Barmecide feasts when reported to us without a single amusing remark,
such waifs and strays of conversation as reached our ears being of
the dreariest and most fatuous description. It is not so with the
real masters of their craft. Mr. Peacock does not stop to explain to
us that Doctor Folliott is witty. The reverend gentleman opens his
mouth and acquaints us with the fact himself. There is no need for
George Eliot to expatiate on Mrs. Poyser's humor. Five minutes of
that lady's society is amply sufficient for the revelation. We do not
even hear Mr. Poyser and the rest of the family enlarging delightedly
on the subject, as do all of Lawyer Putney's friends, in Mr.
Howells's story, "Annie Kilburn"; and yet even the united testimony
of Hatboro' fails to clear up our lingering doubts concerning Mr.
Putney's wit. The dull people of that soporific town are really and
truly and realistically dull. There is no mistaking them. The stamp
of veracity is upon every brow. They pay morning calls, and we listen
to their conversation with a dreamy impression that we have heard it
all many times before, and that the ghosts of our own morning calls
are revisiting us, not in the glimpses of the moon, but in Mr.
Howells's decorous and quiet pages. That curious conviction that we
have formerly passed through a precisely similar experience is strong
upon us as we read, and it is the most emphatic testimony to the
novelist's peculiar skill. But there is none of this instantaneous
acquiescence in Mr. Putney's wit; for although he does make one very
nice little joke, it is hardly enough to flavor all his conversation,
which is for the most part rather unwholesome than humorous. The only
way to elucidate him is to suppose that Mr. Howells, in sardonic
mood, wishes to show us that if a man be discreet enough to take to
hard drinking in his youth, before his general emptiness is
ascertained, his friends invariably credit him with a host of shining
qualities which, we are given to understand he balked and frustrated
by his one unfortunate weakness. How many of us know these
exceptionally brilliant lawyers, doctors, politicians and journalists
who bear a charmed reputation based exclusively upon their inebriety,
and who take good care not to imperil it by too long a relapse into
the mortifying self-revelations of soberness! And what wrong has been
done to the honored name of humor by these pretentious rascals! We do
not love Falstaff because he is drunk; we do not admire Becky Sharp
because she is wicked. Drunkenness and wickedness are things easy of
imitation; yet all the sack in Christendom could not beget us another
Falstaff—though Seithenyn ap Seithyn comes very near to the

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