2. Works of Satire, Wit, and Humor.

Among the best performances of this kind which our literature contains, are "The Tale of a Tub" and "The Battle of the Books" by Swift, Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" and "Sentimental Journey," and the "AntiJacobin" by Canning, Ellis, and Frere.

An explanation has already been given of the title of the first among the works above named.1 Swift tells us that it was composed when "his invention was at the height, and his reading fresh in his head." The "Epistle dedicated to Prince Posterity" is a fine piece of irony; Dryden is maliciously mentioned in it, as a poet who, the prince would be surprised to hear, had written many volumes, and made a noise among his contemporaries. The tale itself, such as it is, relates the adventures of the brothers Peter, Martin, and Jack; and with the sections in which it is carried on, other sections alternate, in which the abuses of learning are exposed. The three brothers, as the names imply, are allegorical, and represent the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinistic systems respectively. The book was eagerly read and discussed: a thing little to be wondered at, when a satire, expressed with inconceivable force and humor, and upon which all the resources of an unquestionably great genius had been expended, was directed against the religious belief and practice of the whole Roman Catholic, and a large portion of the Protestant world. But, though admired, it was widely

1 See p. 257.

2 That by "Martin " Swift originally meant Lutheranism, and not the Church of England, seems clear from the passage in the Fragment appended to the work, where he speaks of dropping "the former Martin," and substituting for him "Lady Bess's institution," by which the Church of England could alone be meant. But it is likely that he was not unwilling, at a later period, to have it supposed that "Martin" stood for the Church of England.

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condemned. Smalridge, a divine of that age, when taxed with the authorship by Sacheverell, answered with indignation, "Not all that you and I have in the world, nor all that we ever shall have, should hire me to write The Tale of a Tub.'" Swift therefore found it necessary to prefix an "Apology" to the edition of 1709, in which he declared that his meaning had been misinterpreted in many places, and that his real object throughout was to serve pure religion and morality. But, if this was his object, he chose a singular way of promoting it. Martin's proceedings, which are represented as rational and right, are disposed of in a page and a half; the rest of the work consists of satirical descriptions of Peter's knavery and mendacity, and of Jack's fanatical extravagance. Of course the general effect of the book is that of a satirical attack on Christianity itself. Voltaire's strong approval, and recommendation to his followers to peruse it, are conclusive as to the real relation in which it stands to religion. What chiefly delighted him was the vigor of the attacks on Peter. These, though highly humorous, are coarse, and sometimes revolting, particularly when it is considered that they came from a clergyman. They show plainly enough that Swift was at the time a cynic and a materialist, and utterly scouted all religion in his secret heart.

In "The Battle of the Books," which, as already mentioned, is Swift's contribution to the controversy on the respective merits of classical and modern literature, the ancient and modern books in the Royal Library are represented as engaging each other in a pitched battle. The moderns march under various leaders, Cowley and Boileau commanding the light horse, and Descartes and Hobbes leading on the bowmen; but Milton and Shakspeare, indignant at the depreciators of their great mas

ters, take no part in the fray. The Ancients form a small and compact body, under the command of Homer, Pindar, Plato, &c. A humorous description of the battle follows, which ends in the moderns being routed, horse and foot. A change of style occurs about the middle of the satire, and thence to the end the Homeric manner is parodied very amusingly.

"The Anti-Jacobin," or "Weekly Examiner," established in 1797 by Canning and his friends, might be classed, according to its form, under the head of Journalism; but since its professed object was to chastise by ridicule, and so render harmless, the Jacobinical rootand-branch aspirations of that portion of the press, which had adopted the new French principles, it is properly classed among works of satire and wit. In performing this self-assigned function, the conductors of "The Anti-Jacobin" did not mince matters. Their language was as violent and abusive as that of their opponents, their accusations as sweeping, and their scrupulosity of assertion not much superior. But the vigor and wit with which they employed the weapons of sarcasm, irony, and parody, gave them a decided advantage, and have gained for "The Anti-Jacobin" a permanent place in our libraries. Parody was used by Canning in the sonnet upon Mrs. Browning, imitated from Southey's lines on Marten the regicide, and in the famous ballad of "The Needy Knife-Grinder," suggested by Southey's Sapphics. The prose portion of the paper contained each week three paragraphs headed "Lies," "Misrepresentations," "Mistakes," in which the corresponding delinquencies of the Jacobin press during the preceding week were examined and castigated. In the second volume Canning introduced the prose drama of “The Rovers; or, the Double Arrangement," a capital burlesque on Kotzebue's plays, which were then the rage

in England. The virtuous sentiments and loose practice of Kotzebue's heroes and heroines are amusingly exhibited in Matilda and her lover. Matilda's "A thought strikes me let us swear eternal friendship," is exquisite in its absurdity.

Before speaking of works of humor, it is necessary, in order not to confound them with works of satire, to define the term, "humor" with some strictness. Humor is a peculiar way of regarding persons, actions, and things, in conformity to the peculiar character of the humorist. It is to be carefully distinguished from wit, which is the quick apprehension of relations between dissimilar ideas; such relations being generally verbal rather than real. Humor looks beneath the surface; it does not stay among the familiar outsides and semblances of things; it seizes upon strange out-of-the-way relations between ideas, which are real rather than verbal. In this it resembles imagination; and the humorist must, indeed, possess this fusing and re-uniting faculty in a high degree; but the difference is, that the relations between ideas which his turn of mind leads him to perceive are mostly odd, strange relations, the exhibition of which, while it makes us thoughtful, because the relations are real, not verbal merely, awakens also our sense of the ludicrous. We may take as an illustration the strange train of ideas in which Hamlet indulges in the scene. with the grave-digger, when he "traces in imagination the noble dust of Alexander, until he finds it stopping a bung-hole." Again, the property which has been assigned to humor, of looking beneath the surface, involves the power of detecting empty pretension and hypocrisy, however carefully they may be disguised. Under all the trappings and habiliments with which he seeks to veil his littleness, the humorist still detects the insignificant creature, man; and delights, by homely

apologue or humiliating comparison, to hold up a mirror in which he may see himself as he is. This is the direction in which the humorist approaches very near to the satirist; the distinction being that the latter has, while the former has not, a definite moral purpose, genuine or assumed, in lashing and exposing the weaknesses of mankind. Humor is exhibitive, satire didactic. In humor, as Coleridge says, there is a universalising property. Satire, on the contrary, seizes upon different classes of and tends always to personality. It seems never to have quite lost the memory of the scenes amid which it had its origin, of the Fescennine license, the unlimited freedom of heaping up abuse and ridicule upon individuals, which were allowed to the Eleusinian mystics upon their return from the solemn ceremonies of initiation.

men,

Sterne, the author of "Tristram Shandy" and "The Sentimental Journey," is essentially and above all things a humorist. "Tristram Shandy" is ostensibly a fictitious narrative; but it is really a pure work of humor, the narrative being destitute of plot, and the incidents only serving to bring out the humorous traits and notions of the different characters (Mr. Shandy, Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, &c.), and to give occasion to humorous rhapsodies on the part of the author. In "Tristram Shandy" the humor tends to the side of satire, while in "The Sentimental Journey " it tends to the side of sentiment and pathos. The well-known episode on the dead donkey, and the story of the captive, exhibit this phase of Sterne's humor. We extract the former: —

"The mourner was sitting upon a stone bench at the door, with an ass's pannel and its bridle on one side, which he took up from time to time, then laid them down, looked at them, and shook his head. He then took his crust of bread out of his wallet again, as if to eat it, held it some time in his hand, then laid it upon the bit of his ass's bridle, looked wistfully at the little arrangement he had made, and