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We can weep together over the pathos of the poor Yorkshireman, whose county has never produced some humour not intelligible to the rest of the world. And we can smile together when he says that somebody or other is "not even" a Cockney humourist like Samuel Johnson or Charles Lamb. It is surely sufficiently obvious that all the best humour that exists in our language is Cockney humour.
But American humour on such a general theme would be the humour of exaggeration. The American humourist would say that the English politicians so often sat down on their hats that the noise of the House of Commons was one crackle of silk.
The Characters in this little volume are of a Ballad Maker, a Tapster, a Drunkard, a Rectified Young Man, a Young Novice's New Younger Wife, a Common Fiddler, a Broker, a Jovial Good Fellow, a Humourist, a Malapert Young Upstart, a Scold, a Good Wife, and a Self-Conceited Parcel-Witted Old Dotard.
"You are a humourist, and may say what you like. Quite a humourist. Well, I shall bring Jane with me Jane and her aunt. The rest I leave to you. I have no objections at all to meeting the Hartfield family. Don't scruple. I know you are attached to them." "You certainly will meet them if I can prevail; and I shall call on Miss Bates in my way home."
My friends, topsy-turveydom is not so easy as it looks. The trouble is not in inverting, but in finding what to invert. Our language is full of ancient saws, but it takes wit to discover which to turn upside down. Anybody can stand anything on its head, but it is only the real humourist who knows which thing can stand on its head without falling or looking foolish.
"And anyhow," said Benham, when it was clear that he was not to be struck dead forthwith, "you show a poor idea of your God to think he'd kill a schoolboy for honest doubt. Even old Roddles " "I can't listen to you," cried Latham the humourist, "I can't listen to you. It's HORRIBLE." "Well, who began it?" asked Benham.
There was much visiting and jocular sympathy expressed for the prime mover, and the sailor's sense of humour was greatly touched by all he heard. The mate himself was a humourist, and after he had got over the painful period he often told the story against himself, and never failed to do so with a vividness that made it highly attractive.
But one supreme reason stands not in a certain general superiority to them all a reason which may be stated in three propositions united in a common conclusion: first, that he was a genuine American; second, that he was a genuine humourist; and, third, that he was not an American humourist. Bret Harte had his own peculiar humour, but it had nothing in particular to do with American humour.
It was easy to see that the unfortunate man had tumbled into a position more fantastic and infinitely more dangerous than any position he had hitherto occupied since setting foot in the house of Rochester. That vanished and fantastic humourist would have found plenty to feed his thoughts could he have returned.
Tiro is said to have collected and published three volumes of his master's good things after his death; but if they were not better than those which have come down to us, as contained in his other writings, there has been no great loss to literature in Tiro's 'Ciceroniana'. He knew one secret at least of a successful humourist in society: for it is to him that we owe the first authoritative enunciation of a rule which is universally admitted "that a jest never has so good an effect as when it is uttered with a serious countenance".
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