The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1882-05-18
American Humor,

In some respects, though in seme only,
Charles Lambs humor anticipates the
type of humor which we now call, in
the main, American. When, for instance,
he gravely narrated the origin of the
Chinese invention of roast pig, in the
burning down of house-when he told
friend that he had moved Just forty
two inches nearer his beloved London
and again, when he wrote to Manning
In China that the new Persian Ambas-
sador was called ''Shaw Ali Mirza,n but
the common people called him ''Shaw
Nonsense" we might think we were
listening to Artemus Wards or MARI
Twain's minute and serious nonsense.
But for the most part Charles Lambs
humor is more frolicsome, more whim-
sical, and less subdued in its extrava-
gance: more like the gamboling of
mind which did not care 10 conceal its
enjoyment of paradox, and less like the
inward, invisible laughter in which the
Yankees most delight. Lamb dearly
loved frisk, and when, for instance,
he blandly proposed to some friend who
offered to wrap up for him bit of old
cheese which he had seemed to like at
dinner. to let him have bit of string
with which he could probably ''lead it
home," there was certainly nothing in
him of the grim impassiveness of Yam
kee extravaganza. 1t might be asserted,
perhaps, that, even if the prospect of q
great future for English humor is good,
there is still reason to fear that it must
dwindle in largeness of conception, so
that such massive forms of humor as we
find, for instance, in ''Gulliyer's Tray
els" or the Tale of a Tub" are not
likely to return.
Dickens-who as humorist was prob
ably not inferior in conception, and GER
tainly more abundant in creation, than
any humolist in the worlds wholly
modern. and he certainly has by no
means exhausted the field even of that
sort of humor in which he himself was
most potent. The field of what we may
call idealized yulgarities, which includes
sketches of the abstract monthly nurse
whose every thought and action breathe
the fawning brutalitieS of the Mrs. Camp
species-Of beadles who incarnate all
beadledom-of London pickpockets who
have assimilated ali that is entertaining
in the world of professional slang and
nothing that is disgustng-of boarding
house keepers whose mind is transform
ed into an instrument for providing
enough food and gravy and amusement
for their commercial gentlemen-of
water-rate collectors glorifed by one ideal
passion for the ballet-of rascaliy school
masters whose very action betrays the
coward and bully-or of hypocrites
who secrete airs of pretentious benevol-
ence as an oil-giand secretes oil, is by no
means exhausted, hardly attacked
And yet it promises a sort of humor
particularly well adapted to this period
Of at once almost sordid realism and in
genious abstraction. Nor can it be de-
MED that 'Alice in Wonderland" "espec-
tally such plaintive ballads as that of the
walrus and the carpenter, provide us
with type of grotesque fancy almost
cut free from the realities of life, and vet
quantity reproducing all the old human
tendencies under absurdly new condi-
tions; nor that this promises well for in
9ffd ct t5d dlaiFF laiFFGlhqes lhaq2 we ffSgleT never
expect to see the great types of transat-
lantic humor reproduced on this side of
the Atlantic. These for the most part
imply a rare faculty for turning the
mind aside from the direct way of saving
a thing to one that is so indirect as to |
lead you travelling on totally opposite |
track, as for example, when Bret Harte
declares that one of his rowdies:
Took point of order when
A chunk Of old red sandstone hit him in the nh |
domen,
And he smiled kind O. sickly smile. and curI- |
ed I'D on the floor,
And the subeekent proceedings interested him
no more;
or when the American blasphemer re-
torted that if his censor had but ..iump-
ed out OF bed on to the business end of |
a tin-tack, even he would have cursed |
some" This wonderful power OF sug-
gesting misleading analogies taken from
The very province which would seem to
be least suggested either by analogy or
contrast seems to be, digenous in the
United States.-Lond0nSpectator.