The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-01-12

From the New York Mail and Express.
 N RITISH humor has always been H regarded with awe and reverence
 " In this country. Its manifesto tions are so humorous because of their lack of humor; it smacks of Dr. John son, and rings with the sharp wit of Boswell. London "Pnch is not wholly typical of British humor, though parts of it are. Burnands Happy Thoughts and More Happy Thoughts" for ex- ample; good in homeopathic doses at long intervals, but deadly in allopathic doses at merely constructive intervals.
 The recent campaign of the London Times in selling its edition of the En- cyclopedia Britannica was a cause of a vast outburst of British humor. The methods used were caricatured-every caricature, of course, advertising the work still more-in handbills, circulars and leaflets, even up to the imitation of the handsomely illustrated pamphlets" which one obtained free of charge by cutting off 'the corner of this page and sending 1t, with your name and address clearly written" to the office of the newspaper in Printing House Square. London. These limitations of the pamph- lets were-pace MT. (now Sir Francis) Burnan-"typical developments of mod ern British humor
 There were two of them, Parts l. and II, of the Inside Complete You Are Britannia Ware'' How is that for a caricature of Encyclopedia Britannica D. They sold at a shilling a part, and went through several editions Their contents resembled those of the original pamph- let-or rather, suggested those-about as closely as their title recalled that of advertising columns of newspapers serv- ed as illustrations; and, the pun being still the quintessential part of British humor, the text was full of verbal ir- felicities and atrocities As MT. Lincoln once said, For those who like that sort of thing, that is just the sort of thing they'll like;" and the British public fell on the burlesque pamphlets with joyous avidity. to the profit of the unnamed au- thors and their publishers.
 Another form of British humor Is the
 serious relation of an imaginary event
 or series of events. "The Battle of DorR- ing was the first modern instance of this
 sort ofshumor. It appeared about thirty
 years ago and made a great hit in Eng
 land It has been republished more than
 once; but whether 1t described a British
 victory over the invaders of the right tight little island or not, the present wri- ter confesses to forgetting There was at least one attempt to make similar story ''go" over here Park Benjamin. in "The Battle of New York" or ''The Conquest of New York" published is the now for gotten annex of Puck entitled "Fic- tion,' described the Spanish capture of this city; but the attempt was not sue cessful, and that form of English pleas antry has never been naturalized here. It is still fiourishing strongly at 'ome though not recognized there as ''humour, 2 for within a few months volume oi nearly five hundred pages has appeared entitled Modern Warfare" by ''Ubique' The title is a misnomer, for more thar four hundred pages of the book are giver up to description of the next war be. tween Germany and France. in which Great Britain takes an active part as ar | ally of the latter country, and disposes | of the German army out of hand. very
 much as Butcher disposed of the French | at Waterloo-according to the kaiser t recent speech at Hamburg. Perhaps. b,