I may add that the Dandelion on the cover (dent de lion), despoiled of the six floating seeds-one symbolic seed for each of my Humorists-appeared to me to indicate aptly enough the incisive bite, yet vagrant character, of Wit.

Wit often seizes its prey with a truly leonine grip; yet sometimes it has to wander far in search of an appropriate soilin vain do its seedlets fall upon minds without a sense of humor.

For the fate of these seeds which have been blown across the Atlantic I have no fear. They have long since taken root ; and a glance at the full Dandelion ball that remains is enough to show that plenty more are ready to take wing from the same quarter, and to find, let us hope, a pleasant resting-place upon

British soil.

LONDON,

H. R. HAWEIS.

October, 1882.

AMERICAN HUMORISTS.

I.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

FOREWORDS ON HUMOR AND WIT.

A FEW words on wit and humor in general; a few more on American wit and humor in particular; and a good many on the wit and humor of WASHINGTON IRVING, OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, ARTEMUS WARD, MARK TWAIN, and BRET HARTE.

I have read long and tiresome essays by HAZLITT and others, explaining the difference between wit and humor.

I have lain awake at night thinking over the difference, and

I have come to the conclusion-that there is none.

I hasten to reveal this truth to the world because it has been such a comfort to me.

Humor is the electric atmosphere, wit is the flash. A situation provides the atmospheric humor, and with the culminating point of it comes the flash.

The character of CARLYLE'S "Teufelsdroeckh" is perfectly steeped in a peculiar kind of dry and flowing humor, but when he says that England is composed of ten million of human beings-mostly fools, there is the flash. Out of such a tone of mind from such a humorous atmosphere, we may expect to draw a spark at almost any moment.

COWPER'S "John Gilpin" provides a series of situations from which we naturally have great expectations; and, in fact, at each turning-point there comes the inevitable flash of wit proper to the humorous situation. As the worthy citizen flies helplessly past the place where he should have dined

"Stop, stop, John Gilpin!-Here's the house!
They all at once did cry;

The dinner waits, and we are tired :'
Said Gilpin, So am I!'"

"a hit-a palpable hit !"

There are some people who turn away from such light themes. They consider fun dangerous, humor frivolous, wit waste of time. They are wrong.

I assert the dignity of wit, and I claim for it noble ends, for, rightly used, it is sensible, moral, recreative, and stimulating in a very high degree.

PORSON said, "Wit is the best sense in the world." Everything truly witty is a very nucleus of condensed thought-a sort of literary Liebig, an "extractum carnis" of sense.

Analyze any "good saying" or "bon mot," you will find it will bear sifting-thinking about, and will generally rivet upon the mind something worth remembering.

A conceited poet once asked Porson to read a new poem which he had just written, and tell him candidly what he thought of it. "Sir," said the great scholar, "your verse will be read when VIRGIL is forgotten, but not till then!" Was there no sense in that?

"Doctor, how do you live to be so old and rich ?" "By writing prescriptions, but never taking them," was the witty and very sensible reply.

"Man," says a proverb, "leads woman to the altar, and there his leadership ends." This is a truth which has doubtless been so often and so happily illustrated in the lives and experiences of the people whom I have the honor of addressing, that I need hardly do more than allude to it here,