Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/117

 Rh Micawber and Mrs. Gamp, are not amusing, and by the critics who are so good as to reveal to me the depths of my own delusions. "We have long ago ceased to be either surprised, grieved, or indignant at anything the English say of us," writes Mr. Charles Dudley Warner. "We have recovered our balance. We know that since 'Gulliver' there has been no piece of original humor produced in England equal to Knickerbocker's 'New York;' that not in this century has any English writer equaled the wit and satire of the 'Biglow Papers.'"

Does this mean that Mr. Warner considers Washington Irving to be the equal of Jonathan Swift; that he places the gentle satire of the American alongside of those trenchant and masterly pages which constitute the landmarks of literature? "Swift," says Dr. Johnson, with reluctant truthfulness, "must be allowed for a time to have dictated the political opinions of the English nation." He is a writer whom we may be permitted to detest, but not to undervalue. His star, red as Mars, still flames fiercely in the horizon, while the genial lustre of Washington Irving grows