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92 erudite sort of tickle, and may be reserved for one of the Quarterly Reviews. Never throw away a simile unnecessarily.

"Now for a sample of the facetious tickle.

"'Mr. has obtained a considerable reputation! Some fine ladies think him a great philosopher, and he has been praised in our hearing by some Cambridge Fellows, for his knowledge of fashionable society.'

"For this sort of tickle we generally use the dullest of our tribe, and I have selected the foregoing example from the criticisms of a distinguished writer in the Asinæum, whom we call par excellence, the Ass.

"There is a variety of other tickles; the familiar, the vulgar, the polite, the goodnatured, the bitter; but in general all tickles may be supposed to signify, however disguised, one or the other of these meanings. 'This book would be exceedingly good if it were not exceedingly bad.' Or, 'This book would be exceedingly bad if it were not exceedingly good.'

"You have now, Paul, a general idea of the superior art required by the tickle?"