Page:The English humourists of the eighteenth century. A series of lectures, delivered in England, Scotland, and the United States of America (IA englishhumourist00thacrich).pdf/299

 who can make you laugh, who can make you cry, too—never lets his reader alone, or will permit his audience repose: when you are quiet, he fancies he must rouse you, and turns over head and heels, or sidles up and whispers a nasty story. The man is a great jester, not a great humourist. He goes to work systematically and of cold blood; paints his face, puts on his ruff and motley clothes, and lays down his carpet and tumbles on it.

For instance, take the "Sentimental Journey," and see in the writer the deliberate propensity to make points and seek applause. He gets to Dessein's Hotel, he wants a carriage to travel to Paris, he goes to the inn-yard and begins what the actors call "business" at once. There is that little carriage the désobligeant. "Four months had elapsed since it had finished its career of Europe in the corner of Monsieur Dessein's courtyard, and having sallied out thence but a vamped-up business at first, though it had been twice taken to pieces on Mount Sennis, it had not profited much by its adventures, but by none so little as the standing so many months unpitied in the corner of Monsieur Dessein's coach-yard. Much, indeed, was not to be said for it—but something might—and when a few words will rescue misery out of her distress, I hate the man who can be a churl of them."

Le tour est fait! Paillasse has tumbled! Paillasse