“Our Father who art in Heaven,” the little visitor began devoutly, “Cabot be thy name--” “What? What do you mean?” asked the startled lady. “Oh,” said the child, “of course, at home, I say ‘Halliwell be thy name,’ but here, I thought it more polite to say Cabot.” * * * * * It is held by most writers on the subject that the great influx of humor into literature took place in the latter half of the sixteenth century. This is partly because the progressing art of printing brought about the influx of many elements into literature at that time, and also because then appeared the work of three of the greatest of the world’s humorists. Shakespeare in England, Rabelais in France and Cervantes in Spain, gave us their immortal works. Earlier in the century Thomas More in his _Utopia_ and Nicholas Udall in his _Ralph Royster Doyster_ wrote in humorously satiric vein, but these works are difficult to quote from satisfactorily. Having reached the period when Humor began to be produced in various countries independently of one another, it becomes necessary to modify our strict chronological arrangement and consider the nations and their humorists separately. Before this, broadly speaking, literature should be considered as a whole, but as great names began to appear in certain widely separated localities, a national division must be made. And so, continuing in England, we come to William Shakespeare. With Shakespeare’s greatness as a poet and dramatist we are not here concerned, but there are some critics who dispute his preeminence as a humorist. While Hazlitt declared that in his opinion Molière was as great or greater than Shakespeare as a comic genius; Doctor Johnson, on the other hand, held that Shakespeare’s comedies are better than his tragedies. However, few are found to support Johnson’s opinion, and Hazlitt qualifies his by saying that as Shakespeare’s imagination and poetry were the master qualities of his mind, the ludicrous was forced to take second place. Both these worthies, however, agree on the question of Falstaff’s greatness, and Hazlitt takes this attitude. “I would not be understood to say that there are not scenes or whole characters in Shakespeare equal in wit and drollery to anything upon record. Falstaff alone is an instance, which, if I would, I could not get over. He is the leviathan of all the creatures of the author’s comic genius, and tumbles about his unwieldy bulk in an ocean of wit and humour. But in general it will be found (if I am not mistaken), that even in the very best of these the spirit of humanity and the fancy of the poet greatly prevail over the mere wit and satire, and that we sympathize with his characters oftener than we laugh at them. His ridicule wants the sting of ill-nature. He had hardly such a thing as spleen in his composition. Falstaff himself is so great a joke, rather from his being so huge a mass of enjoyment than of absurdity.”