When, however, the English people read Haliburton’s satiric comedy and comic characterization, they came, _for the first time_, upon an absolute or sheer literary novelty—literature that was _not_ English, _not_ English-American, _not_ English-Canadian, but an original _American_ species, absolutely new and unique. Here in Haliburton’s work was literature in the English language, but not English in matter, manner, or tone. Here were such novel satiric humor, such arresting and vitalized comic characterization, and such a strange medley of practical wisdom in moral maxims and epigrams, and all expressed in a unique lingo, that the like of it never was before in any literature which had come even from America. At once a change took place in the minds of the English people in England. Hitherto America had looked across to England for fresh literature, and had based its own literature on English models. But when Haliburton produced a wholly original American literature, England looked, for the first time in history, across to America both for fresh and original literature, and for models which the English writers might follow. At least in one instance English humoristic literature actually modelled itself on Haliburton. There is no argument possible in the matter. For the fact is that Dickens did read _The Clockmaker_, which appeared serially a year earlier than Dickens’ _Pickwick Papers_, and that Sam Weller is an English version of Haliburton’s Sam Slick (not conversely). It is a literary phenomenon by itself that Haliburton’s work enjoyed an ‘unprecedented popularity’ in England but also displaced in popularity the work of Irving, Cooper and Richardson. The popularity of Haliburton’s work was not a mere vogue. It remains to this day. His Sam Slick has been admitted to the gallery of the chief comic characters, not only in English, but also in world, literature—to a place beside Sterne’s Uncle Toby, Dickens’ Pickwick and Micawber, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Daudet’s Tartarin, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. It is also a fact that Haliburton’s epigrams and moral maxims have become part of the English colloquial speech and at least English popular literature. Most remarkable were the influences of Haliburton and his works on American Literature. Rightly to appreciate these influences, it is necessary to understand what Haliburton was not. He was not, as has been alleged, ‘the father (or founder) of American humor.’ He was not ‘the creator of the American type in literature.’ He was not ‘the first American in literature.’ His Sam Slick is not ‘the typical American.’ These alleged distinctions are half-truths and are based on ambiguities.