To define the particular quality which makes them good is more than a little difficult. It is much easier to analyse and expose the virtues of the most affecting poetry than to explain what moves us in the mildest piece of humour. This is amply proved by the fact that innumerable volumes exist on the origin of comedy and the cause of laughter, and there are more to come: while, roughly speaking, even philosophers are agreed as to the manner in which serious poetry touches us. A great deal, too, of the appeal of these pieces is due to the illustrations of B. T. B. which complement the text with an apt and grotesque commentary. The pleasure given by the verse, perhaps, if one may handle so delicate and trifling a thing, lies in a sort of inconsequence and unexpectedness. Witness the poem on the Yak: Then tell your Papa where the Yak can be got, And if he is awfully rich He will buy you the creature-- (The reader now turns over the page.) Or else he will _not_. (I cannot be positive which.) Or it may reside in mere genial idiocy, as in _The Dodo_: The Dodo used to walk around And take the sun and air. The Sun yet warms his native ground-- The Dodo is not there! The voice which used to squawk and squeak Is now for ever dumb-- Yet may you see his bones and beak All in the Mu-se-um. This is the quality which chiefly inspires the _Cautionary Tales_, that admirable series of biographies. "_Matilda, Who told Lies and was Burned to Death_" is perhaps too well known to quote, but we may extract a passage from "_Lord Lundy, who was too Freely Moved to Tears, and thereby ruined his Political Career_": It happened to Lord Lundy then, As happens to so many men: Towards the age of twenty-six, They shoved him into politics; In which profession he commanded The income that his rank demanded In turn as Secretary for India, the Colonies and War. But very soon his friends began To doubt if he were quite the man: Thus, if a member rose to say (As members do from day to day), "Arising out of that reply...!" Lord Lundy would begin to cry. A hint at harmless little jobs Would shake him with convulsive sobs, While as for Revelations, these Would simply bring him to his knees And leave him whimpering like a child. This genial idiocy, this unexpectedness and inconsequence, are perhaps the most characteristic qualities of his freest humour elsewhere. Take, for example, the flavour of this singular remark from _The Four Men_. Grizzlebeard is telling, according to his oath, in a most serious fashion the story of his first love. He says: