POINTS OF HUMOUR, Part II.
By Anonymous
By The Designs Of GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
Ten Engravings of Copper, Twelve Wood Cuts
1824
" Let me play the fool:
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come;
And let my liver rather heat with wine,
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.
Why should a man, whose blood is warm within,
Sit like his grandsire, cut in alabaster?
Sleep when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice
By being peevish?"
Shakspeare
PREFACE.
The best preface to _this_ set of the Points of Humour is the _former_
set, which, we are credibly informed, has favorably disposed the
muscles of our readers for repeating a certain cackling sound, which is
heart-food to our friend George Cruikshank.
One individual, for certain, has laughed over these Points, and he is
a very worthy gentleman, who may be, discerned wedging his way through
sundry piles of books in a remarkable part of Newgate-street, being
opposite to the huge prison of that name. No one ever asked him after
the sale of this little work, without observing an instantaneous
distension of that feature of the face which is used for more purposes
than merely grinning. It is to be devoutly hoped that this second set
will not spoil his merriment, and that, as rather a coarse saying goes,
"he will not be made to sing to another tune."
The author, collector, compiler, editor, writer, or whatever name the
daily or weekly critics may give him, for they have given him all these,
will, undoubtedly, be heartily sorry should this change take place,
for he avows that since the publication of the Points, the face of
the worthy gentleman alluded to has been illuminated by one unclouded
sunshine, so much so, indeed, that to enter his shop has been a constant
resource against melancholy during this gloomy weather. A face lighted
up with good humour in a dark shop, is like a blaze of light in the
middle of one of Rembrandt's murky pictures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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