If it were not for Miss and the dinner—two objects of perennial interest to all men of spirit and taste—I am not sure that I should not prefer the introduction to the conversations themselves. It is indispensable to the due understanding of the latter, and I cannot but think that Thackeray unjustifiably overlooked the excuse it contains for the somewhat miscellaneous and Gargantuan character of the feast which excited his astonishment and horror. But it would be delightful in itself if we were so unfortunate as to have lost the conversations, and, as I have already said, its delight is of a strangely different kind from theirs. Although there are more magnificent and more terrible, more poignant and more whimsical examples of the marvellous Swiftian irony, I do not know that there is any more justly proportioned, more exquisitely modulated, more illustrative of that wonderful keeping which is the very essence and quiddity of the Dean’s humour. Some things have been lately said, as they are always said from time to time, about the contrast between the Old humour and the New. The contrast, I venture to think, is wrongly stated. It is not a contrast between the old and the new, but, in the first place, between the perennial and the temporary, and in the second between two kinds of humour which, to do them justice, are both perennial enough—the humour which is quiet, subtle, abstracted, independent of catchwords and cant phrases, and the humour which is broad, loud, gesticulative, and prone to rely upon cant phrases and catchwords. Swift has illustrated the two in the two parts of this astonishing book, and whoso looks into the matter a little narrowly will have no difficulty in finding this out. Far be it from me to depreciate the “newer” kind, but I may be permitted to think it the lower. It is certainly the easier. The perpetual stream of irony which Swift pours out here in so quiet yet so steady a flow, is the most difficult of all things to maintain in its perfection. Not more, perhaps, than half-a-dozen writers in all literature, of whom the three chiefs are Lucian, Pascal, and Swift himself, have been quite masters of it, and of these three Swift is the mightiest. Sink below the requisite proportion of bitterness and the thing becomes flat; exceed that proportion and it is nauseous. Perhaps, as one is always fain to persuade oneself in such cases, a distinct quality of palate is required to taste, as well as a distinct power of genius to brew it. It is certain that though there are some in all times who relish this kind of humour (and this is what gives it its supremacy, for examples of the other kind are, at other than their own times, frequently not relished by anybody), they are not often found in large numbers. The liquor is too dry for many tastes; it has too little froth, if not too little sparkle for others. The order of architecture is too unadorned, depends too much upon the bare attraction