Of these, the Apologue and the Riddle are the most ancient--the latter being entitled to priority, if we take into account its positive origin in the Hebrew Scriptures themselves, although the jocular or comic development is so much more recent. The same criticism applies to the Apologue which was transplanted from Oriental soil, where it has ever been a favourite method of conveying instruction and amusement, into the oldest Western vehicles for the same twofold purpose, such as the _Gesta Romanorum_, the _Fables_ of Æsop, and _Reynard the Fox_. These productions, with many others, were designed as a method of inculcating moral precepts and political lessons under a fictitious or romantic garb. The facetious adaptation was a later growth, and first manifests itself in the French and Latin _fabliaux_ in prose or verse edited for us by Méon and Wright. Next in the scale of antiquity to the Apologue and Riddle we may be warranted in ranking the Epigram; and this, too, like the two others to which I have been referring, was in its inception and early employment satirical rather than burlesque for the most part. Humour did not enter at first into its composition or design. Any one who looks through the Greek Anthology may see that the productions in that language are serious narratives treated in a terse and condensed style. The Quibble and Repartee were tolerably popular features and characteristics in the jest-books of the seventeenth century, when the formation of literary clubs, and the increased correspondence between men of parts and wit, naturally led to the growth of that large body of sayings which the printed and MSS. collections have handed down to us. The age immediately succeeding that of Shakespear saw the uprise of the quip and crank, and the retort courteous, “conceits, clinches, flashes, and whimzies,” and all the rest of the merry, motley company. Such utterances they were as undoubtedly appealed with success to their auditors and readers; but so thorough is the change which has stolen over our taste and feeling in these matters, that, in turning over the leaves of a volume of _facetiæ_, which was once read with avidity and delight, the impression now produced is a mingled one of surprise and disappointment. The humorous literature, like the coinage, of a particular era, seems as if it were part of it; and it is in a vast majority of instances incapable of assimilation or transfer, as I shall endeavour to prove by a few casual selections from miscellanies which were in prime vogue and favour when James I. was on the throne, and those three renowned hostelries, the Mermaid, the Mitre, and the Devil, were flourishing centres of all that was cultivated and spiritual.