Into certain works of fiction, not professedly or specifically jocular, the humorous side or element has been unwittingly introduced by the authors in connection with the treatment of their topics; and in one or two cases at least it is so much so, that the whole production amounts to little better than an elaborate and tedious jest. The _Bravo of Venice_, by Monk Lewis, to which I allude elsewhere, is, by way of example, from first to last a solemn absurdity. It purports to narrate a series of extraordinary adventures in the city by an Italian prince in disguise; and Lewis, who seems to have been exhaustively ignorant of the institutions, habits, and costume of the Republic, paints with the utmost nonchalance a succession of scenes in which his hero is the central figure, and not one of which could have possibly occurred under the strict and vigilant oligarchical government ruling there supreme--an administrative machinery so thorough and so omnipresent, that no one could raise a finger or utter a sound unobserved and unreported. Yet in this serio-comic romance the Bravo performs a variety of thrilling and marvellous exploits, bespeaking the existence of an executive of the loosest type, with an _éclat_ and an impunity possible only in a melodramatic performance or a South American democracy. He even represents to us, in one of his theatrical tableaux, the lovely Rosabella of Corfu, the Doge’s own niece, seated alone in an arbour attached to some public gardens, and as rescued from assassination by the Bravo, who is discovered at the last moment, not by the Venetian officials, but his own act, to be somebody totally different from the character which he had originally assumed. It is not too much to say that on that soil such a mystery would not have outlived one round of the clock. [Illustration] CHAPTER XI. THE BALLAD AND THE NURSERY RHYME--PHILOSOPHICAL SIDE OF THE QUESTION--“JACK THE GIANT-KILLER.” The normal jest-book limits itself to stories of the ordinary jocular cast relative to incidents either of the current or past time. Neither the compiler nor the peruser, as a rule, concerns himself with any other aspect of the question than the utility of the volume as a source of immediate amusement. The existence of a philosophical side to the matter remains unsuspected. But I have already tried to demonstrate that this is an intrinsically valuable body of literary material, with which we have to deal, and that it lurks in a wide variety of forms. I have illustrated some of them; but there are yet others--namely, the BALLAD and the NURSERY RHYME.