It is upward of two decades since I launched the so-called “Shakespear Jest-Books”; and, looking at them to-day, I cannot help saying that I see in them a means supplied to the inquirer of forming a comparative estimate between the ancient school and the early English on the one hand, and the modern English on the other. The volumes form a selection of types from 1526 to 1639, and embrace within their limits almost every variety of jocular invention. Even in the miscellany which passed under the name of _Tarlton’s Jests_ there had been commencing symptoms of a change of fashion and requirement; and in Taylor the Water Poet’s budget of _facetiæ_, which he christened his _Wit and Mirth_, 1629, we perceive that the revolution has reached a farther stage. The strokes of fun, which delighted the contemporary readers of the _Hundred Merry Tales_, still preserved their place; but with them are mingled anecdotes more redolent and characteristic of the Stuart period, preparing us for those still later and still grosser publications which marked the reign of the second Charles. The _Hundred Merry Tales_, with which the series naturally and properly opens, sets the example of plagiarism by adopting stories from still earlier sources; but the obligations of the book to ready-made or convertible material are relatively slight, and the best portions, including the inimitable account of the “Miller that stole the nuts of the tailor that stole a sheep,” and the dramatic story of the Maltman of Colebrook, seem, so far as one has the means of judging, to be founded on actual incidents. The tales bear constant and unmistakable testimony of having been composed by some one who possessed a keen sense of humour and a hearty relish for the ludicrous; that they were from the hand of a literary man and a scholar of no mean ability, is not to be reasonably doubted; and if we were informed on credible authority that some of them offered to us the fruits of the leisure of even so distinguished a public character as Sir Thomas More, we should receive the ascription without misgiving, and feel that there were among his graver works some which we could better spare.