the self-sparing charity of phrase that could stretch the meaning of the word "dissemble" so as to make it cover so violent a process as kicking downstairs has the true zest, the tang, of contradiction and surprise. Hood, not content with such a play upon ideas, would bewitch the whole sentence with plays upon words also. His fancy has the enchantment of Huon's horn, and sets the gravest conceptions a-capering in a way that makes us laugh in spite of ourselves. Andrew Marvell's satire upon the Dutch is a capital instance of wit as distinguished from fun. It rather exercises than tickles the mind, so full is it of quaint fancy: Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land, As but the offscouring of the British sand, And so much earth as was contributed By English pilots when they heaved the lead, Or what by ocean's slow alluvium fell Of shipwrecked cockle and the muscle-shell; This indigestful vomit of the sea Fell to the Dutch by just propriety. Glad, then, as miners who have found the ore They, with mad labor, fished their land to shore, And dived as desperately for each piece Of earth as if 't had been of ambergreese Collecting anxiously small loads of clay, Less than what building swallows bear away, Or than those pills which sordid beetles roll. Transfusing into them their sordid soul. How did they rivet with gigantic piles Thorough the centre their new-catchèd miles, And to the stake a struggling country bound, Where barking waves still bait the forcèd ground! Yet still his claim the injured ocean laid. And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played, As if on purpose it on land had come To show them what's their _mare liberum_; The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossessed, And sate, not as a meat, but as a guest; And oft the Tritons and the sea-nymphs tan Whole shoals of Dutch served up as Caliban, And, as they over the new level ranged, For pickled herring pickled Heeren changed. Therefore necessity, that first made kings, Something like government among them brings; And as among the blind the blinkard reigns So rules among the drowned he that drains; Who best could know to pump on earth a leak, Him they their lord and Country's Father speak. To make a bank was a great plot of state, Invent a shovel and be a magistrate; Hence some small dykegrave, unperceived, invades The power, and grows, as 't were, a king of spades. I have cited this long passage not only because Marvell (both in his serious and comic verse) is a great favorite of mine, but because it is as good an illustration as I know how to find of that fancy flying off into extravagance, and that nice compactness of expression, that constitute genuine wit. On the other hand, Smollett is only funny, hardly witty, where he condenses all his wrath against the Dutch into an epigram of two lines: Amphibious creatures, sudden be your fall, May man undam you and God damn you all.