Here is a passage of biting sarcasm from Job. We should surely call it sarcasm if we found it in the pages of Robert South. Job is expressing his scorn for those who affect to look down upon him in his adversities: "But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock." They are "the children of fools, yea, children of base men; they were viler than the earth." (We have an equivalent expression in "meaner than dirt.") They are members of the long-eared fraternity. He does not say so in the bluntest form of expression that can be used, and that any one less skillful would have used. Job puts it much more effectively: "Among the bushes they _brayed_; under the _nettles_ they were gathered together." "If that is not wit," says one, "there is no such thing as wit. And yet the commentators do not see it, or will not see it. They are perfectly wooden when they come to any such gleam of humor." There is a bit of ridicule in Jeremiah that we should be quick to call ridicule, if we came upon it elsewhere. He is describing the disasters that fell upon the allies of the King of Egypt. "Why are the strong ones swept away? They stood not because the Lord did thrust them down. He made them to stumble, yea they fell one upon another; and they said, Arise, and let us go again to our own people, and to the land of our nativity, from the oppressing sword." They are defeated in spite of all the promises of the King of Egypt. He does not seem to avail them. His boasts are ineffectual. His disgusted allies depart, flinging at him the withering reproach, "_Pharoah, King of Egypt, is but a noise_; he hath let the appointed time pass by." That is to say, according to one paraphrase, "Pharoah is of no account now, he has had his chance and lost it; he has outlived his influence; his day is over; he is not a sovereign any longer; he is only a noise." Or as Matthew Henry puts it, "Pharoah can hector and talk big; but that is all; all his promises vanish into smoke." In the same spirit, Queen Catherine says of the dead Wolsey, "His promise was as he then was, mighty; But his performance, as he now is, nothing." If we found a little sketch like the following in Thackeray, we should, beyond doubt, pronounce it humorous: "All the brethren of the poor do hate him; how much more do his friends go far from him. He pursueth them with words, yet are they wanting to him." The words of a poor man can not travel fast enough to overtake his rich friends and neighbors. Indeed, Thackeray has drawn such a picture in his more elaborate description of Harry Warrington in the sponging-house, making vain appeals for help to his rich relatives and friends. "He pursued them with words, yet were they wanting to him." His aunt,--"a member of the great and always established Church of the Pharisees, sent him her blessing,--and a tract!"