fool, and not a prophet in the market-place. And if the man in the
market-place chances to be a prophet, his message is safe from
assault. No laughter can silence him, no ridicule weaken his words.

Carlyle's grim humour was also drilled into efficacy. He used it in
orderly fashion; he gave it force by a stern principle of repression.
He had (what wise man has not?) an honest respect for dulness, knowing
that a strong and free people argues best--as Mr. Bagehot puts
it--"in platoons." He had some measure of mercy for folly. But
against the whole complicated business of pretence, against the
pious, and respectable, and patriotic hypocrisies of a successful
civilization, he hurled his taunts with such true aim that it is not
too much to say there has been less real comfort and safety in lying
ever since.

These are victories worth recording, and there is a big battlefield
for American humour when it finds itself ready for the fray, when
it leaves off firing squibs, and settles down to a compelling
cannonade, when it aims less at the superficial incongruities of life,
and more at the deep-rooted delusions which rob us of fair fame. It
has done its best work in the field of political satire, where the
"Biglow Papers" hit hard in their day, where Nast's cartoons helped
to overthrow the Tweed dynasty, and where the indolent and luminous
genius of Mr. Dooley has widened our mental horizon. Mr. Dooley is
a philosopher, but his is the philosophy of the looker-on, of that
genuine unconcern which finds Saint George and the dragon to be both
a trifle ridiculous. He is always undisturbed, always illuminating,
and not infrequently amusing; but he anticipates the smiling
indifference with which those who come after us will look back upon
our enthusiasms and absurdities. Humour, as he sees it, is that