replied, "b-b-boiled, madam, BOILED!" that mother loved him no
more: and when John Randolph said "THANK YOU!" to his
constituent who kindly remarked that he had the pleasure of
PASSING his house, it was wit at the expense of friendship. The
whole English school of wits--with Douglas Jerrold, Hood,
Sheridan, and Sidney Smith, indulged in repartee. They were
PARASITIC wits. And so with the Irish, except that an Irishman
is generally so ridiculously absurd in his replies as to only
excite ridicule. "Artemus Ward" made you laugh and love him too.

The wit of "Artemus Ward" and "Josh Billings" is distinctively
American. Lord Kames, in his "Elements of Criticism," makes no
mention of this species of wit, a lack which the future
rhetorician should look to. We look in vain for it in the
English language of past ages, and in other languages of modern
time. It is the genus American. When Artemus says in that
serious manner, looking admiringly at his atrocious pictures,--"I
love pictures--and I have many of them--beautiful photographs--of
myself;" you smile; and when he continues, "These pictures were
painted by the Old Masters; they painted these pictures and then
they--they expired;" you hardly know what it is that makes you
laugh outright; and when Josh Billings says in his Proverbs,
wiser than Solomon's "You'd better not know so much, than know so
many things that ain't so;"--the same vein is struck, but the
text-books fail to explain scientifically the cause of our mirth.

The wit of Charles Browne is of the most exalted kind. It is
only scholars and those thoroughly acquainted with the SUBTILTY
of our language who fully appreciate it. His wit is generally
about historical personages like Cromwell, Garrick, or