beyond his fellows with a love for all that is jovial, he speaks from
out of the richness of his experience. "Those who have a sense of
humor," he says, "instead of being quietly and humbly thankful, are
perhaps a little too apt to celebrate their joy in the face of the
afflicted ones who have it not; and the afflicted ones only follow a
general law in protesting that it is a very worthless thing, if not a
complete humbug." This spirit of exclusiveness on the one side and of
irascibility on the other may be greatly deplored, but who is there
among us, I wonder, wholly innocent of blame? Mr. Saintsbury himself
confesses to a silent chuckle of delight when he thinks of the dimly
veiled censoriousness with which Peacock's inimitable humor has been
received by one-half of the reading world. In other words, his
enjoyment of the Reverend Doctors Folliott and Opimian is sensibly
increased by the reflection that a great many worthy people, even
among his own acquaintances, are, by some mysterious law of their
being, debarred from any share in his pleasure. Yet surely we need
not be so niggardly in this matter. There is wit enough in those two
reverend gentlemen to go all around the living earth and leave plenty
for generations now unborn. Each might say with Juliet:

"The more I give to thee,
The more I have;"

for wit is as infinite as love, and a deal more lasting in its
qualities. When Peacock describes a country gentleman's range of
ideas as "nearly commensurate with that of the great king
Nebuchadnezzar when he was turned out to grass," he affords us a
happy illustration of the eternal fitness of humor, for there can
hardly come a time when such an apt comparison will fail to point its
meaning.