he grows so irrepressibly
funny as to call Josephus 'Mr. Joe,' and addresses him as
follows:--'Wicked Joseph, listen to me: you've been telling us a fairy
tale; and for my part, I've no objection to a fairy tale in any
situation, because if one can make no use of it oneself, always one
knows that a child will be thankful for it. But this tale, Mr. Joseph,
happens also to be a lie; secondly, a fraudulent lie; thirdly, a
malicious lie.' I have seen this stuff described as 'scholarlike
badinage;' but the only effect of such exquisite foolery, within my
mind, is to persuade one that a writer assailed by such weapons, and
those weapons used by a man who has the whole resources of the English
language at his command, must probably have been encountering an
inconvenient truth. I will simply refer to the story of Sir Isaac Newton
sitting all day with one stocking on and one off, in the Casuistry of
Roman Meals, as an illustration of the way in which a story ought not to
be told. Its most conspicuous, though not its worst fault, its extreme
length, protects it from quotation.

It is strange to find that a writer, pre-eminently endowed with delicacy
of ear, and boasting of the complex harmonies of his style, should
condescend to such an irritating defect. De Quincey says of one of the
greatest masters of the humorous:--'The gyration within which his
(Lamb's) sentiment wheels, no matter of what kind it may be, is always
the shortest possible. It does not prolong itself, it does not repeat
itself, it does not propagate itself.' And he goes on to connect the
failing with Lamb's utter insensibility to music, and indifference to
'the rhythmical in prose composition.' The criticism is a fine one in
its way, but it may perhaps explain some of De Quincey's shortcomings in
Lamb's peculiar sphere. De Quincey's jokes are apt to repeat and
prolong and propagate themselves, till they become tiresome; and the
delicate touch of the true humorist, just indicating a half-comic,
half-pathetic thought, is alien to De Quincey's more elaborate style.
Yet he had a true and peculiar sense of humour. That faculty may be
predominant or latent; it may form the substance of a whole book, as in
the case of Sterne: or it may permeate every sentence, as in Carlyle's
writings; or it may simply give a faint tinge, rather perceived by
subsequent analysis than consciously felt at the time; and in this
lowest degree it frequently gives a certain charm to De Quince