ns would
be a dull and thankless task. We will finish the review of his verbal
humour by quoting a passage out of an indifferent farce he wrote
entitled, "Mr. H----."

(_The hero cannot on account of his patronymic get any girl to
marry him._)

"My plaguy ancestors, if they had left me but a Van, or a Mac, or
an Irish O', it had been something to qualify it--Mynheer Van
Hogsflesh, or Sawney Mac Hogsflesh, or Sir Phelim O'Hogsflesh, but
downright blunt---- If it had been any other name in the world I
could have borne it. If it had been the name of a beast, as Bull,
Fox, Kid, Lamb, Wolf, Lion; or of a bird, as Sparrow, Hawk,
Buzzard, Daw, Finch, Nightingale; or of a fish, as Sprat, Herring,
Salmon; or the name of a thing, as Ginger, Hay, Wood; or of a
colour, as Black, Gray, White, Green; or of a sound, as Bray; or
the name of a month, as March, May; or of a place, as Barnet,
Baldock, Hitchen; or the name of a coin, as Farthing, Penny,
Twopenny; or of a profession, as Butcher, Baker, Carpenter, Piper,
Fisher, Fletcher, Fowler, Glover; or a Jew's name, as Solomons,
Isaacs, Jacobs; or a personal name, as Foot, Leg, Crookshanks,
Heaviside, Sidebottom, Ramsbottom, Winterbottom; or a long name, as
Blanchenhagen or Blanchhausen; or a short name as Crib, Crisp,
Crips, Tag, Trot, Tub, Phips, Padge, Papps, or Prig, or Wig, or
Pip, or Trip; Trip had been something, but Ho--!"

(_Walks about in great agitation; recovering his coolness a little,
sits down._)

These were weaker points in Lamb, but we must also look at the other
side. Those who have read his celebrated essay on Hogarth will find that
he possesses no great appreciation for that humour which is only
intended to raise a laugh, and might conclude that he was more of a
moralist than a humorist. He admires the great artist as an instructor,
but admits that "he owes his immortality to his touches of humour, to
his mingling the comic with the terrible." Those, he continues, are to
be blamed who overlook the moral in his pictures, and are merely taken
with the humour or disgusted by the vulgarity. Moreover, there is a
propriety in the details; he notices the meaning in the tumbledown
houses "the dumb rhetoric," in which "tables, chairs, and joint stools
are living, and significant things." In these passages Lamb seems to
regard the comic merely as a means to an end