ll there are few greater
attractions than that of open healthy laughter of the contagious sort;
and it would be black ingratitude not to pay tribute to the authoresses
of _Some Experiences of an Irish R.M._--a book that no decorous person
can read with comfort in a railway carriage. These ladies have the
keenest eye for the obvious humours of Irish life, they have abundance
of animal spirits, and they have that knack at fluent description
embroidered with a wealth of picturesque details that is shared by
hundreds of peasants in Ireland, but is very rare indeed on the printed
page. And, mingling with the broad farce there is a deal of excellent
comedy--for instance, in the person of old Mrs. Knox of Aussolas. But
there is the same point to insist on--and since these witty and
delightful ladies have already the applause of all the world one insists
less unwillingly--this kind of thing, admirable as it is, will not
redeem Irish humour from the reproach of trifling. But in the novel,
_The Real Charlotte_, there is humour as grim almost as Swift's--and as
completely un-English; it is a humour which assuredly stirs more
faculties than the simple one of laughter.

There is indeed a literature which, if not always exactly humorous, is
closely allied to it--the literature of satire and invective; and in
this Ireland has always been prolific. In the days of the old kings the
order of bards had grown so numerous, that they comprised a third of the
whole population, and they devoted themselves with such talent and zeal
to the task of invective that no man could live in peace, and the
country cried out against them, and there was talk of suppressing the
whole order. The king spared them on condition that they would mend
their manners. We have those bards still, but nowadays we call them
politicians and journalists; and frankly I think we are ripe for another
intervention, if only in the interests of literature. So much good
talent goes to waste in bad words; and, moreover, an observance of the
decencies is always salutary for style. And it seems that as the years
have gone on, humour has diminished in Irish politics, while bad humour
has increased; and therefore I leave alone any attempt to survey the
humour of the orators, though Curran tempts one at the beginning and Mr.
Healy at the close. Of purely literary satire there has been little
enough, apart from its emergence in the novel; but there is one example
which deserves to be r