have acquired
not only a permanent place in English literature, but a popularity
quite unique among standard English novelists. The jocularity of Mark
Twain is equally dexterous, but it is not so completely imagined as
the humour of Dickens; it springs more often from situation than from
character, and to that extent belongs more to the accidents than to
the essentials of life. Mr. W.W. Jacobs deserves a higher place than
is usually accorded to him in contemporary literature. His short
stories are excellently contrived within their limits; the humour
springs from situation and character conjoined. When a clever writer
is content to confine himself primarily to the ridiculous in life, it
is possible for him to make his effect both for the million and the
more exacting few. As _Wuthering Heights_ was popular because it was
little more than a brilliant presentation of the love passion, so
_Many Cargoes_ and _Light Freights_ are popular as well as excellent
because they aim at nothing but the broad effect of laughter. Mr.
Jacobs is inferior to Dickens because he is a humorist and nothing
more, and also because he has an infinitely narrower range. His art is
one which presents but a single aspect of life, and suggests no
ambition to exhibit a large grasp upon life as a whole. But he
succeeded exactly in what he set out to do.

But have any of Mr. Jacobs' books, or any of Dickens', enjoyed greater
popularity than fell to Mr. Jerome's _Three Men in a Boat_? In this
book the humour sprang in no sense out of character; nor did it even
spring out of situations contrived with especial skill. It consisted
of a series of ludicrous impressions such as that of a man sitting on
a pat of butter. Well, a man sitting on a pat of butter is a funny
thing--when it happens naturally in life. But a collection of
incidents, each of which might be funny if it happened among the
accidents of life, are a poor source of entertainment when strung
together without the life which makes them real. It should be
remembered that what is an accident in life ceases to be an accident
when it is invented in a story. A writer must needs supply from the
imagination something which may give the artistic effect of accident.
Even farce misses its true effects if it contains no verisimilitude.
To see your friend sitting on a pat of butter is amusing; to listen to
an invented account of besmeared garments is not amusing; for it
misses the amusing point--which was