arkable, his hollowest sentiment ring true! What a
pity he never came to beat the muffled drum, on which he was so supreme
a performer, around the Islip Chapel! As I make my way down the stairs,
I am trying to imagine what would have been the cadence of the final
sentence in this essay by Thackeray. And, as I pass along the North
Ambulatory, lo! there is the same verger with a new party; and I catch
the words 'was interred with great pomp on St. Simon's and St. Jude's
Day October 28 1307 in 1774 the tomb was opened when--

THE HUMOUR OF THE PUBLIC

They often tell me that So-and-so has no sense of humour. Lack of this
sense is everywhere held to be a horrid disgrace, nullifying any number
of delightful qualities. Perhaps the most effective means of
disparaging an enemy is to lay stress on his integrity, his erudition,
his amiability, his courage, the fineness of his head, the grace of his
figure, his strength of purpose, which has overleaped all obstacles,
his goodness to his parents, the kind word that he has for every one,
his musical voice, his freedom from aught that in human nature is base;
and then to say what a pity it is that he has no sense of humour. The
more highly you extol any one, the more eagerly will your audience
accept anything you may have to say against him. Perfection is unloved
in this imperfect world, but for imperfection comes instant sympathy.
Any excuse is good enough for exalting the bad or stupid brother of us,
but any stick is a valued weapon against him who has the effrontery to
have been by Heaven better graced than we. And what could match for
deadliness the imputation of being without sense of humour? To convict
a man of that lack is to strike him with one blow to a level with the
beasts of the field--to kick him, once and for all, outside the human
pale. What is it that mainly distinguishes us from the brute creation?
That we walk erect? Some brutes are bipeds. That we do not slay one
another? We do. That we build houses? So do they. That we remember and
reason? So, again, do they. That we converse? They are chatterboxes,
whose lingo we are not sharp enough to master. On no possible point of
superiority can we preen ourselves save this: that we can laugh, and
that they, with one notable exception, cannot. They (so, at least, we
assert) have no sense of humour. We have. Away with any one of us who
hasn't!

Belief in the general humorousness of the human race is the more
deep-roote