e latter be "cross-gartered"; but
in the deep heart of him, in his high-flying vanities, his low-lying
oddities--what we call his "ways"--nay, in the very motions of his
back as he crosses the road. These stir our laughter whilst he lives
and our tears when he dies, for in mourning over him we know full well
we are taking part in our own obsequies. "But indeed," wrote Charles
Lamb, "we die many deaths before we die, and I am almost sick when I
think that such a hold as I had of you is gone."

Literature is but the reflex of life, and the humour of it lies in the
portrayal of the individual, not the type; and though the young man in
_Locksley Hall_ no doubt observes that the individual withers, we have
but to take down George Meredith's novels to find the fact is
otherwise, and that we have still one amongst us who takes notes, and
against the battery of whose quick wits even the costly raiment of
Poole is no protection. We are forced as we read to exclaim with
Petruchio: "Thou hast hit it; come sit on me." No doubt the task of
the modern humorist is not so easy as it was. The surface ore has been
mostly picked up. In order to win the precious metal you must now work
with in-stroke and out-stroke after the most approved methods.
Sometimes one would enjoy it a little more if we did not hear quite so
distinctly the snorting of the engine, and the groaning and the
creaking of the gear as it painfully winds up its prize: but what
would you? Methods, no less than men, must have the defects of their
qualities.

If, therefore, it be the fact that our national comedy is in decline,
we must look for some other reasons for it than those suggested by
Hazlitt in 1817. When Mr. Chadband inquired, "Why can we not fly, my
friends?" Mr. Snagsby ventured to observe, "in a cheerful and rather
knowing tone, 'No wings!'" but he was immediately frowned down by Mrs.
Snagsby. We lack courage to suggest that the somewhat heavy-footed
movements of our recent dramatists are in any way due to their not
being provided with those twin adjuncts indispensable for the genius
who would soar.

_Augustine Birrell._

BOOK-BUYING

The most distinguished of living Englishmen, who, great as he is in
many directions, is perhaps inherently more a man of letters than
anything else, has been overheard mournfully to declare that there
were more book-sellers' shops in his native town sixty years ago, when
he was a boy in it, than are to-day to be