More Happy Thoughts, By F. C. Burnand. (Bradbury and Evans.)
—Few readere, we should think, fail to enjoy the pages which Mr. Bar- nand commonly contributes to Punch, and few will be sorry to have a chance of renewing their acquaintance with them. Of course, the gentleman whose "happy thoughts " so entertain us is not drawn with artistic correctness. Neither was the immortal "Mr. Pickwick," who makes our acqueintance as a simpleton, and takes farewell of us as a shrewd and benevolent old gentleman. And the hero of this volume and of its predecleesers is equally inconsistent. That a man should sometimes be such a fool and sometimes so acute is, it must be allowed, scarcely true to nature. But who cares for that ? In fact it may be urged that the objection is scarcely ad rem. We have to do with an extravaganza rather than a comedy, and what does it matter about consistency and nature if every pago makes us laugh. Afore Happy Thoughts, we being, 'alas thanks to much comic reading and talking, much less prone to laughter than we were of old, have found very amusing. Almost everything is good ; good, especially in the interview of the "Happy Thinker" with "Popgood and Groolly," publishers. How natural it is that when they ask whether his "Typical Development" (of course a profound philosophical work) is a collection of tales such as they could bring out with illustrations at Christmas, he wishes lie "could turn it into that, just to please Popgoocl and Groolly." Perhaps Captain Dingwell, whose slang is positively sublime, is as amusing as anybody ; though the Captain, by the way, was decidedly a mistake when he appeared in the late war. Good, too, is the German professor, whom the Captain calls a "Cockalorurn," and who is much perplexed by the title, first coming to the conclusion that it is a genitive of " Cook- a-leoltio," unknown to him, us he humbly puts it, from his ignorance of Scotch dialects ; and secondly, that it is a compound of " Oustos Rotulorum."
Previous page
