LIVES OF WITS AND HUMORISTS.* BEAN:NG an anecdote biography is

very like making a dinner of force-meat ; the stuff may be very good in itself, and very well put together, but its use is to flavour more solid food, and a meal of it can produce nothing but indigestion. Mere stories, however true or carefully selected, can never give a reader an idea of his subject's character, for all the springs of action, the thousand circumstances and impulses, and accidents of training, which explain and justify a man's career, cannot be described by anecdotes. An idea may indeed be given through them of external and obvious peculiarities. We understand Vespasian, for example, chiefly through little historiettes, and first-rate stery-tellers, like Horace Walpole and Velise, do also contrive to give us some notion of the scene amidst which the inci- dents they narrate occurred. But, in ordinary hands, anecdotes are to biography what the complexion is to the face—an all-important particular in description, but in itself conveying no idea of a man's features. "Well," says Mrs. —, in Lady Theresa Lewis's novel, "The Semi-detached House," "it is not very like John, to be sure, but then it was taken for him, and the buttons are so exact ;" and that praise is just what an anecdote biography usually deserves. Mr. 'limbs has done his best with the dozen of wits and humorists whom he has selected—Swift, Steele, Foote, Goldsmith, the two Colmans, Sheridan, Porson, Sydney Smith, T. Hook, and H. and J. Smith— and his special subject favours the method he has been induced to adopt. It is not possible, as some unhappy man tried, to write a biography of Napoleon in three or four hundred stories, but it is very possible to give the flavour of any man's wit, and even the tone of his mind in the same number of isolated anecdotes. Modern wit, with some very marked exceptions, is apt to embody itself in anec- dote, but then the collector should confine himself to the stories which really illustrate the mental power he describes. Everything beyond this is surplusage, belonging properly to the analytical bio- grapher, a character which it is waste of time for the anecdote-monger to assume. The following political story, for example, tells just as well in its detached form : "Upon Sheridan's return to town, he hastened to aid his friend Fox on the hustings at Westminster, where he had to encounter the cool personalities of Horne Tooke. Among other sallies of his splenetic humour, is is related that Mr. Fox having, upon one occasion, retired from the hustings, and left to She- ridan the task of addressing the multitude, Tooke remarked, that such was always the practice of quack doctors, who, whenever they quitted the stage themselves, made it a rule to leave their merry-andrews behind."

Or this : "The new Drury-lane Theatre, built within twelve months, was opened October 10, 1812, under the superintendence of Mr. Whitbread, with a prologue by Lord Byron. The advertisement of the committee for an occa- sional address, gave rise to the Rejected Addresses, the celebrated faux d'esprit of James and Horace Smith, in most successful imitation of the poets of the day.

"Mr. Whitbread sent in a poem for this laurel crown: like the rest, it chiefly turned on allusions to the Phcenix. But,' said Sheridan to a convi- vial party at Mr. Rogers's, Whitbread made more of this bird than any of them. He entered into particulars, and described its wings, beak, tail, &c. ; in short it was a poulterer's description of a Phcenix " But this paragraph is wretchedly out of place, and conveys, besides, in its necessarily brief form, a false impression:

"It was in the Session of 1794, on the question of the treaty with the King of Sardinia, that Mr. Canning made his first appearance as an orator in the House. From the political faith in which he had been educated, under the very eyes of Mr Sheridan, who had long been the friend of his family, and at whose home he generally passed his college vacations, the line that he was to take in the House of Commons seemed already marked out for him ; and Mr. Sheridan went so far as to announce the accession which his own party was about to receive in the talents of his companion and friend. Whether this and other friendships formed by Mr. Canning at the University, had any share in alienating him from the political creed which he may not have adopted from choice, or whether be was startled at the idea of appearing for the first time in the world, 88 the announced pupil and friend of a person, marked, both by the vehemence of his politics and the irregularities of his life—or whether he saw the difficulties of rising under the shadowing branches of the Whig aristocracy, who had kept such men as Burke and Sheridan out of the Cabinet —whicA of these motives it was that now decided the choice of Canning can scarcely be now determined. But it is certain that he decided in favour of the • Lives of Wits and ifuniourists. By .J. Timbs, F.S.A. Bentley. Minister of Toryism ; and after a friendly and candid explanation . Sheridan of the reasons and feelings that had urged him to this step, he entered into terms with Mr. Pitt, and was by him immediately brought into Parliament. Nevertheless, his first political lessons were derived from sources too sacred to his young admiration to be forgotten' and they enabled him to infuse some of the spirit of the times into the body which he had thus joined."

Sheridan's life, though a favourite one with collectors, does not bear telling in paragraphs,—the character was too composite and too much influenced by politics and the rush of surrounding events. Each anecdote wants a glossary, a requirement as fatal to good story- telling as to good poetry, and when we have read them all we have not so good an idea of the man as is conveyed in the following couplet :

"Good at a Fight, but better at a Play, God-like in Giving—but the Devil to Pay !"

By the way, Mr. Timbs might as well have mentioned that the lines on Sheridan's funeral are at last supposed to have been written by Moore, and it is not easy to imagine that anybody else can have pro-

duced the first two addressed to George the : "No not for the wealth of all those that despise thee,

Though that would make Europe's whole opulence mine."

The account of James and Horace Smith, again, told in this fashion, reads like a collection of newspaper miscellanea. The brothers achieved a great reputation in society, but their sayings are seldom worth preserving, and their writings—the "Rejected Addresses" of course excepted—are of a very inferior order of humour. Puns made up the bulk of their wit, and Mr. Brough used to put into a single extravaganza more and better puns than they ever uttered in their lives. Theodore Hook fares better, but his wit does not boil well ; it wants space, and demands prolixity. Taking stories out of " Gilbert Gurney" is like taking he raisins out of a plum-pudding- they are not had, but they are incomparably better mixed up with the edibles they are intended to flavour. The humour of "Jack Brag," for instance, flows through the whole volume, and consists not in this or that touch, but in the delineation of a preposterous yet natural character who, under every variety of circumstances, does the most absurd thing possible, yet the very thing you would expect such a man to do. What sort of an anecdote does Mr. Timbs call this : "The room was becoming excessively hot : the first specimen of the punch was handed to Hook, who paused to quaff it., and then, exclaiming that he was stifled, flung his glass through the window. Coleridge rose, with the aspect of a benignant patriarch, and demolished another pane : the example was followed generally ; the window was a wreck in an instant; the kind host was farthest from his mark, and his goblet made havoc of the chandelier. The roar of laughter subsided on Theodore's re- sumption of the song, and window and chandelier, and the peculiar shot of each individual destroyer, were wondrously commemorated. This is described as a remarkable witty display : it certainly must have been improvised, since the destructive climax could not have been foreseen or anticipated." That is not a specimen of Hook's power, but merely an assertion that he exhibited it on one particular occasion, and no more illustrates him than the general remark that he could improvise admirably.. Foote, of course, comes off best of all. His wit was exactly of the style which tells best in a jest-book, quick, simple, and slightly vulgar, while his life was a series of acted anecdotes All strong acids keep well, and Foote's real nature is best shown in stories like these :

"Murphy was repeating to Foote some remarks by Garrick of Lacey's love of money as a mere attempt to cover his own stinginess by throwing it on his fellow patentee—when it was asked, why on earth didn't Garrick take the beam out of his own eye before attacking the mote in other people's. He is not sure,' replied Foote, of selling the timber."

"A mercantile man of Foote's acquaintance had written a poem, and exacted a promise that Foote would listen to it; but he dropped off before the end of the first pompous line, Hear me, 0 Phoebus, and ye Muses mine!' ' Pray, pray be attentive, Mr. Foote.' 'I am,' said Foote ; nine and one are ten ; go on!"

"Holland, the actor, of Drury-lane theatre, WU the son of a baker, and became a pupil of Garrick. He died suddenly, and Foote being a legatee, as well as one of the bearers appointed by Holland's will, attended the corpse to the family vault at Chiswick, which so subdued his vivacity as to affect hint even to tears. On his return to town, however, he caned in at the Bedford Coffee-house, where an acquaintance inquiring as to his paying the last tribute to his friend Holland, he replied : 'Yes poor fellow ! I have just seen him shoved into the family oven P "

"Foote had attacked some pretentious person for his characteristic foible. Why do you attack my weakest part ?' asked the assailed. 'Did I ever say anything about your head ?' replied Foote."

"Hugh Kelly was mightily boasting of the power he had as a reviewer of distributing literary reputation to any extent. Don't be too prodigal of it,' Foote quietly interposed, 'or you may have none for yourself.' "

" Garrick's puppet-show showed virtue rewarded, and common-place thoughts concealed by high-flown words ; settled Goldsmith's sentimental comedy, and laughed at Garrick's Stratford Jubilee. Foote proposed a paste- board imitation. Pray, sir, are your puppets to bees largess life ?' asked a lady of fashion. Oh dear, madame, no,' replied Foote, not much above the size of Garrick.' But the Marquis of Stafford interposed : the two managers met at his door. What is it, war or peace ?' said Garrick. Oh, peace by all means!' replied Foote, and he kept his word. But Foote kept in the Puppet-Show a whimsical imitation of Garrick refusing to engage in his company Mr. Punch's wife Joan."

"When Foote heard of Sir Francis Blake Delayers death, the shock of losing so intimate a friend had such an effect on his spirits that he burst into tears, retired to his room, and saw no company for two days ; the third day, Jewel, his treasurer, calling in upon him, he asked him, with swollen eyes, what time the burial would be ? Not till next week, sir,' replied the other, as I hear the surgeons are first to dissect his head.' Tins last word recovered Foote's fancy, and, repeating it with some surprise, he asked And what will they get there ? I am sure,' said he, I have known poor Frank these five-and-twenty years, and I never could find anything in it.'" But let any reader compare this collection of incidents and good sayings with Forster's biographical essay, and then decide which is the most enjoyable. It is like eating apples and flour instead of an apple-pie. The absence of arrangement cannot spoil Foote's sayings any more than rawness can spoil apples, but every taste beyond a schoolboy's will prefer the prepared comestible. The Lives of Wits and Bumourists may serve to pass away an hour as well as any other scrapbook, but as a contribution to literature it is not worthy of Mr. Timbs's really remarkable ability as a chaffonnier.