and were not yet run down. People's ears
wearied, though, of A C. Mery Talys, Merie
Tales of Skelton, and so forth, and caterers for
novelties found it imperative to "change the
bill." So exeunt C. Mery Talys, Merie Tales
and Quicke Answeres, very mery and pleasant
to be read, Merie Tales of Skelton, and the rest
of the old company, and enter, with "new and
startling effects," "Pasquil and Mother Bunch,
Jack of Dover, Dobson, Hobson, Democritus
Secundus, Taylor (Water–poet to King Charles),
and Hugh Peters: each with his wallet
brimming over with "screamers." Most of this
comic throng were men of buckram—puppets
in the showman's hands. But our ever–
renowned literary waterman must be excepted.
He moved the strings himself; his Wit and
Mirth, as he calls it, was made in the main
out of honest materials, and was a good six–
pennyworth. Some of its flowers were culled
from other gardens, no doubt. Take this:

"A proper gentlewoman went to speak
with a rich mizer that had more gowt than
good manners. After taking leave, hee
requested her to taste a cup of Canara. Shee
(contrary to his expectation) tooke him at
his word, and thanked him. He commanded
Jeffrey Starveling, his man, to wash a glasse
and fill it to the gentlewoman. Honest
Jeffrey fil'd a great glasse about the bigness of
two taylors thimbles, and gave it to his
master, who kist it to save cost, and gave it to
the gentlewoman, saying that it was good
Canara of six yeeres old at the least; to whom
shee answered (seeing the quantitie so small),
'Sir, as you requested me, I have tasted your
wine; but I wonder that it should be so little,
being of such a great age.'"

Poor Taylor did not know how to tell a
story as well as Lucian, but the drawback is,
that Lucian relates this of a gentlewoman who
was very far from being "proper." On the
whole, however, the water–poet sins by no
means so grievously as other men of his
century, who were worse thieves than he was,
and more bungling. As it will wound nobody's
feelings, we do not mind asserting our belief
that the gentlemen who availed themselves of
the freedom of the press to bring on to the
stage Pasquil (with Mrs. Bunch), Hobson,
Dobson, and the rest, in old motley furbished
up to look like new, were persons sincerely to
be compassionated. There is a greater variety,
too, in Taylor's Wit and Mirth (first printed in
the year 1629), than in many of its fellows.
The collection contains examples of the joke in
its succincter and more epigrammatic forms—
what used to be termed Clinches and Conceits
—approaching, in fact, more nearly to the modern
joke, as it is usually understood.

But the book best answering to this description
is Conceits, Clinches, Flashes, and Whimsies,
1639, the reputed handiwork of Robert
Chamberlain, a Devonshire man, and his friends.
He was in the habit of noting down, like a
smaller Athenæus, what was said at table over
the wine, and his notes in time made a
volume which somebody thought worth printing.
We are without information as to the degree
of Chamberlain's personal responsibility, and
seeing that he was a writer of some average
poetry, and of a drama, we may venture to
assume that all the good things are his, and
all the bad things his friends'. He addressed
his publication to the reader, quaintly enough, as
"the producements of some vaporing houres;"
with a wish that the reader might be as merry
in the reading as he and some other of his friends
had been in speaking of them.

If the reader will take our word for it, Mr.
Chamberlain's table–talk is very much in this
style—we say Mr. Chamberlain's, because we
pick the best we can find:

"One put a jest upon his friend. 'Oh,' said
his friend, 'that I could but see your braines!
I would even hug them for this jest.'"

"One wondred much what great scholler this
same Finis was, because his name was almost
to every booke." We apprehend that Mr.
Chamberlain has the Spectator on the hip here.

Good wit must be good in more than one
sense now, to be fit for circulation. Our
earliest book of facetiæ, the Hundred Mery
Talys, has less to answer for on this score
than its successors; but when we have passed
the middle of the seventeenth century and reach
the Restoration, this class of works is most
foully tainted with the leaven of uncleanness,
and it may be accepted as a pretty safe rule that
the most unpresentable jokes are also the most
vapid. It was Roscommon, not Pope, who said,
that "want of decency was want of sense."

THE BATTLE OF REICHENBERG.

NOT much more than a hundred years ago,
Prussia and Austria were engaged in a
deadly war, as they were but recently. The
causes of that war were very similar to those
of the struggle which has cast such a stain
of blood over the records of this summer;
and some of the minor episodes exhibit curious
coincidences. On the one hand, we find Prussia,
strong in its compactness and nationality,
pursuing a course of ambition and aggrandisement;
on the other hand, we see Austria,
jealous of and alarmed at the expanding power
of her rival, vainly opposing to her advance the
mere material strength of a great military
organisation which had not the still mightier
force of an united people at its back. The
Third Silesian or Seven Years' War, commencing
in 1756 and ending in 1763, was the
inevitable result of a state of things which had
been developing itself ever since Prussia
became a kingdom and a Power of magnitude
and importance, at the commencement of the
century. Frederick the Great had himself
already engaged in two successful wars with
Austria, and had wrested Silesia from the
House of Hapsburg. Bad blood existed between
the two leading German Powers, and the
peace from 1746 to 1756 was little better than
an armed truce. Austria, chafing under her
defeats, watched for any opportunity which