eneral" reader-a comprehensive term, which, doubtless, signifies one who knows "small Latin and less Greek"-is, that it is "a Joe Miller;" both impl
erhaps hardly necessary to say that honest Joseph Miller, the comedian, was not the compiler of the celebrated jest-book with which his name is associated; that it was, in fact, simply a bookseller's trick to entitle a heterogeneous collection of jokes, "quips, and cranks, and quiddities," Joe Millers Jests; or, The Wit's Vade Mecum. And when one speaks of a jest as being "a Joe Mil
. We find in them the indirect originals of some of the bulls and blunders which have in modern times been credited to Irishmen and Scotch Highlanders, and the germs also, perhaps, of some stories of the Gothamite type: as brave men lived before Agamemnon, so, too, the race of Gothamites can boast of a very ancient pedigree! By far the greater number of them, however, seem now pithless and pointless, whatever they may have been considered in ancient days, when, perhaps, folk found food for mirth in things which utterly fa
le of that droll stupidity which is the characteristic of noodles or simpletons. In the latter class, however, one need not hesitate to place the story of the men of Cum?, who were expecting shortly to
such a pair, I will bring you one of thirty years;" and in the fellow who was quarrelling with his father, and said to him, "Don't you know how much injury you have done me? Why, had you no
o wished to sell some clothes he had stolen, and smeared them with pitch, so that they should not be recognised by the owner. They were Gothamites, too, those men of Abdera who punished a
and afterwards, being asked by his friends why he seemed to avoid the doctor whenever they were both likely to meet, he replied, "He told me I should not live, and now I am ashamed to be alive;" or that of
ter stuffing it full of feathers to render it soft; again, in the cross-grained fellow who had some honey for sale, and a man coming up to him and inquiring the price, he upset the jar, and then replied, "You may shed my heart's blood like that before I tell such as you;" and again, in the man of Abdera who tried to hang himself, when the
atch in turn during the night. It was the barber's watch first. He propped up the sleeping pedant, and shaved his head, and when his time c
gro. Some coffee-room jokers having blackened his face during the night, when he was called, as he had desired, very early next morning, an
o many people if I have not something about me that the others have not." So he tied a pumpkin to his right leg and, thus decorated, entered the town. A young wag, perceiving the simpleton, made friends with him, and induced him to spend the night at his house. While he was asleep, the joker removed the pumpkin from his leg and
llections of faceti?, who applied to a farmer for work. "I'll have nothing to do with you," said the farmer, "for the last five Irishmen I had all died on my hands." Quoth Pat, "Sure, sir, I can bring you characters from half a dozen gentlemen I've worked for that I never did such a thing." And the
have the prototype of a modern "Irish" story in the following: A pedant sealed a jar of wine, and his slaves perforated it below and drew off some of the liquor. He was astonished to find his wine disappear while the seal remained
uenues and a shallow braine) was told by his man that he did continually gape in his sleepe, at which he was angry with his man, saying he would not belieue it. His man verified it to be true; his master said that he would
was running from his house, giving the alarm, the thief hastily descended from the tree. "Why were you up that tree?" asked the gardener. The thief replied, "My brother, I went up to gather grass for my calf." "Ha! ha! is there grass, then, on a cocoa-nut tree?" said the gardener. "No," quoth the thief; "but I did not know; therefore I came down again."-And we have a variant of this in the Turkish jest of the fellow who went into a garden and pulled up carrots, turnips, and other kinds of vegetables, some of which he put into a sack, and
tly died, a pedant, meeting the survivor, asked him whether it was he or his brother who had deceased.-Taylor has this in his Wit and Mirth, and he probably heard it from some one who had read the facetious tales of the Sieur Gaulard: "A nobleman of France (as he was riding) met with a yeoman of the Country, to whom he said, My friend, I should know thee. I doe remember I haue often seene thee. My good Lord, said the countriman, I am one of your Honers poore tenants, and my name is T.J. I remember better now
eague, what i
wood, and ki
wood, and ki
me, or was it
at a corner; turn round it, go a little way on, and you will find your girdle." But is there anything like this in "Joe Miller"?-Two lazy fellows were sleeping together, when a thief came, and drawing down the coverlet made off with it. One of them was aware of the theft, and said to the other, "Get up, and run after the man th
ologia may find a plac
it by fleas, pu
ried, 'Now you ca
ing them off, but finding this did not answer, one suggested they should extinguish the light and thus puzzle their tormentors to find them, which was done. Presently the oth
e son dutifully took the body to the embalmers. When he returned at the appointed time to fetch it away, there happened to be a number of bodies in
TNO
slation, entitled Bizarrures; or, The Pleasant and Witlesse and Simple Speeches of the Lord Gaulard of Burgundy, purporting to be made by "J.B., of Charterhouse," probably about the year 1660, in the possession of Mr. Frederick William Cosens, London, fifty copies, edited, with a preface, b
st of John Garrett's Ghost." (1635)-such is the elaborate title of the collection of jests made by John Taylor, the Water Poet, which owes very little to preceding English jest-books. The above story had, however, been told previously in the Bizarrures of the Sieur Gaulard: "His cousine Dan
steamer could go u
t busy town being in the habit of frequently interjecting,
to be the Erse
s of England, vol. iv. of P