"The city of Albany was originally settled by Scotch people. When strangers on their arrival there asked how the new comers did, the answer was 'All bonny.' The spelling is now a little altered but the sound is the same.
"When the French first settled on the banks of the river St. Lawrence, they were stinted by the intendant, Monsieur Picard, to a can of spruce beer a day. The people thought this measure very scant, and were constantly exclaiming, 'Can-a-day!' It would be ungenerous of any reader to require a more rational derivation of the word Canada."
No name is more familiar to us in connection with humour than that of "Joe" (Josias) Miller. He was well known as a comedian, between 1710 and 1738, and had considerable natural talent, but was unable to read. He owes his celebrity to popular jest books having been put forward in his name soon after his death.[9] It was common at that time, as we have seen in the case of Scogan, for compilers to seek to give currency to their humorous collections by attributing them to some celebrated wit of the day. To Jo Miller was attributed the humour most effective at the period in which he lived, and it has since passed as a byword for that which is broad and pointless. Sometimes it merely suggests staleness, and I have heard it said that he must have been the cleverest man in the world, for nobody ever heard a good story related that someone did not afterwards say that it was "a Jo Miller."
A question may here be raised whether these humorous sayings, which are similar in all ages, have been handed down or re-invented over and over again. It must be admitted that the minds of men have a tendency to move in the same direction, and may have struck upon the same points in ages widely separated. In reading general literature, we constantly find the same thought suggesting itself to different writers, and I have known two people, who had no acquaintance with each other, make precisely the same joke—original in both cases. On the other hand, the rarity of genuine humour has given a permanent character to many clever sayings, and there has always been a demand for them to enliven the convivial and social intercourse of mankind. Their subtlety—the small points on which they turn—makes it difficult to remember them, but there will be always some men, who will treasure them for the delectation of their friends. It is remarkable that people are never tired of repeating humorous sayings, though they are soon wearied of hearing a repetition of them by others. A man who cannot endure to hear a joke three times, will keep telling the same one over and over all his life, and but for this, fewer good stories would survive. The pleasure derived from humour, while it lasts, is greater than that from sentiment or wisdom; hence we repeat it more in daily converse than poetry or proverbs, and the constant reproduction of it until it is reduced to a mere phantom, causes its influence to appear more transient than it is.
And hence, although humour is generally "fleeting as the flowers," some of the jests, which pass with us as new, are more than two thousand years old. Porson said that he could trace back all the "Joe Millers" to a Greek origin. The domestic cat—the cause of many of our household calamities—was in full activity in the days of Aristophanes. Then, as now, mourners had recourse to the friendly onion; and if Pythagoreans had never dreamed of a donkey becoming a man, they had often known a man to become a donkey. If they were not able to skin a flint, they knew well what was meant by "skinning a flayed dog," and "shearing an ass." These and similar sayings, being of a simple character, may have been due to the same thought occurring to different minds, and this may be the case even where there is more point; thus, "an ass laden with gold will get into the strongest fortress," has been attributed to Frederick the Great and to Napoleon, and may have been due to both. The saying "Treat a friend as though he would one day become an enemy," has been attributed to Lord Chesterfield, to Publius Syrus, and even to Bias, one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. Many may exclaim, "Perish those who have said our good things before us!"
But where the saying is very remarkable, or depends on some peculiar circumstances, we may conclude that there is one original, and that upon this pivot a number of different names and characters have been made to revolve. It has been ascribed to or appropriated by many. We have read of two eminent comic writers in classical times dying of laughter at seeing an ass eat figs. Here it is most probable that there was some standing joke upon this subject, or that some instance of the kind occurred, and so this strange death came to be attributed to several individuals. The saying,
"On two days is a wife enjoyable,
That of her bridal and her burial,"
attributed to Palladas in the fifth century A.D., was really due to Hipponax in the fifth century B.C.
There is a story that Lord Stair was so like Louis XIV. that, when he went to the French Court, the King asked him whether his mother was ever in France, and that he replied "No, your Majesty, but my father was." This is in reality a Roman story, and the answer was made to Augustus by a young man from the country.
Sydney Smith's reply when it was proposed to pave the approach to St. Paul's with blocks of wood, "The canons have only to put their heads together and it will be done," was not original; Rochester had made a similar remark to Charles II. when he noticed a construction near Shoreditch: and the story of the man who complained that the chicken brought up for his dinner had only one leg, and was told to go and look into the roost-house, is to be found in an old Turkish jest-book of the fifteenth century. When Byron said of Southey's poems that "they would be read when Homer and Virgil were forgotten—but not till then," he was no doubt repeating what Porson said of Sir Richard Blackmore's. "Most literary stories," observes Mr. Willmott, "seem to be shadows, brighter or fainter, of others told before."