“Well, why should you have read them?” snarled Carlyle. “They were written after you moved over here, and they were good stuff. You needn’t think because you quit, the whole world put up its shutters and went out of business. I did a few things myself which I fancy you never heard of.”
“Oh, as for that,” retorted Doctor Johnson, with a smile, “I’ve heard of you; you are the man who wrote the life of Frederick the Great in nine hundred and two volumes—”
“Seven!” snapped Carlyle.
“Well, seven then,” returned Johnson. “I never saw the work, but I heard Frederick speaking of it the other day. Bonaparte asked him if he had read it, and Frederick said no, he hadn’t time. Bonaparte cried, ‘Haven’t time? Why, my dear king, you’ve got all eternity.’ ‘I know it,’ replied Frederick, ‘but that isn’t enough. Read a page or two, my dear Napoleon, and you’ll see why.’”
“Frederick will have his joke,” said Shakespeare, with a wink at Tennyson and a smile for the two philosophers, intended, no doubt, to put them in a more agreeable frame of mind. “Why, he even asked me the other day why I never wrote a tragedy about him, completely ignoring the fact that he came along many years after I had departed. I spoke of that, and he said, ‘Oh, I was only joking.’ I apologized. ‘I didn’t know that,’ said I. ‘And why should you?’ said he. ‘You’re English.’”
“A very rude remark,” said Johnson. “As if we English were incapable of seeing a joke!”
“Exactly,” put in Carlyle. “It strikes me as the absurdest notion that the Englishman can’t see a joke. To the mind that is accustomed to snap judgments I have no doubt the Englishman appears to be dull of apprehension, but the philosophy of the whole matter is apparent to the mind that takes the trouble to investigate. The Briton weighs everything carefully before he commits himself, and even though a certain point may strike him as funny, he isn’t going to laugh until he has fully made up his mind that it is funny. I remember once riding down Piccadilly with Froude in a hansom cab. Froude had a copy of Punch in his hand, and he began to laugh immoderately over something. I leaned over his shoulder to see what he was laughing at. ‘That isn’t so funny,’ said I, as I read the paragraph on which his eye was resting. ‘No,’ said Froude. ‘I wasn’t laughing at that. I was enjoying the joke that appeared in the same relative position in last week’s issue.’ Now that’s the point—the whole point. The Englishman always laughs over last week’s Punch, not this week’s, and that is why you will find a file of that interesting journal in the home of all well-to-do Britons. It is the back number that amuses him—which merely proves that he is a deliberative person who weighs even his humor carefully before giving way to his emotions.”
“What is the average weight of a copy of Punch?” drawled Artemas Ward, who had strolled in during the latter part of the conversation.
Shakespeare snickered quietly, but Carlyle and Johnson looked upon the intruder severely.
“We will take that question into consideration,” said Carlyle. “Perhaps to-morrow we shall have a definite answer ready for you.”