“Joe Miller sitting one day in the window of the Sun Tavern, in Clare Street, a fishwoman and her maid passing by, the woman said, ‘Buy my soles, buy my maids!’ ‘Ah, you wicked old creature!’ said honest Joe. ‘What! Are you not content to sell your own soul, but you would sell your maid’s too?’”
The benevolent forbearance of Mottley was advantageous to the sale of the book confided to his editorship; and the best jest of all was the title and conception. To put forward as the author of all good things a poor fellow who could not make a joke, or even see it when it was made by a friend, was an idea as happy as if some speculative genius were to announce a jest-book by Mr. Spurgeon or the philanthropic Earl of Shaftesbury. But the most popular of preachers or philanthropists would not have answered the purpose so well at the moment as a defunct theatrical performer, equally impervious to humour, but to the play-going public infinitely more familiar, not as a wit, nor even as the cause of it in others, but on purely negative grounds. A notable piece of triumphant charlatanry, as this Joe Miller in the first beginning was, has happened, from a singular caprice of fortune, to overshoot the original design and proportions, to change its fugitive and perishable nature, and to accommodate itself from time to time to enlarged and different requirements.
The circumstance must be treated as accidental; for, looking at the question on every side, the book has had from the commencement a host of competitors, possessing at least equal merit, at least equally inviting forefronts, and even the superstitious prestige of the green-room. But these, one and all, unaccountably disappeared from the public view; and Miller proved the only phœnix, the only sterling coin, the only lasting trademark.
Spiller’s Jests, Penkethman’s, Quin’s, nay, Garrick’s, were things of a season, the nugæ canoræ of their day. Joe witnessed their coming and going; and he is with us yet! He will endure as long as the earth’s crust—as long as Shakespear, and longer, perchance, than Milton.
One of the consequences of this huge and matchless renown is that, in the amplified Vade Mecum for Wits of Joe the Great, a considerable assortment of comic incidents is enrolled under that talismanic name an age or twain after the date, when all that was soluble of the Miller of Millers had been lifted across from the purlieus of Clare Market to the hospitable shelter of St. Clement’s opposite.
CHAPTER XIX.
Jest-books considered as Historical and Literary Material—The Twofold Point Illustrated—Localisation of Stories.
