betrays itself in an instant. They are only the
tales of Irish bulls served up by a clever
medical gentleman to suit his own purposes—
which they did; for his name being Andrew,
people called him Merry Andrew then, and so it
has ever been since.

These Gothamite Tales, though fragmentary,
and most dishonourable plagiarisms from the
Celtic were not unamusing, as for instance:

"There was a man of Gotham did ride to the
market with two bushells of wheate, and because
his horse should not beare heavy, he caried his
corne vpon his owne necke, and did ride vpon
his horse, because his horse should not cary so
heavy a burthen. Judge you, which was the
wisest, his horse or himselfe!"

Little England would shrink from competition
with her great Emerald sister in exuberant
riches of fun; yet she has one small
magazine of home–grown wit. This magazine
of wit is of modest proportions, and does
not run into millions; at is an even hundred,
and no more; but most of the articles are
of pure English manufacture, and this small
but independent country is not to be bullied
out of the proprietorship by any forthcoming
editors and publishers of Celtic MSS.
whomsoever. They are Britons born and bred, these
HUNDRED MERRY TALES, and we have very
little to thank Hierocles or any other foreigner
for, in them, from beginning to end. They
and ourselves being of the same blood, and, so
to say, countrymen, we must confess, indeed,
frankly, to the weakness of thinking them a peg
or two above Hierocles aforesaid, rather beyond
Lucian, about four times too good for Athenæus
and his friends—in short, not to err too
much on the side of partiality, nearly the best
things of the kind that have fallen under our
limited observation.

These English tales have, for the most part,
strong and decided English characteristics,
which show them to be no imported matter, no
foreign goods, but of strictly insular growth.
It was at one lime our impression that the
Hundred Mery Talys might have been the
invention of the same Doctor Andrew Borde, of
Pevensey, for whom is claimed the authorship
of the old Gothamite drolleries, Scoggin's Jests,
and, possibly, the Merie Tales of Skelton, Poet
Lauriat: which last, according to the writer, are
"very pleasant for the recreacion of the minde."
But, on re–perusal, the Hundred Mery Talys
strike us as being some degrees too clever for
Doctor Andrew's pen; reminding us of him
only in their occasional coarseness. They were,
evidently, the work of some one not dependent,
on their sale, or he would have informed us,
as the compiler of Mery Tales and Quicke
Answeres, circa 1530, took care to do, that they
were "very mery, and pleasant to rede," or
were "full of sport and delightful pastime," or
some such bookseller's garnish. We feel confident
that this folio of twenty–four leaves
proceeded from some superior hand, indifferent to
the ordinary energetic expedients used for
tickling coy palates.

The Merie Tales of Skelton have never been
regarded by competent critics as of autobiographical
authority; but that circumstance does not
interfere with their value as English produce,
which they most probably are. They were
the fruit of some pleasant gentleman's
opulent fancy; with which fruit he was forbearing
enough, on commercial grounds, to identify a
name more popular, perhaps, than his own.
There are only fifteen of these stories, the
majority of which are by no manner of means
exhilarating, but, on the contrary, either stupid
merely, or stupid and indelicate too. In
fact, they are scarcely admissible within the same
category as the book we have lately dismissed
with praise. That is a collection of Jests quasi
Joci—to translate literally, Jokes; but the Tales
of Skelton are, more strictly, Jests quasi Gesta,
in the same sense in which we say Gesta
Romanorum.

There are three other compilations to which
a similar remark is applicable, namely, Scoggin's
Jests, Peele's Jests, and Tarlton's Jests—the
last in a less measure than the other two, but
still it is of a very germane character. They
resemble in structure and treatment the
Adventures of Howleglas, and even the History of
Friar Rush, in a far greater degree than they
resemble the Hundred Mery Talys or the Tales
of the Gothamites. They come under the head
of facetious biography, or may be allowed
almost a place among the Ana; for there is no
denying the likelihood that to some extent the
material may have been derived from actual
incidents in the lives of the men. These small
books are indeed the early English ANA, and
some knowledge of them may be serviceable to
those students who are anxious to acquaint
themselves with the true character of the later
English ana, such as the Sheridaniana, the
Sydney Smithiana, and a multitude more.

The Merry Jests and Witty Shifts of Scoggin
scarcely exhibit an item suitable for repetition.
Many of the stories were as old in his time, as
the book itself is in ours. We meet there with
many ancient acquaintances, as How Jack made
of Two Eggs Three; and there is one morsel of
facetiousness which is still being swallowed
almost nightly by a cheaply diverted public, and
which seems to possess the gift of remaining
perennially green and fresh. It will continue,
we predict, to amuse distant generations. We
are alluding to the account here found, How
the Scholler said that Tom Miller, of Oseney,
was Jacob's Father. What would the biographer
of Scoggin have said if he could have foreseen
that this imported merriment would have
lived on in its native air ever so long, and, after
centuries, have migrated to the pleasant land of
Ethiopia, from which it has now returned to
delight these shores in the company of Mr.
Christy and his company?

Not looking for the moment at the great main
question, of which enough has been heard
already, as to the Alma Mater of all jokes
whatsoever, wheresoever, and whensoever, it is to
be said of the jokes which ran in England
in the sixteenth century that they were doing
exactly the same thing in the seventeenth.