letter-writer like Voiture,” “no teller of tales like La Fontaine,” and “no chansonnier like Beranger.”  Now, it is evident that this is a comparison not of French and English humorists, but of certain classes of writers in the two languages in reference to their manifestation of humor.  We have no fabulist like La Fontaine, no song-writer equal to Beranger; but then we do not think of citing our fables and songs as the highest examples of English humor.  It would be easy to array a list of names as a set-off against that of Mr. Besant.  But this is needless.  Humor, in the sense in which the word is commonly understood, may almost be said to be a distinctive quality of English literature, which is pervaded by it in a far greater degree than that of any other people.  It is a leading trait in all the great English novelists, from Fielding to Thackeray and George Eliot, without excepting Richardson, in whom it is least conspicuous; it is the chief attribute of our finest essayists, from Addison to Charles Lamb; it is harmoniously blended with the fresh and simple pathos of Chaucer and with the passionate moodiness of Carlyle:  it holds equal sway with the tragic element in the world created by Shakespeare.  When Mr. Besant says that “there is no English humor comparable for a moment with that of the fabliaux,” we are forced to suppose either that he uses the word “humor” in some unexplained and inexplicable sense, or that he leaves out of the account what would generally be considered the greatest of humorous productions.  The puzzle increases when we find him omitting all mention of Le Sage, while excusing himself for the omission, from lack of space, of Rousseau!  A list of humorous works which should exclude Gil Blas to make room for Emile or Le Contrat Social, might itself, one would think, act as a provocative on the esprit gaulois.

These mysteries are not the only ones in Mr. Besant’s volume to which we have to confess our inability to discover a key.  In closing his remarks on Montaigne he touches with undissembled irony the question whether he was a Christian, and, after contrasting the tone and sentiments of the Essais with those of the Gospels, bids us “remember that we are not in the nineteenth century, but in the sixteenth, that Montaigne died in the act of adoration, and cease to ask whether the man was a Christian;” adding, “Christian?  There was no better Christian than Montaigne in all his century.”  It appears, therefore, that the sixteenth century, instead of being, as we had supposed, one in which the Reformation had brought with it a revival of religious earnestness and a reaction against religious formalism, and in which on the battle-field, in the dungeon and at the stake, as well as through voluntary exile and the relinquishment of property, thousands in every country testified to the fervor and sincerity of their religious convictions, was in truth, like the eighteenth century,