ABSTRACT
It has been a fashion of late days, we have observed, to christen a new favourite in the humorous department of literature, after one of the great pleasant fathers; and we have had War-Fieldings and Sea-Fieldings, and Small-Smolletts and Sea-Smolletts, time after time, until we almost get a-weary of the race. True wit, or true humour, ought to provoke no trace of relationship—ought to ‘mention no names’—it is, in fact, ‘wild wit, invention ever new!’ or it is not what it assumes to be. A wit or a humourist should remind you of human nature—human nature in its vivid and lustrous colours—and not hunt you back to a foregone work, or a pleasant author-predecessor. The writer of the periodical (for such it is) which is now before us, has great cleverness; but he runs closely upon some leading hounds in the humorous pack, and when he gives tongue (perchance a vulgar tongue,) he reminds you of the baying of several deep dogs who have gone before. The Pickwick Papers, in fact, are made up of two pounds of Smollett, three ounces of Sterne, a handful of Hook, a dash of a grammatical Pierce Egan—incidents at pleasure, served with an original sauce piquante.
