MR. LABOUCHERE AS A WIT.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR.,-" Whatever else he was or was not, everybody admits that he was the greatest English wit since Sheridan." Thus Mr. Algar Thorold writes in the introduction to his uncle's Life. It is a daring statement, but Mr. Thorold probably knows what he is about, and how to coax the appetite of that feckless, unthinking "everybody," always ready to swallow any pronouncement of this character if only it be repeated often enough and with assurance. Still, there must have been a few units—let us call them nobodies, since they disclaim fellowship with Mr. Thorold's "everybody "—who gasped when they read this astonishing claim. Did no such people exist as Hook, Tom Hood, Peacock, Dean Ramsay, Disraeli, Bernal Osborne, Thackeray, Charles Bowen, or Gilbert, and was there not one Charles Lamb, who died in 1834, eighteen years after Sheridan ? The worst of it is that Mr. Thorold's rating will be accepted by hundreds to whom Lamb is only a name—the crowd which finds more attractive than the wit of these masters the snarl of the cynic trading as a purveyor of social gossip. And then Lamb was not blessed with unlimited cash, nor with a pitch from which he could shout in security his weekly advertisement.—I am, Sir, &c.,
W. G. WATERS.
7 Mansfield Street, Portland Place, W.
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