A Treasury of Humorous Poetry

The great end of comedy, said Doctor Johnson, in speaking of the drama, is making an audience merry. Whatever else may or may not be true of a humorous compilation, it is certain that unless such a book is amusing, it is a failure. The aim of this Treasury is not that of presenting extracts illustrating the development of humorous poetry in the English language. If that were its purpose, the anthology might have greater value for historical students of literature, but for the average reader it would prove of necessity uninteresting. A sense of relative proportion would have to be observed, which would mean that Chaucer must be liberally represented; that one or more scenes from Shakespeare would have to be transplanted bodily; that the Rape of the Lock must needs be included, as well as much of Dryden, Prior, Gay, Samuel Butler, Swift, Southey, and other wits of a former day, and that the jesters who can really amuse a modern audience would have to be represented meagrely or not at all., The editors first intention, he confesses, was to produce a book a little after this fashion, but upon examining a number of compilations which aim to preserve a sense of historical perspective, and discovering how uncompromisingly dull they are, viewed in the light of contemporary taste, he abandoned the scheme for one more unpretentious. The selections are almost wholly from nineteenth century writers, but in any anthology which succeeds in interesting a wide audience of readers, this is unavoidable. And yet the present book has a higher aim than that of collecting ephemeral newspaper rhymes.