A well-known humorist, Mr. Stephen Leacock, has decided that Popes and Ecclesiastical dignitaries are as a class deficient in humour, and he extends his condemnation to crowned heads, captains of industry, great writers, thinkers, philanthropists, martyrs, reformers and patriots. Such a sweeping charge it is difficult to challenge, and all we can do is to indicate here and there certain symptoms of a humorous nature latent in the higher clergy and royalty ; we have neither time nor space for the rest of mankind.

Humour, like a verb, is sometimes active and sometimes passive. If active in a subject it either produces wit or appreciates it in another. If passive, it is generally unconscious and consequently the amusement is gathered by others. To be plain, the one so gifted is himself a joke, and his state of mind prevents him from being a humorist of the active or real type. The heavens prevent that we should consider the Popes and “the more dignified clergy” in this category of unconscious humorists. The title of this paper is not Dignity versus Humour, and it is far from being our intention to hold up position and responsibility as objects of merriment, though misplaced dignity is one of the foundation stones of the world’s laughter. Few writers would be bold enough to regard the Popes as fit subjects for a joke, but bishops and abbots, more especially the mediaeval ones, have long been looked upon as legitimate prey by writers of amusing (?) fiction. Emperors and other crowned heads have oftentimes aroused amusement, usually a discreet amusement, amongst their subjects ; but there is little humour, conscious or unconscious, in a Captain of Industry, whatever that pompous and preposterous title means.