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jeiters of former ages. Two of the earlier Englilh collections have
gained a greater celebrity than the reit, chiefly through adventitious
circumfiances. One of thefe, entitled "A Hundred Merry Tales,"
has gained cliftinction among Shakespearian critics as the one efpecially
alluded to by the great poet in " Much Ado about Nothingff (Act ii.,
Sc. 1), where Beatrice complains that fomebody had faid "that I had
my good wit out of the Hundred Merry Tales." The other collection
alluded to was entitled "Mery Tales, lVittie Queitions, and Quicke
Anfweres, very pleafant to be readde," and was printed in I567. Its
modern fame appears to have arifen chiefly From the circumftance that,
until the accidental difcovery of the unique and imperfect copy of the
" Hundred Merry Tales," it was fuppofed to be the book alluded to by
Shakefpeare. Both thefe collections are mere compilations from the
" Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles," Poggio," " Straparola," and other foreign
works." The Words put into the mouth of Beatrice are correctly defcrip-
tive of the ufe made of thefe jeii:-books. It had become fafhionable to
learn out of them jeits and ftories, in order to introduce them into
polite converfation, and efpecially at table ; and this practice continued to
prevail until a very recent period. The number of fuch jeft-books pub-
lilhed during the Gxteenth, feventeeth, and eighteenth centuries, was
quite extraordinary. Many of thefe were given anonymoufly 5 but many
alfo were put forth under names which poiTeH'ed temporary celebrity, fuch
as Hobfon the carrier, Killigrew the jetter, the friend of Charles II., Ben
Jonfon, Garrick, and a multitude of others. It is, perhaps, unnecetiary
to remind the reader that the great modern reprefentative of this clafs of
literature is the illuitrious Joe Miller.
3" A neat and useful edition of these two jest-books, with the other most curious
books of the same class, published during the Elizabethan period, has recently been
Pllbllbhfid in two volumes, by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt.
