" All the apparent good humour had faded from Phipps' face.

" "It is a joke," Wingate assured him gravely, "but it may need a very peculiar sense of humour to appreciate it.

Never neglecting an opportunity to indulge his humour, when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote a poem on the untimely death of a friend, he could not refrain from presenting her with a parody.

Two persons with such impish humour could not but frequently find themselves at loggerheads, but their liking for each other's society was genuine, and quarrels were followed by peace-making.

Miss Skerritt is in the house with, me, and Lady Stafford has taken a lodging at Richmond: as their ages are different, and both agreeable in their kind, I laugh with the one, or reason with the other, as I happen to be in a gay or serious humour; and I manage my friends with such a strong yet with a gentle hand, that they are both willing to do whatever I have a mind to.

"My cousin is going to Paris, and I will not let her go without a letter for you, my dear sister, though I was never in a worse humour for writing" (the anxious mother wrote to her sister).

Hitherto he has always been directed, either by his own humour, or the advice of those he thought better friends to him than myself.

His Anna How and Charlotte Grandison are recommended as patterns of charming pleasantry, and applauded by his saint-like dames, who mistake pert folly for wit and humour, and impudence and ill nature for spirit and fire.

Fielding has really a fund of true humour, and was to be pitied at his first entrance into the world, having no choice, as he said himself, but to be a hackney writer, or a hackney coachman.

Her style is clear and concise, with some strokes of humour, which appear to me so much above her, I can't help being of opinion the whole has been modelled by the author of the book in which it is inserted, who is some subaltern admirer of hers.

You should encourage your daughter to talk over with you what she reads; and, as you are very capable of distinguishing, take care she does not mistake pert folly for wit and humour, or rhyme for poetry, which are the common errors of young people, and have a train of ill consequences.

I have seen ladies indulge their own ill humour by being very rude and impertinent, and think they deserved approbation by saying I love to speak truth.

I feel in myself a proof of this assertion, being much against my will at Venice, though I own it is the only great town where I can properly reside, yet here I find so many vexations, that, in spite of all my philosophy and (what is more powerful) my phlegm, I am oftener out of humour than among my plants and poultry in the country.

I own I have too much indulged a sedentary humour and have been a rake in reading.

Killegrew was a man of very great humour, and frequently diverted king Charles II, by his lively spirit of mirth and drollery.

She had wit, humour, good-nature and judgment.

The authors of the Biographia Brittanica say, that her poetry is none of the best; and that her comedies, tho' not without humour, are full of the most indecent scenes and expressions.

He seems to have had a sprightly genius, and possessed a pleasing gaiety of humour.

There are high authorities in favour of many of his Comedies, and the best wits of the age gave their testimony for them: They have in them fine strokes of humour, the characters are often original, strongly mark'd, and well sustained; add to this, that he had the greatest expedition in writing imaginable, and sometimes produced a play in less than a month.

And as no man ever undertook to discover the frailties of such pretenders to this kind of knowledge before Mr. Shadwell, so none since Johnson's time, ever drew so many different characters of humour, and with such success.

This comedy was designed by the author to have been acted by his Majesty's servants, which they thought proper however to refuse, we know not for what reason,The poet indeed has assigned one, whether true or false is immaterial; but it may serve to shew his humour.

The whole atmosphere of such a play should be impregnated with humour, without reaching that gross supersaturation which we find in the lower order of farce-plays of the type of Charlie's Aunt or Niobe.

Goldsmith, like Farquhar and Steele, vaguely realized the superiority of humour to wit; but he died too early to exercise much influence on his successors.

Well, her husband, eccentric peer with a priceless collection of snuffboxes and a chronic deficiency of humour, had arranged the little dinner to effect a reconciliation, away from the prying eyes of their set.

In it you will find all those qualities, a sane and soldier-like common-sense, an entire absence of gush, and a saving humour in the midst of horrors, which made the earlier installment memorable.