Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/125

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HUMOR: ENGLISH AND AMERICAN.
111

"Mother of mightier, nurse of none more dear,"

rich in the splendid literature of England, and faithful lover both of the teeming city and the ripe old books, Lamb speaks to English hearts in a language they can understand. And we, his neighbors, whom he recked not of, hold him just as dear; for his spleenless humor is an inheritance of our mother tongue, one of the munificent gifts which England shares with us, and for which no payment is possible save the frank and generous recognition of a pleasure that is without peer.