Mr.Nichol, in his recent history of American literature, speaks of Mr.Webster as deficient in this respect.

Either the critic himself is deficient in humor or he has studied only Webster's collected works, which give no indication of the real humor in the man.

That Mr.Webster was not a humorist is unquestionably true, and although he used a sarcasm which made his opponents seem absurd and even ridiculous at times, and in his more unstudied efforts would provoke mirth by some happy and playful allusion, some felicitous quotation or ingenious antithesis, he was too stately in every essential respect ever to seek to make mere fun or to excite the laughter of his hearers by deliberate exertions and with malice aforethought.

He had, nevertheless, a real and genuine sense of humor.

We can see it in his letters, and it comes out in a thousand ways in the details and incidents of his private life.