Word: clownish
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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EVERY age has its humorists and wits, and the depth of their humor is no doubtful index to the literary attainments of its thinking minds. While one epoch jests like a Touchstone, another is content with nothing less than a Sheridan, and the age itself is clownish or witty accordingly. To those who have scanned most eagerly the literary horizon of our own age for the predicted rise of its great facetious luminary, the meteor-like appearance of Henry C. Carey* among its most brilliant stars came with all the surprise that the greatness of the event demands; and every...
...first sight, we must confess, a row, in which the marshals are sometimes obliged to use their batons like policemen's billies, and a series of clownish actions that would disgrace school-boys of ten years old, may not seem the fittest exhibition of ourselves we can make to our friends. We have dwelt sufficiently, however, on the fallacy of confusing facts with ideas. It needs no argument to withstand the enthusiasm of innovation. The nature of its error is apparent to all of us who have howled in the Yard in our Freshman year, who were properly drunk...