We have had comic pulpits, for a sign that the laughter-moving and

the worshipful may be in alliance: I know not how far comic, or how



much assisted in seeming so by the unexpectedness and the relief of

its appearance: at least they are popular, they are said to win the



ear. Laughter is open to perversion, like other good things; the

scornful and the brutal sorts are not unknown to us; but the



laughter directed by the Comic spirit is a harmless wine, conducing

to sobriety in the degree that it enlivens. It enters you like



fresh air into a study; as when one of the sudden contrasts of the

comic idea floods the brain like reassuring daylight. You are



cognizant of the true kind by feeling that you take it in, savour

it, and have what flowers live on, natural air for food. That which



you give out--the joyful roar--is not the better part; let that go

to good fellowship and the benefit of the lungs. Aristophanes



promises his auditors that if they will retain the ideas of the

comic poet carefully, as they keep dried fruits in boxes, their



garments shall smell odoriferous of wisdom throughout the year. The

boast will not be thought an empty one by those who have choice



friends that have stocked themselves according to his directions.

Such treasuries of sparkling laughter are wells in our desert.



Sensitiveness to the comic laugh is a step in civilization. To

shrink from being an object of it is a step in cultivation. We know



the degree of refinement in men by the matter they will laugh at,

and the ring of the laugh; but we know likewise that the larger



natures are distinguished by the great breadth of their power of

laughter, and no one really loving Moliere is refined by that love



to despise or be dense to Aristophanes, though it may be that the

lover of Aristophanes will not have risen to the height of Moliere.



Embrace them both, and you have the whole scale of laughter in your

breast. Nothing in the world surpasses in stormy fun the scene in



The Frogs, when Bacchus and Xanthias receive their thrashings from

the hands of businesslike OEacus, to discover which is the divinity



of the two, by his imperviousness to the mortal condition of pain,

and each, under the obligation of not crying out, makes believe that



his horrible bellow--the god's iou iou being the lustier--means only

the stopping of a sneeze, or horseman sighted, or the prelude to an



invocation to some deity: and the slave contrives that the god

shall get the bigger lot of blows. Passages of Rabelais, one or two



in Don Quixote, and the Supper in the Manner of the Ancients, in

Peregrine Pickle, are of a similar cataract of laughter. But it is



not illuminating; it is not the laughter of the mind. Moliere's

laughter, in his purest comedies, is ethereal, as light to our



nature, as colour to our thoughts. The Misanthrope and the Tartuffe

have no audiblelaughter; but the characters are steeped in the



comic spirit. They quicken the mind through laughter, from coming

out of the mind; and the mind accepts them because they are clear



interpretations of certain chapters of the Book lying open before us

all. Between these two stand Shakespeare and Cervantes, with the



richer laugh of heart and mind in one; with much of the Aristophanic

robustness, something of Moliere's delicacy.



The laughter heard in circles not pervaded by the Comic idea, will

sound harsh and soulless, like versified prose, if you step into



them with a sense of the distinction. You will fancy you have

changed your habitation to a planet remoter from the sun. You may



be among powerful brains too. You will not find poets--or but a

stray one, over-worshipped. You will find learned men undoubtedly,



professors, reputed philosophers, and illustrious dilettanti. They

have in them, perhaps, every element composing light, except the



Comic. They read verse, they discourse of art; but their eminent

faculties are not under that vigilant sense of a collective



supervision, spiritual and present, which we have taken note of.

They build a temple of arrogance; they speak much in the voice of



oracles; their hilarity, if it does not dip in grossness, is usually

a form of pugnacity.



Insufficiency of sight in the eye looking outward has deprived them

of the eye that should look inward. They have never weighed



themselves in the delicate balance of the Comic idea so as to obtain

a suspicion of the rights and dues of the world; and they have, in



consequence, an irritablepersonality. A very learned English

professor crushed an argument in a political discussion, by asking



his adversaryangrily: 'Are you aware, sir, that I am a

philologer?'



The practice of polite society will help in training them, and the

professor on a sofa with beautiful ladies on each side of him, may



become their pupil and a scholar in manners without knowing it: he

is at least a fair and pleasingspectacle to the Comic Muse. But



the society named polite is volatile in its adorations, and to-

morrow will be petting a bronzed soldier, or a black African, or a



prince, or a spiritualist: ideas cannot take root in its ever-

shifting soil. It is besides addicted in self-defence to gabble



exclusively of the affairs of its rapidly revolving world, as

children on a whirligoround bestow their attention on the wooden



horse or cradle ahead of them, to escape from giddiness and preserve

a notion of identity. The professor is better out of a circle that



often confounds by lionizing, sometimes annoys by abandoning, and

always confuses. The school that teaches gently what peril there is



lest a cultivated head should still be coxcomb's, and the collisions

which may befall high-soaring minds, empty or full, is more to be



recommended than the sphere of incessantmotion supplying it with

material.



Lands where the Comic spirit is obscure overhead are rank with raw

crops of matter. The traveller accustomed to smooth highways and



people not covered with burrs and prickles is amazed, amid so much

that is fair and cherishable, to come upon such curious barbarism.



An Englishman paid a visit of admiration to a professor in the Land

of Culture, and was introduced by him to another distinguished



professor, to whom he took so cordially as to walk out with him

alone one afternoon. The first professor, an erudite entirely

• estimate [´estimət, ´estimeit] n.估计；评价 vt.估价 (初中英语单词)


• hostile [´hɔstail] a.敌方的，敌意的 (初中英语单词)


• sentiment [´sentimənt] n.情绪；多愁善感 (初中英语单词)


• laughter [´lɑ:ftə] n.笑，笑声 (初中英语单词)


• poverty [´pɔvəti] n.贫穷(乏，瘠)；不足 (初中英语单词)