Tracy Wuster
Last time I posted “In the Archives,” I posted William Hazlitt’s “On Wit and Humour” (1818). In her 1893 book, Essays in Idlesness, the critic Agnes Repplier takes up many of the threads of Hazlitt’s easy in her own essay entitled, “Wit and Humor.” Repplier was a prominent essayist who published many books over almost 50 years, often writing on the subject of humor (a primer on Repplier’s works). Repplier is better known in humor studies for her essay, “A Plea for Humor,” (1891) which will undoubtedly show up here in a future post.
Repplier at Mark Twain’s 70th Birthday Party
Published in the same year as James Russell Lowell’s “Humor, Wit, Fun, and Satire,” Repplier’s essay shows less of Lowell’s didactic style and classical leanings, offering a much more direct discussion of humor and one that reflects her concerns with the place of humor in her society.
In this essay, reprinted in full below, Repplier takes up Hazlitt’s subject, examining it from new perspectives and extending or revising some of his main points. She starts with this point:
while he gathers and analyzes every species of wit and humor, it plainly does not occur to him for a moment that either calls for any protection at his hands. Hazlitt is so sure that laughter is our inalienable right, that he takes no pains to soften its cadences or to justify its mirth.
In the age of George Vasey and his philosophy that viewed humor as dangerous, Repplier found it necessary to defend humor. The bulk of the essay, in fact, seeks to redeem the rougher edges of humor in favor of an essence of “geniality” as the keynote of humor.
for sympathy is the legitimate attribute of humor, and even where the humorist seems most pitiless, and even brutal, in his apprehen- sion of the absurd, he has a living tenderness for our poor humanity which is so rich in its absurdities.
After discussing Hazlitt’s definition of humor, Repplier then discusses the difference between wit and humor (see pages 169-170 below). As is common in the nineteenth century, Repplier discusses the national characteristics of humor:
Nevertheless, an understanding of the differ- ences in nations and in epochs helps us to the enjoyment of many humorous situations.
But:
It is in its simplest forms, however, that humor enjoys a world-wide actuality, and is the connecting link of all times and places and people.
And though some humor may be cruel–witness the scene of the wealthy man falling on his backside while a chimney sweep laughs uproariously–the humorist’s view of life is, she argues, at heart “genial.” True, many of the great English humorist (even Dickens) were often cruel, but humor had changed:
But we have now reached that point of humane seriousness when even puppet- shows cannot escape their educational respon- sibilities, and when Punch and Judy are gravely censured for teaching a lesson in bru- tality. (175)
Indeed, much of the essay seems to be a defense of a genial humor in the face of other not-so-kind variations, such as “hoaxing, quizzing, ” selling,” and other variations of the game” (177). With reference to great humorists of the past, Repplier smoothes the rough edges of the less kind uses of humor.
It is in her discussion of satire where Repplier shines:
A keen sense of the absurd is so little rel- ished by those who have it not that it is too often considered solely as a weapon of offense, and not as a shield against the countless ills that come to man through lack of sanity and judgment. There is a well-defined impression in the world that the satirist, like the devil, roams abroad, seeking whom he may devour, and generally devouring the best ; whereas his position is often that of the besieged, who defends himself with the sharpest weapons at his command against a host of invading evils. There are many things in life so radically un- wholesome that it is not safe to approach them save with laughter as a disinfectant ; and when people cannot laugh, the moral atmosphere grows stagnant, and nothing is too morbid, too preposterous, or too mischievous to meet with sympathy and solemn assurances of good will. (179)
And:
The best use we can make of humor is, not to divert ourselves with, but to defend ourselves against, the folly of fools ; for much of the world’s misery is entailed upon her by her eminently well-meaning and foolish children. (180-181)
Her goal of defending humor thus shifts subtly from a keynote of “geniality” to one of complexity in the role humor plays in helping people adjust to the ills of modern society:
Humor has been somewhat daringly defined as ” a sympathy for the seamy side of things.” It does not hover on the borders of the light and trifling ; it does not linger in that keen and courtly atmosphere which is the chosen playground of wit ; but diffusing itself subtly throughout all nature, reveals to us life, — life which we love to consider and to judge from some pet standpoint of our own, but which is so big and wonderful, and good and bad, and fine and terrible, that our little peaks of observa- tion command only a glimpse of the mysteries we are so ready and willing to solve. (185)
The following section is well worth reading in its entirety to trace her argument that the humorous view of life is the healthiest and that , in fact, “we are too impatient to understand that they represent an attitude, and a very healthy attitude, towards life.” (188) Enjoy.
WIT AND HUMOR.
It is dubious wisdom to walk in the foot-
prints of a giant, and to stumble with little
steps along the road where his great strides
were taken. Yet many years have passed
since Hazlitt trod this way; fresh flowers have
grown by the route, and fresh weeds have
fought with them for mastery. The face of
the country has changed for better or for
worse, and a brief survey reveals much that
never met his eyes. The journey, too, was
safer in his day than in ours; and while he
gathers and analyzes every species of wit and
humor, it plainly does not occur to him for a
moment that either calls for any protection at
his hands. Hazlitt is so sure that laughter is
our inalienable right, that he takes no pains
to soften its cadences or to justify its mirth.
” We laugh at that in others which is a serious
matter to ourselves,” he says, and sees no
reason why this should not be. ” Some one 5s
WJT AND HUMOR. 169
generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke ; “
and, fortified with this assurance, he confesses
to a frank delight in the comic parts of the
Arabian Nights, although recognizing keenly
the spirit of cruelty that underlies them, and
aware that they ” carry the principle of callous
indifference in a jest as far as it can go.”
Don Quixote, too, he stoutly affirms to be as
fitting a subject for merriment as Sancho
Panza. Both are laughable, and both are
meant to be laughed at ; the extravagances of
each being pitted dexterously against those of
the other by a great artist in the ridiculous.
But he is by no means insensible to the charm
and goodness of the ” ingenious gentleman ; “
for sympathy is the legitimate attribute of
humor, and even where the humorist seems
most pitiless, and even brutal, in his apprehen-
sion of the absurd, he has a living tenderness
for our poor humanity which is so rich in its
absurdities.
Hazlitt’s definition of wit and humor is per-
haps as good as any definition is ever likely to
be ; that is, it expresses a half-truth with a
great deal of reasonableness and accuracy.
“Humor,” he says, *’is the describing the
170 ESSAYS IN IDLENESS,
ludicrous as it is in itself ; wit is the exposing
it by comparing or contrasting it with some-
thing else. Humor is the growth of nature
and accident; wit is the product of art and
fancy. Humor, as it is shown in books, is an
imitation of the natural or acquired absurdities
of mankind, or of the ludicrous in accident,
situation, and character; wit is the illustrating
and heightening the sense of that absurdity by
some sudden and unexpected likeness or oppo-
sition of one thing to another, which sets off
the quality we laugh at or despise in a still
more contemptible or striking point of view.”
This is perhaps enough to show us at least
one cause of the endless triumph of humor over
wit, — a triumph due to its closer affinity with
the simple and elementary conditions of human
nature and life. Wit is artificial; humor is
natural. Wit is accidental ; humor is inevi-
table. Wit is born of conscious effort ; humor,
of the allotted ironies of fate. Wit can be
expressed only in language; humor can be
developed sufficiently in situation. Wit is the
plaything of the intellectual, or the weapon of
nimble minds ; humor is the possession of all
sorts and conditions of men. Wit is truly
WIT AND HUMOR. 171
what Shelley falsely imagined virtue to be,
” a refinement of civilized life ; ” humor is the
property of all races in every stage of develop-
ment. Wit possesses a species of immortality,
and for many generations holds its own;
humor is truly immortal, and as long as the
eye sees, and the ear hears, and the heart
beats, it will be our privilege to laugh at the
pleasant absurdities which require no other
seed or nurture than man’s endless intercourse
with man.
Nevertheless, an understanding of the differ-
ences in nations and in epochs helps us to the
enjoyment of many humorous situations. We
should know something of England and of
India to appreciate the peculiar horror with
which Lord Minto, on reaching Calcutta, be-
held the fourteen male attendants who stood
in his chamber, respectfully prepared to help
him into bed ; or his still greater dismay at
being presented by the rajah of Bali with
seven slaves, — five little boys and two little
girls, — all of whom cost the conscientious
governor-general a deal of trouble and expense
before they were properly disposed of, and in a
fair way to learn their alphabet and catechism.
172 ESSAYS IN IDLENESS,
Yet perhaps a deeper knowledge of time and
character is needed to sound the depths of Sir
Robert Walpole’s cynical observation, ” Grati-
tude is a lively sense of future favors ; ” al-
though this is indeed a type of witticism which
possesses inherent vitality, not depending upon
any play of words or double meanings, but
striking deep root into the fundamental fail-
ings of the human heart.
It is in its simplest forms, however, that
humor enjoys a world-wide actuality, and is
the connecting link of all times and places and
people. ” Let us start from laughter,” says M.
Edmond Scherer, “since laughter is a thing
familiar to every one. It is excited by a sense
of the ridiculous, and the ridiculous arises
from the contradiction between the use of a
thing and its intention.” Even that common-
est of all themes, a fellow-creature slipping or
falling, M. Scherer holds to be provocative of
mirth ; and in selecting this elementary ex-
ample he bravely drives the matter back to its
earliest and rudest principles. For it is a
weapon in the hands of the serious that such
casualties, which should excite instant sym-
pathy and alarm, awaken laughter only in
WIT AND HUMOR. 173
those who are too foolish or too brutal to ex-
perience any other sensation. It would seem,
indeed, that the sight of a man falling on the
ice or in the mud cannot be, and ought not to
be, very amusing. But before we frown se-
verely and forever upon such vulgar jests, let
us turn for a moment to a well-known essay,
and see what Charles Lamb has to plead in
their extenuation : —
“I am by nature extremely susceptible of
street affronts; the jeers and taunts of the
populace ; the low-bred triumph they display
over the casual trip or splashed stocking of a
gentleman. Yet I can endure the jocularity
of a young sweep with something more than
forgiveness. In the last winter but one, pacing
along Cheapside with my accustomed precipi-
tation when I walk westward, a treacherous
slide brought me upon my back in an instant.
I scrambled up with pain and shame enough,
— yet outwardly trying to face it down, as if
nothing had happened, — when the roguish
grin of one of these young wits encountered
me. There he stood, pointing me out with his
dusky finger to the mob, and to a poor woman
(I suppose his mother) in particular, till the
174 ESSAYS IN IDLENESS.
tears for the exquisiteness of the fun (so he
thought it) worked themselves out at the cor-
ners of his poor red eyes, red from many a pre-
vious weeping, and soot-inflamed, yet twinkling
through all with such a joy, snatched out of
desolation, that Hogarth — but Hogarth has
got him already (how could he miss him ?) in
the March to Finchley, grinning at the pieman ;
— there he stood, as he stands in the picture,
irremovable, as if the jest was to last forever,
with such a maximum of glee and minimum
of mischief in his mirth — for the grin of a
genuine sweep hath absolutely no malice in it
— that I could have been content, if the honor
of a gentleman might endure it, to have re-
mained his butt and his mockery till mid-
night.”
Ah, prince of kindly humorists, to whom
shall we go but to you for tears and laughter,
and pastime and sympathy, and jests and
gentle tolerance, and all things needed to make
light our trouble-burdened hearts !
It is not worth while to deny or even to
soften the cruel side of humor, though it is a
far more grievous error to overlook its gener-
ous forbearance. The humorist’s view of life
WIT AND HUMOR. 175
IS essentially genial ; but he has given stout
blows in his day, and the sound of his vigorous
warfare rings harshly in our unaccustomed
ears. *’ The old giants of English fun ” were
neither soft-spoken nor soft-handed gentry,
and it seems to us now and then as if they
laid about them with joyous and indiscriminate
activity. Even Dickens, the last and greatest
of his race, and haunted often to his fall by
the beckoning of mirthless modern phantoms,
shows in his earlier work a good deal of this
gleeful and unhesitating belligerency. The
scenes between old Weller and Mr. Stiggins
might be successfully acted in a spirited
puppet-show, where conversation is of less
importance than well-timed and well-bestowed
pommeling. But we have now reached that
point of humane seriousness when even puppet-
shows cannot escape their educational respon-
sibilities, and when Punch and Judy are
gravely censured for teaching a lesson in bru-
tality. The laughter of generations, which
should protect and hallow the little manikins
at play, counts for nothing by the side of their
irresponsible naughtiness, and their cheerful
disregard of all our moral standards. Yet
176 KSSAYS IN IDLENESS.
here, too, Hazlitt has a seasonable word of
defense, holding indeed that he who invented
such diverting pastimes was a benefactor to
his species, and gave us something which it
was rational and healthy to enjoy. ” We place
the mirth and glee and triumph to our own
account,” he says, “and we know that the
bangs and blows the actors have received go
for nothing as soon as the showman puts them
up in his box, and marches off quietly with
them, as jugglers of a less amusing description
sometimes march off with the wrongs and
rights of mankind in their pockets.” It has
been well said that wit requires a good head ;
humor, a good heart; and fun, high spirits.
Punch’s spirits, let us hasten to admit, are
considerably in advance of his head and heart ;
yet nevertheless he is wanting neither in
acuteness nor in the spirit of good-fellowship.
He has hearkened to the advice given by
Seneca many years ago, “Jest without bit-
terness ” ! and has practiced this delightful
accomplishment for centuries, as befits the
most conservative joker in the world.
Another reproach urged against humor
rather than wit is its somewhat complicated
IV IT AND HUMOR. Ill
system of lying ; and much well-merited sever-
ity has been expended upon such questionable
diversions as hoaxing, quizzing, ” selling,” and
other variations of the game, the titles of
which have long since passed away, leaving
their substance behind them. It would be
easy, but untrue, to say that real humor has
nothing whatever to do with these unworthy
offshoots, and never encourages their growth.
The fact remains that they spring from a great
humorous principle, and one which critics have
been prompt to recognize, and to embody in
language as clear and unmistakable as possible.
“Lying,” says Hazlitt, “is a species of wit
and humor. To lay anything to a person’s
charge from which he is perfectly free shows
spirit and invention ; and the more incredible
the effrontery the greater is the joke.” ” The
terrors of Sancho,” observes M. Scherer, ” the
rascalities of Scapin, the brags of Falstaff,
amuse us because of their disproportion with
circumstances, or their disagreement with
facts.” Just as Charles Lamb humanizes a
brutal jest by turning it against himself, so
Sir Walter Scott gives amusing emphasis to a
lie by directing it against his own personality.
178 ESSAYS IN IDLENESS.
His description of himself in his journal as a
“pebble-hearted cur,” the occasion being his
parting with the emotional Madame Mirbel, is
truly humorous, because of its remoteness from
the truth. There are plenty of men who could
have risked using the phrase without exciting
in us that sudden sense of incongruity which
is a legitimate source of laughter. A delight-
ful instance of effrontery, which shows both
spirit and invention, is the story told by Sir
Francis Doyle of the highwayman who, having
attacked and robbed Lord Derby and his
friend Mr. Grenville, said to them with re-
proachful candor, ” What scoundrels you must
be to fire at gentlemen who risk their lives
upon the road ! ” As for the wit that lies in
playful misstatements and exaggerations, we
must search for it in the riotous humor of
Lamb’s letters, where the true and the false
are often so inextricably commingled that it is
a hopeless task to separate facts from fancies.
” I shall certainly go to the naughty man for
fibbing,” writes Lamb, with soft laughter ; and
the devout apprehension may have been justly
shared by Edward Fitzgerald, when he de-
scribes the parish church at Woodbridge as
WIT AND HUM on. 179
being so damp that the fungi grew in great
numbers about the communion table.
A keen sense of the absurd is so little rel-
ished by those who have it not that it is too
often considered solely as a weapon of offense,
and not as a shield against the countless ills
that come to man through lack of sanity and
judgment. There is a well-defined impression
in the world that the satirist, like the devil,
roams abroad, seeking whom he may devour,
and generally devouring the best ; whereas his
position is often that of the besieged, who
defends himself with the sharpest weapons at
his command against a host of invading evils.
There are many things in life so radically un-
wholesome that it is not safe to approach them
save with laughter as a disinfectant ; and when
people cannot laugh, the moral atmosphere
grows stagnant, and nothing is too morbid, too
preposterous, or too mischievous to meet with
sympathy and solemn assurances of good will.
This is why a sense of the ridiculous has been
justly called the guardian of our minor morals,
rendering men in some measure dependent
upon the judgments of their associates, and
laying the basis of that decorum and propriety
180 ESSAYS IN IDLENESS.
of conduct which is a necessary condition of
human life, and upon which is founded the
great charm of intercourse between equals.
From what pitfalls of vanity and self-assurance
have we been saved by this ever-watchful pres-
ence ! Into what abysmal follies have we
fallen when she withholds her restraining
hand ! Shelley’s letters are perhaps the
strongest argument in behalf of healthy hu-
mor that literature has yet offered to the
world. Only a man burdened with an “in-
vincible repugnance to the comic ” could have
gravely penned a sentence like this : ” Cer-
tainly a saint may be amiable, — she may be
so ; but then she does not understand, — has
neglected to investigate the religion which re-
tiring, modest prejudice leads her to profess.”
Only a man afflicted with what Mr. Arnold
mildly calls an ” inhuman ” lack of humor
could have written thus to a female friend:
“The French language you already know;
and, if the great name of Rousseau did not
redeem it, it would have been perhaps as well
that you had remained ignorant of it.” Our
natural pleasure at this verdict may be agree-
ably heightened by placing alongside of it
WIT AND HUMOR. 181
Madame de Stael’s moderate statement, ” Con-
versation, like talent, exists only in France.”
And such robust expressions of opinion give
us our clearest insight into at least one of the
dangers from which a sense of the ridiculous
rescues its fortunate possessor.
When all has been said, however, we must
admit that edged tools are dangerous things to
handle, and not infrequently do much hurt.
” The art of being humorous in an agreeable
way ” is as difficult in our day as in the days
of Marcus Aurelius, and a disagreeable exer-
cise of this noble gift is as unwelcome now as
then. ” Levity has as many tricks as the kit-
ten,” says Leigh Hunt, who was quite capable
of illustrating and proving the truth of his as-
sertion, and whose scratching at times closely
resembled the less playful manifestations of a
full-grown cat. Wit is the salt of conversation,
not the food, and few things in the world are
more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards
life. ” Je goute ceux qui sont raisonnables, et
me divertis des extravagants,” says Uranie, in
” La Critique de I’Ecole des Femmes ; ” and
even these words seem to tolerant ears to savor
unduly of arrogance. The best use we can make
182 ESSAYS IN IDLENESS,
of humor is, not to divert ourselves with, but
to defend ourselves against, the folly of fools ;
for much of the world’s misery is entailed upon
her by her eminently well-meaning and foolish
children. There is no finer proof of Miss
Austen’s matured genius than the gradual
mellowing of her humor, from the deliberate
pleasure affected by Elizabeth Bennet and her
father in the foibles of their fellow-creatures to
the amused sympathy betrayed in every page
of ” Emma ” and ” Persuasion.” Not even the
charm and brilliance of ” Pride and Prejudice “
can altogether reconcile us to a heroine who,
like Uranie, diverts herself with the failings of
mankind. What a gap between Mr. Bennet’s
cynical praise of his son-in-law, Wickliam, —
which, under the circumstances, is a little re-
volting, — and Mr. Knightley’s manly reproof
to Emma, whose youthful gayety beguiles her
into an unkind jest. While we talk much of
Miss Austen’s merciless laughter, let us remem-
ber always that the finest and bravest defense
of harmless folly against insolent wit is embod-
ied in this (against remonstrance from the lips
of a lover who is courageous enough to speak
plain truths, with no suspicion of priggishness
to mar their wholesome* flavor.
WIT AND HUMOR, 183
It is difficult, at any time, to deprive wit
of its social or political surroundings ; it is
impossible to drive it back to those deeper,
simpler sources whence humor springs un-
veiled. “Hudibras,” for example, is witty;
” Don Quixote ” is humorous. Sheridan is
witty ; Goldsmith is humorous. To turn from
the sparkling scenes where the Rivals play their
mimic parts to the quiet fireside where the
Vicar and Farmer Flamborough sit sipping
their gooseberry wine is to reenter life, and to
feel human hearts beating against our own.
How delicate the touch which puts everything
before us with a certain gentle, loving malice,
winning us to laughter, without for a moment
alienating our sympathies from the right.
Hazlitt claims for the wicked and witty come-
dies of the Restoration that it is their privilege
to allay our scruples and banish our just re-
grets ; but when Goldsmith brings the profli-
gate squire and his female associates into the
Vicar’s innocent household, the scene is one
of pure and incomparable humor, which never-
theless leaves us more than ever in love with
the simple goodness which is so readily de-
ceived. Mr. Thornhill utters a questionable
184 ESSAYS IN IDLENESS.
sentiment. The two fine ladies, who have been
striving hard to play their parts, and only let-
ting slip occasional oaths, affect great displea-
sure at his laxness, and at once begin a very dis-
creet and serious dialogue upon virtue. ” In this
my wife, the chaplain, and I soon joined ; and
the squire himself was at last brought to con-
fess a sense of sorrow for his former excesses.
We talked of the pleasures of temperance, and
of the sunshine of the mind unpolluted with
guilt. I was so well pleased that my little
ones were kept up beyond the usual time, to
be edified by so much good conversation. Mr.
Thornhill even went beyond me, and demanded
if I had any objection to giving prayers. I
joyfully embraced the proposal ; and in this
manner the night was passed in a most com-
fortable way, till at length the company began
to think of returning.” What a picture it is I
What an admirably humorous situation I
What easy tolerance in the treatment ! We
laugh, but even in our laughter we know that
not for the space of a passing breath does
Goldsmith yield his own sympathy, or divert
ours, away from the just cause of innocence
and truth.
WIT AND HUMOR. 185
If men of real wit have been more numer-
ous in the world than men of real humor, it is
because discernment and lenity, mirth and
conciliation, are qualities which do not blend
easily with the natural asperity of our race.
Humor has been somewhat daringly defined as
” a sympathy for the seamy side of things.”
It does not hover on the borders of the light
and trifling ; it does not linger in that keen
and courtly atmosphere which is the chosen
playground of wit ; but diffusing itself subtly
throughout all nature, reveals to us life, — life
which we love to consider and to judge from
some pet standpoint of our own, but which is so
big and wonderful, and good and bad, and fine
and terrible, that our little peaks of observa-
tion command only a glimpse of the mysteries
we are so ready and willing to solve. Thus, the
degree of wit embodied in an old story is a mat-
ter of much dispute and of scant importance ;
but when we read that Queen Elizabeth, in her
last illness, turned wearily away from matters
of state, “yet delighted to hear some of the
‘ Hundred Merry Tales,’ and to such was very
attentive,” we feel we have been lifted into
the regions of humor, and by its sudden light
lA-
186 ESSAYS IN IDLENESS.
we recognize, not the dubious merriment of the
tales, but the sick and world-worn spirit seek-
ing a transient relief from fretful care and
poisonous recollections. So, too, when Sheri-
dan said of Mr. Dundas that he resorted to
his memory for his jests, and to his imagina-
tion for his facts, the great wit, after the
fashion of wits, expressed a limited truth. It
was a delightful statement so far as it went,
but it went no further than Mr. Dundas, with
just the possibility of a second application.
When Voltaire sighed, ” Nothing is so dais-
greeable as to be obscurely hanged,” he gave
utterance to a national sentiment, which is not
in the least witty, but profoundly humorous,
revealing with charming distinctness a French-
man’s innate aversion to all dull and common-
place surroundings. Dying is not with him,
as with an Englishman, a strictly ” private af-
fair ; ” it is the last act of life’s brilliant play,
which is expected to throw no discredit upon
the sparkling scenes it closes.
The breadth of atmosphere which humor
requires for its development, the saneness and
sympathy of its revelations, are admirable’
described by one of the most remonstrating and
WJT AND HUMOR, 187
least humorous of French critics, M. Edmond
Scherer, whose words are all the more grateful
and valuable to us when they refer, not to his
own countrymen, but to those robust English
humorists whom it is our present pleasure to
ignore. M. Scherer, it is true, finds much
fault, and reasonable fault ever, with these
stout-hearted, strong-handed veterans. They
are not always decorous. They are not always
sincere. They are wont to play with their
subjects. They are too eager to amuse them-
selves and other people. It is easy to make
out a list of their derelictions. ” Yet this does
not prevent the temperament of the humorist
from being, on the whole, the happiest that a
man can bring with him into this world, nor
his point of view from being the fairest from
which the world can be judged. The satirist
grows wroth ; the cynic banters ; the humorist
laughs and sympathizes by turns. . . . He has
neither the fault of the pessimist, who refers
everything to a purely personal conception,
and is angry with reality for not being such
as he conceives it ; nor that of the optimist,
who shuts his eyes to everything missing on
the real earth, that he may comply with the
188 ESSAYS IN IDLENESS.
demands of his heart and of his reason. The
humorist feels the imperfections of reality,
and resigns himself to them with good temper,
knowing that his own satisfaction is not the
rule of things, and that the formula of the
universe is necessarily larger than the prefer-
ences of a single one of the accidental beings
of whom the universe is composed. He is be-
yond doubt the true philosopher.”
\ This is a broad statement ; yet to endure
life smilingly is no ignoble task ; and if the
humors of mankind are inseparably blended
with all their impulses and actions, it is worth
while to consider bravely the value of quali-
ties so subtle and far-reaching in their influ-
ences. Steele, as we know, dressed the invad-
ing bailiffs in liveries, and amazed his guests
by the number and elegance of his retainers.
Sydney Smith fastened antlers on his sheep,
for the gratification of a lady who thought he
ought to have deer in his park. Such elabo-
rate jests, born of invincible gayety and high
spirits, seem childish to our present adult
seriousness ; and we are too impatient to im-
derstand that they represent an attitude, and
a very healthy attitude, towards life. The
WIT AND HUMOR. 189
iniquity of Steele’s career lay in his repeatedly
running into debt, not in the admirable temper
with which he met the consequences of that
debt when they were forced upon him ; and
if the censorious are disposed to believe that
a less happy disposition would have avoided
these consequences, let them consider the ca-
reers of poor Richard Savage and other mis-
anthropic prodigals. As for Sydney Smith,
he followed Burton’s excellent counsel, ” Go
on then merrily to heaven ; ” and his path was
none the less straight because it was smoothed
by laughter. That which must be borne had
best be borne cheerfully, and sometimes a
single telling stroke of wit, a single word rich
in manly humor, reveals to us that true cour-
age, that fine philosophy, which endures and
even tolerates the vicissitudes of fortune,
without for a moment relinquishing its honest
hold upon the right. Mr. Lang has told us
such a little story of the verger in a Saxon
town who was wont to show visitors a silver
mouse, which had been offered by the women
to the Blessed Virgin that she might rid the
town of mice. A Prussian officer, with that
prompt brutality which loves to offend religious
190 ESSAYS IN IDLENESS.
sentiment it does not share, asked jeeringly,
“Are you such fools as to believe that the
creatures went away because a silver mouse
was dedicated ? ” ” Ah, no,” replied the ver-
ger, “or long ago we should have offered a
silver Prussian.”
It is the often-expressed opinion of Leigh
Hunt that although wit and humor may be
found in perfection apart from each other, yet
their best work is shared in common. Wit
separated from humor is but an element of
sport ; ” a laughing jade,” with petulant
whims and fancies, which runs away with our
discretion, confuses our wisdom, and mocks at
holy charity ; yet adds greatly, withal, to the
buoyancy and popularity of life. It makes
gentlefolk laugh, — a difficult task, says Mo-
liere ; it scatters our faculties, and ” bears
them off deridingly into pastime.” It is a
fire-gleam in our dull world, a gift of the gods,
who love to provide weapons for the amuse-
ment and discomfiture of mankind. But hu-
mor stands on common soil, and breathes our
common air. The kindly contagion of its
mirth lifts our hearts from their personal ap-
prehension of life’s grievances, and links us
WJT AND HUMOR. 191
together in a bond of mutual tears and laugh-
ter. If it be powerless to mould existence, or
even explain it to our satisfaction, it can give
us at least some basis for philosophy, some
scope for sympathy, and sanity, and endurance.
” The perceptions of the contrasts of human
destiny,” says M. Scherer, “by a man who
does not sever himself from humanity, but
who takes his own shortcomings and those of
his dear fellow-creatures cheerfully, — this is
the essence of humor.”
