these quotations seem to me of chief value as pointing out that the condition of true humorous thought is individuality. This assertion receives confirmation from the time when humor began to be consciously talked of, especially in Italy, where Cervantes had lived. In the Middle Ages, life was too serious for the individual to grow. Thought was epic; its theme was man's greatness, rather than his littleness. It occupied itself with those qualities in which he resembles the gods, not with those in which he resembles nothing save a creature as complex as himself, if such there be. In an age of great ideals the individual is crushed: where all men are of one mind there is no room for humorous eccentricity. The surroundings are stern and oppressive, and the result is a simple character and singleness of eye. The force which was afterwards developed as humor acted in other ways. It spoke out | in the arising of chivalry. Europe was regenerated by the enthusiasm for women which was a passion, a humor of the Germanic tribes. This vital force was overpowered by superstition and the priesthood, and once again it broke out, in very different form, in the Renaissance. There is always this blessed quality in superstition it stupefies itself. Life is crippled, defaced, caricatured, a mere torso of humanity as in Rabelais. Then superstition loses its power, and life breaks out once more. The Renaissance was a peculiar manifestation of this force: its ideal was humanity, it developed a new science, humanism, and it culminated in humor. Human life became individual at the Renaissance, for it was then that man began to realize the certainties of his state and dwelling-place. To this sympathy with, and understanding of, humanity as it is, was added an inheritance which the classic times knew nothing of the lurid glow of the infinite - a world of emotion and of hope, and of unspeakable possibilities. Men could not forget altogether the ideals of the past centuries. When this new force- this principle of humanism awoke, with new-born delight, in a world of color and of form and the recollections of the old humanity, it found itself also in contact with these awful realities, these great beliefs, which once conceived could never be forgotten. Then humanity was seen for the first time in relation to its eternal environment, the unswerving realities of existence by which it is conditioned; humanity as complete as in the pagan times the eternal existences as the pagan never saw them. The antithesis was complete, the incongruities of life flashed upon the human consciousness, and humor became a conscious faculty of the brain. This great brain-wave passed over into England, where the vibration of its note found strings of perfect accord. The sadness and melancholy of the English humor, vivified and warmed by this brilliant sunbreak from the lands of color and of pleasure, formed a setting of surpassing mellowness, and elevated and purified the wildness and license of the original birth into a work of perfect, if fantastic, tone. There is something of wonderful grace in this development of the Renaissance spirit in the Shakespearian drama. In Jacques and Touchstone-in "Love's Labor's Lost," and in Olivia and the Duke in "Twelfth Night," there is something of Italian courtliness, mingling with the sad, rough phlegm of the English humor, which is peculiarly charming, and very curious, especially when found in Shakespeare, usually so reckless in projecting the habits and thought of England into all countries and times. The mere masques and pantomimes which, in the preceding reigns, had wandered over into England by the medium of the French wars, culminate here, in the Elizabethan culture, in this combination of perfect humor, wherein The wise man's folly is anatomized Even by the squand'ring glances of the fool. But our insular dulness was too gross. The English genius kept the humor, but, except for a moment in Addison, lost the grace. The superiority of the English genius, however, is shown by comparing this combination, while it lasted, with the humor of Scarron and Le Sage. The nearest approach to it in these latter writers will be found, I think, in “Le Diable Boiteux," elevated and relieved as this admirable picture of a great city is, by the beautiful story of the Count de Belfleur. I have said that the English genius kept the humor while losing the grace. That it did so was greatly owing to pecul iar circumstances which favored the culture of individual character. As in the Middle Ages, the individual had little scope, so in modern centralization it is again lost. It is, therefore, in the period between these two epochs that we must look for humor, and accordingly it is here, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centu as is said, by the poet Herrick, himself no mean humorist, was for more than a century the most original of its brethren. But Sterne's humor was only developed by this life; Don Quixote, Sir Roger de Coverley, and Uncle Toby are, alike, the offspring of it. They all correspond to this highest mark of the humorous character-perfection in itself the ridicu lous and pathetic blended into one. It is not enough to depict a ludicrous character and side by side with it, a pathetic. This is the work of the dramatist but not of the humorist. It must be admitted, I think, that the humor of "The Spectator" is mostly of this character. The effect is produced by the alternation of grave and lively papers, now a lively letter from a rake, then a discourse upon immortality, but in Sir Roger the two are united, as far as each goes, as much as in the highest effort of humorous writing. Sir Roger is, in fact, a mild reproduction of Don Quixote. ries, that we shall find it. The last cen- | ature. Curious and graphic examples of tury was particularly fertile in individual it are to be found, even to a late date, in character among all classes of the people." Poor Robin's Almanac," which, started, Village life was peculiarly productive of it. The difficulty of locomotion kept people in one place, and undisturbed by constant contact from without, the individual had time and room to expand and grow. Newspapers were unknown, and all men's minds were not modelled into one fashion every morning by the newspaper train. The clergy, the doctors, and many of the gentry, inhabiting the innumerable manor houses and parsonages that covered the land, carried with them a quaint and original scholarship from universities as yet innocent of the degree grinding-mill. The distinction of classes was much less marked than at present. Domestic service was a friendly and intimate relation. The village lad was constantly rising to the university, by the aid of twenty pounds from the squire. A two days' journey by stage or on horseback was an education in life, with its constant change of companionship, and its study of character. In the villages, and in cathedral and market towns, all classes lived side by side in friendly and mutual help, and the smiling plenty of the land-rivers abounding with fish and coverts with game-which as yet no absorbing central markets tore ruthlessly from the dwellers on the soil, a smokeless sky, and ample leisure, mellowed the human mind, and disposed it towards a genial and gay esteem of life a striking characteristic of the old civilization, most inadequately replaced by the tyrannous chatter of to-day. Let us turn back in recollection over the pages of "The Spectator," and see with what a magic touch Mr. Addison brings the world of English life, both of city and country, before us. Mr. Thackeray does not, I venture to think, rise to the full estimate of Addison's work. cases are tried." Indeed! I should have thought that was a "hanging assize" in which the foul plays were lashed with a withering sarcasm. Addison's humor was permeated with intention and purpose, and with insight into the whole of life. "It is as a tattler of small talk that we love him," he says, and "as a spectator of mankind." The last is surely true, but is the first? Addison's talk is never small; his lightest touch in the description of the slightest fop, has as deep a meaning This village life, with its plenty, its hu- as his paper upon Westminster Abbey. morous instinct, and its genial neighborli-"In Addison's kind court only minor ness is well seen in Sterne, and has been well depicted by the late Lord Lytton, and by one, who, within the lines which he set himself, and which he never overpassed, was perhaps the most perfect humorist that ever wrote Washington Irving. In Hone's "Table Book" there is a sketch of a city worthy, written by Hone himself, but which would do credit to Charles Lamb, which illustrates with distinctness what a fertile source of humor this individuality of character was, and how, with such examples around him, the humoristic writer naturally grew into existence, and found materials ready to his band. The whole nation, familiar with this life, recognized the Shandean humor as true, and it was continued in English liter Vol. ii., p. 446, ed. 1830. It is here that he rises immeasurably above Fielding, and here, I think, we again gain a clear insight into the real facts of the unconscious theory with respect to genius. The theory contains much truth, as we have seen, but the chances are that such writers as Fielding are unconscious, because they only see, and can therefore only describe part of life. "Tom Jones" is nature, but, as Addison said, "nature in its lowest form." Fielding has always gained by being contrasted only with Richardson, and by being opposed by him. Addison was dead; it was fortunate for Fielding that the rapier was rusted, and the skilled erately was marching down with noble hand cold. Miss Martineau speaks graphically somewhere, of an upright manhood following upon a gallant youth," and Sir Richard Steele, in "The Spectator," says "a man that is temperate, generous, valiant, chaste, faithful, and honest, may at the same time have wit, humor, mirth, good-breeding, and gallantry. While he exerts these latter qualities [for the purpose, Sir Richard means, of filling an agreeble part in play or tale] twenty occasions might be invented to show that he is master of the other noble virtues. Such characters would smite and improve the heart of a man of sense when he is given up to his pleasures." Rather a different ideal this, to the handsome booby, devoid of intellect and of every conceivable virtue, save a certain stupidity which prevents his being a hypocrite, who drags his tedious and dirty steps through a slough of coarseness and filth. That Fielding could do better, he proved in the character of Amelia, where we get that most exquisite sight the purity which walks unspotted through evil of every kind. Holborn before me, forming in mental I have already ventured to differ from Mr. Thackeray in his opinion of Addison. I have also to do so as to Pope and Swift. I fail to detect the slightest humor in Pope; indeed I have sometimes thought that Mr. Thackeray's lecture upon Pope must have been inspired by sly humor itself. How else can we account for his extraordinary enthusiasm for the concluding passage of the "Dunciad"? The artificial satire of Pope seems to be wit, and the savagery of Swift, satire illuminated by wit. But Mr. Thackeray was not only a writer upon humor. He was the author It has been well pointed out that this of one book which will probably in the contrast forms the raison d'être of the future stand among the few masterpieces obscene in humor. "It arises from an of humor. I mean of course "Vanity acute apprehension of this great and eter- Fair." It would be grotesque to dwell nal incongruity of man's existence the upon the excellences of this great work conflict of a spiritual nature, and such its life-painting, minute as a photoaspirations as man's, with conditions en-graph yet warm and rounded with all the tirely physical, and perhaps the only truly delicacy of color, its crowded canvas, gay philosophical definition of the word 'in- and bustling with movement, the reserved decency' would be this, 'a painful and strength of its invective, the point of its shocking contrast of man's spiritual with irony, the power of its narrative, as in the his physical nature.'" Very true! but in scenes in Belgium, which never drops into order to have this contrast, we must mere narrative, but constantly preserves surely have both sides represented in the human character-play, so that it is not something like equal proportion, and it is the author who narrates, but the real perworthy of notice that Richard Steele, who sonages of the novel who act - the tremmay be supposed to have known some- ulous change from the comic to the pathing about the matter, charges the play- thetic, and the perfect tone of its pathos. wright with being obscene merely because The comic in Thackeray may sometimes his wit and invention fail. Mr. Traill, drop into caricature as in the schoolmasone of the charms of whose brilliant mon- ter, the Rev. Lawrence Veal, but his pa ograph is impartiality, will admit that this thos (unlike that of Dickens) invariably charge is sometimes true of Sterne. rings clear and true. "The Spectator" shirks no evil - the fopling, the rake, the coquette, the fallen seamstress, the stage at its lowest depths. Old London rises before us with all the sin and all the charm of city life when cities were inhabited that life and that humor which Charles Lamb so loved. A few months before his death he writes: "On Wednesday ! was a-gadding, Mary gave me a holiday, and I set off to Snow-hill. From Snow-hill I delib It has always seemed to me one of the greatest proofs of the power of this book, that it survived the most painful illustra tions with which the author, with a distressing perversity, insisted upon ornamenting it. It is not only that they are badly drawn; they are utterly contrary to the conception which the author had formed of his own characters. The men are broken-down swindlers, the women impossible scarecrows. But, while fascinated by the brilliancy | pared to Sir Roger de Coverley. It is a of "Vanity Fair," what we have to decide perfectly beautiful creation, and did it is whether, and in what, it falls short of occur in " Vanity Fair" would go far to the very highest perfection. I venture to perfect the book; but coming from Mr. think that it does so fall short, and that Thackeray's pen, it can scarcely fail to the reason is given on its title-page. It strengthen the painful feeling suggested is there called" A Novel without a Hero." by his good women, that goodness is This seems to me to be precisely what it weak. None of Mr. Thackeray's good is, and what all Mr. Thackeray's work is; women are real; they are so unnaturally it lacks the ideal. The standard is low foolish. I shall gain no thanks by the even for Vanity Fair, but curiously the assertion, so I make it without hesitation story is not confined to Vanity Fair; if it - that the heroine of the exquisite were, the book would not be so great as it "Story of Elizabeth" is worth all the undoubtedly is. It presents life; it is con- good women Mr. Thackeray ever drew; scious of the infinite, but it has no hero. and the same may be said of Dolly in Dobbin is unselfish and noble, but his "Old Kensington." ideal is Amelia. Constantly spooning after a foolish woman is not the end of existence, and that book which represents it as such cannot take the highest rank as a mirror of human life. Henry Esmond fails in a precisely similar way, but with even less excuse. He sacrifices himself and his country, almost his honor, to a wretched girl, who repeatedly jilts him. In both these lives, the result, even when the coveted end is obtained, is declared by Mr. Thackeray to be vanity. Love even is vanity. It is this presence of the ideal which perfects the masterpieces of German humor, the result of that outburst of intellectual development which began with Lessing. "Wilhelm Meister 29 is full of the ideal, so is "Werther" and the "Wahlverwandtschaften." "Here, as in a burial urn," wrote Goethe of this last, "many a sad experience is buried." Some may hesitate in applying the title of humorist to Goethe at all; but if it be humor to blend with surpassing skill into one lifepiece the noble and the frivolous, the simple-hearted and the sarcastic, the pure and the foul, then the genius which has given Philina in the same book that revealed the "secrets of a beautiful soul" ("fair saint as Carlyle has chosen to call her), which has created in the dramatis persone of the "Lehrjahre" a phantasmal and yet real world of marvellous variety, of gaiety and pathos, has surely conferred upon its possessor the right to be so called. But it was reserved for Germany to produce in Jean Paul Richter the greatest and most perfect humorist, if we except the author of "Don Quixote," that the world has yet seen. I doubt even whether Jean Paul does not surpass Cervantes in some respects. I am content to rest this assertion on the fantastic story of the friends Leibgeber, with their whimsical changes of identity and simulated deaths, which begins in "Siebenkäs," and is combeginning is strangely touching, and full pleted in "Titan." The story from the of the deepest humor; but when in "Titan" one of these friends, who now calls himself Schoppe, becomes, as is perhaps not to be wondered at, finally deranged, the psychological interest is intensified with a marvellous power of genius. Schoppe's madness is of a different kind from that of Don Quixote, or of any enthusiast, and of a far more terrible kind. To the crazed brain of the Span- | He had struggled forward after infinite ish gentleman nothing came amiss, noth-reality beyond the point at which the ing disturbed him. Giants might turn human brain can maintain its steadiness into windmills, ladies into peasant girls, and their soft hands into hard cords, but this was only what might be expected to occur in the death struggle in which he was engaged with the powers of evil enchantment and guile. The madness of Schoppe is of that terrible kind which is recognized by its victim; and surely, in the whole range of literature, never has the terrible disease been so perfectly portrayed. on the dizzy ridge, and returned crazed and scared from the glance into the pit itself. He had despised the common realities among which man is meant to dwell; he had neglected nature's teaching, which is present in every mouthful of common food by which the brain is fed, and in consequence nothing is real to him. This is the most terrible form of insanity, when the sense of phantasm is present at every moment to the victim. He himself is phantasmal; he is not himself-somewhere among the festivals and village maidens, the pleasant meadows and moist hills and woods of his native land (that blessed sense of moisture which he can never feel), there is another and a happy being, his former self-his sane, his collected self-the self of former years, when love had not given place to irony, nor allowance to sarcasm; the self of boyhood and of youth, when those brilliant guides and thoughts of the mind were fresh and innocent, which have since led him such a wizard's satanic dance. But if he is not himself, what then is he? Ah, God! should he ever meet that other one, anywhere, face to face! It has been said that the machinery of ventriloquism and jugglery (diablerie in fact) which is introduced into "Titan" impairs its beauty and does not help the development of character, but with this criticism I am quite unable to agree. These fantastic, but quite accountable appearances, the "father of death," the inflated figure carried up to heaven by gas, the complicated machinery which, at the fated moment, animates statues and "hearts without a breast," the Baldhead and his madhouse of wax figures, the forgotten burial-ground in the mystic gardens; all these are not only full of a grotesque humor, but actually exerted a powerful influence upon the characters of the romance. Events such as these which It is surely a most appropriate function are laughable or childish to a self-con- of genial and kindly humor to point such tained mind, are productive of surprising a moral as this, but it can only be very and terrible results when seen through seldom that a genius arises equal to the the medium of passion or of disordered dual task. I incline to think that it will intellect. At a certain period of incipient be found the most surprising fact in literderangement, a very slight apparent vio- ature that the humorist who had such a lation of the expected and the known is childlike, fanciful delight in sunshine and unspeakably terrible, and may upset ir- flowers, whose heart melted with love to revocably the equilibrium of the mind. God and tenderness and sympathy at the When the mind is struggling to retain its sight of every living thing, to whom not hold upon fact, and to do its duty, so to only the very beasts, but the most despeak, to the real, there is a sense of un- graded and repulsive of his fellow-men speakable wrong and injustice when the were dear, could conceive and execute so real seems to change its nature and to elaborate and careful a study of a mental cease to be depended upon. Were the course so opposed to his own. It is not earth as firm as adamant, he could not a sketch merely; Schoppe's whole life keep his step correctly; but when the and conversation is before us, worked out earth shifts too, when by accident, or the in the fullest detail, and we trace step by fantastic action of other men, or by vil-step the downward course of a nature at lanous design, nature seems to enter into the plot, what becomes of the wretch, then? In Schoppe's case the psychological study is appallingly instructive. man had chosen To vary from the kindly race of men, The the bottom genial and kindly, but whose very geniality is alienated by the want of such quality in others, to whom the sar castic and the bitter have become the food and sustenance, not the corrective salt of the mind. With its grotesqueness, with its ludicrous side, with its terrific earnestness, with its ghastly terror, its laughter and its tears, this surely must be perfect Where all should pause, as is most meet for humor if such can be found. all. "Laughter and tears." This brings us |