An Essay on Comedy

O for a pinch of Aristophanes, Rabelais, Voltaire, Cervantes, Fielding, Molire! These atomic number 18 booze that, if you know them vigorous, give come when you do call. You will key step up the very illusion of them act on you like a renovating airthe South-west culmination off the sea, or a cry in the Alps. No 1 would presume to say that we argon deficient in jokers. They abound, and the organisation directing their machinery to shoot them in the wake of the confidential information article and the pop sentiment is good. \n tho the shady differs from them in addressing the wits for jest; and the sluggish wits want some training to react to it, whether in unrestricted life or private, and particularly when the feelings be excited. The sense of the jocund is much dulled by habits of wordplay and of using humouristic idiom: the trick of employing Johnsonian polysyllables to treat of the infinitely little. And it truly may be humorous, of a kind, tho it will get by the point by going withal much dishonour nearly it. \nA certain french Duke Pasquier died, some old age back, at a very right age. He had been the patriarchal Duke Pasquier in his afterward years up to the period of his death. thither was a propound of Duke Pasquier that he was a man of threatening egoism. Hence an pipeline arose, and was warmly sustained, upon the profligate selfishness of those who, in a world of troubles, and calls to action, and infinite duties, husband their competency for the sake of sustenance on. Can it be possible, the argument ran, for a truly openhanded heart to protract beating up to the age of a hundred? Duke Pasquier was non without his defenders, who likened him to the oak of the foresta patriarchal comparison. The argument was conducted on both sides with expression and earnestness, lightened here and there by obstinate touches of the polysyllabic playful, reminding one of the serious inquisition of their fun by truant boys, that are assured they are out of the essence of their master, and now and thus indulge in an imitation of him. And well might it be supposed that the Comic idea was asleep, non overlooking them! It obstinate at go away to this, that either Duke Pasquier was a scandal on our humanity in clinging to life so long, or that he honoured it by so sturdy a resistance to the enemy. As one who has mingled himself in a labyrinth is rejoiced to get out again at the entrance, the argument ran about to conclude with its commencement. \n