Nature has endowed few men with two gifts, and emotional joyousness and high intellectual culture form a rare combination, such as was found in Goldsmith with his hearty laughter, and in Macaulay, who tells us that he laughed at Mathews' comic performance "until his sides were sore." Bishop Warburton said that humorists were generally men of learning, but although those who were so would have been most prominent, we scarcely find the name of one of them in the course of these volumes; many of those mentioned sprang from the humbler paths of life, but all were men of study. Still those who are altogether unable to enjoy a joke are men of imperfect sympathies.
Charles Lamb observes that in a certain way the character, even of a ludicrous man, is attractive—"The more laughable blunders a man shall commit in your company, the more tests he gives you that he will not betray or over-reach you. And take my word for this, reader, and say a fool told it you, if you please, that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his composition. What are commonly the world's received fools, but such whereof the world is not worthy?"
We have intimated that our sense of the ludicrous varies in accordance with memory, imagination, observation, and association. The minds of some are so versatile, and so richly endowed with intellectual gifts, that their ideas sparkle and coruscate, they splinter every ray of light into a thousand colours, and produce all kinds of strange juxtapositions and combinations. (This exuberance has probably led to the seemingly contradictory saying that men of sentiment are generally men of humour.) No doubt their sallies would be poor and appreciated by themselves alone were they without a certain foundation, but a vast number of things are capable of affording amusement. Pleasantries often turn upon something much more difficult to define than to feel—upon some nicety of regard, or neatness of proportion. No interchange of ideas can take place without much beyond the letter being understood, and very much depends upon variety of delicate significations. Words are as variable and relative as thought, differing with time and place—a few constantly dropping out of use, some understood in one age, but conveying no distinct idea in another, and not calling up exactly the same associations in different individuals. We cannot, therefore, agree with Addison that translation may be considered a sure test for distinguishing between genuine and spurious humour—although it would detect mere puns. Voltaire says of Hudibras, "I have never met with so much wit in one book as in this—who would believe that a work which paints in such lively and natural colours the several foibles and frolics of mankind, and where we meet with more sentiment than words, should baffle the endeavours of the ablest translator?" But any alteration of words would generally destroy humour. "To go to the crows," was a good and witty expression in ancient Greece, but it does not signify anything to us, except, perhaps, climbing trees. When we wish a man to be devoured, we tell him to "go to the dogs." Even the flow and sound of words sometimes has great influence in humour.
Association has also considerable effect. Owing to this little boys at school are rarely able to laugh at a Greek joke. We consider that to call a man an ass is a reproach, but in the East in bewailing a lost friend they frequently exclaim, "Alas, my jackass!" for they do not associate the animal with stupidity, but with patience and usefulness. These differences show that the essence of some humour is so fugitive that the smallest change will destroy it. We may well suppose, therefore, that it escapes many who have not quick perceptions, while we find that everyone more keenly appreciates that which relates to some subject with which he is specially conversant—a lawyer enjoys a legal, a broker a commercial joke. Hence women, taking more interest than men in the general concerns of life and in a great variety of things, are more given to mirth—their mind reflects the world, that of men only one line in it. We see in society how much more quickly some persons understand an obscure allusion than others—some from natural penetration, some from familiarity with the subject. There are those who cannot enjoy any joke which they do not make themselves. Some cannot guess the simplest riddle, while others could soon detect the real nature of a cherry coloured cat with rose-coloured feet.
Observation is necessary for all criticism, especially of that kind often found in humour. As an instance of humour being unappreciated for lack of it, I may mention that Beattie considers the well known passage of Gray to be parodied poetically, but not humorously, in the following lines upon a country curate—
"Bread was his only food; his drink the brook;
So small a salary did his rector send,
He left his laundress all he had—a book,
He found in death, 'twas all he wished—a friend."
Most people would think that this was intended to be humorous. It struck me so—the "book" was evidently his washing book—and on turning to the original poem I found that the other stanzas were not at all of a serious complexion. The assistance given by imagination to humour is clearly seen, when after some good saying laughter recurs several times, as new aspects of the situation suggested present themselves.
Circumstances of time and country greatly modify our modes of thought, and a vast amount of humour has thus become obscure, not only for want of information, but because things are not viewed in the same light. Beattie observes that Shakespeare's humour will never be adequately relished in France nor Molière's in England.[17]
The inquiry in the present chapter is not as to what creates the ludicrous, but as to what tends to vivify or obscure it. We shall not here attempt any surmises as to its essential nature, although we trace the conditions necessary to its due appreciation. A great number of things pass unnoticed every day both in circumstances and conversation, in which the ludicrous might be detected by a keen observer. The following is not a bad instance of an absurd statement being unconsciously made—
"One day when walking in the Black Country the Bishop of Lichfield saw a number of miners seated on the ground, and went to speak to them. On asking them what they were doing, he was told they had been 'loyin.' The Bishop, much dismayed, asked for an explanation. 'Why, you see,' said one of the men, 'one of us fun' a kettle, and we have been trying who can tell the biggest lie to ha' it.' His lordship, being greatly shocked, began to lecture them and to tell them that lying was a great offence, and that he had always felt this so strongly that he had never told a lie in the whole course of his life. He had scarcely finished, when one of the hearers exclaimed, 'Gie the governor the kettle; gie the governor the kettle!'"