Longinus, says, "He was possessor of a field as small as a Lacedæmonian letter." Their letters often consisted only of two or three words. A gentleman I met on one occasion in a train, speaking of a lady friend, observed—"She's very small, but what there is of her is very, very good. Why, she'd go into that box," pointing to one for sandwiches. "She's not bigger than that umbrella. 'Pon my honour as a gentleman, she's not."
Humour, by means of the perplexity it produces, often gains the victory over strong emotions. This fact has been practically recognised by orators, who see that when a man is struck by a humorous allusion, powerful feelings which could not otherwise be swayed give way, and even firm resolutions seem for the moment shaken and changed. We are bribed by our desire for pleasure, and a man thus often seems to sympathise with those he really opposes and can even be made to laugh at himself—strong antagonistic sensations and emotions being conquered by complexity. To most persons nothing can be more solemn than the thought of death, except its actual presence; but Theramenes was light-hearted when the hemlock bowl was presented to him, and drinking it off could not, as he threw out the dregs, resist exclaiming "To the health of the lovely Critias."[23] Sir Thomas More was jocose upon the scaffold. Baron Görz, when being led to death, said to his cook—"It's all over now, my friend, you will never cook me a good supper again." The poet Kleist, who was killed in the battle of Kunersdorf, was seized with a violent fit of laughter just before he expired, when he thought of the extraordinary faces a Cossack, who had been plundering him, made over the prize he had found. In the same way a lady told me that a friend of hers, having had a severe fall from his horse, drew a caricature of the accident while the litter was being prepared for him. Scarron was constantly in bodily suffering; and Norman Macleod wrote some humorous verses "On Captain Frazer's Nose" when he was enduring such violent pain that he spent the night in his study, and had occasionally to bend over the back of a chair for relief.
Charles Mathews retained his love of humour to the last. I have heard that, when dying at Plymouth, he ordered himself to be laid out as if dead. The doctor on entering exclaimed, "Poor fellow, he's gone! I knew he would not last long," and was just leaving the room with some sad reflections, when he heard the lamented man chuckling under the sheet.
Thus, also, a German General relates that after a skirmish a French hussar was brought in with a huge slash across his face. "Have you received a sabre cut, my poor fellow?" asked the General. "Pooh, I was shaved too closely this morning," was the reply. Something may be attributed in such cases to nervous excitement, which seeks relief in some counteraction. Mr. Hardy observes that there appears to be always a superficial film of consciousness which is left disengaged and open to the notice of trifles.
Addison says that false humour differs from true, as a monkey does from a man. He goes on to say that false humour is given to little apish tricks, and buffooneries. Now the reason why Addison and cultivated men in general do not laugh at buffooneries and place them in the catalogue of false humour, is simply because they do not present to their minds any complication. When harlequin knocks the clown and pantaloon over on their backs, "the gods" burst with laughter, unable to understand the catastrophe, but those who have seen such things often, and consider that men make a living by such tricks, see nothing at all strange in it, remain grave and perhaps wearied. It was the want of complication that probably prevented Uncle Shallow from complying with the simple Slender's request to "Tell Mistress Anne the jest how my father stole two geese out of a pen."
It may be almost unnecessary to observe that all errors in taste are not ludicrous. "Tea-boardy" pictures do not make us laugh, we only attribute them to unskilful artists, of whom unfortunately there are too many. Nor is the ludicrous to be classed under the head of taste; very often that which awakens it offers no violence to our æsthetic sensibilities. It is true that in Art, that which appears ludicrous will always be distasteful, for it will offend the eye or ear, but it is something more, and we occasionally speak as though it were outside taste altogether. Thus when we see some very evident failure in a sketch, we say "this is a most wretched work, and out of all drawing," and add as a climax of disapprobation "It is perfectly ridiculous." A violation of taste is never sufficient for the ludicrous, and the ludicrous is not always a violation of taste.
There is something in humour beyond what is merely unexpected. I remember a physician telling me that a gentleman objected very much to some prescriptions given to his wife, and wanted some quack medicines tried. The doctor opposed him, and on the gentleman calling on him and telling him he was unfit for his profession, there was an open rupture between them, and they cut each other in the street. Not long afterwards the gentleman died, and left him a legacy of £500. The doctor could not help being amused at the bequest under such circumstances, though, had it come equally unexpectedly from a mere stranger, he would have been merely surprised.
In some humorous sayings we find several different complications, which increase the force. Coincidences of this kind not only add to, but multiply humour in which when of a high class the complexity is very subtle. It has much increased since ancient times, there was a large preponderance of emotion.