History of English Humour, Vol. 2

by A. G. K. L'Estrange

"And still the wonder grew,
How one small head could carry all he knew."

Again, we may ask, what person can be possibly injured by most of the humorous stories in which our Transatlantic cousins delight, such as that an American, describing a severe winter said, "Why I had a cow on my farm up the Hudson river, and she got in among the ice, and was carried down three miles before we could get her out again. And what do you suppose has been the consequence? why, she has milked nothing but ice-cream ever since."

How little of the humour, which is always floating around and makes life and society enjoyable, ever gives pain to anybody; how few men there really are who, as it is said, would rather lose a friend than a joke. Most strokes are directed against imaginary persons, it is generally recognised that what seems wrong to one may seem right to another, and no man of common honesty can deny that he has often ridiculed others for faults which he would have committed himself. This confession might be well made by the most of our humorists.

But although humour should not be offensive, it would be wrong to consider that its proper duty is to inculcate virtue. This is no more its office than it is that of a novel to give sage advice, or of a poem to teach science. Herein Addison's excellent feelings seem to have led him astray, for speaking of false humour he says that "it is all one to it whether it exposes vice and folly, luxury and avarice, or, on the contrary, virtue and wisdom, pain and poverty." From what he says, we might conclude that true humour was that which attacks vice, and false that which makes against virtue. But although it is good to have a worthy object, this has nothing to do with the quality of humour. We have less enjoyment of ridicule when it is directed against a virtuous man, but we also feel little when the principal element in it is moral instruction.

There is no reason why we should view laughter at what is ludicrous as something objectionable. The more intelligent portion of the civilised world is not now amused at the real sufferings or misfortunes of others. If a man be run over in the street, and have his leg broken, we all sympathise with him. But some pains which have no serious result are still treated with levity, such as those of a gouty foot, of the extraction of a tooth, or of little boys birched at school.

The actions of people in pain are strange and abnormal, and sometimes seem unaccountable; it is not the mere suffering at which any are amused. We can sometimes laugh at a person, although we feel for him, where the incentive to mirth is much stronger than the call for sympathy. Still we confess that some of the old malice lingers among us, some skulking cruelty peeps out at intervals. Fiendish laughter has departed with the Middle Ages, but what delights the schoolboy more than the red-hot poker in the pantomime?

Wit is chiefly to be recommended as a source of enjoyment; to many this will seem no great or legitimate object, for we cannot help drawing a very useful distinction between pleasure and profit. The lines,

"There are whom heaven has blessed with store of wit
Yet want as much again to manage it;
For wit and judgment ever are at strife,
Though meant, each others, and like man and wife,"

teach us that talent of this kind may be often turned into a fruitful channel. The politician can by humour influence his audience; the man of society can make himself popular, and perhaps without this recommendation would never have had an opportunity of gaining his knowledge of the world. When by some happy turn of thought we are successful in raising a laugh, we seem to receive a kind of ovation, the more valuable because sincere. We are allowed a superiority, we have achieved a victory, though it may be but momentary and unimportant.

In daily life our sense of the ludicrous leads us to mark many small errors and blemishes, which we should have overlooked had it not given us pleasure to notice them, and thus from observing the failures of others we learn to correct our own. Much that would be offensive, if not injurious, is thus avoided, and those little angles are removed which obstruct the onward course of society. A sensible man will gain more by being ridiculed than praised, just as adverse criticism, when judicious, ought to raise rather than depress. Lever remarks, with regard to acquiring languages, that "as the foreigner is too polite to laugh, the stranger has little chance to learn." A compendium of humorous sayings would, if rightly read, give a valuable history of our shortcomings in the different relations of life. Louis XII., when urged to punish some insolent comedian, replied, "No, no; in the course of their ribaldry they may sometimes tell us useful truths; let them amuse themselves, provided they respect the ladies."