Genuine comedy—the true tickling scene, exquisite absurdity, soul-rejoicing incongruity—
has really nothing to do with types, prevailing fashions, and such-like vulgarities. Sir Andrew Aguecheek is not a typical fool; he is a fool, seised in fee simple of his folly.
Humour lies not in generalizations, but in the individual; not in his hat nor in his hose, even though the latter be ‘cross-gartered’; but in the deep heart of him, in his high-flying vanities, his low-lying oddities—what we call his ‘ways’—nay, in the very motions of his back as he crosses the road. These stir our laughter whilst he lives and our tears when he dies, for in mourning over him we know full well we are taking part in our own obsequies. ‘But indeed,’ wrote Charles Lamb, ‘we die many deaths before we die, and I am almost sick when I think that such a hold as I had of you is gone.’
Literature is but the reflex of life, and the humour of it lies in the portrayal of the individual, not the type; and though the young man in Locksley Hall no doubt observes that the ‘individual withers,’ we have but to take down George Meredith’s novels to find the fact is otherwise, and that we have still one amongst us who takes notes, and against the battery of whose quick wits even the costly raiment of Poole is no protection. We are forced as we
read to exclaim with Petruchio: ‘Thou hast hit it; come sit on me.’ No doubt the task of the modern humorist is not so easy as it was. The surface ore has been mostly picked up. In order to win the precious metal you must now work with in-stroke and out-stroke after the most approved methods. Sometimes one would enjoy it a little more if we did not hear quite so distinctly the snorting of the engine, and the groaning and the creaking of the gear as it painfully winds up its prize: but what would you? Methods, no less than men, must have the defects of their qualities.
If, therefore, it be the fact that our national comedy is in decline, we must look for some other reasons for it than those suggested by Hazlitt in 1817. When Mr. Chadband inquired, ‘Why can we not fly, my friends?’ Mr. Snagsby ventured to observe, ‘in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, “No wings!”’ but he was immediately frowned down by Mrs. Snagsby. We lack courage to suggest that the somewhat heavy-footed movements of our recent dramatists are in any way due to their not being provided with those twin adjuncts indispensable for the genius who would soar.
CAMBRIDGE AND THE POETS.
Why all the English poets, with a barely decent number of exceptions, have been Cambridge men, has always struck me, as did the abstinence of the Greeks from malt Mr. Calverley, ‘as extremely curious.’ But in this age of detail, one must, however reluctantly, submit to prove one’s facts, and I, therefore, propose to institute a ‘Modest Inquiry’ into this subject. Imaginatively, I shall don proctorial robes, and armed with a duster, saunter up and down the library, putting to each poet as I meet him the once dreaded question, ‘Sir, are you a member of this University?’
But whilst I am arranging myself for this function, let me utilize the time by making two preliminary observations—the first one being that, as to-day is Sunday, only such free libraries are open as may happen to be attached to public-houses, and I am consequently confined
to my own poor shelves, and must be forgiven even though I make some palpable omissions. The second is that I exclude from my survey living authors. I must do so; their very names would excite controversy about a subject which, when wisely handled, admits of none.