The apprehension of this complex basis of humour helps us, further, to understand somewhat the curious variations of the attitude among races and peoples. There are regions of civilisation where, so far as literary expression gives us the key, laughter seems to remain at, or at most only a little above, the level of the child’s simple merriment. This appears to be true of certain portions of the East, where a considerable love of fun coexists with a predominant gravity of mind without interpenetration, almost without contact.[268] Among certain races of Southern Europe, too, which have produced a rich literature of amusement, the blending of the serious and the playful, which is of the essence of humour seems to be but very imperfectly reached. The gaiety of the mediæval Conte is the gaiety of the Frenchman who, {312} in spite of one or two literary exceptions, likes to keep his thinking and his mirth distinct, in their original purity and netteté.[269] Frenchmen, such as M. Taine and M. Scherer, have fully recognised the fact that what we mean by humour is a product of the triste nord. What racial characteristics have served to further its growth in this region, it may not be easy to say. Perhaps, the closest approximation to an explanation may be found in the hypothesis that a vigorous germ of laughter fertilised by a disposition to brooding melancholy always tends to generate something of the nature of humour; and that, as we shall presently see, utility does something for its preservation.
The consideration of the complexity of the sentiment may throw light, further, on its modifications among the peoples which are correctly spoken of as endowed with it. These differences are roughly accounted for by saying that the proportions of gravity and gaiety, of serious reflection and playful fancy vary indefinitely. They are certainly different, let us say, in the case of the Englishman, the American, the Scotchman and the Irishman. Yet this consideration does not account for all the dissimilarity. Since humour is playfulness modified by the whole serious temper of a man, we should expect it to differentiate itself into many shades according to the trend of the ideas, interests, impulses and the rest which distinguishes one sort of mind or character from another. We can only fully understand the contrast between American and English, or between Irish and Scotch, humour, when we understand the differences {313} of character. An amusing Irish or Scotch story, one, that is to say, which is produced for home-consumption, seems to be redolent of the whole temperament, mind and character of the people. It is this complexity of the sentiment which makes the amiable effort to illustrate the humour of other peoples by published selections a pathetic futility. How can one expect, for example, the ordinary Englishman to get into touch with that fine product of child’s fun, quick fancy, alert sympathy, open-heartedness, and a deep brooding sentiment which meets him in the humour of the Irishman? It is enough to remember how he is wont to laugh his superior laugh at an Irish bull, as if this were necessarily an unconscious “howler,” whereas it may be, in reality, a charming expression of a most amiable trait of character.[270]
A due recognition of the complexity of the sentiment discloses to us a point of capital importance: humour, in the sense of a perfect fusion of play and gravity, of the aggressiveness of laughter and kindly consideration, is, as already hinted, pre-eminently an endowment of individuals rather than of races. It presupposes a basis of temperament which, though it may be favoured by certain racial characters, is only realised where nature hits upon a particular proportion among the elements by the mixing of which she produces an individual; and so nice an operation is this mixture, that humour, of the full rich quality at least, is perhaps less frequently handed down from parent to child than specific forms of talent.
The old writers treated humour by help of their general {314} theory of temperaments as compounded of certain physical elements. The learned Burton, for instance, in the chapter already quoted, discourses agreeably of pleasant vapours which break from the heart, and thinks that these may explain why the melancholy are witty, as Aristotle suggested. The passage is valuable as indicating that antiquity recognised the connection between laughter and the melancholy disposition. Modern testimony might be added. Thus Savage Landor remarks that genuine humour, as well as true wit, requires a sound and capacious mind, which is always a grave one;[271] and Tennyson notes that humour “is generally most fruitful in the highest and most solemn human spirits”.[272]
The need of this deep and massive seriousness, if not of a marked tendency to sombre reflection, seems to be borne out by what we know of the great humorists. Sainte-Beuve regards Rabelais, who was a grave doctor, and who worthily represented in his public lectures at Lyons “the majesty of science,” as writing with the quite serious purpose of throwing out in advance certain ideas of deep import (de grand sens) “dans un rire immense”. Much the same is true of Cervantes, who is said—though the assertion has been challenged—to have conceived of his delightful romance in the dreary surroundings of a sponging-house.[273] The germination of a mirthful sense in the soil of a serious character has been noted, indeed, in the case of some who represent the lighter moods of comedy—a fact which points to the more general relation of laughter to seriousness spoken of in an earlier chapter. Thus {315} Sainte-Beuve, writing of Molière, says that he was called “the contemplative”; and was wont to be taken with sadness (tristesse) and melancholy when he was alone.[274] Victor Hugo has somewhere spoken of him as “ce moqueur pensif comme un apôtre”. It was remarked of Sheridan and other dealers in the mirthful by those who knew them that they seldom even smiled.
It is easy to see that the transformation of laughter which we find in humour will carry with it a large modification of the range of enjoyment. While, as has been admitted, the changes of feeling and mental attitude involved will tend to restrain the earlier reckless merriment, they will also add vast regions to the territory of the amusing.
With regard to restriction, one must protest against the common misapprehension, that the development of humour spoils the taste for simple modes of mirth. I have known sad-looking humorists who were well endowed with the valuable capability of joining in children’s fun. What humour does undoubtedly restrain is any tendency in laughter which smacks of the brute and the bully in man.
On the other hand, the field of objects over which humour wanders bee-like gathering its honey is vastly greater than any region known to the rougher and more brutal merriment. The introduction of a reflective element and of higher points of view expands the horizon to an incalculable extent.
This change in point of view means at once that we penetrate below the surface of things, reaching the half-veiled realities, and that we envisage them in a network of relations. The former is illustrated in the humorist’s finer contemplation of behaviour as a revelation of character. {316} An amplitude of enjoyment is secured by the circumstance that, even in the case of the self-vigilant, intellectual and moral weaknesses have a way of peeping out which is most convenient for a humorous onlooker who has his mental eye duly accommodated. When, for example, a young teacher, asked by an examiner to explain “congenital tendency,” wrote, “It is the tendency to be congenial and pleasant: children vary in this characteristic,” the entertainment of the error for the reader lay in the naïve disclosure of the preoccupation of the writer’s mind with the chequered fortunes of her profession. Or again, when another candidate from the same class, in describing the qualifications of a teacher, wrote: “He should be as intimately acquainted with the workings of a child’s mind as the engine-driver is with the engine,” the fun of the comparison for the reader came from the detection of an unscientific habit of mind, natural enough in an over-zealous worker, intruding, unobserved, into theoretic reflection.
These innocent self-revelations meet the watchful eye of the humorist everywhere in the haunts of men. They lie like hoar frost in the sun on his surroundings, on which he unwittingly casts a reflection of the habits of his mind and of the directions of his taste; as when in a large town bizarre juxtapositions of the vulgar heroic strike the observer’s eye in the names of streets, or of loose engines on a railway.