Yet though in their well-marked forms thus dissimilar, the satirical and the humorous mood may shade one into the other in a way that makes it difficult to draw the boundary line. Heine, in some of his writings, e.g., the poem Deutschland, tempers his mockery with sentiment and humour in such a way that one finds it hard to think of it as a satire. In places, indeed, this genius, so simple-looking yet really so profound, seems to become a consummate humorist, bringing out with a single touch all the laughter and all the tears of things. Was Lewis Carroll a satirist when he threw behind the fun of his children’s stories some deeper meaning which for ever eludes us? or was this semblance of a meaning a part of his fun, his playful way of punishing the “grown up” for reading a child’s book? {387}
In modern literature, the interesting point to note is the growing interpenetration of the laughing and the serious attitude, and the coalescence of the mirthful spirit with sentiment. The two processes, though distinct, may run on together, as we may see in Shakespeare’s plays. The humorous element introduced by the fool in “Lear” and elsewhere at once relieves the tragic tension, and gives a moment’s play to that disposition towards a lighter laughing criticism which is always active when we survey colossal folly, even though the mental eye is at the moment focussed for its catastrophic effects. The laughter is controlled and kept tenderly humorous and half-sad by a large reflection, which does not lose sight, even at the relieving moment, of the lamentable ruin. It is only another way of combining the “fun” and the “pity” of it when the master brings a genial humour into comedy and makes us, with his faithful follower Bardolph, half-love and more than half-pity the faulty knight who so merrily entertains us.
As we have seen, prose-fiction may illustrate the comic spirit and something of the fiercer temper of satire. Yet laughter comes into it in another form. It has to accommodate itself to the presence of serious interests, and of a plot which involves sympathetic fear and strain. Hence it appears in stories which have a mixed tone, as it does indeed in comedy when this is not pure—for example, “heroic comedy,” as illustrated by M. Rostand’s Cyrano—in the guise of humour. That is to say, its gay treble note is complicated by an undertone, a resonance of the sadness of its milieu. One needs only to think how one laughs at Moses and his purchase of spectacles in the Vicar of Wakefield, or at the disfigurement of the hero in Cyrano.
A novel may, of course, present the grave and the gay in mere juxtaposition, so that the interaction and {388} modification here spoken of are only very imperfectly realised. The notion of a good story entertained by many is of one that bears the imagination of the reader swiftly through a series of diverse scenes, now grave and pathetic, now gay and mirthful. A large part of modern fiction satisfies this need. Stories of wild adventure from Gil Blas to Tom Jones are “humorous” to the multitude in this sense. Even in the case of a real humorist like Dickens, whose amusing figures are there to touch the heart as well as to entertain the imagination, the perfect harmonising of tones may sometimes seem to be wanting. A humorist of another complexion, Laurence Sterne, seems to have missed the judicious mixture of laughter and sentiment in his Sentimental Journey.[323]
The art of humorous writing consists in part in selecting characters, incidents and the rest in such a way as to exhibit the intimate connections between that which amuses and that which touches the serious sentiments, respect and pity; and to develop the reflective consciousness which sustains the mood of humour. Goldsmith’s history of the Vicar and his family is one of the best examples. Scott’s Antiquary and Fielding’s Parson Adams are characters which at once entertain and win us. Such humorous types involve, as Leigh Hunt has pointed out, a striking contrast within the characters, e.g., the gullible and the manly in Parson Adams;[324] and the sharpness of this contrast turns on that of the feelings excited by the constituents. The characters selected by humorous fiction may be consciously amusing, after the manner of the Merry Knight, or wholly unconscious of their laughter-provoking power. A valuable part of this amusing portraiture consists in bringing out {389} the fresh and odd-looking characteristics not only of individuals, but of classes and even of races.
In addition to this objective presentation of the humorous aspects of character and its relations, the writer may further the effect by striking now and again undertones of quaint reflection and so introducing an element of subjective humour. The notion that such reflection is out of place in narrative art seems strange to a student of the history of literature. If there was room for the comments of the onlooking chorus in Greek drama, and for the yet deeper reflections supplied by the acting onlookers in Shakespeare’s plays, there should be room for it in a prose narrative. In truth, some of the best writers of fiction, Fielding, Thackeray and George Eliot among others, make excellent use of this reflective accompaniment. In the best works of the last-named writer we have something of Shakespeare’s art of adding a pregnant observation which, so far from disturbing, rather furthers the mood needed for a due appreciation of the action.
In the great humorous writings, those of Rabelais, Cervantes and—removed by an interval no doubt—Sterne, we appear to find presented a largeness of subject and of treatment which makes direct appeal as much to reflection as to perception. You must know the Middle Ages, which are being laughingly kicked aside, before you will even care for Gargantua; you must envisage Don Quixote and his squire, not as two individuals or even as two types of character, but as embodiments of two remote levels of culture, and more, of two opposed ways of looking at the world, before you will begin to feel all the humour of these juxtapositions. And so of the great contrast between Mr. Shandy and his brother, the Captain. There is no need for the interpolation of reflection: the scale, the breadth {390} of treatment, the wealth of ideas poured out, these compel us to reflect. The laughter which comes from the perceptions of the utter incongruity of the mental and moral structures thus juxtaposed and attached is saturated with this reflection. And more, so right, so likeable, so estimable even is each of these contrasting characters, with its well-marked temper and manière de voir, that our sympathies go out towards both. Thus we leave the perceptual level and the relative point of view of comedy far behind us, reaching a standpoint near that of the thinker who embraces all particular points of view, and yet may manage to have his own laugh in the end. When, as in Jean Paul’s Siebenkäs, and yet more clearly in Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, the contrast seems to open up the great collision in human experience between sentiment and prosaic reality, idealism and the earth-binding instincts of practical life, we stand, indeed, on the border-line between the humour of fiction and that of philosophy.
Humour has its place, a respectable one too, in essays and other forms of literature which deal directly with reality and are products not so much of imagination as of thought. In these, the contrast between the serious and the playful appears in transitions from a perfectly grave to a humorous kind of reflection. Marked differences of tone are observable here also. The humorous remark may be but a momentary diversion of the attention, a playful side-glance, in a serious argument. In some writings, e.g., those of Sir Thos. Browne and of Lamb, the humorous element hardly amounts to a digression, or even to a momentary interruption, but is fused into and half lost to sight in the serious argument.[325] Among more recent writers, too, including some yet living, we have admirable examples of historical narrative {391} and criticism lit up here and there with soft glow-worm points of humour. In other cases, the humorous feature may be so large as to modify the colour of the whole, as in Miss Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa. An Essay, again, may be as a whole a jeu d’esprit and the fun seem to preponderate, while the manner is throughout that of grave argument; or, in more subtle work, as some of Charles Lamb’s, it may be best described as fun sandwiched in between a look of seriousness on the surface, and a real seriousness of meaning below. The fusion of tones leaves much to be desired in the case of many writers who are popularly regarded as skilled humorists. A mere interruption of serious thought by a sort of playful “aside” does not prove the existence of the gift of humour, which is essentially the power of playing on moods not only dissimilar but usually antagonistic in a way that avoids all shock and sense of discontinuity.
