CHAPTER XI.
Genius has its hours of sunshine as well as of shadow, and when it finds expression in wit and humor it is undoubtedly most popular. The Emperor Titus thought he had lost a day if he had passed it without laughing. Coleridge tells us men of humor are in some degree men of genius; wits are rarely so, although a man of genius may, among other gifts, possess wit. As in pathos and tenderness "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin," so is it in true wit and humor with the appreciative. Obtuseness will be unsympathetic under any circumstances. "It is not in the power of every one to taste humor," says Sterne, "however much he may wish it; it is the gift of God! and a true feeler always brings half the entertainment with him." Bruyere has somewhere said very finely that "wit is the god of moments, but genius is the god of ages." Some men of genius have found their most natural exponent to be the pen; others indulge in practical humor. Sheridan[190] belonged to this latter class; he was full of fun and frolic, ever on the alert for an opportunity to exercise his humor. When on a certain occasion he had been driving about the town for three or four hours in a hackney-coach, he chanced to see his friend Richardson, whom he hailed, and invited into the vehicle. When they were seated together he at once introduced a subject upon which he and Richardson always differed, and a controversy naturally ensued. At last, affecting to be mortified at Richardson's argument, Sheridan said abruptly, "You are really too bad; I cannot bear to listen to such things: I will not stay in the coach with you." And accordingly he opened the door and sprang out, Richardson hallooing triumphantly, "Ah, you're beat, you're beat!" Nor was it until the heat of the victory had a little cooled that he realized he was left in the lurch to pay for Sheridan's three hours' coaching.[191]
Sheridan, profligate and unprincipled as he was, still was capable of fine expression of sentiment and true poetic fire. In a poem called "Clio's Protest; or, the Picture Varnished," we find the following really beautiful lines:—
"Marked you her cheek of rosy hue?
Marked you her eye of sparkling blue?
That eye in liquid circles moving;
That cheek abashed at man's approving;
The one Love's arrows darting round;
The other blushing at the wound:
Did she not speak, did she not move,
Now Pallas, now the Queen of Love?"
The poets have frequently made satire an auxiliary of their wit; and when the proportions are properly adhered to, a favorable result is produced. Satire, like many subtle poisons used as a medicine, may be safely taken in small quantities, while an overdose is liable to be fatal. In Chaucer's[192] Canterbury Pilgrims he draws his portraits to the life. While he exposes the weakness of human nature, he does not do so in surliness; a pleasant smile wreathes his lips all the while. There is slyness, but no bitterness in his satire. He would not chastise, he would only reform his fellow-men. As illustrating exactly the opposite spirit, we may instance Pope, Dryden, and Byron, who, descending from their high estate, often prostituted their genius to attacks upon personal enemies or rivals, with keenest weapons, while their opponents had no means of defence. The "Dunciad" is a monument of satiric wit, or genius belittled.
Swift, who wrote "cords" of worthless rhymes, squibs, songs, and verses, which live as much by their vulgar smartness as for the slight portion of true wit which tinctures them, says: "Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders generally discover everybody's face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets with in the world, and that so few are offended with it." Hawthorne gave the Dean a merited thrust when he said, "the person or thing on which his satire fell shrivelled up as if the Devil had spit on it." The double entendre to be found in nearly all of Swift's effusions, epigrams, and verses, comes with ill grace from a dignitary of the Church. He was always ready with an epigram on all occasions. One "lives in our memory" which he addressed to Mrs. Houghton of Bormount, who took occasion one day to praise her husband in Swift's presence:—