The maxim that an author who desires to make us weep must be affected himself by what he writes, is too trite to be repeated in its original language. Both authors and actors however can produce this effect without eliciting a spark of feeling from their own hearts; and what perhaps may be deemed more remarkable, they can with the same success excite merriment in others, without partaking of it in the slightest degree themselves. No man ever made his contemporaries laugh more heartily than Scarron, whose bodily sufferings were such that he wished for himself
à toute heure
Ou la mort, ou santé meilleure:
And who describes himself in his epistle to Sarazin, as
Un Pauvret
Tres-maigret;
Au col tors,
Dont le corps
Tout tortu,
Tout bossu,
Suranné,
De'charné,
Est reduit
Jour et nuit,
A souffrir
Sans guerir
Des tourmens
Vehemens.
It may be said perhaps that Scarron's disposition was eminently cheerful, and that by indulging in buffoonery he produced in himself a pleasurable excitement not unlike that which others seek from strong liquors, or from opium; and therefore that his example tends to invalidate the assertion in support of which it was adduced. This is a plausible objection; and I am far from undervaluing the philosophy of Pantagruelism, and from denying that its effects may, and are likely to be as salutary, as any that were ever produced by the proud doctrines of the Porch. But I question Scarron's right to the appellation of a Pantagruelist; his humour had neither the heighth nor the depth of that philosophy.
There is a well-known anecdote of a physician, who being called in to an unknown patient, found him suffering under the deepest depression of mind, without any discoverable disease, or other assignable cause. The physician advised him to seek for cheerful objects, and recommended him especially to go to the theatre and see a famous actor then in the meridian of his powers, whose comic talents were unrivalled. Alas! the comedian who kept crowded theatres in a roar was this poor hypochondriac himself!
The state of mind in which such men play their part, whether as authors or actors, was confessed in a letter written from Yarmouth Gaol to the Doctor's friend Miller, by a then well-known performer in this line, George Alexander Stevens. He wrote to describe his distress in prison, and to request that Miller would endeavour to make a small collection for him, some night at a concert; and he told his sad tale sportively. But breaking off that strain he said; “You may think I can have no sense, that while I am thus wretched I should offer at ridicule! But, Sir, people constituted like me, with a disproportionate levity of spirits, are always most merry when they are most miserable; and quicken like the eyes of the consumptive, which are always brightest the nearer a patient approaches to dissolution.”
It is one thing to jest, it is another to be mirthful. Sir Thomas More jested as he ascended the scaffold. In cases of violent death, and especially upon an unjust sentence, this is not surprizing; because the sufferer has not been weakened by a wasting malady, and is in a state of high mental excitement and exertion. But even when dissolution comes in the course of nature, there are instances of men who have died with a jest upon their lips. Garci Sanchez de Badajoz when he was at the point of death desired that he might be dressed in the habit of St. Francis; this was accordingly done, and over the Franciscan frock they put on his habit of Santiago, for he was a knight of that order. It was a point of devotion with him to wear the one dress, a point of honour to wear the other; but looking at himself in this double attire, he said to those who surrounded his death-bed, “The Lord will say to me presently, my friend Garci Sanchez, you come very well wrapt up! (muy arropado) and I shall reply, Lord, it is no wonder, for it was winter when I set off.”
The author who relates this anecdote, remarks that o morrer com graça he muyto bom, e com graças he muyto māo: the observation is good but untranslateable, because it plays upon the word which means grace as well as wit. The anecdote itself is an example of the ruling humour “strong in death;” perhaps also of that pride or vanity, call it which we will, which so often, when mind and body have not yielded to natural decay, or been broken down by suffering, clings to the last in those whom it has strongly possessed. Don Rodrigo Calderon whose fall and exemplary contrition served as a favourite topic for the poets of his day, wore a Franciscan habit at his execution, as an outward and visible sign of penitence and humiliation; as he ascended the scaffold, he lifted the skirts of the habit with such an air that his attendant confessor thought it necessary to reprove him for such an instance of ill-timed regard to his appearance. Don Rodrigo excused himself by saying that he had all his life carried himself gracefully!
The author by whom this is related calls it an instance of illustrious hypocrisy. In my judgement the Father Confessor who gave occasion for it deserves a censure far more than the penitent sufferer. The movement beyond all doubt was purely habitual, as much so as the act of lifting his feet to ascend the steps of the scaffold; but the undeserved reproof made him feel how curiously whatever he did was remarked; and that consciousness reminded him that he had a part to support, when his whole thoughts would otherwise have been far differently directed.