Humourist

“ It is difficult, though desirable, to combine good feeling with the comic spirit. The humourist has to expose the contrasts of life, to unmask hypocrisy, and to show selfishness lurking under multitudinous disguises. ”

“ As these general classes, however, are few in number, they must be soon exhausted [Pg 15] by the writers of Comedy, who have been obliged, for the sake of variety, to exhibit those peculiarities which are more rare and singular. Hence have been derived many pictures of that character which we call an humourist; by which is meant a character distinguished by certain ludicrous singularities from the rest of mankind. The humourist is not without those marks of distinction which he may acquire, like others, from rank, profession, or temper of mind ”

“ If you laugh all round him (to wit, the ridiculous person) , tumble him, roll him about, deal him a smack, and drop a tear on him, own his likeness to you, and yours to your neighbour, spare him as little as you shun, pity him as much as you expose, it is spirit of Humour that is moving you.... The humourist of mean order is a refreshing laugher, giving tone to the feelings, and sometimes allowing the feelings to be too much for him. ”

“ But the humourist, if high, has an embrace of contrasts beyond the scope of the comic poet.” The third sentence is required to complete the first. The tumbling and rolling, the smacks and the exposure, may be out of place where there is humour of the most humorous quality. ”

“ In the charge abstractedly there is truth; but the fair remark upon it is that whatever can be regarded as essential in the want implied by it will be found in other forms in his writings, that the perfect innocence of their laughter and tears has been itself a prodigious blessing, and that it is otherwise incident to so great a humourist to work after the fashion most natural to the genius of humour. ”

“ In his caricatures, he becomes an unflinching realist, lightly emphasising this or that feature, this or that peculiarity of his subject, but never dropping the very human attitude of a kindly humourist. ”

“ For humour is essentially the expression of a personal idiosyncrasy, and a man is a humourist just because the tragic and the comic elements of life present themselves to his mind in new and unexpected combinations. ”

“ If a person desires to be a humourist it is necessary that the people around him shall [pg 217] be at least as wise as he is, otherwise his humour will not be comprehended. ”

“ My uncle was known as a humourist; and prove that a man differs from others in one thing, and the world will believe that he differs from them in a thousand. His favour to me would be, in the popular eye, only an eccentricity, and the unlooked-for disposition of his will only a caprice. Possession, too, gave Gerald a proverbial vantage-ground, which my whole life might be wasted in contesting; while his command of an immense wealth might, more than probably, exhaust my spirit by delay, and my fortune by expenses. ”

“ On the other hand, certainly he at times makes his characters more laughable than nature; few great humourists have so persistently sought to efface the line which separates the barely possible from the morally probable. ”

“ The laughter of satire is a blow in the back or the face. The laughter of Comedy is impersonal and of unrivalled politeness, nearer a smile; often no more than a smile. It laughs through the mind, for the mind directs it; and it might be called the humour of the mind.
One excellent test of the civilization of a country, as I have said, I take to be the flourishing of the Comic idea and Comedy; and the test of true Comedy is that it shall awaken thoughtful laughter. ”

“ Humor, in one form or another, is characteristic of every nation; and reflecting the salient points of social and national life, it illuminates those crowded corners which history leaves obscure. The laugh that we enjoy at our own expense betrays us to the rest of the world, and the humorists of England and America have been long employed in pointing out with derisive fingers their own, and not their neighbor's shortcomings. If we are more reckless in our satire, and more amused at our own wit, it is because we are better tempered, and newer to the game. ”

“ The value of comedy as chief ministress to our laughter may be seen by a mere glance at its many resources. It seems able to present to the eye and ear all varieties of the amusing. As a show, it carries on the fun of children’s make-believe play. It can set before us the most grotesque aberrations of dress, carriage and manners. In its human figures, again, it presents to us in forms of its own choosing the full variety of laughable traits of mind and of character. Lastly, it can exhibit in its plots the whole gamut of teasing and practical joke which amuses ordinary men in real life. ”

“ Humour.—If it is difficult to draw a hard-and-fast line round other elements of comedy, and detach wit from satire, or satire from farce, it is still harder to attempt to isolate humour and discuss it as a separate and distinct property. Humour is the sympathetic appreciation of the comic, the faculty which enables us to love while we laugh, and to love the better for our laughter. ”

“ That gives surprise, and this delight, Humour is odd, grotesque, and wild, Only by affectation spoil'd; 'Tis never by invention got, Men have it when they know it not. Our conversation to refine, True humour must with wit combine: From both we learn to rally well, Wherein French writers most excel; [2] Voiture, in various lights, displays That irony which turns to praise: His genius first found out the rule For an obliging ridicule: He flatters with peculiar air The brave, the witty, and the fair: And fools would fancy he intends A satire where he most commends. ”

“ We may now better define the attitude of the humorist in its relation to that of the comedian and of the satirist. The comic spirit, placing itself at the social point of view, projects as laughable show an eccentric individual, or group of individuals. Satire, when it attacks the manners of an age, may be said to project the society, turning it into an object of derision. Humour, as we have seen, sometimes does the like, though in its laughter at the social scene it is neither passionately vindictive nor concerned with the practical problem of reforming a world. ”

“ When the cause of our laughter—be it mind, matter, or imaginary circumstance—is merely regarded as something incongruous and amusing, we name it the ludicrous, and a man is called ludicrous as faulty or contemptible. But when the cause of it is viewed as something more than this, as coming from some conscious power or tendency within us—a valuable gift and an element in our mental constitution—we call it humour, a term applied only to human beings and their productions; and a man is called humorous as worthy of commendation. ”

“ Comedy is a feigned action, in which is represented the ridiculous, in order to correct it; it rebukes with a smile, and corrects with a facetious stroke: the matter of comedy is civil life, of which it is an imitation: it ought to be every where enlivened with all possible care, to have fine and easy strokes of wit and satire, which present the ridiculous in the most glaring point of view ”

“ But the deep background that lies behind and beyond what we call humour is revealed only to the few who, by instinct or by effort, have given thought to it. The world's humour, in its best and greatest sense, is perhaps the highest product of our civilisation. One thinks here not of the mere spasmodic effects of the comic artist or the blackface expert of the vaudeville show, but of the really great humour which, once or twice in a generation at best, illuminates and elevates our literature. ”

“ When we pass from Goldsmith to Hazlitt—one of the greatest names in English criticism—we find that “humour” has grown in meaning, without quite reaching its full development. In the introduction to his Lectures on the English Comic Writers he attempts a classification of the comic spirit into wit and humour. “Humour,” he says, “is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself; wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. ”

“ Strange as the genealogy may seem, the original parentage of that wonderful and delicious mixture of fun, fancy, philosophy, and feeling, which constitutes modern humor, was probably the cruel mockery of a savage at the writhings of a suffering enemy—such is the tendency of things toward the good and beautiful on this earth! Probably the reason why high culture demands more complete harmony with its moral sympathies in humor than in wit, is that humor is in its nature more prolix—that it has not the direct and irresistible force of wit. ”

“ The same covert conceit, the same hidden humor, the same piquant allusion, which, while you read, place the author bodily before you, a quiet old gentleman fond of his ease, but fonder of his joke—not a broad, forced, loud, vacant-minded joke, but a quiet, pungent, sly, laughter-moving conceit, which, at first stirring the finest membranes of your pericardium, at length sets you out into a broad roar of laughter, honest fellow as you are, and which you must be, indeed, a very savage, if you can avoid. ”

“ We had chosen Every Man in his Humour, with special regard to the singleness and individuality of the "humours" portrayed in it; and our company included the leaders of a journal then in its earliest years, but already not more renowned as the most successful joker of jokes yet known in England, than famous for that exclusive use of its laughter and satire for objects the highest or most harmless which makes it still so enjoyable a companion to mirth-loving right-minded [210] men. ”

“ For which reason, I pray you, let there be no huge red noses, nor extravagant monstrous wigs, nor coarse men garbed as women in this comi-tragedy; for such things are as much as to say, "I am a comick fellow—I pray you laugh at me, and hold what I say to be cleverly ridiculous." Such labelling of humour is an impertinence to your audience, for it seemeth to imply that they are unable to recognise a joke unless it be pointed out to them. I pray you avoid it.
⁠First Player. Sir, we are beholden to you for your good counsels. ”

“ Nothing could be more unlike the laughter of virulent satire than that provoked by the expression of humour in literature. As our analysis would lead us to expect, we find in the truly humorous writer the mellowing influences of good nature and sympathy, and a large understanding and acceptance of that against which he pokes fun. While satire, sarcasm and their kind seem to be trying to push things away, or at least to alter them, humour, curiously enough, looks as if it were tenderly holding to the world which entertains it. ”

“ Thus, it is indubitable that whereas humour specially favours certain kinds of imaginative and reflective activity, wit seems always to prefer, even in its play, something in the shape of an incisive logical process.320 But I suspect that the deeper ground of the distinction is to be found in the circumstance that the wit which is most brilliant, of keenest edge, and most effective in its stroke, appears always to grow out of, and so becomes associated with, those moods of satire and mordant mockery, to which humour as good-natured and tolerant is directly opposed. ”

“ There is another way in which the development of the humorous faculty enlarges the sphere of the risible. In the simple nature of children and uncultured adults, fun and seriousness tend to dwell apart. The introduction of a serious element into the mood of amusement, which is at the basis of humour, makes a breach in the dividing wall. As a consequence, the humorist, though a profoundly serious person, will show a readiness in the midst of grave occupations to digress for a moment at the prick of some ludicrous suggestion. ”

“ If we, as a nation, have more humor, they have better humorists, and can point serenely to those unapproached and unapproachable writers of the eighteenth century, whose splendid ringing laughter still clears the murky air. It is true, I am told now and then, with commendable gravity, that such mirth is unbecoming in a refined and critical age, and that, if I would try a little harder to follow the somewhat elusive satire of the modern analyst, I should enjoy a species of pleasantry too delicate or too difficult for laughter. ”

“ I divide all witnesses into two classes: those who, while giving testimony or being examined or cross-examined, cause laughter in the courtroom at others. The second class turn all laughter against themselves. That is why the gift of humour is so grave—it keeps us from making ourselves ridiculous. A Frenchman (still my French) has recently pointed out that the reason we laugh is to drive things out of the world, to jolly them out of existence and have a good time as we do it. Therefore not to be laughed at is to survive. ”

“ He did buy the ring, and he furnished the flat, but it was for another lady. The audience roared. I have heard it so often asked, “What is humour?” From observation, I should describe it as other people’s troubles.
A male performer followed her. He came on dressed in a night-shirt, carrying a baby. His wife, it seemed, had gone out for the evening with the lodger. That was his joke. It was the most successful song of the whole six.
The one sure Joke.
A philosopher has put it on record that he always felt sad when he reflected on the sorrows of humanity. ”

“ The prevalence of jokers, moreover, spoils the game of humour; the sputter and sparkle of their made jokes interferes with that luminous contemplation of the incongruities p. 86of life and the universe which is humour’s essence. All that is ludicrous depends on some disproportion: Comedy judges the actual world by contrasting it with an ideal of sound sense, Humour reveals it in its true dimensions by turning on it the light of imagination and poetry. The perception of these incongruities, which are eternal, demands some expense of intellect ”