"half awake I heard
The parson taking wide and wider sweeps,
Now harping on the church commissioners,
Now hawking at Geology and schism."
It would be possible for the parson and his congregation to keep on with
that sort of thing Sunday after Sunday. They would discover nothing
absurd in the performance, so long as they were in their usual
semi-somnolent condition.
Humor implies mental alertness and power of discrimination. It also
implies a hospitality toward all the differences that are recognized.
Psychologists speak of the Association of Ideas. It is a pleasant
thought, but it is, in reality, difficult to induce Ideas to associate
in a neighborly way. In many minds the different groups are divided by
conventional lines, and there are aristocratic prejudices separating the
classes from the masses. The Working Hypothesis, honest son of toil that
he is, does not expect so much as a nod of recognition from the High
Moral Principle who walks by in his Sunday clothes. The steady Habit
does not associate with the high-bred Sentiment. They do not belong to
the same set. Only in the mind of the humorist is there a true
democracy. Here everybody knows everybody. Even the priggish Higher
Thought is not allowed to enjoy a sense of superiority. Plain Common
Sense slaps him on the back, calls him by his first name, and bids him
not make a fool of himself.
Of the two ingredients which Thackeray mentions, the first, love, is
that which gives body; the addition of wit gives the effervescence. The
pleasure of wit lies in its unexpectedness. In humor there is the added
pleasure of really liking that which surprises us. It is like meeting an
old friend in an unexpected place. "What, you here?" we say. This is the
kind of pleasure we get from Dr. Johnson's reply to the lady who asked
why he had put a certain definition in his dictionary: "Pure ignorance,
madam."
The fact is that long ago we made the acquaintance of one whom Bunyan
describes as "a brisk young lad named Ignorance." He is a dear friend of
ours, and we are on very familiar terms with him when we are at home;
but we do not expect to meet him in fine society. Suddenly we turn the
corner, and we see him walking arm in arm with so great a man as Dr.
Samuel Johnson. At once we are at our ease in the presence of the great
man; it seems we have a mutual acquaintance.
Another element in real humor is a certain detachment of mind. We must
not be afraid, or jealous, or angry; in order to take a really humorous
view of any character, we must be in a position to see all around it. If
I were brought before Fielding's Squire Western on charge of poaching,
and if I had a pheasant concealed under my coat, I should not be able
to appreciate what an amusing person the squire is. I should be inclined
to take him very seriously.
The small boy who pins a paper to the schoolmaster's coat tail imagines
that he has achieved a masterpiece of humor. But he is not really in a
position to reap the fruits of his perilous adventure. It is a fearful
and precarious joy which he feels. What if the schoolmaster should turn
around? That would be tragedy. Neither the small boy nor the
schoolmaster gets the full flavor of humor. But suppose an old friend of
the schoolmaster happens just then to look in at the door. His delight
in the situation has a mellowness far removed from the anxious,
ambiguous glee of the urchin. He knows that the small boy is not so
wicked as he thinks he is, and the schoolmaster is not so terrible as he
seems. He remembers the time when the schoolmaster was up to the same
pranks. So, from the assured position of middle age, he looks upon the
small boy that was and upon the small boy that is, and finds them both
very good,--much better, indeed, than at this moment they find each
other.
It is this sense of the presence of a tolerant spectator, looking upon
the incidents of the passing hour, which we recognize in the best
literature. Books that are meant simply to be funny are very
short-lived. The first reception of a joke awakens false expectations.
It is received with extravagant heartiness. But when, encouraged by this
hospitality, it returns again and again, its welcome is worn out. There
is something melancholy in a joke deserted in its old age.
The test of real literature is that it will bear repetition. We read
over the same pages again and again, and always with fresh delight. This
bars out all mere jocosity. A certain kind of wit, which depends for its
force on mere verbal brilliancy, has the same effect. The writers whom
we love are those whose humor does not glare or glitter, but which has
an iridescent quality. It is the perpetual play of light and color which
enchants us. We are conscious all the time that the light is playing on
a real thing. It is something more than a clever trick; there is an
illumination.
Erasmus, in dedicating his "Praise of Folly" to Sir Thomas More,
says:--
"I conceived that this would not be least approved by you, inasmuch as
you are wont to be delighted with such kind of pleasantry as is neither
unlearned nor altogether insipid. Such is your sweetness of temper that
you can and like to carry yourself to all men a man of all hours. Unless
an overweening opinion of myself may have made me blind, I have praised
folly not altogether foolishly. I have moderated my style, that the
understanding reader may perceive that my endeavor is to make mirth
rather than to bite."
Erasmus has here described a kind of humor that is consistent with
seriousness of purpose. The characteristics he notes are good temper,
insight into human nature, a certain reserve, and withal a gentle irony
that makes the praise of folly not unpleasing to the wise. It is a way
of looking at things characteristic of men like Chaucer and Cervantes
and Montaigne and Shakespeare, and Bunyan and Fielding and Addison,
Goldsmith, Charles Lamb and Walter Scott. In America, we have seen it in
Irving and Dr. Holmes and James Russell Lowell.
I have left out of the list one whom nature endowed for the supreme man
of humor among Englishmen,--Jonathan Swift. Charles Lamb argues against
the common notion that it is a misfortune to a man to have a surly
disposition. He says it is not his misfortune; it is the misfortune of
his neighbors. It is our misfortune that the man who might have been the
English Cervantes had a surly disposition. Dean Swift's humor would have
been irresistible, if it had only been good humor.
One of the best examples of humor pervading a work of the utmost
seriousness of purpose is Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." The "Pilgrim's
Progress" is not a funny book; the humor is not tacked on as a moral is
tacked on to a fable, nor does it appear by way of an interlude to
relieve the tension of the mind. It is so deeply interfused, so a part
and parcel of the religious teaching, that many readers overlook it
altogether. One may read the book a dozen times without a smile, and
after that he may recognize the touch of the born humorist on every
page. Bunyan himself recognized the quality of his work:--
"Some there be that say he laughs too loud,
And some do say his head is in a cloud.
* * * * *
One may, I think, say both his laughs and cries
May well be guessed at by his wat'ry eyes.
Some things are of that nature as to make
One's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache."
There speaks the real humorist; not the Merry Andrew laughing at his
meaningless pranks, but one whose quick imagination is at play when his
conscience is most overtasked. Even in the Valley of Humiliation, where
the fierce Apollyon was wont to fright the pilgrims, they heard a boy
singing cheerily,--
"He that is down need fear no fall."
And Mr. Great Heart said: "Do you hear him? I dare say that boy lives a
merrier life, and wears more of the herb called heart's-ease in his
bosom, than he that is clad in silk and velvet." It is a fine spirit
that can find time, on such a strenuous pilgrimage, to listen to these
wayside songs.