MALIGNITY SOFTENED INTO HUMOUR.

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gratification. Much of the enjoyment of mankind arises from victimizing, in idea, the absent, the dead, and the imaginary. Doubtless the satisfaction would be still greater to see the sufferers writhing under the infliction: but this has its drawbacks, in consequence of our possessing a tender and sympathetic as well as a malevolent side. We accept a smaller pleasure that is free from compunctions, in preference to a greater that carries a sting with it.

Historical literature and fiction have multiplied, and are still multiplying, comic pictures without end. Every new instance possessing the attributes essential to the Emotional Qualities in general, and to the quality of Humour in particular, is an addition to our pleasures. At the same time, there is a growing stringency in the negative conditions of the comic art, especially as regards vituperation and ridicule. Not only must our sympathies with actual persons be taken into account; even the ideal indulgence in malignity and horror is considered as unduly strengthening what is already too strong by nature.

(9) Strange to say, the malignant sentiment can find satisfaction in venting itself upon the inanimate world. The young girl can make her doll the victim of her displeasure, as well as the recipient of her loving caresses; and is equally gratified in both ways. Savages, disappointed in the chase or the fight, find consolation in maltreating the images of their gods, no less than by uncomplimentary language.

Hudibras finds an occasion for the ludicrous in the

morning dawn. The device consists in a degrading or vulgarizing simile :

The sun had long since, in the lap
Of Thetis, taken out his nap,

And, like a lobster boiled, the morn
From black to red began to turn.

At the time when the sun was treated as a person, a great comic genius, like Aristophanes or Lucian, could put his rising into a ludicrous form, but our present notions of the fact resist such attempts.

Likewise

For he, by geometric scale,

Could take the size of pots of ale.

People have a kind of respect for geometry, no doubt, and anything that is respected may be humorously degraded, but the application to pots of ale does not sufficiently hurt

the feelings of the most susceptible geometer; as a jest it tells only against Hudibras himself.

Passing now to the classification of the literary embodiments of the present quality, we find a number of designations connected with language. The Figures of Speech named Epigram,' 'Irony,' 'Innuendo,' and 'Hyperbole,' are more or less pressed into the service of the Comic art. Exaggeration, even to the pitch of extravagance and absurdity, is freely employed for the need of provoking laughter; nevertheless, without some measure of originality or genius, it cannot attain the dignity of literary art.

Much stress is laid by some writers on the Anti-climax, or the falling down from a high to a low degree of Dignity or Strength. By the very nature of the case, this is a species of humiliation or degradation, and fits in exactly with the general bearing of the Ludicrous, of which it is merely one exemplification. It may take the form of immense expenditure for small result, as in the line of Horace

Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

4. Conspicuous among the express designations of the Ludicrous are-Parody, Mock-heroic, and Burlesque.

Common to all these is the conjunction, through language, of the dignified, lofty, serious, estimable, with the mean, vulgar, indecorous, indecent, filthy.

Parody, like caricature generally, is the mimicking of grand and serious composition in a vulgar or inferior subject. It was one of the many ways that Aristophanes derided the great tragedians. Of modern examples, among the best known are Philips's parody of Milton's style, and the Rejected Addresses, which caricatured a whole generation of authors. The humour is greatly assisted by the closeness of the imitation.

Mimicry is a noted source of pleasure, of the purely malevolent stamp. Something is due to the skill of the imitation, but the chief part of the effect is the humiliation of the object by a mixture of degrading touches. The mere fact that a person can be imitated by another seems to prove smallness or poverty of character, implying a certain degree of inferiority. The mimicry of parrots is ludicrous for the same reason.

Savages can be intensely tickled by the successful mimicry of their chiefs.

PARODY.-MOCK-HEROIC.

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Not far removed from the same effect is the Mock-heroic; which is also the treating of mean or degrading things in the style of high composition, without imitating any author in particular. The Burlesque has no specific difference of meaning; being interchangeable at pleasure with the two other designations.

Among the frequent accompaniments of the Laughable, whether as Humour or as Wit, have to be counted Oddity, Incongruity and Irrelevance. These are sometimes treated as the ultimate explanation of the quality, and as not depending for their efficacy on malevolent pleasure.

Oddity is, from its nature, calculated to excite attention and surprise, as being a deviation from the accustomed routine of things. The surprise may be agreeable or it may be the opposite; everything depends on the mode and the circumstances. The whimsical gargoyles on the old cathedrals are agreeable or not according to the success of the working out. As degrading caricatures of humanity, they give the pleasure of malevolence; but they may also fail even in this, from feeble execution.

There are

Incongruity is qualified in the same manner. incongruities that give pleasure, some that give pain, and others that do neither. George Eliot speaks of a grating incongruity. Sydney Smith rejects the explanation absolutely for the case of an

Irish bull.

"It is clear," he says, "that a bull cannot depend upon mere incongruity alone; for if a man were to say that he would ride to London upon a cocked hat, or that he would cut his throat with a pound of pickled salmon, this, though completely incongruous, would not be to make bulls, but to talk nonsense. The stronger the apparent connexion, and the more complete the real disconnexion of the ideas, the greater the surprise and the better the bull."

His own explanation of Humour, nevertheless, is wholly based on Incongruity. He gives an example to this effect.

"As you increase the incongruity, you increase the humour; as you diminish it, you diminish the humour. If a tradesman of a corpulent and respectable appearance, with habiliments somewhat ostentatious, were to slide down gently into the mud, and dedecorate a pea-green coat, I am afraid we should all have the barbarity to laugh. If his hat and wig, like treacherous servants, were to desert their falling master, it certainly would not diminish our propensity to laugh; but if he were to fall into a violent passion, and abuse everybody about him, nobody could possibly resist the incongruity of a pea-green tradesman, very respectable, sitting in the mud, and threatening all the passers-by with the effects of his wrath. Here every incident heightens the humour of the scene:-the gaiety of his tunic, the general respectability of his appearance, the rills of muddy water which trickle down his

cheeks, and the harmless violence of his rage! But if, instead of this, we were to observe a dustman falling into the mud, it would hardly attract any attention, because the opposition of ideas is so trifling, and the incongruity so slight."

The inequality of our malignant pleasure in the two cases is the real cause of the difference. The ostentatiously dressed tradesman is humiliated at every turn; his rage being a further confirmation of his suffering. The dustman is making no pretensions, he has nothing to lose; for him we are more ready to feel sympathy than to laugh.

Irrelevance has an agreeable effect, either as exposing some one's imbecility and weakness, or as an ingenious surprise of the nature of wit. Seeming irrelevance is recognized as one of the varieties of Epigram, and needs a stroke of invention or ingenuity to produce it. The irrelevance of a confused mind may be made to enter into comedy; or it may be purely insipid and repugnant. The same remarks apply to the Nonsensical generally. itself, this has no positive value, but the contrary. By dexterity of management it may produce any, or all, of the effects that are now under discussion. The criterion of its aptness is the result.

In

5. The conditions of the Ludicrous and Humour as an excellence of composition are implied in the foregoing explanations. They may be further elucidated by a review of the modes of failure or miscarriage.

(1) Insipidity, either from want of importance in the object or from commonplace repetition.

So intense is the enjoyment of ludicrous depreciation, that a very small amount of either dignity in the object, or originality in the form, will afford gratification in everyday life; the higher demands appertain to works of considerable literary pretensions.

This is

(2) Coarseness, indelicacy, filth or indecorum. an offence against the taste of the age, and is differently viewed at different times.

It is needless to refer to the extreme instances of coarseness, either in ancient or in modern writings. The taste of the present day may be measured by cases that are close on the verge of admissibility.

Coarseness was the reproach of the old Dramatists. The Dunciad of Pope is disfigured by coarseness no less than by malignity. Swift, in his paper for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to them, coolly develops a proposal of cannibalism, which he supports through all its circumstantials with the utmost

gravity. He had, he says, consulted an American friend, who told him that a young healthy child well nursed is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled'. Whereupon he recommends the practice of rearing babies for the market; setting forth in minute detail the economical and other advantages and disposing of objections on the score of diminished population. Nevertheless, he is not so violently bent upon his own opinion as to reject any other proposed by wise men, which shall be equally innocent, cheap, easy and effectual. He adds, in conclusion, that he has no personal interest to serve, seeing that his youngest child is nine years old, and his wife past child-bearing.

It is possible to treat all this as humour, knowing that it has an underlying object in calling attention to Irish misery, and in satirizing the usual unfeeling ways of looking at it. Yet there is some difficulty in not being shocked and repelled by the mere imagination of reducing human beings to the level of animals for food.

There is not the same apology for Sydney Smith's cannibal humour, at the expense of the Bishop of New Zealand; whom he advised to receive the native chiefs with the assurance that they would find 'cold curate and roasted missionary on the sideboard'.

Not less questionable is De Quincey's paper entitled 'Murder as a Fine Art'. Opinions differ as to the legitimacy of the theme. All the author's delicacy and invention are at work to invest murder with the choicest designations of a work of Art. The only test to apply is-Does it foster for the time our malignant gratification in the horrid details of this worst of crimes?

(3) Excess of severity. To offend the sympathies or moral sentiment of those addressed is to awaken pain and moral indignation instead of conferring pleasure.

(4) Clumsiness in wording, so as to expose the sharp edge of malignity, without the indispensable qualifying additions.

EXEMPLIFICATION.

The following Examples are intended to embrace the whole circle of Qualities above discussed. This is more