critics he impudently meets by pointing to his wares: are not some
of the most sacred properties of humanity--sympathy with suffering,
family affection, filial devotion, and the rest--displayed upon his
stall? Not thus shall he evade the charges brought against him.
It is the sensual side of the tender emotions that he exploits for
the comfort of the million. All the intricacies which life offers
to the will and the intellect he lards and obliterates by the
timely effusion of tearful sentiment. His humanitarianism is a
more popular, as it is an easier, ideal than humanity--it asks no
expense of thought. There is a scanty public in England for
tragedy or for comedy: the characters and situations handled by
the sentimentalist might perchance furnish comedy with a theme; but
he stilts them for a tragic performance, and they tumble into
watery bathos, where a numerous public awaits them.

A similar degradation of the intellectual elements that are present
in all good literature is practised by those whose single aim is to
provoke laughter. In much of our so-called comic writing a
superabundance of boisterous animal spirits, restrained from more
practical expression by the ordinances of civil society, finds
outlet and relief. The grimaces and caperings of buffoonery, the
gymnastics of the punster and the parodist, the revels of pure
nonsense may be, at their best, a refreshment and delight, but they
are not comedy, and have proved in effect not a little hostile to
the existence of comedy. 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 of 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,