came here purposely to avoid you,' says the patient. 'I came here
purposely to take care of you,' says the doctor. Off they go, and come
to a swollen brook. The patient clears it handsomely: the doctor tumbles
in. All the field are alive with the heartiest relish of every incident
and every cross-light on it; and dull would the man have been thought who
had not his word to say about it when riding home.

In our prose literature we have had delightful Comic writers. Besides
Fielding and Goldsmith, there is Miss Austen, whose Emma and Mr. Elton
might walk straight into a comedy, were the plot arranged for them.
Galt's neglected novels have some characters and strokes of shrewd
comedy. In our poetic literature the comic is delicate and graceful
above the touch of Italian and French. Generally, however, the English
elect excel in satire, and they are noble humourists. The national
disposition is for hard-hitting, with a moral purpose to sanction it; or
for a rosy, sometimes a larmoyant, geniality, not unmanly in its verging
upon tenderness, and with a singular attraction for thick-headedness, to
decorate it with asses' ears and the most beautiful sylvan haloes. But
the Comic is a different spirit.

You may estimate your capacity for Comic perception by being able to
detect the ridicule of them you love, without loving them less: and more
by being able to see yourself somewhat ridiculous in dear eyes, and
accepting the correction their image of you proposes.

Each one of an affectionate couple may be willing, as we say, to die for
the other, yet unwilling to utter the agreeable word at the right moment;
but if the wits were sufficiently quick for them to perceive that they
are in a comic situation, as affectionate couples must be when they
quarrel, they would not wait for the moon or the almanac, or a Dorine, to