make you weep, but nothing to move you to laughter. Why is this? Are
there not smiles as well as tears in life? Have we not a deep, joyous
nature, as well as aspiration, reverence, awe? Is there not a
free-and-easy side of existence, as well as vexation and sorrow? We
assent that these things are so.

But comedy implies ridicule, sharp, corroding ridicule. The comedy of
the Greeks ridiculed everything,--persons, characters, opinions,
customs, and sometimes philosophy and religion. Comedy became,
therefore, a sort of consecrated slander, lyric spite, aesthetical
buffoonery. Comedy makes you laugh at somebody's expense; it brings
multitudes together to see it inflict death on some reputation; it
assails private feeling with all the publicity and powers of the stage.

Now we doubt if the Jewish faith or taste would tolerate this. The Jews
were commanded to love their neighbor. We grant, their idea of neighbor
was excessively narrow and partial; but still it was their neighbor.
They were commanded not to bear false witness against their neighbor,
and he was pronounced accursed who should smite his neighbor secretly.
It might appear that comedy would violate each of these statutes. But
the Jews had their delights, their indulgences, their transports,
notwithstanding the imperfection of their benevolence, the meagreness of
their truth, and the cumbersomeness of their ceremonials. The Feast of
Tabernacles, for instance, was liberal and happy, bright and smiling; it
was the enthusiasm of pastime, the psalm of delectableness. They did not
laugh at the exposure of another's foibles, but out of their own merry
hearts.

Will it be said, the Bible is not true to Nature, if it does not
represent the comical side of life, as well as Shakspeare does? We think