Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

men who had never known adversity, that he might inscribe them upon her tombstone; and upon the prince acknowledging the impossibility of complying with his request, he asked him, with his usual laugh, why he should expect to escape affliction, when not one, among so many millions, was exempt from calamity? Here was philosophy as well as laughter; and indeed I doubt whether there be any wisdom more profound than that which developes itself by our risible faculties. This convulsion, as well as reason, is peculiar to man, and one may, therefore, fairly assume that they illustrate and sympathize with one another. Animals were meant to cry, for they have no other mode of expression; and infants, who are in the same predicament, are provided with a similar resource ; but when we arrive at man's estate (the only one to which I ever succeeded), both the sound and physiognomy of weeping must be admitted altogether brutal and irrational. The former is positively unscriptible, and we should never utter any thing that cannot be committed to writing; and as to a lachrymose visage, I appeal to the reader whether it be not contemptible and fish-like, beyond all the fascinations of Niobe herself to redeem. All associations connected with this degrading process are hateful. Perhaps I may be deemed fastidiously sensitive upon this point, but I confess that I feel an antipathy towards a whale, because it has a tendency to blubber; I abominate the common crier, simply on account of his name; I would rather get wet through than seek shelter under a weep

ing willow, and I instinctively avoid a birch on account of certain juvenile recollections.

"But hail, thou goddess fair and free,

In Heaven yclept Euphrosyne;"

and before I go any farther, let me observe how abundantly the Pagan heaven was provided with hearteasing mirth; for besides the damsel we have mentioned, Venus is expressly termed by Homer the laughter-loving Queen; the whole Court of the immortals was often thrown into fits by the awkwardness of Vulcan; Jove himself was so fond of the recreation that he even laughed at lovers' perjuries; and Momus the jester, whose province it was to excite their risible faculties, was instructively represented as the son of Sleep and Night, whereby we are taught to go to bed betimes if we wish to have cheerful and hilarious days. But in this our sombre and antirisible age, it has rather become the fashion to attack laughter, notwithstanding the cowardice of assaulting a personage who is obliged to be constantly holding both his sides, and is therefore incapable of other self-defence than that of sniggering at his assailants. I am too old for laughing, they tell me; but it is by laughing that I have lived to grow old, and they may as well take my life itself as that whereby I live. "Laugh and grow fat" may be a questionable maxim, but "laugh and grow old" is an indisputable one; for so long as we can laugh at all, we shall never die unless it be of laughing. As to

performing this operation in one's sleeve, it is a base compromise; no more comparable to the original, than is a teeth-displaying simper to that hilarious roar which shakes the wrinkles out of the heart, and frightens old Time from advancing towards us. Fortune, love, and justice, are all painted blind: they can neither see our smiles nor frowns. Fate is deaf to the most pathetic sorrows: we cannot mend our destined road of life with a paviour's sigh, nor drown care in tears. Let us, then, leave growling to wild beasts, and croaking to the ravens, indulging freely in the rationality of laughter: which, in the first place, is reducible to writing-Ha! Ha! Ha! and should always be printed with three capital letters, and a prop of admiration between each to prevent its bursting its sides. (The very hieroglyphic makes one snigger, so festive, social, and joyous is its character.) And secondly, its delicious alchymy not only converts a tear into the quintessence of merriment, and makes wrinkles themselves expressive of youth and frolic, but lights up the dullest eye with a twinkle, and throws a flash of sunshine over the cloudiest visage, while it irradiates and embellishes the most beautiful. Including thine, reader, in the latter class, I counsel thee to give the experiment a frequent trial.

It just occurs to me, that I ought to have begun my essay with a definition of laughter, and an argute inquiry into its causes; but it will come in as well at the end, and perhaps a hysteronproteron, in itself a common provocative to risibility, is more appropriate

[ocr errors]

than any methodical arrangement. Lastly and imprimis, then, it is a great mistake to suppose that wit, which has been termed the unexpected discovery of resemblance between ideas supposed dissimilar, has any tendency to excite the giggling faculties. Quite the contrary: it elicits only the silent smile of the intellect; on which account I have no great regard for wit, for I love to laugh with all my heart and none of my head. Humour, therefore, I deem preferable to but I am not proceeding systematically. Well, then, this convulsion is of three different kinds. Animal laughter, which may be produced by tickling, or by that happy and healthy organization which occasions a constant flow of the animal spirits. Unnatural laughter, which sometimes accompanies the triumph of the most malignant passions, or bursts out upon any unexpected change of fortune, or assumes that ghastly smile or "jealous leer malign," designated the Sardonic grin, not, as a young lady of my acquaintance supposed, from the Sardones or people of Roussillon, but from the involuntary hysterical affection produced by eating that species of ranunculus called the Herba Sardonia. And lastly, (for the second time,) Sentimental laughter,—a compound operation, emanating jointly or separately from the head or the heart, and whose basis seems to be a union, or rather opposition, of suitableness and unsuitableness in the same object, or any unexpected ludicrous combination. I shall not notice the subdivision of Sympathetic laughter, which is a mere infection; or of

that which is stimulated by the consciousness that we ought not to laugh, which gives a poignant zest to the ebullition.

Talking of incongruities puts me in mind of the steam-boat, and of a conversation between two parties, one conversing of their children, the other settling the ingredients of a wedding-dinner, whose joint colloquies, as I sat between them, fell upon my ear in the following detached sentences. "Thank Heaven! my Sally is blessed with a calf's head and a pig's face."— "Well, if I should have another baby, I shall have it immediately- -skinned and cut into thin slices.""I do love to see little Tommy well-dressed—in the fish-kettle over a charcoal fire."-" To behold the little dears dancing before one-in the frying-pan.""And to hear their innocent tongues-bubble and squeak."—" My eldest girl is accomplished—with plenty of sauce.""I always see the young folks put to bed myself and smothered in onions."-" And if they have been very good children, I invariably order the heart to be stuffed and roasted, the gizzard to be peppered and devilled, and the sole to be fried."

Broken metaphors are not less laughable than these ludicrous games of cross-purposes; and the risible public are much indebted to the Editor of a loyal journal, who lately informed them that the radicals, by throwing off the mask, had at last shown the cloven foot; congratulated his readers that the hydra-head of faction had received a good rap upon the knuckles;

« AnteriorContinuar »