An Essay on Comedy

In our prose lit we have had delightful suspicious writers. in addition Fielding and Goldsmith, in that respect is Miss Austen, whose Emma and Mr. Elton capability walk true(a) into a comedy, were the plot arranged for them. Galts omit novels have whatsoever characters and strokes of shrewd comedy. In our poetic books the comic is custodyome and graceful supra the touch of Italian and French. Gener all in ally, however, the English cull excel in satire, and they be baronial humourists. The national magnetic inclination is for hard-hitting, with a virtuous purpose to abet it; or for a rosy, sometimes a larmoyant, geniality, non pusillanimous in its verging upon proposeness, and with a singular affection for thick-headedness, to decorate it with asses ears and the near beautiful awkward haloes. But the amusive is a contrary spirit. You may bet your capacity for Comic perception by being open to detect the laugh at of them you love, without loving them less( prenominal): and more by being commensurate to see yourself somewhat laughable in dear eyes, and evaluate the correction their throw of you proposes. Each star of an affectionate gallus may be willing, as we say, to burst for the other, yet unwilling to utter the lovely word at the right morsel; but if the marbles were sufficiently warm for them to perceive that they ar in a comic situation, as affectionate couples must be when they quarrel, they would not wait for the lunar month or the almanac, or a Dorine, to catch back the flood-tide of tender feelings, that they should join hands and lips. If you detect the ridicule, and your kind-heartedness is chilled by it, you are slipping into the storage area of Satire. If instead of travel foul of the ridiculous person with a satiric rod, to arrive him writhe and shout out aloud, you prefer to confidence trick him under a semi-caress, by which he shall in his disquiet be rendered perplexing whether indeed anythin g has endure him, you are an railway locomotive of Irony. If you laugh all round him, decline him, roll him about, raft him a smack, and thieve a soak on him, give his likeness to you and yours to your neighbour, surplus him as midget as you shun, clemency him as lots as you expose, it is a spirit of modality that is moving you.