of necessity
kept in restraint. The French lay marked stress on mesure et gout,
and they own how much they owe to Moliere for leading them in simple
justness and taste. We can teach them many things; they can teach us in
this.

The Comic poet is in the narrow field, or enclosed square, of the
society he depicts; and he addresses the still narrower enclosure of
men's intellects, with reference to the operation of the social world
upon their characters. He is not concerned with beginnings or endings or
surroundings, but with what you are now weaving. To understand his work
and value it, you must have a sober liking of your kind and a sober
estimate of our civilized qualities. The aim and business of the Comic
poet are misunderstood, his meaning is not seized nor his point of view
taken, when he is accused of dishonouring our nature and being hostile
to sentiment, tending to spitefulness and making an unfair use of
laughter. Those who detect irony in Comedy do so because they choose to
see it in life. Poverty, says the satirist, has nothing harder in itself
than that it makes men ridiculous. But poverty is never ridiculous to
Comic perception until it attempts to make its rags conceal its bareness
in a forlorn attempt at decency, or foolishly to rival ostentation.
Caleb Balderstone, in his endeavour to keep up the honour of a noble
household in a state of beggary, is an exquisitely comic character. In
the case of 'poor relatives,' on the other hand, it is the rich, whom
they perplex, that are really comic; and to laugh at the former,
not seeing the comedy of the latter, is to betray dulness of vision.
Humourist and Satirist frequently hunt together as Ironeists in pursuit
of the grotesque, to the exclusion of the Comic. That was an affecting
moment in the history of the Prince Regent, when the First Gentleman of
Europe burst into tears at a sarcastic remark of Beau Brummell's on the
cut of his coat. Humour, Satire, Irony, pounce on it altogether as
their common prey. The Comic spirit eyes but does not touch it. Put into
action, it would be farcical. It is too gross for Comedy.

Incidents of a kind casting ridicule on our unfortunate nature instead
of our conventional life, provoke derisive laughter, which thwarts the
Comic idea. But derision is foiled by the play of the intellect. Most
of doubtful causes in contest are open to Comic interpretation, and any
intellectual pleading of a doubtful cause contains germs of an Id