erwise. These are the comedies of Ben Jonson, Massinger, and
Fletcher. Massinger's Justice Greedy we can all of us refer to a type,
'with fat capon lined' that has been and will be; and he would be comic,
as Panurge is comic, but only a Rabelais could set him moving with real
animation. Probably Justice Greedy would be comic to the audience of a
country booth and to some of our friends. If we have lost our youthful
relish for the presentation of characters put together to fit a type, we
find it hard to put together the mechanism of a civil smile at his
enumeration of his dishes. Something of the same is to be said of
Bobadil, swearing 'by the foot of Pharaoh'; with a reservation, for he is
made to move faster, and to act. The comic of Jonson is a scholar's
excogitation of the comic; that of Massinger a moralist's.

Shakespeare is a well-spring of characters which are saturated with the
comic spirit; with more of what we will call blood-life than is to be
found anywhere out of Shakespeare; and they are of this world, but they
are of the world enlarged to our embrace by imagination, and by great
poetic imagination. They are, as it were--I put it to suit my present
comparison--creatures of the woods and wilds, not in walled towns, not
grouped and toned to pursue a comic exhibition of the narrower world of
society. Jaques, Falstaff and his regiment, the varied troop of Clowns,
Malvolio, Sir Hugh Evans and Fluellen--marvellous Welshmen!--Benedict and
Beatrice, Dogberry, and the rest, are subjects of a special study in the
poetically comic.

His Comedy of incredible imbroglio belongs to the literary section. One
may conceive that there was a natural resemblance between him and
Menander, both in the scheme and style of his lighter plays. Had
Shakespeare lived in a later and less emotional, less heroical period of
our history, he might have turned to the painting of manners as well as
humanity. Euripides would probably, in the time of Menander, when Athens
was enslaved but prosperous, have lent his hand to the composition of
romantic comedy. He certainly inspired that fine genius.

Politically it is accounted a misfortune for France that her nobles
thronged to the Court of Louis Quatorze. It was a boon to the comic
poet. He had that lively quicksilver world of the animalcule passions,
the huge pretensions, the placid absurdities, under his eyes in full
activity; vociferous quacks and snapping dupes, hypocrites, p