to make an accurate measurement in
parallel lines, with a tough rope-yarn by one party, and a string of
yawns by the other, of the veteran's power of enduring life, and our
capacity for enduring _him_, with tremendous pulling on both sides.

Would not the Comic view of the discussion illumine it and the disputants
like very lightning? There are questions, as well as persons, that only
the Comic can fitly touch.

Aristophanes would probably have crowned the ancient tree, with the
consolatory observation to the haggard line of long-expectant heirs of
the Centenarian, that they live to see the blessedness of coming of a
strong stock. The shafts of his ridicule would mainly have been aimed at
the disputants. For the sole ground of the argument was the old man's
character, and sophists are not needed to demonstrate that we can very
soon have too much of a bad thing. A Centenarian does not necessarily
provoke the Comic idea, nor does the corpse of a duke. It is not
provoked in the order of nature, until we draw its penetrating
attentiveness to some circumstance with which we have been mixing our
private interests, or our speculative obfuscation. Dulness, insensible
to the Comic, has the privilege of arousing it; and the laying of a dull
finger on matters of human life is the surest method of establishing
electrical communications with a battery of laughter--where the Comic
idea is prevalent.

But if the Comic idea prevailed with us, and we had an Aristophanes to
barb and wing it, we should be breathing air of Athens. Prosers now
pouring forth on us like public fountains would be cut short in the
street and left blinking, dumb as pillar-posts, with letters thrust into
their mouths. We should throw off incubus, our dreadful familiar--by
some called boredom--whom it is our present humiliation to be just alive
enough to loathe, never quick enough to foil. There would be a bright
and positive, clear Hellenic perception of facts. The vapours of
Unreason and Sentimentalism would be blown away before they were
productive. Where would Pessimist and Optimist be? They would in any
case have a diminished audience. Yet possibly the change of despots,
from good-natured old obtuseness to keen-edged intelligence, which is by
nature merciless, would be more than we could bear. The rupture of the
link between dull people, consisting in the fraternal agreement that
something is too clever for them, and a shot beyond them, is no