out all the latent absurdity of the
"sixieme et septieme arron-dissements," in the twinkling of an eye. So
is it with the mere "domicile;" with the aid of but a little of the
burlesque of life, the suit at law to "reintegrer le domicile conjugal"
becomes as grotesque as a phrase can make it. Even "a domicile"
merely--the word of every shopman--is, in the unconscious mouths of the
speakers, always awaiting the lightest touch of farce, if only an
Englishman hears it; so is the advice of the police that you shall
"circuler" in the street; so is the request, posted up, that you shall
not, in the churches.

So are the serious and ordinary phrases, "maison nuptiale," "maison
mortuaire," and the still more serious "repos dominical," "oraison
dominicale." There is no majesty in such words. The unsuspicious
gravity with which they are spoken broadcast is not to be wondered at,
the language offering no relief of contrast; and what is much to the
credit of the comic sensibility of literature is the fact that, through
this general unconsciousness, the ridicule of a thousand authors of
comedy perceives the fun, and singles out the familiar thing, and compels
that most elaborate dulness to amuse us. _Us_, above all, by virtue of
the custom of counterchange here set forth.

Who shall say whether, by operation of the same exchange, the English
poets that so persist in France may not reveal something within the
English language--one would be somewhat loth to think so--reserved to the
French reader peculiarly? Byron to the multitude, Edgar Poe to the
select? Then would some of the mysteries of French reading of English be
explained otherwise than by the plainer explanation that has hitherto
satisfied our haughty curiosity. The taste for rhetoric seemed to
account for Byron, and the desire of the rhetorician to claim a taste for
poetry seemed to account for Poe. But, after all, _patatras_! Who can
say?

HARLEQUIN MERCUTIO

The first time that Mercutio fell upon the English stage, there fell with
him a gay and hardly human figure; it fell, perhaps finally, for English
drama. That manner of man--Arlecchino, or Harlequin--had outlived his
playmates, Pantaleone, Brighella, Colombina, and the Clown. A little of
Pantaleone survives in old Capulet, a little in the father of the Shrew,
but the life of Mercutio in the one play, and of the subordinate Tranio
in the other, is less quickly spent, less easily put out, than the