green to wed our blue;
But whether note of joy, or knell,
Not his own Father-singer knew;
Nor yet can any mortal tell,
Save only how it shivers through;
The breast of us a sounded shell,
The blood of us a lighted dew.

Well in music, in painting, this graduating which gives right
proportion and, with proportion, a sense of distance, of
atmosphere, is called _Value._ Let us, for a minute or two, assay
this particular meaning of Value upon life and literature, and
first upon life, or, rather upon one not negligible facet of
life.

I suppose that if an ordinary man of my age were asked which has
better helped him to bear the burs of life--religion or a sense
of humour--he would, were he quite honest, be gravelled for an
answer. Now the best part of a sense of humour, as you know
without my telling you, consists in a sense of proportion; a
habit, abiding and prompt at command, of seeing all human,
affairs in their just perspective, so that its happy possessor at
once perceives anything odd or distorted or overblown to be an
excrescence, a protuberance, a swelling, literally a _humour_:
and the function of Thalia, the Comic Spirit, as you may read in
Meredith's "Essay on Comedy," is just to prick these humours. I
will but refer you to Meredith's "Essay," and here cite you the
words of an old schoolmaster:

It would seem to be characteristic of the same mind to appreciate
the beauty of ideas in just proportion and harmonious relation to
each other, and the absurdity of the same ideas when distorted or
brought into incongruous juxtaposition. The exercise of this
sense of humour ... compels the mind to form a picture to itself,
accompanied by pleasurable emotion; and what is this but setting
the imagination to work, though in topsy-turvy fashion? Nay, in
such a case, imagination plays a double part, since it is only by
instantaneous comparison with ideal fitness and proportion
that it can grasp at full force the grotesqueness of their
contraries[2].

Let us play with an example for one moment. A child sees such an
excrescence, such an offence upon proportion, in an immoderately
long nose. He is apt to call attention to it on the visage of a
visitor: it intrigues him in Perrault's 'Prince Charming' and
many a fairy tale: it amuses him in Lear's "Book of Nonsense":

There was an old man with a Nose,
Who said 'If you choose to suppose
That my nose is too long
You are c