ould lead us an endless dance.

The advantage of the humorist is that he cannot be a man of one
idea--for the essence of humor lies in the contrast of two. He is the
universal disenchanter. He makes himself quite as much the subject of
ironical study as his neighbor. Is he inclined to fancy himself a great
poet, or an original thinker, he remembers the man who dared not sit
down because a certain part of him was made of glass, and muses
smilingly, "There are many forms of hypochondria." This duality in his
mind which constitutes his intellectual advantage is the defect of his
character. He is futile in action because in every path he is confronted
by the horns of an eternal dilemma, and is apt to come to the conclusion
that nothing is very much worth the while. If he be independent of
exertion, his life commonly runs to waste. If he turn author, it is
commonly from necessity; Fielding wrote for money, and "Don Quixote" was
the fruit of a debtors' prison.

It seems to be an instinct of human nature to analyze, to define, and to
classify. We like to have things conveniently labelled and laid away in
the mind, and feel as if we knew them better when we have named them.
And so to a certain extent we do. The mere naming of things by their
appearance is science; the knowing them by their qualities is wisdom;
and the being able to express them by some intense phrase which combines
appearance and quality as they affect the imagination through the senses
by impression, is poetry. A great part of criticism is scientific, but
as the laws of art are only echoes of the laws of nature, it is possible
in this direction also to arrive at real knowledge, or, if not so far as
that, at some kind of classification that may help us toward that
excellent property--compactness of mind.

Addison has given the pedigree of humor: the union of truth and goodness
produces wit; that of wit with wrath produces humor. We should say that
this was rather a pedigree of satire. For what trace of wrath is there
in the humor of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne,
Fielding, or Thackeray? The absence of wrath is the characteristic of
all of them. Ben Jonson says that

When some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers
In their constructions all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a humor.

But this, again, is the definition of a humorous character,--of a