Sir
Roger—What have we here?
Giles—There is everything under the sun set down
with some show of reason; they run atilt at the world,
and treat men and manners as familiar as an old hat.
Sir Roger—Think you they protest too much? I like
a matter disposed bravely, but—
Giles—Methinks they have a genial tongue. Will
you hear them?
Sir Roger—Well, an’ it be not too long I’ll
have some sack, and you read on.
—
Old Play.
On
my humble bookshelves a place has ever been set apart
as sacred to volumes of wit and humor. I cannot exactly
understand the nature of a man who is impervious to
the influences of this essential department of literature.
Like Shakespeare’s man who did not appreciate
music, he would seem to me a sort of moral monstrosity,
lacking one of the qualities that go to constitute an
all round personality. He may be a heavyweight, to use
a sporting expression, in the affairs of life, but he
is among his fellows but bread without leaven, sandwich
without the mustard, wine without the sparkle; and,
no matter what may be his ideas or qualities as a worker,
such a man is sure in the end to be a failure. I think
we ought to be very charitable toward many bigots and
other persons of narrow and extreme tendencies, who
have attempted rabid and impractical changes in society.
History may regard them as fanatics and even as brutal
persecutors, but it seems to me the poor fellows meant
well, but, lacking the necessary balance, they failed
in the essential quality, a sense of humor. Men and
women of an intensely zealous nature, who are wrapped
up in their own ideas of bettering the world, are perfectly
incapable of looking at the ridiculous side of anything.
On the other hand, the great reformers of all ages have
been intensely susceptible to humor, and appreciated
it to the fullest extent. Hence all of the greatest
humorists have been closely identified with the world’s
progress. Many brutalities have been ridiculed out of
society that graver influences would not have removed.
So humor and satire have their essential place and work
to do. In the education of the young this should always
be kept in mind. The sense of shame and of the ridiculous
are closely allied in character, and have much to do
with moulding the finer feelings and yet in keeping
the normal balance. It is a pity that some of the most
famous wit and satire of the past is so allied to indecency
of thought and expression that it is unreadable, and
disgusts and repels rather than pleases and instructs,
and nothing shows the gradual elevation of modern society
more than our disgust for this sort of thing in the
old writers. The remarkable genius of Rabelais and of
his apparent follower Swift cannot recompense the coarseness
of thought and expression they have left behind them.
The same must be said of the humor of Fielding and Smollett,
and of the rhymed satires of Pope and Dryden. At the
best, we can say that the age was coarse, and that they
mirrored its grossness. It is with a sense of relief
that we turn to our modern humor and satire, and at
once we are struck by the kindly humor of Irving and
Dickens, and the worldly-wise but kindly satire of Thackeray.
And the world will never in a sense tire of such creations
as the Connecticut schoolmaster in “Ichabod Crane;”
the cockney immortal “Sam Weller” or of
the genial worldly wisdom of the somewhat blase but
almost lovable (society man) Major Pendennis. To come
down to humorists pure and simple, Canada and the United
States have produced three of the most famous of this
century—Sam Slick (Haliburton), Artemus Ward (Browne)
and Mark Twain (Clemens). Of the three the Canadian
Haliburton was undoubtedly the founder of this school
of American humorous writers, and in his “Sam
Slick,” immortalised the sharp, shrewd Connecticut
Yankee, who, from being a vendor of important clocks
and wooden nutmegs, rose to be an ambassador, and still
remaining the same remarkable and interesting personage.
The followers of Haliburton were legion, but Browne
in his “Artemus Ward,” the travelling showman
of the era of the war, with his moral waxworks and civilised
wild beasts, rivaled and surpassed Haliburton. Both
Haliburton and Browne became noted in England as well
as America. The present king of humor, Mark Twain (Samuel
L. Clemens), is one of the most remarkable personalities
of the American Republic, and his famous “Innocents
Abroad,” which all have read or ought to read,
and his “Tom Sawyer” and “Yankee at
King Arthur’s Court,” are books that mark
an epoch in the upward grade of the humorous literature
of the age.
C.
This
year the French will celebrate the centenary anniversary
of the composition of the “Marseillaise,”
a song which did more for the armies of France in the
last days of the old revolution than all the genius
of their generals; and though it did not avail to save
the decrepit wreck of their power at Woerth or Wedan,
nevertheless when the next war shall arise its thunder
will be terrible upon the Rhine. Modern France is the
France of the revolution, and the very soul of the revolution
pulses in the Marseillaise, a spirit wild, daring and
titanic. It is the most tremendous call to battle that
ever sprang to the lips of man. Its note is inspired,
fierce, aggressive. But like the military fervor that
gave it birth its passion is too high to be maintained.
It represents the charge, the first splendid fury of
the attack; it does not fit so well the hour of uncertainty,
of dogged defence, still less of miserable defeat. “The
Watch on the Rhine” is a much better “working”
battle song. It represents the feeling of a nation of
serious, home-loving people, who in the hour of solemn
necessity go forth not to conquer or even to win glory
but simply to defend their fatherland. It is strong,
sonorous, somewhat sad, a spirit and a cry that will
stand, and not give back. The Germans have a great many
very fine battle songs, most of them the product of
the War of the Liberation. Through all of them there
runs a peculiar vein of tragic sadness. In the midst
of their romantic heroism they never lose sight of the
awfulness of the battle field and the piteousness of
the soldier’s death. They are tenderer, more human,
more deeply tragical than the French songs.
L.
A
review of Lord Tennyson’s “Foresters,”
in a recent issue of The Athenænum, after stating
the eagerness with which the production of that play
will be awaited in England, goes on to make some rather
startling observations on the relative importance of
verdicts of play-goers in England and America. He concedes
without an argument that the superiority is “with
the Americans in regard to the acceptance of drama as
a literary form. An American first night audience is
almost as intelligent and almost as artistic as a Parisian
one, while the intelligence and culture of England are
poorly represented on such occasions in London.”
There was no urgent call for the writer to say this,
and the statement must have proceeded from reflection,
and must have had some personal experience of both audiences
as a foundation, otherwise it would have been hazardous.
It would be hardly prudent to found such an assertion
upon the success of the new play in New York, for there
are special reasons why it should attract and interest
an American audience. In fact, the production of the
play is almost an international episode, as the part
of “Maid Marian” was at first intended for
Miss Mary Anderson, and was afterwards altered for Miss
Ada Rehan. Even if the writer is not qualified to speak
with final authority of the position of the American
audience he is certainly at home in his criticisms of
the English one, and he gives a very clear and unhesitating
opinion as to its culture and acuteness. “It is
only in the cheaper parts of the house that intelligence
and attention are still awarded to the play.”
I find that sentence genuinely gratifying, and it is
what one would naturally expect; it is probably just
as true of the American audience if the skits of the
caricaturists have any foundation in fact. It must necessarily
follow that the class of the population who have the
most active interest in life, and whose outlook is not
limited by any sacred social code, will bring to the
consideration of any work of art a livelier perception
and a more nimble intelligence. It is inevitable that
the people who live and whose experience is of the earth
and the rough facts of life will most readily see the
truth and beauty of those types by which the artist
has endeavored to reproduce the essence of events and
emotions which have been and will be to them matters
of daily occurrence. It is in their case more a matter
of sympathy than of culture. Our own audiences would
have an equal appreciation if they had a chance to exercise
their native taste. But unfortunately the “stage”
is non-existent in Canada, and it will be some decades
yet before we add that final flower of culture to our
national civilisation.
S.
Certainly
custom is a more thorough inculcator of patience than
all the precepts of the stoics. I have often wondered
as I sat in church on a quiet murmurous summer morning,
longing for the end of some pathetically futile sermon,
and battling with the sea of sleep that threatened every
moment to overwhelm me, why it is that so many sensible
people in so many thousands of churches persist in placidly
subjecting themselves to a torture which they would
not endure for a moment in any other sort of building.
I do not see why it should be established as a kind
of eleventh commandment that every good Christian soul
must submit to be plagued with a sermon, good or bad,
at least once a Sunday. In the Presbyterian, Methodist
and other bodies, where the ceremonial of religious
service is so slight, I suppose that the sermon is unavoidable
and the only resource for those who follow these branches
of the common faith is to insist on it that their clergy
be selected only from those who have the gift of eloquence.
In the Roman and Anglican bodies, however, the case
is different and they ought to do away with the incompetent
preacher. The clergy should be divided into two distinct
classes, the parish priests and the itinerant preaching
priests. We know to our discomfort that many—one
might say most—of those clergyman who are most
useful and most beloved as parish workers and private
spiritual comforters are hopelessly incapable of exerting
any powerful influence from the pulpit. These men should
be restricted to the work for which they are fitted,
and in which their interest is most centred. Those priests
who are found after thorough probation to be gifted
with the power of moving speech should be set apart
and formed into an unbeneficed body of preachers, whose
duty it should be to go about among all the parishes
in rotation delivering genuine and effective sermons.
In this way the working parish priest would not be withdrawn
from the occupations nearest to his heart by the necessity
of composing toilsome and unendurable discourses, and
the naturally-gifted preacher would be enabled by undisturbed
study and meditation to develop to its utmost the bountiful
power that is in him. Church men might not have sermons
every Sunday, but when they did have them they would
be of that magical and inspiriting kind that would more
than compensate them for an occasional silence.
L.
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