RIDICULE.

Ridicule is vituperation accompanied with Derision. To be ourselves laughed at, or derided, is a severe infliction. Hence to laugh at, or deride, another person gives us a feast of malignity.

Vituperation passes into Ridicule when it fastens upon conduct allied with weakness, indignity, insignificance or contempt. An unusually mischievous character, possessed of power, may be the object of vituperation and opprobrium, but not necessarily of ridicule. We may occasionally combine the two, by seizing the weak points of a character in other respects powerful.

The Arts of Ridicule, therefore, consist in finding out all the circumstances that can insinuate weakness, or attach indignity and disesteem. To make one out a fool; to suggest bodily feebleness, inefficiency or ugliness; to humble pride in any way,—are means to provoke derision or ridicule. Nevertheless, we have still to take precautions against possible failure, as will be seen from the examples.*

HUMOUR.

1. There is a kind of Laughter that enters into the innocent pleasures of mankind. It still grows out of the delight in malignity; which, however, is softened and redeemed in a variety of ways.

Although every instance of the Ludicrous may not be obviously connected with malignant pleasure, the great majority of cases will be seen to involve it. But while vituperation and ridicule aim at severe and humiliating inflictions, the Ludicrous can flourish on less painful, or even trivial, discomfitures and disasters. There is a wellmarked difference between ridicule and raillery; yet a difference, not in kind, but in degree. Nothing can better attest the reality and depth of our malignant pleasures than the delight obtained from causing or witnessing even the most trifling annoyances.

2. While Laughter is a marked accompaniment of

* While the substantive 'Ridicule' is expressive of a severe form of vituperation, the adjective ridiculous' is much milder in its application; being very little stronger than the ludicrous or the laughable.

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pleasure generally, it is most identified with certain special modes of pleasure.

1

As Laughter is common to Ridicule and Humour, its causes and occasions may be here reviewed: these being wider in their sweep than the effects special to our present topic of discussion.

(1) It is an accompaniment of mere exuberant spirits, without any more special motive than abundance of nervous energy.

(2) A sudden burst of good fortune or success, no matter what or how, being productive of general elation of mind, will express itself in laughter among other joyful indications.

(3) Sudden re-action from constraint is a cause of the same general elation of mental tone, with its gleeful accompaniments. This enters into the Ludicrous, when levity is confronted with seriousness, gravity or solemnity.

(4) Victory in a conflict is a more specific occasion of laughter than any of the foregoing. Hence its tendency to accompany malign emotion in general. Vituperation, when successful as a fighting weapon, will occasion the laugh of victory. This passes into the laugh of Derision, wherein power, superiority or triumph of some sort is implicated.

(5) The laugh of self-complacency is well known; it is related more or less closely to the foregoing varieties.

(6) There is a laugh of kindliness and benevolence, which connects the state with our affectionate side, when we are in a happy frame, and able to bestow happiness.

The Ludicrous means laughing at some person or thing, thus excluding such occasions of laughter as animal spirits generally, and the smile of kindly affection. It points more particularly to Victory, Malignity and Power, as the examples will show.

In witnessing the infliction of pain or suffering, we are moved in opposite ways. On the one hand, we may be sympathetically affected, so as to make the pain our own; on the other hand, we may restrain sympathy and allow free scope to our malignant satisfaction. It is the mutual accommodation of these two opposing tendencies that determines the scope afforded to our enjoyment of the ludicrous. Some pains affect our sympathies exclusively: such are the severer modes of inflictions and calamity. Among savages, a drowning man's struggles will be viewed with exultant laughter; while the enlargement of the sphere of sympathy is a characteristic of human progress. The admissible range of the Ludicrous is adapted to the standard of fellow-feeling prevalent among ourselves; so that, in surveying the literature of past times, we have to make due allowance for the varying range of sympathies prevailing in different ages and countries.

The following is a brief summary of the chief occasions of our enjoyment of the Ludicrous in actual life.

A very large department is expressed by the spectacle of

weakness, impotence, failure, miscarriage, stumbling, being thwarted; the circumstances being such as not to bring sympathy into play.

Being beaten in a conflict; being checked in anything we have undertaken; committing some gross error in a public display; blunders, inaccuracies and awkwardness of speech; being put about by trifles; making great exertions for small results; being chaffed and jeered at; being slightly intoxicated; being defied by our inferiors;-these, and such like, expose us to the laughter of bystanders, the infliction not being severe enough to rouse either our sympathy or some of the strong emotions, as anger or fear.

Weakness in all forms, not of a kind to rouse sympathy, may excite laughter. When the love-passion becomes uncontrollable and extreme, as a temporary frenzy, it is apt to be laughed at. If it can maintain itself in permanence, it is admired.

Of all forms of weakness, Folly in some shape is the kind most universally adopted into Comedy. The ways that a man may make a fool of himself are countless; and comic characters have been drawn on this type in every age. One favourite mode is the solemn assertion of common-places, as in Don Quixote. Another mode is extreme seriousness in trifles, as Lamb's Sarah Battle'.

It is an aggravation when weakness, or failure, has been accompanied with assumption, boasting, self-conceit, coxcombry; the suspension of sympathy being then most complete. To throw down or humiliate a swaggerer is always an unqualified pleasure. When weakness is accompanied with modesty, humility or unpretentiousness, the sting is effectually drawn.

It is only giving one single aspect, under the present head, to mention the wide-spread influence of Loss of Dignity, or Degradation in esteem or importance. We refrain, in ordinary circumstances, from rejoicing over injury to person or estate, but we do not maintain the same sympathetic regard for people's conventional dignity in the eyes of the world. We are naturally jealous of any superiority in this respect, and when something happens to pull down any one from the pinnacle of a superior position, we are apt to indulge ourselves in a burst of malicious gratification, and to signify it by the laugh.

The most expressive indication of weakness is fright; and hence the pleasure that we are apt to take in seeing any one suddenly terrified, there being no serious mischief in the case. Cowardice and timidity inspire either contempt or ridicule; and cowards are largely employed as material for the ludicrous.

There may be an equally gratifying proof of weakness in being thrown into a fit of grief, or made angry. This is one of the gratifications of teasing.

Hypocrisy receives its punishment by ridicule and laughter. Sanctimonious hypocrites are especially the butts of comedy.

A favourite variety of ludicrous degradation is the contact with filth or pollution, and the production of malodours; enough to

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cause annoyance without serious injury. To burn assafoetida in a room is considered a good practical joke. The pain is acute but temporary, and free from bad consequences.

The pleasure of causing or witnessing degradation extends to the established government, religion, and the sanctities and decencies of life. Hence vilification and profanation of the solemn and sacred rites of society may become causes of ludicrous pleasure. As, however, the respecters of law and religion are offended by such liberties, they are chiefly taken with creeds and ritual that are losing their hold of mankind; as in Lucian's severe ridicule of the pagan gods.

3. The Ludicrous or Humour, as a form of literary composition, must work on the same lines, and take up the same occasions, as in the actual; but with the advantage of an unlimited scope in imagining conjunctions suited to the effect; while the essence of the art lies in the mollifying ingredients that appease the sympathies without marring the delight.

The means to this end are various :

(1) As already implied, the Ludicrous in the form of Humour fastens on the slighter forms of giving pain. There is in consequence an unavoidable diminution of malignant pleasure; this, however, may be more than made up in the abeyance of sympathy, which permits the full swing of such enjoyment as the occasion supplies.

(2) In ludicrous degradation, we may aim at points of character that persons do not pride themselves upon, or else upon what cannot be seriously assailed.

We may laugh at the slovenliness in dress of one that is indifferent to appearance.

Macaulay shows his good humour in quoting a description of himself from Blackwood-' A little, splay-footed, ugly dumpling of a fellow,' and then remarking-Conceive how such a charge must affect a man so enamoured of his beauty as I am'.

Likewise, it is mere innocent raillery to pretend that a millionaire cannot afford indulgence and hospitality. The force of the jest would lie in an innuendo of stinginess.

(3) To make a person utter jests at his own expense is the most humorous of any. This dispenses with all sympathy, through the voluntary self-surrender of the party himself. This is the humour of the fools of Comedy.

To constitute a genial and good-humoured company, it

is essential that each, in his turn, should submit to be laughed at.

Sydney Smith's remark to the Chapter of St. Paul's, on the proposal to lay a wooden pavement round the building,if we lay our heads together, the thing is done,'-was witty and humorous. If any one outside had said,-'if you lay your heads together,'-it would have wanted the humour. Thackeray's Snobs of England' is said to be by one of themselves. At the time when the theories of the origin of language were hotly debated in the Philological Society, one of the members remarked, 'Every one of us thinks all the rest mad'; the view taken, at Shakespeare's dictation, of the English generally, by the gravedigger in Hamlet.

(4) The degradation may be made the occasion of a compliment. A man is often raised into importance by being publicly caricatured. It is possible to pass off, by the seasoning of a little jocularity, an amount of adulation that would otherwise make the object of it uncomfortable. (For examples, see WIT.)

(5) One great softening application is the mixture of tender and kindly feeling with the ludicrous effect. This is a recognized distinction between humourists in the best sense, as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Addison, Burns, Scott, Richter, and those that have little or no redeeming tenderness, as Swift, Pope, and Voltaire. Hence, the frequent remark that the same writer excels at once in pathos and in humour. There is humour in Froissart's saying- The Saxons take their pleasures sadly, after their fashion'. This brings out a touch of pity to temper the somewhat ridiculous picture.

(6) High poetic originality or beauty is accepted as redeeming the severity of derisive laughter. This is the one great justification of Aristophanes. Whence it is, that malignity, in every form,-whether vituperation, ridicule or humour-is rendered tolerable and acceptable by the genius of style, when nothing else would quiet our compunctions of pity for the victim. We shall have to advert more fully to the connexion with Wit, which has importance enough to be treated apart.

(7) The ludicrous may be the accompaniment of disquisitions on matters of knowledge or instruction, as in the political articles of Sydney Smith.

(8) There remains a large sphere of unchecked malignant