No collision of circumstances in
our mortal career strikes a light for them. It is but one step from being
agelastic to misogelastic, and the [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced], the laughter-hating, soon learns to dignify his dislike as
an objection in morality.
We have another class of men, who are pleased to consider themselves
antagonists of the foregoing, and whom we may term hypergelasts; the
excessive laughers, ever-laughing, who are as clappers of a bell, that
may be rung by a breeze, a grimace; who are so loosely put together that
a wink will shake them.
'. . . C'est n'estimer rien qu'estioner tout le monde,'
and to laugh at everything is to have no appreciation of the Comic of
Comedy.
Neither of these distinct divisions of non-laughers and over-laughers
would be entertained by reading The Rape of the Lock, or seeing a
performance of Le Tartuffe. In relation to the stage, they have taken in
our land the form and title of Puritan and Bacchanalian. For though the
stage is no longer a public offender, and Shakespeare has been revived on
it, to give it nobility, we have not yet entirely raised it above the
contention of these two parties.
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