It will at any rate hardly be questioned that it is
unwholesome for men and women to see themselves as they are, if they are
no better than they should be: and they will not, when they have improved
in manners, care much to see themselves as they once were. That comes of
realism in the Comic art; and it is not public caprice, but the
consequence of a bettering state. {2} The same of an immoral may be said
of realistic exhibitions of a vulgar society.
The French make a critical distinction in ce qui remue from ce qui
emeut--that which agitates from that which touches with emotion. In the
realistic comedy it is an incessant remuage--no calm, merely bustling
figures, and no thought. Excepting Congreve's Way of the World, which
failed on the stage, there was nothing to keep our comedy alive on its
merits; neither, with all its realism, true portraiture, nor much
quotable fun, nor idea; neither salt nor soul.
The French have a school of stately comedy to which they can fly for
renovation whenever they have fallen away from it; and their having such
a school is mainly the reason why, as John Stuart Mill pointed out, they
know men and women more accurately than we do.
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