'I
came here purposely to avoid you,' says the patient. 'I came here
purposely to take care of you,' says the doctor. Off they go, and come to
a swollen brook. The patient clears it handsomely: the doctor tumbles in.
All the field are alive with the heartiest relish of every incident and
every cross-light on it; and dull would the man have been thought who had
not his word to say about it when riding home.
In our prose literature we have had delightful Comic writers. Besides
Fielding and Goldsmith, there is Miss Austen, whose Emma and Mr. Elton
might walk straight into a comedy, were the plot arranged for them.
Galt's neglected novels have some characters and strokes of shrewd
comedy. In our poetic literature the comic is delicate and graceful above
the touch of Italian and French. Generally, however, the English elect
excel in satire, and they are noble humourists. The national disposition
is for hard-hitting, with a moral purpose to sanction it; or for a rosy,
sometimes a larmoyant, geniality, not unmanly in its verging upon
tenderness, and with a singular attraction for thick-headedness, to
decorate it with asses' ears and the most beautiful sylvan haloes.
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