Those who detect irony in Comedy do so because they choose to see it in
life. Poverty, says the satirist, has nothing harder in itself than that
it makes men ridiculous. But poverty is never ridiculous to Comic
perception until it attempts to make its rags conceal its bareness in a
forlorn attempt at decency, or foolishly to rival ostentation. Caleb
Balderstone, in his endeavour to keep up the honour of a noble household
in a state of beggary, is an exquisitely comic character. In the case of
'poor relatives,' on the other hand, it is the rich, whom they perplex,
that are really comic; and to laugh at the former, not seeing the comedy
of the latter, is to betray dulness of vision. Humourist and Satirist
frequently hunt together as Ironeists in pursuit of the grotesque, to the
exclusion of the Comic. That was an affecting moment in the history of
the Prince Regent, when the First Gentleman of Europe burst into tears at
a sarcastic remark of Beau Brummell's on the cut of his coat. Humour,
Satire, Irony, pounce on it altogether as their common prey.
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