Passages
of Rabelais, one or two in Don Quixote, and the Supper in the Manner of
the Ancients, in Peregrine Pickle, are of a similar cataract of laughter.
But it is not illuminating; it is not the laughter of the mind. Moliere's
laughter, in his purest comedies, is ethereal, as light to our nature, as
colour to our thoughts. The Misanthrope and the Tartuffe have no audible
laughter; but the characters are steeped in the comic spirit. They
quicken the mind through laughter, from coming out of the mind; and the
mind accepts them because they are clear interpretations of certain
chapters of the Book lying open before us all. Between these two stand
Shakespeare and Cervantes, with the richer laugh of heart and mind in
one; with much of the Aristophanic robustness, something of Moliere's
delicacy.
The laughter heard in circles not pervaded by the Comic idea, will sound
harsh and soulless, like versified prose, if you step into them with a
sense of the distinction. You will fancy you have changed your habitation
to a planet remoter from the sun.
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