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drama, like all other things, was put down because it put itself down. It had become intolerably corrupt, and went the way of all flesh. But the contrast between the two forces is typical. The dramatists represent the sense of humour; the laughing, mocking spirit which delights in contrast, and piques itself on never overlooking the sunny side of things. They had incomparably the best of the joke. The snivelling, canting, whining rogues were ridiculed with admirable spirit. The Puritans, however, had the best of it in the long run; for Puritanism represents the conviction that, on the whole, the world is anything but a joke; and that a manly spirit will sometimes have to take it in the most grim and serious earnest. The conflict has gone on ever since, and will probably go on in one shape or another for some time to come. The humour, indeed, is not all on one side. The greatest of modern humorists is also the most thorough Puritan. The strongest perception of the serious issues which underlie our frivolous lives, the profoundest sense of the infinities which surround our petty world, may express itself in an irony more trenchant than solemn denunciation. Human nature is too oddly mixed to allow of such sharp divisions being perfectly accurate; and, having already renounced the attempt to define humour, I admit some thinkers who may fairly be called humorous are in alliance with the cause to which humorists, as such, are naturally opposed. Nor, again, do I wish to deny that as there is a time for everything, so there is a time for jesting, and, within proper limits, a time even for the Elizabethan drama. Shakspeare was a good writer; and one or two of his successors deserve some of the things that have been said about them.

Why, if this be true, is humour so highly valued? Our answer is easy. One of the best things that Pope ever said, and he has said more things deserving to be so called than perhaps any other writer, was that Gentle dulness ever loves a joke.

I am almost daily reminded of the truth of this saying; I doubt not that it will be illustrated afresh for anybody who cares to defend my positions. He will find that the most vigorous defenders of a sense of humour will be precisely the people who are most incapable of humorous perception. I never, for example, knew a person thoroughly deaf to humour who did not worship Miss Austen, or, when her writings were assailed, defend themselves by saying that the assailant had no sense of humour. Miss Austen, in fact, seems to be the very type of that kind of humour which charms one large class of amiable persons; and Austenolatry is perhaps the most intolerant and dogmatic of literary creeds. To deny Miss Austen's marvellous literary skill would be simply to convict oneself of the grossest stupidity. It is probable, however, that as much skill may have been employed in painting a bit of old china as in one of Raphael's masterpieces. We do not therefore say that it possesses equal merit. And, on the same principle, allowing all possible praise to Miss Austen within her own sphere, I should dispute the conclusion that she was therefore entitled to be ranked with the great authors who have

sounded the depths of human passion, or found symbols for the finest speculations of the human intellect, instead of amusing themselves with the humours of a country tea-table. Comparative failure in the highest effects is more creditable than complete success in the lower. Now the popularity of Miss Austen with non-humorous persons (I should expressly admit, to avoid any false interpretation, that she is also popular with some humorists) shows what it is which mankind really understand by humour. They are really shocked by its more powerful manifestations. They call it cynicism. They like Dickens, who was beyond all doubt a true humorist, because he was not a thoroughgoing humorist; because he could drop his humour and become purely and simply maudlin at a moment's notice: that is to say, precisely because of the qualities which offend the more refined judges and the truest humorists. They like Miss Austen, on a similar ground, because her humour (to use a vulgar, but the only phrase) is drawn so excessively mild. There is not only nothing improper in her books, nothing which could prevent them from being given by a clergyman to his daughter as a birthday present; but there is not a single flash of biting satire. She is absolutely at peace with her most comfortable world. She never even hints at a suspicion that squires and parsons of the English type are not an essential part of the order of things; if she touches upon poverty, the only reflection suggested is one of gentle scorn for people who can't keep a butler themselves or take tea with people who do so. When the amiable Fanny Price in Mansfield Park finds that her mother has to eat cold mutton and mend the children's clothes, her only thought is to return to her rich uncle. The harsh hideous facts with which ninety-nine out of a hundred of our fellowcreatures are constantly struggling, are never admitted into this delightful world of well-warmed country-houses. Humour of the gentle variety which charms us in Miss Austen, or the humour of Addison's Knight, or of Goldsmith's Vicar, is indeed charming in its way and may well be popular. It is but the gentle smile with which an amiable character disarms our jealousy of virtue. You may really admire my Christian charity, it seems to say, without grudging, for I wear coarse stockings and commit half-a-dozen harmless solecisms of manner. You need not be afraid that I shall call upon you to be heroic, or invite your attention to the seamy side of the world. All the evils to which flesh is heir can be sufficiently cured by the milk of human kindness. Sentimentality that won't make you cry, sympathy that will never become painful, quick observation that will never ask really awkward questions, these are sufficient weapons wherewith to conquer this hard world. A gentle optimism is the most popular of creeds, for we all want some excuse for turning away our eyes from certain facts. And optimism put so gracefully and deferentially is fascinating within its sphere. Life becomes an idyl with just enough spice of latent satire to prevent it from becoming insipid. Let us all drink plenty of milk-punch and forget the laws of Political Economy, seems to be the moral of Dickens's Christmas Carols; and in

a less boisterous form, fitted to feebler animal spirits, that seems to be the substantial creed of the gentler variety of humorist.

There is a time for such moods: and they have been interpreted with infinite grace and delicacy by some of the writers noticed; but between such humour and the humour of Swift or Fielding there is a whole world of difference. The mocking goblin has been put into livery, and can wait gracefully at a tea-table or become a pleasant assistant in a library. The "Berserker" spirit, which some critics find to be the essential element of English literature, is thoroughly quenched within him. No thought of revolting against the world, of outraging its decencies, flying in the face of its conventionalities, and pouring ridicule on its holiest creeds, is encouraged by him more than by a thorough English governess. Delight in such humour may therefore be comparable with dislike to humour in its most genuine forms. And consequently, humour of the old savage kind is pretty well obsolete. A wretched caricature of it exists in what is called American humour. The trick has become so stale that one may hope that it too will speedily expire. The whole art consists in speaking of something hideous in a tone of levity. Learn to make a feeble joke about murder and sudden death and you are qualified to set up as a true humorist. Learn the ordinary newspaper English, and apply it to some horrors where it is manifestly out of place, and you can thenceforward make jokes by machinery. The true humorist might be brutal, but he had real intensity of feeling. When Swift discussed the propriety of converting Irish babies into an article of food, he went beyond all permissible limits and even defeated his own satirical aim by the coarseness of his images; but at least he showed concentrated wrath and righteous indignation. When the same method is applied by writers who really aim only at producing a grin, it rapidly becomes disgusting. The popularity of the sham article shows that our taste for the genuine has grown weak.

Is this a good thing? Does it show that we have become squeamish or tender-hearted? Are our nerves too weak for the old horseplay of our forefathers, or do we take too solemn a view of life to bear such trifling? These are questions not to be easily decided; and yet one must admit that when the historian of English æsthetic literature in the nineteenth century arises, there is one quality which he will certainly not find in excess. It may be tender, delicate, graceful, or anything you please; but nobody will ever call it manly. The general want of vigour is perhaps after all at the bottom of the deficiency in good hearty reckless humour; and therefore much as we may rejoice at the absence of some of its worst manifestations, I fear we shall not be able to congratulate ourselves unreservedly when we have reached the consummation to which we seem to be so rapidly tending, and can declare that the humorous has been finally banished from our literature.

An Artist's Life in the Fifteenth Century.

[FROM RECENTLY DISCOVERED DOCUMENTS.]

It seems as if, with the hero-worship which makes us delight to honour the great deeds of great men, were intimately mingled-even as the warp with the woof of some woven stuff-another tendency, namely, the desire to gain a familiar knowledge of those who have charmed our imaginations by genius, ennobled our hearts by goodness, or exalted our spirits by the brightness of their splendid fortunes. We love not only to behold these demi-gods at their ambrosial banquet among the shining summits, "purpureo bibenteș ore nectar," but to share with them, as it were, the daily bread of humanity; to touch their hands, to see them live their household lives, and to enjoy with regard to them something of the feeling which inspired the well-known exclamation of the artist before a brother-artist's masterpiece, " Anch' io son pittore!" "I, too, am a man! And if my head be not crowned with your laurels, yet my heart beats as yours once beat, and I claim kinship with my great relations."

This sentiment, too, is the thread that strings together the centuries for us. What a strange cordial glow of pleasure it awakens to recognise across the lapse of three hundred years the household voices of husband The and wife, child and parent, such as sound daily in our ears! simplest and homeliest details about the generations who have passed across the theatre of this world before us have a subtle charm for most minds. The theme is old, but cannot become threadbare, any more than the turf that carpets our fields. Like the grass, it is perennially fresh; it grows, and is not made.

And he

Thanks to the indefatigable and learned researches of Professor Adamo Rossi, Librarian of the Communal Library of Perugia, we are enabled to reconstruct with some vividness the history of a painter who, if he does not rank among the very greatest, was yet a man of mark in a period when the art of painting had almost reached its highest point of glory. For a long time the honour of having been Perugino's master was attributed to him; erroneously, however, as we shall see. is the only Folignese painter whom garrulous Giorgio Vasari condescends to mention. Pictures by his hand exist in many European galleries; but in every catalogue, guide-book, or art-history hitherto published, these works are attributed to "the Folignese painter, Niccolò Alunno," in accordance with the name bestowed upon him by Vasari, and confirmed later by the authority of Jacobilli, a native historian of Foligno. The world, however, has been mistaken all this time.

The real style and title of the so-called Niccolò Alunno runs thus: Maestro Niccolò di Liberatore da Foligno; that is to say, Nicholas, son of Liberator of Foligno.

Surnames, at least for those of plebeian birth, were far from being in general use when Maestro Niccolò flourished. Many similar errors have been exposed by Professor Rossi's patient and intelligent labours. For example, the great Perugino, pride and glory of the Umbrian school, is written of by (I quote Professor Rossi's own phrase) "the servile herd of the erudite," as Pietro Vanucci, making Vanucci a family name. But the fact is that he was known to his contemporaries as "Pietro di Atto di Vanuccio, Perugino;" in our vernacular, "Peter, son of Atto, son of Jack, the Perugian." Vanuccio was a diminutive formed from Giovanni-Giovanuccio. Even Raphael came by his surname, Sanzio, in the same fashion. He was Raffaello di Giovanni di Santi, da Urbino. Santi is to this day a common baptismal name in Italy, as offering a compendious form to express the holy patrons to whom the child at his christening is peculiarly dedicated, "All-theSaints!" It reminds one a little of the parental solicitude of the kings and queens in the fairy tales, who invite all the fairies, en masse, to stand godmothers to their little prince or princess. However, to return to the realms of fact and documents, it should be known that until the young Raphael went to Rome he was destitute of a surname. There, some one of the classical cardinals who then frequented the Papal Court the learned Pagan Bembo himself, may be !-doubtless conferred on the famous artist a family appellation by latinising his grandfather's simple name of Santi into Sanctius, which latter was easily corrupted by Italian tongues into Sanzio.

The history of the name of Alunno, conferred on Maestro Niccolò, is more singular. I will give it in Professor Rossi's own words, for to him is due the honour of having discovered it :

"As it had never occurred to me to read the cognomen Alunno, either in any of the numerous works signed by Maestro Niccolò, or in any of the still more numerous public acts in which it was necessary that he should be fully and distinctly named, I set myself to find out how and whence Vasari had derived it; and after a long search I believe I have discovered its origin in the following fact. There exists in the church of St. Nicholas at Foligno a picture representing, in the principal compartment, the birth of Christ, and containing in the other divisions various saints and angels. On the base of the picture are two angels supporting a scroll with an inscription, of which these are the four first lines:

AD LECTOREM.

Nobile testata est pingi pia Brisida quondam
Hoc opus; O nimium munera grata Deo.
Si petis auctoris nomen; Nicholaus Alumnus
Fulginie patrie pulcra corona sue (sic.)

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