buked, as a sign that
the jester is not recognising the rights of his company, and
outstepping the laws of civility and decency.

It is a very difficult thing to say what humour is, and probably it is
a thing that is not worth trying to define. It resides in the
incongruity of speech and behaviour with the surrounding
circumstances.

I remember once seeing two tramps disputing by the roadside, with the
gravity which is given to human beings by being slightly overcome with
drink. I suppose that one ought not to be amused by the effects of
drunkenness, but after all one does not wish people to be drunk that
one may be amused. The two tramps in question were ragged and
infinitely disreputable. Just as I came up, the more tattered of the
two flung his hat on the ground, with a lofty gesture like that of a
king abdicating, and said, "I'll go no further with you!" The other
said, "Why do you say that? Why will you go no further with me?" The
first replied, "No, I'll go no further with you!" The other said, "I
must know why you will go no further with me--you must tell me that!"
The first replied, with great dignity, "Well, I will tell you that! It
lowers my self-respect to be seen with a man like you!"

That is the sort of incongruity I mean. The tragic solemnity of a man
who might have changed clothes with the nearest scarecrow without a
perceptible difference, and whose life was evidently not ordered by
any excessive self-respect, falling back on the dignity of human
nature in order to be rid of a companion as disreputable as himself,
is what makes the scene so grotesque, and yet in a sense so
impressive, because it shows a lurking standard of conduct which no
pitiableness of degradation could obliterate. I think that is a good
illustration of what I mean by humour, because in the presence of such
a scene it is possible to have three perfectly distinct emotions. One
may be sorry with all one's heart that men should fall to such
conditions, and feel that it is a stigma on our social machinery that
it should be so. Those two melancholy figures were a sad blot upon
the wholesome countryside! Yet one may also discern a hope in the mere
possibility of framing an ideal under such discouraging circumstances,
which will be, I have no sort of doubt, a seed of good in the upward
progress of the poor soul which grasped it; because indeed I have no
doubt that the miserable creature _is_ on an upward path, and that
even if there is