ation. And these wise men are
strong in their opinion that we should encourage the Comic Spirit, who
is after all our own offspring, to relieve the Book. Comedy, they say,
is the true diversion, as it is likewise the key of the great Book, the
music of the Book. They tell us how it condenses whole sections of the
book in a sentence, volumes in a character; so that a fair pan of a
book outstripping thousands of leagues when unrolled may be compassed
in one comic sitting.

For verily, say they, we must read what we can of it, at least the page
before us, if we would be men. One, with an index on the Book, cries
out, in a style pardonable to his fervency: The remedy of your
frightful affliction is here, through the stillatory of Comedy, and not
in Science, nor yet in Speed, whose name is but another for voracity.
Why, to be alive, to be quick in the soul, there should be diversity in
the companion throbs of your pulses. Interrogate them. They lump along
like the old loblegs of Dobbin the horse; or do their business like
cudgels of carpet-thwackers expelling dust or the cottage-clock
pendulum teaching the infant hour over midnight simple arithmetic. This
too in spite of Bacchus. And let them gallop; let them gallop with the
God bestriding them; gallop to Hymen, gallop to Hades, they strike the
same note. Monstrous monotonousness has enfolded us as with the arms of
Amphitrite! We hear a shout of war for a diversion.--Comedy he
pronounces to be our means of reading swiftly and comprehensively. She
it is who proposes the correcting of pretentiousness, of inflation, of
dulness, and of the vestiges of rawness and grossness to be found among
us. She is the ultimate civilizer, the polisher, a sweet cook. If, he
says, she watches over sentimentalism with a birch-rod, she is not
opposed to romance. You may love, and warmly love, so long as you are
honest. Do not offend reason. A lover pretending too much by one
foot's length of pretence, will have that foot caught in her trap. In
Comedy is the singular scene of charity issuing of disdain under the
stroke of honourable laughter: an Ariel released by Prospero's wand
from the fetters of the damned witch Sycorax. And this laughter of
reason refreshed is floriferous, like the magical great gale of the
shifty Spring deciding for Summer. You hear it giving the delicate
spirit his liberty. Listen, for comparison, to an unleavened society: a
low as of the udderful cow past milking hour! O fo