n be made to laugh at
himself--strong antagonistic sensations and emotions being conquered by
complexity. To most persons nothing can be more solemn than the thought
of death, except its actual presence; but Theramenes was light-hearted
when the hemlock bowl was presented to him, and drinking it off could
not, as he threw out the dregs, resist exclaiming "To the health of the
lovely Critias."[23] Sir Thomas More was jocose upon the scaffold.
Baron Goerz, when being led to death, said to his cook--"It's all over
now, my friend, you will never cook me a good supper again." The poet
Kleist, who was killed in the battle of Kunersdorf, was seized with a
violent fit of laughter just before he expired, when he thought of the
extraordinary faces a Cossack, who had been plundering him, made over
the prize he had found. In the same way a lady told me that a friend of
hers, having had a severe fall from his horse, drew a caricature of the
accident while the litter was being prepared for him. Scarron was
constantly in bodily suffering; and Norman Macleod wrote some humorous
verses "On Captain Frazer's Nose" when he was enduring such violent pain
that he spent the night in his study, and had occasionally to bend over
the back of a chair for relief.

Charles Mathews retained his love of humour to the last. I have heard
that, when dying at Plymouth, he ordered himself to be laid out as if
dead. The doctor on entering exclaimed, "Poor fellow, he's gone! I knew
he would not last long," and was just leaving the room with some sad
reflections, when he heard the lamented man chuckling under the sheet.

Thus, also, a German General relates that after a skirmish a French
hussar was brought in with a huge slash across his face. "Have you
received a sabre cut, my poor fellow?" asked the General. "Pooh, I was
shaved too closely this morning," was the reply. Something may be
attributed in such cases to nervous excitement, which seeks relief in
some counteraction. Mr. Hardy observes that there appears to be always a
superficial film of consciousness which is left disengaged and open to
the notice of trifles.

Addison says that false humour differs from true, as a monkey does from
a man. He goes on to say that false humour is given to little apish
tricks, and buffooneries. Now the reason why Addison and cultivated men
in general do not laugh at buffooneries and place them in the catalogue
of false humour, is simply because they do not present to