COMIC ASPECT OF LOVE

My subject to-night is the comic aspect of love. No doubt most of you
have had some little experience, at least in the sentimental and
sighing side of the tender passion; and what I propose to do is to
give you the humorous or comic side. Perhaps I ought to begin by
begging pardon of the ladies for treating so sacred a thing as love in
a comic way, or for turning the ludicrous side of so charming a thing
as they find love to be, to the gaze of men--but I wish to premise
that I shall not so treat sensible or rational love. Of that beautiful
feeling, less warm than passion, yet more tender than friendship, I
shall not for a moment speak irreverently; of that pure disinterested
affection--as charming as it is reasonable, which one sex feels for
the other, I cannot speak lightly. But there is a certain romantic
senseless kind of love, such as poets sometimes celebrate, and men
and women feign, which is a legitimate target for ridicule. This kind
of love is fanciful and foolish; it is not the offspring of the heart,
but of the imagination. I know that generous deeds and contempt of
death have sometimes covered this folly with a veil. The arts have
twined for it a fantastic wreath, and the Muses have decked it with
the sweetest flowers: but this makes it none the less ridiculous nor
dangerous. Love of this romantic sort is an abstraction much too light
and subtle to sustain a tangible existence in the midst of the
jostling relations of this busy world. It is a mere bubble thrown to
the surface by the passions and fancies of men, and soon breaks by
contact with the hard facts of daily life. It is a thing which bears
but little handling. The German Wieland, who was a great disciple of
love, was of opinion that "its metaphysical effects began with the
first sigh, and ended with the first kiss!" Plato was not far out of
the way when he called it "a great devil"; and the man or woman who is
really possessed of it will find it a very hard one to cast out.

Of the refinements of love the great mass of men can know nothing. The
truth is that sentimental love is so much a matter of the imagination
that the uncultivated have no natural field for its display. In
America you can hardly realise the full force of this truth, because
the distinctions of class are happily nearly obliterated. Here
intellectual culture seems to be about equally divided among all
classes. I suppose it is not singular in this country to