or the most part on the play-side of literature, he
should, we are apt to suppose, be entirely on the play-side of life.
He ought to laugh and grow fat,--and he ought to have an easy-chair to
laugh in. Why should he who makes so many joyous not have the largest
mess of gladness to his share? He ought to be a favored Benjamin at the
banquet of existence,--and have, above the most favored of his
brethren, a double portion. He ought, like the wind, to be "a chartered
libertine,"--to blow where he listeth, and have no one to question
whence he cometh or whither he goeth. He ought to be the citizen of a
comfortable world, and he ought to have an ungrudged freedom in it. What
debt is he should not be allowed to learn or to know,--and the idea of
a dun it should not be possible for him even to conceive. Give him good
cheer; enrich the juices of his blood, nourish generously the functions
of his brain; give him delicate viands and rosy wine; give him smiles
and laughter, music and flowers; let him inherit every region of
creation, and be at home in air and water as well as on the earth; at
last, in an Anacreontic bloom of age, let him in a song breathe away his
life. Such is the lot, we believe, that many imagine as the condition
of a humorist; but which the humorist, less than most men, has ever
enjoyed. All great humorists have been men grave at heart, and often
men of more than ordinary trials. None but the superficial can fail to
recognize the severity of Rabelais's genius. The best portion of poor
Moliere's manhood was steeped in sorrow. The life of Swift was a hidden
tragedy. The immortal wit of "Hudibras" did not save Butler from the
straits and struggles of narrow means. Cervantes spent much of his time
in a prison, and much of his grandest humor had there its birthplace.
Farquhar died young, and in terrible distress of mind at the desolate
prospect that he saw before his orphan children. How Sheridan died is
familiar to us all. The very conditions of temperament which gave Sterne
genius gave him also torment. Fielding and Smollett battled all their
lives with adversity; and Goldsmith died in his prime, embittered in
his last hours by distress and debt. Banim, the great Irish novelist,
withered early out of life upon a government pittance of a pension;
Griffin gave up literature, became a monk, and found in youth a grave;
Carleton, one of the most gifted humorists that ever painted the
many-colored pictures of Irish chara