ways, in Bottom and
Malvolio.' Has it indeed come to this? Have the Zeitgeist and the
Weltschmerz and the other things compared to which 'le spleen' was gay,
done so much for us? Is there to be no laughter left in literature free
from the preoccupation of a sham real-life? So it would seem. Even what
the great master has not shown us in his work, that your critic convinced
of pathos is resolved to see in it. By the penetration of his intrusive
sympathy he will come at it. It is of little use now to explain Snug the
joiner to the audience: why, it is precisely Snug who stirs their
emotions so painfully. Not the lion; they can see through that: but the
Snug within, the human Snug. And Master Shallow has the Weltschmerz in
that latent form which is the more appealing; and discouraging questions
arise as to the end of old Double; and Argan in his nightcap is the
tragic figure of Monomania; and human nature shudders at the petrifaction
of the intellect of Mr. F.'s aunt. _Et patati, et patata_.

It may be only too true that the actual world is 'with pathos delicately
edged.' For Malvolio living we should have had living sympathies: so
much aspiration, so ill-educated a love of refinement; so unarmed a
credulity, noblest of weaknesses, betrayed for the laughter of a
chambermaid. By an actual Bottom the Weaver our pity might be reached
for the sake of his single self-reliance, his fancy and resource
condemned to burlesque and ignominy by the niggard doom of circumstance.
But is not life one thing and is not art another? Is it not the
privilege of literature to make selection and to treat things singly,
without the after-thoughts of life, without the troublous completeness of
the many-sided world? Is not Shakespeare, for this reason, our refuge?
Fortunately unreal is his world when he will have it so; and there we may
laugh with open heart at a grotesque man: without misgiving, without
remorse, without reluctance. If great creating Nature has not assumed
for herself she has assuredly secured to the great creating poet the
right of partiality, of limitation, of setting aside and leaving out, of
taking one impression and one emotion as sufficient for the day. Art and
Nature are separate, complementary; in relation, not in confusion, with
one another. And all this officious cleverness in seeing round the
corner, as it were, of a thing presented by literary art in the flat--(the
borrowing of similes from other arts i