he
springing delight of hawk over heron, hound after fox, that it gives her
chase, never fretting, never tiring, sure of having her, allowing her no
rest.

Contempt is a sentiment that cannot be entertained by comic
intelligence. What is it but an excuse to be idly minded, or personally
lofty, or comfortably narrow, not perfectly humane? If we do not
feign when we say that we despise Folly, we shut the brain. There is
a disdainful attitude in the presence of Folly, partaking of the
foolishness to Comic perception: and anger is not much less foolish than
disdain. The struggle we have to conduct is essence against essence. Let
no one doubt of the sequel when this emanation of what is firmest in us
is launched to strike down the daughter of Unreason and Sentimentalism:
such being Folly's parentage, when it is respectable.

Our modern system of combating her is too long defensive, and carried on
too ploddingly with concrete engines of war in the attack. She has time
to get behind entrenchments. She is ready to stand a siege, before the
heavily armed man of science and the writer of the leading article or
elaborate essay have primed their big guns. It should be remembered that
she has charms for the multitude; and an English multitude seeing her
make a gallant fight of it will be half in love with her, certainly
willing to lend her a cheer. Benevolent subscriptions assist her to hire
her own man of science, her own organ in the Press. If ultimately she is
cast out and overthrown, she can stretch a finger at gaps in our ranks.
She can say that she commanded an army and seduced men, whom we thought
sober men and safe, to act as her lieutenants. We learn rather gloomily,
after she has flashed her lantern, that we have in our midst able
men and men with minds for whom there is no pole-star in intellectual
navigation. Comedy, or the Comic element, is the specific for the
poison of delusion while Folly is passing from the state of vapour to
substantial form.

O for a breath of Aristophanes, Rabelais, Voltaire, Cervantes, Fielding,
Moliere! These are spirits that, if you know them well, will come when
you do call. You will find the very invocation of them act on you like a
renovating air--the South-west coming off the sea, or a cry in the Alps.

No one would presume to say that we are deficient in jokers. They
abound, and the organisation directing their machinery to shoot them in
the wake of the leading article and the popular