cure and
temporary composure. Below appears a girl of eighteen or twenty, whose
vacancy of intellect is captured and occupied by the innocuous folly
still in progress; she gazes on expectantly, assured that a new
blossom of the wonder of absurdity is about to display itself. Her
father, a man who does not often surrender himself to an indecent
convulsion, leans his face upon his hand, and with the other steadies
himself by grasping one of the iron spikes that inclose the orchestra.
In the right corner sits the humorist, whose eyes, around which the
wrinkles gather, are half closed, while he already goes over the jest
a second time in his imagination. At the opposite side an elderly
woman is seen, past the period when animal violences are possible,
laughing because she knows there is something to laugh at, though she
is too dull-witted to know precisely what. One spectator, as we guess
from his introverted air, is laughing to think what somebody else
would think of this. Finally, the thin-lipped, perk-nosed person of
refinement looks aside, and by his critical indifference condemns the
broad, injudicious mirth of the company.

All these laughers of Hogarth are very commonplace, and some are very
vulgar persons; one trivial, ludicrous spectacle is the occasion of
their mirth. When from such laughter as this we turn to the laughter
of men of genius, who gaze at the total play of the world's life; and
when we listen to this, as with the ages it goes on gathering and
swelling, our sense of hearing is enveloped and almost annihilated by
the chorus of mock and jest, of antic and buffoonery, of tender mirth
and indignant satire, of monstrous burlesque and sly absurdity, of
desperate misanthropic derision and genial affectionate caressing of
human imperfection and human folly. We hear from behind the mask the
enormous laughter of Aristophanes, ascending peal above peal until it
passes into jubilant ecstasy, or from the uproar springs some
exquisite lyric strain. We hear laughter of passionate indignation
from Juvenal, the indignation of "the ancient and free soul of the
dead republics." And there is Rabelais, with his huge buffoonery, and
the earnest eyes intent on freedom, which look out at us in the midst
of the zany's tumblings and indecencies. And Cervantes, with his
refined Castilian air and deep melancholy mirth, at odds with the
enthusiasm which is dearest to his soul. And Moliere, with his
laughter of unerring good sens