e, undeluded by fashion or vanity or
folly or hypocrisy, and brightly mocking these into modesty. And
Milton, with his fierce objurgatory laughter,--Elijah-like insult
against the enemies of freedom and of England. And Voltaire, with his
quick intellectual scorn and eager malice of the brain. And there is
the urbane and amiable play of Addison's invention, not capable of
large achievement, but stirring the corners of the mouth with a humane
smile,--gracious gayety for the breakfast-tables of England. And
Fielding's careless mastery of the whole broad common field of mirth.
And Sterne's exquisite curiosity of oddness, his subtile extravagances
and humors prepense. And there is the tragic laughter of Swift, which
announces the extinction of reason, and loss beyond recovery of human
faith and charity and hope. How in this chorus of laughters, joyous
and terrible, is the laughter of Shakespeare distinguishable?

In the first place, the humor of Shakespeare, like his total genius,
is many-sided. He does not pledge himself as dramatist to any one view
of human life. If we open a novel by Charles Dickens, we feel assured
beforehand that we are condemned to an exuberance of philanthropy; we
know how the writer will insist that we must all be good friends, all
be men and brothers, intoxicated with the delight of one another's
presence; we expect him to hold out the right hand of fellowship to
man, woman, and child; we are prepared for the bacchanalia of
benevolence. The lesson we have to learn from this teacher is, that
with the exception of a few inevitable and incredible monsters of
cruelty, every man naturally engendered of the offspring of Adam is of
his own nature inclined to every amiable virtue, Shakespeare abounds
in kindly mirth: he receives an exquisite pleasure from the alert wit
and bright good sense of a Rosalind; he can dandle a fool as tenderly
as any nurse qualified to take a baby from the birth can deal with her
charge. But Shakespeare is not pledged to deep-dyed ultra-amiability.
With Jacques, he can rail at the world while remaining curiously aloof
from all deep concern about its interests, this way or that. With
Timon he can turn upon the world with a rage no less than that of
Swift, and discover in man and woman a creature as abominable as the
Yahoo. In other words, the humor of Shakespeare, like his total
genius, is dramatic.

Then again, although Shakespeare laughs incomparably, mere laughter
wearies him