sing to them.

These same tendencies were aggravated also by two defects which are
exceedingly rare in great English authors, and which perhaps Milton
alone amongst those of the highest class is in a remarkable degree
chargeable with; we mean a deficiency in humor, and a deficiency in a
knowledge of plain human nature. Probably when, after the lapse of
ages, English literature is looked at in its larger features only, and
in comparison with other literatures which have preceded or which may
follow it, the critics will lay down that its most striking
characteristic as a whole is its involution, so to say, in life; the
degree to which its book life resembles real life; the extent to which
the motives, dispositions, and actions of common busy persons are
represented in a medium which would seem likely to give us peculiarly
the ideas of secluded and the tendencies of meditative men. It is but
an aspect of this fact, that English literature abounds--some critics
will say abounds excessively--with humor. This is in some sense the
imaginative element of ordinary life,--the relieving charm, partaking
at once of contrast and similitude, which gives a human and an
intellectual interest to the world of clowns and cottages, of fields
and farmers. The degree to which Milton is deficient in this element
is conspicuous in every page of his writings where its occurrence could
be looked for; and if we do not always look for it, this is because the
subjects of his most remarkable works are on a removed elevation, where
ordinary life, the world of "cakes and ale," is never thought of and
never expected. It is in his dramas, as we should expect, that Milton
shows this deficiency the most. "Citizens" never talk in his pages, as
they do in Shakespeare. We feel instinctively that Milton's eye had
never rested with the same easy pleasure on the easy, ordinary,
shopkeeping world. Perhaps, such is the complication of art, it is on
the most tragic occasions that we feel this want the most.

It may seem an odd theory, and yet we believe it to be a true
principle, that catastrophes require a comic element. We appear to
feel the same principle in life. We may read solemn descriptions of
great events in history,--say of Lord Stratford's trial, and of his
marvelous speech, and his appeal to his "saint in heaven"; but we
comprehend the whole transaction much better when we learn from Mr.
Baillie, the eye-witness, that people ate nuts and app