Humour of all human things is the most transitory and changing in
its moods. As a perambulating interpreter of literature, ancient as
well as modern, this has especially been borne in upon me. I have
been guilty, in that sickening academic way which makes one howl
with shame in one's self-respecting moments, of "trying out" upon
people the old stock humours of the standard authors.

I have dragged poor Bottom back to life and made the arms of the
Cervantian wind-mill turn and the frogs of Aristophanes croak. But
oh, shade of Yorick! how the sap, the ichor, the sharp authentic tang,
that really tickles our sensibilities, has thinned out and fallen flat
during the centuries. My hearers have smiled and tittered perhaps--with
a pathetic wish to be kind, or a desire to show themselves not
quite dull to these classic amenities--and between us we have, in a
kind of chuckling pedantry, shuffled through the occasion; but it is
not pleasant to recall such moments.

Of course a sly comedian could make anything amusing; but one
cannot help feeling that if the humour of these famous scenes were
really permanent it would force its way even through the frosty air
of academic culture into our human nerves.

"We are not wood; we are not stones, but men"--and being men the
essential spirit of outrageous humour ought surely to hit us, however
poorly interpreted. And it does; only the proprieties and the
decencies sheer us off from what is permanently appealing!

I recollect on one occasion, how, after making my hearers cry over
the natural and permanent tragedy of Shylock, I asked the fatuous
question, addressing it, as one does, to the vague air--

"What are we to say about Launcelot Gobbo?"

Now obviously any one but a professional interpreter of literature
would know that there's _nothing_ to say about this harmless fool.
Shakespeare threw him in as "a comic relief" and probably felt his
strongest appeal to the native genius of the actor who impersonated
him. But I can recall now, with that sense of humiliation which
wrings one's withers, the sweetly murmured tones of some tactful
woman who answered--and the last thing one wants is an answer to
these inanities--

"Oh, we must say that Launcelot Gobbo is charming!"

But Gobbo or no Gobbo, the fact remains that humour is one of the
most delicate, the most evasive, and the most unstable of human
qualities. I am myself inclined to hold that sheer outrageous ribaldry,
especially