It is in quite another kind, however, that the modern purveyor of sentiment exercises his most characteristic talent.  There are certain real and deeply-rooted feelings, common to humanity, concerning which, in their normal operation, a grave reticence is natural.  They are universal in their appeal, men would be ashamed not to feel them, and it is no small part of the business of life to keep them under strict control.  Here is the sentimental hucksters most valued opportunity.  He tears these primary instincts from the wholesome privacy that shelters them in life, and cries them up from his booth in the market-place.  The elemental forces of human life, which beget shyness in children, and touch the spirits of the wise to solemn acquiescence, awaken him to noisier declamation.  He patronises the stern laws of love and pity, hawking them like indulgences, cheapening and commanding them like the medicines of a mountebank.  The censure of his critics he impudently meets by pointing to his wares:  are not some of the most sacred properties of humanity—­sympathy with suffering, family affection, filial devotion, and the rest—­displayed upon his stall?  Not thus shall he evade the charges brought against him.  It is the sensual side of the tender emotions that he exploits for the comfort of the million.  All the intricacies which life offers to the will and the intellect he lards and obliterates by the timely effusion of tearful sentiment.  His humanitarianism is a more popular, as it is an easier, ideal than humanity—­it asks no expense of thought.  There is a scanty public in England for tragedy or for comedy:  the characters and situations handled by the sentimentalist might perchance furnish comedy with a theme; but he stilts them for a tragic performance, and they tumble into watery bathos, where a numerous public awaits them.

A similar degradation of the intellectual elements that are present in all good literature is practised by those whose single aim is to provoke laughter.  In much of our so-called comic writing a superabundance of boisterous animal spirits, restrained from more practical expression by the ordinances of civil society, finds outlet and relief.  The grimaces and caperings of buffoonery, the gymnastics of the punster and the parodist, the revels of pure nonsense may be, at their best, a refreshment and delight, but they are not comedy, and have proved in effect not a little hostile to the existence of comedy.  The prevalence of jokers, moreover, spoils the game of humour; the sputter and sparkle of their made jokes interferes with that luminous contemplation of the incongruities of life and the universe which is humour’s essence.  All that is ludicrous depends on some disproportion:  Comedy judges the actual world by contrasting it with an ideal of sound sense, Humour reveals it in its true dimensions by turning on it the light of imagination and poetry.  The perception of these incongruities, which are eternal, demands some expense