nous? It is this potentiality for enthusiasm among
the mass of men that makes the function of comedy
at once common and sublime. Shakespeare’s
“Much Ado About Nothing” is a great comedy,
because behind it is the whole pressure of that love
of love which is the youth of the world, which is
common to all the young, especially to those who swear
they will die bachelors and old maids. “Love’s
Labour’s Lost” is filled with the same
energy, and there it falls even more definitely into
the scope of our subject, since it is a comedy in
rhyme in which all men speak lyrically as naturally
as the birds sing in pairing time. What the love
of love is to the Shakespearean comedies, that other
and more mysterious human passion, the love of death,
is to “L’Aiglon.” Whether we
shall ever have in England a new tradition of poetic
comedy it is difficult at present to say, but we shall
assuredly never have it until we realise that comedy
is built upon everlasting foundations in the nature
of things, that it is not a thing too light to capture,
but too deep to plumb. Monsieur Rostand, in his
description of the Battle of Wagram, does not shrink
from bringing about the Duke’s ears the frightful
voices of actual battle, of men torn by crows, and
suffocated with blood, but when the Duke, terrified
at these dreadful appeals, asks them for their final
word, they all cry together
Vive l’Empereur!
Monsieur Rostand, perhaps, did not know that he was
writing an allegory. To me that field of Wagram
is the field of the modern war of literature.
We hear nothing but the voices of pain; the whole
is one phonograph of horror. It is right that
we should hear these things, it is right that not one
of them should be silenced; but these cries of distress
are not in life, as they are in modern art, the only
voices; they are the voices of men, but not the voice
of man. When questioned finally and seriously
as to their conception of their destiny, men have
from the beginning of time answered in a thousand
philosophies and religions with a single voice and
in a sense most sacred and tremendous,
Vive l’Empereur.
CHARLES II
There are a great many bonds which still connect us
with Charles II., one of the idlest men of one of
the idlest epochs. Among other things Charles
II. represented one thing which is very rare and very
satisfying; he was a real and consistent sceptic.
Scepticism, both in its advantages and disadvantages,
is greatly misunderstood in our time. There is
a curious idea abroad that scepticism has some connection
with such theories as materialism and atheism and
secularism. This is of course a mistake; the
true sceptic has nothing to do with these theories
simply because they are theories. The true sceptic
is as much a spiritualist as he is a materialist.
He thinks that the savage dancing round an African
idol stands quite as good a chance of being right as
Darwin. He thinks that mysticism is every bit
as rational as rationalism. He has indeed the
most profound doubts as to whether St. Matthew wrote
his own gospel. But he has quite equally profound
doubts as to whether the tree he is looking at is
a tree and not a rhinoceros.