for the “Century Magazine,” he claimed that Mr. Field was so great a humourist as to be—­what all great humourists are,—­a moralist as well.  But he had little to quote which could be received as evidence in a court of criticism; and many of the paragraphs which he deemed it worth while to reprint were melancholy instances of that jaded wit, that exhausted vitality, which in no wise represented Mr. Field’s mirth-loving spirit, but only the things which were ground out of him when he was not in a mirthful mood.

The truth is that humour as a lucrative profession is a purely modern device, and one which is much to be deplored.  The older humourists knew the value of light and shade.  Their fun was precious in proportion to its parsimony.  The essence of humour is that it should be unexpected, that it should embody an element of surprise, that it should startle us out of that reasonable gravity which, after all, must be our habitual frame of mind.  But the professional humourist cannot afford to be unexpected.  The exigencies of his vocation compel him to be relentlessly droll from his first page to his last, and this accumulated drollery weighs like lead.  Compared to it, sermons are as thistle-down, and political economy is gay.

It is hard to estimate the value of humour as a national trait.  Life has its appropriate levities, its comedy side.  We cannot “see it clearly and see it whole,” without recognizing a great many absurdities which ought to be laughed at, a great deal of nonsense which is a fair target for ridicule.  The heaviest charge brought against American humour is that it never keeps its target well in view.  We laugh, but we are not purged by laughter of our follies; we jest, but our jests are apt to have a kitten’s sportive irresponsibility.  The lawyer offers a witticism in place of an argument, the diner-out tells an amusing story in lieu of conversation.  Even the clergyman does not disdain a joke, heedless of Dr. Johnson’s warning which should save him from that pitfall.  Smartness furnishes sufficient excuse for the impertinence of children, and with purposeless satire the daily papers deride the highest dignitaries of the land.

Yet while always to be reckoned with in life and letters, American humour is not a powerful and consistent factor either for destruction or for reform.  It lacks, for the most part, a logical basis, and the dignity of a supreme aim.  Moliere’s humour amounted to a philosophy of life.  He was wont to say that it was a difficult task to make gentlefolk laugh; but he succeeded in making them laugh at that which was laughable in themselves.  He aimed his shafts at the fallacies and the duplicities which his countrymen ardently cherished, and he scorned the cheaper wit which contents itself with mocking at idols already discredited.  As a result, he purged society, not of the follies that consumed it, but of the illusion that these follies were noble, graceful, and wise.  “We do not plough or sow for fools,” says a Russian proverb, “they grow of themselves”; but humour has accomplished a mighty work if it helps us to see that a fool is a fool, and not a prophet in the market-place.  And if the man in the market-place chances to be a prophet, his message is safe from assault.  No laughter can silence him, no ridicule weaken his words.