Now, to look about us in the present time, I think it will be acknowledged that in neglecting the cultivation of the Comic idea, we are losing the aid of a powerful auxiliar.  You see Folly perpetually sliding into new shapes in a society possessed of wealth and leisure, with many whims, many strange ailments and strange doctors.  Plenty of common-sense is in the world to thrust her back when she pretends to empire.  But the first-born of common-sense, the vigilant Comic, which is the genius of thoughtful laughter, which would readily extinguish her at the outset, is not serving as a public advocate.

You will have noticed the disposition of common-sense, under pressure of some pertinacious piece of light-headedness, to grow impatient and angry.  That is a sign of the absence, or at least of the dormancy, of the Comic idea.  For Folly is the natural prey of the Comic, known to it in all her transformations, in every disguise; and it is with the springing delight of hawk over heron, hound after fox, that it gives her chase, never fretting, never tiring, sure of having her, allowing her no rest.

Contempt is a sentiment that cannot be entertained by comic intelligence.  What is it but an excuse to be idly minded, or personally lofty, or comfortably narrow, not perfectly humane?  If we do not feign when we say that we despise Folly, we shut the brain.  There is a disdainful attitude in the presence of Folly, partaking of the foolishness to Comic perception:  and anger is not much less foolish than disdain.  The struggle we have to conduct is essence against essence.  Let no one doubt of the sequel when this emanation of what is firmest in us is launched to strike down the daughter of Unreason and Sentimentalism:  such being Folly’s parentage, when it is respectable.

Our modern system of combating her is too long defensive, and carried on too ploddingly with concrete engines of war in the attack.  She has time to get behind entrenchments.  She is ready to stand a siege, before the heavily armed man of science and the writer of the leading article or elaborate essay have primed their big guns.  It should be remembered that she has charms for the multitude; and an English multitude seeing her make a gallant fight of it will be half in love with her, certainly willing to lend her a cheer.  Benevolent subscriptions assist her to hire her own man of science, her own organ in the Press.  If ultimately she is cast out and overthrown, she can stretch a finger at gaps in our ranks.  She can say that she commanded an army and seduced men, whom we thought sober men and safe, to act as her lieutenants.  We learn rather gloomily, after she has flashed her lantern, that we have in our midst able men and men with minds for whom there is no pole-star in intellectual navigation.  Comedy, or the Comic element, is the specific for the poison of delusion while Folly is passing from the state of vapour to substantial form.

O for a breath of Aristophanes, Rabelais, Voltaire, Cervantes, Fielding, Moliere!  These are spirits that, if you know them well, will come when you do call.  You will find the very invocation of them act on you like a renovating air—­the South-west coming off the sea, or a cry in the Alps.