THE LUDICROUS side of life, like the serious side, has its literature, and it is a literature of untold wealth. Mirth is a Proteus, changing its shape and manner with the thousand diversities of individual character, from the most superficial gayety, to the deepest, most earnest humor. Thus, the wit of the airy, feather-brained Farquhar glances and gleams like heat lightning; that of Milton blasts and burns like the bolt. Let us glance carelessly over this wide field of comic writers, who have drawn new forms of mirthful being from life’s ludicrous side, and note, here and there, a wit or humorist. There is the humor of Goethe like his own summer morning, mirthfully clear; and there is the tough and knotty humor of old Ben Jonson, at times ground down to the edge to a sharp cutting scorn, and occasionally hissing out stinging words, which seem, like his own Mercury’s “steeped in the very brine of conceit, and sparkle like salt in fire.” There is the incessant brilliancy of Sheridan:—

	“Whose humor, as gay as the firefly’s light,
	Played round every subject, and shone as it played;
	Whose wit in the combat, as gentle as bright,
	Ne’er carried a heart-stain away on its blade.”

There is the uncouth mirth, that winds, stutters, wriggles, and screams, dark, scornful, and savage, among the dislocated joints of Carlyle’s spavined sentences. There is the lithe, springy sarcasm, the hilarious badinage, the brilliant careless disdain, which sparkle and scorch along the glistening page of Holmes. There is the sleepy smile that sometimes lies so benignly on the sweet and serious diction of old Izaak Walton. There is the mirth of Dickens, twinkling now in some ironical insinuation,—and anon winking at you with pleasant maliciousness, its distended cheeks fat with suppressed glee,—and then, again, coming out in broad gushes of humor, overflowing all banks and bounds of conventional decorum. There is Sydney Smith,—sly, sleek, swift, subtle,—a moment’s motion, and the human mouse is in his paw! Mark, in contrast with, him, the beautiful heedlessness with which the Ariel-like spirit of Gay pours itself out in benevolent mockeries of human folly. There, in a corner, look at that petulant little man, his features working with thought and pain, his lips wrinkled with a sardonic smile; and, see! the immortal personality has received its last point and polish in that toiling brain, and, in a strait, luminous line, with a twang like Scorn’s own arrow, hisses through the air the unerring shaft of Pope to—

	“Dash the proud gamester from his gilded car,
	And bare the base heart that lurks beneath a star.”

There a little above Pope see Dryden keenly dissecting the inconsistencies of Buckingham’s volatile mind, or leisurely crushing out the insect life of Shadwell,—

	“——owned, without dispute,
	Throughout the realms of Nonsense, absolute.”

There, moving gracefully through that carpeted parlor, mark that dapper, diminutive Irish gentleman. The moment you look at him, your eyes are dazzled with the whizzing rockets and hissing wheels, streaking the air with a million sparks, from the pyrotechnic brain of Anacreon Moore. Again, cast your eyes from that blinding glare and glitter, to the soft and beautiful brilliancy, the winning grace, the bland banter, the gliding wit, the diffusive humor, which make you in love with all mankind, in the charming pages of Washington Irving. And now for another change,—glance at the jerks and jets of satire, the mirthful audacities, the fretting and teasing mockeries, of that fat, sharp imp, half Mephistopheles, half Falstaff, that cross between Beelzebub and Rabelais, known in all lands as the matchless Mr. Punch. No English statesman, however great his power, no English nobleman, however high his rank, but knows that every week he may be pointed at by the scoffing finger of that omnipotent buffoon, and consigned to the ridicule of the world. The pride of intellect, the pride of wealth, the power to oppress,—nothing can save the dunce or criminal from being pounced upon by Punch, and held up to a derision or execration which shall ring from London to St. Petersburg, from the Ganges to the Oregon. From the vitriol pleasantries of this arch-fiend of Momus, let us turn to the benevolent mirth of Addison and Steele, whose glory it was to redeem polite literature from moral depravity, by showing that wit could chime merrily in with the voice of virtue, and who smoothly laughed away many a vice of the national character, by that humor which tenderly touches the sensitive point with an evanescent grace and genial glee. And here let us not forget Goldsmith, whose delicious mirth is of that rare quality which lies too deep for laughter; which melts softly into the mind, suffusing it with inexpressible delight, and sending the soul dancing joyously into the eyes to utter its merriment in liquid glances, passing all the expression of tone. And here, though we cannot do him justice, let us remember the name of Nathaniel Hawthorne, deserving a place second to none in that band of humorists, whose beautiful depth of cheerful feeling is the very poetry of mirth. In ease, grace, delicate sharpness of satire, in a felicity of touch which often surpasses the felicity of Addison, in a subtlety of insight which often reaches further than the subtlety of Steele,—the humor of Hawthorne presents traits so fine as to be almost too excellent for popularity, as, to every one who has attempted their criticism, they are too refined for statement. The brilliant atoms flit, hover, and glance before our minds, but the subtle sources of their ethereal light lie beyond our analysis,—

	“And no speed of ours avails
	To hunt upon their shining trails.”

  And now let us breathe a benison on these our mirthful benefactors, these fine revelers among human weaknesses, these stern, keen satirists of human depravity. Wherever humor smiles away the fretting thoughts of care, or supplies that antidote which cleanses

	“The stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
	That weighs upon the heart,”

wherever wit riddles folly, abases pride, or stings iniquity,—there glides the cheerful spirit, or glitters the flashing thought, of these bright enemies of stupidity and gloom. Thanks to them, hearty thanks, for teaching us that the ludicrous side of life is its wicked side, no less than its foolish; that in a lying world there is still no mercy for falsehood; that guilt, however high it may lift its brazen front, is never beyond the lightnings of scorn; and that the lesson they teach agrees with the lesson taught by all experience, that life, in harmony with reason, is the only life safe from laughter—that life, in harmony with virtue, is the only life safe from contempt.