Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/120

 It is also a suggestion of the subtlest humor when Titania summons her fairies to wait upon Bottom; for the fact is that the soul's airy and nimble fancies are constantly detailed to serve the donkeyism of this world. "Be kind and courteous to this gentleman." Divine gifts stick musk-roses in his sleek, smooth head. The world is a peg that keeps all spiritual being tethered. John Watt agonizes to teach this vis inertiæ to drag itself by the car-load; Palissy starves for twenty years to enamel its platter; Franklin charms its house against thunder; Raphael contributes halos to glorify its ignorance of divinity; all the poets gather for its beguilement, hop in its walk and gambol before it, scratch its head, bring honey-bags, and light its farthing dip at glow-worms' eyes. Bottom's want of insight is circled round by fulness of insight, his clumsiness by dexterity. In matter of eating, he really prefers provender: "good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow." But how shrewdly Bottom manages this holding of genius to his service! He knows how to send it to be oriented with the blossoms and the sweets, giving it the characteristic counsel not to fret itself too much in the action.

You see there is nothing sour and cynical about Bottom. His daily peck of oats, with plenty of munching-time, travels to the black cell where the drop of gall gets secreted into the ink of starving thinkers, and sings content to it on oaten straw. Bottom, full-ballasted, haltered to a brown-stone-fronted crib, with digestion always waiting upon appetite, tosses a tester to Shakspeare, who might, if the tradition be true, have held his