Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/73

 There is a comic passage in the "Inferno" of Dante, noticed by Lowell (XV. 119), "where Brunetto Latini lingers under the burning shower to recommend his Tesoro to his former pupil," Dante; "a comical touch of Nature in an author's solicitude for his little work; not, as in Fielding's case, after its, but his own damnation."

The opening verses of Canto XVI. of the "Paradiso"are also comic, "where Dante tells us how, even in heaven, he could not help glorying in being gently born,—he who had devoted a Canzone and a book of the Convito to proving that nobility consisted wholly in virtue."

Humor subsidizes every vein like this to supply the great heart-beat which mantles over all human features and visits all the members of great or little honor. Irony is jesting hidden behind gravity. Humor is gravity concealed behind the jest. Our grave and noble tendencies are brought in this world of ours into contact with very ordinary styles of living, which are stubborn; they neither surrender nor give way. Humor steps in to mediate: it seeks to put in the same light and color all the parts of this incongruity, the ideal and the vulgar real; and the constant inference of humor is that all the ideals of right, honor, goodness, manly strength, are serious with a divine purpose.

Even the coarsest and most revolting things can be adopted by this temper and cheerfully assigned to their places in the great plan. Jamie Alexander, the old Scotch grave-digger, had the habit of carrying home