Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/76

 the rose. "The image of a wicked heinous fault" lives in its eye.

Now this impartial observation cannot shield the poet's ideal from the hurts which are inflicted by the discrepancies of life: the real seems to be no legitimate child of the ideal, but a changeling with low-born traits. The noble lover of goodness cannot help being pained at the contrast of circumstances with his thought, and there moves over his nature a deep seriousness from this cloud, beneath which his imagination broods upon the landscape. It raises a suspicion that Deity itself must find omniscience annoying and provocative of gloom; for all the worlds and the ages keep on inflicting this incongruity upon the divine source of all ideal things. The poet must manage to recover from this mood, to reassure his heart with the faith that the One who calculated and devised the aberrations which sustain His system must exist in eternal serenity.

When many human characters are contemplated by a superior observer, an impartiality kin to that of the mind who created them sets in. But it cannot remain a colorless, judicial attitude, nor can it deteriorate into indifference. Good nature is an element in the superiority of a good observer. He may make use of wit, comedy, and irony, but his essential mood can only be described by the word "humor;" that is, the quality of being reconciled with all that is observed. The poet would fain conciliate, but without complicity; for he can never give up the gravity of his ideal. Now to be perfectly impartial to all would be too great a strain for a finite mind. It