If he be independent of
exertion, his life commonly runs to waste. If he turn author, it is
commonly from necessity; Fielding wrote for money, and "Don Quixote" was
the fruit of a debtors' prison.
It seems to be an instinct of human nature to analyze, to define, and to
classify. We like to have things conveniently labelled and laid away in
the mind, and feel as if we knew them better when we have named them.
And so to a certain extent we do. The mere naming of things by their
appearance is science; the knowing them by their qualities is wisdom;
and the being able to express them by some intense phrase which combines
appearance and quality as they affect the imagination through the senses
by impression, is poetry. A great part of criticism is scientific, but
as the laws of art are only echoes of the laws of nature, it is possible
in this direction also to arrive at real knowledge, or, if not so far as
that, at some kind of classification that may help us toward that
excellent property--compactness of mind.
Addison has given the pedigree of humor: the union of truth and goodness
produces wit; that of wit with wrath produces humor. We should say that
this was rather a pedigree of satire. For what trace of wrath is there
in the humor of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne,
Fielding, or Thackeray? The absence of wrath is the characteristic of
all of them.
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