We are driven to the belief that humour, with its loving
and smiling observation, is necessary to the author who would make
his persons real and congenial, and, above all, friendly. Now
humour is the quality which Dumas, Moliere, and Rabelais possess
conspicuously among Frenchmen. Montaigne has it too, and makes
himself dear to us, as the humorous novelists make their fancied
people dear. Without humour an author may draw characters distinct
and clear, and entertaining, and even real; but they want
atmosphere, and with them we are never intimate. Mr. Alfred Austin
says that "we know the hero or the heroine in prose romance far
more familiarly than we know the hero or heroine in the poem or the
drama." "Which of the serious characters in Shakspeare's plays are
not indefinite and shadowy compared with Harry Esmond or Maggie
Tulliver?" The SERIOUS characters--they are seldom very familiar
or definite to us in any kind of literature. One might say, to be
sure, that he knows Hotspur a good deal more intimately than he
knows Mr. Henry Esmond, and that he has a pretty definite idea of
Iago, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, as definite as he has (to follow
Mr. Austin) of Tito Melema. But we cannot reckon Othello, or
Macbeth, or King Lear as FRIENDS; nay, we would rather drink with
the honest ancient. All heroes and the heroines are usually too
august, and also too young, to be friendly with us; to be handled
humorously by their creators.
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