The
appreciation of such situations is in reality the same as the
common and barbarous form of humour, of which we have already
spoken, which consists in being amused at the disasters which
befall others. The stage that is but slightly removed from the
lowest stage is the theory of practical jokes, the humour of which
is the pleasure of observing the actions of a person in a
disagreeable predicament which is not so serious as the victim
supposes. And thus we get to the region illustrated by the two
stories I have told, where the humour lies in the observation of
one in a predicament that appears to be of a tragic character, when
the tragic element is purely imaginary. And so we pass into the
region of intellectual humour, which may be roughly illustrated by
such sayings as that of George Sand that nothing is such a
restorative as rhetoric, or the claim advanced by a patriot that
Shakespeare was undoubtedly a Scotchman, on the ground that his
talents would justify the supposition. The humour of George Sand's
epigram depends upon the perception that rhetoric, which ought to
be based upon a profound conviction, an overwhelming passion, an
intense enthusiasm, is often little more than the abandonment of a
personality to a mood of intoxicating ebullience; while the humour
of the Shakespeare story lies in a sense of the way in which a
national predilection will override all reasonable evidence.
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