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Show ABOUT FUNNY MEN. Funny characters in novels are seldom consistent, because they are made funny and nothing more. Lever and Cockton are merely tiresome to some readers on this account. Charles Lever mingled pathos and fun with much success; but even he found the task too much in his latter years. Frank Swedley succeeded in being very funny, as did Captain Maryatt, but they were usually nothing more. It is only the genius that can unite the two extremes. It is often supposed that a man only required good digestion and a hard conscience to be amusing, but the supposition is not well founded. High spirits are, no doubt, a good thing, if they be not too high, but they often correspond to a depression which nothing can mitigate. Consciously or not, a high-spirited man is always amusing, but there is a much higher walk in the mind which can command its wit. As a rule, the most cultivated people are the most agreeable. No man, it is true, can absolutely set himself to learn humor. But no man is naturally so witty that he can afford to dispense with art. Sheridan was funny by nature, yet even he worked up a joke before he dared to use it in the house of commons, and Goldsmith's best things have been traced, like Stearne's, through many authors before his day. It is the same with most other writers of comedy. Swift perhaps being the only one in English literature who can bear the investigation of the critic. Some of the most famous hits in "Gulliver" have, however, been found in Rabelais, just as Shakespeare's plots are found in Bocaccio. The real natural wit is funny to the last. Raleigh and More joking on the scaffold are not examples in point. Both were playing a part in the end. But when Sydney Smith writes of Holland House in his last moments, that it had every convenience for sickness and death, we feel sure that his spirits had not flagged, and that the presence of his end did not destroy the readiness of his mind. There is not of necessity any want of reverence in true fun. It has been well remarked that any fool can make a joke of sacred things, and that mere coarseness is often looked upon as a form of wit. The man who has to distort Scripture or say what ???? or revile at his neighbor, in order to raise a laugh, may often succeed, but at best his wit is of a second-rate order. A close observation of things on the surface, a vivid appreciation of shades and character as they are presented to the eye, will alone constitute a fund of pure comedy, and it is in this particular that Dickens differs from the greatest humorists of his day. Thackeray was superior to Dickens because he saw below the surface, and though he never created a Weller, or even a Tapley, the outpourings of his own mind are always sufficient to secure for him the higher place. No doubt it is the fault of funny men that they wish to produce an immediate effect, but it is not given to every one of them to be so disinterested as to wish that they may be remembered after death by the amount of pleasure they have been able to give to those who knew them in life. <br><br> London Saturday News. |