The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1865-1903, 1866-05-17
mRTH AND MISERY.
Light words and Heavy Hearts.--The
Two NOT Incompatible .... Seeming
FIpI1 BfJlflelI,s Mdonrine.

Light words ana Heavy AetAFtS--SL ne
Two NOT Incompatible .... Seeming
Accounted For.
FFon Bsnttey's Magazine.
Says Doctor Dove to Doctor Dense,
when the latter, true to his name, is all
astonishment at the doctors egregtous
fooling, and begins to suspect him of
fooling in earnest, ' 'Ay, doctor! you,
|. meet. In this world with false mirth as
often as with false gravity; the grinning
Il hypocrite is not a more uncommon
character than the groaning one: He
/ goes on to say that as much light dis
course comes from a heavy heart as
from hollow one, and from a tuu
| mind as from an empty head. And he
quotes Mr.. Danby's remark, that levtty
is sometimes a refuge from the gloom
\ of seriousness; and that man may
| whistle from want of thought, or ffom
4 having too much OF 1t.
l Some one observed once to Doctor
4 johnson, thatit seemed strange that he,
i who so often delighted his company by
! his lively conversation, should say that
he was miserable. "Alas, IL is all out
| ing my joke, and cursing the sun. Sun,
| how hate thy beamsi" Boswell ap-
pends a foot note; in which he remarks
that beyond doubt a man may appear
very gay IN company, VINO is SAD at
4 heart. "His merriment is like the
/ 5OuLlu anu ~ u OAt-
tie, to drown-the groans of the wound
| ed and dying" 1t is well known that
/ Cowper was in a morbidly dispondent
state when he penned "JOhn Gilptn,"
of which delectable ballad, and its
congeners, he himself bears record:
'Strange as it may seem, the most lu-
dicrouS lines i ever wrote have been
written in the saddest mood, and but
| for that saddest mood, perhaps, had
never been written at ALL" In the
hight of his ill-fortune, in 1926, Sir
Walter Scott was ever giving vent, in
his diary or elsewhere, to some whtm-
steal outburst or humorous sally; and
after indiLing an extra gay jet-d' esprit
in his journal, just before leaving his
dingy Edinburg lodgings for Abbots-
| ford, he follows 1t up next day by this
bit of Ofself-portraiture:" "Anybody would
think, from the fal-de-ral conclusion OF
my journal of yesterday, that left
town in a very gay humor; cujdS con-
| trGriuR VeT-tn est. But nature has
given me kind of buoyancy-I know
not what to call it-that mingles even
| with my deepest atfltctions and most
gloomy hours. Ihave a secret pride-l
fancy twill be SO most truly termed
which impels me to mix with my dis
tress strange snatches of mirth which
have no mirth in them" Finally says
Hartley Coleridge, in one of those som
nets he knew so well to round into
grace of form, and infuse with tender
feeling
All mel is the saddest thing on earth,
To see a change where much is yet un-
changed, ~ 81
| To mark face, not alter'd, but estranged 4
From Its own wOnted self by Its own hearth
50 sadly smiling like the gho t of mIrth,
That cannot quite desert lts long abode;
The very sigh that lifts the weary load
or pain, and looSens tue constrntning g1rth
Within the breast, a semi-tone OF laughter.
For in such case it may be said with
Thomas Hood, who but too we'll knew
the sensation, and WINGED under its cru
city, that
---inwarl grief Is wrIthing DER its task,
As heart-stck testers weep behind the mask
In this way young Werther, by his
own account, as recorded in his once
compassionated Sorrows, declares of
himself, 81 affect mirth in my troubles"
and could compose whole litany of
lantitheses," like that between grief and
-gayety, mirth and gloom, weight at
the heart and flighty fooling on the lips.
In the bitterness of his soul, Byron
protested, when that soul was perhaps
inits least spiritual, most s1IirittteL mood
for he was writing Don Juan at the
time,
And II laugh atany mortal thing,
IT'S that may not weep.
Ina later canto, he harps on the same
strings: -.i-r,=-
But meier the less, L hope IL isno crime
To laugh at all things, for 1 wish 10 know
What, after all, are all things but show2
In the ninth canto, again, helays stress
in successive stanzas on the fact that
"Death laughs, that is to say, the skele-
toms lipless mouth grins without
breath Mark how it laughs and
,scorns at all you aret"
| And thus Death laughs,-is sad merriment,
L still 4, n cI1R n
| Why should not life be equally conlent, \
/ With his superior, In q smile TO trample.
Upon the n0things which are daily spent
Like bubbles on an ocean, &c. l5.. -i-5 ,5 7
It was in precursor of his great satire
that Byron had said, much in the same
mood, though scarcely SO heavy heart
ed, s.l
I fear have a little turn for satire,
1nclineS us more to laugh than Scold, though
Leaves Us so doubly serious shortly after.
AS usual, he was painting himself, in
one, of his favorite attitudes-in print
at least, and shorter meter-when he
wrote OF his Giaour, ,rs5-,ss
Not Oft to smile descendeth he,
And when he doth, It's sad to see
That he but mocks at misery.
Inhis rhyming letter. to Mr., Hodgson,
written on board ship, dated Falmouth
when he left England in 1909, occur the
characteristic lines,
But, since life Mt most n jest is,
AS philosophers allow,
stu to laugh by far the best Is;
Then laugh on as do now.
Laugh at all things,
Great and small thlngs, F5 .-y +
Sick r,well, at sea or shore,
. e