The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-03-01
HUMOR IN AMERICA.
The Punster, the Gag Maker and
the Clown Considered.
cYNIcs AND coNToRTloNisTs.

Bohemian Pes shooters who Cali rhen-
selves wits-Ths South VIM
Breed Humorists.
Edmund G. Stedman, critic, poet and
broker, few years ago pointed out that
the twilight Of poetry prevails alike in
both England and America" What is
true Of poetry is equally true Of genuine
humor. The age is one Of intense and in
creasing plutomania, and such an age
cares nothing for the work of poet as
distinguished from that Of = clever verse;
maker; or for the work of q genuine
humorist as separated from the grimaces
and gags of the literary buffoons and
scribbling clowns who devote themselves
to the profession of raising laugh in
the newspapers. OF this race Of profess
sional fun-makers, whose talent" is that
Of the old women who, in Queen Eliza
beth's day, made the king, the court and
the crowd roar by grinning through
horse collar for prize, we have certainly
enough and to spare, but these squib-
makers are not humorists, because mere
cheap drollery is no more genuine humor
than the tender, sympathetic smile
Of Hamlet greeting Horatio is identical
with the horse-laugh Of Tony Lampkin. A
humorist is not pun maker, gag an
nunciator, or . master Of what we might
call literary horse-play; humorist is
high comedian; not the hero OF roaring
farce; . humorist is an April day of both
smiles and tears; humorist is man Of
soul and sensibility, alike apprehensive of
mirth and melancholy; equally mas
ter Of the minor key of hui
man JOY and sorrow: of hi
larity and pathos. 1t is clear, therefore,
that q genuine humorist is something far
higher than man who merely makes you
laugh; if he can only make you laugh he
is merely Sunny man." but a. an artist
and master Of the high comedy Of human
nature humorist must be able at will and
in turn to gently touch Your mind
and heart as well as tickle
your superficial risibles This 10
the test of mans title to the name of
humorist; he must be able to occupy the
middle ground between mere heartless,
coarse, ale-houSe fun, that is never blended
with contagious kindness or tinted with
sentiment, and the dark and bloody
ground of tragic mood and feeling. A
humorist is therefore a rare man, while .
mere jester or laugh-maker is . very COM
mon shape and generally rather cheap
and shallow creature.
On the stage Joe jefferson is true
humorist or high comedian when he plays
rip Van Winkle," while Dixey, when he
plays the burlesque part of Adonis, is not
q humorist at all, but a mere funny"
actor, who makes the crowd all laugh with
about as little intellectual effort as is ex-
erted by polecat when he succeeds in
making the crowd all melancholy
Humor belongs to the English mind, in
distinction from pure wit, which is the
salient characteristic of the French or
Latin genius. This is true, as rule,
despite the fact that the greatest humor-
lists in literature next to Shakespeare were
the Spaniard Cervantes and the French
Gascon Montaigne. The famous English
humorits include Addison, Pope, Swift.
Steele, Prior, Gay, Fielding, Smoliett,
Goldsmith. Sheridan, Burma, Scott, Hood,
Lamb, Thackeray, Sydney Smith, Carlyle,
Dickens, George Eliot and Charles Reade,
and perhaps Charles Lever. All of these
men were genuine humorists, and some of
them trenchant satirists too, but the list
will serve to illustrate the truth of the
statement that the Characteristic of
the English mind is humor rather
than pure wit and keen satire.
turning 70 TIeu.A n'clasu,e VIC
ma ka0eialS, coarse Dut poweriul satlr-
list, rather than humorist; Boiieau, Mo-
here, Voltaire, LIE Sage, Fontanelle, Beau
marchias, Rochefoucauld, Hugo, Heine,
who, German born and of Jew blood, was
yet Paris bred and of French genius; Bal
FAC, Daudet, Merimee, lola, Gautier, per-
sons of various degrees of excellence, but
whose genius is instinct with wit and So
tire rather than humor.
The same is true of Italian literature.
The Latin has reelected better than the
English or German mind the influence Of
the Greek satire of Aristophanes and the
Roman satire of Horace, Terence, Martial
and Juvenal. Greek and Roman humor
never seemed to rise much above the level
of the coarse, ribald jests of the sidewalk.
Pure satire is not so conspicuous in the
English mind as humor, save in Dryden,
Swift and Byron.
Passing from England to the United
States, which was chiefly colonized by the
English race, we would naturally expect
genius for genuine humor rather than
satire, nor are we disappointed. Our best
literature is touched with fine humor
rather than bitter, blasting satire. This Is
natural, because young, vigorous nation
is always notably gay and optimistic
rather than pessimistic, for pessimism and
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