The sun., 1918-12-08
THE NEW MIRTH.


WE who have the privilege of living today
w may halloo to those beings who lived after
the death of julius CAESAR, 10 those who lived at
that mighty date when COLUMBUS set sail from
Palos, to those who lived when LUTHER nailed his
theses the door of Wittenberg church We,
like they, stand at an end and a beginning. But
we, unlike those Others are blase.
Having suffered all things, the great pendulum
of Time will swing, we may believe, to Mirth We
have tried all gods and all ways. Why not Puck
and AREI.-Mirth and Magic? They are creative
and regeneratiye. In literature, away with Toll
sTOY and his brood! Let US to the land of Mrth-
for there is a comic spirit in things as well as
tragic spirit If the essence of life be Jest if we
the sport of blind gods, why not utter a Yea
TO their invitation and enter into the royal sport
of these irOnic rulers of our destiny?
Mrth is no accident 1t is something rooted in
the depths of our being. Don QUIxoTE. Tom SAW
YER and TARTARIN will outlive WELLS at his worst
and TOISToY at his best The gods bowl
and still make merry. War. earthquake, pest
and famine conspire 10 annihilatc us, but JocOsty
and Joviaty flow forever in unbrOkcn silver
stream from the wells of buoyancy set deep within
us. The Shaws and ChcstcrtOns have Calvary.
The New Mirth that will come to us will be
mic-threadbare word; but for that very reason
meaningful. We have taken life too seriously until
now. But the great tragedy just ended has put the
human race in relief For the first time
standing aside and looking at ourselves. 1t is
time Of perspectives and mirrors-the psychology
cal moment of the new birth-and the New Mirth
What fools these mortals be-" comes reteranty
from the tomb of Avon, and he who rests there did
not put that Judgment in the mouth of HAMLET
ht,tt fho bofD prog A ito bat ~
Some of the elements of the New Mrth they
shape up in the mists of this day can already be
felt. The groundwork of history-that is, the adj
ventures of starts the paradox. The
homogeneous and the ridiculous and the perversc are
the mOulds of action. All characters to be real, to
be great to be epical in the fiction of the future,
must move to the strings of these forces. Logic
is purely mental. 1t is the Unknown, the Tn
foresccn that are the Destinies and Fates of hui
man action Life rambles and is all infinite num-
Der of ''aSideS.''
The intervention of the unknown the Unforeseen
III the affairs of mankind whrls them off their feet,
and draws from the mirthfu intellect the same
gleeful scream that children give vent to in cir
us, when the air is charged with ropes, swings,
danger and death We have laid too much stress
on danger and death. The New Mirth will record
the laughter in the adventure. Tragedy itself is
a form of sublime mirth
Mirth is kind of serene scepticsm THE fanatic
knows nothing of it. The fixed idea in literature
a formula, school, pontifical LogoS-S anathe-
to mirth. The mind should open to the world
like a circular fan. TO see the whole circle at
glance is to laugh.
GEORGE MEREDITH has written superb essay
the comic spirit 1t would be well for the world
to dig it out of the Libraries and make of it n
breviary. And along with it that great master
piece of mirth by the same fine genius, The Shau-
ing of Shdgpdt Who to-day reads this master
piece, the English equivalent of Don QUirote? 1t
contains the germ of the New Mirth--the one thing
needful in literature. There is in MEREDITHs
epic the unarthmetical smile of -EsCHYLUs-
the sane irony of the world directed against it.
self.
Above that old rumpus of the heart, the nerves