we have all the characteristic qualities of the poem illustrated in three lines. Another instance is in the bacchanalian song already quoted in another connection: It is the moon, I ken her horn, The half-drunken drollery of the stanza is irresistibly humorous; yet it contains also a distinct imaginative element, and that not purely recollective. It is through this sympathetic element in humor, taking it for the time in the more special sense, that it is brought into its familiar relation with pathos. Besides surrounding and enveloping the perception of the incongruous with tolerance and kindliness, this sympathy opens the heart to feelings of compassion, and renders it more responsive when the images presented pull on the cords of association. This process is illustrated with especial frequency in poetry dealing with childhood, where the sources of humor and pathos lie very close together in the sense of the contrast between effort and accomplishment on the one hand, and pity for a helpless little bit of humanity on the other. Shakespeare's treatment of children nearly always combines the two elements. Take, for example, the scene between Hubert and the little Prince Arthur in King John: Arth. Must you with hot irons burn out both mine eyes? Hub. Young boy, I must. Arth. Hub. And will you? And I will. Arth. Have you the heart? When your head did but ache, I knit my handkercher about your brows, The best I had, a princess wrought it me, And I did never ask it you again; And with my hand at midnight held your head, And like the watchful minutes to the hour, Still and anon cheer'd up the heavy time, Saying, What lack you?' and 'Where lies your grief?' Or, What good love may I perform for you?' Many a poor man's son would have lien still (Act IV, sc. i, vv. 39 ff.) With the sheer pathos of this passage is mingled a tender vein of humor in the little faults in taste of the boy, as when he shows how well he remembers his own kindnesses. In the treatment of the little princes in Richard III, of the young Martius in Coriolanus, and of the boy Mamilius in Winter's Tale we find this strain of wistful humor reappearing amidst the terror or the sadness of the situation. The effect of such humor is not, however, completely accounted for if we think of it as merely the result of the adding together of the usual reactions from the two elements of the humorous and the pathetic. It is not the sum but the product of the two qualities. In some types of cases, at least, there is a more subtle interaction, by which the specific effect which either element would produce in isolation is greatly intensified by the presence of the other. One of the elements seems to produce in the mind of the reader a degree of sensitiveness which makes it respond to the appeal of the other much more powerfully than it would do to it alone; and this service is reciprocal. Humor in such circumstances is much more keen; pathos gains poignancy, even from a mere jest. "Courage, man," says Romeo to the wounded Mercutio; "the hurt cannot be much." "No," answers the irrepressible gallant, "t is not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 't is enough, 't will serve. Ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man." The irony in the first sentence and the poor pun in the second, apart from the tragic situation, would be futile enough: in their setting, they outshine Mercutio's most brilliant repartees in the comedy scenes. On the other side, nothing could make the death of Mercutio more moving than that he should pass with a jest on his lips. Similar, but more terrible, is the use of the grotesque humor of Edgar and the Fool in the scene of the storm in King Lear, where the terror and pity of the situation are intensified by its flashes, as the darkness of that night is intensified by the lightning as it forks and quivers through the tempest. And even in the last scene it glimmers faintly but effectively in the gloom of a tragic close already well nigh intolerable. III We have come far from our original starting point of the apparent incompatibility of humor and imagination. In most cases we have seen that when the same line or phrase exhibited both elements in intimate relation, it was to be accounted for by the presence of the common element of sympathetic insight; but the examples last cited point to another class of circumstances, where both elements are present and mutually strengthening, but where the field of operation is less restricted. This class calls for a more ample treatment. Among the other limitations of Matthew Arnold's essay on The Study of Poetry, already discussed, is the neglect of the element of structure in art. One objection to the suggestion made above, that the reader should think of a line of verse at once pointedly humorous and highly poetic, applies also to his method of testing poetry in general by the style of the single line or short passage. The artistic quality, especially in classical art, resides as well in the whole design as in the workmanship of the detail: a piece of marble, or the carving on the capital of a column, is hardly sufficient evidence for judging the effect of a cathedral. Many a drama is a genuine poetic creation, although it may be simple to the point of baldness in diction, and exhibit the fundamental qualities of poetry only in the characterization and in the significance, proportion, and verisimilitude of the plot. It is not unconnected with the ignoring of this element by Arnold, that he has nothing to say of humor in his essay, and that he conse |