much of the employment of this, as of other kinds of humor, is on a much humbler plane. Often it is merely verbal, and, as in the case of wit in the narrower sense of the word, while it may give point and increase the entertaining power of verse, it has nothing to add to its poetical quality. It may even be hostile to it, for it may provoke a mood incompatible with that which the essential qualities of poetry combine to induce.

Somewhat akin to irony is the element of humor in such satirical forms as the mockheroic poem and the mock-epic. In these, the loftiness of style of the kind of poem burlesqued produces an expectation which is at once contradicted by the actual matter of the satire; and this incongruity is the source of the humor throughout. In this by itself there is little or nothing to contribute to poetical effect. The mock element is merely a comic framework; yet it may enclose poetry either in the direct satire, or in the imitation of the epic or heroic style in itself. This last is naturally rare and difficult, yet it was accomplished in the great close of Pope's Dunciad. Here the make-believe of the epic of Dulness seems finally to have taken possession of the poet's imagination, an illusion of a higher kind of reality is produced, and a sort of poetic faith takes the place of the conscious hyperbole which has sustained the satire hitherto. Protest against stupidity is at last seen to be useless, and in a genuine imaginative flight the poet prophesies the final conquest of the universe by the enemies of light:

In vain, in vain - the all-composing Hour
Resistless falls: the Muse obeys the Pow'r.
She comes! she comes ! the sable Throne behold
Of Night primæval and of Chaos old !
Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying Rain-bows die away.
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain;
As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest,
Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest;
Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,
Art after Art goes out, and all is night.
See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head!
Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense !
See Mystery to Mathematics fly !
In vain ! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.

For public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;

Nor human Spark is left, nor Glimpse divine !
Lo! thy dread Empire, CHAOS ! is restor'd;
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,
And universal Darkness buries All.

We may now sum up the relation of humor to the various types of poetry with which we have been mainly concerned.

In romantic poetry in general, poetry in which there is a marked predominance of imagination, we have found humor to be noticeably rare, so that in the leading romantic poets of the age of Wordsworth we have not been able to find illuminating examples. This has not been surprising. In real life every one has observed the absence of humor in people of a strongly romantic tendency; and, in our own romantic moods, our flights into ideal realms are apt to be checked by the intrusion of even a momentary glimpse of ourselves as ludicrous. If it is difficult, as the philosophers have always said, to be in love and to be wise, it is still more difficult to be a romantic lover and retain a sense of humor. For the more romantic a mood is, the more does the imagination soar above the hampering restrictions of the reasonable, the traditional, and the actual; while one of the commonest sources from which humor springs is the contrast between the subjective imaginative view and the facts as presented by common sense.

In classical poetry this difficulty does not exist. The different aspects of what we have called the reason dominant in poetry of this type - the critical judgment, the sense of fitness, the feeling for restraint and moderation, the avoidance of excess, the harmony of means with ends, the respect for the normal, the tendency to follow tradition which has been tested by experience - these aspects remain uninjured by the power of perceiving the incongruous. Many of them, indeed, are such as to reinforce that power. It is natural, then, that in the poetry of classical periods humor should be much more abundant than in romantic periods. Writers greatly concerned with congruity in their work will be quick to perceive the incongruous, and to use it for ornament, for emphasis, and for relief. But in classical poetry imagination, though restrained, is not absent. It is only when the classical tendency runs to a vicious excess, when respect for tradition and the care for form degenerate into mere convention and mannerism, that the balancing element of imagination is reduced to the vanishing point. Then humor is apt to assume some of the vitalizing functions of the lost imagination, and there results a superabundance of satirical writing, such as we find in the pseudo-classical verse of the eighteenth century. Yet even in this satire, when it has true classical quality, we have seen the possibility of the coexistence of humor and imagination, the imagination being already disciplined by common sense.

Realistic poetry, also, has no antipathy to the humorous. The fact, as well as the reason, affords a sharp contrast to man's vain imaginings and pretences; and realism, going about its own business, might be expected to stumble upon many instances of the humorous. If we are right in classifying the great mass of satire of the individual as realistic, in contrast with classical satire of the type, we have in our satirical poetry much more abundant examples of realistic than of classical humor. From Jonson and Dryden to Burns and Byron our literature is rich in close transcripts of actual persons and conditions, enlivened with a vast variety of humorous contrast. Here, as