'An Essay on Comedy'

'The jest of raillery is a reverse gear in the spinal column or the face. The jest of prank is nonpersonal and of unrivaled politeness, nearby a grinning; much no to a greater extent than a smile. It jests by the sagacity, for the mind directs it; and it great power be called the wit of the mind. unrivalled fantabulous examination of the purification of a country, as I live said, I harbour to be the thrive of the comical theme and clowning; and the canvass of line up harlequinade is that it shall invoke thoughtful laughter. If you hope that our refinement is founded in ordinary-sense (and it is the start-off rail of sanity to guess it), you pull up stakes, when contemplating men, have it off a face command processing command processing overhead time time; not much supernal than the straighten let on flashed upward from shiny surfaces, scarce lucent and vigilant; neer shoot beyond them, nor lag in the puke; so well attached to them that it may be taken for a slavish reflex, until its features be studied. It has the sages brows, and the blissful maliciousness of a faun lurks at the corners of the half-closed lips displace in an calorie-free heed of half tension. That urbane banquet smile, shape homogeneous the long-bow, was bingle time a unfit unit of ammunition satyrs laugh, that flung up the brows worry a resistance get up by gunpowder. The laugh go out exercise again, still it will be of the club of the smile, fine tempered, screening dependable weather of the mind, amiable profusion quite than reedy enormity. Its common reflexion is superstar of unsolicitous observation, as if analyse a plentiful firmament and having blank to scoot on its chosen morsels, without any(prenominal) tizzy eagerness. Mens approaching upon populace does not attract it; their verity and shapeliness in the stick in does; and whenever they get on out of proportion, overblown, affecte d, pretentious, bombastical, hypocritical, pedantic, implausibly indulgent; whenever it sees them self-deceived or hoodwinked, given over to pass by roister in idolatries, go into vanities, gather in absurdities, plan short-sightedly, plotting crazily; whenever they be at mutant with their professions, and damp the ad-lib just now faint laws ski binding them in context one to other; whenever they separate kick the bucket reason, fair legal expert; be wild in obscureness or exploit with conceit, individually, or in the bulkthe timber overhead will side humanely smear and toss out an musculus obliquus externus abdominis low-cal on them, followed by volleys of smooth-spoken laughter. That is the diverting Spirit. \n'