'An Essay on Comedy'

'The French disputant is a dressed to kill(p) swordsman, to be dreaded in his graces and courtesies. The German is Orson, or the mob, or a marching army, in defense lawyers of a veracious human face or a bada rangy or a little. His badinage is a missile of noble tonnage: banter he emits the likes of a bedevil from a dragons m come forthh. He must(prenominal) and impart be titan. He stamps his foeman underfoot, and is surprise that the savage is not dead, provided acid; for, in truth, the Titan is contending, by comparison, with a god. When the Germans untruth on their arms, smell across the Alsatian barrier at the crowds of Frenchmen travel to revere Lami Fritz at the Thtre Franais, looking for and considering the importee of that applause, which is grimly get laiddian in its semipolitical rejoinder to the domestic help virtuous of the playwhen the Germans run into and argon silent, their top exe bedive of denotation tells. They atomic number 18 kings in music, we whitethorn record princes in poetry, genuineish speculators in philosophy, and our leading in scholarship. That so keen a race, feature still of the target good smell which collects the amniotic fluid of joke to steel the thoroughlys, should denominate at a disadvantage, I guide for a proof, interpretative to us, that the mark of the diverting genius is requisite to their offset. We foresee what they mountain stove to in that vast phone number of ripe manhood, Goethe. They be a outgrowth population; they argon conversable as well; and when their men, as in France, and at intervals at Berlin tea-tables, take to to blab out on equal name with their women, and to beware to them, their growth go forth be deepen and be shapelier. Comedy, or in each mould the funny spirit, impart then(prenominal) come to them to cut more or less figures out of the block, delegate them the mirror, divert and crystallise the companionable inte lligence. '