was a fact to be disposed of. He finds fun to be an affair of the intellect quite detached for the moment from moral considerations and startled into mirth by some preposterous contrast between apparent promise and actual performance. But a protest runs through all his work against the divorce between the intellectual and the moral, hence comic license must be sparingly granted. His natural serenity and dignity protested against being victimized by a spasm of the diaphragm and facial muscles at the will of another, and he might almost have said with Lord Chesterfield, "I am sure that since I had the use of my reason no human being has ever heard me laugh." But if he had not wit according to his conception of it, he had that better quality into which human sympathy and kindliness enter as largely,—the saving sense of humor which crops out continually in his lectures. Ridicule and sarcasm were impossible to him. If he was not witty at others' expense, he often was at his own. He was always cheerful; what he saw in life made him happy, and in conversation in the family and with friends he was almost gay and often very amusing. Two subjects, Love and Death, were to him, and in his presence, always held sacred from jest.
This lecture, called "Comedy," was the eighth, following "Tragedy," in the course on Human Life given in Boston in the winter of 1839-40. It was published in the Dial for 1843.
Page 157, note 1. In the Dial the lecture opened with this paragraph:—
"It is a nail of pain and pleasure, said Plato, which fastens the body to the mind. The way of life is a line between the regions of tragedy and comedy. I find few books so entertaining as the wistful human history written out in the
