I trust that those who have accompanied me through the chapters of this
work, will have been able to trace a gradual amelioration in humour. We
have seen it from age to age running parallel with the history, and
varying with the mental development of the times, rising and falling in
fables, demonology, word-coining and coarseness, and I hope we may add
in practical joking and coxcombry.
The remaining chapters will draw conclusions from our general survey.
There can be little doubt that humour cannot be studied in any country
better than in our own. The commercial character of England, and its
connection with many nations whose feelings are intermingled in our
minds as their blood is in our veins, are favourable for the development
of fancy and of the finest kinds of wit, while the moderate Government
under which we live, tends in the same direction. Humour may have
germinated in the darkness of despotism, among the discontented subjects
of Dionysius or under "the tyranny tempered by epigrams," of Louis XIV.,
but it failed, under such conditions to obtain a full expression, and
although it has revelled and run riot under republican governments, it
has always tended in them to coarse and personal vituperation. The
fairest blossoms of pleasantry thrive best where the sun is not strong
enough to scorch, nor the soil rank enough to corrupt.
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