Now the same principle is to be recognized in dealing with things spiritual. It may not be affirmed that anything appertaining to universal consciousness—spontaneous, irresistible, as breathing—is of itself base, and therefore to be put away; since so to do is to question the Creative Wisdom. The work of the Infinite Spirit must be consistent; and you might as truly charge the bright stars with malignity as denounce as vile one faculty or capacity of the mind. Consequently, there is a use for all forms of wit and humor.
Punch represents a genuine phase of human nature,—none the less genuine because human nature has other and far different phases. That there is a time to mourn does not prove there is no time to dance. Punch has his part, and his times to play it, in the melodrama, the mixed comedy and tragedy, of existence. What we have to do is to see that he interferes with no other actor's rôle, comes upon the stage in fitting scenes, keeps to the text and the impersonations which right principle and pure taste assign him. His grimaces are not for the church. He may not sing his catches when penitent souls are listening to the "Miserere," drop his torpedo-puns when life's mystery and solemnity are pressed heavily upon the soul,—be irreverent, profane, or vulgar. He must know and keep his place. But he should have his place, and have it confessed; and that place is not quite at the end of the procession of the benefactors of the race. Punch, as we speak of him now, is but a generic name for Protean wit and humor, well and wisely employed. As such, let Punch have his mission; there is ample room for him and his merry doings, without interfering with soberer agencies. Let him go about tickling mankind; it does mankind good to be tickled occasionally. Let him broaden elongated visages; there are many faces that would be improved by horizontal enlargement, by having the corners of the mouth curved upward. Let him write and draw "as funny as he can"; there are dull talking and melancholy pictures in abundance to counterbalance his pleasantry. Let him amuse the children, relax with jocosity the sternness of adults, and wreathe into smiles the wrinkles of old age. Let him, in a word, be a Merry Andrew,—the patron and promoter of frolicsomeness. To be only this is nothing to his discredit; and to esteem him for being only this is not to pay respect to a worthless mountebank.
But Punch is and can be something more than a caterer of sport. Kings, in the olden time, had their jesters, who, under cover of blunt witticisms, were permitted, to utter home-truths, which it would have cost grave counsellors and dependent courtiers their heads to even whisper. Punch should enjoy a similar immunity in this age,—and society tolerate his free and smiling speech, when it would thrust out sager monitors. If it be true that
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,"
something like the converse of this saying is also true. Not fools exactly, but wisdom disguised in the motley of wit, often gains entrance to ears deaf to angelic voices. There are follies that are to be laughed out of their silliness and sinfulness. There are tyrants, big and little, to be dethroned by ridicule. There are offences, proof against appeals to conscience, that wince and vanish before keen satire. Even as a well-aimed joke brings back good-humor to an angry mob, or makes mad and pugnacious bullies cower and slink away from derision harder to stand than hard knocks,—even so will a quizzical Punch be efficient as a philanthropist, when sedate exhortations or stern warnings would fail to move stony insensibility.
As an element in effective literature, a force in the cause of reform, the qualities Punch personifies have been and are of no slight service. And herein those qualities have an indefeasible title to regard. Let there be no vinegar-faced, wholesale denunciation of them, because sometimes their pranks are wild and overleap the fences of propriety
