Synopsis

"Perfect melancholy," says honest Ben, "is the complexion of the ass." I have heard it asserted that the observation is no longer applicable. This is cer- tainly a broad grinning age. A grave face is no longer the frontispiece to the apocryphal book of wisdom. Gravity is laughed out of countenance. — But melan- choly is not the fashion of an age, nor the whim of an individual — it is the universal humour of mankind — so far, indeed, I differ from Ben Jonson (whose memory may Heaven preserve from editorial spite, and editorial adulation !) inasmuch as I think that melancholy is a ion properly and exclusively human. The ass and the owl are solemn, the cat is demure, the savage is serious, but only the culti- vated man is melancholy. Perhaps the fallen spirits may partake of this disposition. So Ben would imply by the title of his comedy, called, " The Devil is an Ass," and if, as hath been more plausibly a£&rmed, the devil be a great humourist, then he must needs be melancholy — for whatever tends to laughter (unless it be mere fun) proceeds from that complexion.