It would be an interesting inquiry, if our limits allowed {345} of it, to examine the means which art, as a whole, possesses for moving us to laughter. This would open up the curious question of the symbolism of colours and tones, and of their combinations, as expressive of mirthful feeling and of jocose intention. That laughter has for its proper excitant men and their doings, at once suggests that only those arts which represent human ideas and actions on a large scale have a considerable field for the exhibition of the ludicrous. Architecture, apart from sculpture, is heavily handicapped here. Music, as the expressive art _par excellence_, has a certain though narrowly limited range of effect, as may be seen in the characteristic rhythms, such as combinations of light staccato with deep-pitched notes, incompleted phrases and so forth, which do duty in comic opera. Some of this tickling effect is certainly due, not to an expression of jocose feeling, but to the bizarre aspect of the combination of sounds. And the same is probably true of the slightly amusing effects of such grotesque combinations of colour as are common in the costume of the harlequin, of the prince of mockers, and of other more or less comic figures. The grotesque and amusing in dress, that of the clown for example, is manifestly based on its suggestions, especially those of wrong sex, wrong age and the like. Passing by the comic directions of pictorial art, including the highly developed process of modern political and other caricature, the great _rôle_ in stimulating men’s laughing susceptibilities falls to literature, and pre-eminently to dramatic literature and its interpreter, the stage. Here, only, can the procession of human follies display something of its variegated amplitude. Hither must we come, if we would fain laugh our fill and know what resources art possesses for playing on the whole gamut of our “risibility”. {346} It would be well if we knew the beginnings of jocose literature. It may be that the jest-books preserve for us forms resembling those which these beginnings have taken. A short descriptive story of some practical joke, or of some smart bit of repartee, may have grown naturally enough out of the evening fire-side talk and become fixed and handed down to new generations. The Mediæval Contes (fabliaux) may be viewed as a slight expansion of such stories and fragments of talk. This short anecdotal story would allow a certain scope for mimicry and a crude art of elocution. A rudimentary form of comic acting, with its mimic gestures and its facetious dialogue, would naturally take its rise in the rehearsal of such a story by an acknowledged expert. The bits of dialogue, at least, would enforce a certain amount of mimicry of tones and gestures.