In comedy we have the appeal to laughter in its purity, the child’s laughter at the funny show guided by an intelligent grasp of social customs. It addresses itself to the {380} many, united by common modes of judgment and a common standard of fitness. Literature gives us, however, appeals of another kind. The writer who amuses us may seem, at least, to be very far from the social point of view, and the mood he induces may be by no means that of pure gaiety. After what has been said in the preceding chapter, a few words must suffice to indicate these other literary expressions of the laughing spirit. We may distinguish two main varieties of this mixed tone: (_a_) the combination of laughter with the attitude of serious attack, as illustrated in satire; (_b_) its combination with mellowing feelings in what we have recognised as modern humour. The distinguishing note of satire is the angry one of reprobation. Here vices and follies are no longer set before us as a diverting spectacle, but emphasis is laid on their moral indignity. The satirist is at the point of view of the moral judge; only, instead of the calmness of the judge, he has something of the fierce attitude of the prosecutor who aims at exposing and denouncing the turpitude of an offence. This being so, we see that laughter enters into satire as an expression of contempt and as an instrument of punishment. It assumes its most pungent and most dreaded form, ridicule or derision. It is thus less a spontaneous feeling than a volitional process: the satirist wills to mock. As satirist he controls his personal indignation by an artistic purpose, such a presentment of his victim as will excite in his hearers or readers the full laughter of contempt. Hence, the large license he takes, in the employment of exaggeration and the devices of caricature, in the invention of degrading situations, and in the appropriation of humiliating comparison, figure of speech and the other resources of his art. {381} It is clear that the mirthful spirit when it thus lends itself to the purpose of damaging attack becomes modified to the point of transformation. To laugh with Juvenal or with Swift is to feel more of a bitter malignity than of gaiety. We may say that satire takes us back to the brutal laughter of the savage standing jubilant over his prostrate foe. Or we may describe the laughter as a feeling of “sudden glory” deeply tinged by the dominant angry attitude of the laugher.