We have seen so much of Cruikshank's kingdom of supernature that it is scarcely necessary to revisit it. The reader will note, however, that the degradation of the terrible to the absurd is his chief humorous idea of supernature, and that he respects the seriousness of fairy tales. Not even the burlesque metaphors of Giambattista Basile--that monkey of genius among the euphuists--tempts him to ridicule the stories in "Il Pentamerone"; no one less than Milton can banish the ridiculous from his idea of Satan. A Satan who is a little lower than Punch, is he not more absurd than Man figured as a little lower than the angels? He is both more absurd and more satisfactory. Out of the folklore of Iceland and Wales and Normandy he comes to us outwitted by mortals who seem paradoxically to think that the Father of lies has a right to their adherence to the letter of their agreements with him. Out of Cruikshank's caricature he comes to us with a tail capable of delineating a whole alphabet of humour. The fire which he and his demons can live in without consumption becomes jocose. If you doubt it, compare Cruikshank's etching for Douglas Jerrold's story, "The Mayor of Hole-cum-Corner" (1842), with his etching, _Sing old Rose and burn the Bellows_ in "Scraps and Sketches" (1828). The human-looking demon with his left leg in the flabbergasted mayor's fire is much funnier in effect than the negro sailor boiling the kettle over his wooden leg. Human terror at superiority over natural law is highly ludicrous when the superiority is evinced as though it were ordinary, negligible, and compatible with sociableness. We cannot now say of such humour that it is a revelation, though once it was brighter than all the fires of Smithfield. There are foes of peace which in Cruikshank's simplicity he thought of as good. For these, too, there is a Humour to keep them at bay, until Science delivers us from their evil by making them obsequious to all who see them. When Humour pretends to drop from the supernatural to the commonplace, it--I cannot for the moment persuade myself to write he or she--is about to continue its most important mission, for it deserts a subject which is naturally laughable for one which is not; it goes from the supernatural to the commonplace. The supernatural is naturally laughable because the human animal instinctively laughs at that which at once transcends and addresses his intelligence, on a principle similar perhaps to that which Schopenhauer acted on when he smiled at the angle formed by the tangent and the circumference of a circle. At the commonplace, however, the human animal never spontaneously laughs. Its staleness is not dire to him; but negativeness is not good, and Cruikshank helps the commonplace to be his friend.