LAUGHTER AS AN INDEX TO CHARACTER

Evening Star, Issue 5226, 4 December 1879, Page 3

LAUGHTER AS AN INDEX TO CHARACTER

It was a favorite maxim with Goethe that a man might be known by his laugh. Goethe did not mean to Bay that a man might be known by what he laughs at, though that Bometimes affords a very trustworthy teat of character, and one which Steele saya he waa wont to depend upon. '' In order to look into any person's temper," he remarks, "I generally make my first observation upon his Faugh ; whether "he is easily moved, and what are the passages which throw him into that agreeable kind of convu'aion. People are never so much unguarded," he continues, "as when they are pleased. And laughter being a visible symptom of some inward satiafaction.it is tl en, if ever, we may believe the face. There is perhaps no better index to point us to the of the mind than this, which is in itself one of the chief distinctions of cur rationality." Bub Goethe believed that it wa* possible to form a pretty safe estimate of a man's character by his manner of laughing, and few careful observers will dispute that much, at all events, may be learnt from it. From the cynical smile of Cassiua, as described by Shakespeare's Caewr, to the rampant, uproarious guffaw of T«ufelsdrockh, as described by Carlyle, laughter has aa many peculiarities of expression as there are peculiarities of mind and heart. "Paul," says Carlyle, "in his seiious way was giving one of those inimitable 'extract harangues,' and, as it chanced, on the proposal for a cast metal king. Gradually a light gathered in our professor's eyes and face a beaming, J mantling, loveliest light ; through those i murky features a radiant ever young Apollo I looked, and he burst forth like the neighing of Tattersall's tears streaming down his j cheeks, pipe held aloof, foot clutched in the air—loud, long-continuing, uncontrollable : a laugh not of the face and diaphragm but of the whole man from head to heel." It was the laugh of a simple, honest nature, and Sir John Falataff could no more have laughed bo than could lago or Don John. At the same time, it would undoubtedly be a mistake to imagine that turbulent, boisterous laughter is in itself always, or even generally, a creditable symptom of character. The real, hearty outburst of irrepressible mirriment is unquestionably so ; but it has often been remarked by acute observers that uproarious laughter marks the vacant and ill-regulated mind, and that they who are the most boisterous in their risibility, are often these who did not smile. With nnny a forlorn and uneasy wretch the seemingly hearty guffaw is out the "vice Id bcu/aldk" of a Swift, feeling himself doomed to hopeless despondency, and si niggling to ward it off. Laughter in all its phages is a valuable index of character, but it requires to be intelligently read, and it may be observed that the keenest obsarvers have been wont to mark the smile of a man as a more delicate criterion of charaoter than his laugh. It is interesting to notice with what marvellous skill and effect Shakespeare is always employing the smile as an indication of what is within—men's smiles with daggers in them, the smile of safety, the scatttred smile, tho modest smile, the dimpled smile, the smile of knaves, the smile mocking, the fawning smiles, enforced smiles, and so on. One might almost make out the characters that figure on the stage of the great dramatist by merely noting his description of their smiles and what they smile at. And as it ia on the Shakespearean stage, to it is around us. The light that ever and anon kindles in the faces we meet is a light called forth by something withou 1 ., but ic comes from within, and the significance and importance of that face is one which oil close student* of humm nature hav<> ]>fi-n quick to rero/.miso.--Mi1,1)6 '