PLAYFULNESS.
THE late Lord Iddesleigh's nature was evidently essentially playful. It is curious how many words we have in English to express the brighter side of character,—playful, gay, frolicsome, droll, sportive, lively, vivacious, cheerful, joyful, merry, sunny, and very likely a host of others. But of all these, "playful" is, we think, the most characteristic and the least translatable into other languages. We should not know, certainly, bow to trans- late it into either German or French, and we doubt whether an exact translation into either language is as much as possible, the German equivalents being all too much possessed with the idea of smiling, laughing, boisterous happiness, and the French with that of mere gaiety and vivacity, qualities which differ from playful.
nese just as the buoyancy of the individual temperament differs from the buoyancy which is essentially sympathetic, and which takes as much delight in eliciting signs of happiness in another as it does in reflecting them back and multiplying the occasions for them. Gaiety is possible for a person alone, but playfulness hardly. It is a kind of happiness which needs companionship, and is conscious of the need,—nay, is all the happier for its consciousness of the need. Charles Lamb, for instance, was essentially both droll and playful; and his drollery, which was inimitable, was perhaps even more uniqne than his playfulness; yet it was in the mixture of playfulness and drollery that the charm of his humour consisted. The playfulness contributed to his drollery that gentleness and tenderness, that sense of the warmth of pleasure felt in happy companionship, which softened it and made it more humane. Lord Iddesleigh evidently delighted in Charles Lamb, as he shows by his quotation from Lamb's essay on the difficulty of writing to distant correspondents, and it is evident, too, that he had a large share of that playfulness which was the leaven which made Lamb's drollery so genial and charming. The delight with which Sir Stafford Northcote set himself to devise lively charades for his children and guests, entering himself heartily into the acting of them, would alone show this. Some people are never less sympathetic than when they are happy ; others are never really happy unless they are in con- scious sympathy with others, and it is this temperament which alone is in the truest sense playful. And such evidently was Sir Stafford Northcote's. Those charades of his could not have been written had not the nature of the man naturally overflowed into the invention of enjoyments for the young, and become young again in the very delight of discovering such pleasures. The charade on the word " Candidate" which he wrote and helped to act in 1874, the delineation of the "practical hatter" whom he impersonated himself, and of the blind beggar who com- memorated the passed-away glories of his hat in a delightful parody on "The harp that once through Tarree halls,"—as well as the sketch of the Candidate whose politics are absolutely to let, provided only that he should be allowed to put a tax on blue-stockings and throw off the tyranny of an " undenomina- tional wife,"—all show his delight in getting a laugh out of politics for the young people he loved. The stanzas, too, on the frightful iron statue of the Duke of Wellington that used to stand at Hyde Park Corner, are playful in the best sense ; they are animated by the desire to make the absurdity of the Duke's statue a subject of as much pleasure to the admirers of the Duke as it was to those who made merry over it. That spirit of sympathy which turns gaiety to playfulness pervades this admirable little poem, and is expressed with much subtlety and delicacy in the few excellent lines on Nemesis :—
"The stranger came—a goddess she,
But not of first-rate quality ; Full seldom loved, full often feared, At Court but rarely she appeared ; Shunned by the gods on days of state, They sought her when they learned to hate,
For none could orush their enemies
More skilfully than Nemesis.
Her face was singular enough—
Seen from above 'twas hard and rough ; Bat those who saw it from below Have said more mild it seemed to grow."
And certainly she must have been seen from below on this occasion, when she saved the great Doke from the destruction proposed amongst the envious immortals for one who might be regarded as in imminent danger of too lofty a pride, by producing for him a statue which he could not look upon without feeling that the greatest fame is after all only the vanity of vanities. Lord Iddesleigh never showed his humour except in this playful manner, never making use of ridicule or satire, except perhaps at his own expense, —as when, in concluding the truly humorous lecture upon "Nothing," he told the story of the man who had uninten- tionally killed another by firing off a blunderbuss in the dark, for whom his counsel pleaded that "he had shot at nothing and missed it ;" Lord Iddesleigh adding, as he took leave of his audience, "Perhaps I have done the same." And, indeed, he was quite right, though not in the sense he intended, for it would be impossible to conceive a lecture which, while proposing to talk about nothing, made nothing the subject of such profitable talk.
But though it is the spirit of sympathy pervading Lord Iddes- leigh's temperament which turned his gaiety into playfulness,— note, for example, as illustrating his sympathetic nature, all he
says against nicknames which are uncharitable, in the lecture on "Names and Nicknames," and the deep and delicate sympathy with the producers of pins and nails and all the minute con- stituents of the great instruments of civilisation, under the law of the division of labour, which he shows in the lecture on "Taste," —that spirit of sympathy would never have bubbled up in play- fulness had he not had a redundancy of life rendering it impossible for him not to overflow the more in play, the harder he worked. He tells us, in the charming address to thc students of the University of Edinburgh on "Desultory Reading :"—" I never read so many novels in succession as during the months I was working for my degree at the rate of ten or twelve hours a day ; and in the week when I was actually under examination, I read through the 'Arabian Nights' in the evenings." That shows an extraordinary elasticity of intellectual life, and without elasticity, there cannot easily be genuine playfulness, for play- fulness depends on the reserve of vitality which remains after the routine of work is done. A worked-out man cannot be playful, and it is clear that Lord Iddeeleigh, even to the last part of his career in the House of Commons, and in spite of that House, was never a worked-out man. But then, it is not elasticity alone, even in connection with a sympathetic tempera- ment, that will make a man playful, for elasticity sometimes shows itself in didacticism, in philanthropy, in all sorts of serious by-play which, though we call it by-play, is not and never can be playful. It is only elasticity in men who enjoy not being too serious, which results in playfulness. And it is rather remark- able, though it is certainly quite true, that we habitually attach a sort of moral merit to the temperament of men (and still more of women) who enjoy (as Lord Iddesleigh certainly did) not being too serious. We do more than praise them for writing amusing charades like Lord Iddesleigh's ; we almost incline to love them for it, and certainly contrast them invidiously with those who, in the intervals of their duties, manufacture for themselves other solemn duties to take the place of amusements. Why is play- fulness so attaching, so engaging, so delightful P We suppose because it shows, as nothing else shows, that there is genuine pleasure taken in our society for its own sake. If a man is a good companion only while we are working together for some earioue end, it is quite conceivable that he enjoys the efficient co-operation and not the mere companionship, not us. But if his nature bubbles over with signs of happiness, when nothing of any importance is going on, we are quick to believe, and to believe with some reason, that what he enjoys is the mere fact of our society, that that society stimulates his nature, and makes it overflow in evidences of redundant happiness. That is precisely what makes playfulness delightful in a sense in which serious converse,--converee held for a given purpose, and with an end, however noble, in view,—can never be equally delightful. It is the consciousness produced in us by the playfulness of those dearest to us as it is produced by nothing else in the world, that we brighten their life, as they brighten ours, which makes playfulness so delightful and so attaching.
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