Transactions of The Royal Society of Canada 



SECTION II 

 Series III JUNE AND SEPTEMBER, 1919 Vol. XIII 



Presidential Address — Satire and Humour 

 By Maurice Hutton, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S.C. 



(Read May Meeting, 1919) 



Having had occasion recently to make a paper for a Centenary 

 of Lowell, I have been led to consider the point of view of Lowell as 

 humourist and satirist, but also the wider question of the point of 

 view of humourists and satirists generally; whence this separate paper. 



The peculiarity of the humour and satire of Lowell lay in this, I 

 think: that, though he represented literature and the universities to 

 his country men, he yet set himself to reach the governing masses, 

 the masses who did not belong to the universities or literature, and 

 to be understanded of the people; or again to put the same 

 thing is a way more interesting and piquant, though he was 

 satirist and humourist, of first rate excellence, yet, unlike the majority 

 of humourists and satirists he chose the side of reform and championed 

 the faiths of Reformers and Idealists, the "New Faiths"; or I might as 

 well put it more broadly and say he championed just "Faith," for 

 Faith after all is broadly the quality of reformers; he championed 

 "Faith" and "Reform" against all those forces of conservatism which 

 have generally included for reasons not very obscure, the humourists' 

 irony and the satirists' wit. 



Plato, who has often photographed by casual anticipation the 

 smaller and quainter ironies of our world's life, has an obiter dictum 

 on this theme; himself a humourist and no one can tell just how often 

 a humourist, he has the right to be heard. 



Advocating emancipation for women, publicity and public service 

 for them "Glaucon" he made Socrates say "Glaucon, my superlative 

 friend let us ask the wits and humourists to forego for once their usual 

 line: not to make fun of all this novel and reforming feminism for its 

 incongruities: not to jest unceasingly about the ladies who wear 

 uniforms and ride a-horse back" — as who should say who drive motor 

 cars and ride bicycles. 



"Of course it is funny to see them, passing funny; but so were our 

 naked races funny even to us once, to see; and they are a scandal 



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