AN ILLUSTRATIVE ESSAY

WIT

ON

AND HUMOR.

THE facetious Dr. King, the civilian, one of the minor, or rather the minim poets, who have had the good luck to get into the Collections, tells us, that he awoke one morning, speaking the following words" out of a dream,"

Nature a thousand ways complains,
A thousand words express her pains;
But for her laughter has but three,
And very small ones, Ha, ha, he!

This seems to be a very tragical conclusion for “ poor human nature;" but the Doctor had probably been taking his usual potations over-night, and so put his waking thoughts into plaintive condition; for had he reflected on that "art of wit" which he professed, and opposed pleasures to pains, instead of "laughter," as the correct wording of his proposition required, he would have discovered that laughable fancies have at least as many ways of expressing themselves as those which are lachrymose; gravity tending to the fixed and monotonous, like the cat on the hearth, while levity has as many tricks as the kitten.

I confess I felt this so strongly when I began to reflect on the present subject, and found myself so perplexed with the demand,

that I was forced to reject plan after plan, and feared I should never be able to give any tolerable account of the matter. I experienced no such difficulty with the concentrating seriousness and sweet attraction of the subject of "Imagination and Fancy;" but this laughing jade of a topic, with her endless whims and faces, and the legions of indefinable shapes that she brought about me, seemed to do nothing but scatter my faculties, or bear them off deridingly into pastime. I felt as if I was undergoing a Saint Anthony's Temptation reversed,-a laughable instead of a frightful one. Thousands of merry devils poured in upon me from all sides,―doubles of Similes, buffooneries of Burlesques, stalkings of Mock-heroics, stings in the tails of Epigram, glances of Inuendoes, dry looks of Ironies, corpulences of Exaggerations, ticklings of mad Fancies, claps on the back of Horse-plays, complacencies of Unawarenesses, flounderings of Absurdities, irresistibilities of Iterations, significancies of Jargons, wailings of pretended Woes, roarings of Laughters, and hubbubs of Animal Spirits ;-all so general yet particular, so demanding distinct recognition, and yet so baffling the attempt with their numbers and their confusion, that a thousand masquerades in one would have seemed to threaten less torment to the pen of a reporter.

Nor has this difficulty been unfelt before, even by the profoundest investigators. The famous Dr. Barrow, who was one of the writers of all others from whom a thoroughly searching account of Wit might have been expected, both as he was a wit himself and remarkable for exhausting the deepest subjects of reflection, has left a celebrated passage on the subject, in which indeed much is said, and a great many definite things glanced at, but which still includes a modest confession of incompleteness.

"It may be demanded," says he, "what the thing we speak of is, and what this facetiousness doth import; to which question I might reply, as Democritus did to him that asked the definition of a man-'tis that which we all see and know: and one better apprehends what it is by acquaintance, than I can inform him by description. It is indeed a thing so versatile and multiform, appearing in so many shapes, so many postures, so many garbs, so variously apprehended by several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear and certain notice thereof, than to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure of fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in seasonable application

of a trivial saying, or in forging an apposite tale; sometimes it playeth in words and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense, or the affinity of their sound; sometimes it is wrapped in a dress of luminous expression; sometimes it lurketh under an odd similitude. Sometimes it is lodged in a sly question; in a smart answer; in a quirkish reason; in a shrewd intimation; in cunningly diverting or cleverly restoring an objection; sometimes it is couched in a bold scheme of speech; in a tart irony; in a lusty hyperbole; in a startling metaphor; in a plausible reconciling of contradictions; or in acute nonsense. Sometimes a scenical representation of persons or things, a counterfeit speech, a mimical look or gesture, passeth for it. Sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous bluntness, gives it being. Sometimes it riseth only from a lucky hitting upon what is strange; sometimes from a crafty wresting obvious matter to the purpose. Often it consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless rovings of fancy and windings of language. It is, in short, a manner of speaking out of the simple and plain way (such as reason teacheth and knoweth things by), which by a pretty surprising uncouthness in conceit or expression doth affect and amuse the fancy, showing in it some wonder, and breathing some delight thereto. It raiseth admiration, as signifying a nimble sagacity of apprehension, a special felicity of invention, a vivacity of spirit, and reach of wit more than vulgar; it seeming to argue a rare quickness of parts, that one can fetch in remote conceits applicable; a notable skill that he can dexterously accommodate them to a purpose before him; together with a lively briskness of humor not apt to damp those sportful flashes of imagination. Whence in Aristotle such persons are termed eπideğioi, dexterous men, and suтporoi, men of facile and versatile manners, who can easily turn themselves to all things, or turn all things to themselves. It also procureth delight, by gratifying curiosity with its rareness or semblance of difficulty (as monsters, not for their beauty but their rarity-as juggling tricks, not for their use but their abstruseness—are beheld with pleasure); by diverting the mind from its road of serious thoughts; by instilling gaiety and airiness of spirit; by provoking to such dispositions of spirit in way of emulation or compliance; and by seasoning matter, otherwise distasteful or insipid, with an unusual and thence grateful tang.”—Barrow's Works, Sermon 14.

It is obvious that many of the distinctions here so acutely made are referable to the same forms of Wit, and therefore are but distinctions of mode without difference of matter. Yet so abundant, nevertheless, are the varieties which he has intimated, that had the writer followed them up with illustrations, and so have been tempted to endeavor at completing the subject, one almost fancies

he might have done so. But he was truly in a state of embarras des richesses of perplexity with his abundance.

Locke followed Barrow; and was the first to discern in Barrow's particulars the face of a general proposition. He described Wit as "lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures, and agreeable visions in the fancy." (Human Understanding, book ii., chap. x.) But the necessity of fetching congruity out of incongruity itself is here scarcely hinted at, perhaps not at all. Addison first pointed it out in his papers on Wit in the Spectator: where, in commenting on this passage of Locke, he heightens the properties pointed out by the philosopher, by adding to them the requirements of Delight and Surprise; and completes them, or at least intimates their completion, by the demand of Dissimilitude. "Every resemblance in the ideas," he observes, "is not that which we call Wit, unless it be such an one that gives Delight and Surprise to the reader"-" particularly the last ;" and "it is necessary that the ideas should not lie too near one another in the nature of things; for where the likeness is obvious, it gives no surprise."-No. 62.

Upon this hint of the great master, all the subsequent critics have spoken; such as Campbell in his Philosophy of Rhetoric, Beattie in his Essay on Laughter and Ludicrous Composition, and Hazlitt in the remarks on "Wit and Humor," prefixed to his Lectures on the English Comic Poets. The last in particular has entered into the metaphysical portion of the subject, or the inquiry into the causes of our laughter and entertainment, with so much of his usual acuteness and gusto, that I gave up, in modesty, all attempt to resume it, beyond what a different treatment might require. I resolved to confine myself to what was in some measure a new, and might at all events be not an undesirable or least satisfactory, mode of discussion: namely, as thorough an account as I could give of the principal forms both of Wit and Humor, accompanied with examples.

In order to prepare the way, however, for the readier acceptance of the definition of Wit, it may be as well to state the cause of Laughter itself, or of our readiness to be agreeably influenced by

this kind of exercise of the fancy. We are so constituted that the mind is willingly put into any state of movement not actually painful; perhaps because we are then made potentially alive to our existence, and feel ourselves a match for the challenge. Hobbes refers all laughter to a sense of triumph and "glory;" and upon the principle here expressed, his opinion seems to be justifiable; though I cannot think it entirely so on the scornful ground implied by him.* His limitation of the cause of laughter looks like a saturnine self-sufficiency. There are numerous occasions, undoubtedly, when we laugh out of a contemptuous sense of superiority, or at least when we think we do so. But on occasions of pure mirth and fancy, we only feel superior to the pleasant defiance which is given to our wit and comprehension; we triumph, not insolently but congenially; not to any one's disadvantage, but simply to our own joy and reassurance. The reason indeed is partly physical as well as mental. In proportion to the vivacity of the surprise, a check is given to the breath, different in degree, but not in nature, from that which is occasioned by dashing against some pleasant friend round a corner. The breath recedes only to re-issue with double force; and the happy convulsion which it undergoes in the process is Laughter. Do I triumph over my friend in the laughter? Surely not. I only triumph over the strange and sudden jar, which seemed to put us for the moment in the condition of antagonists.

Now this apparent antagonism is the cause, per se, of the laughter occasioned by Wit. Our surprise is the consequence of a sudden and agreeable perception of the incongruous;-sudden, because even when we laugh at the recollection of it, we undergo, in imagination, a return of the suddenness, or the liveliness of the first impression (which is the reason why we say of a good thing that it is always "new"); and agreeable, because the jar against us is not so violent as to hinder us from recurring

"The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly: for men laugh at the follies of themselves past, when they come suddenly to remembrance, except they bring with them any present dishonor."-Treatise on Human Nature, chap. ix.