indifference, or an ingenious and striking exposition of those evanescent and glancing impressions of objects which affect us more from surprise or contrast to the train of our ordinary and literal preconceptions, than from any thing in the objects themselves exciting our necessary sympathy or lasting hatred. The favourite employment of wit is to add littleness to littleness, and heap contempt on insignificance by all the arts of petty and incessant warfare; or if it ever affects to aggrandise, and use the language of hyperbole, it is only to betray into derision by a fatal comparison, as in the mock-heroic; or if it treats of serious passion, it must do it so as to lower the tone of intense and high-wrought sentiment, by. the introduction of burlesque and familiar circumstances. To give an instance or two. Butler, in his Hudibras, compares the change of night into day, to the change of colour in a boiled lobster. "The sun had long since, in the lap And, like a lobster boil'd, the morn From black to red, began to turn: When Hudibras, whom thoughts and aching 'Twixt sleeping kept all night, and waking, Began to rub his drowsy eyes, And from his couch prepared to rise, Resolving to dispatch the deed He vow'd to do with trusty speed." Compare this with the following stanzas in Spenser, treating of the same subject: "By this the Northern Waggoner had set At last the golden oriental gate Of greatest heaven 'gan to open fair, And Phoebus, fresh as bridegroom to his mate, And hurl'd his glist'ring beams through gloomy air: He started up and did himself prepare In sun-bright arms and battailous array, For with that pagan proud he combat will that day." In this last passage, every image is brought forward that can give effect to our natural impression of the beauty, the splendour, and solemn grandeur of the rising sun; pleasure and power wait on every line and word: whereas, in the other, the only memorable thing is a grotesque and ludicrous illustration of the alteration which takes place from darkness to gorgeous light, and that brought from the lowest instance, and with associations that can only disturb and perplex the imagination in its conception of the real object it describes. There cannot be a more witty, and at the same time degrading comparison, than that in the same author, of the Bear turning round the pole-star to a bear tied to a stake :- "But now a sport more formidable Which learned butchers call bear-baiting, A bold adventrous exercise With ancient heroes in high prize, That at the chain's end wheels about I need not multiply examples of this sort.-Wit or ludicrous invention produces its effect oftenest by comparison, but not always. It frequently effects its purposes by unexpected and subtle distinctions. For instance, in the first kind, Mr. Sheridan's description of Mr. Addington's administration as the fag-end of Mr. Pitt's, who had remained so long on the treasury bench that, like your Nicias in the fable," he left the sitting part of the man behind him," is as fine an example of metaphorical wit as any on record. The same idea seems, however, to have been included in the old well-known nickname of the Rump Parliament. Almost as happy an instance of the other kind of wit, which consists in sudden retorts, in turns upon an idea, and diverting the train of adversary's argument abruptly and adroitly into another channel, may be seen in the sarcastic reply of Porson, who hearing some one observe, that "certain modern poets would be read and admired when Homer and Virgil were forgotten," made answer-" And not till then!" Sir Robert Walpole's definition of the gratitude of placeexpectants, "That it is a lively sense of future favours," is no doubt wit, but it does not consist in the finding out any coincidence or likeness, but in suddenly transposing the order of time in the common account of this feeling, so as to make the professions of those who pretend to it correspond more with their practice. It is filling up a blank in the human heart with a word that explains its hollowness at once. Voltaire's saying, in answer to a stranger who was observing how tall his trees grew-" That they had nothing else to do"-was a quaint mixture of wit and humour, making it out as if they really led a lazy, laborious life; but there was here neither allusion or metaphor. Again, that master-stroke in Hudibras is sterling wit and profound satire, where speaking of certain religious hypocrites he says, that they "Compound for sins they are inclin'd to, By damning those they have no mind to;" but the wit consists in the truth of the character, and in the happy exposure of the ludicrous con tradiction between the pretext and the practice; between their lenity towards their own vices, and their severity to those of others. The same principle of nice distinction must be allowed to prevail in those lines of the same author, where he is professing to expound the dreams of judicial astrology. There's but the twinkling of a star A huffing officer and a slave; A crafty lawyer and pickpocket; A great philosopher and a blockhead; A formal preacher and a player; A learn'd physician and man slayer." The finest piece of wit I know of, is in the lines of Pope on the Lord Mayor's show "Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er, But lives in Settle's numbers one day more." |