CHAPTER XV.

ESTHETICS OF EXPRESSION-THE

RIDICULOUS.

Humor is wit and love.-THACKERAY.

Every resemblance of ideas is not that which we call wit, unless it be such a one that gives delight and surprise to the reader. These two properties seem essential to wit, more particularly the last.-ADDISON.

IT is derived from the Saxon witan, modern German wissen, which means 'to know.' Its first application, therefore, was to the intellect. A witty was formerly a wise man, a man of quick apprehension, of vigorous intellectual powers. As late as the reign of Elizabeth, a man of great wit signified a man of great judgment. To this day, we say of a person, if he is selfpossessed and rational, that he is in his wits; if otherwise, that he is out of his wits. It is in this general sense of quick wisdom that Pope observes:

True wit is nature to advantage drest,

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.

Lord Russell's definition of a proverb, 'The wisdom of many and the wit of one,' would thus form a witticism; likewise Coleridge's comparison of a single thought to a wave of the sea, which takes its shape from the waves which precede and follow it; and of experience to the stern-lights of a ship, which illumine only the track it has passed.

But wit, as currently understood, is a diverting or mirthmaking power — the power of so associating objects not usually connected as to produce a pleasant surprise. Its essential element consists in the accidental, awkward,

or intentional grouping or bringing together, in a sudden and unexpected manner, of objects or ideas that are in their nature incongruous. Most of the wit that we call Irish is the result of accident. —a blunder, a bull. A gentleman in a coffee-house writing a letter, and perceiving an Irishman behind him, concluded: 'I would say more, but a tall Irishman is reading over my shoulder every word I write.' 'You lie! you scoundrel,' said the self-convicted Hibernian.

Where the juxtaposition is designed, as in what is more properly denominated wit, the incongruities are of various types. The debasement of the elevated and grave by means of figures and phrases that are mean and contemptible, takes the name of burlesque :

'I love to hear the thunder burst,

See

Butler's Hudibras affords numerous illustrations.
also Cervantes' description of the battle between Don
Quixote and the wind-mills, a burlesque on the ancient
tournaments. To this division belong compositions in
which a prevailing serious tone is unexpectedly changed
at the close, as in Goldsmith's Elegy on Madam Blaize:
She strove the neighborhood to please

With manners wondrous winning;
She never followed wicked ways,-
Unless when she was sinning.

Of similar nature is the parody, a composition of like sound to another, but of ludicrously different meaning. A writer, for example, enumerating the miseries of life, says that, as he climbed into a berth in a river steam-boat,

I thought, as I hollowed my narrow bed,

And punched up my meagre pillow,

How the foe and the stranger should tread o'er my head,
As I sped on my way o'er the billow.

Which is evidently a parody on a stanza in that beautiful poem that commemorates the burial of Sir John Moore.

The converse of the burlesque is the mock-heroic, which aggrandizes the insignificant. In this kind of pleasantry the writings of Pope abound. Lord Petre having cut a lock of hair from the head of a fashionable beauty, and a quarrel ensuing, Pope, thinking to laugh the estranged lovers into reconciliation, writes an epicThe Rape of the Lock. Invocations, apostrophes, councils, fatal catastrophes, fearful combats between beaux and belles, spirits of the air-sylphs, gnomes, nymphs, and salamanders-form the poetic mechanism and action. The loftiness of style contrasts with the frivolous nature of the events. The history of a trifle is given with the pomp of heraldry, and the meanest things are set off with stately phrase and profuse ornament. A game at cards is a mimic Waterloo, whose hosts are marshalled by the king and queen of hearts:

Behold four kings, in majesty revered,

With hoary whiskers and a forky beard;

And four fair queens whose hands sustain a flow'r,
Th' expressive emblem of their softer power;

Four knaves in garb succinct, a trusty band;
Caps on their heads, and halberds in their hand;
And particolored troops, a shining train,
Drawn forth to combat on the velvet plain.

The oft-quoted passage in which the heroine's rage is told, is a good example of the ludicrous junction of small things with great:

Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes,
And screams of horror rent th' affrighted skies.
Not louder shrieks to pitying Heav'n are cast,

When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last.

Wit, as now understood, is often epigrammatic, chiefly conveying depreciation. 'Is not Geneva dull?' said a

friend to Talleyrand. 'Yes,' he replied, especially when

they amuse themselves.'

Said Celia to a reverend dean,

'What reason can be given,

Since marriage is a holy thing,

That they have none in heaven?'
"They have,' says he, no women there.'

She quick returns the jest,

'Women there are, but I'm afraid

They cannot find a priest.'-Swift.

Witty retort in conversation, as above, is usually styled repartee. How happy I am to be seated between a wit and a beauty,' said a fop to Madame de Staël. Yes,' replied she, and without possessing either.' Jerrold was famous for his brilliancy and readiness. At a certain supper of sheeps' heads, a guest was so charmed with his fare that he threw down his knife and fork, exclaiming, 'Well, say I, sheeps' heads for ever!' 'There's egotism,' said Jerrold.

Other species of witticism are the varieties of play upon words, double entendres, or double meanings, including irony, innuendo, sarcasm, conundrums, and puns. The last, though least meritorious, are most frequent. Specimens of the higher order are:

His death, which happened in his berth,

At forty odd befell;

They went and told the sexton, and

The sexton toll'd the bell.-Hood.

MR. STRAHAN,-You are a member of Parliament, and one of the majority which has doomed my country to destruction. You have begun to burn our towns and murder our people. Look upon your hands! They are stained with the blood of your relations! You and I were long friends. You are now my enemy, and I am B. FRANKLIN.

Yours,

Witticisms not distinctively embraced in the preceding enumeration may be described as surprising the mind by

the queerness or singularity of the imagery they employ. When Curran fought his duel with Judge Egan, the latter, who was a big man, directed the attention of the second to the advantage which, in this respect, his adversary had over him: 'He may hit me as easily as he would a haystack, and I might as well be aiming at the edge of a knife. as at his lean carcass.' 'Well,' said Curran, 'let the gentleman chalk the size of my body on your side, and let every ball hitting outside of that go for nothing.'

Speaking of having been shampooed at Mahommed's Baths at Brighton, Sidney Smith said, 'They squeezed enough out of me to make a lean curate.' To the Bishop of New Zealand, just before his departure for that cannibal diocese, he said: 'A bishop should be given to hospitality, and never be without a smoked little boy in the bacon-rack`and a cold missionary on the sideboard.'

A witticism's prosperity-Shakespeare to the contrary— often lies not only in the tongue of him who makes it,' but in his manner of speaking it, and in the occasion which brings it forth. Novelty, too, is an essential ingredient. Therefore it will seldom bear transplantation, and suffers by repetition. Nothing, it has been written, is so dreary as a jest-book. The choicer wines lose their flavor by exposure.

But the dreariness of perpetual and sustained wit is fundamental. To be incessantly surprised is to be soon wearied, and finally disgusted. Hudibras is saved from tediousness by being read in small quantities. Wit is the god of moments,' says Bruyère. Butler apparently so conceives its limitations, in these lines:

We grant although he had much wit,

He was very shy of using it,

As being loth to wear it out;
And therefore bore it not about,
Unless on holidays, or so,
As men their best apparel do