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LECTURE IX.

ON THE DISTINCTIONS OF THE WITTY, THE DROLL, THE ODD, AND THE HUMOROUS; THE NATURE AND CONSTITUENTS OF HUMOR;

RABELAIS-SWIFT--STERNE.

I.

PERHAPS the most important of our intellectual operations are those of detecting the difference in similar, and the identity in dissimilar, things. Out of the latter operation it is that wit arises; and it, generically regarded, consists in presenting thoughts or images in an unusual connection with each other, for the purpose of exciting pleasure by the surprise. This connection may be real; and there is in fact a scientific wit; though where the object, consciously entertained, is truth, and not amusement, we commonly give it some higher name. But in wit popularly understood, the connection may be, and for the most part is, apparent only, and transitory; and this connection may be by thoughts, or by words, or by images. The first is our Butler's especial eminence; the second, Voltaire's; the third, which we oftener call fancy, constitutes the larger and more peculiar part of the wit of Shakspeare. You can scarcely turn to a single speech of Falstaff's without finding instances of it. Nor does wit always cease to deserve the name by being transient, or incapable of analysis. I may add that the wit of thoughts belongs eminently to the Italians, that of words to the French, and that of images to the English.

II. Where the laughable is its own end, and neither inference, nor moral is intended, or where at least the writer would wish it so to appear, there arises what we call drollery. The pure, unmixed, ludicrous, or laughable belongs exclusively to the understanding, and must be presented under the form of the senses; it lies within the spheres of the eye and the ear, and hence is allied to the fancy. It does not appertain to the reason or the moral

sense, and accordingly is alien to the imagination. I think Aristotle has already excellently defined* the laughable, tò yɛlotov, as consisting of, or depending on, what is out of its proper time and place, yet without danger or pain. Here the improprietyTò arолov-is the positive qualification; the dangerlessness—tò anduvor the negative. Neither the understanding without an object of the senses, as for example, a mere notional error, or idiocy;-nor any external object, unless attributed to the understanding, can produce the poetically laughable. Nay, even in ridiculous positions of the body laughed at by the vulgar, there is a subtle personification always going on, which acts on the, perhaps, unconscious mind of the spectator as a symbol of intellectual character. And hence arises the imperfect and awkward effect of comic stories of animals; because although the understanding is satisfied in them, the senses are not. Hence too, it is, that the true ludicrous is its own end. When serious satire commences, or satire that is felt as serious, however comically drest, free and genuine laughter ceases; it becomes sardonic. This you experience in reading Young, and also not unfrequently in Butler. The true comic is the blossom of the nettle.

III. When words or images are placed in unusual juxtaposition rather than connection, and are so placed merely because the juxtaposition is unusual-we have the odd or the grotesque; the occasional use of which in the minor ornaments of architecture, is an interesting problem for a student in the psychology of the Fine Arts.

IV. In the simply laughable there is a mere disproportion between a definite act and a definite purpose or end, or a disproportion of the end itself to the rank or circumstances of the definite person; but humor is of more difficult description. I must try to define it in the first place by its points of diversity from the

He elsewhere commends this Def: "To resolve laughter into an expression of contempt is contrary to fact, and laughable enough. Laughter is a convulsion of the nerves, and it seems as if nature cut short the rapid thrill of pleasure on the nerves by a sudden convulsion of them to prevent the sensation becoming painful-Aristotle's Def, is as good as can be. Surprise at perceiving any thing out of its usual place when the unusualness is not accompanied by a sense of serious danger. Such surprise is always pleasurable, and it is observable that surprise accompanied with circumstances of danger becomes Tragic. Hence Farce may often border on Tragedy; indeed Farce is nearer Tragedy in its Essence than Comedy is.”

Table Talk

senses.

former species. Humor does not, like the different kinds of wit, which is impersonal, consist wholly in the understanding and the No combination of thoughts, words, or images will of itself constitute humor, unless some peculiarity of individual temperament and character be indicated thereby, as the cause of the same. Compare the Comedies of Congreve with the Falstaff in Henry IV. or with Sterne's Corporal Trim, Uncle Toby, and Mr. Shandy, or with some of Steele's charming papers in the Tatler, and you will feel the difference better than I can express it. Thus again (to take an instance from the different works of the same writer), in Smollett's Strap, his Lieutenant Bowling, his Morgan the honest Welshman, and his Matthew Bramble, we have exquisite humor,-while in his Peregrine Pickle we find an abundance of drollery, which too often degenerates into mere oddity; in short, we find that a number of things are put together to counterfeit humor, but that there is no growth from within. And this indeed is the origin of the word, derived from the humoral pathology, and excellently described by Ben Jonson :

So in every human body,

The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood,

By reason that they flow continually

In some one part, and are not continent,

Receive the name of humors.

Now thus far

It may, by metaphor, apply itself
Unto the general disposition:
As when some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his effects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a humor.*

Hence we may explain the congeniality of humor with pathos, so exquisite in Sterne and Smollett, and hence also the tender feeling which we always have for, and associate with, the humors or hobby-horses of a man. First, we respect a humorist, because absence of interested motives is the groundwork of the character, although the imagination of an interest may exist in the individual himself, as if a remarkably simple-hearted man should pride himself on his knowledge of the world, and how well he can manage it—and secondly, there always is in a genuine humor * Every Man Out Of His Humor. Prologue.

farce of the world, and And it follows imme

an acknowledgment of the hollowness and its disproportion to the godlike within us. diately from this, that whenever particular acts have reference to particular selfish motives, the humorous bursts into the indignant and abhorring; whilst all follies not selfish are pardoned or palliated. The danger of this habit, in respect of pure morality, is strongly exemplified in Sterne.

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This would be enough, and indeed less than this has passed, for a sufficient account of humor, if we did not recollect that not every predominance of character, even where not precluded by the moral sense, as in criminal dispositions, constitutes what we mean by a humorist, or the presentation of its produce, humor. What then is it? Is it manifold? Or is there some one humorific point common to all that can be called humorous ?—I am not prepared to answer this fully, even if my time permitted: but I think there is ;—and that it consists in a certain reference to the general and the universal, by which the finite great is brought into identity with the little, or the little with the finite great, so as to make both nothing in comparison with the infinite. The little is made great, and the great little in order to destroy both; because all is equal in contrast with the infinite. "It is not without reason, brother Toby, that learned men write dialogues on long noses. I would suggest, therefore, that whenever a finite is contemplated in reference to the infinite, whether consciously or unconsciously, humor essentially arises. In the highest humor, at least, there is always a reference to, and a connection with, some general power not finite, in the form of some finite ridiculously disproportionate in our feelings to that of which it is, nevertheless, the representative, or by which it is to be displayed. Humorous writers, therefore, as Sterne in particular, delight, after much preparation, to end in nothing, or in a direct contradiction. That there is some truth in this definition, or origination of humor, is evident; for you can not conceive a humorous man who does not give some disproportionate generality, or even a universality to his hobby-horse, as is the case with Mr. Shandy; or at least there is an absence of any interest but what arises from the humor itself, as in my Uncle Toby, and it is the idea of the soul, of its undefined capacity and dignity, that gives the sting to any absorption of it by any one pursuit, and this not in respect of the

Trist. Sh. vol. iii. c. 37.

humorist as a mere member of society for a particular, however mistaken, interest, but as a man.

The English humor is the most thoughtful, the Spanish the most ethereal-the most ideal-of modern literature. Amongst the classic ancients there was little or no humor in the foregoing sense of the term. Socrates, or Plato under his name, gives some notion of humor in the Banquet, when he argues that tragedy and comedy rest upon the same ground. But humor properly took its rise in the middle ages; and the Devil, the Vice of the mysteries, incorporates the modern humor in its elements. It is a spirit measured by disproportionate finites. The Devil is not, indeed, perfectly humorous; but that is only because he is the extreme of all humor.

RABELAIS.*

Born at Chinon, 1483-4.-Died, 1553.

ONE can not help regretting that no friend of Rabelais (and surely friends he must have had) has left an authentic account of him. His buffoonery was not merely Brutus' rough stick, which contained a rod of gold; it was necessary as an amulet against the monks and bigots. Beyond a doubt, he was among the deepest as well as boldest thinkers of his age. Never was a more plausible, and seldom, I am persuaded, a less appropriate line than the thousand times quoted,

Rabelais laughing in his easy chair—

of Mr. Pope. The caricature of his filth and zanyism proves how fully he both knew and felt the danger in which he stood. I could write a treatise in proof and praise of the morality and moral elevation of Rabelais' work which would make the church stare, and the conventicle groan, and yet should be the truth, and nothing but the truth. I class Rabelais with the creative minds of the world, Shakspeare, Dante, Cervantes, &c.

All Rabelais' personages are phantasmagoric allegories, but Panurge above all. He is throughout the navoυgyla,-the wis

* No note remains of that part of this Lecture which treated of Rabelais. This seems, therefore, a convenient place for the reception of some remarks written by Mr. C. in Mr. Gillman's copy of Rabelais, about the year 1825. See Table Talk, VI. p. 333.-Ed.

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