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in her darkness, though as yet she compre- | afraid," are substituted for her natural hended it not.

From The British Quarterly Review.
WIT AND HUMOUR.*

A LITTLE girl was one day reading the History of England with her governess, and coming to the statement that Henry I. never laughed again after the death of his son, she looked up and said, "What did he do when he was tickled?" The question was a philosophical one, but it discovers the youth of the querist. She had not yet grown to an age to appreciate the moral power of wit, and only thought of that cause of laughter which came home to herself. If Henry himself could have heard such a question, it might have brought a smile at least over his troubled features, for there is something irresistibly risible in the thought of anyone daring to tickle a great king.

We have placed at the head of this article the titles of the earliest and latest jest-books, and although the last-issued one is by far the more voluminous of the two, we do not think it will gain in comparison with its predecessor. We must confess to feeling some disappointment in the contents of the "New London Jest-Book," and do not quite understand the reason for its publication. When we saw Mr. Hazlitt's name attached to a collection of "Choice Jests," we expected to find a book somewhat of the character of Mr. Thoms's admirable "Anecdotes and Traditions," published for the Camden Society, in which an attempt would be made to trace the history of the jokes to their sources, and show how they illustrate the manners of the people. Something of this kind we had reason to expect from the editor of the Shakespeare Jest-Books," but we find nothing to distinguish the new work from the hundreds that have preceded it. Among the faults we have noticed are the following. The oldest jokes are told as if they occurred yesterday, and the same story is variously related in different parts of the book. Some of the jokes also are spoiled: thus the story of the old woman who, while passing a sentry at the time of relieving guard, answered his "Who goes there?" by calling out, "It's only me, soldier, don't be afeard," is maimed, and the impossible words, "It's I, patrol, don't be

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The Jests of Hierocles. Carew Hazlitt.

The New London Jest-Book. Edited by William

speech. Dr. Johnson's answer to the lady who played a difficult piece of music to him, that he wished it had been impossible, is here attributed to the friend of a vain but indifferent performer on the violin. Again, the story of Paley and his wellhere that hath five barley-loaves and two known joke that the verse "There is a lad small fishes, but what are these among so many?" would make a good text for a sermon during Pitt's visit to Cambridge, is here said to have been actually preached by a chaplain. Why will compilers coutinue to make up their books from one another with the introduction of little or no new matter? We venture to say that the memoir of Sydney Smith contains more good wit than is to be found in all the jest-books put together. Mr. Hazlitt has introduced a few witticisms of Leigh Hunt, Douglas Jerrold, and Sidney Smith, but the major part of his volume is filled with jokes that are as old as the hills.

Hierocles, who lived in the sixth century, collected twenty-one jests under the general title of the Pedants, and in this fossil jest-book we find jokes that have been handed down through succeeding collections, and have become old and familiar friends. Among these ancient jests is the account of the man who for fear of drowning determined not to enter the water until he was master of the art of swimming; of the man who complained that his horse died just as he had taught it to live without food; of the philosopher who carried a stone about with him as a specimen of his house; of one who stood before a glass with his eyes shut, to see how he looked when he was asleep; of the man who bought a crow, to see whether it would live two hundred years; and of one who went into a boat on horseback, because he was in a hurry. Here we find the evernew story of a man who, meeting a friend, asked whether it was he or his brother, who was buried; and the blundering excuse of the person who, not having attended to the request of a friend, said when he met him, "I am sorry I never received the letter which you wrote to me about the books." The Rev. Mr. Hartley, of Philadelphia, must, we should imagine, have come fresh from the perusal of Hierocles when he forwarded to M. Thiers last year one of the original bricks of Independence Hall in that city, "with the earnest prayer that the legislators of beautiful France may derive from it such an inspiration as shall lead them to erect a republic, whose diguity, justice, and purity shall be

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the admiration of our age, and which shall | nate word; from the quiet twinkle of the prove a model for other nations in securing eye, to "laughter holding both his sides." the rights and liberties of their people." We need not waste much time in the conWe are unable to understand why it is sideration of the received definitions of that some one has not systematized our the philosophers, for they are either too treasures of wit, and given life and form comprehensive or too contracted. Some to bare jests, making them show us some- would include much that is not, and what of the inner life of man, and of his others would exclude much that is, wit. characteristic manners and feelings. Dean Pope commits himself to the idea that Ramsay has collected a large number of True wit is nature to advantage drest, stories of Scotch character, and arranged Oft thought before, but ne'er so well exprest; ' them so as to illustrate the past and pass-which he clearly borrowed from Dryden, ing manners of his country. In consequence his book has a double use, for it is who defines wit to be "a propriety of valuable historically considered, and is words and thoughts adapted to the subalso by far the best jest-book in the lan-ject." But these definitions are too vague and general, for they would include all guage. Most writers seem to consider the col-good writing. Locke describes wit as lecting of jests as a derogatory office; and lying mostly in the assemblage of ideas, doubtless it is so, when the work is under- and putting those together with quickness taken as it usually is; but surely we need and variety, wherein can be found any renot be ashamed to do what was done by semblance or congruity, whereby to make Julius Cæsar, Tacitus, and Lord Bacon. up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions There are few greater mistakes than the in the fancy." Addison adds to this definition, that delight and surprise are nesupposition that wit is frivolous. Most great men, even if not witty themselves, have cessary to make wit, and illustrates it thus: been anxious to listen to that which could

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When a lover tells us that the bosom of his mistress is as white as snow, the

break the thread of their serious thoughts; simile is not witty, but it becomes so have been eager to hear and see whatever would make them laugh. Philip of Mace- when he adds that it is also as cold. Dr. don, and Sylla, the general of the Romans, Johnson defines wit as "a combination of were both fond of jokes; and a priest writing of the last illness of Queen Elizabeth says, "She cannot attend to any discourse of Government and State, but delighteth to hear some of the Hundred Merry Tales, and such like, and to such is very attentive." We know that neither of these was a frivolous person. Proverbs have been generally recognized as affording a wide field of illustration in the study of human nature, but jests have been too little regarded in the same study, yet much may be learnt of the manners of a people from the study of its jokes.

We shall endeavour in the space at our disposal to give a hasty glance at some of the chief divisions of Wit and Humour, illustrating them with such jests as come to hand. Many of these will be old, but if they elucidate the subject our readers will perhaps not object to see their old friends again. Moreover, new jokes are few, and their novelty is often discovered to consist merely of the new dress in which they have been clothed.

dissimilar images, or discovery of occult
resemblances in things apparently unlike;
and Dr. Campbell, in the "Philosophy of
Rhetorick," as "that which excites agree-
able surprise in the mind by a strange as-
semblage of related images presented to
it.". There is much wit, however, which
excites anything but agreeable surprise.
Ridicule is a very important branch of
wit, yet the person ridiculed is little likely
to be filled with agreeable surprise. Both
Barrow and Cowley attempted to define
wit, and ended by describing and illust-
rating it.
Cowley says:-

"Tell me, oh tell, what kind of thing is wit,
Thou who master art of it?
A thousand different shapes it bears,
Comely in thousand shapes appears.
Yonder we see it plain; and here 'tis now,
Like spirits, in a place, we know not how."

Laughter is sometimes emotional, and sometimes only mechanical; so that those who tell us that what produces laughter is wit, forget that to carry out their view we should be led to the conclusion that tickThe two words Wit and Humour bring ling is witty. Lord Chesterfield would up before our mind's eye crowding re- also have to withdraw his claim to the miniscences of the good things we rank of a wit, for he said that since he have heard or read-recollections that had had the full use of his reason nobody range from the delicate wit of the poet, had ever heard him laugh, and he affirmed to the wretched torture of some unfortu- 'that true wit never made anybody laugh.

There are three words which may be considered to include all that relates to our subject. These are, Wit, Humour, and Fun; and though frequently confused, they are each distinct. Roughly we may affirm that wit requires a good head, humour a good heart, and fun good spirits. Wit will rise to the highest flights, and fun may sink to the lowest depths. The word wit has many significations, its original being the Angle-Saxon verb meaning to know, and thus it was formerly a synonym of wisdom; and we should not forget this sense, because the highest wit is wisdom at play. Here is a quibble on the double of the word. Perron observed to the Duke of Mantua, who said that the jester whom he retained in his service was a fellow of no wit or humour, "Your grace must pardon me, I think he has a deal of wit who can live by a trade he does not understand."

mimicry come under this heading, and it has been observed that the author of a comedy is a wit, the comic actor a humourist, and the clown a buffoon. Old jests were usually tricks, and in coarse times we find that little distinction is made between joyousness and a malicious delight in the misfortunes of others. Civilization discountenances practical jokes, and refinement is required to keep laughter within bounds. As the world grows older fun becomes less boisterous, and wit gains in point, so that we cannot agree with Cornelius O'Dowd when he says, "The day of witty people is gone by. If there be men clever enough now-a-days to say smart things, they are too clever to say them. The world we live in prefers placidity to brilliancy, and a man like Curran in our present-day society would be as unwelcome as a pvrotechnist with a pocketful of squibs." This is only a repThe distinction between wit and hu- etition of an old complaint, and its incormour may be said to consist in this, that rectness is proved when we find the same the characteristic of the latter is nature, thing said one hundred years ago. In a and of the former art. Wit is more allied manuscript comedy, "In Foro," by Lady to intellect, and humour to imagination. Houstone, who died near the end of the Humour is a higher, finer, and more genial last century, one of the characters obthing than wit. It is a combination of serves, "Wit is now-a-days out of fashion, the laughable with tenderness, sympathy, people are well-bred, and talk upon a and warmheartedness. Pure wit is often level; one does not at present find wit but ill-natured, and has a sting; but wit, in some old comedy." In spite of Mr. sweetened by a kind, loving expression, Lever and Lady Houstone, we believe that becomes humour. Wit is usually brief, sharp, epigrammatic, and incisive, the fewer words the better; but humour, consisting more in the manner, is diffuse, and words are not spared in it. Carlyle says, "The essence of humour is sensibility, warm, tender fellow-feeling with all forms of existence;" and adds, of Jean Paul's humour, that in Richter's smile itself a touching pathos may lie hid too deep for tears." This same idea of the affinity between smiles and tears is prettily expressed by Frederick Locker :

"I've laughed to hide the tear I shed,

As when the jester's bosom swells,
And mournfully he shakes his head,
We hear the jingle of his bells."

Wit may be considered as the distinctive
feature of the French genius, and humour
of the English; but to show how difficult
it is to carry these distinctions out fairly,
we may note that England has produced a
Butler, one of the greatest of wits, and
France a Moliere, one of the greatest of
humourists.

Fun includes all those things that occasion laughter which are not included in the two former divisious. Buffoonery and

civilized society is specially suited for the
display of refined wit. Under such con-
ditions satire is sure to flourish, for the
pen takes the place of the sword, and we
know it can slay an enemy as surely as
steel. This notion owes its origin in part
to an error in our mental perspective, by
which we bring the wit of all ages to one
focus, fancying what was really far apart
to have been close together, and thus com-
paring things which possess no proper ele-
ments of comparison, and placing as it
were, in opposition to each other the
accumulated broad and well-storied tap-
estry of the past with the fleeting moments
of our day, which are but its still accumu
lating fringe. Charles Lamb will not
allow any great antiquity for wit, and
apostrophizing candle-light says, "This is
our peculiar and household planet; want-
ing it, what savage, unsocial nights must
our ancestors have spent, wintering in
caves and unillumined fastnesses! They
must have lain about and grumbled at one
another in the dark.
could have passed, when you must have
felt about for a smile, and handled a neigh-
bour's cheek to be sure he understoood
it? . . . . Jokes came in with candles."

What repartees

a

Undoubtedly there was but little wit or humour in the early ages of the world. The only laugh we hear that the Jews indulged in was that of scorn. What wit we find among the ancients was usually of very rudimentary character, such as practical jokes, -a form of jesting now happily banished from society, and indulged in only by the lower classes, which is one of the reasons why a cultivated man can seldom laugh with the vulgar. James I. was fond of practical jokes, and of all kinds of foolery. In one of his progresses he asked how far it was to a certain town, when his attendants answered, "Six miles." Half an hour after he asked again, and was told "Six miles and a half," at which he alighted from his coach and crept under the shoulder of his led horse, because, he said, "I must stalk, as yonder town is shy

and flies me."

Goethe said nothing is more significant of men's characters than what they find laughable, and doubtless he was correct; yet we laugh one day at what would not raise even a smile on another, so much depending on the state of our mind at the time. When our feelings are strung to their greatest tension we are often inclined to laugh, and we smile for the very reason that we ought not. A slight thing will upset the gravity of a congregation, and a small joke will set the House of Commons or a court of law into a roar. We often find a jest in the mouths of the dying, not from any irreverence, but from this curious symptom of the mental state. Selden says, "Wit must grow like fingers. If it be taken from others, it is like plums stuck upon blackthorns; there they are for a while, but they come to nothing." It is true that wit will not always bear transplantation, because time and place have much to do with its success; but nevertheless we are fortunate in possessing a large quantity of jests that, as Lord Bacon said, "serve to be interlaced in continued speech." Cicero called a jest-book a salt-pit out of which you might extract salt to sprinkle where you will. The man who sets up for a wit must be careful not to make his jests follow too quickly upon each other, and should introduce flashes of dulness, or he will be voted a bore, and considered as bad as an ill-edited "Joe Miller." Herbert makes some judicious remarks on this point:"Wit's an unruly engine, wildly striking

Sometimes a friend, sometimes the engineer; Hast thou the knack? pamper is not with liking;

Bat if thou want it, buy it not too dear.

Many affecting wit beyond their power,
Have got to be a dear fool for an hour.
If thou be master gunner, speak not all
That thou canst speak at once, but hus-
band it,

And give men turns of speech. Do not fore-
stal,

By lavishness, thine own and other's wit,
As if thou mad'st thy will. A civil guest
Will no more talk all, than eat all the
feast."

Most of the philosophers who have set
to work to define mental sensations insist
that laughter supposes a feeling of superi-
ority in the laugher over the laughed at;
but they seem to overlook the great dis-
tinction between laughing at and laughing
with any one. Doubtless a feeling of
contempt often raises a laugh, and the ab-
surdities of men and women are a con-
stant food for laughter; but humourists
often laugh at themselves. Nothing will
illustrate better the absurdity of the
wholesale statement that laughter implies
contempt than Charles Lamb's relation to
Coleridge. He constantly laughed and
joked at the preaching of the philoso-
pher, but he reverenced his friend of fifty
years, and looked up to him with childlike
love. A "Westminster Reviewer" de-
fines the cause of laughter as the repre-
sentation of objects with qualities the
opposite of their own; but all incongrui-
ties do not cause laughter. Ludicrous
incongruity is opposed to dignity, and
this is why those who have little wisdom
to fall back upon hate a laugh. Lord
Bolingbroke said that gravity is the very
essence of imposture; and Joe Miller is
the authority for the assertion that as
the gravest beast is an ass, the gravest
bird is an owl, and the gravest fish is an
oyster, so the gravest man is a fool. If
any one is inclined to doubt Joe Miller's
dictum, we can corroborate it by the au-
thority of Plato, who, when indulging in
the gaiety of his heart, used sometimes to
say, "Silence, my friends! let us be wise
now; here is a fool coming." Lord Ches-
terfield was no fool, and he disapproved
of laughter; but he allowed his son to
smile, for he did not advocate gravity. He
considered laughter as ill-bred, not only
on account of the disagreeable noise, but
because of the "shocking distortion of the
face that it occasions!" It is happy for
the world that such false notions are not
now received. Some suppose that laugh-
ter is caused by novelty and surprise, and
a French philosopher, in accounting for
the fact that, although we are told our
Lord wept, we never hear that he laughed,

suggests to us the reason that nothing was new to Him. Although this is good enough as a theory, it is grounded upon a mistaken idea of laughter, for we often laugh on the recollection of a witticism. Nevertheless, surprise is a material element of laughter, although it is not confined to that emotion. It has been well observed that "the only constant effect that follows on an original and striking comparison is a shock of agreeable surprise; it is as if a partition-wall in our intellect was suddenly blown out; two things formerly strange to one another have flashed together."

who have during two centuries exhibited all the varieties of wit. Most of the popular jokes have been attributed at different times to the chief wit of his day, so that a large number of them have many fathers. The title of Receiver-General of Waif and Stray Jokes was given to Selwyn, which proves that he made good ones of his own, because it has been said we are only inclined to lend to the rich. The peculiarities of some of these wits have been distinguished from each other. Dr. Johnson says of Prior and Butler, "The spangles of wit which Prior could afford he knew how to polish, but he wanted the bullion of Butler. Butler pours out a negligent profusion, certain of the weight, but careless of the stamp." Horne Tooke makes somewhat the same observations upon Sheridan and Curran : -"Sheridan's wit was like steel, highly polished and sharpened for display and use; Curran's was a mine of virgin gold, incessantly crumbling away from its own richness." Charles Lamb's humour is something by itself, which cannot be cut away from its context; and all he wrote is suffused with his own quaint character. He said of himself that he had been libelled as a person always aiming at wit; which he told a dull fellow that charged him with it, was at least as good as aiming at dulness.

Wit has its fashions as other things have, but in all its changes and varieties it still remains light. It need not always be ludicrous or laughable; in fact, we think it may sometimes be serious, but it must not be too heavily loaded, or it ceases to be wit. Sydney Smith rather unfairly limits the domain of wit by giving specimens which he says would be witty if they were not beautiful, such as the description of the sandal-wood which imparts an aromatic flavour to the edge of the axe that fells it. He considers that that which conveys an idea of sublimity, beauty, or truth cannot be witty. We think he is wrong, and believe that some of the wittiest sayings owe much to their wisdom. Wit is often little more than the Wit is often an unprofitable gift, for the unused side of wisdom, which common- dull people of the world look with susplace people do not see. Surely, Manly's picion upon the witty man, who often speech in Wycherley's "Plain Dealer" makes malapropos speeches rather than contains a truth well worthy of general lose what he considers a good thing. reception, wittily expressed: -"But know, Queen Elizabeth seeing Sir Edward Dyer that speaking well of all mankind is the walking in her garden called to him, worst kind of detraction, for it takes away "What does a man think of, Sir Edward, the reputation of a few good men in the when he thinks of nothing?" referring to world by making.all alike." The man his work entitled, "The Praise of Nothing." who said that Neology is the visible hori- He, smarting under supposed neglect, zon that bounds the outlook of the popu- answered, "He thinks, madame, of a wolar mind, and, as such, recedes as the pop- man's promise." Lord Bacon, after reular mind advances," was both witty and lating this anecdote, adds, "That anger wise. Similies are favourites of the poets, makes dull men witty, but it keeps them and are often as witty as they are beauti- poor." In later times Thomas Warton ful; as when dew is said to be "the tears paid a dear price for a joke. On one ocof the earth for the departure of the sun." casion a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, There are two classes of wits the au- who was not remarkable for wisdom, while thors and the talkers; but sometimes the reading the service, came to Psalm lxix. 5, two characters are united in one person. "Lord, thou knowest my simpleness." The succession has been continuous from Warton, who sat below him, whispered, Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, to Douglas "Why, that is known to everybody." Soon Jerrold. To mention only some, there are afterwards the office of President became Lord Rochester, Butler, Prior, Lords Her- vacant, and Warton was obliged to canvey and Chesterfield, Sir Charles Hanbury vass this man for the casting-vote. The Williams, George Selwyn, Sheridan, Foote, answer he received was, "No. I am not so Wilkes, Charles Lamb, Jekyll, Curran, simple as that neither," and Warton lost Theodore Hook, Thomas Hood, and Syd- his election. It is curious to remark on ney Smith. This is a motley list of men the various classes that have been the

LIVING AGE.

VOL. XXVI. 1229

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