allusion will appear excellent when thrown out extemporé in conversation, which would be deemed execrable in print. In like manner, a witty repartee is infinitely more pleasing than a witty attack. For though, in both cases, the thing may be equally new to the reader or hearer, the effect on him is greatly injured, when there is ground to suppose, that it may be the slow production of study and premeditation. This, however, holds most with regard to the inferior tribes of witticisms, of which their readiness is the best recommendation. The other respect in which wit differs from the illus-. trations of the graver orator, is the way wherein it affects the hearer. Sublimity elevates, beauty charms, wit diverts. The first, as hath been already observed, enraptures, and as it were, dilates the soul; the second diffuseth over it a serene delight; the third tickles the fancy, and throws the spirits into an agreeable vibration. To these reflections I shall subjoin examples in each of the three sorts of wit above explained. It will, however, be proper to premise, that if the reader should not at first be sensible of the justness of the solutions and explications to be given, he ought not hastily to form an unfavourable conclusion. Wherever there is taste, the witty and the humorous make themselves perceived, and produce their effect instantaneously; but they are of too subtle a nature, that they will hardly endure to be touched, much less to undergo a strict analysis and scrutiny. They are like those volatile essences, which, being too delicate to bear the open air, evaporate almost as soon as they are exposed to it. Accordingly, the wittiest things will sometimes be made to appear insipid, and the most ingenious frigid, by scrutinising them too narrowly. Besides, the very frame of spirit proper for being diverted with the laughable in objects, is so different from that which is necessary for philosophising on them, that there is a risk, that when we are most disposed to inquire into the cause, we are least capable of feeling the effect; as it is certain, that when the effect hath its full influence on us, we have little inclination for investigating the cause. For these reasons, I have resolved to be brief in my illustrations, having often observed, that, in such nice and abstract inquiries, if a proper hint do not suggest the matter to the reader, he will be but more perplexed by long and elaborate discussions. Of the first sort, which consists in the debasement of things great and eminent, Butler, amongst a thousand other instances, hath given us those which follow: And now had Phoebus in the lap Here the low allegorical style of the first couplet, and the simile used in the second, afford us a just notion of this lowest species which is distinguished by the name of the ludicrous. Another specimen from the same au thor you have in these lines: Great on the bench, great in the saddle, In this coarse kind of drollery, those laughable translations or paraphrases of heroic and other serious poems, wherein the authors are said to be travestied, chiefly abound. To the same class those instances must be referred, in which, though there is no direct comparison made, qualities of real dignity and importance are degraded, by being coupled with things mean and frivolous, as in some respect standing in the same predicament. An example of this I shall now give from the same hand, For when the restless Greeks sat down Hudibras, Part ii. Canto 3. Ibid, Part i. Canto i. And were renown'd, as Homer writes, For well-soal'd boots,* no less than fights.+ I shall only observe further, that this sort, whose aim is to debase, delights in the most homely expressions, provincial idioms, and cant phrases. The second kind, consisting in the aggrandisement of little things, which is by far the most splendid, and displays a soaring imagination, these lines of Pope will serve to illustrate : As Berecynthia, while her offspring vie Not with less glory mighty Dulness crown'd, Shall take thro' Grubstreet her triumphant round; Behold an hundred sons, and each a dunce.+ This whole similitude is spirited. The parent of the celestials is contrasted by the daughter of night and chaos; heaven by Grubstreet; gods by dunces. Besides, the parody it contains on a beautiful passage in Virgil, adds a particular lustre to it §. This species we may term the thrasonical, or the mock-majestic. It affects the most pompous language, and sonorous phraseology, as much as the other affects the reverse, the vilest and most grovelling dialect. I shall produce another example from the same writer, which is, indeed, inimitably fine. It represents a lady employed at her toilet, attended by her maid, under the allegory of the celebration of some solemn and religious ceremony. The passage is rather long for a quotation, but as the omission of any part would be a real mutilation, I shall give it entire. In allusion to the Exuides Axa, an expression which frequently occurs, both in the Iliad and in the Odyssey. + Hudibras, Part i. Canto 2. Dunciad, B. § The passage is this, Felix prole virum, qualis Berecynthia mater ΕΧΕΙΣ. And now unveil'd the toilet stands display'd, Transform'd to combs, the speckled and the white. And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes.† To this class also we must refer the application of grave reflections to mere trifles. For that great and serious are naturally associated by the mind, and likewise little and trifling, is sufficiently evinced by the common modes of expression on these subjects used in every tongue. An apposite instance of such an application we have from Philips, My galligaskins, that have long withstood The winter's fury and incroaching frosts, By time subdued, (What will not time subdue!) Like to this, but not equal, is that of Young, One day his wife, (for who can wives reclaim!) Levell'd her barbarous needle at his fame. § To both the preceding kinds, the term burlesque is applied, but especially to the first. Of the third specious of wit, which is by far the most multifarious, and which results from what I may call the queerness or singularity of the imagery, I shall give a few specimens that will serve to mark some of its principal varieties. To illustrate all would be impos⚫ sible. The first I shall exemplify, is where there is an apparent contrariety in the things she exhibits as connected. This kind of contrast we have in these lines of Garth, Then Hydrops next appears amongst the throng; But like a miser in excess she's poor; And pines for thirst amidst her watry store.† The wit in these lines doth not so much arise from the comparison they contain of the dropsy to a miser, (which falls under the description that immediately succeeds) as from the union of contraries they present to the imagination, poverty in the midst of opulence, and thirst in one who is already drenched in water. A second sort, is where the things compared are what with dialecticians would come under the denomination of disparates, being such as can be ranked under no common genius. Of this I shall subjoin an example from Young, Health chiefly keeps an Atheist in the dark A fever argues better than a Clark: Let but the logic in his pulse decay, The Grecian he'll renounce, and learn to pray.‡ Here, by implication, health is compared to a sophister, or darkener of the understanding, a fever to a metaphysical disputant, a regular pulse to false logic, for the word logic in the third line is used ironically. In other words, we have here modes and substances, the affections of body, and the exercise of reason, strangely, but not insignificantly linked together; strangely, else the sentiment, however just, could not be denominated witty; significantly, because an unmeaning jumble of things incongruous would not be wit, but nonsense. |