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"fore is so acceptable to all people,- because its beauty appears at first sight, and there is required no labour "of thought to examine what truth or reason there is "in it. The mind, without looking any further, rests "satisfied with the agreeableness of the picture, and the "gaiety of the fancy; and it is a kind of an affront to go about to examine it by the severe rules of truth "and good reason, whereby it appears that it consists in "something that is not perfectly conformable to them." * Now this notion of wit,- that it consists in putting those ideas together with quickness and variety wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, in order to excite pleasure in the mind, is a little too comprehensive, for it comprehends both eloquence and poetry. In the first place, we must exclude the idea of their being put together quickly, as this part of the definition applies only to colloquial wit. The "Avare" and the "Tartuffe" of Molière, would be witty even though we knew each of these plays had taken the author a year to compose. But as for the resemblance and congruity, there is resemblance and congruity in the well-known picture Mr. Burke has drawn of the Queen of France; but nobody can with any propriety call it witty without degrading it. The fact is, that the combinations of ideas in which there is resemblance and congruity will as often produce the sublime and the beautiful, as well as the witty;-a circumstance to which Mr. Locke does not appear to have attended, in the very short and cursory notice he has taken of wit. Addison's papers in the "Spectator" on this subject are more dedicated to the establishment of a good taste in wit, than to an analysis of its nature. He adds to this definition, by way of explanation, that it must be such a resemblance as excites delight and surprise in the reader; but this still leaves the account of wit as it found it, without discri

* Works, vol. i. p. 60.

minating the witty from the sublime and the beautiful, for many sublime and beautiful passages in poetry entirely correspond with this definition of wit.

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"He scarce had ceas'd, when the superior Fiend
Was moving toward the shore: his ponderous shield,
Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,
Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fesolé,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.
His spear-to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great ammiral, were but a wand-
He walk'd with, to support uneasy steps
Over the burning marle."

Now in this picture there certainly is an assemblage of very grand and very beautiful images, exciting delight and surprise, and gathered together expressly for their resemblance; yet no effect can be more distinct from the feeling of wit than the effect produced by these lines. "Wit," says Johnson, "may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of concordia discors-a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery "of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike; but if this be true, then the discovery of the resemblance between diamond and charcoal, between acidification and combustion, are pure pieces of wit, and full of the most ingenious and exalted pleasantry.

It is very little worth while to stop to examine what Lord Kames has said upon the subject of wit and humour: he has said so very little, and that little in so very hasty a manner, that there is no occasion to delay the progress of the investigation by dwelling on his opinions.

The best account in our language of wit and humour (as far as I know) is to be found in the first volume of Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric. I say the best, though I must take the liberty of saying that there

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appears to me to be very material defects in it. In the first place, he seems to make precisely the same mistake which all the other definers and describers of wit have done. "Wit," he says, "is that which excites agreeable "surprise in the mind, by the strange assemblage of "related images presented to it." Now this account of wit, as I have before remarked more than once, is too extensive, and includes the sublime and the beautiful. He then adds, that "wit effects its objects three ways: first, in debasing things pompous; next, in aggrandizing things mean; thirdly, by setting ordinary objects (by means not only remote, but apparently contrary) in a particular and uncommon point of "view." Now if this threefold division be meant as a distinguishing criterion of the operations of wit, it fails; for eloquence effects all these three objects as well as wit and if it be meant as an exhaustive analysis of modes of wit, it is extremely incomplete; for wit may find similitudes for, and relations between, great objects without debasing them, and do the same with little objects without exalting them. I may find a hundred ingenious points of resemblance between a black beetle and a birchen broom, without adding much dignity either to the insect or the instrument. I mention these objections to Dr. Campbell's Essay because it is my duty to discriminate, though I repeat again, that, as far as I know, and upon the whole, it is the best account of these subjects extant in the English language.

Now, to begin at the beginning of this discussion, it is plain that wit concerns itself with the relations which subsist between our ideas: and the first observation which occurs to any man turning his attention to this subject is, that it cannot, of course, concern itself with all the relations which subsist between all our ideas; for then every proposition would be witty; The rain wets me through,- Butter is spread upon bread,—would be propositions replete with mirth; and the moment the

mind observed the plastic and diffusible nature of butter, ⚫ and the excellence of bread as a substratum, it would become enchanted with this flash of facetiousness. Therefore, the first limit to be affixt to that observation of relations, which produces the feeling of wit, is, that they must be relations which excite surprise. If you tell me that all men must die, I am very little struck with what you say, because it is not an assertion very remarkable for its novelty; but if you were to say that man was like a time-glass,-that both must run out, and both render up their dust, I should listen to you. with more attention, because I should feel something like surprise at the sudden relation you had struck out between two such apparently dissimilar ideas as a man and a time-glass.

Surprise is so essential an ingredient of wit, that no wit will bear repetition;-at least the original electrical feeling produced by any piece of wit can never be renewed. There is a sober sort of approbation succeeds at hearing it the second time, which is as different from its original rapid, pungent volatility, as a bottle of champagne that has been opened three days is, from one that has at that very instant emerged from the darkness of the cellar. To hear that the top of Mont Blanc is like an umbrella, though the relation be new to me, is not sufficient to excite surprise; the idea is so very obvious, it is so much within the reach of the most ordinary understandings, that I can derive no sort of pleasure from the comparison. The relation discovered, must be something remote from all the common tracks and sheep-walks made in the mind; it must not be a comparison of colour with colour, and figure with figure, or any comparison which, though individually new, is specifically stale, and to which the mind has been in the habit of making many similar; but it must be something removed from common apprehension, distant from the ordinary haunts of thought, things which are

never brought together in the common events of life, and in which the mind has discovered relations by its own subtlety and quickness.

Now, then, the point we have arrived at, at present, in building up our definition of wit, is, that it is the discovery of those relations in ideas which are calculated to excite surprise. But a great deal must be taken away from this account of wit before it is sufficiently accurate; for, in the first place, there must be no feeling or conviction of the utility of the relation so discovered. If you go to see a large cotton-mill, the manner in which the large water-wheel below, works the little parts of the machinery seven stories high, the relation which one bears to another, is extremely surprising to a person unaccustomed to mechanics; but, instead of feeling as you feel at a piece of wit, you are absorbed in the contemplation of the utility and importance of such relations,. - there is a sort of rational approbation mingled with your surprise, which makes the whole feeling very different from that of wit. At the same time, if we attend very accurately to our feelings, we shall perceive that the discovery of any surprising relation whatever, produces some slight sensation of wit. When first the manner in which a steamengine opens and shuts its own valves is explained to me, or when I at first perceive the ingenious and complicated contrivances of any piece of machinery, the surprise that I feel at the discovery of these connections has always something in it which resembles the feeling of wit, though that is very soon extinguished by others of a very different nature. Children, who view the

different parts of a machine not so much with any notions of its utility, feel something still more like the sensation of wit when first they perceive the effect which one part produces upon another. Show a child of six years old, that, by moving the treadle of a knifegrinder's machine, you make the large wheel turn round,