but I should like to know if any man living could have laughed if he had seen Sir Isaac Newton rolling in the mud? I believe that not only Senior Wranglers and Senior Optimi would have run to his assistance, but that dustmen, and carmen, and coal-heavers would have run and picked him up, and set him to rights. It is a beautiful thing to observe the boundaries which nature has affixt to the ridiculous, and to notice how soon it is swallowed up by the more illustrious feelings of our minds. Where is the heart so hard that could bear to see the awkward resources and contrivances of the poor turned into ridicule? Who could laugh at the fractured, ruined body of a soldier? Who is so wicked as to amuse himself with the infirmities of extreme old age? or to find subject for humour in the weakness of a perishing, dissolving body? Who is there that does not feel himself disposed to overlook the little peculiarities of the truly great and wise, and to throw a veil over that ridicule which they have redeemed by the magnitude of their talents, and the splendour of their virtues? Who ever thinks of turning into ridicule our great and ardent hope of a world to come? Whenever the man of humour meddles with these things, he is astonished to find, that in all the great feelings of their nature the mass of mankind always think and act aright; — that they are ready enough to laugh,—but that they are quite as ready to drive away with indignation and contempt, the light fool who comes with the feather of wit to crumble the bulwarks of truth, and to beat down the Temples of God! So, then, this turns out to be the nature of humour: that it is incongruity which creates surprise, and only surprise. Try the most notorious and classical instances of humour by this rule, and you will find it succeed. you find incongruities which create surprise and are not humorous, it is always, I believe, because they are accompanied with some other feeling,-emotion, or an If interesting train of thought, besides surprise. Find an incongruity which creates surprise, and surprise only, and, if it be not humorous, I am, what I very often am, completely wrong; and this theory is, what theories very often are, unfounded in fact. - Most men, I observe, are of opinion that humour is entirely confined to character; and if you choose to confine the word humour to those instances of the ridiculous which are excited by character, you may do so if you please, this is not worth contending. All that I wish to show is, that this species of feeling is produced by something besides character; and if you allow it to be the same feeling, I am satisfied, and you may call it by what name you please. One of the most laughable scenes I ever saw in my life was, the complete overturning of a very large table, with all the dinner upon it, which I believe one or two gentlemen in this room remember as well as myself. What of character is there in seeing a roasted turkey sprawling on the floor? or ducks lying in different parts of the room, covered with trembling fragments of jelly? It is impossible to avoid laughing at such absurdities, because the incongruities they involve are so very great; though they have no more to do with character than they have with chemistry. A thousand little circumstances happen every day which excite violent laughter, but have no sort of reference to character. The laughter is excited by throwing inanimate objects into strange and incongruous positions. Now, I am quite unable, by attending to what passes in my own mind, to say, that these classes of sensations are not alike they may differ in degree, for the incongruous observed of things living, is always more striking than the incongruous observed in things inanimate; but there is an incongruous not observable in character, which produces the feeling of humour. Having thus endeavoured to ascertain the nature of humour, I come next to the various classes and divisions of the ridiculous which have an affinity with humour. Buffoonery is voluntary incongruity. To play the buffoon, is to counterfeit some peculiarity incongruous enough to excite laughter: not incongruities of mind, for this is a humour of a higher class, and constitutes comic acting; but incongruities of body,-imitating a drunken man, or a clown, or a person with a hunched back, or puffing out the cheeks as the lower sort of comic actors do upon the stage. Buffoonery is general in its imitations; mimicry is particular, and seizes on the incongruous in individual characters. I think we must say, that mimicry is always employed upon defects: a good voice, a gentleman-like appearance, and rational agreeable manners, can never be the subject of mimicry; -they may be exactly represented and imitated, but nobody would call this mimicry, as the word always means the representation of defects. Parody is the adaptation of the same thoughts to other subjects. Burlesque is that species of parody, or adaptation of thoughts to other subjects, which is intended to make the original ridiculous. Pope has parodied several Odes of Horace; Johnson has parodied Juvenal; Cervantes has burlesqued the old romances. A bull,-which must by no means be past over in this recapitulation of the family of wit and humour,—a bull is exactly the counterpart of a witticism: for as wit discovers real relations that are not apparent, bulls admit apparent relations that are not real. The pleasure arising from bulls, proceeds from our surprise at suddenly discovering two things to be dissimilar in which a resemblance might have been suspected. The same doctrine will apply to wit and bulls in action. Practical wit discovers connexion or relation between actions, in which duller understandings discover none; and practical bulls originate from an apparent relation between two actions which more correct understandings immediately perceive to have none all. In the late rebellion in Ireland, the rebels, who had conceived a high degree of indignation against some great banker, passed a resolution that they would burn his notes; which they accordingly did, with great assiduity; forgetting, that in burning his notes they were destroying his debts, and that for every note which went into the flames, a correspondent value went into the banker's pocket. A gentleman, in speaking of a nobleman's wife of great rank and fortune, lamented very much that she had no children. A medical gentleman who was present observed, that to have no children was a great misfortune, but he thought he had remarked it was hereditary in some families. Take any instance of this branch of the ridiculous, and you will always find an apparent relation of ideas leading to a complete inconsistency. I hardly know whether quaintness belongs to this subject, and the word is now used so loosely that it is no very easy matter to determine at what it points. I think it means an attention to petty excellences in style, an over-scrupulous and affected delicacy of expression; and that quaint humour, is humour in this peculiar garb. Good caricature is the humorous addressed to the eye. It represents you as doing something which it would be extremely incongruous and absurd in you to do; but it adds the effects of mimicry to those of humour, laying hold of personal defects and peculiarities, and aggravating them in a very high degree. I shall say nothing of charades, and such sort of unpardonable trumpery: if charades are made at all, they should be made without benefit of clergy, the offender should instantly be hurried off to execution, and be cut off in the middle of his dulness, without being allowed to explain to the executioner why his first is like his second, or what is the resemblance between his fourth and his ninth. Incongruities, which excite laughter, generally produce a feeling of contempt for the person at whom we laugh. I do not know that I can state an instance of the humorous in persons, where the person laughing does not feel himself superior to the person laughed at, whether that sense of the humorous be excited by an accidental incongruity of situation, or by a permanent incongruity interwoven in the character. Remember, I am not speaking of persons laughed with, but of persons laughed at: and in all such cases the laugher is, in his own estimation, the superior man; the person laughed at, the inferior: at the same time, contempt accompanied by laughter, is always mitigated by laughter, which seems to diminish hatred, as perspiration diminishes heat. Laughing contempt is by no means the strongest contempt; whenever contempt increases to a very high degree, it becomes serious, and all laughter ceases. Contempt verges upon anger, and the humorous is at an end. A very foolish, insignificant man, may give himself airs of great importance in society, and provoke laughter; but the laughter by no means goes on increasing with the incongruity, for at last a degree of contempt ensues, which is rather painful than agreeable; and so painful, as to put an end to laughter, and chase away the humorous. The ridiculous is not so much opposed to the proper and the decent, as to that which is very proper and very decent. There is a propriety so unusual, that it obtains positive praise whenever it is observed; there is a fainter sense of propriety, just sufficient to guard a man from observation, but for which he obtains neither blame nor praise. There is a deficiency of propriety so great, that it is universally ridiculous. Take it in language: - my mode of expressing myself may be so happy and so ac |