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has humour, appears to me to be in high request in a civilised country. I allow that his humour, to be well received, must be of a very different complexion from what would pass current in more barbarous times; it must be the humour of the mind, not the humour of the body. It must be devoid of every shade of buffoonery and grimace, and managed with a great degree of delicacy and skill. Civilisation improves the humour, but I can hardly allow that it diminishes it: in spite of all Professor Millar has said, I am strongly inclined to think there will be more humour, more agreeable raillery, and more facetious remark, displayed between seven and ten o'clock this evening, in the innumerable dinners which are to be eaten by civilised people in this vast city, than ten months could have produced in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth or Henry the Seventh.

On the very face of the proposition there is indeed something which it is difficult to digest. The effect of civilisation is, to avert mankind from the contemplation of a great part of their own nature: they observe incongruities better in a state of barbarism, or half barbarism; and in proportion as they are elegant, acute, and learned, they become dull and careless observers of some of the most striking phenomena of the human mind.

I wish, after all I have said about wit and humour, I could satisfy myself of their good effects upon the character and disposition; but I am convinced the probable tendency of both is, to corrupt the understanding and the heart. I am not speaking of wit where it is kept down by more serious qualities of mind, and thrown into the background of the picture; but where it stands out boldly and emphatically, and is evidently the master quality in any particular mind. Professed wits, though they are generally courted for the amusement they afford, are seldom respected for the qualities they possess. The habit of seeing things in a witty point of view, increases, and makes incursions from its own proper regions, upon

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principles and opinions which are ever held sacred by the wise and good. A witty man is a dramatic performer: in process of time, he can no more exist without applause, than he can exist without air; if his audience be small, or if they are inattentive, or if a new wit defrauds him of any portion of his admiration, it is all over with him, -he sickens, and is extinguished. The applauses of the theatre on which he performs are so essential to him, that he must obtain them at the expense of decency, friendship, and good feeling. It must always be probable, too, that a mere wit is a person of light and frivolous understanding. His business is not to discover relations of ideas that are useful, and have a real influence upon life, but to discover the more trifling relations which are only amusing; he never looks at things with the naked eye of common sense, but is always gazing at the world through a Claude Lorraine glass, discovering a thousand appearances which are created only by the instrument of inspection, and covering every object with factitious and unnatural colours. In short, the character of a mere wit it is impossible to consider as very amiable, very respectable, or very safe. So far the world, in judging of wit where it has swallowed up all other qualities, judge aright; but I doubt if they are sufficiently indulgent to this faculty where it exists in a lesser degree, and as one out of many other ingredients of the understanding. There is an association in men's minds between dulness and wisdom, amusement and folly, which has a very powerful influence in decision upon character, and is not overcome without considerable difficulty. The reason is, that the outward signs of a dull man, and a wise man, are the same, and so are the outward signs of a frivolous man and a witty man; and we are not to expect that the majority will be disposed to look to much more than the outward sign. I believe the fact to be, that wit is very seldom the only eminent quality which resides in the mind of

any man; it is commonly accompanied by many other talents of every description, and ought to be considered as a strong evidence of a fertile and superior understanding. Almost all the great poets, orators, and statesmen of all times, have been witty. Cæsar, Alexander, Aristotle, Descartes, and Lord Bacon, were witty men; so were Cicero, Shakspeare, Demosthenes, Boileau, Pope, Dryden, Fontenelle, Jonson, Waller, Cowley, Solon, Socrates, Dr. Johnson, and almost every man who has made a distinguished figure in the House of Commons. I have talked of the danger of wit: I do not mean by that to enter into common-place declamation against faculties because they are dangerous;-wit is dangerous, eloquence is dangerous, a talent for observation is dangerous, every thing is dangerous that has efficacy and vigour for its characteristics; nothing is safe but mediocrity. The business is, in conducting the understanding well, to risk something; to aim at uniting things that are commonly incompatible. The meaning of an extraordinary man is, that he is eight men, not one man; that he has as much wit as if he had no sense, and as much sense as if he had no wit; that ⚫his conduct is as judicious as if he were the dullest of human beings, and his imagination as brilliant as if he "were irretrievably ruined. But when wit is combined with sense and information; when it is softened by benevolence, and restrained by strong principle; when it is in the hands of a man who can use it and despise it, who can be witty and something much better than witty, who loves honour, justice, decency, good-nature, morality, and religion, ten thousand times better than wit;— wit is then a beautiful and delightful part of our nature. There is no more interesting spectacle than to see the effects of wit upon the different characters of men; than to observe it expanding caution, relaxing dignity, unfreezing coldness, teaching age, and care, and pain, to smile, — extorting reluctant gleams of pleasure from

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melancholy, and charming even the pangs of grief. It is pleasant to observe how it penetrates through the coldness and awkwardness of society, gradually bringing men nearer together, and, like the combined force of wine and oil, giving every man a glad heart and a shining countenance. Genuine and innocent wit like this, is surely the flavour of the mind! Man could direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food; but God has given us wit, and flavour, and brightness, and laughter, and perfumes, to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to "charm his pained steps over the burning marle."

LECTURE XII.

ON TASTE.

ALL language which concerns the mind, is borrowed from language which respects material objects.

The mind itself is called breath, wind, air, in almost all the languages of the world. Apprehension, comprehension, understanding, perception, are all metaphors taken from the human body, or from substance of some sort or another. The reason is plain: the attention of man is first called powerfully to outer objects; they are the first observed and the first named, they make the basis of all languages; and then, when men can turn their attention inwardly upon themselves, and want words for new ideas, they naturally borrow them from already existing language, and are determined in their choice by some fanciful analogy between the object of mind, and the object of body. This is exactly the case with taste. There are certain feelings of the mind which take place upon the perception of certain objects, or the contemplation of certain actions, which men have chosen to compare to the sensations of the palate upon the application of certain flavours. There is no reason, that I know of, why they should compare them to sensations excited by taste, rather than by smell or by touch. The feeling of beauty, excited by the view of a pleasant landscape, no more resembles any flavour which the palate can taste, than it resembles a soft and smooth object which the hand can touch: one metaphor has

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