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crous, wit has to be judged by the results. We have already recognized, among the palliatives of the ludicrous that convert it into Humour, the agency of Wit.

It is easy to quote witticisms that draw the sting of vituperation, by the delicacy and ingenuity of the wording. A Puritan is said to have been the author of the pun

Great praise to God, and little Laud to the Devil.

Sir Francis Burdett, when he became a Tory, had the want of tact to declaim against the prevailing cant of patriotism. Lord John Russell retorted that there was one thing even worse-the re-cant of patriotism. This will be celebrated among the arrows of invective feathered by wit.

Although somewhat less frequent, Wit may be employed to convey and enhance a compliment, and also to fence it, by abating the jealousy of being praised.

Jerrold's Wit was for the most part depreciatory, but there were exceptions. His epitaph on Charles Knight, the publisher, a man greatly esteemed, was both happy and complimentary: Good Knight'.

Chaucer could mingle touches of depreciation with his characters in a way to heighten the force of his eulogy. The Clerk is a good example.

Goldsmith's fine compliment on Garrick

An abridgment of all that is pleasant in man—

is not marred, but the contrary, by the enumeration of his foibles that follows.

It is characteristic of Congreve to work from exactly the opposite view. He concedes a compliment to point an invective: His want of learning gives him more opportunities to show his natural parts'. Wycherley has the same turn, though mostly less polished in the wording :—‘I can allege nothing against your practice-but your ill

success'.

Fielding even insinuates a satire on mankind in general by means of a compliment paid to an individual:

"Poverty and distress seemed to him to give none a right of aggravating those misfortunes. The meanness of her condition did not represent her misery as of little consequence in his eyes, nor did it appear to justify, or even to palliate, his guilt, in bringing that misery upon her."

By making one the exception, the author makes the rest the rule.

The excessive displays of the Love emotion are tempered by Wit, as well as by Humour, and so kept at a greater distance from mawkish sentimentality. No one excels Shakespeare in this device for the dilution and redemption of erotic extravagance. His Benedick and Beatrice play at love-making, and disguise the reality of their mutual passion by banter, quips and cutting repartees.

Among effects allied to the nature of Wit, and illustrative of it, although more suitably discussed in a different connexion (see MELODY), are Alliteration, Rhyme and Metre.

EXEMPLIFICATION.

Under Figures of Speech, a large amount of attention was bestowed on Epigram, as well as on Irony and Innuendo. In all species of Wit, these are recurring effects. Hyperbole or Exaggeration is also one of the principal forms of the ludicrous.

It has been already apparent that the chief, though not the only, use of Wit is to bring forth the Ludicrous, whether as Ridicule or as Humour: so that the further exemplification of the quality will implicate these other effects. Almost all the eminent wits are humourists; in a few the humour depends less upon word-play than upon other devices.

In classing witticisms, with a view to expounding Wit, we should have to treat as one species those arising from the play of language alone. Between these and such as reside entirely in the thought, there is a class dependent partly on the one circumstance and partly on the other.

In all the kinds, there may be a subdivision into Pure Wit, where the effect is simple surprise, and Applied Wit, where a further end is sought, whether vituperation, compliment, humour or illustration of a truth.

Of our great humourists, some depend very little upon word-play; others a great deal. The finest passages in Don Quixote are not remarkable for what is strictly called wit. The same may be said of Rabelais. Even Molière's humour and sarcasm do not often exhibit the play of epigrams or puns; although irony and innuendo are sufficiently worked.

The Elizabethans are our earliest English source of purely witty combinations. They often sacrifice more important qualities to word-play. Thus, of Lyly the 'Euphuist,'

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Professor Minto remarks: 'There is hardly a sentence in his comedies that does not contain some pun, or clever antithesis, or far-fetched image. He is so uninterruptedly witty that he destroys his own wit; the play on words and images ceases to be unexpected, and so falls out of the definition.'

Shakespeare's word-play is notorious, and shows alike the good and the bad side of the exercise. Occasionally, it yields humour; at other times, it is nothing but witty surprise, of all degrees of originality and brilliancy; while, again, it is characterized as a tissue of conceits. As displayed in 'Romeo and Juliet,' it is designated by Mr. Dowden as 'the sought-out phrases, the curious antitheses of the amorous dialect of the period'.

Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!

O anything, of nothing first create!

O heavy lightness! Serious vanity!

Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

Beatrice affords two characteristic specimens of Shakespeare's wit, both on the good side. Flouting matrimony she says:- Adam's sons are my brethren, and, truly, I hold it sin to match in my kindred'; where the effect lies mainly in the dexterous word-play. At another time she turns the point of her uncle's compliment on her perspicacity :— 'I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight'; where the effect lies wholly in the conflict of ideas.

In Butler's Hudibras, the most remarkable quality is vituperation, with more or less of the Ridiculous conjoined. The severity is too great for Humour; while the arts employed are not sufficiently expressed by Wit. Of pure play upon words there is not much, except in the forcing of double and triple rhymes. It is the originality of the situations. and the illustrative similitudes that produce the impression, which, however, is weakened by the exaggeration and the intense partisanship of the whole. It is not so much wit as a severe reflection on mankind to say

What makes all doctrines plain and clear?
About two hundred pounds a year.

And that which was proved true before
Prove false again? Two hundred more.

Butler's fertility of crushing similitudes is unsurpassed. Thus

The truest characters of ignorance

Are vanity, and pride, and arrogance;
As blind men use to bear their noses higher

Than those that have their eyes and sight entire.

Voltaire's famous saying on the execution of Admiral Byng, for alleged cowardice in the face of the enemy,-that it was done pour encourager les autres,—is an exquisite play upon words, with an under meaning of sarcastic contradiction. The supposed defect of the admiral being' courage,' the word encourager, by its etymology, would give the remedy, to infuse courage'; by its acquired meaning, it is in glaring contradiction to the use of capital punishment, whose end is to deter in the highest degree. It is a witty and crushing innuendo.

Congreve's comedies are one scene of vituperation and ridicule, relieved by the arts of innuendo, irony and clever comparison, and by a continuous display of point and wit in expression. He succeeds in making almost tolerable his sacrifice of every kindly relation of family and friendship to an insatiable craving for witty depreciation. Nobody and nothing is spared, till we simply forget the anti-social bent in order to enjoy the language and the wit. A sentence from The Way of the World,' aimed at a club of ladies, might be extended to all the characters :- They come together like the coroner's inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputations of the week'.

Here is a typical specimen of the feeling and the expression :

"Witwond. A messenger ?-a mule, a beast of burden! he has brought me a letter from the fool, my brother, as heavy as a panegyric in a funeral sermon, or a copy of commendatory verses from one poet to another: and what's worse, 'tis as sure a forerunner of the author as an epistle dedicatory.

"Mirabell. A fool, and your brother, Witwond!

"Witwond. Ay, ay, my half brother. My half brother he is, no nearer upon honour.

Mirabell. Then 'tis possible he may be but half a fool." Witwond deserves his fall, but this same Mirabell had just before finished an invective on Witwond, suggested by a casual praise of him that 'he has something of good-nature, and does not always want wit'. 'Not always,' jibes Mira

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bell; but as often as his memory fails him and his commonplace of comparisons. He is a fool with a good memory, and some few scraps of other folk's wit. He is one whose conversation can never be approved, yet it is now and then to be endured. He has indeed one good quality, he is not exceptious; for he so passionately affects the reputation of understanding raillery, that he will construe an affront into a jest, and call downright rudeness and ill-language satire and fire.'

Sheridan's various and sparkling Wit was spread over his speeches and his plays alike. The part of Mrs. Malaprop in the Rivals is filled out by clever confusion of meanings through similarity of sound. 'As headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile' is witty and humorous by the unexpected juxtaposition of the two meanings, with the effect of degrading the more dignified. Shakespeare, as well as others, had exemplified the manner; as when Falstaff is declared by Mrs. Quickly to be 'in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom '. The device is now one of the persisting species of comic invention.

Sydney Smith is entitled to the compliment of a wit; but his proper designation is as wide as the entire circle of related qualities now under discussion His great powers

both as a Humorist and as a Wit were subservient to his work as a political writer in a wide sense. He was also distinguished as a man of society; and many of his recorded witticisms were thrown off in the course of conversation. They seldom exemplified pure word-play; they were usually mixed up with ingenuity in the turn of the thought, and were not to be imitated but by an equal force of genius. As an example of the simple pun, we have his illustration of the selfishness of Englishmen by the remark that they were distinguished more for the love of their specie than for the love of their species.

His more usual style is the invention of situations, circumstances and illustrations, of a kind to enforce his views, by their extravagant, or otherwise ridiculous character. The originality suffices to give interest and piquancy; and the aptness drives the lesson home. The following is a characteristic specimen :

"We are terribly afraid that some Americans spit upon