Which is evidently a parody on a stanza in that beautiful poem that commemorates the burial of Sir John Moore.

The converse of the burlesque is the mock-heroic, which aggrandizes the insignificant. In this kind of pleasantry the writings of Pope abound. Lord Petre having cut a lock of hair from the head of a fashionable beauty, and a quarrel ensuing, Pope, thinking to laugh the estranged lovers into reconciliation, writes an epicThe Rape of the Lock. Invocations, apostrophes, councils, fatal catastrophes, fearful combats between beaux and belles, spirits of the air-sylphs, gnomes, nymphs, and salamanders — form the poetic mechanism and action. The loftiness of style contrasts with the frivolous nature of the events. The history of a trifle is given with the pomp of heraldry, and the meanest things are set off with stately phrase and profuse ornament. A game at cards is a mimic Waterloo, whose hosts are marshalled by the king and queen of hearts:

Behold four kings, in majesty revered,

With hoary whiskers and a forky beard;

And four fair queens whose hands sustain a flow'r,
Th' expressive emblem of their softer power;

Four knaves in garb succinct, a trusty band;
Caps on their heads, and halberds in their hand;
And particolored troops, a shining train,
Drawn forth to combat on the velvet plain.

The oft-quoted passage in which the heroine's rage is told, is a good example of the ludicrous junction of small things with great:

Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes,
And screams of horror rent th' affrighted skies.
Not louder shrieks to pitying Heav'n are cast,

When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last.

Wit, as now understood, is often epigrammatic, chiefly conveying depreciation. Is not Geneva dull?' said a

friend to Talleyrand. 'Yes,' he replied, especially when

they amuse themselves.'

Said Celia to a reverend dean,

'What reason can be given,
Since marriage is a holy thing,

That they have none in heaven?'
'They have,' says he, no women there.'

She quick returns the jest,

'Women there are, but I'm afraid

They cannot find a priest.'-Swift.

Witty retort in conversation, as above, is usually styled repartee. 'How happy I am to be seated between a wit and a beauty,' said a fop to Madame de Staël. 'Yes,' replied she, and without possessing either.' Jerrold was famous for his brilliancy and readiness. At a certain supper of sheeps' heads, a guest was so charmed with his fare that he threw down his knife and fork, exclaiming, 'Well, say I, sheeps' heads for ever!' 'There's egotism,' said Jerrold.

Other species of witticism are the varieties of play upon words, double entendres, or double meanings, including irony, innuendo, sarcasm, conundrums, and puns. The last, though least meritorious, are most frequent. Specimens of the higher order are:

His death, which happened in his berth,

At forty odd befell;

They went and told the sexton, and

The sexton toll'd the bell.-Hood.

MR. STRAHAN,—You are a member of Parliament, and one of the majority which has doomed my country to destruction. You have begun to burn our towns and murder our people. Look upon your hands! They are stained with the blood of your relations! You and I were long friends. You are now my enemy, and I am B. FRANKLIN.

Yours,

Witticisms not distinctively embraced in the preceding enumeration may be described as surprising the mind by

the queerness or singularity of the imagery they employ. When Curran fought his duel with Judge Egan, the latter, who was a big man, directed the attention of the second to the advantage which, in this respect, his adversary had over him: 'He may hit me as easily as he would a haystack, and I might as well be aiming at the edge of a knife as at his lean carcass. 'Well,' said Curran, 'let the gentleman chalk the size of my body on your side, and let every ball hitting outside of that go for nothing.'

Speaking of having been shampooed at Mahommed's Baths at Brighton, Sidney Smith said, 'They squeezed enough out of me to make a lean curate.' To the Bishop of New Zealand, just before his departure for that cannibal diocese, he said: 'A bishop should be given to hospitality, and never be without a smoked little boy in the bacon-rack and a cold missionary on the sideboard.'

A witticism's prosperity-Shakespeare to the contraryoften lies not only 'in the tongue of him who makes it,' but in his manner of speaking it, and in the occasion which brings it forth. Novelty, too, is an essential ingredient. Therefore it will seldom bear transplantation, and suffers by repetition. Nothing, it has been written, is so dreary as a jest-book. The choicer wines lose their flavor by exposure.

But the dreariness of perpetual and sustained wit is fundamental. To be incessantly surprised is to be soon wearied, and finally disgusted. Hudibras is saved from tediousness by being read in small quantities. 'Wit is the god of moments,' says Bruyère. Butler apparently so conceives its limitations, in these lines:

We grant although he had much wit,

He was very shy of using it,

As being loth to wear it out;

And therefore bore it not about,

Unless on holidays, or so,

As men their best apparel do

In composition and in conversation, wit should be but an occasional accompaniment. As to the first, to divert and interrupt the train of thought too much is to lose the interest and attention due to the cardinal point. As for the second, wit should be the seasoning, not the food. Usually none are so feared and hated as habitual wits, and there are no greater bores than persistent punsters.

While mirth may be secured at the cost of conviction, indulgence increases demand, and the flattered wit who constantly exhibits his power is liable to degenerate into a buffoon. Corwin was fearful that he would be remembered only as a clown. As a habit, indeed, wit is necessarily inimical to the nobler faculties. The tendency to mark and treasure trivial connections in things diverse and remote cannot become predominant without detriment to the higher, reflective power, which, neglecting relations that are distant and fanciful, adheres to what are substantial and permanent. Memory and wit,' says Lord Kames, 'are often conjoined: solid judgment seldom with either.' This principle, which does not deny that the cultivated and great may be witty, probably suggests Hazlitt's observation: Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.'

A perilous possession, but still a precious one, whether we consider it as an instrument of correction and reform, an aid to discourse, or a means of relaxation and cheer. Says Sidney Smith, himself one of the keenest of wits:

I have talked of the danger of wit. I do not mean by that to enter into commonplace declamation against faculties because they are dangerous; wit is dangerous, eloquence is dangerous, a talent for observation is dangerous, everything is dangerous that has efficacy and vigor 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 principles; 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 honor, 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 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, gives every man a glad heart and a shining countenance. Genuine and innocent wit like this is surely the flavor 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 flavor and brightness and laughter and perfumes to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to 'charm his pained steps over the burning marl.'

Let us now look for the characteristics of humor:

My friend, Sir Roger, being a good Churchman, has beautified the inside of his church with several texts of his own choosing; he has likewise given a handsome pulpit-cloth, and railed in the communion-table at his own expense. He has often told me that at his coming to his estate he found his parishioners very irregular; and that in order to make them kneel and join in the responses, he gave every one of them a hassock and a common-prayer book, and at the same time employing an itinerant singing-master, who goes about the country for that purpose, to instruct them rightly in the tunes of the psalms-upon which they now very much value themselves, and indeed out-do most of the country churches that I have heard. As Sir Roger is landlord to the whole congregation, he keeps them in very good order, and will suffer nobody to sleep in it besides himself; for if by chance he has been surprised into a short nap at sermon, upon recovering out of it, he stands up and looks about him, and if