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ninas. Tarrower is geoservation and less refective in town ing which, waling with the onvert of some whesis is w. sienes the word Wit DWE fandard, and letter ess or is the meruities of Jumamity. Sien 10 genius-out & iy, hard, and mechanical sort of intellect, mi v mi humor are ad mysery a t

The authors who teal nost array va human mature are dose in vom the Hements of vit mi humour will be most tianiayed in connection, however, with serious elements. This will be seen especially in those writers whose Imaginations have profaced the greatest number of creaturme--I mean of invented characters representative of humanity. In English literature, the three who may, I think, be regarded as pre-eminent for the number and life-like Reality of their creations, are Chancer, Shakspeare, and Scott; and in their writings may be found the finest specimens of genuine humour, coupled, too, with tragic power equally admirable. It is remarkable, too, to observe how, in an early age, the large imagination of Chaucer blended

with the tenderest pathos a humour coarse at times, but again as delicate as any of an age of refinement-such as his description of the "Sergeant of the Law," which is like a smile of kindly-natured humour, rather than a stroke or a sneer of satire :

"Discreet he was, and of great reverence

He seemed such, his words were so wise:

Nowhere so busy a man as he there n'as,

And yet he seemed busier than he was."

Examples without number of Sir Walter Scott's genial humour, as displayed in the personages of his novels, will rise up to the thoughts of any one. How beautifully is it interwoven with the serious passages in the Antiquary! How it gleams through the clouds of civil war and the gloom of Puritan severity-in Old Mortality! and what a fine relief does it not give to the deeper tragedy of the Bride of Lammermoor! In Shakspeare, the whole subject might be studied and illustrated through a boundless variety of character, from the malevolent and wicked wit of Iago, with its serpent-like venom, the inexhaustible resources of Falstaff, the morbid humour of Jaques, or the healthy humour of Falconbridge, and the many other phases of these faculties in his men and women.

These powers may be discovered also in other great poets of our language, the subjects or forms of whose poems were less favourable to their appearance. The pensive atmosphere with which the sage and solemn spirit of Spenser has enveloped the region of his Faery Land, admits, at times, some rays of a quaint humour. In Milton, the powers assume so stern an aspect, that one hesitates in associating them with wit and humour, and yet, assuredly,

ID 1 STK Mi sevir n vennymi spionag

Tie prane ď des deutes ʼn the gatest Lugia IMUR TIES E Lst stseenile vť priť de nos Üst ve of the vit denes der er n 1 vs 17 met u mer deigiasi får ut my u 1 s de vis ff de mi isuran. Tuomas Fuler v de ermens ft de voy De Suri.” we immor vi s binded with the reasonng of B and the prere ognence of Jermy TITin The waif Svá k mively recognised as his mos efe verson: and in another caserine ninad. as Estampered by Eveness Swift's was, there was 3 sies of zangi innor. in In. Johnson's. The high-tooed singence of Burke, though far from sparkling with wa Eke Stendan's was not without its humour: cbserve it, too, in his chief political treatise the quiet humour for example, in the well-known comparison of the noisy, factious pamphleteers with solid unloquacious English sobriety. Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chirp, while thousands of great cattle reposing beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent,

Milton's Prose Works. Preface to Animadversions upon the Remonstrants' Defence against Smectymnuus, p. 55.

pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour."

It is to one of the great divines of the seventeenth cenury that we owe the most famous description (it attempts not definition) of Wit: I refer, of course, to that passage so often, and yet never too often, quoted in Barrow's sermon "against foolish talking and jesting." It was composed at a time when the word "Wit' was beginning to change its original meaning of mental power for the more limited sense of later times, and when the faculty itself, having the special favour of the "merry monarch" was in unwonted, and, it may be added, wanton activity. Dr. Barrow said, "To the question what the thing we speak of is, or what this facetiousness doth import? I might reply as Democritus did to him that asked the definition of a man, 'Tis that which we all see and know: any one better apprehends what it is by acquaintance than I can inform him by description. It is, indeed, a thing so versatile and multiform, appearing in so many shapes, so many postures, so many garbs, so variously apprehended by several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less. hard to settle a clear and certain notion thereof, than to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure of fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in a pat allusion to a known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial saying, or in forging an apposite tale: sometimes it payeth in words and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense or the affinity of their sound: sometimes it is wrapped in a dress of humorous expression.

sometimes it lurketh under an odd similitude: sometimes it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer, in a quirkish reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cunningly diverting or cleverly retorting an objection: sometimes it is couched in a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in a lusty hyperbole, in a startling metaphor, in a plausible reconciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense: sometimes a scenical representation of persons or things, a counterfeit speech, a mimical look or gesture, passeth for it: sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous boldness, giveth it being; sometimes it riseth from a lucky hitting upon what is strange, sometimes from a crafty wresting obvious matter to the purpose; often it consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless rovings of fancy and windings of language. It is, in short, a manner of speaking out of the simple and plain way, (such as reasoning teacheth and proveth things by,) which, by a pretty surprising uncouthness in conceit or expression, doth affect and amuse the fancy, stirring it to some wonder and breeding some delight thereto."

One cannot read this large induction and analytical description of the forms of wit, from the higher inventions down to "acute nonsense," without thinking how thoughtfully this great and learned divine must have observed the wits of the times of Charles the Second, and how genially he must have received what he so wisely expounded! Nor can I discover that the metaphysicians have been able to advance beyond this description to the more precise ground of definition. The most acute of the Greek philosophers,

stotle, gave what is at best a negative definition of the