AN ILLUSTRATIVE ESSAY ON WIT AND HUMOR. THE facetious Dr. King, the civilian, one of the minor, or rather the minim poets, who have had the good luck to get into the Col. lections, tells us, that he awoke one morning, speaking the fol lowing words "out of a dream," Nature a thousand ways complains, A thousand words express her pains; This seems to be a very tragical conclusion for "poor human nature;" but the Doctor had probably been taking his usual potations over-night, and so put his waking thoughts into plaintive condition; for had he reflected on that "art of wit" which he professed, and opposed pleasures to pains, instead of "laughter," as the correct wording of his proposition required, he would have discovered that laughable fancies have at least as many ways of expressing themselves as those which are lachrymose; gravity tending to the fixed and monotonous, like the cat on the hearth, while levity has as many tricks as the kitten. I confess I felt this so strongly when I began to reflect on the present subject, and found myself so perplexed with the demand, that I was forced to reject plan after plan, and feared I should never be able to give any tolerable account of the matter. I experienced no such difficulty with the concentrating seriousness and sweet attraction of the subject of "Imagination and Fancy;" but this laughing jade of a topic, with her endless whims and faces, and the legions of indefinable shapes that she brought about me, seemed to do nothing but scatter my faculties, or bear them off deridingly into pastime. I felt as if I was undergoing a Saint Anthony's Temptation reversed,-a laughable instead of a frightful one. Thousands of merry devils poured in upon me from all sides, doubles of Similes, buffooneries of Burlesques, stalkings of Mock-heroics, stings in the tails of Epigram, glances of Inuendoes, dry looks of Ironies, corpulences of Exaggerations, ticklings of mad Fancies, claps on the back of Horse-plays, complacencies of Unawarenesses, flounderings of Absurdities, irresist ibilities of Iterations, significancies of Jargons, wailings of pretended Woes, roarings of Laughters, and hubbubs of Animal Spirits-all so general yet particular, so demanding distinct recognition, and yet so baffling the attempt with their numbers and their confusion, that a thousand masquerades in one would have seemed to threaten less torment to the pen of a reporter. Nor has this difficulty been unfelt before, even by the profoundest investigators. The famous Dr. Barrow, who was one of the writers of all others from whom a thoroughly searching account of Wit might have been expected, both as he was a wit himself and remarkable for exhausting the deepest subjects of reflection, has left a celebrated passage on the subject, in which indeed much is said, and a great many definite things glanced at, but which still includes a modest confession of incompleteness. "It may be demanded," says he, "what the thing we speak of is, and what this facetiousness doth import; to which question I might reply, as Democritus did to him that asked the definition of a man-'tis that which we all see and know: and one better apprehends what it is by acquaintance, than I can inform him by description. It is indeed a thing so versa. tile 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 notice thereof, than to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure of fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in seasonable application |