1896.] on the Theory of the Ludicrous. 97 



with habiliments somewhat ostentatious, sliding down gently into the 

 mud, and dedecorating a pea-green coat ; and the overturning of a 

 very large dinner table with all the dinner upon it. But these do 

 not appear to me to be examples of Humour at all. My old friend 

 Dr. Kennedy, for many years Eegius Professor of Greek at Cam- 

 bridge, a very dignified and correct person, was dining in the hall of 

 one of the colleges of that University upon some festive occasion, 

 and found himself next to a well-known joker, whose facetiousness, 

 never very refined, grew coarser and coarser as the banquet proceeded, 

 while the Doctor's face grew glummer and glummer. At last the 

 funny man said, " You seem to have no taste for humour. Professor." 

 " Sir," replied the Doctor, much in wrath, " I have a taste for 

 humour, but I have no taste for low buffoonery." Well, what Sidney 

 Smith gives as his first instance of Humour appears to me — to use 

 Dr. Kennedy's expression — low buffoonery ; his other two instances 

 I should refer to the category of the Comical. As little can I accept 

 Sidney Smith's account of Wit. " It discovers," he tells us, " real 

 relations that are not apparent between ideas exciting surprise, and 

 surprise only." Surely this will not stand. Consider, for example, 

 the lines of Pope — Hazlitt judged them the finest piece of Wit he 

 knew — on the Lord Mayor's Show, and the Lord Mayor's Poet 

 Laureate : — 



" Now night descending the proud show is o'er, 

 But lives in Settle's numbers one day more." 



What discovery is there here of real but not apparent relations 

 between ideas producing surprise, and surprise only ? Or take 

 the lines — far wittier I think than these — of Pope's Epistle to 

 Dr. Arbuthnot. He is speaking of certain bad poets : — 



" He who still wanting, though he lives on theft, 

 Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left ; 

 And he who now to sense, now nonsense leaning. 

 Means not, but blunders round about a meaning ; 

 And he whose fustian 's so sublimely bad, 

 It is not poetry but prose run mad." 



Surely the Wit here does not lend itself to Sidney Smith's explana- 

 tion. But as I have ventured thus to criticise this gifted man's 

 definition of Wit, perhaps I ought to offer for your criticism a 

 definition of my own. I should say, then, that Wit consists in the 

 discovery of incongruities in the province of the understanding 

 ( Verstand), the distinctive element which it leaves out being the 

 element of reason {Vernunft). 



I am equally dissatisfied with Sidney Smith's account of another 



variety of the Ludicrous, namely, the Bull : — " A Bull," he tells us, 



" is the exact counterpart of a Witticism, for as Wit discovers real 



relations that are not apparent, Bulls admit apparent relations that 



Vol. XV. TNo. 90.) n 



