But there is another department of wit, less earnest, sweeter in temper, more playful and tender, compassionate towards its objects, and sympathetic with them. It ministers to our sentiment of mirthfulness, our desire for fun, but the laughter it provokes is not a "laugh at men and things," but a laugh with them." This kind

of wit we call

HUMOR.-Humor is that kind of wit which, without hostility to anything, ministers to our feeling of mirthfulness. Humor is not to be distinguished from wit, but from the subdivisions of wit just defined; it is one hemisphere of wit, these subdivisions being the other. That which distinguishes it from them all is its freedom from animosity. Humor looks leniently, though with a roguish twinkle in its eye, upon human frailties and foibles, and finds food only for harmless fun in the imperfections and infelicities of life. It is a shower that quickens, not a storm which destroys-light that fructifies, not lightning which blasts. For its effect, humor depends less upon surprise than do the other forms of wit; hence the productions into which it enters please continually.

But

It will be seen that, though we have called wit a quality of style, we have grouped under it the burlesque, the mock heroic, the parody, and the pun, which, we have said, are not species of wit but species of witty discourse— productions or expressions into which wit enters. it seemed best, even to the disregard of logic, to speak of these witty productions here where we were attempting to define wit and illustrate its nature and functions— especially as the door to this was partly opened by our being obliged to say of satire and sarcasm not only that they were species of this quality of style, but that they were also productions into which wit enters.

Literature teems with witty productions and with productions in which witty expressions here and there gleam and sparkle from the setting of serious discourse. Such productions appear in the decadence of manners and morals; and they appear at all times, since in our imperfect civilization there are always social strings that need tuning to a higher pitch, institutions that demand reformation, and evils that cry aloud for redress. And that form of wit which we have called humor, "full of humanity, flavored throughout with tenderness and kindness," has given us creations which are an exhaustless source of refreshment and delight.

PATHOS. Pathos is a quality of style found in passages which express sorrow or grief, or sympathy with these. Pathos brings tears into the eye and tremulousness into the voice. It has some natural connection with humor. Laughter and tears lie close to each other, and the transition from the humorous to the pathetic is short and easy. Pathetic passages, full of tender feeling, abound in discourse of almost every kind.

Direction. Classify these witty sentences according to the species of wit which enters into them, and point out those sentences containing pathos:

1. Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached the ground, encumbers him with help? 2. I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. 3. What was Joan of Arc made of? She was Maid of Orleans. 4. I am, indeed, Sir, a surgeon to old shoes; when they are in great danger, I recover them. 5. I had rather be married to a Death's-head with a bone in his mouth than to either of these. 6. Father, I have sinned against Heaven and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants. 7. Ichabod

Crane was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large, green, glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.

8. Dear little, sweet little, nice little damosels,
We, the magnificent cream of society,

Bid you good-night; and we trust you feel gratitude
For the sweet smiles we have scattered among you.
We have been bored, but we gladly put up with it;
Nothing is sweeter than disinterestedness.

9. As you slip to and fro on the frozen levels of Gower's verse, which gives no foothold to the mind, as your nervous ear awaits the inevitable recurrence of his rhyme, regularly pertinacious as the tick of an eight-day clock, and reminding you of Wordsworth's

"Once more the ass did lengthen out

The hard, dry seesaw of his horrible bray,"

you learn to dread, almost to respect, the powers of this indefatigable man. 10. Why, hear me, my masters, was it for me to kill the heir apparent? Should I turn upon the true Prince? Why, thou know'st I am as valiant as Hercules; but beware instinct : the lion will not touch the true Prince. Instinct is a great matter; I was a coward on instinct. 11. Why is a ragged boy like a preacher nearing the end of his sermon? Because he's tored his clothes. 12. I have eaten as many shrimps as Samson slew Philistines. Yes, and with the same instrument. 13. Yes, to smell pork; to eat of the habitation which your prophet, the Nazarite, conjured the devil into! 14. 'Tis true, this god did

shake. I did hear him groan. 15. The Romans were said to urn their dead, but we earn our living. 16. I fear I wrong the honorable men whose daggers have stabbed Cæsar. 17. There is one secret a woman can keep her age. 18. Erskine said to one who surprised him digging potatoes in the garden, “This is otium cum diggin' a tatie. 19. Of the Sergeant of Law, Chaucer says,

20. Late upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered chill and cheery Over certain prosy volumes of contemporary lore,

66

Midst prophetic pages prowling, suddenly I heard a growling,
As of something faintly howling, howling at my chamber

door;

'Tis some poor stray tyke," I muttered, "howling at my chamber door.

Only this and nothing more."

21. This child is not mine as the first was, I cannot sing it to rest, I cannot lift it up fatherly and bliss it upon my breast; yet it lies in my little one's cradle, and sits in my little one's chair, and the light of the heaven she's gone to transfigures her golden hair.

Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dryden, Congreve, Addison, Pope, Swift, Goldsmith, Lamb, Irving, Scott, Jerrold, Dickens, Thackeray, Carlyle, Holmes, and Lowell are but a few of the writers of English from whom illustrations of wit can be gleaned.

Direction. Bring in illustrations of all the species of wit and illustra tions of pathos also.

LESSON 71.

WIT AND PATHOS.

Direction.-Classify these witty sentences according to the species of wit which enters into them, and point out those containing pathos:

1. There are ** men whose visages do cream and mantle like a standing pond; and doa wilful stillness entertain with purpose to be dressed in an opinion of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit; as who should say, “I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips, let no dog bark." 2. Ichabod rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers'; he carried his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre; and, as his horse jogged on, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. A small wool hat rested on the top of his nose,―for so his scanty strip of forehead might be called—and the skirts of his black coat fluttered out almost to the horse's tail. 3. Making light of serious things is a very wicked matter. 4. "Do you know what happened to Balaam?" said a would-be wit to Coleridge, as the poet was riding along the street. "The same that has happened to me—an ass spoke to him.” 5. The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honorable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall attempt neither to palliate nor to deny. 6. Down the long street he walked, as one who said, "A town that boasts inhabitants like me can have no lack of good society." 7. Hector should have a great catch, if he knock out either of your brains; he were as good crack a fusty nut with no kernel. 8. "You must be either a knave or a fool," said two lawyers to an Irishman sitting between them. "No, I'm between both" was the reply. 9. "Nay, Sir, it was not the wine that made your head ache, but the sense I put into it." "What, Sir, will sense make the head ache ?" "Yes, Sir, when it is not used to it."