which men who write books should keep constantly in their remembrance. It is there set forth, that many centuries ago the earth was covered with a great flood, by which the whole of the human race, with the exception of one family, were destroyed. It appears also, that from thence a great alteration was made in the longevity of mankind, who, from a range of seven hundred or eight hundred years, were confined to their present period of seventy or eighty years. This epoch in the history of man gave birth to the twofold division of the antediluvian and the postdiluvian style of writing, the latter of which naturally contracted itself into those inferior limits which were better accommodated to the abridged duration of human life and literary labour. Now to forget this event, to write without the fear of the deluge before his eyes, and to handle a subject as if mankind could lounge over a pamphlet for ten years, as before their submersion, is to be guilty of the most grievous error into which a writer can possibly fall. The author of this book should call in the aid of some brilliant pencil, and cause the distressing scenes of the deluge to be pourtrayed in the most lively colours for his use. He should gaze at Noah, and be brief. The ark should constantly remind him of the little time there is left for reading; and he should learn, as they did in the ark, to crowd a great deal of matter into a very little compass.' This was written in Sydney Smith's early reviewing days; but his wit took a more concentrated form, as when he said of Lord John Russel, "His worst failure is that he is utterly ignorant of all moral fear; there is nothing he would not undertake. I * Edinburgh Review, 1809. Works, vol. ii. p. 208. believe he would perform the operation for the stone, build St. Peter's, or assume (with or without ten minutes' notice) the command of the channel fleet; and no one would discover by his manner that the patient had died, the church tumbled down, and the channel fleet been knocked to atoms;" and then he adds quietly in a note, "Another peculiarity of the Russels is, that they never alter their opinions they are an excellent race, but they must be trepanned before they can be convinced."* Nay, sometimes the subtle element is concentrated in a single word or phrase, as when he speaks of "a gentleman lately from the Pyramids or the upper cataracts, let loose upon the drawing-room;" or that phrase, so excellent in the satire, and admitting unfortunately of such frequent application, which mentions an orator "splashing in the froth of his own rhetoric"- —a descriptive image which is worth a whole chapter of rhetorical admonition. This combination of wit and reasoning makes also much of the virtue of that instruction which, in Fables, charms the mind of childhood, and is not cast aside by mature reason. It enters, too, into a people's instruction by proverbs, which have been happily described as "the wisdom of many and the wit of one." One of the most remarkable uses of wit and humour, is that which combines them with tragedy, and makes them subservient to tragic effect. These combinations seem to be denied to modern art by the refinement or daintiness of later times; and by such denial, modern art loses much of the power which resulted from that natural blending of the humorous and the serious, each equally earnest, * Second Letter to Archdeacon Singleton, Works, vol. iii. p. 193, 194. which may be seen in the early minstrelsy, and in the highest form of genius and art in Shakspeare's deepest tragedies. The most careless reader must have noticed how profoundly the tragic pathos of King Lear is deepened by the wild wit and pathetic humour of that faithful and full-hearted follower-the fool. Remember how, in Hamlet, one of the most solemn scenes is preceded by the quaint professional witticisms of the gravedigger, so different and yet not discordant. In Macbeth the brief and awful interval between the murder of Duncan, and the disclosure of it, is filled with that rudely-comic passage of the drunken, half-sobered porter, to whose gross jocularity you pass from the high-wrought frenzy of Macbeth, reeking with his victim's blood, and from the yet more fearful atrocity of his wife, to return quickly to the tragic horror on the discovery of the murder; and in that transition, through a species of the comic, the harmony is preserved by the quaint allusions to hell and the vain equivocations to heaven. Another kindred combination, which also shows a unity connecting the serious and the sportive, proving what Socrates is said to have asserted, that there is a common ground for tragedy and comedy, is in that contrast between the thought or feeling and its expression, which is termed "irony." It is the humorous wresting of language from its literal use for the expression of feeling, either happy or painful, but too vehement to be contented with that literal use. The pensive perplexity of a gentle and philosophic soul like Hamlet, bewildered and self-secluded in a wicked world, finds relief in almost every form of bitter or tranquil humour for meditations and for emotions that overmastered him. When the thoughtful spirit of Mac beth is distorted by guilt, and as the agony of that guilt grows more and more intense, the pent-up misery either flows forth in a subdued irony, or breaks out in that which is fierce and frenzied. In one very familiar passage, the beauty of the expression makes many a reader forget that it is pure and essential irony: when Macbeth puts to the Doctor the simple and literal inquiry after Lady Mabeth: "How does your patient, doctor? Doctor. Not so sick, my lord, As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies, That keep her from her rest." Then comes the deep feeling, with its ironical questions, sounding more like soliloquy : "Cure her of that: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased? Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow? Raze out the written troubles of the brain? And, with some sweet, oblivious antidote, Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous grief The literal answer "Therein the patient Must minister to himself" brings him back to reality with the exclamation, "Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it!" But, even in the irritable putting on of his armour, the bitter relief of an ironical humour comes again in another form: "What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug Would scour these English hence?" If the truthfulness of such use of irony be doubted, let it be remembered how abundantly and remarkably it pervades Holy Writ. I do not refer merely to the bitter, ironical taunts which the prophet hurled at the priests of Baal, but to the manifold use of it in the expression of thoughts and emotions affecting the spiritual intercourse of man and his Maker. Remember how something of the kind breaks out in the very midst of St. Paul's most solemn argument. Again, it is not contrary to nature— it is not a levity unworthy of man's nature-that these playful faculties make their appearance in the most awful realities of life. The gentle spirit of Anne Boleyn was pleasant with the headsman on the scaffold; and so "More's gay genius played With the inoffensive sword of native wit, Than the bare axe more luminous and keen."* The power of wit to combine itself harmoniously and vigorously with sagacity and seriousness, is eminently exemplified in all the works of that remarkable author of the seventeenth century, the church historian, Thomas Fuller, whose wit, in the largeness of its circuit, the variety of its expression, its exuberance, and its admirable sanity, stands second only to that of Shakspeare. It has the indispensable merit of perfect naturalness, and the excellence of being a growth from a soil of sound wisdom. There are no large works in our language so thoroughly ingrained with wit and humour as Fuller's "Worthies of England," his Church History of Britain no less so, and the essays entitled "The Holy and Profane State"essays which, in wit, and wisdom, and just feeling, are not unlike the Elia Essays of Charles Lamb. The genius *Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sonnets, Sonnet 22. |