Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 37, November, 1860 | Page 5

must ascribe it to the category of wit.
This presence or absence of intention often decides whether a saying or

an image is within the sphere of humor or of wit. But wit and humor
constantly run into each other; and though the absence of intention at
once shows that a ludicrous surprise belongs to the humorous, the
presence of it will not so clearly define it as belonging to the witty. Nor
will laughter quite settle this question; for there is wit which makes us
laugh, and there is humor which does not. On the whole, it is as to what
is purely wit that we are ever the most at fault. Certain phases of humor
we cannot mistake,--especially those which are broadly comic or
farcical. But sometimes we meet with incidents or scenes which have
more in them of the pathetic than the comic, that we must still rank
with the humorous. Here is a case in point. A time was when it was a
penal offence in Ireland for a priest to say Mass, and under particular
circumstances a capital felony. A priest was malignantly prosecuted;
but the judge, being humane, and better than the law, determined to
confound the informer.
"Pray, Sir," said the judge, "how do you know he said Mass?"
"Because I heard him say it, my Lord."
"Did he say it in Latin?" asked the judge.
"Yes, my Lord."
"Then you understand Latin?"
"A little."
"What words did you hear him say?"
"Ave Maria."
"That is the Lord's Prayer, is it not?" asked the judge.
"Yes, my Lord."
"Here is a pretty witness to convict the prisoner!" cried the judge; "he
swears Ave Maria is Latin for the Lord's Prayer!"
Now, surely, this scene is hardly laughable, and yet it is thoroughly
humorous. But take an instance which is entirely comic:--"All ye
blackguards as isn't lawyers," exclaimed a crier, "quit the Coort." Or
this:--"Och, Counsellor, darling," said a peasant once to O'Connell,
"I've no way here to show your Honor my gratitude! but _I wish I saw
you knocked down in my own parish_, and may be I wouldn't bring a
faction to the rescue." A similar instance occurred in this country. An
enthusiastic Irishwoman, listening once to a lecturer praising Ireland,
exclaimed,--"I wish to God I saw that man in poverty, that I might do
something to relieve him."

We shall now cite an example of pure wit.
"How can you defend this item, Mr. Curran," said Lord Chancellor
Clare,--"'To writing innumerable letters, £100'?"
"Why, my Lord," said Curran, "nothing can be more reasonable. It is
not a penny a letter."
But we might fill the whole space of our article, ay, or of twenty
articles, with such illustrations; we will content ourselves with two
others. The idea is the same in both; but in the first it seems to have a
mixture of the witty and the humorous; in the second, it belongs
entirely to the humorous.
A lady at a dinner-party passing near where Talleyrand was standing,
he looked up and significantly exclaimed, "Ah!" In the course of the
dinner, the lady having asked him across the table, why on her entrance
he said "Oh!" Talleyrand, with a grave, self-vindicatory look,
answered,--"_Madame, je n'ai pas dit_ 'Oh!' _J'ai dit_ 'Ah!'"
Here is the second.--The Reverend Alonzo Fizzle had preached his
farewell-sermon to his disconsolate people in Drowsytown. The next
morning, Monday, he was strolling musingly along a silent road among
the melancholy woods. The pastor of a neighboring flock, the Reverend
Darius Dizzle, was driving by in his modest one-horse chaise.
"Take a seat, Fizzle?" said he. "Don't care if I do," said Fizzle,--and
took it.
"Why, the mischief, Fizzle," said Dizzle, "did you say in your
farewell-sermon, that it was just as well to preach to the dead buried six
feet under the earth as to the people of Drowsytown?"
_"I?--I?--I?"_ gasped the astonished Fizzle. "A more alive and wakeful
people are not upon the earth than the citizens of Drowsytown. What
calumniator has thus outraged them and _me_? Who told you this?
Who dared to say it?"
"Brother Ichabod Muzzle," calmly answered Dizzle.
Fizzle leaped out, hurried to his home, and was soon seen whipping his
unfortunate horse in a certain direction. He was on his way to the
residence of the Reverend Ichabod Muzzle, who lived five or six miles
off. He reached the home of the Reverend Ichabod. The friends greeted
each other. Fizzle, though pregnant with indignation, assumed the
benignant air of the Beloved Disciple. Muzzle looked Platonically the
incarnate idea of the Christian Parson.

"Fine day," said Fizzle.
"Lovely," said Muzzle.
"Glorious view from this window," observed Fizzle.
"Superb," replied Muzzle.
"The beauties of Nature are calming and consolatory," murmured
Fizzle.
"And so are the doctrines of