The Philosophy of Rhetoric

Chapter II: Of Wit, Humour, and Ridicule

8 THE PHILOSOPHY [BOOK I. CHAPTER II. Of wit, llUmour, and ridicule. This article, concerning eloquence in its largest acceptation, I cannot properly dismiss without making some observations on another genus of oratory, in many things similar to the former, but which is naturally suited to light and trivial matters. This also may be branched into three sorts, corresponding to those already discussed, directed to the fancy, the passions, and the will; for that which illuminates the understanding serves as a common foundation to both, and has here nothing peculiar. This may be styled the eloquence of conversation, as the othcr is more strictly the eloquence of declamation9 • Not, indeed, but that wit, humour, ridicule, which are the essentials of the former, may often be successfully admitted into public harangues. And, on the other hand, sublimity, pathos, vehemence, may sometimes enter the precincts of familiar converse. To justify the use of such distinctive appellations , it is cnough that they refer to those particulars which are predominant in each, though not peculiar to either. SECTION I.-Oj wit. To consider the matter more nearly, it is the design of wit to excite in the mind an agreeable surprise, and that arising, not from any thing marvellous in the subject, but solely from the imagery she employs, or the strange assemblage of related ideas presented to the mind. This end is effected in one or other of these three ways: first in debasing things pompous or seemingly grave: I say seemingly grave, because to vilify what is truly grave has something shockin~ in it, which rarely fails to counteract the end: secondly, m aggrandizing things little and frivolous: thirdly, in setting ordinary objects, by means not only remote, but apparently contrary, in a particular and uncommon point of view1• This will be better understood from the following observations and examples. 9 In the latter of these the ancients excel; in the former the moderns. Demostbenes and Cicero, not to say Homer and Virgil, to this day remain unrivalled; and in all antiquity, Lucian himself not excepted, we cannot find a match for Swift and Cervantes. 1 I know no language which affords a name for this species of imagery, but the English. ThE' French esprit or bel esprit, though on some occasions rIghtly translated wit, hath commonly a signification more extensive and generical. It must be owncd, indeed, that in conformity tothe stylc of French critics, the term wit, in English writings, hath been sometimes used with equal latitude. But this is certainly a perversion of the word from its ordinary sense, through CHAP. II.] OF RHETORIC. 9 The materials employed by wit in the grotesque pieces she exhibits, are partly derived from those common fountains of whatever is directed to the imaginative powers, the ornaments of elocution, and the oratorical figures, simile, apostrophe, antithesis, metaphor; partly from those she in a manner appropriates to herself, irony, hyperbole, allusion, parody, and (ifthe reader will pardon my descending so low) paronomasia2, and pun. The limning of wit differs from the rhetorical painting above described in two respects. One is, that in the latter there is not only a resemblance requisite in that particular on which the comparison is founded, but there must also be a general similitude, III the nature and quality of that which is the basis of the imagery, to that which is the theme of discourse . In respect of dignity, or the impression they make upon the mind, they must be things homogeneous. What has magnificence, must invariably be portrayed by what is maguificent ; objects ofimportance by objects important; such as have grace by things graceful: Whereas the witty, though requiring an exact likeness in the first particular, demands, in the second, a contrariety rather, or remoteness. This enchantress exults in reconciling contradictions, and in hitting on that special light and attitude, wherein you can discover an unexpected similarity in objects, which, at first sight, appear the most dissimilar and heterogeneous. Thus high and low are coupled, humble and superb, momentous and trivial, common and extraordinary . Addison, indeed, observes3, that wit is often produced , not by the resemblance, but by the opposit.ion of ideas. But this, of which, however, he hath not given us an instance, doth not constitute a different species, as the repugnancy in that case will always be found between objects in other respects resembling; for it is to the contrast of an excessive deference to the manner and idiom ofour ingenious neighbours. Indeed, when an...