Compare this with the following stanzas in Spenser, treating of the same subject: 66 By this the Northern Waggoner had set At last the golden oriental gate Of greatest heaven 'gan to open fair, And Phoebus, fresh as bridegroom to his mate, And hurl'd his glist'ring beams through gloomy air: In sun-bright arms and battailous array, For with that pagan proud he combat will that day." In this last passage, every image is brought forward that can give effect to our natural impression of the beauty, the splendour, and solemn grandeur of the rising sun; pleasure and power wait on every line and word: whereas, in the other, the only memorable thing is a grotesque and ludicrous illustration of the alteration which takes place from darkness to gorgeous light, and that brought from the lowest instance, and with associations that can only disturb and perplex the imagination in its conception of the real object it describes. There cannot be a more witty, and at the same time degrading comparison, than that in the same author, of the Bear turning round the pole-star to a bear tied to a stake :- "But now a sport more formidable Had raked together village rabble; Which learned butchers call bear-baiting, A bold adventrous exercise With ancient heroes in high prize, Others derive it from the Bear A circle like a bear at stake, That at the chain's end wheels about I need not multiply examples of this sort.-Wit or ludicrous invention produces its effect oftenest by comparison, but not always. It frequently effects its purposes by unexpected and subtle distinctions. For instance, in the first kind, Mr. Sheridan's description of Mr. Addington's administration as the fag-end of Mr. Pitt's, who had remained so long on the treasury bench that, like your Nicias in the fable," he left the sitting part of the man behind him," is as fine an example of metaphorical wit as any on record. The same idea seems, however, to have been included in the old well-known nickname of the Rump Parliament. Almost as happy an instance of the other kind of wit, which consists in sudden retorts, in turns upon an idea, and diverting the train of adversary's argument abruptly and adroitly into another channel, may be seen in the sarcastic reply of Porson, who hearing some one observe, that" certain modern poets would be read and admired when Homer and Virgil were forgotten," made answer" And not till then!" Sir Robert Walpole's definition of the gratitude of placeexpectants, "That it is a lively sense of future favours," is no doubt wit, but it does not consist in the finding out any coincidence or likeness, but in suddenly transposing the order of time in the common account of this feeling, so as to make the professions of those who pretend to it correspond more with their practice. It is filling up a blank in the human heart with a word that explains its hollowness at once. Voltaire's saying, in answer to a stranger who was observing how tall his trees grew-"That they had nothing else to do❞—was a quaint mixture of wit and humour, making it out as if they really led a lazy, laborious life; but there was here neither allusion or metaphor. Again, that master-stroke in Hudibras is sterling wit and profound satire, where speaking of certain religious hypocrites he says, that they "Compound for sins they are inclin'd to, but the wit consists in the truth of the character, and in the happy exposure of the ludicrous con · tradiction between the pretext and the practice; between their lenity towards their own vices, and their severity to those of others. The same principle of nice distinction must be allowed to prevail in those lines of the same author, where he is professing to expound the dreams of judicial astrology. There's but the twinkling of a star A huffing officer and a slave; A crafty lawyer and pickpocket; A great philosopher and a blockhead; A formal preacher and a player; A learn'd physician and man slayer." The finest piece of wit I know of, is in the lines of Pope on the Lord Mayor's show "Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er, But lives in Settle's numbers one day more." This is certainly as mortifying an inversion of the idea of poetical immortality as could be thought of; it fixes the maximum of littleness and insignificance: but it is not by likeness to any thing else that it does this, but by literally taking the lowest possible duration of ephemeral reputation, marking it (as with a slider) on the scale of endless renown, and giving a rival credit for it as his loftiest praise. In a word, the shrewd separation or disentangling of ideas that seem the same, or where the secret contradiction is not sufficiently suspected, and is of a ludicrous and whimsical nature, is wit just as much as the bringing together those that appear at first sight totally different. There is then no sufficient ground for admitting Mr. Locke's celebrated definition of wit, which he makes to consist in the finding out striking and unexpected resemblances in things so as to make pleasant pictures in the fancy, while judgment and reason, according to him, lie the clean contrary way, in separating and nicely distinguishing those wherein the smallest difference is to be found.* * His words are-" If in having our ideas in the memory ready at hand consists quickness of parts, in this of having them unconfused, and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where there is but the least difference, consists in a great measure the exactness of judgment and |