your understanding, love knowledge with a great love, with a vehement love, with a love co-eval with life, what do I say, but love innocence, — love virtue, love purity of conduct,-love that which, if you are rich and great, will sanctify the blind fortune which has made you so, and make men call it justice, love that which, if you are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and make the proudest feel it unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes, love that which will comfort you, adorn you, and never quit you, which will open to you the kingdom of thought, and all the boundless regions of conception, as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and the pain that may be your lot in the outer world, that which will make your motives habitually great and honourable, and light up in an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and of fraud! Therefore, if any young man here have embarked his life in pursuit of knowledge, let him go on without doubting or fearing the event; — let him not be intimidated by the cheerless beginnings of knowledge, by the darkness, from which she springs, by the difficulties which hover around her, by the wretched habitations in which she dwells, by the want and sorrow which sometimes journey in her train; but let him ever follow her as the Angel that guards him, and as the Genius of his life. She will bring him out at last into the light of day, and exhibit him to the world comprehensive in acquirements, fertile in resources, rich in imagination, strong in reasoning, prudent and powerful above his fellows, in all the relations and in all the offices of life. LECTURE X. ON WIT AND HUMOUR, THE question I have very often had asked me respecting the present subject of my lecture is, what has Wit to do with Moral Philosophy? Little or nothing, certainly, if by Moral Philosophy is merely understood practical Moral Philosophy, or Ethics; but if the term be taken as it universally is wherever Moral Philosophy is taught, -as in contradistinction to Physical Philosophy, or the philosophy which concerns itself with the laws of the material world,then Moral Philosophy will include everything which relates to the human mind-of which mind these phenomena of wit and humour are very striking peculiarities. But if, though allowed to appertain to Moral Philosophy because they appertain to the human mind, they should be considered as very frivolous parts of that science, this must not, on any account, be allowed to pass for truth. The feeling of the ridiculous produces an immense effect upon human affairs. It is so far from being powerless or unimportant, that it has a strong tendency to overpower even truth, justice, and all those high-born qualities which have the lawful mastery of the human mind. Such sort of subjects are no less difficult than they are important. I may not always speak on them with the forms of modesty, but no man can be more thoroughly convinced than I am, of the difficulty with which such investigations are attended, and of the folly of dogmatizing upon topics where the best understandings may arrive, and have arrived, at very oppo - site conclusions. In addition to this plea for indulgence, it so happens this year that I am extremely ill prepared for what I have undertaken. To read lectures upon Moral Philosophy is not a very easy thing under any circumstances ;· to read them before a mixt audience of both sexes, and for the first time, are accidents which do not come in diminution of that difficulty. These difficulties are best overcome by a little practice. The same indulgence should be extended to young lecturers and young professors that is extended to the young of all other animals, — who cannot reasonably be supposed to have arrived at the top of their cunning, or to have reached the perfection of their strength. I shall only advertise my hearers, that when I have finished this lecture I have not finished this subject;-I shall have a great deal more to say upon it in my next lecture, and the two must be taken together, in order to analyse the ridiculous, and, perhaps, as some evil-disposed persons may say, to exemplify it. SO "Wit," says Dr. Barrow, "is a thing so subtle, so "versatile, and so multiform, -appearing in so many 66 shapes, so many postures, and so many garbs, "variously apprehended by several eyes and judg"ments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear "and certain notion thereof than to make a portrait of "Proteus, or to define the figure of the fleeting air. "Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial saying, or in "forging an apposite tale; sometimes it playeth in "words and phrases, taking advantage of the ambiguity of their sense, or the affinity of their sound; "sometimes it is wrapt in a dress of humorous expression;—sometimes it lurketh under an odd "similitude; sometimes it is lodged in a sly question, "in a smart answer, in a quirkish reason, in a shrewd "intimation, in cunningly diverting, or cleverly retort"ing an objection;-sometimes it is couched in a 66 66 66 66 66 66 "bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, a lusty hyper"bole, a startling metaphor, a plausible reconciling of "contradictions, or in acute nonsense; - sometimes a "scenical representation of persons or things, a coun"terfeit speech, a mimical look or gesture, passeth for "it ;-sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous bluntness, giveth it being; some"times it ariseth only from a lucky hitting upon what "is strange; often it consisteth in one knows not what, and ariseth one knows not how: its ways are "unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to "the numberless rovings of fancy and windings of language. It is, in short, a manner of speaking out of "the plain way, which, by an uncouthness in conceit or "expression, doth amuse the fancy, stirring in it some "wonder, and breeding some delight. It raiseth "admiration, as signifying a nimble sagacity of appre"hension, a special felicity of invention, a vivacity of spirit, and reach of wit more than vulgar. It "seemeth to argue a rare quickness of parts that can produce such applicable conceits, a notable skill that can dexterously accommodate them to the purpose "before him, together with a lively briskness of "humour, not apt to damp those sportful flashes of "imagination. It procures delight, by gratifying "curiosity with its rarity, by diverting the mind from "its road of serious thoughts, by instilling gaiety and "airiness of spirit, and by seasoning matters, other"wise distasteful and insipid, with an unusual and a "grateful twang." This is Dr. Barrow's famous definition of wit,-which is very witty, and nothing. else! and in which the author has managed as a man would do, who should take a degree in music by singing a song, or in medicine by healing a surfeit. has exemplified his subject instead of explaining it ; and given you a specimen, instead of a solution, of wit. It is surprising what very little has been written in the English language upon this curious subject. Congreve has written upon it in the same witty 66 66 He manner as Barrow, without light upon the nature of wit. throwing the smallest "Tell me, oh tell, what kind of thing is wit, A thousand different shapes it bears, Yonder we see it plain; and here 'tis now, And so he goes on, with a string of witty allusions, for twenty stanzas, in an ode which Johnson calls inimitable, and which, as a mere piece of poetry of the school of the metaphysical poets, certainly is so; but has nothing to do with a serious explanation of the subject. Dryden says of wit, that it is a propriety of thoughts and words, or thoughts and words elegantly adapted to the subject; but there is a propriety of thoughts and words in one of Blair's Sermons, which I never yet heard praised for their wit. And the thoughts and words are elegantly adapted to the subject in Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope," which is something much better than a witty poem. Pope says of wit, "True wit is nature to advantage drest, Oft thought before, but ne'er so well exprest. Then the Philippics of Cicero, the Orations of Demosthenes, are witty; Cæsar's Commentaries are witty; Massillon is one of the greatest wits that ever lived; the Oraisons funèbres of Bossuet are prodigies of facetiousness. Sir Richard Blackmore's notion of wit is, that it is a series of high and exalted ferments. It very possibly may be; but, not exactly comprehending what is meant by a series of high and exalted ferments," I do not think myself bound to waste much time in criticising the metaphysics of this learned physician. 66 The first definition of wit worth noticing is that of Mr. Locke, which I shall read to you. "How much "the imperfection of accurately discriminating ideas I |