(The disappointment of the author here adds considerably to our amusement at the ingenious answer of the publisher.)
Two men, attired as a bishop and chaplain, entered one of the great jewellery establishments in Bond Street and asked to be shown some diamond rings. The bishop selected one worth a hundred pounds, but said he had only a fifty-pound note with him, and that he wished to take the ring away. The foreman took the note, and the bishop gave his address; but he had scarcely left when a policeman rushed in and asked where the two swindlers had gone. The foreman stood aghast, but said he had at least secured a fifty-pound note. The policeman asked to see it, and saying it was a flash note and that he would have it tested, left the shop and never returned.
The amusement afforded by practical jokes is also largely dependent upon the discomfort of the victims. This kind of humour, happily now little known in this country, has been much in favour with Italian bandits, who occasionally unite whimsical fancy with great personal daring. A Piedmontese gentleman told me an instance in which two Counts, who were dining at an albergo, met a strange-looking man whom they took to be a sportsman like themselves. The conversation turned upon bandits, and the Counts expressed a hope that they might meet some, as they were well armed and would teach them a lesson. Their companion left before them, and walking along the road they were to take, ordered a labouring man whom he met to stand in an adjoining vineyard and hold up a vine-stake to his shoulder like a gun. As soon as the Counts' carriage came to the place the bandit rushed out, seized the horses, and called upon the Counts to deliver up their arms or he would order his men, whom they could see in the vineyard, to fire. The Counts not only obeyed the summons, but began to accuse one another of keeping something back. Shortly afterwards, on a doctor boasting in the same way, the bandit went out before him and stuck a bough in the road on which he hung a lantern. The doctor called out who's there? and was taking a deadly aim with his gun, when he was seized from behind and pinioned. The bandit said he should teach him a different lesson from that he deserved, and only deprived him of his gun.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Nomenclature—Three Classes of Words—Distinction between Wit and Humour—Wit sometimes dangerous, generally innocuous.
The subject of which we have been treating in these volumes will suggest to us the logical distinctions to be drawn between three classes of words. First, we have those which imply that we are regarding something external, awakening laughter as the ludicrous from ludus, a game, especially pointing to antics and gambols; the ridiculous from rideo to laugh, referring to that which occasions a demonstrative movement in the muscles of the countenance—implying a strong emotion, often of contempt, and generally applied to persons, as the ludicrous is to circumstances; the grotesque referring to strangeness in form, such as is seen in fantastic grottoes, or in the quaint figures of sylvan deities which the Ancients placed in them, and the absurd, properly referring to acts of people who are defective in faculties.
The ludicrous is often used in philosophical works to signify a feeling, and our second class will contain words which may refer either to something external or to the mind, such as droll, (from the German) comical, amusing, and funny. To say "I do not see any fun in it," is different from saying "I do not see any fun in him," and a man may be called funny, either in laudation or disparagement.
In the third class we place such words as refer to the mind alone as the source of amusement, and under this head we may place Humour as a general and generic term. Raillery and sarcasm (from a Greek word "to tear flesh") refer especially to the expression of the feeling in language, and irony from its covert nature generally requires assistance from the voice and manner. Some words refer especially to literature, and never to any attacks made on present company. Of these, satire aims at making a man odious or ridiculous; lampoon, contemptible. Satire is the rapier; lampoon the broadsword, or even the cudgel—the former points to the heart and wounds sharply, the latter deals a dull and blundering blow, often falling wide of the mark. In general a different man selects a different weapon; the educated and refined preferring satire; the rude and more vulgar, lampoon—one adopting what is keen and precise, the other seeking rough and irrelevant accessories. But clever men, to gain others over to them by amusement, have sometimes taken the clumsier means, and while placing their victim nearer the level of the brutes than of humanity, have not struck so straight; for the improbability they have introduced has in it so much that is fantastic that their attack seems mostly playful, if not bordering on the ludicrous.
Lampoon was the earliest kind of humorous invective; we have an instance of it in Homer's Thersites. Buffoonery differs from lampoon in being carried on in acting, instead of words. The latter is rather based upon some moral delinquency or imperfection; the former aims merely at amusement, and resembles burlesque in being generally optical, and containing little malice. Both come under the category of broad humour, which is excessive in accessory emotion, and in most cases deficient in complication. Caricature resembles them both in being often concerned with deformity. It appeals to the senses rather than to the emotions. The complication in it is never very good when it is confined to pictorial representation, as we may observe that without some explanation we should seldom know what a design was intended to portray; and when the word means description in writing it still retains some of its original reference to sight, and is concerned principally with form and optical similitudes.