Finally, what presage can we form of the future from the experience of the past? We may expect the augmenting emotion in humour to become less, and of a more æsthetical character, indelicacy, profanity, and hostility have been considerably modified even since the commencement of this century. Humour will, by degrees, become more intellectual and more refined, less dependent upon the senses and passions. At some time far hence allusions will be greatly appreciated, the complexity of which our obtuser faculties would now be unable to understand. Still, as keen and excellent wit is a rare gift, some even of the ancient sayings will doubtless survive.
By some, humour has been called a "morbid secretion," and its extinction has been foretold, but history, the only unerring guide, teaches us that it will increase in amount and improve in quality. Man cannot exist without emotion, and as we have seen various forms and subjects of humour successively arising, so we may be sure in future ages fresh fields for it will be constantly opening. When we consider how necessary amusement is to all, and how bounteously it has been supplied by Providence, we shall feel certain that man will always have beside him this light, which although it cannot lead as a star, can still brighten his path and cheer his spirits upon the pilgrimage of life.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Properly Centrones, from a Greek word signifying patchwork.
[2] In which the various kinds of fish are introduced in mock heroic verse. It dates from the fifth century B.C.
[3] About this time Addison and Bishop Attenbury first called attention to the beauties of Milton.
[4] Ale-houses at Oxford.
[5] A game at cards.
[6] Haynes writes, "I have known a gentleman of another turn of humour, who despises the name of author, never printed his works, but contracted his talent, and by the help of a very fine diamond which he wore on his little finger, was a considerable poet on glass." He had a very good epigrammatic wit; and there was not a parlour or tavern window where he visited or dined for some years, which did not receive some sketches or memorials of it. It was his misfortune at last to lose his genius and his ring to a sharper at play, and he has not attempted to make a verse since.
[7] This seems taken from a Spanish story.