"Our choir would scarcely be excused,
Even as a band of raw beginners:
All mercy, now, must be refused
To such a set of croaking sinners.
If David, when his toils were ended
Had heard these blockheads sing before him,
To us his psalms had ne'er descended;
In furious mood, he would have tore 'em."
[16] The saying "He that fights and runs away, shall live to fight another day," is as old as the days of Menander.
[17] Beattie was unfortunate in selecting Molière for his comparison, for his humour is especially that of situation and can be tolerably well understood by a foreigner.
[18] Thus we speak of "fried ice" or "ice with the chill off."
[19] It may be observed that as men's perceptions of humour are different, so in the expression of them there is a character about laughter in accordance with its subject, and with the person from whom it comes.
[20] This term seems the nearest, though not quite accurate.
[21] Ruskin observes that the smile on the lips of the Apollo Belvedere is inconsistent with divinity.
[22] The false generalisations of childhood are well represented by Dickens when, in "Great Expectations," he makes Pip discover a singular affinity between seeds and corduroys. "Mr. Pumblechook wore corduroys, and so did his shopman, and somehow there was a general air and flavour about the corduroys so much in the nature of seeds, and such a general air and flavour about the seeds in the nature of corduroys that I hardly knew which was which."
[23] Critias was one of the thirty tyrants who condemned him.
[24] That the present style of men's dress is unbecoming strikes us forcibly when we see it reproduced in statues, where we are not used to it.