Wit, Humor, and Shakspeare: Twelve Essays

by John Weiss

The best repartee must subsidize the pleasure of wit. When M. Scribe replied to the millionnaire who wanted him to lend the use of his genius for a consideration, that it was contrary to Scripture for a horse and an ass to plough together, the man instantly parried the snub by saying, "By what right do you call me a horse?"

Among the announcements in a French paper, we find that "a young man about to marry wants to meet a man of experience who will dissuade him." So Abraham Lincoln thought he would not marry, because "I can never be satisfied with any one who would be blockhead enough to have me."

Perhaps the purest instance of thoroughly French wit is to be credited to Mr. Emerson. An amiable rustic once heard him lecture, but could make nothing of it. Turning to a friend, he said, "Darn it! I'd like to know what Emerson thinks about God. I bet I'll ask him." He did, when Mr. Emerson came down the aisle. "God," replied he, "is the x of algebra,"—that is, the unknown quantity in every problem. Nothing could be more admirable.

Mr. Beecher affirms that "it is impossible to discriminate between the wit that produces only pleasure of thought and that which produces pleasure of laughter." It does not seem to me so hopeless a task to discriminate between the two kinds of wit. Where reflection predominates, and the act of wit approaches the statement of a truth, so that the surprise does not borrow any tinge from any human sentiment, the pleasure will be inaudible; and, if we produce a smile at all, it will be where the German constructed the idea of a camel,—in the depths of his consciousness; as when Voltaire said of the priests of his time, "Our credulity makes all their knowledge." But when an American poet, whose Pegasus had stepped upon his foot, said, "What a pity it is! my grandfather left to me his gout, and nothing in the cellar to keep it up with," a fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind; it is so incongruously human to nurse our own infirmities.

So when Frederic the Great said spitefully to Minister Elliot, on occasion of the Te Deums over the reverses of Hyder Ali in India, "I never knew that Providence was one of your allies," and Elliot replied, "The only one, sire, whom we do not pay," both the remark and the retort involve the mind in a momentary adjustment of its ideas to the new suggestion; and the wit is thus restrained from sallying into laughter. We have to reflect that Elliot's repartee is a hit at all subsidized powers, including Prussia, and also at his own nation for its trick of futile gratitude and ascription of praise. But if any movement of sympathy prevents the act of wit from settling upon the internal organs, and bids it escape by every pore, we feel the dew of laughter on the face; as when Falstaff whimsically apologizes for himself, "Thou knowest, in the state of innocency, Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do, in the days of villany?"—or when, at a meeting in London to hear a report from some missionaries who had been sent to discover the lost tribes of Israel, the chairman opened the business by saying, "I take a great interest in your researches, gentlemen. The fact is, I have borrowed money from all the Jews now known; and, if you can find a new set, you'll do me a favor."

It is witty when the author of the "Maid of Sker," describing a dinner, makes the mouth water with smiles when he particularizes "a little pig for roasting, too young to object to it, yet with his character formed enough to make his brains delicious."

Wit can depend, like punning, upon the felicitous use of some well-known verse or sentiment, which suddenly is made to adapt itself to a new idea; as when Henry Clapp, speaking of an intolerable bore, inverted the famous sentence which is associated with Shakspeare, and said, "He is not for a time, but for all day."

In the same vein, on the strength of Laurence Sterne's[2] assertion that "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," a Boston wit, finding himself in the powerful blast which sweeps across the Common and makes a tunnel of Winter Street, remarked that he wished there was a shorn lamb tied at the head of that street.

Walter Scott tells an anecdote of the same special character. "So deep was the thirst of vengeance impressed on the minds of the Highlanders that, when a clergyman informed a dying chief of the unlawfulness of the sentiment, urged the necessity of forgiving an inveterate enemy, and quoted, 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,' the acquiescing penitent said, with a deep sigh, 'To be sure! it is too sweet a morsel for a mortal.'"

Wit can be blundered into as well as a pun. The unmerited praise of it can be earned by mental awkwardness and want of tact. A widower, who had loved a lady previous to his marriage to another, approached his first love after the death of his wife, and sought to renew the old attachment. After he had made his offer, at a juncture more critical than the turning-point of Waterloo, he was permitted to add, "And I know that all my children will follow you to the grave with the same affection that they showed when their mother died." This is certainly the pallida mors of Horace beating æquo pede at the door.