HUMOR, WIT, AND HIBERNIANISM.
Humor is a subtle, witty, philosophical, and greatly satirical form of gayety, the outcome of simplicity in the character, that is met chiefly among English-speaking people.
Humor has not the brilliancy, the vivacity of French wit, but it is more graceful, lighter, and above all more philosophic. A sarcastic element is nearly always present in it, and not unfrequently a vein of sadness. There is something deliciously quiet and deliberate about humor, that is in perfect harmony with the English character; and we have been right in adopting the English name for the thing, seeing that the thing is essentially English.
Germany has produced humorists, among whom Hoffman and Henry Heine shine conspicuously; but this kind of playful raillery is not to be met with in French literature, except perhaps in the Lettres provinciales of Pascal.
In France, irony is presented in a more lively form. Swift and Sterne are the acknowledged masters of British humor, as Rabelais and Voltaire are the personification of French wit.
British humor does not evaporate so quickly as French wit; you feel its influence longer. The latter takes you by storm, but humor lightly tickles you under the ribs, and quietly takes possession of you by degrees; the bright idea, instead of being laid bare, is subtly hidden; it is only after you have peeled off the coating of sarcasm lying on the surface, that you get at the fun underneath.
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I believe Parisian wit might be correctly described as a sudden perception and expression of a likeness in the unlike. Here is an example of it; an English one:
Sydney Smith, the most Parisian wit England has produced, one day asked the Corporation of the City of London to pave St. Paul's Churchyard with wood. The Corporation replied that such a thing was perfectly impracticable.
"Not at all, gentlemen, I assure you," cried Sydney Smith; "you have only to lay all your heads together, and the thing is done."