Holding the sleeping images of things
For the selection of the pausing judgment.—Doge of Venice, I. 2.
And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
’Tis that I may not weep.—Byron: Don Juan.
Richardson had said, long before,—
Indeed, it is to this deep concern that my levity is owing; for I struggle and struggle, and try to buffet down my cruel reflections as they rise; and when I cannot, I am forced to try to make myself laugh that I may not cry; for one or other I must do: and is it not philosophy carried to the highest pitch for a man to conquer such tumults of soul as I am sometimes agitated by, and in the very height of the storm to quaver out a horse-laugh?
Clarissa Harlowe, Let. 84.
In the Antiquary of Sir Walter Scott, Maggie says to Oldbuck of Monkbarns (ch. xi.):—
It’s no fish ye’re buying, its men’s lives.