Nescio. “Why, Apple, your grief bewilders your mind. You began with talking about punning, and ended with wit and sentiment. Where is the connection?”
Apple. “At least as close, Mr. Quod, as between your real and expressed opinion, when you speak so despitefully of this innocent and dignified amusement. But now we are on the subject, what is wit?”
Nescio. “To which question I might reply, as Democritus did to him that asked the definition of a man—‘tis that which we all see and know.’ Such is the language of Barrow, the celebrated divine; I read it this very day. I however would admit no definition, that could possibly include a pun.”
Tristo. “You go to an extreme there, Nescio. A mere play upon words, a mere coincidence of sounds, makes but a poor jest, and a ready facility in discovering and thrusting into conversation these ‘imperfect sympathies,’ gives one but slight pretensions to the reputation of a wit. But there are some witticisms, which depend for their force upon a pun, but yet including also a racy humor, deserve the praise of true wit. I will read you an instance from Hazlitt:—“An idle fellow, who had only fourpence left in the world, which had been put by to pay for the baking of some meat for his dinner, went and laid it out to buy a new string for a guitar. An old acquaintance, on hearing this story, repeated these lines out of L’Allegro—
‘And ever against eating cares
Lap me in soft Lydian airs.’”
Here the point of the jest lies in the pun upon eating, yet who does not acknowledge it as highly humorous. There are not many puns so refined and pure as this, but they sink in infinite and imperceptible gradations. You cannot draw a bold line between ‘the wit of words and wit of things.’ ‘For,’ as is said of Wit and Madness, ‘thin partitions do their bounds divide.’”
Pulito. “Very true, and I detest that squeamishness, which would refuse the praise of wit to any thing approaching to a pun, and sympathize most heartily with poor Apple for his many rebuffs. But nevertheless, Apple, ‘a joke’s prosperity lies in the ear of the hearer,’ Shakspeare says, and one should not complain if his pet witticisms are not received with applause and answered with laughter. If the jest is worthless, he deserves ridicule—if it does contain the essence of wit he has only himself to blame for giving it an utterance, where it could not be appreciated. Think you that Addison would have displayed his delicate humor for the amusement of crabbed and adust bookworms, or Voltaire sported his sarcasms to tickle the ear of clowns? Let their example encourage and instruct you, my dear Apple, and if you cannot equal their fame, you may, at least, attain the celebrity of Joe Miller.”
Tristo. “You will allow, however, Pulito, there is too often manifested a disposition to decry and disparage, when approbation would have been more natural. Censure is too often heard from lips, from which praise would have been more graceful, or silence more becoming. There are too many among us, who seek to rise upon the fall of their rivals—too many ‘frosty-spirited knaves,’ of whom it may be said, in bitterest truth, ‘not to admire is all the art they know.’”
Pulito. “I have, however, been accustomed to regard such characters with more of pity than severity. I have regarded them as defrauded by nature of the just proportions of humanity. I have been vexed by their perversity, but no more inclined to resent it, than to chastise the ceaseless annoyances of a child or an idiot.”