‘Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!’
R. You know we make it a rule to discountenance every attempt at wit, as much as the world in general abhor a punster.
S. By your using the phrase, ‘attempts at wit,’ it would seem that you admit there is a true and a false wit; then why do you confound the distinction? Is this logical, or even politic?
R. The difference is not worth attending to.
S. Still, I suppose, you have a great deal of this quality, if you chose to exert it?
R. I fancy not much.
S. And yet you take upon you to despise it! I have sometimes thought that the great professors of the modern philosophy were hardly sincere in the contempt they express for poetry, painting, music, and the Fine Arts in general—that they were private amateurs and prodigious proficients under the rose, and, like other lovers, hid their passion as a weakness—that Mr. M—— turned a barrel-organ—that Mr. P—— warbled delightfully—that Mr. Pl—— had a manuscript tragedy by him, called ‘The Last Man,’ which he withheld from the public, not to compromise the dignity of philosophy by affording any one the smallest actual satisfaction during the term of his natural life.
R. Oh, no! you are quite mistaken in this supposition, if you are at all serious in it. So far from being proficients, or having wasted their time in these trifling pursuits, I believe not one of the persons you have named has the least taste or capacity for them, or any idea corresponding to them, except Mr. Bentham, who is fond of music, and says, with his usual bonhomie (which seems to increase with his age) that he does not see why others should not find an agreeable recreation in poetry and painting.[[29]]
S. You are sure this cynical humour of theirs is not affectation, at least?
R. I am quite sure of it.