The Sun.
London, England, 1865-08-28 00:00:00

them, they were aiiMiefable for losses sustained by
passengers. The jury returned a verdict for the
plaintiff for three guineas.
" THE LONDON REVIEW " ON THE FASHIONS OF
WIT.—It has become a smart thing for a certain
class of writers to detect the age of a joke and to
ascribe its origin to some remote period, either of
Lempriere or Joe Miller. The process is just as
cruel as if you hunted up the parish registry for the
baptism of a parish belle ; the result of antiquity in
both cases being fatal. Yet it is just possible that
the ways by which people can be made to laugh are
so far limited that in a certain time we should come
back upon the place we started from and go the
entire round of fun over again. Hallam gave it as
his opinion that the world was closer to where it
was a thousand years ago than he would at all like
to suspect. Historians will tell you that the com-
binations of events are not incalculable, and may
yet furnish sufficient data for a set of laws by which
their study will become a science. Humanity is
much the same in the lump. There were rouge-pots
found in Pompeii, and there are a few still extant
in London. Burlesques were in high favour before
now. Plato put into the mouth of Socrates a
sentence which shows how well they are appre-
ciated. " All opposites (he says) can be fully
understood only, by and through each other ; con-
sequently, we can only know what is serious
by knowing, also, what is laughable and ludi-
crous." Thus, having a lively recollection that
Claude Melnotte or the Colleenßawn were used for
the purpose of getting sentimentally the better
of us, it is positively a relief to the mind to have
them dancing a break-down and making puns, which
put us quite at our ease as to their intellectual supe-
riority. The Athenians laughed at Jupiter, on the
stage, attempting the window of Alcmena by means
of a ladder, or at Socrates coming down from the
flies in a basket. This trick is often repeated in our
travestie and pantomime. In the " Clouds" of
Aristophanes, a part of the fun consists in making
the " clouds" walk about or gather up at the sides.
So we find Nick Bottom recommending somebody
to represent a" wall" and " hold his fingers thus,
and through that cranny let Pyramus and Thisbe
whisper." Thehumour of mugging at the pit is more
or less modern, but the joke of having an aside with
the theatrical officials is to be found in the " Peace"
of Aristophanes, where Trygesus is suspended in
the air on the back of a beetle, and calls out
anxiously to the manager to take care his neck is
not broken. He afterwards intimates his safe arrival
on the earthby joining the musicians in the orchestra.
The " Ecclesiazusm," or " Woman's Parliament,"
embodies the idea of Tennyson's charming medley.
Nor is it in drama alone we can find these analogies.
Lucian and Rabelais, Swift and Diogenes, had much
in common. You might yet find a club philosopher
at this day sharing an opinion or two with his tub
progenitor. We have, however, a few modes of
fun which seem to have no precedents. Where, for
instance, will you find the antecedent of the comic
nigger ? There is no account in Plautus, or else-
where, of a Carthaginian minstrel who would pro-
bably be the ancestor of Mr. Bones. We think the ne-
gro such a funny dog that we have him inlamp-black
when the real article cannot be imported. The
humour of cotton trousers, wooden boots, and hee-
haw conundrums appear to have been quite un-
known to our forefathers, who did some business
with Jamaica, and got quite a different value out of
Sambo. Nor were they acquainted with the intense
joviality of such songs as those of the " great"
Vance, the very St. Vitus of comicality. They
were ignorant of Slick " down east" stories and
sells. Those fashions of wit are all our own, pure
and simple. At the same time, we have discarded
the epigram, which now only turns up as a curiosity.
The acrostic, too, has had its day, appearing but
once in a twelvemonth, when the stationers' shops
are measled with valentines. The chronogram is no
more, and a lover is not now required, as in the
Elizabethan age, to play 50 tricks with his mistress's
name before she permits him to change it for his
own. Nor have we those curious specimens of
humour recorded by Addison. No one writes a
poem in the shape of an egg, an axe, or an altar, or
attempts the highest peaks of Parnassus on wings
composed of his own verses. Even the rebus shows
symptoms of decay. It only appears at the fag end
of cheap journals, and as an innocent dodge for
purchasing our next in which the solution will be
given. Frequently the answer is withheld for a
period of two or three numbers, the periodical thus
having a little game of send-the-fool-farther with
its readers. Enigmas are nowhere, except in
Reuter's telegrams. A pun has come to be alto-
gether unlike what it was ; instead of a laugh,
it extorts a murmur of astonishment. Perhaps
this was the manner in which the jests of
Dick Tarleton and the Shakespearian clowns
were received. We read that Cicero, Aristotle,
Ciesar, and Cleopatra, all punned. Victor Hugo
has a long chapter on the subject in " Les Miser-
ables," and one cannot help associating the title of
the work with that particular section of it. 'There
is a sort of genuine wit lying between fancy and
plain prose, having the vivacity of the one and the
truth of the other, which is at once serious, pic-
turesque, and playful, and which, in fact, makes
the most of a thought by putting it in the very best
position and in the very best words. It may con-
sist in a comparison, an allusion, or the discovery of
some new and unsuspected quality. It rejoices in
similitudes ; illustrating a single idea, it fills in a
meagre outline with warm colour, and light, and
perspective. In some proportion every man has
wit. It is a characteristic of our minds never to be
wholly unoccupied. Nothing is presented to us
that we do not pass judgment on, compare, con-
trast, combine, retain, or reject. We never allow
things to remain simply as they come. We must
piece them together with other matter, distinguish
them by the native hue of our own mental com-
plexions, and recognise them afterwards not as we
knew them first, but as we know them when par-
taking of ourselves. The strange idea will, in
truth, be enriched according as we are furnished,
and we shall reproduce it in a manner and garb
indicative of our resources. Peter Bell had
nothing to say of the primrose save that it was
yellow ; Wordsworth or Burns could see a ten-
derness in it, and by a thousand attributes mag-
nified the powers into a promise of spring
fulfilled, a hope of sweet summer days to come, a
something that enjoyed the very air it breathed, and
so on. And this, though poetry, is also wit. "By
resemblances," Burke writes, "we produce new
images ;" and true wit increases our stock just as
poetry does. There was seldom a great poet who
was not also a great wit. Even Homer has it in a
measure, and it shines here and there like a torch
through the gloom of Dante's terrible revelations.
Milton has left us " L'Allegro" as well as "Para-
dise Lost." In that author, whose name is a house-
hold word amongst us, there are many beautiful
prose poems ; and in the works of Thackeray there
are passages of sentiment, which are assuredly
poetry. In both are phrases and sentences in which
we know not whether wit or poetry predominate ;
they hover as it were between thoughts half gay and
half sad, with a fluttering uncertainty which causes
in us a feeling of suspense similar to that which
good music produces. And we want something of
this instead of the perpetual gagging and gibe which
passes for humour amongst our smart writers. Nor
is it the height of comicality to job up the worst
mannerisms even of the best men. A literary mimic
is one of the saddest objects in the world. Our mo-
dern wits not only find the joke, but, as Cibber
wrote, find the laugh also. If they would only cease
from being so very funny, but the appetite they
cater for is a coarse one, only a degree above that
which is tickled at the music-halls with cockney
vulgarities, hot and hot punch, and hot and hot
songs. The stage indeed gives us small hope of re-
formation in this respect ; but we look to our novel
writers for it, possessing as they do models of
genuine humour and examples of real wit, which
have never been surpassed or even approached in
the literature of any other country.
THE " ATHEN/EUM" ON LONDON BRIDGES.—Per-
sons of satirical turns of mind aver that the archi-
tectural quality of our bridges over the Thames, not
less than those which span the streets of London,
suffices to prove the almost total absence of good
sense and common honesty of design among us.
Without going higher than Hampton Court, the
observer may satisfy himself that such is the fact.
There stood, until lately, in front of Wolsey's noble
house, a picturesque, but decidedly inconvenient,
wooden pile-bridge, constructed in the cheap but
handy way that suited our grandfathers, and which,
having no architectural pretensions,—being, in
fact, a mere structure—grew, by process of wear,
to be as pleasant a thing as any painter could
desire to see. It cost scarcely anything to keep
in order, for if a pile decayed there were certain
persons who, with skill worthy of dentistry,
drew it out of Father Thames's jaws, and put a new
one in so deftly that you would hardly believe the
thing had been done at all. Folks said the old
viaduct was narrow and steep.. As to the first, one
might reply that a few more piles, placed to right
and left, would bear footways wide enough to ac-
commodate the gigantic crinolines now worn by
the lower female orders of her Majesty's subjects ;
the portliest cook in London, hoop and all, might
cross the river on such on a trottoir. As to the
steepness, people forget that in such cases an ascent
must be made somewhere, so that it is delusive to
aver that a gradient-has been reduced, when it
has been really transferred from a bridge to its
approaches. The unkindest cut of all, with regard
to this bridge, was administered by gratuitous
information that the lean-iron contrivance, which
supplanted the old piles was intended to " har-
monise with the architecture of Hampton Court
Palace ! Some miles further down the river we
pass several really handsora? railway bridges, and