The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1873-03-07
Wit and Irony.

All pure wit is born in the imagina
ton, but only in that capability OF 1T tc
see our point where two incongruou'
things may meet. But the poetic simil,
| involves more than that it IL born o.
| the utmost vitality, which must over
| flow, spill itself upon nature, appropri
ate her, senseless as she may seem, and
incapable of rejecting our subtleties oi
| mind and heart. Often there Is some
thing very noble and tender in this pro
| cess of imagination, which converts sur
prise into emotion, as when Coleridgt
says -
Methinks Il should have been impossible
Not to love all things in world 80 filed;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute, still all
Is music slumbering on her instrument.
The impression of surprise which q
perfect simile produces is transferred
from the understanding back to the i'm
agination, before the former can venture
to be amused. But sometimes the sur
prise fingers there long enough to have
d narrow escape from smiling; as when
Sir Thomas Brown, finding that mid
night has overtaken him Mt his desk,
says "To keep our eyes open longer,
were to act the antipodes." His wake
fitness is not like the antipodal day,
but dramatizes it and this is a simile
that imparts the shock of it. Some OF
the SMILES which Americans derive
from their professions, and apply to
persons, have all the character OF wit.
A 4armer says of a meager and unequal
speech that it was "pretty scattering,
alluding to ground crops that grow un-
evenly. An iron founder will say OF a
speech, that was all passion, that, not
withstanding, it didn't make a weld. ="
Miners in the West use the word " col
or" for the purest gold in the ground.
One of them remarked of a man who
had been tried and found worthless,
have found him out, clear down to the
bed rock but can't even raise the
color" Frequenters of the racc-course
mentions beaten politician as the
longest cared horse they ever saw (;
and Nantucket captain, when asked
his opinion of Il very rhetorical preach
er, said hes good sailor, hut bad
carrier The poetry of Doune, Cowley,
and others easily furnish examples OF
SMILES which stop so short of beauty
that their aptness only serves to ralse
q smile. When Sir John Sucking
describes a lady -
"Her feet beneath her peticoat,
Like mice, stole in and out"
we casually glance toward the pantry.
A man being suddenly walked at sea,
and told that the ship was sinking, cried,
Don't disturb me, I'm only passen-
ger, tell the captain" This betrays the
marks of manufacture at Yankee mill
but the grist is genuine as IN the story
of a person who delivered load of hay
that was full of stones to increase the
weight. "How came all these stones
on it?' Wal-Im sure L dunno.
"Then 1 guess nobody knows" /" See,
here, do recollect that coming along ]
drew pretty close to stone wall. Lord
Dundrearv says, Sam always calls me
his brother, because neither OF MS ever
had q sister" The mind uses irony
when it gravely states an opinion or sen
timent which is the opposite of its be-
lief, with the moral purpose of showing
its real dissent from the opinion. 1t
must therefore be done with this appar-
ent fr Om the purpose OF it, SO that 1T
NAV not pass for an acquiescence in an
opposite sentiment. 1t may be done so
we'll as to deceive even the elect; and
perhaps the ordinary mind complains oi
irony az wanting in straightforward
ness. The pleasure of irony arises from
a contrast between the discovery OF the
thing said and the thing intended, and
this pleasure is heightened when we
observe tue contrast between the pure
soul who means nobly and his speaking
as If he meant to be ignoble.