The St. Johns herald., 1890-05-01
WIT AND HUMCa.
Their Old Meaning, and the Wide Dis-
 tinction Between Them.


 malignant, but it is allied rather to egotism and contempt than to affec- tion and devOtedness, the chief source of the ludicrous being the degradation of some person or thing which we have been accustomed to associate with power, dignity or gravity. Parodies are ludicrous. Daniel O'ConncI, wishing to ridicule three obnoxious Colonels, wrote the following:
 Three Colonels, in three d stlut counties born, Lincoln, Armagh and Sligo dd adorn.
 Tine first in matchless Impotence surpassed The next in bigotry, in both the last.
 The force of nature could no further go:
 To beard the third she shaved the other two.
 When we find the laughter shading into malignity we have wit When we find the laughter kindly we have humor. Sydney Smiths remark to a committee on a wooden pavement was humorous: "We have only to lay our heads together and the thing IS done" But Dean Swift was witty when some one remarked to him : "Do you know, sir, that 1 have set up for wit?" and he replied: "Then, young man, take my advice and sit down again. The altruistic tenn pecament inclines to humor, the ego tistic to wit. There is little humor in Swift. Heine or Voltaire.
 The old meaning of wit was clever ness or intelligence, the derivation of wit being from the Anglo-Saxon verb witan, to know. We have 8 survival of this original meaning in the col Ioquial phrases, He has lost his wits" 'He is at his wits end.' We but with mirth. It has become so far de- graded that paronomasia is considered a species of wit. While nothing can be more tedious than the inveterate punster, good pun has it's relish.
 Mrs. Grote once appeared at a soiree with a queer kind of turban on her head. ''Look at that!" said Sydney Smith, "that's the origin of the word grotesque." Daniel Purcell, asked to make 8 pun impromptu, asked: ''On what subject?" "Oh, any subject the King" "Ah, but the King is no subject" was the prompt reply.
 The old meaning of hunor was a harmless eccentricity. In it's modern signifcation, humor is a combination of the Imaginable with an element of tenderness, sympathy CT affection. As CarlyIe says: 'Humor is sympa- thy with the seamy sido of things" and Thackeray: "Humor is 8 com pound of wit and love"
 As to the distinction between wit and humor, we find that wit is sting ing. humor kindly; that wit is con- centrated and brief" "Brevity is the soul of wit t''-while 0 whole volume may Do humorous. According to Syd- ney Smith, wit discovers real relations that are not apparent and humor ad- mits apparent relations that are not real.
 According to Hazlitt ''Humor is the describing of the ludicrous as it is in itself; wit is the exposing of it by com pairing or contrasting it with some thing else. Humor is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit is the product of art and fancy" Per haps the distinction has been ex- pressed most clearly by Webster: ''Wit denotes the power of seizing on somo thought or occurrence, and by a sud- den turn, presenting it under aspects wholly new and unexpected-appar- ently natural and admissible, if not perfectly just, and bearing on the sub- ject or the parties concerned with a Imaginable keenness and force" Ac- cording to this the following story would be witty: A mute" who had laughed at 8 funeral was upbraided by his master. ''You rascal, you, have been raising your wages for these two years past on condition that you should appear more sorrowful, and the higher wages you receive the happier you look"
 ''Humor.' says Webster. "consists primarily in taking up the peculiari- ties of @ humorist Gan eccentric per- son) and drawing them out, as Addison did those of Sir Roger de Coverly, so that we enjoy a hearty, good-natured laugh at the unconscious development he makes of his whims and oddities. From this original sense the te m has been widened to embrace other sources of kindly mirth of the same general character. Don Quixote is humorous when he gravely remarks to his fol- lower: ''The reason. Sancho, why thou feelest that pain all down thy back is that the stick which gave it thee was of length to that extent. "- Home Journal.