A. G. K. L'Estrange

“ It is true that in Art, that which appears ludicrous will always be distasteful, for it will offend the eye or ear, but it is something more, and we occasionally speak as though it were outside taste altogether. Thus when we see some very evident failure in a sketch, we say "this is a most wretched work, and out of all drawing," and add as a climax of disapprobation "It is perfectly ridiculous." A violation of taste is never sufficient for the ludicrous, and the ludicrous is not always a violation of taste.
There is something in humour beyond what is merely unexpected. ”

“ What can be expected from a man who tells us that "the worst puns are the best," or who can applaud Swift for having asked, on accidentally meeting a young student carrying a hare; "Prithee, friend, is that your own hair or a wig?" He finds the charm in such hazards in their utter irrelevancy, and truly they can only be excused as flowing from a wild and unchastened fancy. It must require great joviality or eccentricity to find any humour in caricaturing a pun. ”

“ Wisdom is a fox, who after long hunting will at last cost you the pains to dig out; it is a cheese which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homelier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a judicious palate the maggots are the best; it is a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go you will find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg, but then, lastly, it is a nut, which unless you choose with judgment may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm. ”

“ Voltaire says of Hudibras, "I have never met with so much wit in one book as in this—who would believe that a work which paints in such lively and natural colours the several foibles and frolics of mankind, and where we meet with more sentiment than words, should baffle the endeavours of the ablest translator?" But any alteration of words would generally destroy humour. "To go to the crows," was a good and witty expression in ancient Greece, but it does not signify anything to us, except, perhaps, climbing trees. When we wish a man to be devoured, we tell him to "go to the dogs." ”

“ Although nearly every misconception may be represented under the form of false ratiocination, the imperfection almost always lies in one of the premises, and it is seldom that there is plainly a fault of argument in humour. If we claim everything as a fallacy of which there is no evidence, though there seems to be some, we shall embrace a large area—part of which is usually assigned to falsity, and if we consider every mistake to come from wrong deduction, we shall convict mankind of being so full of fallacies as not to be a rational, but a most illogical animal. ”

“ Dallas writes, "Wit is of the known and definite; humour is of the unknown and indefinable. Wit is the unexpected exhibition of some clearly defined contrast or disproportion; humour the unexpected indication of a vague discordance, in which the sense or the perception of ignorance is prominent." "Wit is the comedy of knowledge, humour of ignorance." But we must observe in opposition to this view that humour may be too clearly defined, as in puns or caricatures, it may be broad—but who ever heard of broad wit. ”

“ If we can connect the ludicrous with certain acts of judgment, we cannot tell how far the emotion is modified by them, and even if we seem to have detected some elements in it, we were not conscious of them at the moment of our being amused. If they exist, they are then undiscernible.
As when we regard a work of art, we are [Pg 280] not sensible of pleasure until all the several elements of beauty are blended together, so if the ludicrous be a compound, there is some power within us that fuses the several emotions into one, and evolves out of them a completely new and distinct feeling. ”

“ This inch—only an inch!—would have destroyed the vanity of the very handsomest face, and so driven the thought of a man from a vulgar looking-glass, a piece of shop crystal—and more, from the fatal mirrors carried in the heads of women, to reflect heaven knows how many coxcombs who choose to stare into them—driven the man to the glass of his own mind. ”

“ Many a lady has fetched a sigh at the loss of a wig, and been ruined by the tapping of a snuff box. It is impossible to describe all the execution that was done by the shoulder knot, while that fashion prevailed, or to reckon up all the maidens that have fallen a sacrifice to a pair of fringed gloves. A sincere heart has not made half so many conquests as an open waistcoat: and I should be glad to see an able head make so good a figure in a woman's company as a pair of red heels. ”

“ It must be admitted that the minds of men have a tendency to move in the same direction, and may have struck upon the same points in ages widely separated. In reading general literature, we constantly find the same thought suggesting itself to different writers, and I have known two people, who had no acquaintance with each other, make precisely the same joke—original in both cases. On the other hand, the rarity of genuine humour has given a permanent character to many clever sayings, and there has always been a demand for them to enliven the convivial and social intercourse of mankind. ”

“ Not a smile of mirth or of joy, but a smile of affection, which most ladies have always ready at their command, and which serves them to show at once their good-humour, their pretty dimples, and their white teeth. ”

“ Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic, you cannot poison them or make them sharper than they are—but consider he is a weakling—a flower."
Lamb gives his opinion that you can no more improve sucking pig than you can refine a violet.
Thus he proceeds along his sparkling road—his humour and poetry gleaming one through the other, and often leaving us in pleasant uncertainty whether he is in jest or earnest. ”

“ Some have been so serious in mood that it has been recorded that they were never known to laugh, as it is said of Philip the Third of Spain that he only did so once—on reading Don Quixote.
How little attempt at humour is there in most of our literary works! True, humour is rather the language of conversation, and we may expect it as little in writing, as we do sentiment in society. But even in its own special province it is lacking, there is generally in our festive gatherings more of what is dull than of what is playful and pleasant. ”

“ I am very sensible how much the gentlemen of wit and pleasure are apt to murmur, and be choked at the sight of so many draggle-tailed parsons, who happen to fall in their way and offend their eyes; but at the same time, these wise reformers do not consider what an advantage and felicity it is for great wits to be always provided with objects of scorn and contempt, in order to exercise and improve their talents, and divert their spleen from falling on each other, or on themselves ”

“ The minds of some are so versatile, and so richly endowed with intellectual gifts, that their ideas sparkle and coruscate, they splinter every ray of light into a thousand colours, and produce all kinds of strange juxtapositions and combinations. (This exuberance has probably led to the seemingly contradictory saying that men of sentiment are generally men of humour.) No doubt their sallies would be poor and appreciated by themselves alone were they without a certain foundation, but a vast number of things are capable of affording amusement. ”

“ No one ever so finely commingled poetry and humour as Charles Lamb. In his transparent crystal you are always seeing one colour through another, and he was conscious of the charm of such combinations, for he commends Andrew Marvell for such refinement. ”

“ Raillery and sarcasm (from a Greek word "to tear flesh") refer especially to the expression of the feeling in language, and irony from its covert nature generally requires assistance from the voice and manner. Some words refer especially to literature, and never to any attacks made on present company. Of these, satire aims at making a man odious or ridiculous; lampoon, contemptible. Satire is the rapier; lampoon the broadsword, or even the cudgel—the former points to the heart and wounds sharply, the latter deals a dull and blundering blow, often falling wide of the mark. ”

“ Our ordinary modes of speech seem to point to some imperfection [Pg 320] or error in humour, as when we say "there is many a true word spoken in jest," or "life is a jest," signifying its unreality. Sometimes we say that an observation "must be a joke," implying that it is false. I have even heard of a man who never laughed at humour because he hated falsehood, and we sometimes say of an untrue statement that it must be taken with a "grain of salt."
It is so very common for men to flinch under ridicule, that it is said to be a good test of courage. ”

“ But although humour should not be offensive, it would be wrong to consider that its proper duty is to inculcate virtue. This is no more its office than it is that of a novel to give sage advice, or of a poem to teach science. Herein Addison's excellent feelings seem to have led him astray, for speaking of false humour he says that "it is all one to it whether it exposes vice and folly, luxury and avarice, or, on the contrary, virtue and wisdom, pain and poverty." From what he says, we might conclude that true humour was that which attacks vice, and false that which makes against virtue. ”

“ It is remarkable that people are never tired of repeating humorous sayings, though they are soon wearied of hearing a repetition of them by others. A man who cannot endure to hear a joke three times, will keep telling the same one over and over all his life, and but for this, fewer good stories would survive. The pleasure derived from humour, while it lasts, is greater than that from sentiment or wisdom ”

“ The difference between their views and that of most authorities is not so great as it at first appears; they admit a "negation" of truth and beauty, but found the ludicrous, not upon this, but upon the rebirth which follows. This step in advance, taken in accordance with their general philosophy, may be correct, but it does not seem warranted by the mere examination of the subject itself. Can we say that at the instant of laughter we regard not that something is wrong, but that the reverse of it is right? When humour is brought before us, do we feel in any way instructed? ”

“ Humour, by means of the perplexity it produces, often gains the victory over strong emotions. This fact has been practically recognised by orators, who see that when a man is struck by a humorous allusion, powerful feelings which could not otherwise be swayed give way, and even firm resolutions seem for the moment shaken and changed. We are bribed by our desire for pleasure, and a man thus often seems to sympathise with those he really opposes and can even be made to laugh at himself—strong antagonistic sensations and emotions being conquered by complexity. ”

“ There is nothing pleasant in nonsense. In both humour and the ludicrous the imperfection must refer to some kind of right or truth, and revolve, as it were, round a fixed axis. "To laugh heartily we must have reality," writes Marmontel, and it is remarkable that most good comic situations have been taken from the author's own experience. The best kind of humour is the most artistic embellishment of the ludicrous.
The fact that humour is often found in comparisons, probably led Léon Dumont to consider that it arose from the meeting of two opposite ideas in the mind. ”

“ We may say generally that any fresh acquisition of knowledge destroys one source of amusement and opens another. But if our mental powers were to become perfect, which they never will, we should cease to laugh at all. Wisdom or knowledge—the study of our own thoughts or of those of others—has a tendency to alter our general views, and affects our appreciation of humour, even where it affords no special information on the subject before us. ”

“ But those who took the former course might be charged with wandering into the province of literature; while the views of those who adopted the latter might be thought incorrect with regard to definition, or unwarranted with regard to humour. To suppose that a definition of humour would be of any great value, would be to think that it would unfold the nature of things, instead of merely giving the meaning of a term; nor is it correct to conclude that by employing a string of words we can reach the precise signification of one, any more than we can hit the mark by striking at each side of it. ”

“ The simplest mode in which we can demonstrate this character of humour is to consider some of those things which although amusing to others are not so to us, and those which amuse us, but not others; we sometimes regard as ludicrous what is intended to be humorous, sometimes on the other hand we view as humorous what is seriously meant, and sometimes we take gravely what is intended to be amusing.
A man may make what he thinks to be a jest, and be neither humorous nor ludicrous, and a man may cause others to laugh without being one or the other ”

“ As wit must be always intellectual it must be in words, and hence as well as because it must imply impromptu talent, the comic situations of a farce or pantomime are not witty. When Poole represents Paul Pry as peeping through a gimlet hole, as attacked with a red hot poker, or blown out of a closet full of fireworks, and where Douglas Jerrold on the Bridge of Ludgate makes the innkeeper tells Charles II., in his disguise, all the bad stories he has heard about his Majesty, we merely see the humour, unless we are so far abstracted as to regard the scene as ludicrous. ”

“ For my own part, I fear I should never so find the way; let me be wise and religious, but let me be man; wherever Thy Providence places me, or whatever be the road I take to get to Thee, give me some companion in my journey, be it only to remark to. 'How our shadows lengthen as the sun goes down,' to whom I may say, 'How fresh is the face of nature! ”

“ M. Taine does not seem to have exercised his usual penetration when he says that English humour "far from agreeable, and bitter in taste, like their own beverages, abounds in Dickens. French sprightliness, joy, and gaiety is a kind of good wine only grown in the lands of the sun. In its insular state it leaves an aftertaste of vinegar. The man who jests here is seldom kindly and never happy; he feels and censures the inequalities of life." ”

“ For wit and judgment ever are at strife,
Though meant, each others, and like man and wife,"
teach us that talent of this kind may be often turned into a fruitful channel. The politician can by humour influence his audience; the man of society can make himself popular, and perhaps without this recommendation would never have had an opportunity of gaining his knowledge of the world. When by some happy turn of thought we are successful in raising a laugh, we seem to receive a kind of ovation, the more valuable because sincere. ”