PLAY UPON WORDS. 269 the Figures of Innuendo and Irony; which work by affording two (or more) different openings to the thoughts; the one apparent but not intended, the other intended but not apparent. One of Jerrold's well-known witticisms was directed against an objectionable person, who said of a certain musical air, that he was quite carried away by it'. 'Is there any one here that can whistle it?' was the remark. The play upon carried away' was the instrument of a subtle and telling innuendo. Voltaire said of Dante's reputation-that, if people read him, the admiration would cease. Without word-play, there is here a cutting insinuation, aimed at Dante and his admirers alike. The point and compression of the balanced sentence may be treated as nearly allied to effects of wit proper, although wanting in verbal equivocations:-'My poverty, but not my will, consents'. 'Not that I loved Cæsar less, but that I loved Rome more.' Many of Fuller's witticisms are of this kind: 'I shall not wonder that good men die so soon, but that they live so long; seeing wicked men desire their room here on earth and God their company in heaven'. When we pass from the meanings now stated, we lose the distinctive and well-marked character of word-play, and enter on a wider range of literary ingenuity, approaching more closely to Pope's definition. For example, the use of balance and antithesis, when very effective, may receive the compliment of wit. In this application, something is due to the idea of compact brevity and terseness, which entered into the original notion of the Epigram, and adheres still to the character of Wit. As this effect demands an ingenious manipulation of words, and imparts an agreeable surprise when well executed, it easily chimes in with the more strict employment of the term. Still further from the primitive and standard meaning is the application of the word to a brilliant simile or metaphor. Ingenuity, originality, and the putting of much meaning into few words, together operate to awaken surprise and admiration and, as language is the vehicle of the effect, we regard it as nearly allied to the characteristic effects of wit. Thus Bright like the sun her eyes the gazers strike, When metaphors or similes are exaggerated and disparaging, they are ministerial to vituperation, ridicule, or humour. They are called wit, when they are distinguished for brevity or verbal point. Jerrold, after a bad illness, described himself as having made a runaway knock at Death's door'. Sydney Smith's definition of marriage is called witty, from his ingenuity in framing a simile with a plurality of applications It resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them'. 2. Seeing that Wit, in its purest form, aims chiefly at a pleasing surprise, the originality and ingenuity must be of a distinguished sort it must sparkle. It may fail from one or other of three vices: (1) Coarseness, (2) Remoteness or Obscurity, (3) Excess. (1) Wit, in itself, besides possessing the essential circumstance of ingenuity, must avoid Coarseness. The search for witticisms has to be controlled by refinement or delicacy. Some of the greatest wits have overstepped this boundary: as Aristophanes, among the ancients; Rabelais, Swift and Pope, among moderns. (See HUMOUR, p. 244.) (2) Like every other effect of style, Wit must be intelligible to those addressed. Far-fetched allusions are condemned, whatever be their purpose. (3) The greatest risk, in constantly aiming at wit, is overdoing it. Like all pungent effects, it palls by repetition; although, by originality, the limits of surfeit can be so far extended. The torturing of language may be carried to a point where meaning is entirely sacrificed to effect. This point is reached by conundrums, riddles and acrostics. 3. In the great majority of instances, Wit lends itself to other effects. It may be used in furtherance of any of the great emotional qualities, although most frequently employed in connexion with Vituperation, Ridicule and Humour. In all such cases, its propriety must be ruled by aptness for the end in view. As employed in Vituperation, Ridicule, and the Ludi AS THE MEDIUM OF OTHER EFFECTS. 271 We have already crous, wit has to be judged by the results. recognized, among the palliatives of the ludicrous that convert it into Humour, the agency of Wit. It is easy to quote witticisms that draw the sting of vituperation, by the delicacy and ingenuity of the wording. A Puritan is said to have been the author of the pun Great praise to God, and little Laud to the Devil. Sir Francis Burdett, when he became a Tory, had the want of tact to declaim against the prevailing cant of patriotism. Lord John Russell retorted that there was one thing even worse-the re-cant of patriotism. This will be celebrated among the arrows of invective feathered by wit. Although somewhat less frequent, Wit may be employed to convey and enhance a compliment, and also to fence it, by abating the jealousy of being praised. Jerrold's Wit was for the most part depreciatory, but there were exceptions. His epitaph on Charles Knight, the publisher, a man greatly esteemed, was both happy and complimentary: Good Knight'. Chaucer could mingle touches of depreciation with his characters in a way to heighten the force of his eulogy. The Clerk is a good example. Goldsmith's fine compliment on Garrick— An abridgment of all that is pleasant in man— is not marred, but the contrary, by the enumeration of his foibles that follows. It is characteristic of Congreve to work from exactly the opposite view. He concedes a compliment to point an invective:- His want of learning gives him more opportunities to show his natural parts'. Wycherley has the same turn, though mostly less polished in the wording :— ‘I can allege nothing against your practice-but your ill success'. Fielding even insinuates a satire on mankind in general by means of a compliment paid to an individual : 'Poverty and distress seemed to him to give none a right of aggravating those misfortunes. The meanness of her condition did not represent her misery as of little consequence in his eyes, nor did it appear to justify, or even to palliate, his guilt, in bringing that misery upon her." By making one the exception, the author makes the rest the rule. The excessive displays of the Love emotion are tempered by Wit, as well as by Humour, and so kept at a greater distance from mawkish sentimentality. No one excels Shakespeare in this device for the dilution and redemption of erotic extravagance. His Benedick and Beatrice play at love-making, and disguise the reality of their mutual passion by banter, quips and cutting repartees. Among effects allied to the nature of Wit, and illustrative of it, although more suitably discussed in a different connexion (see MELODY), are Alliteration, Rhyme and Metre. EXEMPLIFICATION. Under Figures of Speech, a large amount of attention. was bestowed on Epigram, as well as on Irony and Innuendo. In all species of Wit, these are recurring effects. Hyperbole or Exaggeration is also one of the principal forms of the ludicrous. It has been already apparent that the chief, though not the only, use of Wit is to bring forth the Ludicrous, whether as Ridicule or as Humour: so that the further exemplification of the quality will implicate these other effects. Almost all the eminent wits are humourists; in a few the humour depends less upon word-play than upon other devices. In classing witticisms, with a view to expounding Wit, we should have to treat as one species those arising from the play of language alone. Between these and such as reside entirely in the thought, there is a class dependent partly on the one circumstance and partly on the other. In all the kinds, there may be a subdivision into Pure Wit, where the effect is simple surprise, and Applied Wit, where a further end is sought, whether vituperation, compliment, humour or illustration of a truth. Of our great humourists, some depend very little upon word-play; others a great deal. The finest passages in Don Quixote are not remarkable for what is strictly called wit. The same may be said of Rabelais. Even Molière's humour and sarcasm do not often exhibit the play of epigrams or puns; although irony and innuendo are sufficiently worked. The Elizabethans are our earliest English source of purely witty combinations. They often sacrifice more important qualities to word-play. Thus, of Lyly the Euphuist,' THE ELIZABETHANS. SHAKESPEARE. 273 Professor Minto remarks: There is hardly a sentence in his comedies that does not contain some pun, or clever antithesis, or far-fetched image. He is so uninterruptedly witty that he destroys his own wit; the play on words and images ceases to be unexpected, and so falls out of the definition.' Shakespeare's word-play is notorious, and shows alike the good and the bad side of the exercise. Occasionally, it yields humour; at other times, it is nothing but witty surprise, of all degrees of originality and brilliancy; while, again, it is characterized as a tissue of conceits. As displayed in 'Romeo and Juliet,' it is designated by Mr. Dowden as 'the sought-out phrases, the curious antitheses of the amorous dialect of the period'. Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O anything, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness! Serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! Beatrice affords two characteristic specimens of Shakespeare's wit, both on the good side. Flouting matrimony she says:—' Adam's sons are my brethren, and, truly, I hold it sin to match in my kindred'; where the effect lies mainly in the dexterous word-play. At another time she turns the point of her uncle's compliment on her perspicacity :I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight'; where the effect lies wholly in the conflict of ideas. In Butler's Hudibras, the most remarkable quality is vituperation, with more or less of the Ridiculous conjoined. The severity is too great for Humour; while the arts employed are not sufficiently expressed by Wit. Of pure play upon words there is not much, except in the forcing of double and triple rhymes. It is the originality of the situations and the illustrative similitudes that produce the impression, which, however, is weakened by the exaggeration and the intense partisanship of the whole. It is not so much wit as a severe reflection on mankind to say— What makes all doctrines plain and clear? And that which was proved true before Butler's fertility of crushing similitudes is unsurpassed. Thus |