Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

RHYME. 173
it presents, is greatly heightened and enlivened by our surprise
at the command displayed over a part of the constitution, which,
in our own case, we find to be so little subject to the will. We
consider wit as a sort of feat or trick of intellectual dexterity,
analogous, in some respects, to the extraordinary performances
of jugglers and rope-dancers; and, in both cases, the pleasure
we receive from the exhibition, is explicable in part, (I, by no
means, say entirely,) on the same principles.
If these remarks be just, it seems to follow as a consequence,
that those men who are most deficient in the power of prompt
combination, will be most poignantly affected by it, when exerted
at the will of another: and therefore, the charge of jealousy
and envy brought against rival wits, when disposed to look grave
at each other's jests, may perhaps be obviated in a way less
injurious to their character.
The same remarks suggest a limitation, or rather an explanation, of an assertion of Lord Chesterfield's, that " genuine wit
never made any man laugh since the creation of the world."
The observation, I believe to be just, if by genuine wit, we
mean wit wholly divested of every mixture of humor: and if
by laughter, we mean that convulsive and noisy agitation which
is excited by the ludicrous. But there is unquestionably a smile
appropriated to the flashes of wit; a smile of surprise and
wonder; — not altogether unlike the effect produced on the mind
and the countenance by a feat of legerdemain, when executed
with uncommon success.
2. Of rhyme. — The pleasure we receive from rhyme, seems
also to arise, partly, from our surprise at the command which
nowned" for his long wars against Louis XIV; while his consort and
the sharer of his throne, the childless Mary, stands for Minerva. Thetis
stands for Queen Anne, who was "matched with a Inortal"- one wh
was not a king, though married to a queen - Prince George of Denmark;
her "short-lived darling son " was the Duke of Gloucester, who died at
the age of twelve years. " The last" was George I., about as poor a
representative of "Jove" as could be imagined; the Highlanders - i. e.
the rebel "Titans," from "a hundred hills " —attempted in vain to
dethrone him in 1715.1