What a frightful thing it would be if true humour were more common or,
rather, more easy to see, for it is more common than those are who can
see it. It would block the way of everything. Perhaps this is what
people rather feel. It would be like Music in the _Ode for St. Cecilia’s
Day_, it would “untune the sky.”
I do not know quite what is meant by untuning the sky and, if I did, I
cannot think that there is anything to be particularly gained by having
the sky untuned; still, if it has got to be untuned at all, I am sure
music is the only thing that can untune it. Rapson, however, whom I used
to see in the coin room at the British Museum, told me it should be
“entune the sky” and it sounds as though he were right.
Myself and “Unconscious Humour”
The phrase “unconscious humour” is the one contribution I have made to
the current literature of the day. I am continually seeing unconscious
humour (without quotation marks) alluded to in _Times_ articles and other
like places, but I never remember to have come across it as a synonym for
dullness till I wrote _Life and Habit_.