_THE FALSE HUMOURIST._
"There are more faults in the humour than in the mind."--LA
ROCHEFOUCAULD.
Among the various kinds of talk there is, perhaps, none in which talkers
are more liable to fail than in humour. It is that in which most persons
like to excel, but which comparatively few attain. It is not the man
whose imagination teems with monsters, whose head is filled with
extravagant conceptions, that furnishes innocent pleasure by humour. And
yet there are those who claim to be humourists, whose humour consists
only in wild irregular fancies and distortions of thought. They speak
nonsense, and think they are speaking humour. When they have put
together a round of absurd, inconsistent ideas, and produce them, they
cannot do it without laughing. I have sometimes met with a portion of
this class that have endeavoured to gain themselves the reputation of
wits and humourists by such monstrous conceits as almost qualified them
for Bedlam, rather than refined and intelligent society. They did not
consider that humour should always lie under the check of reason; and
requires the direction of the nicest judgment, by so much the more it
indulges in unrestrained freedoms. There is a kind of nature in this
sort of conversation, as well as in other; and a certain regularity of
thought which must discover the speaker to be a man of sense, at the
same time he appears a man given up to caprice. For my part, when I hear
the delirious mirth of an unskilful talker, I cannot be so barbarous as
to divert myself with it, but am rather apt to pity the man than laugh
at anything he speaks.
"It is indeed much easier," says Addison, "to describe what is not
humour than what is; and very difficult to define it otherwise than as
Cowley has done wit, by negatives. Were I to give my own notions of it,
I would deliver them after Plato's manner, in a kind of allegory--and by
supposing humour to be a person, deduce to him all his qualifications,
according to the following genealogy. Truth was the founder of the
family, and the father of Good Sense. Good Sense was the father of Wit,
who married a lady of collateral line called Mirth, by whom he had
issue, Humour. Humour, therefore, being the youngest of this illustrious
family, and descendant from parents of such different dispositions, is
very various and unequal in his temper: sometimes you see him putting on
grave looks and a solemn habit, sometimes airy in his behaviour, and
fantastic in his dress; inasmuch that at different times he appears as
serious as a judge, and as jocular as a merry-andrew. But as he has a
great deal of the mother in his constitution, whatever mood he is in, he
never fails to make his company laugh."
In carrying on the allegory farther, he says of the false humourists,
"But since there is an impostor abroad, who takes upon him the name of
this young gentleman, and would willingly pass for him in the world: to
the end that well-meaning persons may not be imposed upon by cheats, I
would desire my readers, when they meet with this pretender, to look
into his parentage and examine him strictly, whether or no he be
remotely allied to truth, and lineally descended from good sense; if
not, they may conclude him a counterfeit. They may likewise distinguish
him by a loud and excessive laughter, in which he seldom gets his
company to join with him. For as true Humour generally looks serious,
while everybody laughs about him; false Humour is always laughing, while
everybody about him looks serious. I shall only add, if he has not in
him a mixture of both parents, that is, if he would pass for the
offspring of Wit without Mirth, or Mirth without Wit, you may conclude
him to be altogether spurious and a cheat.
The impostor of whom I am speaking descends originally from Falsehood,
who was the mother of Nonsense, who gave birth to a son called Frenzy,
who married one of the daughters of Folly, commonly known by the name of
Laughter, from whom came that monstrous infant of which I have been
speaking. I shall set down at length the genealogical table of False
Humour, and, at the same time, place by its side the genealogy of True
Humour, that the reader may at one view behold their different pedigree
and relations:--
Falsehood. Truth.
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Nonsense. Good Sense.
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Frenzy--Laughter. Wit--Mirth.
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False Humour. Humour.
I might extend the allegory, by mentioning several of the children of
False Humour, who are more in number than the sands of the sea, and
might in particular enumerate the many sons and daughters of which he is
the actual parent. But as this would be a very invidious task, I shall
only observe in general that False Humour differs from the True, as a
monkey does from a man.
First of all, he is exceedingly given to little apish tricks and
buffooneries.
Secondly, he so much delights in mimicry, that it is all one to him
whether he exposes by it vice and folly, luxury and avarice; or, on the
contrary, virtue and wisdom, pain and poverty.
Thirdly, he is wonderfully unlucky, inasmuch that he will bite the hand
that feeds him, and endeavour to ridicule both friends and foes
indifferently. For, having but small talents, he must be merry where he
can, not where he should.
Fourthly, being entirely devoid of reason, he pursues no point either of
morality or instruction, but is ludicrous only for the sake of being
so."