WIT.

The similes of poetry which select natural objects and fit human

thoughts and emotions to them have the movement which belongs to wit.

They suddenly take things which we have been in the habit of seeing all

our lives without after-thought, just as we see a brick or a house;

but, when thus taken, they become involved in sentiments which are also

customary, and indulged by us without after-thought. We are surprised

and charmed to notice what an apt comradeship springs up between the

object and the sentiment.

"Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That, if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy."

Constantinople may be seen any day from the Bosphorus, stretching

its length of domes and minarets across the sunset; but when Mr.

Browning observes it he says it runs black and crooked athwart the

splendor, "like a Turk verse along a scimitar." There occurs a moment

of surprise; a lively shock is given to the mind, which would liberate

itself into the smile of wit if we were not instantly conscious that

the sudden aptness is also beautiful. All pure wit is born in the

imagination, but only in that capability of it to see one point where

two incongruous things may meet. But the poetic simile involves more

than that: it is born of the inmost vitality which must overflow,

spill itself upon Nature, appropriate her, senseless as she may

seem and incapable of reflecting our subtilties of mind and heart.

Often there is something very noble and tender in this process of

imagination, which converts surprise into emotion: as when Coleridge

says,--

"Methinks it should have been impossible

Not to love all things in a world so filled;

Where the breeze warbles, and the mute, still air

Is music slumbering in her instrument."

This innate nobleness of the simile checks our smile, and if we feel

any hilarity it belongs to that delighted health which mantles all

through us when we recognize beauty. Perhaps the mind soared,

"By means of that mere snatch, to many a hoard

Of fancies: as some falling cone bears soft

The eye, along the fir-tree spire, aloft

To a dove's nest."

The simile gives us such a new perception of the mysterious relations

of mind and Nature that we should not be surprised if the object

designated had really, in the great involvement of all things, some

secret affinity with the thought; perhaps the thought has recognized

the family mark and claimed kinship. This is an exalted claim because

it sets free our personality. We become superior to Nature, and are

made aware that we can vivify her as the Creator can; but, as we also

are creatures, we admit her to a tender and refining confidence.

"Daffodils, that come before the swallow dares," "take the winds of

March with beauty."

"The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth,

And the earth changes like a human face."

"Earth is a wintry clod,

But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes

Over its breast to waken it."

"The winds

Are henceforth voices, in a wail or shout,

A querulous mutter, or a quick, gay laugh,--

Never a senseless gust now man is born."

The imagination thus proclaiming the banns between spirit and matter

reminds us of Wordsworth's dear maiden, of whom he says,--

"She was known to every star in heaven,

And every wind that blew."

The impression of surprise which a perfect simile produces is

transferred from the understanding back to the imagination before the

former can venture to be amused. But sometimes the surprise lingers

there long enough to have a narrow escape from smiling; as when Sir

Thomas Brown, finding that midnight has overtaken him at his desk,

says, "To keep our eyes open longer, were to _act_ the antipodes." His

wakefulness is not only like the antipodal day, but dramatizes it; and

this is a simile that imparts the shock of wit.

Here is one from Shakspeare that approaches it, but is intercepted by a

sense of beauty:--

"These violent delights have violent ends,

And in their triumph die; like fire and powder,

Which, as they kiss, consume."

And he says that, when the people saw Anne Boleyn at her coronation,

such a noise arose "as the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest."

Mr. Browning makes us smile when he paints the "poppy's red

effrontery--till autumn spoils their fleering quite with rain,"

"And, turbanless, a coarse, brown, rattling crane

Protrudes."

This reminds me that in the West a bald man's head is spoken of as

rising above the timber-line; which is quite in the style of American

similes, as when Rufus Choate, who so frequently appeared to be saying

to his jury, "If you have tears, prepare to shed them now," was

described to be a man who always bored for water.

Charles Lamb commenting upon the following line from Davenport's King

John and Matilda,--

"And thou, Fitzwater, reflect upon thy _name_,

And turn the _Son of Tears_,"--

says, "Fitzwater: son of water." A striking instance of the

compatibility of the _serious pun_ with the expression of the

profoundest sorrows. Grief as well as joy finds ease in thus playing

with a word. Old John of Gaunt in Shakspeare thus descants on his

name: "Gaunt, and gaunt, indeed;" to a long string of conceits which

no one has ever yet felt to be ridiculous. The poet Wither, thus, in

a mournful review of the declining estate of his family, says with

deepest nature,--

"'The very name of Wither shows decay.'"

But, in the following passage from John Fletcher's "Bonduca," pure

poetry checks the laugh,--

"I have seen these Britons that you magnify

Run as they would have outrun time, and roaring,

Basely for mercy, roaring; the light shadows,

That in a thought scur o'er the fields of corn,

Halted on crutches to them."

That is in the finest style of an exaggeration which has been inherited

by Americans and is the source of much of their wit and humor. Here

is a coarser specimen, but perfectly witty. A person, remarking to a

famous criminal lawyer that his client would certainly go to hell, had

for a reply, "Go to hell! he ought to be thankful that there is a hell

he _can_ go to."

This characteristic will recur under the head of Falstaff.

Some of the similes which Americans derive from their professions, and

apply to persons, have all the character of wit. A farmer says of a

meagre and unequal speech that it was "pretty scattering," alluding to

ground crops that grow unevenly. An iron-founder will say of a speech

that was all fusion and passion that, notwithstanding, it "didn't make

a weld." Miners in the West use the word "color" for the finest gold in

the ground. One of them remarked of a man who had been tried and found

worthless, "I have panned him out clear down to the bed rock, but I

can't even raise the color." Frequenters of the race-course mention a

beaten politician as "the longest-eared horse they ever saw," as the

ears hang to a jaded horse. And a Nantucket captain, when asked his

opinion of a very rhetorical preacher, said, "He's a good sailor, but a

bad carrier."

The poetry of Donne, Cowley, Suckling, and others of that epoch, easily

furnish examples of similes which stop so far short of beauty that

their aptness only serves to raise a smile. Suckling says,--

"Her feet beneath her petticoat

Like little mice stole in and out."