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Igno. Meltor, Dulman, meltor. Rubba me cum towallio, rubba. Ubi est Pecus?

Pec. Hic, sir.

Igno. Fac ventum, Pecus. Ita, sic, sic. Ubi est Fledwit?

Dul. Non est inventus.

Igno. Ponite nunc chlamydes vestras super me, ne capiam frigus. Sic, sic. Ainsi bien faict.

Dul. Juro, magister, titillasti punctum legis hodie.

Igno. Ha, ha, he! Puto titillabam. Si le nom del granteur ou granté soit rased ou interlined en faict pol, le faict est grandement suspicious. Dul. Et nient obstant, si faict pol, &c., &c. Oh illud etiam in Covin.

Igno. Ha, ha, he!

Pec. At id, de au faict pendu en le smoak, nunquam audivi titillatum. melius.

Igno. Ah, ha, he! Quid tu dicis, Musæe?

Mus. Equidem ego parum intellexi.

Igno. Tu es gallicrista, vocatus a coxcomb:-nunquam faciam te Legistam.

Dul. Nunquam, nunquam; nam ille fuit universitans.

Igno. Sunt magni idiotæ, et clerici nihilorum, isti universitantes. Miror quomodo spendisti tuum tempus inter eos.

Igno. I melt, Dulman, I melt. Rub me with the towel. Where's Pecus ?

Pecus. (entering) Here, sir.

Igno. Air, Pecus, air. So, so. Where's Fledwit?

Dul. Non est inventus.

Igno. Now put your cloaks over me, that I mayn't catch cold. So, so. Ainsi bien faict.

Dul. Faith, sir, you tickled 'em prettily to-day with that point of law. Igno. Ha, ha, he! I think I did. Si le nom del granteur ou granté soit rased ou interlined en faict pol, le faict est grandement suspicious. Dul. Et nient obstant, si faict pol, &c., &c. Oh, and that also in Co

vin.

Igno. Ah, ha, he!

Pec. And that about the faict pendu en le smoak! I never heard anything tickled better.

Igno. Ah, ha, he? What's your opinion, Musæus ?

Mus. I can't say I quite understood it.

Igno. You're a gallicrista, as we say; to-wit, a coxcomb. I shall never make a lawyer of you.

Dul. Never, never. He was at college.

Igno. They're devilish ignorant, all those college people. I wonder how you spent your time among 'em.

Mus. Ut plurimum versatus sum in Logicâ.

Igno. Logica? qua villa, quod burgum est Logica?

Mus. Est una artium liberalium.

Igno. Liberalium? Sic putabam. In nomine Dei, stude artes parcas et lucrosas non est mundus pro artibus liberalibus jam.

Mus. Deditus etiam fui amori Philosophiæ.

Igno. Amori? Quid! Es pro

malam regulam, non es pro me. iterum.

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Mus. Dii faxint.

bagaschiis et strumpetis? Si custodis

Sursum reddam te in manus parentum

Mus. In making myself a master in Logic.

Igno. In Logic? Where's that? I never heard of the place.

Mus. 'Tis one of the liberal arts.

Igno. Oh, the liberal arts, is it? I thought so. In the name of God, study some art that will get you a livelihood. This is no world nowadays for liberal arts.

Mus. I was also given to the love of Philosophy.

Igno. The devil you were! In love, too! Oh, you'll never do for me. A pretty fellow, to talk to me of his jades and baggages! If those are the sort of terms you keep, I must send you back to your parents.

Mus. (aside) God grant it!

Macaronic poetry (Maccaronea) originated, like most literary novelties, in Italy; and is understood to have derived its name from the compound called Maccaroni. It is surprising, considering the multitude of scholarly wits, that more of it has not been written, and better. Drummond of Hawthornden appears to have introduced it into this island. He is the author of a Macaronic poem on a rustic fight, called Polemo-Middinia, singularly coarse for a poet so elegant, but showing a considerable feeling for humor. 66 Grinning like the devil" is "girnans more divelli ;" and of a man whose name he cannot recollect, he says, "Deil stick it, ignoro nomen." The names have a ludicrous

effect.

Hic aderant Geordy Akinhedius, et little Johnus,

Et Jamy Richæus, et stout Michel Hendersonus,

Qui jolly trippas ante alios dansare solebat,

Et bobbare bene, et lassas kissare bonæas;

Duncan Olyphantus, valde stalvartus, et ejus

Filius eldestus jolyboyus, atque oldmoudus (old mouthed ?)

Qui pleugham longo gaddo drivare solebat,

Et Rob Gib wantonus homo, atque Oliver Hutchin.

Among other combatants is "Jamy Tomsonus," perhaps an ancestor of the poet, and a certain "Norland-born" man, whose opinions in church and state were the same as the author's ;—

Et unus

Norland-bornus homo, valde valde anti-covenanter.

Drummond's is the best Macaronic we possess. The next in celebrity is one by Dr. Geddes on a political meeting at the London Tavern. It seems impossible to help being ludicrous now and then in compositions of this nature but the Doctor is not without genuine drollery.

Thick-shortus sed homo, cui nomen credo Bevellus,
Upstartans medio, &c.

Iratus Adairus

Surgit; et, aptato periwig, grandi ore profatur,
Quis furor, O cives?

Subsequitur plausus magnus, sed non generalis :
Nam quidem expressly venere, ut speechificarent.
Hos inter juvenis fervens Mancastrius unus,
Nomine Cooperus, tales dedit ore loquelas.

Shall homines, Chairman, hiberno tempore longum
Carpere iter, longam atque insomnes ducere noctem,
Et nil say, nil do? Proh Juppiter! haud ita; no, no.
Ergo egomet, mecum et plus centum millia more, sir,
Dicimus omnimodo passandas esse Resolvas.
Non adeo multum, Chairman, potavimus usque
Ut non possimus de magnis thinkere rebus.
Ergo iterum dico, passandas esse Resolvas!

Dico passandas, passandas esse Resolvas !

Geddes, who was a very irritable good Christian, must have written this passage con amore. But I must hasten out of his

company.

Of Nonsense Verses I am acquainted with no good specimens, or indeed with any beyond a line or two, though wits disburse them occasionally. I am surprised that many have not been written, considering the opportunities they afford, not only for "acute nonsense, ," but the safest yet most galling satire. In proportion, however, to the safety, would be the meanness; so

that the best wits are not likely to use them for that purpose. Still they might produce amusement of other kinds, and display combinations of fancy the most opposite and unlooked for.

As to Acrostics, Anagrams, Altars, and other mechanical shapes of wit, and to false wit in general, nothing need be said on the former subjects, and I have room but for a word on the last. You may know false wit as you may know any other kind of falsehood. It pretends to be natural, and is affected; to be at its ease, and is laborious; to be uttering a series of truths, and is only hampering itself with contradictions. Or if it runs chattering on, and does not mean to be false, the effect is not true to the intention. It has all the mirth to itself, hard as you may try

to laugh with it. There is just the same sort of difference between a flow of false wit and of true, as between buffo music like that of Mozart or Rossini and the melancholy merriments of a fiddle-scraper in the streets. In the former the most capricious notes have their reason and their relations, and you feel the harmonious result. In the latter, every hit is a miss, and discord the consequence, and you only wonder how the poor man can 'go on."

66

8th. CROSS-PURPOSES; or Contradictory Intentions mistaken by their Entertainers for Identical Ones. We have hitherto been considering Wit by itself, or as paramount in its connexion with Humor. I now come to Humor paramount over Wit; for persons are invariably concerned, as well as ideas; and where this is the case, and the humor is of the best kind, the wit as naturally becomes subordinate to it as words are to things.

Cross-purposes, however, may with impunity develope the smallest amount of humor, compared with any other of its forms, because the amusement produced by their mere action is irresistible. The reason is, that while the parties are conscious of nothing but their respective intentions, or mystified by the doubts arising with regard to those of one another, the spectator is in the secrets of both. He is triumphing over their ignorance, and anticipating their discoveries. Admirable scenes of this kind are to be found in the little comedy from the Spanish, entitled Three and the Deuce; in the farce of Blue Devils; the comedy of the Beaux' Stratagem; and in the Mock-Doctor, or Medicin Malgré

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Lui of Molière. In this farce a wood-cutter has had a dispute with his wife, which she is resolved to make him pay for. Two footmen happen to ask her the way to the residence of a famous physician, whose attendance is required by their master. She tells them that the physician, though a great man, has some remarkable eccentricities, among which is a fancy for cutting his own wood, and for persisting, if surprised during the employment, in the pretence of being a very wood-cutter and peasant; a folly, she adds, from which nothing can rouse him but a drubbing. The footmen, grasping their sticks at this news, out of zeal for their master's service, courteously thank the good woman, and proceed in search of the involuntary physician. They find him singing and drinking during his work; and after vainly endeavoring, in the most respectful manner, to recall him to a proper sense of his profession, proceed, with many apologies, to cudgel him into the acknowledgment.

Sganarelle (writhing, and rubbing his shoulders). And so I'm a physician, am I?

Valers. The greatest in the world.

Lucas. There's nobody like you.

Sga. Well; devil take me if I was aware of it.

Val. You're to have whatever you ask.

Sga. You don't say so? Oh, I am a physician, there can be no doubt of it. I had forgotten; but now I recollect.

But it is an injustice to this laughable scene to quote only a fragment of it; nor is the one here given by any means the cream of the jest. The whole is a masterpiece of art and drollery. I had translated the greater part of it for these pages; but found that I was extending them beyond all feasible bounds.

9th. Unconscious Absurdity in a man's character, apart from mere circumstances.-Half the humor in the world may be said to be owing to this fertile source of the ridiculous; perhaps, in a high and pathetic sense, all of it, saving one exquisite class, in which by most people it is most thought to abound.. "Nay, if you mean me by that," said Sir Godfrey Kneller to a man at whose imitations of his friends he had been laughing, "there you are out." He saw the likeness, yet saw it not.

But I am here speaking of it in its form the least mixed, as in

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