laughed with her whole body and soul, and burst the
abscess, and was well.

Humor, if genuine (and if not, it is not humor), is the very flavor of
the spirit, its rich and fragrant _ozmazome_--having in its aroma
something of everything in the man, his expressed juice; wit is but the
laughing flower of the intellect or the turn of speech, and is often
what we call a "gum-flower," and looks well when dry. Humor is, in a
certain sense, involuntary in its origin in one man, and in its effect
upon another; it is systemic, and not local.

Sydney Smith, in his delightful and valuable _Sketches of Lectures on
Moral Philosophy_, to which I have referred, makes a touching and
impressive confession of the evil to the rest of a man's nature from the
predominant power and cultivation of the ludicrous. I believe Charles
Lamb could have told a like, and as true, but sadder story. He started
on life with all the endowments of a great, ample, and serious nature,
and he ended in being little else than the incomparable joker and
humorist, and was in the true sense, "of large discourse."[1]

[1] Many good and fine things have been said of this wonderful
and unique genius, but I know none better or finer than
these lines by my friend John Hunter of Craigcrook. They are
too little known, and no one will be anything but pleased to
read them, except their author. The third line might have
been Elia's own:--

"... Humor, wild wit,
Quips, cranks, puns, sneers,--with clear sweet thought profound;--
_And stinging jests, with honey for the wound_,"--
The subtlest lines of ALL fine powers, split
To their last films, then marvellously spun
In magic web, whose million hues are ONE!"

I knew one man who was almost altogether and absolutely
comic, and yet a man of sense, fidelity, courage, and worth,
but over his entire nature the comic ruled supreme--the late
Sir Adam Ferguson, whose very face was a breach of
solemnity; I dare say, even in sleep he looked a wag. This
was the way in which everything appeared to him first, and
often last too, with a serious enough middle saw him not
long before his death, when he was of great age and knew he
was dying; there was no levity in his manner, or
thoughtlessness about his state; he was kind, and shrewd as