contemplate. This is
especially the case in the present instance. The ludicrous, when we
attempt to grasp it, shows off its gay and motley garb, and appears in
grave attire. It is only by abstracting our mind from the inquiry, and
throwing it into lighter considerations, that we can at all retain the
illusion. A clever sally appears brilliant when it breaks suddenly upon
the mental vision, but when it is brought forward for close examination
it loses half its lustre, and seems to melt into unsubstantial air.
Humour may be compared to a delicate scent, which we only perceive at
the first moment, or to evanescent beauty--

"For every touch that wooed its stay
Has brushed its brightest hues away."

This last simile is especially in point here, and the quotations in this
book will scarcely be found humorous, so long as they are regarded as
mere illustrations of the nature of humour.

We need not--taking these matters into consideration--feel much
surprised that some people say the ludicrous cannot be defined; as for
instance, Buckingham,

"True wit is everlasting like the sun,
Describing all men, but described by none;"

and Addison:--"It is much easier to decide what is not humorous than
what is, and very difficult to define it otherwise than Cowley has done,
by negatives"--the only meaning of which is that the subject is
surrounded with rather more than the usual difficulties attending moral
and psychological researches. Similar obstacles would be encountered in
answering the question, "What is poetry?" or "What is love?" We can only
say that even here there must be some surroundings by which we can
increase our knowledge.

Humour is the offspring of man--it comes forth like Minerva fully armed
from the brain. Our sense of the ludicrous is produced by our peculiar
mental constitution, and not by external objects, in which there is
nothing either absurd or serious. As when the action of our mind is
imperceptible--for instance, in hearing and seeing with our "bodily"
senses--we think what we notice is something in the external world,
although it is only so far dependent upon it that it could not exist
without some kind of outer influence, so the result of our not
recognising the amusing action of the mind in the ludicrous is that we
regard it as a quality resident in the persons and things we
contemplate.[1] But it does not belong to these things, and is totally
different from them in kind. Thus, the rose