he morning, thinking himself
someone else. "One man is as good as another," said Thackeray to the
Irishman. "No, but much better," was the sharp reply. A somewhat similar
breach takes place when something is spoken of under a metaphor, and
then expressions applicable to that thing are transferred to that to
which it is compared. Passages in literature and oratory thus become
unintentionally ludicrous. A dignitary, well known for his
conversational and anecdotal powers, told me that he once heard a very
flowery preacher exclaim, when alluding to the destruction of the
Assyrian host. "Death, that mighty archer, mowed them all down with the
besom of destruction." Another clergyman, equally fond of metaphor,
enforced the consideration of the shortness of life in the words,
"Remember, my brethren, we are fast sailing down the stream of life, and
shall speedily be landed in the ocean of eternity."

Johnson says that wit is "a _discordia concors_, a combination of
dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things
apparently unlike." Many have considered that humour consists of
contrast or comparison, and it is true that a large portion of it owes
much to attributes of relation. This kind of humorous complication is
generally under the form of saying that a thing is _like_
something--from which it is essentially different--merely because of the
existence of some accidental similitude. There are many kinds and
degrees of this, and some points of resemblance may be found in all
things. We say "one man is like another," "a man may make himself like a
brute," &c. Similitudes in minute detail may be pointed out in things
widely different; and from this range of significations the word _like_
has been most prolific of humour. It properly means, a real and
essential likeness, and to use it in any other sense, is to employ it
falsely. But our amusement is greatly increased when associations are
violated, and much amusement may by made by showing there is some
considerable likeness between two objects we have been accustomed to
regard as very far apart. The smaller the similarity pointed out the
slighter is the chain which connects the distant objects, and the less
we are inclined to laugh. But the more we draw the objects together, the
greater is the complication and the humour. We are then inclined to
associate the qualities of the one with the other, and a succession of
grotesque images is suggested backwards and forwa