te a pun; if no great identity is
assumed between the two words, and they are not introduced in a somewhat
strained manner, we do not consider the term applicable. If the use of
merely similar words in sentences were to be so viewed, we should be
constantly guilty of punning. Wordsworth was not guilty of a pun on that
hot day in Germany when, his friends having given him some hock, a wine
he detested, he exclaimed:

"In Spain, that land of priests and apes
The thing called wine doth come from grapes,
But where flows down the lordly Rhine
The thing called _gripes_ doth come from wine."

No doubt he intended to show a coincidence in coupling together two
words of nearly the same sound, but he represented the two things
signified as cause and effect, not as identical, so as to form a pun.

The difference between poetical and humorous comparisons may be
generally stated to be that the former are upward towards something
superior, the latter downwards towards something inferior. Tennyson
calls Maud a "queen rose," and when we sing--

"Happy fair,
Thine eyes are load stars, and thy tongue sweet air,"

the comparison is inspiring, but, when Washington Irving speaks of a
"vinegar-faced woman," we feel inclined to laugh. There are, however,
exceptions to this rule. Socrates says that to compare a man to
everything excellent is to insult him. Sometimes also a dwarf is
compared to a giant for the purpose of calling attention to his
insignificance. This is often seen in irony. So also, we at times laugh
at the sagacity shown by the lower animals, which seems not so much to
raise them in our estimation as to lower them by occasioning a
comparison with the superior powers of man.

Sometimes in comparisons between things very different, we cannot say
one thing is not as good as another, but, with regard to a certain use,
purpose, or design, there may be an evident inferiority. Thus
comparisons are so often odious, that Wordsworth speaks of the blessing
of being able to look at the world without making them. We may observe
generally that when an idea is brought before us, which, instead of
elevating and enlarging our previous conception, clashes and jangles
with it, there is an approach towards the laughable.

We cannot say that enthusiasm in Art or Science should not exist, and
yet a manifestation of it seems absurd when we do not sympathise in it.
The most amiable and beneficent of men, it has