Vice and Folly, Luxury and Avarice; or, on the contrary, Virtue and Wisdom, Pain and Poverty'; he ridicules both friends and foes alike; he 'pursues no point either of morality or instruction, but is ludicrous only for the sake of being so'; and lastly, 'being incapable of anything but mock-representations, his ridicule is always personal, and aimed at the Vicious Man, or the Writer; not at the Vice, or the writing.' As Humour is mirthful Wit, Addison's account of Wit is naturally more complete.' He gives us a long list of the various forms of false wit, classical, mediæval, and contemporary, with appropriate examples of 'scholar's eggs,' anagrams, rebuses, boutsrimez, and other absurd conceits down to the ordinary pun. With respect to this latter, he decides that the test by which a 'piece of wit' may be distinguished from a mere pun is the test of translation into another language. As an example he takes Aristinetus' description of a fine woman— 'When she is dressed she is beautiful, when she is undressed she is beautiful'; which bears the translation, Induitur, formosa est: exuitur, ipsa forma est. In his positive account of Wit he first distinguishes between 'wit' and 'judgment.' Following Locke, whom he quotes, he decides that wit is characterized by the perception of affinities, 'the assemblage of Ideas'; whereas judgment depends upon analysis, the separation of ideas which have an apparent likeness. And he points out the obvious deficiency 1 Ib. Papers 58-63. 2 Ib. 62. of Dryden's definition; 'a propriety of words and thoughts adapted to the subject.' He has already discovered, in commenting1 upon Hobbes' account of laughter, that the basis of our perception of the ludicrous is a sense of our own superiority suddenly awakened by our being confronted with inferiority in others. This, together with Locke's analysis, enables him to recognize in comparison' and 'sur prise' the two primary elements of Wit. Every Resemblance of Ideas is not that which we call Wit, unless it be such an one that gives Delight and Surprise to the Reader: These two properties seem essential to Wit more particularly the last of them. In order, therefore, that the Resemblance in the Ideas be Wit, it is necessary that the Ideas should not lie too near to one another in the Nature of things; for where the Likeness is obvious it gives no Surprise. . . . Thus when the Poet tells us that the Bosom of his Mistress is as white as Snow, there is no Wit in the Comparison; but when he adds, with a Sigh, that it is as cold too, it then grows into Wit.' 2 To this he adds two remarks which are both pregnant. True wit consists in the resemblance of ideas, false wit in the resemblance of the mere symbols of ideas, words, syllables, and even letters. And, on the other hand, an opposition of ideas may have the same effect as a resemblance of ideas, for in such cases the opposition implies or suggests the unexpressed resemblance. As it is not intended to return to the theory of 1 Ib. 47. 2 Ib. 62. humour in any subsequent chapter, I may be allowed to add here a passage from Emerson which seems to me to carry the discussion a step further. Aristotle, it will be remembered, tells us in the Poetics1 that 'the sense of the ridiculous arises from our perception of a defect, a painless and harmless depravity, moral or physical.' His meaning is made plainer by the example which is given. It is the comic mask, which is a deformed and perverted object which can be looked upon without pain." idea of a departure from a standard of physical or moral rightness too insignificant to involve an appeal to our conscience or our humanity is embodied and expanded in Emerson's essay on 'The Comic.' 'The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, is the non-performance of what is pretended to be performed.' He then proceeds: This 'The presence of the ideal of right and of truth in all action makes the yawning delinquencies of practice remorseful to the conscience, tragic to the interest, but droll to the intellect. The activity of our sympathies may for a time hinder our perceiving the fact intellectually, and so deriving mirth from it; but all falsehoods, all vices seen at sufficient distance, seen from the point where our moral sympathies do not interfere, become ludicrous. The comedy is the intellect's perception of discrepancy.' These extracts make both the nature of the subject of humour and the cause of our enjoyment plain. The physical or moral depravity which is the subject 1 1449*. 2 αἰσχρόν τι καὶ διεστραμμένον ἄνευ ὀδύνης. of humour must not cause us pain either by appealing to our humanity or by outraging our sense of decorum; to do either will prevent us from making the comparison necessary for our perception of the defect in the light of the ideal. The extent of our enjoyment depends upon the degree in which we are able (or think we are able) to identify ourselves with this ideal. If we add to this the thought that comedy is humour in its literary form, we shall arrive at a tolerably correct conclusion of the nature of both. CHAPTER V ADDISON'S TREATMENT OF THE IMAGINATION AS A SEPARATE FACULTY OF THE MIND INTRODUCES A NEW PRINCIPLE INTO CRITICISM But it is in the 'Essay on the Pleasures of the Imagination' that Addison's real theory of creative literature appears. The distinction between his theory and Aristotle's can be stated in a single sentence. Aristotle found that the plot was the central principle and soul' of tragedy; Addison finds that the talent of affecting the Imagination' is the 'very life and highest perfection' of poetry. A brief consideration of these two statements will reveal the principles which respectively underlie them. The plot was the soul of tragedy, because it was only by a skilful arrangement of the incidents that a powerful appeal to the emotions of fear and pity could be produced. But the appeal to the emotions, the element of pathos, which is so conspicuous and valuable in tragedy is not equally conspicuous and valuable in other forms of poetry. Addison, therefore, noticing this, was compelled to seek for a new principle wide enough to cover the appeal, not only |