A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.
Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of time.
For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavour;
And to-night I long for rest.
Read from some humbler poet,

Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start:

Who, through long days of labour,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet

The restless pulse of care, And come like the benediction That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume

The poem of thy choice,

And lend to the rhyme of the poet

The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

H. W. Longfellow.

XXXIII.

FORMS OF HUMOUR.

OFTEN the simple sense of incongruity produces the effect of the laughable-the unfitness of the means to the end, as in some of Dr. Johnson's definitions, where his Latinized dialect makes him like the interpreter in Sheridan's farce, the harder to be understood of the two; his definition of "Network-anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections," or when, in the preface of his Dictionary in explanation of the difficulty of ranging the meanings of a word in order, he asks: "When the radical idea branches out into parallel ramifications, how can a consecutive series be formed of senses in their nature collateral?"

Again, when Johnson defines "Excise," to be "a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged, not by common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid :” and Pension to be "an allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally

understood to mean pay given to a state-hireling for treason to his country,"-a comic effect is produced by the unexpected encounter with such a fervid temper among the dispassionate definitions of a dictionary, almost as if one should meet with a spiteful demonstration in geometry. To an ear accustomed to simple English, simple in the choice and in the arrangement of the words, the highly Latinized and stately sentences of Dr. Johnson now make an impression, bordering sometimes on the ludicrous-owing, I think, to the natural disparity between his style, and the ordinary colloquial use of language: this was curiously shown by a practical joke that was practised on that worthy and simple-mannered man, the late Sir David Wilkie, by a fellow-painter and his brother, and described in the Memoir of Collins, the landscape painter: "Mr. Collins's brother Francis possessed a remarkably retentive memory, which he was accustomed to use for the amusement of himself and others in the following manner. He learnt by heart a whole number of one of Dr. Johnson's Ramblers,1 and used to occasion considerable diversion to those in the secret, by repeating it all through to a new company, in a conversational tone, as if it was the accidental product of his own fancy, now addressing his flow of moral eloquence to one astonished auditor, and now to another. One day, when the two brothers were dining at Wilkie's it was determined to try the experiment upon their host. After dinner, accordingly, Mr. Collins paved the way for the coming speech, by leading the

conversation imperceptibly to the subject of the paper in the Rambler. At the right moment, Francis Collins began. As the first grand Johnsonian sentences struck upon his ear, (uttered, it should be remembered, in the most elaborately careless and conversational manner), Wilkie started at the high tone the conversation had suddenly assumed, and looked vainly for explanation to his friend Collins, who, on his part, sat with his eyes. respectfully fixed on his brother, all rapt attention to the eloquence that was dropping from his lips. Once or twice, with, perfect mimicry of the conversational character he had assumed, Francis Collins hesitated, stammered, and paused, as if collecting his thronging ideas. At one or two of these intervals, Wilkie endeavoured to speak, to ask a moment for consideration; but the torrent of his guest's eloquence was not to be delayed until at last it reached its destined close; and then Wilkie, who, as host, thought it his duty to break silence by the first compliment, exclaimed, with the most perfect unconsciousness of the trick that had been played him, 'Ay, ay, Mr. Francis; verra clever(though I did not understand it all)-verra clever!"

It not unfrequently happens, also, that a sense of the ludicrous in style may be traced in a false and florid rhetoric to the incongruous combination of literal and figurative forms of expression. Reading the Earl of Ellesmere's agreeable and usually wellwritten History of the Two Sieges of Vienna, I noted this sentence: speaking of Sobieski, he says, "inspired by the memory of former victories, he

flung his powerful frame into the saddle, and his great soul into the cause." This is that juxtaposition of the literal and metaphorical, which is best exemplified by a well-known instance in a panegyric2 on the celebrated Robert Boyle, in which he was described as "father of chemistry, and brother of the Earl of Cork." Again, another form of the literary ludicrous is in the incongruous combination of metaphors produced by the want of discipline in speech, increased, perhaps, by an excess of unguided fancy. Lord Castlereagh's parliamentary speeches are said to have been full of such confusion of language-without, however, spoiling the speaker's high bearing and elegance of manner: in one of these speeches he used that sentence in which, perhaps, there is as curious an infelicity of speech and confusion of figure as ever were crowded into as small a number of words. "And now, sir, I must embark into the feature on which this question chiefly hinges."

And so in that form of error, which is regarded as belonging pre-eminently to Lord Castlereagh's countrymen, that strange mixture of error and accuracy, called an "Irish bull," the ludicrous effect is, I believe, produced by the sense working its way out through the complexity and confusion of the phrase.

Sir Walter Scott, in the account of his tour in Ireland, mentions an occurrence which illustrates this form of the laughable, for it is a sort of bull in action. "They were widening," he says, "the road near Lord Claremont's seat as we passed. A