him extract a loan during a cross conversation about the conduct of Don Miguel, and Shaw, the carpenter of the Brunswick Theatre. When you expect repayment the sympathetic borrower differs essentially from his predecessor; for, instead of shunning you as a pestilence, he calls on you, and treats you with a score of reasons, the most satisfactory, as to why he cannot pay you: or, if he be sympathizing elsewhere, he favours you with epistles by every post, each evidently the effusion of an elegant mind, depressed at not having money. This mode of warfare the sympathizer can carry on with you for months; and, should you be tired of either reading his letters, or paying for them, hint to him your wish that he should think no more about the sum lent, and you really may depend upon his obliging you in that particular.

SONNET,

BY R. SHELTON MACKENZIE,

On West's Painting of Cupid and Psyché.'

Or deify the canvas till it shine

With beauty so surpassing all below,
That they who kneel to idols so divine
Break no commandments:

Prophecy of Dante.

BEAUTIFUL Psyché! wert thou but a dream
Of some rapt lover who, adoring, knelt
Before an earthly form of love, and felt
From her full glance his inspiration beam?
Or, in a happier hour,-when Hope was young,
And Fame-bright vision! mighty magic flung
Upon the poet's soul, didst thou arise,
Embodied spirit of his energies?

Howe'er created-whether earth or thought-
A form of breathing clay-a shape of mind--
A thing of life, or impulse all refined,
Thine image never was so soothly brought
So palpably before us-first and best
Of art's creations, by her painter-WEST !
Birmingham.

WIT, PUNS, AND PUNSTERS.

THERE is, perhaps, no subject so common a topic of conversation-no term so frequently employed-no word so improperly used-no thing so little understood -no title so unjustly usurped-as wit. The punster, the dealer in conundrums, the acrostic-merchant, the anagrammatist, the chronogrammatist, and the rhymer, or rather crambo-maker,-consider that they deserve to be ranked as wits. These quacks in the science they profess think themselves entitled to scan the merits of true wits, and give to works that authoritative stamp, which shall devote them either to the fires or the attention of posterity. This is by no means extraordinary, since, when no certain, fixed, and acknowledged law is in existence, it is difficult to punish offenders: for when, on the one side, we are told, that the Attic salt was a certain degree of shrewdness, and truth of observation calculated to excite attention, but not risibility; and, on the other, we know that Cicero, Horace, and Cervantes, have not scrupled to make puns; and Martial to descend so low as a play on words, -it is not wonderful that less illustrious admirers of wit should have been deceived; and, while they thought they possessed gold, their property was its mere representative-tinsel. It is not, however, here intended to profess a capability of doing that which no other person ever did before, but only to endeavour to remark those distinctions between the different species of wit, as they seem to arise, from the definitions given by the few authors who have been consulted on the present occasion.

Wit may be divided into two main branches; wit in the thought, and wit in the word. And first, wit in the thought this has been defined by Mr. Locke, 'to lie in the assemblage of ideas; and putting those together, with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the faucy.' With all due deference to Mr. Locke's authority, high as it undoubtedly is, on every subject to which he has devoted

his attention, this definition is not a sufficient explanation of wit. Congruous and similar ideas may be put together with quickness and variety, without, by any means, amounting to wit. Surprise is a necessary ingredient in the formation of wit, and that must be produced by the dissimilarity of the things which in idea are compared. Therefore, probably the following may be regarded as coming nearer to the meaning of the word: an unexpected and fanciful conjunction of different things, similar, or supposed to be similar, in idea. It may probably be said, that there is no necessity for the discovery to be either fanciful or ludicrous, in order to constitute wit. That is, however, not the fact; for, if we strip the connexion of idea of its ludicrous property, it becomes a simile, metaphor, or allegory. The same principle pervades those three figures, as well as wit, namely, the discovery of a similarity, real or supposed, between one object and another. It may be taken, then, as tolerably clear, that the assertion of true wit never making us laugh' is unfounded. Let us now proceed to examples.

First, wit may be said to arise from a ludicrous comparison :

'And now had Phoebus in the lap

Of Thetis taken out his nap;
And, like a lobster boil'd, the morn
From black to red began to turn.'

Hudibras, part ii. canto 2. Here there is no real connexion between a lobster boil

ing and the morn, but it is the unexpected discovery of the similarity in idea, which causes the thought to be witty.

Time was, when honest Fielding writ,

Tales full of nature, character, and wit,

Were reckon'd most delicious boil'd and roast; But stomachs are so cloyed with novel-feeding, Folks get a vitiated taste in reading,

And want that strong provocative-a ghost.'

Colman's Broad Grins, p. 9.

In the same work, in the tale of the Knight and the Friar,' speaking of the secresy of the Duke of Limbs,

• Pour but a secret in him, and 'twould glue him,
Like rosin on a well-cork'd bottle's snout;
Had twenty devils come with cork-screws to him,
They never could have screw'd the secret out.
Again, speaking of the repentance of Friar Roger,-
His breast, soon after he was born,

Grew like an hostler's lantern, at an inn;
All the circumference was dirty horn,

And feebly blinked the ray of warmth within.' Rabelais' comparison of Socrates to the statues of satyrs in druggists' shops, which, although ugly in the exterior, are full of excellent commodities, is of the same description. This may be found in his prologue to the Gargantua.

We next come to wit in the word; or punning.-This arises totally from words which have a double meaning, being selected in such a manner, that if they are understood as they appear in the sentence, they will lead us to a conclusion different from that intended by the person using them. There is not the slightest connexion in idea between them. They are merely superficial, and yet some of the most illustrious writers, ancient and modern, seem to have prided themselves on this childish display.

'Chief Justice. Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy.

Falstaff. He that buckles him in my belt, cannot live in less.

'Chief Justice. Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.

Falstaff. I would it were otherwise; I would my means were greater and my waist slenderer.'

Cicero seems to have been very fond of this kind of wit. That related by Quintilian, with respect to the cook's son, is one of his best. A person who was generally considered as the sop of a cook had become a

candidate for a public office, and, among other electors, requested the support of Cicero, who answered

'Ego quoque tibi jure favebo.'

Here the pun arises on the word jure, that meaning both an elective franchise, and soup. In speaking against Isauricus, he says,

་

Miror, quid sit, quod pater tuus, homo constantissimus te nobis varium reliquit.'

Here the pun is in the double meaning of the word varium, as it may be construed freckled, which was the peculiarity of the countenance of Isauricus; or as fickle, which was the peculiarity of his character.

Punning has of late become so exceedingly popular as to be encouraged by all ranks and orders of society -even royalty itself, we are informed, has caught the infection, and, by a pun perpetrated upon the occasion of Moore's Life of Sheridan being given to the world, has at once rendered the practice fashionable, and stamped it with the sanction of the very highest authority. It cannot, however, for a moment be supposed, that the Defender of the Faith had any serious intention of evil in thus moralizing two meanings in one word!'

'Tis a fortunate circumstance for the tongue of England, the merry and the free,' as well as for her national gravity, that our language is, by no means, so easily disjointed and separated limb from limb, as that of France and some other countries; and even in those instances where it may be done, the disjecti membra are generally composed of such hard and stubborn materials as not to allow of their being worked and shaped into any other than their own natural forms, for the laughter and entertainment of blockheads, however honest, who cannot tell you wherein the difference consists between Dr. Roberts's fig, and a fig for Dr. Roberts! This comparative unpliability in our mother's tongue, is, we take it, highly honourable to her; for we consider that a language is capable of being punned and played with in exact proportion to its richness or its poverty, and the more copious, therefore, and full are its expressions