find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole. The officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so exactly, that we can say they were almost made for each other.

But while I am descanting so minutely upon the conduct of the understanding, and the best modes of acquiring knowledge, some men may be disposed to ask, "Why conduct my understanding with such endless care? and what is the use of so much knowledge ?" What is the use of so much knowledge ?-what is the use of so much life!-what are we to do with the seventy years of existence allotted to us ?-and how are we to live them out to the last? I solemnly declare that, but for the love of knowledge, I should consider the life of the meanest hedger and ditcher, as preferable to that of the greatest and richest man here present: for the fire of our minds is like the fire which the Persians burn in the mountains,—it flames night and day, and is immortal, and not to be quenched! Upon something it must act and feed-upon the pure spirit of knowledge, or upon the foul dregs of polluting passions. Therefore, when I say, in conducting your understanding, love knowledge with a great love, with a vehement love, with a love coeval with life, what do I say, but love innocence, love virtue,-love purity of conduct,-love that which, if you are rich and great, will sanctify the blind fortune which has made you so, and make men call it justice,— love that which, if you are poor, will render your poverty respectable, and make the proudest feel it unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes,-love that which will comfort you, adorn you, and never quit you,- -which will open to you the kingdom of thought, and all the boundless regions of conception, as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and the pain that may be your lot in the outer world,-that which will make your motives habitually great and honorable, and light up in an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and of fraud! Therefore, if any young man here have embarked his life in pursuit of

knowledge, let him go on without doubting or fearing the event; let him not be intimidated by the cheerless beginnings of knowledge, by the darkness from which she springs, by the difficulties which hover around her, by the wretched habitations in which she dwells, by the want and sorrow which sometimes journey in her train; but let him ever follow her as the Angel that guards him, and as the Genius of his life. She will bring him out at last into the light of day, and exhibit him to the world comprehensive in acquirements, fertile in resources, rich in imagination, strong in reasoning, prudent and powerful above his fellows, in all the relations and in all the offices of life.

LECTURE X.

ON WIT AND HUMOR.

THE question I have very often had asked me respecting the present subject of my lecture is, what has Wit to do with Moral Philosophy? Little or nothing, certainly, if Moral Philosophy is merely understood practical Moral Philosophy, or Ethics; but if the term be taken as it universally is wherever Moral Philosophy is taught,—as in contradistinction to Physical Philosophy, or the philosophy which concerns itself with the laws of the material world, then Moral Philosophy will include every thing which relates to the human mind—of which mind these phenomena of wit and humor are very striking peculiarities. But if, though allowed to appertain to Moral Philosophy because they appertain to the human mind, they should be considered as very frivolous parts of that science, this must not, on any account, be allowed to pass for truth. The feeling of the ridiculous produces an immense effect upon human affairs. It is so far from being powerless or unimportant, that it has a strong tendency to overpower even truth, justice, and all those high-born qualities which have the lawful mastery of the human mind.

Such sort of subjects are no less difficult than they are important. I may not always speak on them with the forms of modesty, but no man can be more thoroughly convinced that I am, of the difficulty with which such investigations are attended, and of the folly of dogmatizing upon topics where the best understandings may arrive, and have arrived, at very opposite conclusions. In addition to this plea for indulgence, it so happens this year that I am extremely ill prepared for what I have under

taken. To read lectures upon Moral Philosophy is not a very easy thing under any circumstances; to read them before a mixed audience of both sexes, and for the first time, are accidents which do not come in diminution of that difficulty. These difficulties are best overcome by a little practice. The same indulgence should be extended to young lecturers and young professors that is extended to the young of all other animals,-who can not reasonably be supposed to have arrived at the top of their cunning, or to have reached the perfection of their strength. I shall only advertise my hearers, that when I have finished this lecture I have not finished this subject;-I shall have a great deal more to say upon it in my next lecture, and the two must be taken together, in order to analyze the ridiculous, and, perhaps, as some evil-disposed persons may say, to exemplify it.

"Wit," says Dr. Barrow, "is a thing so subtile, so versatile, and so multiform,-appearing in so many shapes, so many postures, and so many garbs, so variously apprehended by several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear and certain notion thereof than to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure of the fleeting air. Sometime it lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial saying, or in forging an apposite tale ;-sometimes it playeth in words and phrases, taking advantage of the ambiguity of their sense, or the affinity of their sound;sometimes it is wrapped in a dress of humorous expression ;-sometimes it lurketh under an odd similitude ;— sometimes it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer, in a quirkish reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cunningly diverting, or cleverly retorting an objection; sometimes it is couched in a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, a lusty hyperbole, a startling metaphor, a plausible reconciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense-sometimes a scenical representation of persons or things, a counterfeit speech, a mimical look or gesture, passeth for it;-sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous bluntness, giveth it being ;sometimes it ariseth only from a lucky hitting upon what

is strange ;-often it consisteth in one knows not what, and ariseth one knows not how its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless rovings of fancy and windings of language. It is, in short, a manner of speaking out of the plain way, which, by an uncouthness in conceit or expression, doth amuse the fancy, stirring in it some wonder, and breeding some delight. It raiseth admiration, as signifying a nimble sagacity of apprehension, a special felicity of invention, a vivacity of spirit, and reach of wit more than vulgar. It seemeth to argue a rare quickness of parts that can produce such applicable conceits, a notable skill that can dexterously accommodate them to the purpose before him, together with a lively briskness of humor, not apt to damp those sportful flashes of imagination. It procures delight, by gratifying curiosity with its rarity, by diverting the mind from its road of serious thoughts, by instilling gayety and airiness of spirit, and by seasoning matters, otherwise distasteful and insipid, with an unusual and a grateful twang." This is Dr. Barrow's famous definition of wit,-which is very witty, and nothing else! and in which the author has managed as a man would do, who should take a degree in music by singing a song, or in medicine by healing a surfeit. He has exemplified his subject instead of explaining it; and given you a specimen, instead of a solution, of wit. It is surprising what very little has been written in the English language upon this curious subject. Congreve has written upon it in the same witty manner as Barrow, without throwing the smallest light upon the nature of wit. Cowley says,

"Tell me, oh tell, what kind of thing is wit,
Thou who master art of it?

A thousand different shapes it bears,
Comely in thousand shapes appears.
-Yonder we see it plain; and here 'tis now,
Like spirits, in a place, we know not how."

And so he goes on, with a string of witty allusions, for twenty stanzas, in an ode which Johnson calls inimitable, and which, as a mere piece of poetry of the school