[22]
Exaggeration always contains either falsity, or complication, and when
it is used for humour the deficiency is made up. It easily affords
amusement, because it can bring together the most distant and discordant
ideas. American wits have made great use of it. Thus we read of a man
driving his gig at such a pace along the high road that his companion,
looking at the mile stones, asked what cemetery they were passing
through? One of the same country described the extent of his native land
in the following terms: "It is bounded on the North by the Aurora
Borealis, on the South by the Southern Cross, on the East by the rising
sun, and on the West by the Day of Judgment." The same may be said of
diminution which is only humorous when connecting distant ideas. In "The
Man of Taste," a poem, by the Rev. T. Bramstone in Dodsley's collection,
we read--
"My hair I'll powder in the women's way,
And dress and talk of dressing more than they;
I'll please the maids of honour if I can,
Without black velvet breeches--what is man?"
Longinus, says, "He was possessor of a field as small as a Lacedaemonian
letter." Their letters often consisted only of two or three words. A
gentleman I met on one occasion in a train, speaking of a lady friend,
observed--"She's very small, but what there is of her is very, very
good.
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