"Nothing," writes Amelot, "pleases less than a perpetual pleasantry,"
and we all know that a jest-book is dull reading. Humour seems the more
fugitive, because we do not know by what means to reproduce and continue
it. We can, almost at will, call up emotions of love, hatred or sorrow,
and when we feel them we can aggravate them to any extent, but humour is
not thus under our command. We cannot invent or summon it. When we have
heard a "good thing" said, we shall find that the mere repetition of the
words originally uttered are more fully successful in reproducing and
prolonging our mirth than all the attempts we usually make to develop it
and come closer to the point. Sydney Smith was of opinion that much
might be effected by perseverance, and this is the reason that he was
often guilty of that bad and overstrained wit which led Lord Brougham to
call him "too much of a Jack pudding."
We cannot by calculation and design produce anything worthy of the name
of humour. It is generally true that any kind of reflection is inimical
to it. But no doubt the great cause of its evanescence is that it leads
to nothing, and adds nothing to our information. The most fleeting
humour is that which is on unimportant subjects, as in comic poems and
squibs, which may show considerable ingenuity, but have no interest.
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