To this extent we are prepared to agree
with Boileau that "the basis of all wit is truth," but the result and
general impression it gives is falsity.
Addison's Genealogy of Humour:--
Truth
Good Sense
Wit Mirth
Humour
at first seems to be erroneous, but he does not really mean to say that
there is no falsehood in it, but that it does not approach nonsense, and
often contains useful instruction.
Holms exhibits the nature of humour in a passage remarkable for
philosophy and elegance:
"There is a perfect consciousness in every kind of wit that its
essence consists in a partial and incomplete view of whatever it
touches. It throws a single ray separated from the rest, red,
yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade upon an object, never white
light. We get beautiful effects from wit, all the prismatic
colours, but never the object is in fair daylight. Poetry uses the
rainbow tints for special effects, but always its essential object
is the purest white light of truth."
Bacon went further, and considered that even the beauty of poetry and
the pleasures of imagination were derived from falsehood.
"This truth is a naked and open daylight, which doth not show the
masques and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so stately and
daintily as candle light.
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