There seems to be a kind of inspiration in it, and we are
inclined to regard it, like any other great advantage, as a natural
gift. "If you have real wit," says Lord Chesterfield, "it will grow
spontaneously, and you need not aim at it, for in that case the rule of
the gospel is reversed and it will prove, 'Seek, and ye shall not
find.'" Thus, we speak of a man's mother wit, _i.e._ innate, but we do
not call a story witty, as much in it is due to circumstances, and does
not necessarily flow from talent. To speak of a woman as "of great wit
and beauty" is to pay a high compliment to her mental as well as
personal charms.
As wit must be always intellectual it must be in words, and hence as
well as because it must imply impromptu talent, the comic situations of
a farce or pantomime are not witty. When Poole represents Paul Pry as
peeping through a gimlet hole, as attacked with a red hot poker, or
blown out of a closet full of fireworks, and where Douglas Jerrold on
the Bridge of Ludgate makes the innkeeper tells Charles II., in his
disguise, all the bad stories he has heard about his Majesty, we merely
see the humour, unless we are so far abstracted as to regard the scene
as ludicrous. In the same way a conversation between foolish men on the
stage may be amusing, but cannot be witty.
An old stanza tells us--
"True wit is like the brilliant stone
Dug from the Indian mine.
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