[17] Beattie was unfortunate in selecting Moliere for his comparison,
for his humour is especially that of situation and can be tolerably well
understood by a foreigner.
[18] Thus we speak of "fried ice" or "ice with the chill off."
[19] It may be observed that as men's perceptions of humour are
different, so in the expression of them there is a character about
laughter in accordance with its subject, and with the person from whom
it comes.
[20] This term seems the nearest, though not quite accurate.
[21] Ruskin observes that the smile on the lips of the Apollo Belvedere
is inconsistent with divinity.
[22] The false generalisations of childhood are well represented by
Dickens when, in "Great Expectations," he makes Pip discover a singular
affinity between seeds and corduroys. "Mr. Pumblechook wore corduroys,
and so did his shopman, and somehow there was a general air and flavour
about the corduroys so much in the nature of seeds, and such a general
air and flavour about the seeds in the nature of corduroys that I hardly
knew which was which."
[23] Critias was one of the thirty tyrants who condemned him.
[24] That the present style of men's dress is unbecoming strikes us
forcibly when we see it reproduced in statues, where we are not used to
it.
[25] Cicero uses two corresponding words cavillatio and dicacitas, the
former signifying continuous, the latter aphoristic humour.
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