Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/38

 of the sentiment, urged the necessity of forgiving an inveterate enemy, and quoted, 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,' the acquiescing penitent said, with a deep sigh, 'To be sure! it is too sweet a morsel for a mortal.'"

Wit can be blundered into as well as a pun. The unmerited praise of it can be earned by mental awkwardness and want of tact. A widower, who had loved a lady previous to his marriage to another, approached his first love after the death of his wife, and sought to renew the old attachment. After he had made his offer, at a juncture more critical than the turning-point of Waterloo, he was permitted to add, "And I know that all my children will follow you to the grave with the same affection that they showed when their mother died." This is certainly the pallida mors of Horace beating æquo pede at the door.

Wit can also be enhanced by a droll incompetence of understanding on the part of the listener. Sydney Smith, complaining of the heat, told a lady that he wished he could take off his flesh and sit in his bones. The wit consists in extending the congruity of taking clothes off to the flesh, and there is an electric instant of mental possibility. But it is enhanced to us when we recollect the shocked and puzzled look of the lady, who saw only an indelicacy in a remark which was really delicate to the pitch of ghastliness,—stripped, in fact, of every rag of that most indelicate of all things, prudery. Thus the raillery of Falstaff owes half its excellence to Dame Quickly's consistent misinterpretation,