John Leech and other papers

4 Horcz Subsecivce.
Aristotle, who says it is some error in truth or pro-
priety, but at the same time neither painful nor
pernicious ; and Cicero, who defines it as that which,
without impropriety, notes and exposes an impro-
priety ; to Jean Paul, who says it is the opposite of
the sublime, the infinitely great, and is therefore the
infinitely little ; and Kant, who gives it as the sudden
conversion into nothing of a long raised and highly-
wrought expectation ; many have been the attempts
to unsphere the spirit of a joke and make it tell its
secret ; but we agree with our excellent and judicious
friend Quinctilian, that its ratio is at best anceps.
There is a certain robust felicity about old Hobbes's
saying, that ' it is a sudden glory, or sense of emi-
nency above others or our former selves.' There is
no doubt at least about the suddenness and the
glory ; all true laughter must be involuntary, must
come and go as it lists, must take us and shake us
heartily and by surprise. No man can laugh any
more than he can sneeze at will, and he has nearly as
little to do with its ending — it dies out, disdaining to
be killed. He may grin and guffaw, because these
are worked by muscles under the dominion of voli-
tion, but your diaphragm, the midriff, into which
your joker pokes his elbow, he is the great organ of
genuine laughter and the sudden glory, and he, as
you all know, when made absurd by hiccup, is
masterless as the wind. ' untameable as flies ;' there*