An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule | Page 2

wit,
the friend of Hume, Boswell, and other discerning men of the day, he
was elected F.R.S. in 1757, and appears to have been much respected.
In later life Morris had a country place at Chiltern Vale, Herts., where
he took an active delight in country sports. One of his late pamphlets,
not listed in the _D.N.B_. account of him, entertainingly illustrates one
of his hobbies. _The Bird-fancier's Recreation and Delight, with the
newest and very best instructions for catching, taking, feeding, rearing,
&c all the various sorts of SONG BIRDS... containing curious remarks
on the nature, sex, management, and diseases of ENGLISH SONG
BIRDS, with practical instructions for distinguishing the cock and hen,
for taking, choosing, breeding, keeping, and teaching them to sing, for
discovering and caring their diseases, and of learning them to sing to
the greatest perfection_.
Although there is little surviving evidence of Morris's purely literary
interests, a set of verses combining his economic and artistic views
appeared in a late edition of The New Foundling Hospital for Wit (new
edition, 1784, VI, 95). Occasioned by seeing Bowood in Wiltshire, the
home of the Earl of Shelburne, the lines are entitled: "On Reading Dr.
Goldsmith's Poem, the Deserted Village."
This was the man who at the age of thirty-three brought out _An Essay
towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Raillery, Satire,
and Ridicule_. That it was ever widely read we have no evidence, but at

least a number of men of wit and judgment found it interesting. Horace
Walpole included it in a packet of "the only new books at all worth
reading" sent to Horace Mann, but the fulsome dedication to the elder
Walpole undoubtedly had something to do with this recommendation.
More disinterested approval is shown in a letter printed in the Daily
Advertiser for 31 May 1744. Better than any modern critique the letter
illustrates the contemporary reaction to the Essay.
Christ Church College, Oxford,
SIR:
I have examin'd the Essay you have sent me for _fixing the true
Standards of Wit, Humour, &c._ and cannot perceive upon what
pretence the Definitions, as you tell me, are censured for Obscurity,
even by Gentlemen of Abilities, and such as in other Parts of the Work
very frankly allow it's Merit: the Definition of Wit, which presents
itself at first, you say is, particularly objected to, as dark and involv'd;
in answer to which I beg Leave to give you my plain Sentiments upon
it, and which I apprehend should naturally occur to every Reader: In
treating upon Wit, the Author seems constantly to carry in his View a
Distinction between This and _Vivacity_: there is a Lustre or Brilliancy
which often results from wild unprovok'd Sallies of Fancy; but such
unexpected Objects, which serve not to elucidate each other, discover
only a Flow of Spirits, or rambling Vivacity; whereas, says he, Wit is
the Lustre which results from the quick Elucidation of one Subject, by
the just and unexpected Arrangement of it with another Subject.--To
constitute Wit, there must not only arise a Lustre from the quick
Arrangement together of two Subjects, but the new Subject must be
naturally introduced, and also serve to elucidate the original one: the
Word Elucidation, though it be not new, is elegant, and very happily
applied in this Definition; yet I have seen some old Gentlemen here
stumble at it, and have found it difficult to persuade them to advance
farther:--I have also heard Objections made to the Words Lustre and
Brilliancy of Ideas, though they are Terms which have been used by the
Greeks and Romans, and by elegant Writers of all Ages and Nations;
and the Effect which they express, is perfectly conceiv'd and felt by

every Person of true Genius and Imagination.
The Distinctions between Wit and Humour, and the Reasons why
Humour is more pleasurably felt than Wit, are new and excellent: as is
the Definition of an Humourist, and the happy Analysis of the
Characters of Falstaff, Sir Roger de Coverly, and _Don Quixote_; But,
as you say, the Merit of these Parts is universally allowed; as well as
the Novelty, and liberal Freedom of the [word apparently omitted];
which have such Charms in my Eye, as I had long ceased to expect in a
Modern Writer.
I am, &c 25 May, 1744 J---- W---- [not identified]
If the "Gentlemen of Abilities" of the day found some of Morris's
definitions obscure, modern readers will find them more precise than
those of most of his predecessors. All who had gone before--Cowley,
Barrow, Dryden, Locke, Addison, and Congreve (he does not mention
Hobbes)--Morris felt had bungled the job. And although he apologizes
for attempting what the great writers of the past had failed to do, he has
no hesitation in setting forth exactly what he