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THIS instructive and admired essayist was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on the 8th of March, 1819. His father, Matthew Whipple, dying while the son was in his infancy, his widow removed to Salem; and there young Edwin was educated at the English High School. When he was but fourteen years of age, he published articles in the newspaper-press at Salem, and at fifteen became clerk of the Bank of General Interest in that city. When he was eighteen years of age, he went to Boston, where he entered a large banking-house, as clerk, but was soon after appointed Superintendent of the Merchants' Exchange News-Room. Such a position would hardly seem compatible with literary pursuits; and yet but few college-graduates have been as distinguished for articles of beautiful, just, and vigorous criticism, in our best reviews, as Mr. Whipple. But, besides his influence as a writer, he has appeared before the public, in most of our Northern States, as a lecturer of uncommon power and attractiveness, and has often been invited to address the literary societies of various colleges,-Brown, Dartmouth, Amherst, and the New York University. In 1850, the city authorities of Boston elected him to deliver before them the Fourth of July oration. Two collections of his writings have been published by Ticknor & Fields, namely, Essays and Reviews, in two volumes; and Lectures on Subjects connected with Literature and Life; and it would be hard to find in English or American literature three other volumes more instructive for their matter, or more captivating for their style.

THE POWER OF WORDS.

Words are most effective when arranged in that order which is called style. The great secret of a good style, we are told, is to have proper words in proper places. To marshal one's verbal battalions in such order that they may bear at once upon all quarters of a subject, is certainly a great art. This is done in different ways. Swift, Temple, Addison, Hume, Gibbon, Johnson, Burke, are all great generals in the discipline of their verbal armies and the conduct of their paper wars. Each has a system of tactics of his own, and excels in the use of some particular weapon. The tread of Johnson's style is heavy and sonorous, resembling that of an elephant or a mail-clad warrior. He is fond of levelling an obstacle by a polysyllabic battering-ram. Burke's words are continually practising the broadsword exercise, and sweeping down

adversaries with every stroke. Arbuthnot "plays his weapon like a tongue of flame." Addison draws up his light infantry in orderly array, and marches through sentence after sentence without having his ranks disordered or his line broken. Luther is different. His words are "half battles ;""his smiting idiomatic phrases seem to cleave into the very heart of the matter." Gibbon's legions are heavily armed, and march with precision and dignity to the music of their own tramp. They are splendidly equipped, but a nice eye can discern a little rust beneath their fine apparel, and there are sutlers in his camp who lie, cog, and talk gross obscenity. Macaulay, brisk, lively, keen, and energetic, runs his thought rapidly through his sentence, and kicks out of the way every word which obstructs his passage. He reins in his steed only when he has reached his goal, and then does it with such celerity that he is nearly thrown backwards by the suddenness of his stoppage. Gifford's words are moss-troopers, that waylay innocent travellers and murder them for hire. Jeffrey is a fine "lance," with a sort of Arab swiftness in his movement, and runs an iron-clad horseman through the eye before he has had time to close his helmet. John Wilson's camp is a disorganized mass, who might do effectual service under better discipline, but who, under his lead, are suffered to carry on a rambling and predatory warfare, and disgrace their general by flagitious excesses. Sometimes they steal, sometimes swear, sometimes drink, and sometimes pray. Swift's words are porcupines' quills, which he throws with unerring aim at whoever approaches his lair. All of Ebenezer Elliot's words are gifted with huge fists, to pommel and bruise. Chatham and Mirabeau throw hot shot into their opponents' magazines. Talfourd's forces are orderly and disciplined, and march to the music of the Dorian flute; those of Keats keep time to the tones of the pipe of Phoebus; and the hard, harsh-featured battalions of Maginn are always preceded by a brass band. Hallam's word infantry can do much execution when they are not in each others' way. Pope's phrases are either daggers or rapiers. Willis's words are often tipsy with the champagne of the fancy, but even when they reel and stagger they keep the line of grace and beauty, and, though scattered at first by a fierce onset from graver cohorts, soon reunite without wound or loss. John Neal's forces are multitudinous, and fire briskly at every thing. They occupy all the provinces of letters, and are nearly useless from being spread over too much ground. Everett's weapons are ever kept in good order, and shine well in the sun; but they are little calculated for warfare, and rarely kill when they strike. Webster's words are thunderbolts, which sometimes miss the Titans at whom they are hurled, but always leave enduring marks when they strike. Hazlitt's verbal army is some

times drunk and surly, sometimes foaming with passion, sometimes cool and malignant, but, drunk or sober, are ever dangerous to cope with. Some of Tom Moore's words are shining dirt, which he flings with excellent aim. This list might be indefinitely extended, and arranged with more regard to merit and chronology. My own words, in this connection, might be compared to ragged, undisciplined militia, which could be easily routed by a charge of horse, and which are apt to fire into each

others' faces.

WIT AND HUMOR.

Wit was originally a general name for all the intellectual powers, meaning the faculty which kens, perceives, knows, understands; it was gradually narrowed in its signification to express merely the resemblance between ideas; and lastly, to note that resemblance when it occasioned ludicrous surprise. It marries ideas lying wide apart, by a sudden jerk of the understanding. Humor originally meant moisture, a signification it metaphorically retains, for it is the very juice of the mind, oozing from the brain, and enriching and fertilizing wherever it falls. Wit exists by antipathy; humor, by sympathy. Wit laughs at things; humor laughs with them. Wit lashes external appearances, or cunningly exaggerates single foibles into character; humor glides into the heart of its object, looks lovingly on the infirmities it detects, and represents the whole man. Wit is abrupt, darting, scornful, and tosses its analogies in your face; humor is slow and shy, insinuating its fun into your heart. Wit is negative, analytical, destructive; humor is creative. The couplets of Pope are witty, but Sancho Panza is a humorous creation. Wit, when earnest, has the earnestness of passion, seeking to destroy; humor has the earnestness of affection, and would lift up what is seemingly low, into our charity and love. Wit, bright, rapid, and blasting as the lightning, flashes, strikes, and vanishes in an instant; humor, warm and all-embracing as the sunshine, bathes its objects in a genial and abiding light. Wit implies hatred or contempt of folly and crime, produces its effects by brisk shocks of surprise, uses the whip of scorpions and the branding-iron,-stabs, stings, pinches, tortures, goads, teases, corrodes, undermines; humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic, and the true, by whose light it surveys and shapes their opposites. It is a humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequalities of existence, promoting tolerant views of life,-bridging over the spaces which separate the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble. Old Dr. Fuller's remark, that a negro is "the image of God cut in ebony," is humorous; Horace Smith's inversion of it, that the task master is "the image of the devil cut in ivory,"

is witty. Wit can coexist with fierce and malignant passions; but humor demands good feeling and fellow-feeling,-feeling not merely for what is above us, but for what is around and beneath us.

THE LITERATURE OF MIRTH.

The ludicrous side of life, like the serious side, has its literature; and it is a literature of untold wealth. Mirth is a Proteus, changing its shape and manner with the thousand diversities of individual character, from the most superficial gayety, to the deepest, most earnest humor. Thus, the wit of the airy, featherbrained Farquhar glances and gleams like heat-lightning; that of Milton blasts and burns like the bolt. Let us glance carelessly over this wide field of comic writers, who have drawn new forms of mirthful being from life's ludicrous side, and note, here and there, a wit or humorist. There is the humor of Goethe, like his own summer morning, mirthfully clear; and there is the tough and knotty humor of old Ben Jonson, at times ground down at the edge to a sharp cutting scorn, and occasionally hissing out stinging words, which seem, like his own Mercury's, "steeped in the very brine of conceit, and sparkle like salt in fire." There is the lithe, springy sarcasm, the hilarious badinage, the brilliant, careless disdain, which sparkle and scorch along the glistening page of Holmes. There is the sleepy smile that sometimes lies so benignly on the sweet and serious diction of old Isaak Walton. There is the mirth of Dickens, twinkling now in some ironical insinuation, and anon winking at you with pleasant maliciousness, its distended cheeks fat with suppressed glee, and then, again, coming out in broad gushes of humor, overflowing all banks and bounds of conventional decorum. There is Sydney Smith,-sly, sleek, swift, subtle,-a moment's motion, and the human mouse is in his paw! There, in a corner, look at that petulant little man, his features working with thought and pain, his lips wrinkled with a sardonic smile; and, see! the immortal personality has received its last point and polish in that toiling brain, and, in a strait, luminous line, with a twang like Scorn's own arrow, hisses through the air the unerring shaft of Pope,-to

"Dash the proud gamester from his gilded car,

And bare the base heart that lurks beneath a star."

There, moving gracefully through that carpeted parlor, mark that dapper, diminutive Irish gentleman. The moment you look at him, your eyes are dazzled with the whizzing rockets and hissing wheels, streaking the air with a million sparks, from the pyro

technic brain of Anacreon Moore. Again, cast your eyes from that blinding glare and glitter to the soft and beautiful brilliancy, the winning grace, the bland banter, the gliding wit, the diffusive humor, which make you in love with all mankind, in the charming pages of Washington Irving.

Let us now turn to the benevolent mirth of Addison and Steele, whose glory it was to redeem polite literature from moral depravity, by showing that wit could chime merrily in with the voice of virtue, and who smoothly laughed away many a vice of the national character, by that humor which tenderly touches the sensitive point with an evanescent grace and genial glee. And here let us not forget Goldsmith, whose delicious mirth is of that rare quality which lies too deep for laughter; which melts softly into the mind, suffusing it with inexpressible delight, and sending the soul dancing joyously into the eyes to utter its merriment in liquid glances, passing all the expression of tone. And here, though we cannot do him justice, let us remember the name of Nathaniel Hawthorne, deserving a place second to none in that band of humorists, whose beautiful depth of cheerful feeling is the very poetry of mirth. In ease, grace, delicate sharpness of satire, in a felicity of touch which often surpasses the felicity of Addison, in a subtlety of insight which often reaches farther than the subtlety of Steele,-the humor of Hawthorne presents traits so fine as to be almost too excellent for popularity, as, to every one who has attempted their criticism, they are too refined for statement. The brilliant atoms flit, hover, and glance before our minds, but the subtle sources of their ethereal light lie beyond our analysis,

"And no speed of ours avails

To hunt upon their shining trails."

And now let us breathe a benison on these our mirthful benefactors, these fine revellers among human weaknesses, these stern, keen satirists of human depravity. Wherever Humor smiles away the fretting thoughts of care, or supplies that antidote which cleanses

"the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff That weighs upon the heart,"

wherever Wit riddles folly, abases pride, or stings iniquity,there glides the cheerful spirit, or glitters the flashing thought, of these bright enemies of stupidity and gloom. Thanks to them, hearty thanks, for teaching us that the ludicrous side of life is its wicked side, no less than its foolish; that in a lying world there is still no mercy for falsehood; that Guilt, however high it may lift its brazen front, is never beyond the lightnings of scorn; and

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