end itself to the rank or circumstances of the definite person; but
humour is of more difficult description. I must try to define it in the
first place by its points of diversity from the former species. Humour
does not, like the different kinds of wit, which is impersonal, consist
wholly in the understanding and the senses. No combination of thoughts,
words, or images will of itself constitute humour, unless some
peculiarity of individual temperament and character be indicated
thereby, as the cause of the same. Compare the comedies of Congreve with
the Falstaff in Henry IV. or with Sterne's Corporal Trim, Uncle Toby,
and Mr. Shandy, or with some of Steele's charming papers in the Tatler,
and you will feel the difference better than I can express it. Thus
again, (to take an instance from the different works of the same
writer), in Smollett's Strap, his Lieutenant Bowling, his Morgan the
honest Welshman, and his Matthew Bramble, we have exquisite
humour,--while in his Peregrine Pickle we find an abundance of drollery,
which too often degenerates into mere oddity; in short, we feel that a
number of things are put together to counterfeit humour, but that there
is no growth from within. And this indeed is the origin of the word,
derived from the humoral pathology, and excellently described by Ben
Jonson:


So in every human body,
The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood,
By reason that they flow continually
In some one part, and are not continent,
Receive the name of humours. Now thus far
It may, by metaphor, apply itself
Unto the general disposition:
As when some one peculiar quality