WIT.
The similes of poetry which select natural objects and fit human thoughts and emotions to them have the movement which belongs to wit. They suddenly take things which we have been in the habit of seeing all our lives without after-thought, just as we see a brick or a house; but, when thus taken, they become involved in sentiments which are also customary, and indulged by us without after-thought. We are surprised and charmed to notice what an apt comradeship springs up between the object and the sentiment.
"Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy."
Constantinople may be seen any day from the Bosphorus, stretching its length of domes and minarets across the sunset; but when Mr. Browning observes it he says it runs black and crooked athwart the splendor, "like a Turk verse along a scimitar." There occurs a moment of surprise; a lively shock is given to the mind, which would liberate itself into the smile of wit if we were not instantly conscious that the sudden aptness is also beautiful. All pure wit is born in the imagination, but only in that capability of it to see one point where two incongruous things may meet. But the poetic simile involves more than that: it is born of the inmost
