It is probable that there were not living at the time two more serious men than the two wits whose careers we have outlined.  Indeed, it is quite a mistake to suppose that wit has anything to do with temper or sentiment at all.  A man may be perpetually sulky, and yet habitually witty,—­may smile, and smile, and smile, and yet be a most melancholy individual.  Wit is simply a form of thought, and is as intellectual as scientific study.  It differs from other thought only in being a little outre,—­a little in excess; it overdoes the thing only because it has so much energy in it.  It is what Charles Lamb said a pun was,—­“a sole digest of wisdom.”  All great thoughts are at first witty, and afterward come to be common and flat.  When Pythagoras discovered the theorem of the squares erected on the sides of a right-angled triangle, it had the effect on him of a most preposterous joke.  The apple dropping on the head of Newton struck him like a very far-fetched pun.  Show a child the picture of a wild Tartar, and his first motion will be to laugh at it.  We have seen a man while reading Kant, the dryest of metaphysicians, slap his knee, leap upon his feet, and swear, in exuberance of mirth, that Kant had said a good thing.  If it were discovered to-morrow to be a scientific truth that this world is wrong side out, and if inventive genius should discover a way to put the other side out, we should all of us think it a funny thing, but our transversed descendants would regard the matter as a commonplace.  New proposals in the arts, and new discoveries in the sciences are always at first laughed at.  Thus wit is only thought that is beyond the present capacity of the listeners, thought of whose meaning they can catch only a glimpse; it is the forerunner of what our very stupid race, which is always a little behind the times, is wont to call wisdom.  If the race should ever become completely sage, nothing less than a joke would ever be uttered.

The likenesses of Charles Lamb and Sydney Smith make them both very severe-looking men.  Like marble, which in costume takes the appearance of the finest lace, so that it seems as if it would yield to the touch of a finger, their delicate fancies and sentiments were but the surface of a solid and thorough character.

They lived in different spheres, corresponding to the difference in their genius.  Sydney Smith had the more versatile and fruitful mind.  With restless energy he supported various characters, being equally famous as a wit, Whig, Edinburgh reviewer, eloquent preacher, brilliant man of society, and canon of Saint Paul’s.  His biographer well describes him as a rough rider of subjects, and with surpassing good sense he overran every problem with which the public mind was occupied.  He was a reformer, but it was after the English and not the French fashion.  He had unbounded respect for existing human blessings, believed in things substantially as they were, and couldn’t have been persuaded to try an experiment