He told them, “I found his Majesty wished I should talk, and I made it my business to talk.  I find it does a man good to be talked to by his sovereign.  In the first place, a man cannot be in a passion—­” Here some question interrupted him, which is to be regretted, as he certainly would have pointed out and illustrated many circumstances of advantage, from being in a situation where the powers of the mind are at once excited to vigorous exertion and tempered by reverential awe.

LANDORISMS
[Sidenote:  Landor]

From you, Ianthe, little troubles pass
Like little ripples down a sunny river;
Your pleasures spring like daisies in the grass,
Cut down, and up again as blithe as ever.

* * * * *

Metellus is a lover:  one whose ear
(I have been told) is duller than his sight. 
The day of his departure had drawn near;
And (meeting her beloved over-night)
Softly and tenderly Corinna sigh’d: 
“Won’t you be quite as happy now without me?”
Metellus, in his innocence replied,
“Corinna!  O Corinna! can you doubt me?”

* * * * *

One leg across his wide arm-chair,
Sat Singleton, and read Voltaire;
And when (as well he might) he hit
Upon a splendid piece of wit,
He cried:  “I do declare now, this
Upon the whole is not amiss.” 
And spent a good half-hour to show
By metaphysics why ’twas so.

* * * * *

“Why do I smile?” To hear you say,
“One month, and then the shortest day!”
The shortest, whate’er month it be,
Is the bright day you pass with me.

* * * * *

Each year bears something from us as it flies,
We only blow it farther with our sighs.

WIT AND LAUGHTER
[Sidenote:  Hazlitt]

There is nothing more ridiculous than laughter without a cause, nor anything more troublesome than what are called laughing people.  A professed laugher is as contemptible and tiresome a character as a professed wit:  the one is always contriving something to laugh at, the other is always laughing at nothing.  An excess of levity is as impertinent as an excess of gravity.  A character of this sort is well personified by Spenser, in the “Damsel of the Idle Lake”: 

    Who did assay
  To laugh at shaking of the leaves light.

Any one must be mainly ignorant, or thoughtless, who is surprised at everything he sees; or wonderfully conceited, who expects everything to conform to his standard of propriety.  Clowns and idiots laugh on all occasions; and the common failing of wishing to be thought satirical often runs through whole families in country places, to the great annoyance of their neighbours.  To be struck with incongruity in whatever comes before us does not argue great comprehension