If the Humour of this, be for Low Comedy, small Accidents [Incidents], and Raillery; I will force my genius to obey it: though, with more reputation, I could write in Verse.

HUMOUR therefore being the youngest of this Illustrious Family, and descended from Parents of such different Dispositions, is very various and unequal in his Temper; sometimes you see him putting on grave Looks and a solemn Habit, sometimes airy in his Behaviour and fantastick in his Dress: Insomuch that at different times he appears as serious as a Judge, and as jocular as a Merry-Andrew.

In some cases, this desperate humour is not much to be discommended, as in wars it is a cause many times of extraordinary valour; as Joseph, lib. 1. de bello Jud. cap.

It would seem that, after all, humour is the best gift of the gods....

The controversial and denying humour is a different thing from the habit of being careful to know what we mean by the words we use, and what evidence there is for the beliefs we hold.

Were I to give my own Notions of it, I would deliver them after Plato's manner, in a kind of Allegory, and by supposing Humour to be a Person, deduce to him all his Qualifications, according to the following Genealogy.

And I did remember him, and knew his mother well enough to believe it all; for she did not chant his praises to organ music, but rather hummed them to the banjo; and one felt that her own demure humour, so signal and so permanent a charm in Catherine, would have been the saving of half-a-dozen Bobs.

But to convince these people; I need but [to] tell them, that Humour is the ridiculous extravagance of conversation, wherein one man differs from all others.

When I came to reflect at Night, as my Custom is, upon the Occurrences of the Day, I could not but believe that this Humour of carrying a Boy to travel in his Mother's Lap, and that upon pretence of learning Men and Things, is a Case of an extraordinary Nature, and carries on it a particular Stamp of Folly.

Humour, indeed (we speak now generally, of all these performances which have been ascribed to him by common consent), is his strong point; and here he is often successful; but even from this praise many deductions must be made.

Mutual good Humour is a Dress we ought to appear in whenever we meet, and we should make no mention of what concerns our selves, without it be of Matters wherein our Friends ought to rejoyce:

For if that humour is the purest and most delicate which is the freest from any admixture of farce, and produces its effects with the lightest touch, and the least obligations to ridiculous incident, or what may be called the "physical grotesque," in any shapethen one can point to passages from Sterne's pen which, for fulfilment of these conditions, it would be difficult to match elsewhere.

Your wife, with a new dress, soon loses her temper and its beauty; the children splash you and their little frilled continuations; and ill-humour is the order of the day; for on such occasions you cannot slip into a tavern, and follow Dean Swift's example: On rainy days alone I dine, Upon a chick, and pint of wine: On rainy days I dine alone, And pick my chicken to the bone.

"Humour is the conceit of making others act or talk absurdly.

Humour was his proper sphere; and in that, he delighted most to represent mechanic [uncultivated] people.

Humour was his talent; and he had a happy turn for an epitaph; we cannot better conclude his character as a poet, than in the nervous lines of the Prologue quoted in the Life of Shakespear.

"Humour is the making others act or talk absurdly.

But their humours, if I may grace them with that name, are so thin sown; that never above One of them comes up in a Play.

And I must say that their humours were very good humours; far better, it seemed to me, than those of an English race-ground.

Boys will no longer sputter and fume like an over-toasted apple; but, even the cares of childhood will be smoothed into peace; by which means good humour may not be so rare a quality among men.

A pretty pert air thatI'll humour itwhat's the matter, childare you not well?

" Melancthon seconds him, [1083]"as the humour is diversely adust and mixed, so are the species divers;" but what these men speak of species I think ought to be understood of symptoms; and so doth [1084] Arculanus interpret himself: infinite species, id est, symptoms; and in that sense, as Jo.

Humour is but a crookedness of the mind, a disproportioned swelling of the brain, that draws the nourishment from the other parts to stuff an ugly and deformed crup-shoulder.

The world's humour, in its best and greatest sense, is perhaps the highest product of our civilisation.

His humours are the byword of the court, And, were it not for his good-heartedness, His prowess, and undaunted strength at arms, Men would speak lightly of him in disdain; He is so often in a stormy rage, Or supplicating humour to atone, Too petty to repent in very truth, Too light and yielding in repentance, when His temper's force is spent, for dignity Of truest knighthood.