Much of this word-play, too, has a close kinship with make-
believe ; a natural and obvious meaning is the pretence in
this case, whereas the reality is the half-hidden meaning
introduced by the inventive wag. 'All the same it seems to
— me that this group of laughable objects has its place close
to that of the incongruous and absurd.! A pun that claims
any intellectual rank must have a point, a bite, and this
would appear to be most naturally secured by introducing
an element of irony and rendering the primary and obvious
meaning of the sentence ludicrously false. When, for
example, a preacher whose ponderous dulness had set his
congregation genteelly scuttling was said to have delivered
" a very moving discourse," the point of the witty thrust lay
in the complete opposition between the best and the worst
result of eloquence brought together in the two meanings
of " moving," an opposition which gives the trenchant irony
to the description.
In cases, too, where there is no verbal trickery the lighter



VERBAL PLAY AND WITTICISM 113

kind of wit shows the same tendency to a playful capricious-
ness of fancy. It delights in substituting for our ordinary
points of view and standards of reference others which
strike the hearer as amusingly fanciful and extravagant.
This is illustrated by much of our entertaining talk, which
is wont to try to escape for a moment from the leading-
strings of sober sense ; as when a person d, propos of a moon
looking wan and faint some hours after an eclipse observed
that she seemed not yet to have got over the effects of the
eclipse.
