"My God! how mad these poor Greeks are with all their vain and interminable disputes! My successor will do well to dream of being powerful and rich." Scarcely had Honorius uttered these words when he learned that the emperor Heraclius was dead, after having been beaten by the Mahometans. His widow, Martina, poisoned her son-in-law; the senate caused Martina's tongue to be cut out, and the nose of another son of the emperor to be slit: all the Greek Empire flowed in blood. Would it not be better not to have disputed on the two wills? And this Pope Honorius, against whom the Jansenists have written so much--was he not a very sensible man? WIT, SPIRIT, INTELLECT. A man who had some knowledge of the human heart, was consulted upon a tragedy which was to be represented; and he answered, there was so much wit in the piece, that he doubted of its success. What! you will exclaim, is that a fault, at a time when every one is in search of wit--when each one writes but to show that he has it--when the public even applaud the falsest thoughts, if they are brilliant?--Yes, doubtless, they will applaud the first day, and be wearied the second. What is called wit, is sometimes a new comparison, sometimes a subtle allusion; here, it is the abuse of a word, which is presented in one sense, and left to be understood in another; there, a delicate relation between two ideas not very common. It is a singular metaphor; it is the discovery of something in an object which does not at first strike the observation, but which is really in it; it is the art either of bringing together two things apparently remote, or of dividing two things which seem to be united, or of opposing them to each other. It is that of expressing only one-half of what you think, and leaving the other to be guessed. In short, I would tell you of all the different ways of showing wit, if I had more; but all these gems--and I do not here include the counterfeits--are very rarely suited to a serious work--to one which is to interest the reader. The reason is, that then the author appears, and the public desire to see only the hero; for the hero is constantly either in passion or in danger. Danger and the passions do not go in search of wit. Priam and Hecuba do not compose epigrams while their children are butchered in flaming Troy; Dido does not sigh out her soul in madrigals, while rushing to the pile on which she is about to immolate herself; Demosthenes makes no display of pretty thoughts while he is inciting the Athenians to war. If he had, he would be a rhetorician; whereas he is a statesman. The art of the admirable Racine is far above what is called wit; but if Pyrrhus had always expressed himself in this style: _Vaincu, chargé de fers, de regrets consumé,_ _Brûlé de plus de feux que je n'en allumai...._ _Hélas! fus-je jamais si cruel que vous l'êtes?_