Another and primitive relation, that of old and young, or, in its special form, of father and child, amply displays its possibilities of fun on the comic stage. In the newer Attic comedy, we are told, representations of the old became frequent, now as austere and avaricious, now as fond and tender-hearted.[292] The contrast of the severe “Governor” and the fond “Papa,” which we have seen illustrated in Terence and Molière, clearly points to the fact that comedy, as play designed expressly for merry youth, favours the son’s case, and seeks to relax the paternal leading strings. Just as the too weighty rule of a father is apt to be laughingly pushed aside by comedy, so is that of the master. The intriguing, cheating valet of Latin comedy is the ancestor of many a domestic swindler, down to the Mr. Morgan whose sudden disappearance was regretted by Major Pendennis. The outwitted master, like the outwitted husband, is a comic figure that excites but little pity; perhaps, because the getting the better of one in power by his subordinate is never wanting in the agreeable look of a merry equalising of things. Other “humours” of social groups, that of trader, money-lender, and their clients, for example, are, as suggested in an earlier chapter, reflected in comedy. The same flavour of fun, the same kinship to child’s play, is recognisable in the speech of the comic stage. {354} Word-play here is merely the lighter interlude in what as a whole has much of the character of a game, the contest of rapier-like tongues in comic dialogue. Men have written weightily on the nature of wit and its relation to intellect in general and to humour. Their discourses seem hardly to capture its finer spirit. Locke started the discussion by his well-known distinction between wit and judgment, the former consisting in a bringing together of ideas with quickness and variety wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity; the latter in discriminating and separating ideas.[293] Addison, who accepts this definition in the main, is bound to add that, though wit is generally produced by resemblance and congruity of ideas, it is very often produced by their opposition.[294] Hazlitt follows Addison in including likeness and opposition. Wit, according to him, “is an arbitrary juxtaposition of dissonant ideas, for some lively purpose of assimilation or contrast, generally of both.”[295] All this, though it hints at a distinctive manner of intellectual activity, misses the mark by busying itself in the main with the question of a particular kind of relation of ideas. The rather solemn treatment of puns by these serious writers is characteristic. Addison deals with them under the head of false wit, and bravely attacks the ages for upholding the practice.[296] For thus spurning the humble pun, he was rendered blind by the god of laughter to the real nature of wit, as essentially a mode of intellectual play.