The inquiry in the present chapter is not as to what creates the ludicrous, but as to what tends to vivify or obscure it. We shall not here attempt any surmises as to its essential nature, although we trace the conditions necessary to its due appreciation. A great number of things pass unnoticed every day both in circumstances and conversation, in which the ludicrous might be detected by a keen observer. The following is not a bad instance of an absurd statement being unconsciously made-- "One day when walking in the Black Country the Bishop of Lichfield saw a number of miners seated on the ground, and went to speak to them. On asking them what they were doing, he was told they had been 'loyin.' The Bishop, much dismayed, asked for an explanation. 'Why, you see,' said one of the men, 'one of us fun' a kettle, and we have been trying who can tell the biggest lie to ha' it.' His lordship, being greatly shocked, began to lecture them and to tell them that lying was a great offence, and that he had always felt this so strongly that he had never told a lie in the whole course of his life. He had scarcely finished, when one of the hearers exclaimed, 'Gie the governor the kettle; gie the governor the kettle!'" Under the head of unconscious absurdities may be classed what are commonly called "bulls," implying like the French "_betise_" so great a deficiency of observation as to approach a kind of brutish stupidity only worthy of the lower animals. A man could not be charged with such obtuseness if he were only ignorant of some philosophical truth, or even of a fact commonly known, or if his mistake were clearly from inadvertence. I have heard the question asked "Which is it more correct to say. Seven and five _is_ eleven, or seven and five _are_ eleven?" and if a man reply hastily "_Are_ is the more correct," he could not be charged with having made a "bull," any more than if a boy had made a mistake in a sum of addition or subtraction. If a foreigner says "I have got to-morrow's Times," we do not consider it a bull because he is ignorant that he should have said "yesterday's," and a person who does not understand Latin may be excused for saying "Under existing circumstances," perhaps long usage justifies the expression. For this reason, and also because no dulness is implied, we may safely say "the sun sets," or "the sun has gone in." To constitute a bull, there must be something glaringly self-contradictory in the statement. But every observation containing a contradiction does not show dulness of apprehension, but often talent and ingenuity. Poetry and humour are much indebted to such expressions--thus the old Greek writers often call offerings made to the dead "a kindness which is no kindness," and Horace speaks of "discordant harmony" and "active idleness." Some other contradictions are humorous, and most bulls would be so were they made