_The Burlesque._--When the wit is employed in debasing what is great and imposing, by applying thereto figures and phrases that are mean and contemptible, it takes the name of _burlesque_. The pages of Hudibras afford abundant illustrations of this form of the ludicrous. The battle of Don Quixote and the wind-mills is a burlesque on the ancient tournaments. _The Mock-Heroic._--The mock-heroic, by a contrary process, provokes the sense of the ridiculous by investing what is inconsiderable and mean with high-sounding epithets and dignified description. The battle of the mice and frogs is an instance of this. _The double Meaning._--Beside the varieties of intentional incongruity of ideas already mentioned, there are certain less important forms of witticism, which can perhaps hardly be classed under any of the foregoing divisions. The whole tribe of _double entendres_, or double meanings, where one thing is said and another thing is meant, or at least where the apparent and honest is not the only or the real meaning; _satire_, which is only a modification of the same principle, drawn out into somewhat more extended and dignified discourse, and which, under the form of apparent praise, hides the shafts of ridicule and invective; _sarcasm_, which conveys the intended censure and invective in a somewhat more indirect and oblique manner;--these are all but various modes of what we have called intentional incongruity of ideas. _This Principle, in what Respects of dangerous Tendency._--Of the value of this principle of our nature, I have as yet said nothing. To estimate it at its true worth, is not altogether an easy thing. On the one hand, there can be little doubt that, carried to excess, it becomes a dangerous principle. The tendency to view all things, even perhaps the most sacred, in a ludicrous light, and to discover fanciful and remote relations between objects and ideas the most diverse and incongruous, must exert an unhappy influence on the general tone and character of both the mind and the heart. Where wit, or the disposition to the ludicrous, becomes the predominant quality of the mind, impressing the other and nobler faculties into its lawless service, it must be to the detriment of the mind's highest energies and capacities; to the detriment especially of that sincerity and honesty of purpose, and that earnest love of truth, which are the foundation of all true greatness. I speak in this of the excess and abuse of wit; I speak of the _mere_ wit.