"Suavis autem est et vehementer sæpe utilis jocus et facetiæ."—CIC. DE ORAT.
Abernethy's humour was very peculiar; and though there was of course something in the matter, there was a good deal more, as it appeared to us, in the manner. The secret of humour, we apprehend, lies in the juxtaposition, either expressed or implied, of incongruities, and it is not easy to conceive anything humourous which does not involve these conditions. We have sometimes thought there was just this difference in the humour of Abernethy, as contrasted with that of Sidney Smith. In Smith's, there was something that, told by whom it might be, was always ludicrous. Abernethy's generally lay in the telling.
"The jest's propriety lies in the ear Of him who hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it,"
although true, was still to be taken in rather a different sense from that in which it is usually received. The former (a far higher species of humour) may be recorded; the dramatic necessities of the other occasion it to die with the author. The expression Abernethy threw into his humour (though of course without that broadness which is excusable in the drama, but which would have been out of place in a philosophical discourse) was a quiet, much-subdued colouring, between the good-nature of Dowton, and (a little closer perhaps to the latter) the more quiet and gentlemanly portions of Munden.
Few old pupils will forget the story of the Major who had dislocated his jaw.
This accident is a very simple one, and easily put right; but, having once happened, it is apt to recur on any unusual extension of the lower jaw. Abernethy used to represent this as a frequent occurrence with an hilarious Major; but as it generally happened at mess, the surgeon went round to him and immediately put it in again. One day, however, the Major was dining about fourteen miles from the regiment, and, in a hearty laugh, "out went his jaw." They sent for the medical man, whom, said Abernethy, we must call the apothecary. Well, at first, he thought that the jaw was dislocated; but he began to pull and to show that he knew nothing about the proper mode of putting it right again. On this, the Major appeared to be very excited, and vociferated inarticulately in a strange manner; when, all at once, the doctor, as if he had just hit on the nature of the case, suggested that the Major's complaint was in his brain, and that he could not be in his right mind. On hearing this, the Major became furious, which was regarded as confirmatory of the doctor's opinion; they accordingly seized him, confined him in a strait-waistcoat and put him to bed, and the doctor ordered that the barber should be sent for to shave the head, and a blister to be applied "to the part affected."