seriously pensive), that all divertisement of mirth and pleasantness
should be shut out of conversation; and how can we better relieve
our minds, or relax our thoughts, how can we be more ingenuously
cheerful, in what more kindly way can we exhilarate ourselves and
others, than by thus sacrificing to the Graces, as the ancients
called it? Are not some persons always, and all persons sometimes,
incapable otherwise to divert themselves, than by such discourse?
Shall we, I say, have no recreation? or must our recreations be ever
clownish, or childish, consisting merely in rustical efforts, or in
petty sleights of bodily strength and activity? Were we, in fine,
obliged ever to talk like philosophers, assigning dry reasons for
everything, and dropping grave sentences upon all occasions, would
it not much deaden human life, and make ordinary conversation
exceedingly to languish? Facetiousness therefore in such cases, and
to such purposes, may be allowable.

2. Facetiousness is allowable when it is the most proper instrument
of exposing things apparently base and vile to due contempt. It is
many times expedient, that things really ridiculous should appear
such, that they may be sufficiently loathed and shunned; and to
render them such is the part of a facetious wit, and usually can
only be compassed thereby. When to impugn them with down-right
reason, or to check them by serious discourse, would signify
nothing, then representing them in a shape strangely ugly to the
fancy, and thereby raising derision at them, may effectually
discountenance them. Thus did the prophet Elias expose the wicked
superstition of those who worshipped Baal: "Elias (saith the text)
mocked them, and said, 'Cry aloud; for he is a god, either he is
talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure
he sleeps, and must be awaked.'" By which one pregnant instance it