things find better subjects of discourse; who knows not how to be
ingenious within reasonable compass, but to pick up a sorry conceit
is forced to make excursions beyond the bounds of honesty and
decency.

Neither is it any argument of considerable ability in him that haps
to please this way: a slender faculty will serve the turn. The
sharpness of his speech cometh not from wit so much as from choler,
which furnisheth the lowest inventions with a kind of pungent
expression, and giveth an edge to every spiteful word: so that any
dull wretch doth seem to scold eloquently and ingeniously. Commonly
also satirical taunts do owe their seeming piquancy, not to the
speaker or his words, but to the subject, and the hearers; the
matter conspiring with the bad nature or the vanity of men who love
to laugh at any rate, and to be pleased at the expense of other
men's repute; conceiting themselves extolled by the depression of
their neighbour, and hoping to gain by his loss. Such customers
they are that maintain the bitter wits, who otherwise would want
trade, and might go a-begging. For commonly they who seem to excel
this way are miserably flat in other discourse, and most dully
serious: they have a particular unaptness to describe any good
thing, or commend any worthy person; being destitute of right ideas,
and proper terms answerable to such purposes: their representations
of that kind are absurd and unhandsome; their eulogies (to use their
own way of speaking) are in effect satires, and they can hardly more
abuse a man than by attempting to commend him; like those in the
prophet, who were wise to do ill, but to do well had no knowledge.

3. I pass by that it is very culpable to be facetious in obscene
and smutty matters. Such things are not to be discoursed on either