divines, because they are but few who can be guilty of it.



TRUE AND FALSE HUMOUR.



- Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est.
CATULL., Carm. 39 in Egnat.

Nothing so foolish as the laugh of fools.

Among all kinds of writing, there is none in which authors are more
apt to miscarry than in works of humour, as there is none in which
they are more ambitious to excel. It is not an imagination that
teems with monsters, a head that is filled with extravagant
conceptions, which is capable of furnishing the world with
diversions of this nature; and yet, if we look into the productions
of several writers, who set up for men of humour, what wild,
irregular fancies, what unnatural distortions of thought do we meet
with? If they speak nonsense, they believe they are talking humour;
and when they have drawn together a scheme of absurd, inconsistent
ideas, they are not able to read it over to themselves without
laughing. These poor gentlemen endeavour to gain themselves the
reputation of wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as
almost qualify them for Bedlam; not considering that humour should
always lie under the check of reason, and that it requires the
direction of the nicest judgment, by so much the more as it indulges
itself in the most boundless freedoms. There is a kind of nature