that is to be observed in this sort of compositions, as well as in
all other; and a certain regularity of thought which must discover
the writer to be a man of sense, at the same time that he appears
altogether given up to caprice. For my part, when I read the
delirious mirth of an unskilful author, I cannot be so barbarous as
to divert myself with it, but am rather apt to pity the man, than to
laugh at anything he writes.

The deceased Mr. Shadwell, who had himself a great deal of the
talent which I am treating of, represents an empty rake, in one of
his plays, as very much surprised to hear one say that breaking of
windows was not humour; and I question not but several English
readers will be as much startled to hear me affirm, that many of
those raving, incoherent pieces, which are often spread among us,
under odd chimerical titles, are rather the offsprings of a
distempered brain than works of humour.

It is, indeed, much easier to describe what is not humour than what
is; and very difficult to define it otherwise than as Cowley has
done wit, by negatives. Were I to give my own notions of it, I
would deliver them after Plato's manner, in a kind of allegory, and,
by supposing Humour to be a person, deduce to him all his
qualifications, according to the following genealogy. Truth was the
founder of the family, and the father of Good Sense. Good Sense was
the father of Wit, who married a lady of a collateral line called
Mirth, by whom he had issue Humour. Humour therefore being the
youngest of this illustrious family, and descended from parents of
such different dispositions, is very various and unequal in his
temper; sometimes you see him putting on grave looks and a solemn
habit, sometimes airy in his behaviour and fantastic in his dress;