the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.

Tale of a Tub.

In the following instances, the ridicule arises from absurd conceptions in the persons introduced.

Mascarille. Te souvient-il, vicomte de cette demilune, que nous emportâmes sur les ennemis au siege d'Arras ? Jodelet. Que veux tu dire avec ta demi-lune? c'étoit bien une lune tout entiere.

Moliere les Precieuses Ridicules, Sc. xi.

Slender. I came yonder at Eaton to marry Mrs. Anne Page; and she's a great lubberly boy.

Page. Upon my life then you took the wrong.

Slender. What need you tell me that? I think so when I took a boy for a girl; if I had been marry'd to him, for all he was in woman's apparel, I would not have had him.

Valentine. Your blessing, Sir.

Merry Wives of Windsor.

Sir Sampson. You've had it already, Sir; I think I sent it you to-day in a bill for four thousand pound; a great deal of money, Brother Foresight.

Foresight. Ay indeed, Sir Sampson, a great deal of money for a young man; I wonder what can he do with it.

Love for Love, Act II. Sc. 7.

Millament. I nauseate walking; 'tis a country-diversion; I lothe the country, and every thing that relates to it. Sir Wilful. Indeed! hah! look ye, look ye, you do? nay, 'tis like you may-here are choice of pastimes here in town, as plays and the like; that must be confess'd indeed. Millament. Ah l'etourdie! I hate the town too.

Sir Wilful. Dear heart, that's much- -hah! that you should hate 'em both! hah! 'tis like you may; there are some can't relish the town, and others can't away with the country-'tis like you may be one of these, Cousine.

Way of the World, Act IV. Sc. 4.

Lord Froth. I assure you, Sir Paul, I laugh at nobody's jests but my own, or a lady's: I assure you, Sir Paul.

Brisk. How? how, my Lord? what, affront my wit! Let me perish, do I never say any thing worthy to be laugh'd at?

Lord Froth. O foy, don't misapprehend me, I don't say so, for I often smile at your conceptions. But there is nothing more unbecoming a man of quality than to laugh; 'tis such a vulgar expression of the passion! every body can laugh. Then especially to laugh at the jest of an inferior person, or when any body else of the same quality does not laugh with one; ridiculous! To be pleas'd with what pleases the crowd! Now, when I laugh I always laugh alone.

Double Dealer, Act I. Sc. 4.

So sharp-sighted is pride in blemishes, and so willing to be gratified, that it takes up with the very slightest improprieties; such as a blunder by a foreigner in speaking our language, especially if the blunder can bear a sense that reflects on the speaker:

Quickly. The young man is an honest man.

Caius. What shall de honest man do in my closet? dere is no honest man dat shall come in my closet.

Merry Wives of Windsor.

Love-speeches are finely ridiculed in the follow

ing passage.

Quoth he, My faith as adamantine,
As chains of destiny, I'll maintain;
True as Apollo ever spoke,
Or oracle from heart of oak;
And if you'll give my flame but vent,
Now in close hugger mugger pent,
And shine upon me but benignly,
With that one, and that other pigsney,
The sun and day shall sooner part,
Than love, or you, shake off my heart;
The sun that shall no more dispense
His own but your bright influence:
I'll carve your name on barks of trees,
With true love-knots, and flourishes;
That shall infuse eternal spring,
And everlasting flourishing:
Q q

VOL. I.

Drink ev'ry letter on't in stum,
And make it brisk champaign become.
Where-e'er you tread, your foot shall set
The primrose and the violet ;

All spices, perfumes, and sweet powders,
Shall borrow from your breath their odours;
Nature her charter shall renew,

And take all lives of things from you;
The world depend upon your eye,
And when you frown upon it, die.
Only our loves shall still survive,
New worlds and natures to outlive;
And, like to herald's moons, remain
All crescents, without change or wane.

Hudibras, Part II. canto i.

Irony turns things into ridicule in a peculiar manner; it consists in laughing at a man under disguise of appearing to praise or speak well of him. Swift affords us many illustrious examples of that species of ridicule. Take the following.

By these methods, in a few weeks, there starts up many a writer, capable of managing the profoundest and most universal subjects. For what though his head be empty, provided his common-place book be full! And if you will bate him but the circumstances of method, and style, and grammar, and invention; allow him but the common privileges of transcribing from others, and digressing from himself, as often as he shall see occasion; he will desire no more ingredients towards fitting up a treatise that shall make a very comely figure on a bookseller's shelf, there to be preserved neat and clean, for a long eternity, adorned with the heraldry of its title, fairly inscribed on a label; never to be thumbed or greased by students, nor bound to everlasting chains of darkness in a library; but when the fulness of time is come, shall happily undergo the trial of purgatory, in order to ascend the sky.*

I cannot but congratulate our age on this peculiar felicity, that though we have indeed made great progress in all other branches of luxury, we are not yet debauched with any high

* Tale of a Tub, sect. vii.

relish in poetry, but are in this one taste less nice than our

ancestors.

If the Reverend clergy shewed more concern than others, I charitably impute it to their great charge of souls; and what confirmed me in this opinion was, that the degrees of apprehension and terror could be distinguished to be greater or less, according to their ranks and degrees in the church.*

:

A parody must be distinguished from every species of ridicule it enlivens a gay subject by imitating some important incident that is serious it is ludicrous, and may be risible; but ridicule is not a necessary ingredient. Take the following examples, the first of which refers to an expression of Moses.

The skilful nymph reviews her force with care:
Let spades be trumps! she said, and trumps they were.
Rape of the Lock, Canto iii. 45.

The next is in imitation of Achilles's oath in Homer.

But by this lock, this sacred lock, I swear,
(Which never more shall join its parted hair,
Which never more its honours shall renew,
Clipp'd from the lovely head where late it grew),
That while my nostrils draw the vital air,
This hand, which won it, shall for ever wear.
. He spoke, and speaking, in proud triumph spread
The long-contended honours of her head.

Ibid. Canto iv. 133.

The following imitates the history of Agamemnon's sceptre in Homer.

* A true and faithful narrative of what passed in London during the general consternation of all ranks and degrees of mankind.

Now meet thy fate, incens'd Belinda cry'd,
And drew a deadly bodkin from her side,
(The same, his ancient personage to deck,
Her great-great-grandsire wore about his neck,
In three seal-rings; which after, melted down,
Form'd a vast buckle for his widow's gown:
Her infant grandame's whistle next it grew,
The bells she jingled, and the whistle blew ;
Then in a bodkin grac'd her mother's hairs,
Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears.)
Ibid. Canto v. 87.

Though ridicule, as observed above, is no necessary ingredient in a parody, yet there is no opposition between them: ridicule may be successfully employed in a parody: and a parody may be employed to promote ridicule; witness the following example with respect to the latter, in which the goddess of Dulness is addressed upon the subject of modern education :

Thou gav❜st that ripeness, which so soon began,
And ceas'd so soon, he ne'er was boy nor man;
Through school and college, thy kind cloud o'ercast,
Safe and unseen the young Æneas past;*

Thence bursting glorious, all at once let down,
Stunn'd with his giddy larum half the town.

Dunciad, b. iv. 287.

The interposition of the gods, in the manner of Homer and Virgil, ought to be confined to ludicrous subjects, which are much enlivened by such interposition handled in the form of a parody; witness the cave of Spleen, Rape of the Lock, canto iv.; the goddess of Discord, Lutrin, canto i. ; and the goddess of Indolence, canto ii.

Those who have a talent for ridicule, which is seldom united with a taste for delicate and refined

*En. 1. i: At Venus obscuro, &c.