ny thing which hath a contrary tendency. Virtue is of primary importance, both for the happiness of individuals, and for the well-being of society; an exterternal polish is at best but a secondary accomplishment, ornamental indeed when it adds a lustre to virtue, pernicious when it serves only to embellish profligacy, and in itself comparatively of but little conse quence, either to private or to public felicity *. * Whether this attention has been always given to morals, particularly in comedy, must be left to the determination of those who are most conversant in that species of scenic representations. One may, however, venture to prognosticate, that if in any period it shall become fashionable to shew no regard to virtue in such entertainments, if the hero of the piece, a fine gentlemán, to be sure, adorned as usual with all the superficial and exterior graces which the poet can confer, and crowned with success in the end, shall be an unprincipled libertine, a man of more spirit, forsooth, than to be checked in his pursuits by the restraints of religion, by a regard to the common rights of mankind, or by the laws of hospitality and private friendship, which were accounted sacred among Pagans and those whom we denominate Barbarians; then, indeed, the stage will become merely the school of gallantry and intrigue; thither the youth of both sexes will resort, and will not resort in vain, in order to get rid of that troublesome companion, modesty, intended by providence as a guard to virtue, and a check against licentiousness; there vice will soon learn to provide herself in a proper stock of effrontery, and a suitable address for effecting her designs, and triumphing over innocence; then, in fine, if religion, virtue, principle, equity, gratitude, and good faith, are not empty sounds, the stage will prove the greatest of nuisances, and deserve to be styled, the principal corrupter of the age. Whether such an æra hath ever happened in the history of the theatre, in this or any o ther country, or is likely to happen, I do not take upon me to decide. ANOTHER remarkable difference, the only which remains to be observed, between the vhement or contentious and the derisive, consists in the manner of conducting them. As in each there is a mixture of argument, this in the former ought, in appearance at least, to have the ascendant, but not in the latter. The attack of the declaimer is direct and open ; argument therefore is his avowed aim. On the contrary, the passions which he excites, ought never to appear to the auditors as the effects of his intention and address, but both in him and them, as the native, the unavoidable consequences of the subject treated, and of that conviction which his reasoning produces in the understanding. Although, in fact, he intends to move his auditory, he only declares his purpose to convince them. To reverse this method, and profess an intention to work upon their passions, would be in effect to tell them that he meant to impose upon their understandings, and to bias them by his art, and consequently, would be to warn them to be on their guard against him. Nothing is better founded than the famous aphorism of rhetoricians, that the perfection of art consists in concealing art *. On the other hand, the assault of him who ridicules, is from its very nature covert and oblique. What we profess to contemn, we score to confute. It is on this account that the reasoning in ridicule, if at all delicate, is always conveyed under a species of disguise. Nay, sometimes, which is more astonishing, the contempt itself seems to be dissembled, and the rallier assumes * Artis est celare artem, an air of arguing gravely in defence of that which he actually exposeth as ridiculous. Hence, undoubtedly, it proceeds, that a serious manner commonly adds energy to a joke. The fact, however, is, that in this case the very dissimulation is dissembled. He would not have you think him in earnest, though he affects the appearance of it; knowing that otherwise his end would be frustrated. He wants that yon should perceive that he is dissembling, which no real dissembler ever wanted. It is, indeed, this circumstance alone, which distinguishes an ironical expression from a lie, Accordingly, through the thinness of the veil employed, he takes care that the sneer shall be discovered. You are quickly made to perceive his aim, by means of the strange arguments he produces, the absurd consequences he draws, the odd embarrasments, which in his personated character he is involved in, and the still odder methods he takes to disentangle himself. In this manner doctrines and practices are treated, when exposed by a continued run of irony; a way of refutation which bears a strong analogy to that species of demonstration termed by mathematicians, apagogical, as reducing the adversary to what is contradictory or impractible. This method seems to have been introduced first into moral subjects, and employed with success, by the father of ancient wisdom, Socrates. As the attack of ridicule, whatever form it adopts, is always indirect, that of irony may be said to be reverted. It resembles the manner of fighting ascribed to the ancient Parthians, who were ever more formidable in flight than in onset; who looked to VOL. I. E I wards one quarter, and fought towards the opposite; whose bodies moved in one direction, and their arrows in the contrary*. It remains now to confirm and illustrate this branch of the theory, by suitable examples. And, not to encumber the reader with a needless multiplicity of excerptions, 1 shall first recur to those already produced. The first, second, and fifth passages from Butler, the first from Pope, the first from Young, and the quotation from the Dispensary, though witty, have no ridicule in them. Their whole aim is to divert by the oddness of the imagery. This merits a careful and particular attention, as, on the accuracy of our conceptions here, depends, in a great measure, our forming a just notion of the relation which ridicule bears to wit, and of the distinction that subsists between them. Let this, therefore, be carefully remembered, that where nothing reprehensible, or supposed to be reprehensible, either in conduct or in sentiment, is struck at, there is properly no satire, (or, as it is sometimes termed emphatically enough, pointed wit) and consequently no ridicule. THE example that first claims a particular notice here, is one from Young's Satires The wittiness of this passage was already illustrated, I shall now endeavour to shew the argument couched under it, both which together constitute the ridicule. "Atheism is unreasonable." Why? "The Atheist "neither founds his unbelief on reason, nor will at"tend to it. Was ever an Infidel in health convinced by reasoning; or did he ever in sickness need to be "reasoned with on this subject? The truth then is, "that the daring principles of the libertine are solely "supported by the vigour and healthiness of his con"stitution, which incline him to pleasure, thought lessness, and presumption; accordingly you find, "that when this foundation is subverted, the whole "fabric of Infidelity falls to pieces." There is rarely, however, so much of argument in ridicule, as may be discovered in this passage. Generally, as was ob served already, it is but hinted in a single word or phrase, or appears to be glanced at occasionally, without any direct intention. Thus, in the third quotation from Butler, there is an oblique thrust at Homer, for his manner of recurring so often in poems of so great dignity, to such mean and trifling epithets. The fourth and the sixth satirize the particular fanatical practice, and fanatical opinion, to which they refer. To assign a preposterous motive to an action, or to produce an absurd argument for an opinion, is an innuendo, that no good motive or argument can be given. The citations from the Rape of the Lock * We have an excellent specimen of this sort of ridicule, in Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, B. xv. C. 5. where the practice |