for some domestic calamity; a wife be made uneasy all her life, for a mis-interpreted word or action; nay, a good, a temperate, and a just man, shall be put out of countenance by the representation of those qualities that should do him honour. So pernicious a thing is wit, when it is not tempered with virtue and humanity.

I have indeed heard of heedless inconsiderate writers, that without any malice, have sacrificed the reputation of their friends and acquaintance, to a certain levity of temper, and a silly ambition of distinguishing themselves by a spirit of raillery and satire as if it were not infinitely more honourable to be a goodnatured man, than a wit. Where there is this little petulant humour in an author, he is often very mischievous without designing to be so, For which reason I always lay it down as a rule, that an indiscreet man is more hurtful than an illnatured one; for as the latter will only attack his enemies, and those he wishes ill to; the other injures indifferently both friends and foes. I. cannot forbear, on this occasion, transcribing a fable out of Sir Roger L'Estrange, which accidentally lies before me.

« A company of waggish boys were watch. ing of frogs at the side of a pond, and still

as any of them put up their heads, they << were pelting them down again with stones. « Children, says one of the frogs, you never «< consider, that though this may be play to « you, it is death to us. »

(No. XXIII. C.)

VIII.

Rísu inepto res ineptior nulla est.

MART.

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, an 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 humourists, 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 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 any thing 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 offspring of a dis-tempered 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 insomuch that, at different times, he appears as ́serious as a judge, and as jocular as a merry Andrew. But as he has a great deal of the mother in his constitution, whatever mood

he is in, he never fails to make his company laugh.

But since there is an impostor abroad, who takes upon him the name of this young gentleman, and would willingly pass for him in the world; to the end that well meaning persons may not be imposed upon by cheats, I would desire my readers, when they meet with this pretender, to look into his parentage, and to examine him strictly, whether or no he be remotely allied to Truth, and lineally descended from Good Sense; if not, they may conclude him a counterfeit. They may likewise distinguish him by a loud and excessive laughter, in which he seldom gets his company to join with him; for as True Humour generally looks serious, whilst every body laughs about him, False Humour is always laughing whilst every body about him looks serious. I shall only add, if he has not in him a mixture of both parents, that is, if he' would pass for the offspring of Wit without mirth, or Mirth without wit, you may conclude him to be altogether spurious and a

cheat.

The impostor of whom I am speaking, descends originally from Falshood, who was the mother of Nonsense, who was brought to