His satire will then
chiefly fall upon those who ought to be the most exempt from it.
Virtue, merit, and everything that is praiseworthy, will be made the
subject of ridicule and buffoonery. It is impossible to enumerate
the evils which arise from these arrows that fly in the dark; and I
know no other excuse that is or can be made for them, than that the
wounds they give are only imaginary, and produce nothing more than a
secret shame or sorrow in the mind of the suffering person. It must
indeed be confessed that a lampoon or a satire do not carry in them
robbery or murder; but at the same time, how many are there that
would not rather lose a considerable sum of money, or even life
itself, than be set up as a mark of infamy and derision? And in
this case a man should consider that an injury is not to be measured
by the notions of him that gives, but of him that receives it.
Those who can put the best countenance upon the outrages of this
nature which are offered them, are not without their secret anguish.
I have often observed a passage in Socrates's behaviour at his death
in a light wherein none of the critics have considered it. That
excellent man entertaining his friends a little before he drank the
bowl of poison, with a discourse on the immortality of the soul, at
his entering upon it says that he does not believe any the most
comic genius can censure him for talking upon such a subject at such
at a time.
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