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 watching of frogs at
the side of a pond, and still as any of them put up their heads,
they would be pelting them down again with stones. "Children," says
one of the frogs, "you never consider that though this be play to
you, 'tis death to us."
As this week is in a manner set apart and dedicated to serious
thoughts, I shall indulge myself in such speculations as may not be
altogether unsuitable to the season; and in the meantime, as the
settling in ourselves a charitable frame of mind is a work very
proper for the time, I have in this paper endeavoured to expose that
particular breach of charity which has been generally overlooked by
divines, because they are but few who can be guilty of it.
TRUE AND FALSE HUMOUR.
- Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est.
CATULL., Carm. 39 in Egnat.
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, a 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.
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