These poor gentlemen endeavour to gain themselves the
reputation of wits and humorists, 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 anything 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 offsprings of a
distempered brain than works of humour.
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