So fharp-fighted is pride in blemishes, and fo willing to be gratified, that it will take up with the very flightest improprieties; fuch as a blunder by a foreigner in speaking our language, especially if the blunder can bear a sense that reflects upon the speaker: Quickly. The young man is an honest man. Caius. What shall de honeft man do in my clofet? dere is no honest man dat fhall come in my closet. Merry Wives of Windfor. Love-speeches are finely ridiculed in the following paffage. Quoth he, My faith as adamantine, Or oracle from heart of oak; His own, but your bright influence: VOL. II. G I'll I'll carve your name on barks of trees, Drink ev'ry letter on't in ftum, All fpices, perfumes, and fweet powders, And take all lives of things from you; The world depend upon your eye, Hudibras, part 2. canto 1. Irony turns things into ridicule in a peculiar manner. It confifts in laughing at a man under difguife, by appearing to praise or fpeak well of him. Swift affords us ma¬ ny illuftrious examples of this fpecies of ridicule. Take the following example, By thefe methods, in a few weeks, there ftarts up many a writer, capable of managing the profoundest and most "univerfal "univerfal fubjects. For what though his "head be empty, provided his common place book be full? And if you will bate " him but the circumftances of method, "and ftyle, and grammar, and invention; "allow him but the common privileges of "tranfcribing from others, and digreffing from himself, as often as he shall fee oc"cafion; he will defire no more ingre "dients towards fitting up a treatise that "shall make a very comely figure on a bookfeller's fhelf, there to be preserved "neat and clean, for a long eternity, ad"orned with the heraldry of its title, fairly infcribed on a label; never to be thumbed "or greafed by ftudents, nor bound to eit verlafting chains of darknefs in a libra ry; but when the fullness of time is come, fhall happily undergo the trial of purgatory, in order to ascend the sky * The following paffage from Arbuthnot is not lefs ironical. "If the Reverend clergy "fhowed more concern than others, I "charitably impute it to their great charge "of fouls; and what confirmed me in this *Tale of a Tub, fect. 7. G 2 sr " opinion opinion was, that the degrees of appre"henfion and terror could be distinguished "to be greater or lefs, according to their "ranks and degrees in the church*." A parody must be diftinguished from every species of ridicule. It enlivens a gay fubject by imitating fome important incident that is serious. It is ludicrous, and may be rifible. But ridicule is not a neceffary ingredient. Take the following examples, the first of which refers to an expreffion of Moses. The skilful nymph reviews her force with care: Let fpades be trumps! fhe faid, and trumps they were. Rape of the Lock, canto iii. 45. The next is an imitation of Achilles's oath in Homer. But by this lock, this facred lock, I swear, * A true and faithful narrative of what passed in London during the general confternation of all ranks and degrees of mankind. Which never more its honours fhall renew, Clip'd from the lovely head where late it grew), The following imitates the history of Agamemnon's fceptre in Homer. Now meet thy fate, incens'd Belinda cry'd, gown: Ridicule, as obferved above, is no neceffary ingredient in a parody. But I did not intend to say, that there is any oppofition betwixt them. A parody, no doubt, may be fuccessfully employed to promote ridi cule; |