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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,
As chains of destiny, I'll maintain;
True as Apollo ever spoke,

Or oracle from heart of oak;
And if you'll give my flame but vent,
Now in close hugger-mugger pent,
And shine upon me but benignly,
With that one, and that other pigfneye,
The fun and day shall sooner part,
Than love, or you, fhake off my heart;
The fun that shall no more difpenfe

His own, but your bright influence:

VOL. II.

G

I'll

I'll carve your name on barks of trees,
With true love knots, and flourishes;
That shall infufe eternal fpring,
And everlasting flourishing:

Drink ev'ry letter on't in ftum,
And make it brifk champaign become.
Where-e'er you tread, your foot fhall sẹt
The primrose and the violet ;

All fpices, perfumes, and fweet powders,
Shall borrow from your breath their odours;
Nature her charter fhall renew

And take all lives of things from you;

The world depend upon your eye,
And when you frown upon it, die.
Only our loves fhall ftill furvive,
New worlds and natures to outlive;
And, like to herald's moons, remain
All crefcents, without change or wane.

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

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"univerfal fubjects. For what though his "head be empty, provided his common

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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

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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.

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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,
(Which never more shall join its parted hair,

* 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),
That while my noftrils draw the vital air,
This hand, which won it, fhall for ever wear.
He fpoke, and fpeaking, in proud triumph spread
The long-contended honours of her head.
Ibid. canto iv. 133.

The following imitates the history of Agamemnon's fceptre in Homer.

Now meet thy fate, incens'd Belinda cry'd,
And drew a deadly bodkin from her fide,
(The fame, his ancient perfonage to deck,
Her great-great-grandfire wore about his neck,
In three feal rings; which after, melted down,
Form'd a vaft buckle for his widow's

gown:
Her infant grandame's whistle next it grew,
The bells fhe jingled, and the whistle blew;
Then in a bodkin grac'd her mother's hairs,
Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears.)
Ibid. canto v. 87.

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;

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