When wit and humour are introduced for such good purposes, when the
agreeable is blended with the useful, then is the writer said to have
succeeded in every point. Pleasantry (as the ingenious author of
Clarissa says of a story) should be made only the vehicle of
instruction; and thus romances themselves, as well as epic poems, may
become worthy the perusal of the greatest of men: but when no moral,
no lesson, no instruction, is conveyed to the reader, where the whole
design of the composition is no more than to make us laugh, the writer
comes very near to the character of a buffoon; and his admirers, if an
old Latin proverb be true, deserve no great compliments to be paid to
their wisdom.
After what I have here advanced I cannot fairly, I think, be
represented as an enemy to laughter, or to all those kinds of writing
that are apt to promote it. On the contrary, few men, I believe, do
more admire the works of those great masters who have sent their
satire (if I may use the expression) laughing into the world. Such are
the great triumvirate, Lucian, Cervantes, and Swift. These authors I
shall ever hold in the highest degree of esteem; not indeed for that
wit and humour alone which they all so eminently possest, but because
they all endeavoured, with the utmost force of their wit and humour,
to expose and extirpate those follies and vices which chiefly
prevailed in their several countries.
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