t the former. An author
without it, betrays too great a contempt for mankind, and opinion of
himself, which are bad advocates for reputation and success. What a
difference is there between the merit, if not the wit, of Cervantes and
Rabelais? The last has a particular art of throwing a great deal of genius
and learning into frolic and jest; but the genius and the scholar is all
you can admire; you want the gentleman to converse with in him: he is like
a criminal who receives his life for some services; you commend, but you
pardon too. Indecency offends our pride, as men; and our unaffected taste,
as judges of composition: nature has wisely formed us with an aversion to
it; and he that succeeds in spite of it, is,(5) aliena venia, quam sua
providentia tutior.

Such wits, like false oracles of old (which were wits and cheats), should
set up for reputation among the weak, in some Boeotia, which was the land
of oracles; for the wise will hold them in contempt. Some wits, too, like
oracles, deal in ambiguities; but not with equal success: for though
ambiguities are the first excellence of an impostor, they are the last of
a wit.

Some satirical wits and humourists, like their father Lucian, laugh at
every thing indiscriminately; which betrays such a poverty of wit, as
cannot afford to part with any thing; and such a want of virtue, as to
postpone it to a jest. Such writers encourage vice and folly, which they
pretend to combat, by setting them on an equal foot with better things:
and while they labour to bring every thing into contempt, how can they
expect their own parts should escape? Some French writers, particularly,
are guilty of this in matters of the last consequence; and some of our
own. They that are for lessening the true dignity of mankind, are not sure
of being successful, but with regard to one individual in it. It is this
conduct that justly makes a wit a term of reproach.

Which puts me in mind of Plato's fable of the birth of love; one of the
prettiest fables of all antiquity; which will hold likewise with regard to
modern poetry. Love, says he, is the son of the goddess poverty, and the
god of riches: he has from his father his daring genius; his elevation of
thought; his building castles in the air; his prodigality; his neglect of
things serious and useful; his vain opinion of his own merit; and his
affectation of preference and distinction: from his mother he inherits his
indigence, which makes him a con