ersons eminent in dignity or worth, unto whom
special veneration is appropriate. This adjoineth sauciness to
scurrility, and advanceth the wrong thereof into a kind of
sacrilege. 'Tis not only injustice, but profaneness, to abuse the
gods. Their station is a sanctuary from all irreverence and
reproach; they are seated on high, that we may only look up to them
with respect; their defects are not to be seen, or not to be touched
by malicious or wanton wits, by spiteful or scornful tongues: the
diminution of their credit is a public mischief, and the State
itself doth suffer in their becoming objects of scorn; not only
themselves are vilified and degraded, but the great affairs they
manage are obstructed, the justice they administer is disparaged
thereby.

In fine, no jesting is allowable which is not thoroughly innocent:
it is an unworthy perverting of wit to employ it in biting and
scratching; in working prejudice to any man's reputation or
interest; in needlessly incensing any man's anger or sorrow; in
raising animosities, dissensions, and feuds among any.

Whence it is somewhat strange that any men from so mean and silly a
practice should expect commendation, or that any should afford
regard thereto; the which it is so far from meriting, that indeed
contempt and abhorrence are due to it. Men do truly more render
themselves despicable than others when, without just ground, or
reasonable occasion, they do attack others in this way. That such a
practice doth ever find any encouragement or acceptance, whence can
it proceed, but from the bad nature and small judgment of some
persons? For to any man who is endowed with any sense of goodness,
and hath a competence of true wit, or a right knowledge of good
manners (who knows. . . . inurbanum lepido seponere dicto), it
cannot but be unsavoury and loathsome. The repute it obtaineth is
in all respects unjust. So would it appear, not only were the cause
to be decided in a court of morality, because it consists not with
virtue and wisdom; but even before any competent judges of wit
itself. For he overthrows his own pretence, and cannot reasonably
claim any interest in wit, who doth thus behave himself: he
prejudgeth himself to want wit, who cannot descry fit matter to
divert himself or others: he discovereth a great straitness and
sterility of good invention, who cannot in all the wide field of
things find better subjects of disco