rated elocutionist.
The villagers, attracted by the name, came in large numbers, and laughed
vociferously at all the pathetic parts, but looked grave at the humour.
This was, no doubt, partly owing to their habits of life, as well as to
a want of taste and information. Taste for music, and familiarity with
the traditional style of the Opera, enable us to enjoy dialogues in
recitative, but were a man in ordinary conversation to deliver himself
in musical cadences, or even in rhyme, we should consider him supremely
ridiculous.

Translations have often exhibited very strange vagaries of taste. Thus,
Castalio's rendering of "The Song of Solomon" is ludicrous from the use
of diminutives.

"Mea columbula, ostende mihi tuum vulticulum.
Cerviculam habes Davidicae turris similem--Cervicula quasi eburnea
turricula, &c."

Beattie is severe upon Dryden's obtuseness in his translation of the
"Iliad." "Homer," he says, "has been blamed for degrading his gods into
mortals, but Dryden has made them blackguards.... If we were to judge of
the poet by the translator, we should imagine the Iliad to have been
partly designed for a satire upon the clergy."

Addison observes that the Ancients were not particular about the bearing
of their similes. "Homer likens one of his heroes, tossing to and fro in
his bed and burning with resentment, to a piece of flesh broiled on the
coals." "The present Emperor of Persia," he continues, "conformable to
the Eastern way of thinking, amidst a great many pompous titles,
denominates himself the 'Son of Glory,' and 'Nutmeg of Delight.'"
Eastern nations indulge in this kind of hyperbole, which seems to us
rather to overstep the sublime, but we cannot be astonished when we read
in the Zgand-Savai (Golden Tulip) of China, that "no one can be a great
poet, unless he have the majestic carriage of the elephant, the bright
eyes of the partridge, the agility of the antelope, and a face rivalling
the radiance of the full moon."

Reflection is generally antagonistic to humour, just as abstraction of
mind will prevent our feeling our hands being tickled. Often what was
intended to amuse, merely produces thought on some social or physical
question. But the variability of our appreciation of humour, is most
commonly recognised in the differences of moral feeling. We have often
heard people say that it is wrong for people to jest on this or that
subject, or that they will not laugh at such ribaldry