ork, the "Notice des
Diplomes."

[79] This paper, which is a great literary curiosity, is preserved by
Mr. Nichols in his "Literary History," vol. ii.

LITERARY RIDICULE.

ILLUSTRATED BY SOME ACCOUNT OF A LITERARY SATIRE.

RIDICULE may be considered as a species of eloquence; it has all its
vehemence, all its exaggeration, all its power of diminution; it is
irresistible! Its business is not with truth, but with its appearance;
and it is this similitude, in perpetual comparison with the original,
which, raising contempt, produces the ridiculous.

There is nothing real in ridicule; the more exquisite, the more it
borrows from the imagination. When directed towards an individual, by
preserving a unity of character in all its parts, it produces a
fictitious personage, so modelled on the prototype, that we know not
to distinguish the true one from the false. Even with an intimate
knowledge of the real object, the ambiguous image slides into our
mind, for we are at least as much influenced in our opinions by our
imagination as by our judgment. Hence some great characters have come
down to us spotted with the taints of indelible wit; and a satirist of
this class, sporting with distant resemblances and fanciful analogies,
has made the fictitious accompany for ever the real character. Piqued
with Akenside for some reflections against Scotland, Smollett has
exhibited a man of great genius and virtue as a most ludicrous
personage; and who can discriminate, in the ridiculous physician in
"Peregrine Pickle," what is real from what is fictitious?[80]

The banterers and ridiculers possess this provoking advantage over
sturdy honesty or nervous sensibility--their amusing fictions affect
the world more than the plain tale that would put them down. They
excite our risible emotions, while they are reducing their adversary
to contempt--otherwise they would not be distinguished from gross
slanderers. When the wit has gained over the laughers on his side, he
has struck a blow which puts his adversary _hors de combat_. A grave
reply can never wound ridicule, which, assuming all forms, has really
none. Witty calumny and licentious raillery are airy nothings that
float about us, invulnerable from their very nature, like those
chimeras of hell which the sword of AEneas could not pierce--yet these
shadows of truth, these false images, these fictitious realities, have
made heroism tremble, turned the eloquence of