rescue his Eagle, panting in the tremendous gripe of the
critical Lion. His defence of Akenside is an argumentative piece of
criticism on the nature of ridicule, curious, but wanting the graces
of the genius who inspired it.[181]

I shall stop one moment, since it falls into our subject, to record
this great literary battle on the use of ridicule, which has been
fought till both parties, after having shed their ink, divide the
field without victory or defeat, and now stand looking on each other.

The advocates for the use of RIDICULE maintain that it is a natural
sense or feeling, bestowed on us for wise purposes by the Supreme
Being, as are the other feelings of beauty and of sublimity;--the
sense of beauty to detect the deformity, as the sense of ridicule the
absurdity of an object: and they further maintain, that no real
virtues, such as wisdom, honesty, bravery, or generosity, can be
ridiculed.

The great Adversary of Ridicule replied that they did not dare to
ridicule the virtues openly; but, by overcharging and distorting them
they could laugh at leisure. "Give them other names," he says, "call
them but Temerity, Prodigality, Simplicity, &c., and your business is
done. Make them ridiculous, and you may go on, in the freedom of wit
and humour (as Shaftesbury distinguishes ridicule), till there be
never a virtue left to laugh out of countenance."

The ridiculers acknowledge that their favourite art may do mischief,
when _dishonest men obtrude circumstances foreign to the object_. But,
they justly urge, that the use of reason itself is full as liable to
the same objection: grant Spinoza his false premises, and his
conclusions will be considered as true. Dyson threw out an ingenious
illustration. "It is so equally in the mathematics; where, in
reasoning about a circle, if we join along with its real properties
others that do not belong to it, our conclusions will certainly be
erroneous. Yet who would infer from hence that _the manner of proof_
is defective or fallacious?"

Warburton urged the strongest _case_ against the use of ridicule, in
that of Socrates and Aristophanes. In his strong and coarse
illustration he shows, that "by clapping a fool's coat on the most
immaculate virtue, it stuck on Socrates like a San Benito, and at last
brought him to his execution: it made the owner resemble his direct
opposite; that character he was most unlike. The consequences are well
known."

Warburton here adopted the po