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.
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