Readers will be as much startled to hear me affirm, that many of those raving incoherent Pieces, which are often spread among us, under odd Chimerical Titles, are rather the Offsprings of a Distempered Brain, than Works of Humour.
It is indeed much easier to describe what is not Humour, than what is; and very difficult to define it otherwise than as
Cowley
has done Wit, by Negatives. Were I to give my own Notions of it, I would deliver them after
Plato's
manner, in a kind of Allegory, and by supposing Humour to be a Person, deduce to him all his Qualifications, according to the following Genealogy.
Truth
was the Founder of the Family, and the Father of
Good Sense
.