Name of a fond Husband.
Indeed if I may speak my Opinion of great part of the Writings which once prevail'd among us under the Notion of Humour, they are such as would tempt one to think there had been an Association among the Wits of those times to rally Legitimacy out of our Island. A State of Wedlock was the common Mark for all the Adventurers in Farce and Comedy, as well as the Essayers in Lampoon and Satyr, to shoot at, and nothing was a more standing Jest in all Clubs of fashionable Mirth, and gay Conversation. It was determined among those airy Criticks, that the Appellation of a
Sober Man
should signify a
Spiritless Fellow
. And I am apt to think it was about the same Time, that
Good-Nature
, a Word so peculiarly elegant in our Language that some have affirmed it cannot well be expressed in any other, came first to be render'd suspicious, and in danger of being transferred from its original Sense to so distant an Idea as that of
Folly