Essays on Wit No. 2

by Unknown

At nostri proavi Plautinos et numeros et
Laudeveres sales; nimium patienter utrumque,
Ne dicam stule, mirati; si modo ego et vos
Scimus inurbanum lepido seponere dicto.
HOR.
"And yet our fires with joy could Plautus hear;
Gay were his jests, his numbers charm'd their ear."
Let me not say too lavishly they prais'd;
But sure their judgment was full cheaply pleas'd,
If you or I with taste are haply blest,
To know a clownish from a courtly jest.
FRANCIS.

The fondness I have so frequently manifested for the ancients, has not so far blinded my judgment, as to render me unable to discern, or unwilling to acknowledge, the superiority of the moderns, in pieces of Humour and Ridicule. I shall, therefore, confirm the general assertion of Addison, part of which hath already been examined.

Comedy, Satire, and Burlesque, being the three chief branches of ridicule, it is necessary for us to compare together the most admired performances of the ancients and moderns, in these three kinds of writing, to qualify us justly to censure or commend, as the beauties or blemishes of each party may deserve.

As Aristophanes wrote to please the multitude, at a time when the licentiousness of the Athenians was boundless, his pleasantries are coarse and impolite, his characters extravagantly forced, and distorted with unnatural deformity, like the monstrous caricaturas of Callot. He is full of the grossest obscenity, indecency, and inurbanity; and as the populace always delight to hear their superiors abused and misrepresented, he scatters the rankest calumnies on the wisest and worthiest personages of his country. His style is unequal, occasioned by a frequent introduction of parodies on Sophocles and Euripides. It is, however, certain, that he abounds in artful allusions to the state of Athens at the time when he wrote; and, perhaps, he is more valuable, considered as a political satirist than a writer of comedy.

Plautus has adulterated a rich vein of genuine wit and humour, with a mixture of the basest buffoonry. No writer seems to have been born with a more forcible or more fertile genius for comedy. He has drawn some characters with incomparable spirit: we are indebted to him for the first good miser, and for that worn-out character among the Romans, a boastful Thraso. But his love degenerates into lewdness; and his jests are insupportably low and illiberal, and fit only for "the dregs of Romulus" to use and to hear; he has furnished examples of every species of true and false wit, even down to a quibble and a pun. Plautus lived in an age when the Romans were but just emerging into politeness; and I cannot forbear thinking, that if he had been reserved for the age of Augustus, he would have produced more perfect plays than even the elegant disciple of Menander.

Delicacy, sweetness, and correctness, are the characteristics of Terence. His polite images are all represented in the most clear and perspicuous expression; but his characters are too general and uniform, nor are they marked with those discriminating peculiarities that distinguish one man from another; there is a tedious and disgusting sameness of incidents in his plots, which, as hath been observed in a former paper, are too complicated and intricate. It may be added, that he superabounds in soliloquies; and that nothing can be more inartificial or improper, than the manner in which he hath introduced them.

To these three celebrated ancients, I venture to oppose singly the matchless Moliere, as the most consummate master of comedy that former or latter ages have produced. He was not content with painting obvious and common characters, but set himself closely to examine the numberless varieties of human nature: he soon discovered every difference, however minute; and by a proper management could make it striking: his portraits, therefore, though they appear to be new, are yet discovered to be just. The Tartuffe and the Misantrope are the most singular, and yet, perhaps, the most proper and perfect characters that comedy can represent; and his Miser excels that of any other nation. He seems to have hit upon the true nature of comedy; which is, to exhibit one singular, and unfamiliar character, by such a series of incidents as may best contribute to shew its singularities. All the circumstances in the Misantrope tend to manifest the peevish and captious disgust of the hero; all the circumstances in the Tartuffe are calculated to shew the treachery of an accomplished hypocrite. I am sorry that no English writer of comedy can be produced as a rival to Moliere: although it must be confessed, that Falstaff and Morose are two admirable characters, excellently, supported and displayed; for Shakespear has contrived all the incidents to illustrate the gluttony, lewdness, cowardice, and boastfulness of the fat old knight: and Jonson, has, with equal art, displayed the oddity of a wimsical humourist, who could endure no kind of noise.

Will it be deemed a paradox, to assert, that Congreve's dramatic persons have no striking and natural characteristic? His Fondlewife and Foresight are but faint portraits of common characters, and Ben is a forced and unnatural caricatura. His plays appear not to be legitimate comedies, but strings of repartees and sallies of wit, the most poignant and polite indeed, but unnatural and ill placed. The trite and trivial character of a fop, hath strangely engrossed the English stage, and given an insipid similiarity to our best comic pieces: originals can never be wanting in such a kingdom as this, where each man follows his natural inclinations and propensities, if our writers would really contemplate nature, and endeavour to open those mines of humour which have been so long and so unaccountably neglected.

If we proceed to consider the Satirists of antiquity, I shall not scruple to prefer Boileau and Pope to Horace and Juvenal; the arrows of whose ridicule are more sharp, in proportion as they are more polished. That reformers should abound in obscenities, as is the case of the two Roman poets, is surely an impropriety of the most extraordinary kind; the courtly Horace also sometimes sinks into mean and farcical abuse, as in the first lines of the seventh satire of the first book; but Boileau and Pope have given to their Satire the Cestus of Venus: their ridicule is concealed and oblique; that of the Romans direct and open. The tenth satire of Bioleau on women is more bitter, and more decent and elegant, than the sixth of Juvenal on the same subject; and Pope's epistle to Mrs. Blount far excels them both, in the artfulness and delicacy with which it touches female foibles. I may add, that the imitations of Horace by Pope, and of Juvenal by Johnson, are preferable to their originals in the appositeness of their examples, and in the poignancy of their ridicule. Above all, the Lutrin, the Rape of the Lock, the Dispensary and the Dunciad, cannot be parallelled by any works that the wittiest of the ancients can boast of: for, by assuming the form of the epopea, they have acquired a dignity and gracefulness, which all satires delivered merely in the poet's own person must want, and with which the satirists of antiquity were wholly unacquainted; for the Batrachomuomachia of Homer cannot be considered as the model of these admirable pieces.

Lucian is the greatest master of Burlesque among the ancients: but the travels of Gulliver, though indeed evidently copied from his true history, do as evidently excel it. Lucian sets out with informing his readers, that he is in jest, and intends to ridicule some of the incredible stories in Ctesias and Herodotus: this introduction surely enfeebles his satire, and defeats his purpose. The true history consists only of the most wild, monstrous, and miraculous persons and accidents: Gulliver has a concealed meaning, and his dwarfs and giants convey tacitly some moral or political instruction. The Charon, or the prospect, (επισχοπουντες) one of the dialogues of Lucian, has likewise given occasion to that agreeable French Satire, entitled, "Le Diable Boiteux," or "The Lame Devil;" which has highly improved on its original by a greater variety of characters and descriptions, lively remarks, and interesting adventures. So if a parallel be drawn between Lucian and Cervantes, the ancient will still appear to disadvantage: the burlesque of Lucian principally consists in making his gods and philosophers speak and act like the meanest of the people; that of Cervantes arises from the solemn and important air with which the most idle and ridiculous actions are related; and is, therefore, much more striking and forcible. In a word, Don Quixote, and its copy Hudibras, the Splendid Shilling, the Adventures of Gil Blas, the Tale of a Tub, and the Rehearsal, are pieces of humour which antiquity cannot equal, much less excel.