thinking, which is not to be taught, and therefore not to be
imitated by him who has it not from nature. How easy it is to call
rogue and villain, and that wittily! but how hard to make a man
appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those
opprobrious terms! To spare the grossness of the names, and to do
the thing yet more severely, is to draw a full face and to make the
nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of
shadowing. This is the mystery of that noble trade, which yet no
master can teach to his apprentice; he may give the rules, but the
scholar is never the nearer in his practice. Neither is it true
that this fineness of raillery is offensive; a witty man is tickled,
while he is hurt in this manner; and a fool feels it not. The
occasion of an offence may possibly be given, but he cannot take it.
If it be granted that in effect this way does more mischief; that a
man is secretly wounded, and though he be not sensible himself, yet
the malicious world will find it for him; yet there is still a vast
difference betwixt the slovenly butchering of a man, and the
fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body and
leaves it standing in its place. A man may be capable, as Jack
Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare
hanging; but to make a malefactor die sweetly was only belonging to
her husband. I wish I could apply it to myself, if the reader would
be kind enough to think it belongs to me. The character of Zimri,
in my "Absalom" is, in my opinion, worth the whole poem; it is not
bloody, but it is ridiculous enough; and he for whom it was intended
was too witty to resent it as an injury. If I had railed, I might
have suffered for it justly; but I managed my own work more happily,
perhaps more dexterously. I avoided the mention of great crimes,
and applied myself to the representing of blind-sides and little
extravagances; to which the wittier a man is, he is generally the