be of, in order to move laughter; viz. it must produce a perfonification. Then, if any incongruity attend it, and it be not capable of exciting a ferious emotion, the tendency to laugh will be inevitable. However, left this obfervation fhould not be found to be univerfally juft, the definition in the former part of the lecture is left to ftand in more general terms.

To fhew that any ferious emotion will deftroy the property we call either rifible or ridiculous in objects, we may confider the cafe of Sancho Panca fallen into a hole, which he took to be a deep pit, in the dark, and clinging to the fides with his hands and feet,' in the utmost dread of being dashed to pieces, and all the while within a foot of the bottom. This, especially confidering the character of the man, is certainly an object highly rifible. Perhaps no perfon could have refrained from laughing, if he had found him in that fituation; yet, if we had feen him in the fame posture, and his danger had been real; or, perhaps, if we had, found any perfon for whom we entertained a higher kind of respect, in the fame fituation, and without danger, we should not have been disposed to laugh at all. Our anxiety and concern in the former cafe, and our respect in the latter, would have overpowered it.

We, likewife, fee that, in perfons of little ferious religion, and great levity of mind, nothing will excite more profufe laughter, than the appli

cation

cation of passages of Scripture to very foreign and ludicrous purposes; whereas the fame thing will ftrike every serious perfon, who entertains a profound veneration for the Scriptures, with the greateft horror; or if the greatness and unexpectedness of the contraft fhould, in fpite of himfelf, as it were, furprize him into a laugh, he will foon recollect himself, and be very uneasy about it. We, likewise, see every day, that the fame views provoke only the laughter and ridicule of fome perfons, and the serious indignation of others.

LECTURE

LECTURE XXV.

Of BURLESQUE, PARODY, the MOCK-HEROIC, HUMOUR, and IRONY,

To make a fudden transition from a very high to a very low object that is fimilar to it, though fuch a transition be in itself disagreeable, yet, by means of the contraft which it produces, it may affect the mind with a lively fenfe of pleasure. This we may perceive in the following lines of Butler:

The fun had long fince in the lap,
Of Thetis taken out his nap;

And, like a lobster boil'd, the morn

From black to red began to turn.

HUD. Part II. Cant. II. Ver. 29.

This effect is called burlefque; and a great object degraded in this manner, and placed in the fame light with a mean and contemptible one, is faid to be burlesqued; the meaning of which is, that the ideas of meannefs annexed to the leffer object are, by this comparison, transferred to the greater, and adhere to it by affociation. These transferred ideas, being the reverse of the fublime, destroy the effect of every thing fimilar to it in the idea of a great object; and the confequence is, that the great

great object is afterwards mentioned with lefs respect and reverence than it was before.

A Parody, which is the application of a paffage of any author to a foreign, and generally lower purpose, is a kind of burlesque of a grave and ferious writer and confequently parodies have often an unfavourable effect upon the original author. For those foreign allufions will often occur in reading the original paffage, and prevent it from having its proper and intended effect.

For this reafon, if it be a matter of importance to preserve our reverence for any writings. (as, for instance, the scriptures) it is adviseable not to liften to fuch ludicrous applications of them. The unhappy effect of fuch applications is never wholly loft, till the allufion be forgotten. Should the allufion even mifs of its ufual effect upon light minds, and raise horror and indignation at the first hearing, it may not find the mind in fo favourable a disposition every time that it occurs; or if it do, ftill, as the fentiments of indignation are foreign to the design of the paffage, it is defirable that nothing even of that kind come in view when we read it.

Neither art, fcience, profeffion, character, nor any thing else, however venerable or refpectable, is exempt from the power of ridicule; because there is no fetting bounds to thofe analogies in nature or art which give rife to it. We fee the

greatest

1

greatest things analogous to the least, and the leaft to the greatest, without end or limit: infomuch that it is impoffible to name an object in any class of things (let us make the diftribution of them as we please) but some other object may be found analogous to it in any other class, even the mof remote we can think of. And whenever these analogies are brought into view, the refult is an alteration in the ideas of both the objects in which the analogy is perceived, occafioned by the reciprocal influences of the one upon the other. They are univerfally either increased or diminished, raifed or depreffed, &c. and the effect is more or lefs permanent, in proportion as the analogy is more or less striking. This effect is the fame, whether the objects be brought together in order to be compared or contrafted, because analogy is the foundation of both, and they differ only in this, that when things are compared, the points of refemblance are chiefly attended to; whereas, when they are contrafted, the circumftances of difference are principally noted. But it is neceffary, in order to their producing their respective effects, that the circumstances of difference be attended to in the former cafe, and thofe of refemblance in the latter.

Confidering how far and how wide analogies extend themselves through all the parts of nature; how poffible is it that an object, the most refpectable in the world, may be difcovered to be fo analogous,