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And, That what would be odious in a friend is deformity in a mistress.

be

"From these few principles, thus laid down, it will easy to prove, that the true art of assisting beauty consists in embellishing the whole person by the proper ornaments of virtuous and commendable qualities. By this help alone it is, that those who are the favorite work of nature, or, as Mr. Dryden expresses it, the porcelain clay of human kind, become animated, and are in a capacity of exerting their charms; and those who seem to have been neglected by her, like models wrought in haste, are capable in a great measure of finishing what she has left imperfect.

"It is, methinks, a low and degrading idea of that sex, which was created to refine the joys and soften the cares of humanity by the most agreeable participation, to consider them merely as objects of sight. This is abridging them of their natural extent of power, to put them upon a level with their pictures at Kneller's. How much nobler is the contemplation of beauty heightened by virtue, and commanding our esteem and love while it draws our observation! How faint and spiritless are the charms of a coquette, when compared with the real loveliness of Sophronia's innocence, piety, good humor, and truth; virtues which add a new softness to her sex, and even beautify her beauty! That agreeableness which must otherwise have appeared no longer in the modest virgin, is now preserved in the tender mother, the prudent friend, and the faithful wife. Colors artfully spread upon canvas may entertain the eye, but not affect the heart; and she who takes no care to add to the natural graces of her person any excellent qualities, may be allowed still to amuse, as a picture, but not to triumph as a beauty.

"When Adam is introduced by Milton, describ

ing Eve in Paradise, and relating to the angel the impressions he felt upon seeing her at her first creation, he does not represent her like a Grecian Venus, by her shape or features, but by the luster of her mind which shone in them, and gave them their power of charming:

Grace was in all her steps, heav'n in her eye,
In all her gestures dignity and love!

"Without this irradiating power, the proudest fair one ought to know, whatever her glass may tell her to the contrary, that her most perfect features are uninformed and dead.

"I cannot better close this moral than by a short epitaph written by Ben Jonson with a spirit which nothing could inspire but such an object as I have been describing:

Underneath this stone doth lie
As much virtue as could die;
Which when alive did vigor give
To as much beauty as could live.

"I am, Sir, your most humble servant,

AMONG all kinds of writing, there is none in which authors are more apt to miscarry than in works of humor, as there is none in which they are more

ambitious to excel.

It is not an imagination that

teems with monsters, a head that is filled with ex

travagant conceptions, which is capable of furnishing the world with diversions of this nature: and yet if we look into the production of several writers, who set up for men of humor, what wild irregular fancies, what unnatural distortions of thought do we meet with? If they speak nonsense, they believe they are talking humor; and when they have drawn together a scheme of absurd, inconsistent ideas, they are not able to read it over to themselves without laughing. These poor gentlemen endeavor to gain themselves the reputation of wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as almost qualify them for Bedlam ; not considering that humor should always lie under the check of reason, and that it requires the direction of the nicest judgment, by so much the more as it indulges itself in the most boundless freedoms. There is a kind of nature that is to be observed in this sort of compositions, as well as in all other; and a certain regularity of thought which must discover the writer to be a man of sense, at the same time that he appears altogether given up to caprice. For my part, when I read the delirious mirth of an unskillful author, I cannot be so barbarous as to divert myself with it, but am rather apt to pity the man, than laugh at anything he writes.

The deceased Mr. Shadwell, who had himself a great deal of the talent which I am treating of, represents an empty rake, in one of his plays, as very much surprised to hear one say, that breaking of windows was not humor; and I question not but several English 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 humor.

It is indeed much easier to describe what is not

humor, 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 Humor 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. Good Sense was the father of Wit, who married a lady of collateral line called Mirth, by whom he had issue Humor. Humor therefore being the youngest of this illustrious family, and descended from parents of such different dispositions, is very various and unequal in his temper; sometimes you see him putting on grave looks and a solemn habit, sometimes airy in his behavior and fantastic in his dress; insomuch that at different times he appears as serious as a judge, and as jocular as a merry-andrew. But as he has a great deal of the mother in his constitution, whatever mood he is in, he never fails to make his company laugh.

But since there is an impostor abroad, who takes upon him the name of this young gentleman, and would willingly pass for him in the world; to the end that well-meaning persons may not be imposed upon by cheats, I would desire my readers, when they meet with this pretender, to look into his parentage, and to examine him strictly, whether or no he be remotely allied to Truth, and lineally descended from Good Sense; if not, they may conclude him a counterfeit. They may likewise distinguish him by a loud and excessive laughter, in which he seldom gets his company to join with him. For as True Humor generally looks serious while everybody laughs about him; False Humor is always laughing, while everybody about him looks serious I shall only add, if he has not in him a mixture of both parents, that is,

if he would pass for the offspring of Wit without Mirth, or Mirth without Wit, you may conclude him to be altogether spurious and a cheat.

The impostor of whom I am speaking, descends originally from Falsehood, who was the mother of Nonsense, who was brought to bed of a son called Frenzy, who married one of the daughters of Folly, commonly known by the name of Laughter, on whom he begot that monstrous infant of which I have here been speaking. I shall set down at length the genealogical table of False Humor, and, at the same time, place under the genealogy of True Humor, that the reader may at one view behold their different pedigree and relations :

I might extend the allegory, by mentioning severat of the children of false humor, who are more in number than the sands of the sea, and might in particular enumerate the many sons and daughters which he has begot in this island. But as this would be a very invidious task, I shall only observe in general, that False Humor differs from the True, as a monkey does from a man.

First of all, He is exceedingly given to little apish tricks and buffooneries.

Secondly, He so much delights in mimicry, that it is