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weaknefs, ficknefs, health. When a very young man, fqt mr 

 fiance, talks in a ftyle of dogmatical gravity ; when an oicj 

 decrepid wretch conceals his years, and boafts of his youth and 

 vigour J when a ftrong Herculean fellow affumes the drefs of a 

 petit-maitre, and afFcds to lifp and amble ; or fome diminutive 

 and feminine form would, with the military garb, put on the 

 menacing brow and martial ftride ; all thefe abortive attempts to 

 afiume a quality which the perfon does not poffefs are as fair 

 fubjeds of laughter as a monkey when he imperfedly mimjc? the 

 adions of man. The incongruity ftriking us excites the idea of 

 relative imperfedion ; the fenfe of our own fuperiority, in this in- 

 flance, produces an inward triumph, and this triumph is exprefled 

 by laughter. 



But here it may be objeded, and I fhall once for all anfwer 

 the objedion, that laughter is fomctimes produced where no idea 

 of relative inferiority is imprefled, no triumph excited. In fup,- 

 port of this objedion we are referred to the inftancc? of witty 

 drolls, and facetious perfons, who, though capable of ading with 

 the utmoft decorum and accuracy, fall into voluntary blunderis 

 and ftudied folecifms, merely to entertain their com:panions .; 

 and of performers on the ftage, who reprefent clowns, and other 

 low and abfurd charaders. To this I reply, that both the jefter 

 And the player exhibit to us a fiditious charader ; we laugh 

 rather with them than at them ; not at what ithpy really Me, 

 but at what they would feem to be ^ the firft emotion .excited by 

 ^blunders ^nd improprieties is contempt: This is .the irnpreffion of 

 -the moment; it is not until afterwards, and on refledion, that 

 we perceive the imperfedion or abfurdity to be merely affeded, 



<L 2) and 



