324 DRYDEN. 



And this consideration has often made me tremble when I 

 was saying our Lord s Prayer ; for the plain condition of 

 the forgiveness which we beg is the pardoning of others the 

 offences which they have done to us ; for which reason I 

 have many times avoided the commission of that fault, even 

 when I have been notoriously provoked.* And in another 

 passage he says, with his usual wisdom : &quot; Good sense 

 and good-nature are never separated, though the ignorant 

 world has thought otherwise. Good-nature, by which I 

 mean beneficence and candour, is the product of right 

 reason, which of necessity will give allowance to the 

 failings of others, by considering that there is nothing 

 perfect in mankind.&quot; In the same Essay he gives his own 

 receipt for satire : &quot; 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 ! . . . This is the mystery of 

 that noble trade. . . . 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. . . . There is 

 a vast difference between 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, of 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. ... 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 more obnoxious.&quot; 



Dryden thought his genius led him that way. In his 



* See also that noble passage in the &quot;Hind and Panther&quot; (1573- 

 1591), where this is put into verse. Dryden always thought in prose. 



