Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/509

 with how little justice they lay claim to victory, and how much less they deserve to be applauded than despised.

There are two circumstances which, either single or united, make any attainments estimable among men. The first is the usefulness of it to society. The other is the capacity or application necessary for acquiring it.

If we consider this art of scoffing with regard to either of these, we shall not find great reason to envy or admire it. It requires no depth of knowledge, or intenseness of thought. Contracted notions, and superficial views, are sufficient for a man who is ambitious only of being the author of a jest. That man may laugh who cannot reason; and he, that cannot comprehend a demonstration, may turn the terms to ridicule.

This method of controversy is, indeed, the general refuge of those whose idleness or incapacity disable them from producing any thing solid or convincing. They, who are certain of being confuted and exposed in a sober dispute, imagine that by returning scurrility for reason, and by laughing most loudly, when they have least to say, they shall shelter their ignorance from detection, and supply with impudence what they want in knowledge.

Nor will the possessours of this boasted talent or ridicule appear more to deserve respect on account of their usefulness to mankind. These gay sallies of imagination, when confined to proper subjects, and restrained within the bounds of decency, are of no farther use to mankind than to divert, and can have no higher place in our esteem than any other art that terminates in mere amusement.

But when men treat serious matters ludicrously, when they study, not for truth, but for a jest, when they unite the most awful and the most trifling ideas, only to tickle the imagination with the surprise of novelty, they no longer have the poor merit of diverting; they raise always either horrour or contempt, and hazard their highest