AKENSIDE TO MR. DAVID FORDYCE, At Mr. Gavin Hamilton's, Bookseller in Edinburgh. Newcastle, 30th July, 1743. DEAR SIR,-With respect to Shaftesbury's Test of Truth, I apprehend the matter thus :-Ridicule is never conversant about bare abstract speculative truth-about the agreement or disagreement of ideas which merely inform the understanding without affecting the temper and imagination. It always supposes the perception of some quality or object either venerable, fair, praiseworthy, or mean, sordid, and ignoble. The essence of the To yeλolov consists in the unnatural combination of these in one appearance; and hence you will observe the origin of that difference which is made between true ridicule and false; for I, by a wrong imagination, may apprehend that to be sordid and ignoble which really is not; I may also apprehend it inconsistent with the other appearances of reverence or beauty, when they are in fact perfectly coincident. Take an instance of each. I remember to have heard you condemn the late comic romance of Joseph Andrews, for representing Joseph's temperance against the offers of his lady in a ridiculous light; your sentence was perfectly just, for it is custom, corrupted custom, and not nature, which teaches us to annex ideas of contempt to such an abstinence; for by vicious conversations and writings the world is deceived, to think it incongruous, inconsistent with the character and situation of a man, and therefore ridiculous. An instance of the second kind may be this: suppose a gentleman nobly drest, a person of a public character, perhaps in the robes of his office, walking in a foul street, without any conceited airs or self-applause from his splendid appearance; suppose, by an accident or fall, his garment quite stained and defaced, the opposition between the splendour of one part of his dress, and the foul appearance of the other, might perhaps excite the sense of ridicule in a light, superficial mind; but, to a man of taste and penetration, the ridicule would immediately vanish, because, as our gentleman's mind was not fondly prepossessed with any conceit of worth or considerable splendour in his habit, so neither will the change produced in it give him any sensation of real disgrace or shame; consequently, in his mind there is no incongruity produced by this external circumstance, therefore nothing ridiculous in the man, in sentiment, in life: now take away all ideas of this intellectual and feeling species, and then try whether ridicule can have any place in an object; you will find, I believe, none at all. But alter the example a little, and suppose the person so begrimed to have been a fop, whose whole appearance and gesture showed how much he valued himself on his finery, there the ridicule will be irresistible and just, because the incongruity is real. Now, as to the test of our divine Master. This sense of ridicule was certainly given us for good ends-in a word, for the same sort of end as the sense of beauty and veracity and gratitude; to supply the slow deductions of our reason, and lead us to avoid and depress at first sight some certain circumstances of the mind which are really prejudicial to life, but would otherwise have required a longer investigation to discover them to be so than we are usually at leisure for. If, therefore, by any unfairness in an argument, certain circumstances relating to a point in question be concealed, to apply the ridicule is to drag out those circumstances, and set them (if they be opposite) in the fullest light of opposition to those others which are owned and pleaded for, and thus render the claim incongruous and ridiculous. Is there any great mystery or danger in this? and is not Mr. Warburton-are not all the priests in Christendom-at full liberty to inquire whether these circumstances which I represent as opposite and incongruous, be really so; and whether they are any way connected with the claim? If they be not, my procedure is certainly itself ridiculous, as connecting in my own mind the idea of the ro yeλotov with what is no way related to it, and very inconsistent with it. I have not yet fixed either the day of my departure or my route, being detained by some accidents longer than I expected, only I am pretty sure I shall set forward in the second week of August. If you could be at leisure to send me two or three letters enclosed in one to myself, the carrier who sets out every Thursday from Bristow Port would bring them safe enough, especially if you tell him I will give him sixpence or a shilling for his trouble. You or Russell might send them to his lodging by a cadie: you see my impudence, but you taught me it by your too great complaisance. There is another carrier, who sets out from the head of the Cow-gate; so that if one should not be in the way, you will find the other. I was half angry in mirth, that you should so misapprehend me about my difficulty in writing to Philostratus; I thought the word self-control would have given you a different idea of the matter than a diffidence and terror of appearing under so formidable an eye. I assure you, Sir, I wrote a very simple letter, without correction, without brilliancy, without literature. I wrote to Cleghorn last night, to make him laugh, to puzzle and astonish him in this combination of woes. As I make no doubt but he would think me distracted, you may be so good as tell him that you have received a letter, wrote the next morning, in which, after passing an easy night, with nine hours' sleep, there appears some pretty favourable symptoms of a return to my senses. I want letters from him and and Russell and Blair, immediately; for I have waited too long for them. Farewell: I shall write from London. Commend me to all ours. I am, dear Fordyce, your affectionate friend and obedient servant, M. A. --- LYTTELTON. 1709-1773. Son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, of Hagley, in Worcestershire - Educated at Eton and Oxford Visits France and Italy - Obtains a seat in Parliament. Made Secretary to Frederick Prince of Wales — His Friendship with Pope and Thomson Is twice married - Publishes his Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul' - Inherits his Father's Baronetcy Is created a Peer- Writes The History of the Reign of Henry II.' Death, and Burial at Hagley. GEORGE LYTTELTON, the son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, of Hagley in Worcestershire,' was born in 1709. He was educated at Eton, where he was so much distinguished, that his exercises were recommended as models to his school-fellows. From Eton he went to Christ-Church, where he retained the same reputation of superiority, and displayed [1728] his abilities to the public in a poem on Blenheim.' He was a very early writer, both in verse and prose. His Progress of Love' [1732], and his 'Persian Letters,' were both written when he was very young; and indeed the character of a young man is very visible in both. The verses cant of shepherds and flocks, and crooks dressed with flowers; and the letters have something of that indistinct and headstrong ardour for liberty which a man of genius always catches when he enters the world, and always suffers to cool as he passes forward.3 He stayed not long at Oxford; for in 1728 he began his 1 By Christian, the younger of two sisters of Sir Richard Temple of Stowe, created successively Baron and Viscount Cobham. 2 His 'Blenheim,' fol., 1728, is his earliest production in print. 3 In the Persian Letters,' as in all his other works, Lyttelton is but an imitator-the idea, the name, and some of the details are borrowed from the 'Lettres Persannes' of the President Montesquieu, then in high repute.-CROKER: Quar. Rev., No. 155, p. 229. |