But to return The Ridiculous only, as I have before said, falls within my province in the present work.  Nor will some explanation of this word be thought impertinent by the reader, if he considers how wonderfully it hath been mistaken, even by writers who have profess’d it; for to what but such a mistake, can we attribute the many attempts to ridicule the blackest villainies, and what is yet worse the most dreadful calamities?  What could exceed the absurdity of an author, who should write the comedy of Nero, with the merry incident of ripping up his mother’s belly, or what would give a greater shock to humanity than an attempt to expose the miseries of poverty and distress to ridicule?  And yet, the reader will not want much learning to suggest such instances to himself.

Besides, it may seem remarkable, that Aristotle, who is so fond and free of definitions, hath not thought proper to define the Ridiculous.  Indeed, where he tells us it is proper to comedy, he hath remarked that villainy is not its object:  but that he hath not, as I remember, positively asserted what is.  Nor doth the Abbe Bellegarde, who hath written a treatise on this subject, tho’ he shows us many species of it, once trace it to its fountain.

The only source of the true Ridiculous (as it appears to me) is affectation.  But tho’ it arises from one spring only, when we consider the infinite streams into which this one branches, we shall presently cease to admire at the copious field it affords to an observer.  Now affectation proceeds from one of these two causes; vanity, or hypocrisy:  for as vanity puts us on affecting false characters, in order to purchase applause; so hypocrisy sets us on an endeavour to avoid censure by concealing our vices under an appearance of their opposite virtues.  And tho’ these two causes are often confounded, (for they require some distinguishing;) yet, as they proceed from very different motives, so they are as clearly distinct in their operations:  for indeed, the affectation which arises from vanity is nearer to truth than the other; as it hath not that violent repugnancy of nature to struggle with, which that of the hypocrite hath.  It may be likewise noted, that affectation doth not imply an absolute negation of those qualities which are affected:  and therefore, tho’, when it proceeds from hypocrisy, it be nearly allied to deceit; yet when it comes from vanity only, it partakes of the nature of ostentation:  for instance, the affectation of liberality in a vain man, differs visibly from the same affectation in the avaricious; for tho’ the vain man is not what he would appear, or hath not the virtue he affects, to the degree he would be thought to have it; yet it sits less awkwardly on him than on the avaricious man, who is the very reverse of what he would seem to be.

From the discovery of this affectation arises the Ridiculous—­which always strikes the reader with surprize and pleasure; and that in a higher and stronger degree when the affectation arises from hypocrisy, than when from vanity:  for to discover any one to be the exact reverse of what he affects, is more surprizing, and consequently more ridiculous, than to find him a little deficient in the quality he desires the reputation of.  I might observe that our Ben Jonson, who of all men understood the Ridiculous the best, hath chiefly used the hypocritical affectation.