XI. There is an universal Love and Practice of _Drollery_ and _Ridicule_ in all, even the most _serious_ Men, in the most _serious Places_, and on the most _serious Occasions_. Go into the Privy-Councils of Princes, into Senates, into Courts of Judicature, and into the Assemblies of the Kirk or Church; and you will find that Wit, good Humour, Ridicule, and Drollery, mix themselves in all the Questions before those Bodies; and that the most solemn and sour Person there present, will ever be found endeavouring, at least, to crack his Jest, in order to raise a Character for Wit; which has so great an Applause attending it, and renders Men so universally acceptable for their Conversation, and places them above the greatest Proficients in the Sciences, that almost every one is intoxicated with the Passion of aiming at it. In the Reports made to us of the Debates in the Houses of Lords, Commons, and Convocation, the serious Parts of the Speeches there made die for the most part with the Sound; but the Wit, the Irony, the Drollery, the Ridicule, the Satire, and Repartees, are thought worthy to be remember'd and repeated in Conversation, and make a Part of the History of the Proceedings of those Bodies, no less than their grave Transactions, as some such must necessarily be. Whoever will look into Antiquity for an Account of the Lives, Actions, and Works of the old Philosophers, will find little remaining of them; but some of their witty, drolling, and bantering Sayings, which alone have been thought worthy to be preserv'd to Posterity. And if you will look into the Lives of the modern Statesmen, Philosophers, Divines, Lawyers, _&c._ you will find that their witty Sayings ever make a considerable Part: by reporting which great Honour is intended to be done to their Memory. The great and most religious Philosopher Dr. _H. More_, has a great many Pieces of Wit attributed to him in his _Life_ by Mr. _Ward_, who represents him from his Companions, [101] _as one of the merriest Greeks they were acquainted with_, and tells us, that the Doctor said in his _last Illness_, to him[102], _that the merry way was that which he saw mightily to take; and so he used it the more_. The great and famous Sir _Thomas More_, Lord Chancellor of _England_ in _Henry_ the Eighth's time, was an inexhaustible Source of _Drollery_[103], as his voluminous Works, which consist for the most part of controversial Divinity in behalf of Popery, show, and which are many of them written in Dialogue, the better to introduce the _drolling_ Way of Writing, which he has us'd in such Perfection, that it is said [104] _none can ever be weary of reading them, tho they be never so long_. Nor could Death it self, in immediate view before his Eyes, suppress his _merry_ Humour, and hinder him from cracking _Jests_ on the _Scaffold_; tho he was a Man of great _Piety_ and _Devotion_, whereof all the World was convinced by his Conduct both in his Life and at his Death.