LXIV. Men who are always grave, may be termed a sort of entities between men and statues. Risibility being a property or quality inseparable from reason, he who denies himself the pleasure of laughing, degrades himself below the degree of a rational animal. Fools, are apt to esteem such people as men of sense, judgment, and mature understanding. But is a man’s deporting himself with the dryness and rigidity of a stock or a stone, a proof of his understanding? No brute is capable of laughing; and ought a property that is common to every brute, to be considered as a descriptive mark of, and the characteristic of a man of understanding? I look upon such a carriage, to bespeak an obstinate genius, and a man of a sullen temper. The antients were used to say, that all those who had ever entered the enchanted cavern of Trophonius, never laughed afterwards. If there is any truth in this story, which many people doubt, it is probable, that the infernal deity who was consulted in that cavern, instilled into those who consulted him this black diabolical melancholy. SECT. XIV. _Disgusting or unseasonable Jocoseness._ LXV. But excessive gravity, is perhaps not more repugnant to true Urbanity, than unseasonable jocoseness. Pleasantry in conversation, can be disagreeable but in three ways; by exceeding in the quantity of it, by indecency in the quality of it, and by its being deficient in point of nature. LXVI. He who is always laughing and upon the gog, may be more properly termed a buffoon, than a man of good-breeding. No person makes himself more ridiculous, than one who is always laughing, and he who is always affecting to be gay, is ever disgusting; and a man likewise who acts the jack-pudding all his life, is a mere jack-pudding and nothing more. LXVII. Cheerfulness may be also reprehensible, by degenerating into ribaldry, or by being over satyrical. The first, is properly the language of stables and tippling houses, and as I don’t write for lacqueys, grooms, and coachmen, we shall pass this over, and proceed on to the second point. Those who have a high opinion of their own talents, are very frequently guilty of this fault. I mean to speak of those who set themselves up for dictators, but who ought more properly to be termed babblers and praters, but I do not mean to enumerate in this catalogue, such, as may be truly termed men of understanding, but such only as Horace spoke of, when he said, that if opportunities occurred for indulging their satyrical vein, they made no scruple of lashing their most intimate friends. _Dummodo risum_ _Excutiat sibi, non hic cuiquam parcet amico._