“Poor creature!” says the Reverend Philocalvin Frybabe. “Poor creature! little does he think what an account he must one day render for every idle word!” And what account, odious man, if thou art a hypocrite, and hardly less odious if thou art sincere in thine abominable creed,—what account wilt thou render for thine extempore prayers and thy set discourses! My words, idle as thou mayest deem them, will never stupify the intellect, nor harden the heart, nor besot the conscience like an opiate drug! “Such facetiousness,” saith Barrow, “is not unreasonable or unlawful which ministereth harmless divertisement and delight to conversation; harmless, I say, that is, not entrenching upon piety, not infringing charity or justice, not disturbing peace. For Christianity is not so tetrical, so harsh, so envious as to bar us continually from innocent, much less from wholesome and useful pleasure, such as human life doth need or require. And if jocular discourse may serve to good purposes of this kind; if it may be apt to raise our drooping spirits, to allay our irksome cares, to whet our blunted industry, to recreate our minds, being tired and cloyed with graver occupations; if it may breed alacrity, or maintain good humour among us; if it may conduce to sweeten conversation and endear society, then is it not inconvenient, or unprofitable. If for those ends we may use other recreations, employing on them our ears and eyes, our hands and feet, our other instruments of sense and motion; why may we not as well to them accommodate our organs of speech and interior sense? Why should those games which excite our wit and fancies be less reasonable than those whereby our grosser parts and faculties are exercised? yea, why are not those more reasonable, since they are performed in a manly way, and have in them a smack of reason; seeing also they may be so managed, as not only to divert and please, but to improve and profit the mind, rousing and quickening it, yea, sometimes enlightening and instructing it, by good sense conveyed in jocular expression.” But think not that in thus producing the authority of one of the wisest and best of men, I offer any apology for my levities to your Gravityships! they need it not and you deserve it not. _Questi— Son fatti per dar pasto a gl' ignoranti; Ma voi ch' avete gl' intelletti sani, Mirate la dottrina che s'asconde Sotto queste coperte alte e profonde. Le cose belle, e preziose, e care, Saporite, soavi e dilicate, Scoperte in man non si debbon portare Perchè da' porci non sieno imbrattate._[5] [Footnote 5: ORLANDO INNAMORATO.]