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sure to raise envy, and consequently ill words, from the rest who
have no share in the blessing. But satire, being levelled at all,
is never resented for an offence by any, since every individual
person makes bold to understand it of others, and very wisely
removes his particular part of the burden upon the shoulders of the
World, which are broad enough and able to bear it. To this purpose
I have sometimes reflected upon the difference between Athens and
England with respect to the point before us. In the Attic {56b}
commonwealth it was the privilege and birthright of every citizen
and poet to rail aloud and in public, or to expose upon the stage by
name any person they pleased, though of the greatest figure, whether
a Creon, an Hyperbolus, an Alcibiades, or a Demosthenes. But, on
the other side, the least reflecting word let fall against the
people in general was immediately caught up and revenged upon the
authors, however considerable for their quality or their merits;
whereas in England it is just the reverse of all this. Here you may
securely display your utmost rhetoric against mankind in the face of
the world; tell them that all are gone astray; that there is none
that doeth good, no, not one; that we live in the very dregs of
time; that knavery and atheism are epidemic as the pox; that honesty
is fled with Astraea; with any other common-places equally new and
eloquent, which are furnished by the splendida bills {56c}; and when
you have done, the whole audience, far from being offended, shall
return you thanks as a deliverer of precious and useful truths.
Nay, further, it is but to venture your lungs, and you may preach in
Covent Garden against foppery and fornication, and something else;
against pride, and dissimulation, and bribery at Whitehall. You may
expose rapine and injustice in the Inns-of-Court chapel, and in a
City pulpit be as fierce as you please against avarice, hypocrisy,
and extortion. It is but a ball bandied to and fro, and every man
carries a racket about him to strike it from himself among the rest
of the company. But, on the other side, whoever should mistake the
nature of things so far as to drop but a single hint in public how
such a one starved half the fleet, and half poisoned the rest; how
such a one, from a true principle of love and honour, pays no debts
but for wenches and play; how such a one runs out of his estate; how
Paris, bribed by Juno and Venus, loath to offend either party, slept
out the whole cause on the bench; or how such an orator makes long
speeches in the Senate, with much thought, little sense, and to no
purpose;--whoever, I say, should venture to be thus particular, must
expect to be imprisoned for scandalum magnatum, to have challenges
sent him, to be sued for defamation, and to be brought before the
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