"[79] And in another passage he says,
with his usual wisdom: "Good sense and good-nature are never separated,
though the ignorant world has thought otherwise. Good-nature, by which I
mean beneficence and candor, is the product of right reason, which of
necessity will give allowance to the failings of others, by considering
that there is nothing perfect in mankind." In the same Essay he gives his
own receipt for satire: "How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and
that wittily! but how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a
knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms!... This is the
mystery of that noble trade.... Neither is it true that this fineness of
raillery is offensive: a witty man is tickled while he is hurt in this
manner, and a fool feels it not.... There is a vast difference between
the slovenly butchering of a man and the fineness of a stroke that
separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place. A
man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain
piece of work, of a bare hanging; but to make a malefactor die sweetly
was only belonging to her husband. I wish I could apply it to myself, if
the reader would be kind enough to think it belongs to me.
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