n this
occasion above all others.

With us all order and decency in this point is perverted by the insipid
mirth of certain animals we usually call "wags." These are a species of
all men the most insupportable. One cannot without some reflection say,
whether their flat mirth provokes us more to pity or to scorn; but if
one considers with how great affectation they utter their frigid
conceits, commiseration immediately changes itself into contempt.

A wag is the last order even of pretenders to wit and good humour. He
has generally his mind prepared to receive some occasion of merriment,
but is of himself too empty to draw any out of his own set of thoughts,
and therefore laughs at the next thing he meets, not because it is
ridiculous, but because he is under a necessity of laughing. A wag is
one that never in its life saw a beautiful object, but sees what it does
see in the most low and most inconsiderable light it can be placed.
There is a certain ability necessary to behold what is amiable and
worthy of our approbation, which little minds want, and attempt to hide
by a general disregard to everything they behold above what they are
able to relish. Hence it is, that a wag in an assembly is ever guessing
how well such a lady slept last night, and how much such a young fellow
is pleased with himself. The wag's gaiety consists in a certain
professed ill-breeding, as if it were an excuse for committing a fault,
that a man knows he does so. Though all public places are full of
persons of this order, yet, because I will not allow impertinence and
affectation to get the better of native innocence and simplicity of
manners, I have, in spite of such little disturbers of public
entertainments, persuaded my brother Tranquillus and his wife my sister
Jenny, in favour of Mr. Wilks, to be at the play to-morrow evening.

They, as they have so much good sense as to act naturally, without
regard to the observation of others, will not, I hope, be discomposed if
any of the fry of wags should take upon them to make themselves merry
upon the occasion of their coming, as they intend, in their wedding
clothes. My brother is a plain, worthy, and honest man, and as it is
natural for men of that turn to be mightily taken with sprightly and
airy women, my sister has a vivacity which may perhaps give hopes to
impertinents, but will be esteemed the effect of innocence among wise
men. They design to sit with me in the box, which the house have be