with caution. It would be an
endless task to consider comedy in the same light, and to mention the
innumerable shifts that small wits put in practice to raise a laugh.
Bullock in a short coat, and Norris in a long one, seldom failed of
this effect.[A] In ordinary comedies a broad and a narrow brimmed
hat are different characters. Sometimes the wit of a scene lies in a
shoulder-belt, and sometimes in a pair of whiskers. A lover running
about the stage, with his head peeping out of a barrel, was thought a
very good jest in King Charles the Second's time, and invented by
one of the first wits of the age.[B] But because ridicule is not so
delicate as compassion, and because the objects that make us laugh are
infinitely more numerous than those that make us weep, there is a much
greater latitude for comic than tragic artifices, and by consequence a
much greater indulgence to be allowed them.

[Footnote A: Addison's comment about these two favourite comedians
shows that then, as now, eccentricity in dress formed a popular
species of stage humour.]

[Footnote B: Sir George Etherege, in his comedy of "The Comical
Revenge, or Love in a Tub."]

COMIC EPILOGUES

_(From the "Spectator")_

No. 338. FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 1712.

"Nil fuit unquam
Sic dispar sibi."
HOR. SAT. III. 1-1-18.

"Made up of nought but inconsistencies."

I find the tragedy of the "Distressed Mother" is published to-day. The
author of the prologue,[A] I suppose pleads an old excuse I have read
somewhere, of "being dull with design;" and the gentleman who writ the
epilogue[B] has, to my knowledge, so much of greater moment to value
himself upon, that he will easily forgive me for publishing the
exceptions made against gaiety at the end of serious entertainments in
the following letter: I should be more unwilling to pardon him, than
anybody, a practice which cannot have any ill consequence, but from
the abilities of the person who is guilty of it.

[Footnote A: Steele.]

[Footnote B: Addison credited Budgell with the epilogue.]

"MR. SPECTATOR,--I had the happiness the other night of sitting very
near you, and your worthy friend Sir Roger, at the acting of the new
tragedy, which you have in a late paper or two so justly recommended.
I was highly pleased with the advantageous situation fortune had given
me in placing me so near two gentlemen, from one of which I was sure
to hear such reflections on the several incidents of the play as pu