wisdom into folly, and
bowed down the spirit of honour itself.

Not that the legitimate use of RIDICULE is denied: the wisest men have
been some of the most exquisite ridiculers; from Socrates to the
Fathers, and from the Fathers to Erasmus, and from Erasmus to Butler
and Swift. Ridicule is more efficacious than argument; when that keen
instrument cuts what cannot be untied. "The Rehearsal" wrote down the
unnatural taste for the rhyming heroic tragedies, and brought the
nation back from sound to sense, from rant to passion. More important
events may be traced in the history of Ridicule. When a certain set of
intemperate Puritans, in the reign of Elizabeth, the ridiculous
reformists of abuses in Church and State, congregated themselves under
the literary _nom de guerre_ of _Martin Mar-prelate_, a stream of
libels ran throughout the nation. The grave discourses of the
archbishop and the prelates could never silence the hardy and
concealed libellers. They employed a moveable printing-press, and the
publishers perpetually shifting their place, long escaped detection.
They declared their works were "printed in Europe, not far from some
of the bouncing priests;" or they were "printed over sea, in Europe,
within two furlongs of a bouncing priest, at the cost and charges of
Martin Mar-prelate, gent." It was then that TOM NASH, whom I am about
to introduce to the reader's more familiar acquaintance, the most
exquisite banterer of that age of genius, turned on them their own
weapons, and annihilated them into silence when they found themselves
paid in their own base coin. He rebounded their popular ribaldry on
themselves, with such replies as "Pap with a hatchet, or a fig for my
godson; or, crack me this nut. To be sold, at the sign of the
Crab-tree Cudgel, in Thwack-coat lane."[81] Not less biting was his
"Almond for a Parrot, or an Alms for Martin." Nash first silenced
_Martin Mar-prelate_, and the government afterwards hanged him; Nash
might be vain of the greater honour. A ridiculer then is the best
champion to meet another ridiculer; their scurrilities magically undo
each other.

But the abuse of ridicule is not one of the least calamities of
literature, when it withers genius, and gibbets whom it ought to
enshrine. Never let us forget that Socrates before his judges asserted
that "his persecution originated in the licensed raillery of
Aristophanes, which had so unduly influenced the popular mind during
_several years_!"