[104]
There are, generally
speaking, two sorts of jest: the one, coarse, rude,
vicious, indecent; the other, refined, polite, clever,
witty. With this latter sort not only our own
Plautus and the Old Comedy of Athens, but also
the books of Socratic philosophy abound; and we
have many witty sayings of many men—like those
collected by old Cato under the title of Bons Mots
(or Apophthegms). So the distinction between the
elegant and the vulgar jest is an easy matter: the
one kind, if well timed (for instance, in hours of
mental relaxation), is becoming to the most dignified
person; the other is unfit for any gentleman, if the
subject is indecent and the words obscene.
Then, too, certain bounds must be observed in
our amusements and we must be careful not to
carry things too far and, swept away by our passions,
lapse into some shameful excess. Our Campus,
however, and the amusements of the chase are
examples of wholesome recreation.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.