Abel Boyer

“ Boyer's remarks on wit are in keeping with his character. Like many of his contemporaries, he has something to say on the subject, but uses the term rather loosely. He would seem, though, to identify wit with genius, which gives evidence of itself in literary utterance. But judgment is a necessary concomitant of good wit. Conversely, the would-be wit lacks genius, expression, and judgment, and therefore turns critic, that he may denounce in others what is not to be found in himself. Hence the word critic has come to mean a fault finder rather than a man of sound judgment. ”

“ That Boyer's purpose in preparing _The English Theophrastus_ was moral is evident in the preface, where he describes the subject of his book as the "Grand-Lesson, _deliver'd by the_ Delphian _Oracle_, Know thy Self: _Which certainly is the most important of a Man's Life_." Distempers of the mind, he continues, like those of the body, are half cured when well known. Although philosophers of all ages have agreed in their aim to expose human imperfections in order to rectify them, their methods have differed. ”

“ Those moralists who have inveighed magisterially against man's vices generally have been "_abandon'd to the ill-bred Teachers of Musty Morals in Schools, or to the sowr Pulpit-Orators_." Those who, by "_nipping Strokes of a Side-wind Satyr, have endeavour'd to tickle Men out of their Follies_," have been welcomed and caressed by the very people who were most abused. ”