Queen Mary and Westfield College London University PhD Thesis ...

alias Joseph Warton, in The Adventurer of 1753, when relating an imaginary visit with Dean
Swift) 'laugh at the follies' and elicit laughter through their writings from their readers209.
Indeed, there is an extent to which Augustans felt that 'Madmen' and 'Frantick Behaviour'
deserved to be made a spectacle of 210 . Even those as pious, sensitive and grave as the poet,
William Cowper (who himself suffered successively from mental breakdowns), found it 'impos-
sible not to be entertained' by the 'humorous air' and 'many whimsical freaks' of the patienis
he witnessed at Bethlem211 . Although only 'a boy' when he had visited the hospital (probably
during the 1740s), and 'not altogether insensible of the misery of the poor captives, nor desti-
tute of feeling for them', his recollection was still demonstrative forty years later of something
so 'ludicrous' that it 'would conquer' the most 'settled gravity'.
This argument may be overdone, however. Members of the literati like Cowper repeatedly
denounced 'the entertainment of the rabble' in their writings 212 . Even (or especially) popularis-
ers, like Addison, refused to 'Laugh but in order to Instruct', and always preferred 'Instructing'
to 'Diverting'213 . Ludicrousness for its own sake was abhorred by enlightenment publicists.
Addison, Steele, Swift, and Pope, poured mountains of scorn upon the 'FALSE HUMOUR' or
'delirious mirth' of other authors, regarding wit divorced from morality as 'barbarous' and fit
only for the ignorant plebs 214 . Many Augustans, like the Bethlem governor and physician-poet,
Sir Richard Blackmore, remained hostile to 'delight' and amusement and devoted to didac-
ticism215 . Farcical 'mad Scene[s]' and visits to Bedlam, including those dramatised in The
209 Adventsrer, No. 109, 20 November 1753, 182-5. This visit was pure entertainment. It was elaborated,
running into a number of editions, and was chosen for reissue in The Bean ties of ll the Magazines Selected, vol.
i, December 1762, 481-5; vol. ii, March & April 1763, 100-102 & 195-8.
210 See Tatter, No. 125, 26 January 1710, 238, where Steele threaten, via the printed word to maice any
stubborn madman 'in a Months Time as famous as ever Oliver's Porter was'.
211 The Letters & Prose Writings of William Cowper (ad.), James King & Charles Ryskamp (Oxford, Clarendon,
1979-82), 3 vol., vol. II, ltr to John Newton dated 12 July 1784, 265. For more on Cowper'. breakdowns
see Porter, Manacles, 265-7; idem, A Social History of Madness. Stories of the Insane (London, Weidenfeld,
& Nicholson, 1987), 93-102, 242-3; and Cowper's own Memoir of the Early Life of William Cswper (London,
1816).
212 Cowper, Letters, vol. II, ltr to Newton, 26 April 1784, 236-8, re. election rabble, and pasaim.
213 Spectator, No. 179, 25 September 1711, 204-7.
214 Ibid, and No. 35, 10 April 1711. See, also, Noe 23 &58-63; Swift's ltr to Tatter, No. 230, 26-28 September
1710, in Jonathan Swift (Oxford, OUP, 1984), 252-5; and ,dem in The Intelhgencer, No. III, 1728, in Kathjeen
Williams, op. cit, 239-44
215 See a g. Blackmore's A Satire Against Wit (London, 1699), in George deF. Lord (ad.), Aiitteologp of Poems
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