|
Allied to mimicry is raillery, or teasing. While sarcasm and serious irony may be said not to belong to conversation at all, raillery, teasing, "kidding" are indispensable parts of good conversation. The whole world remembers Goldsmith's saying to Johnson that if he tried to make fishes talk his goldfish would talk like whales. Though this clinched the point against Johnson, there was an implied compliment in it. "Raillery," says Jonathan Swift, "is the finest part of conversation." Then he goes on to complain that raillery is not merely "repartee, or being smart." He explains: It now passes for raillery to run a man down in discourse, to put him out of countenance, and make him ridiculous; sometime to expose the defects of his person or understanding; on all which occasions, he is obliged not to be angry, to avoid the imputation of not being able to take a jest. It is |
|||
|
