ABSTRACT
Benjamin Jowett, in his Plato of 1875, told his readers that “you may often laugh at buffoonery which you would be ashamed to utter.” If Jowett had been a French neoclassicist of the seventeenth century, this might be interpreted as “permission to laugh according to the rules.” But since he was an Englishman of the Victorian age, he probably meant to say no more than that at times we cannot contain our mirth at hearing shameless obscenities we would never be guilty of saying ourselves.
