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wit by the description which Aristenetus | the bosom of his mistress is as white as makes of a fine woman: when she is dressed she is beautiful; when she is undressed she is beautiful; or as Mercerus has translated it more emphatically, Induitur, formosa est: exuiter, ipsa, forma est.’* C.

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MR. LOCKE has an admirable reflection upon the difference of wit and judgment, whereby he endeavours to show the reason why they are not always the talents of the same person. His words are as follow: And hence, perhaps, may be given some reason of that common observation, That men who have a great deal of wit, and prompt memories, have not always the clearest judgment or deepest reason. For wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures, and agreeable visions in the fancy; judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and by affinity to take one thing for another. This is a way of proceeding quite contrary to metaphor and allusion; wherein, for the most part, lies that entertainment and pleasantry of wit, which strikes so lively on the fancy, and is therefore so acceptable to all people.'

This, I think, the best and most philosophical account that I have ever met with of wit, which generally, though not always, consists in such a resemblance and congruity of ideas as this author mentions. I shall only add to it, by way of explanation, that every resemblance of ideas is not that which we call wit, unless it be such an one that gives delight and surprise to the reader. These two properties seem essential to wit, more particularly the last of them. In order therefore that the resemblance in the ideas be wit, it is necessary that the ideas should not lie too near one another in the nature of things; for where the likeness is obvious it gives no surprise. To compare one man's singing to that of another, or to represent the whiteness of any object by that of milk and snow, or the variety of its colours by those of the rainbow, cannot be called wit, unless besides this obvious resemblance, there be some further congruity discovered in the two ideas, that is capable of giving the reader some surprise. Thus when a poet tells us

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snow, there is no wit in the comparison; but when he adds with a sigh, it is as cold, too, it, then grows into wit. Every reader's memory may supply him with innumerable instances of the same nature. For this reason, the similitudes in heroic poets, who endeavour rather to fill the mind with great conceptions, than to divert it with such as are new and surprising, have seldom any thing in them that can be called wit. Mr. Locke's account of wit, with this short explanation, comprehends most of the species of wit, as metaphors, similitudes, allegories, enigmas, mottos, parables, fables, dreams, visions, dramatic writings, burlesque, and all the methods of allusion. There are many other pieces of wit (however remote soever they may appear at first sight from the foregoing description) which upon examination will be found to agree with it.

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As true wit generally consists in this re semblance and congruity of ideas, false wit chiefly consists in the resemblance and con gruity sometimes of single letters, as in anagrams, chronograms, lipograms, and acrostics; sometimes of syllables, as in echoes and doggerel rhymes; sometimes of words, as in puns and quibbles; and sometimes of whole sentences or poems, cast into the figures of eggs, axes, or altars: nay, some carry the notion of wit so far, as to ascribe it even to external mimickry; and to look upon a man as an ingenious person, that can resemble the tone, posture, or face of another.

As true wit consists in the resemblance of ideas, and false wit in the resemblance of words, according to the foregoing instances; there is another kind of wit which consists partly in the resemblance of ideas, and partly in the resemblance of words, which for distinction sake I shall call mixt wit. This kind of wit is that which abounds in Cowley, more than in any author that ever wrote. Mr. Waller has likewise a great deal of it. Mr. Dryden is very sparing in it. Milton had a genius much above it. Spenser is in the same class with Milton. The Italians, even in their epic poetry, are full of it. Monsieur Boileau, who formed himself upon the ancient poets, has every where rejected it with scorn. we look after mixt wit among the Greek writers, we shall find it no where but in the epigrammatists. There are indeed some strokes of it in the little poem ascribed to Museus, which by that, as well as many other marks, betrays itself to be a modern composition. If we look into the Latin writers, we find none of this mixt wit in Virgil, Lucretius, or Catullus; very little in Horace, but a great deal of it in Ovid, and scarce any thing else in Martial.

If

Out of the innumerable branches of mixt wit, I shall choose one instance which may be met with in all the writers of this class. The passion of love in its nature has beer

It may be expected, since I am upon this subject, that I should take notice of Mr. Dryden's definition of wit: which, with all the deference that is due to the judgment of so great a man, is not so properly a definition of wit as of good writing in general. Wit, as he defines it, is a propriety of words and thoughts adapted to the subject.' If this be a true definition of wit, I am apt to think that Euclid was the greatest wit that ever put pen to paper. It is certain there never was a greater propriety of words and thoughts adapted to the subject, than what that author has made use of in his Elements. I shall only appeal to my reader, if this definition agrees with any notion he has of wit. If it be a true one, I am sure Mr. Dryden was not only a better poet, but a greater wit than Mr. Cowley; and Virgil a much more facetious man than either Ovid or Martial.

thought to resemble fire; for which reason | author that ever writ; and indeed all other the words fire and flame are made use of to talents of an extraordinary genius. signify love. The witty poets therefore have taken an advantage from the double meaning of the word fire, to make an infinite number of witticisms. Cowley observing the cold regard of his mistress's eyes, and at the same time their power of producing love in him, considers them as burning-glasses made of ice; and finding himself able to live in the greatest extremities of love, concludes the torrid zone to be habitable. When his mistress had read his letter written in juice of lemon, by holding it to the fire, he desires her to read it over a second time by love's flame. When she weeps, he wishes it were inward heat that distilled those drops from the limbec. When she is absent, he is beyond eighty, that is, thirty degrees nearer the pole than when she is with him. His ambitious love is a fire that naturally mounts upwards; his happy love is the beams of heaven, and his unhappy love flames of hell. When it does not let him sleep, it is a flame that sends up no smoke; when it is opposed by counsel and advice, it is a fire that rages the more by the winds blowing upon it. Upon the dying of a tree, in which he had cut his loves, he observed that his written flames had burnt up and withered the tree. When he resolves to give over his passion, he tells us, that one burnt like him for ever dreads the fire. His heart is in Ætna, that instead of Vulcan's shop, encloses Cupid's forge in it. His endeavouring to drown his love in wine, is throwing oil upon the fire. He would insinuate to his mistress, that the fire of love, like that of the sun (which produces so many living creatures,) should not only warm, but beget. Love in another place cooks pleasure at his fire. Sometimes the poet's heart is frozen in every breast, and sometimes scorched in every eye. Sometimes he is drowned in tears, and burnt in love, like a ship set on fire in the middle of the sea.

Bouhours, whom I look upon to be the most penetrating of all the French critics, has taken pains to show, that it is impossible for any thought to be beautiful which is not just, and has not its foundation in the nature of things; that the basis of all wit is truth; and that no thought can be valuable of which good sense is not the groundwork. Boileau has endeavoured to inculcate the same notion in several parts of his writings, both in prose and verse. This is that natural way of writing, that beautiful simplicity, which we so much admire in the compositions of the ancients; and which no body deviates from, but those who want strength of genius to make a thought shine in its own natural beauties. Poets who want this strength of genius to give that majestic simplicity to nature, which we so much admire in the works of the ancients, are forced to hunt after foreign ornaments, and not to let any piece of wit of what kind soever escape them. I look upon these writers as Goths in poetry, who, like those The reader may observe in every one of in architecture, not being able to come these instances, that the poet mixes the up to the beautiful simplicity of the old qualities of fire with those of love; and in Greeks and Romans, have endeavoured to the same sentence, speaking of it both as supply its place with all the extravagances a passion and as real fire, surprises the of an irregular fancy. Mr. Dryden makes reader with those seeming resemblances a very handsome observation on Ovid's or contradictions, that make up all the wit writing a letter from Dido to Æneas, in in this kind of writing. Mixt wit, there- the following words: 'Ovid,' says he, fore, is a composition of pun and true wit, speaking of Virgil's fiction of Dido and and is more or less perfect, as the resem- Æneas, takes it up after him even in the blance lies in the ideas or in the words. same age, and makes an ancient heroine of Its foundations are laid partly in falsehood Virgil's new created Dido; dictates a letand partly in truth; reason puts in her ter for her just before her death, to the unclaim for one half of it, and extravagance grateful fugitive, and very unluckily for for the other. The only province there- himself, is for measuring a sword with a fore for this kind of wit, is epigram, or man so much superior in force to him on those little occasional poems, that in their the same subject. I think I may be judge own nature are nothing else but a tissue of of this, because I have translated both. epigrams. I cannot conclude this head of The famous author of the Art of Love has mixt wit, without owning that the admira- nothing of his own; he borrows all from a ble poet, out of whom I have taken the ex-greater master in his own profession, and amples of it. had as much true wit as any which is worse improves nothing which

he finds. Nature fails him, and being forced to his old shift, he has recourse to witticism. This passes indeed with his soft admirers, and gives him the preference to Virgil in their esteem.'

If in a picture, Piso, you should see
A handsome woman with a fish's tail,
Or a man's head upon a horse's neck,
Or limbs of beast, of the most diff'rent kinds,
Cover'd with feathers of all sorts of birds;
Would you not laugh, and think the painter mad?
Trust me that book is as ridiculous,
Whose incoherent style, like sick men's dreams,
Varies all shapes, and mixes all extremes.

Roscommon.

The

Were not I supported by so great an authority as that of Mr. Dryden, I should not venture to observe, that the taste of most of our English poets, as well as read- It is very hard for the mind to disengage ers, is extremely Gothic. He quotes Mon- itself from a subject on which it has been sieur Segrais for a threefold distinction of long employed. The thoughts will be rising the readers of poetry; in the first of which of themselves from time to time, though he comprehends the rabble of readers, we give them no encouragement; as the whom he does not treat as such with re- tossings and fluctuations of the sea continue gard to their quality, but to their numbers | several hours after the winds are laid. and the coarseness of their taste. His It is to this that I impute my last night's words are as follow: 'Segrais has distin-dream or vision, which formed into one conguished the readers of poetry, according to tinued allegory the several schemes of wit, their capacity of judging, into three classes. whether false, mixed, or true, that have [He might have said the same of writers, been the subject of my late papers. too, if he had pleased.] In the lowest form he places those whom he calls Les Petits Esprits, such things as are our upper-gallery audience in a playhouse; who like nothing but the husk and rind of wit, and prefer a quibble, a conceit, an epigram, before solid sense and elegant expression. These are mob readers. If Virgil and Martial, stood for parliament-men, we know already who would carry it. But though they make the greatest appearance in the field, and cry the loudest, the best on it is, they are but a sort of French hugonots, or Dutch boors, brought over in herds, but not naturalized; who have not lands of two pounds per annum in Parnassus, and therefore are not privileged to poll. Their authors are of the same level, fit to represent them on a mountebank's stage, or to be masters of the ceremonies in a bear-garden: yet these are they who have the most admirers. But it often happens, to their mortification, that as their readers improve their stock of sense (as they may by reading better books, and by conversation with men of judgment) they soon forsake them. I must not dismiss this subject without observing, that as Mr. Locke in the passage above mentioned has discovered the most fruitful source of wit, so there is another of a quite contrary nature to it, which does likewise branch itself out into several kinds. For not only the resemblance, but the opposition of ideas does very often produce wit; as I could show in several little points, turns, and antitheses, that I may possibly enlarge upon in some future specuIation. C.

No. 63.] Saturday, May 12, 1711.

Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam
Jungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas
Undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum
Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne:
Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?
Credite, Pisones, isti tabulæ fore librum
Persimilem, cujus, velut ægri somnia, vane
Fingentur species-
Hor. Ars Poet. ver. 1.

Methought I was transported into a country that was filled with prodigies and en chantments, governed by the goddess of Falsehood, and entitled the region of False Wit. There was nothing in the fields, the woods, and the rivers, that appeared natural. Several of the trees blossomed in leafgold, some of them produced bone-lace, and some of them precious stones. fountains bubbled in an opera tune, and were filled with stags, wild boars, and mermaids that lived among the waters; at the same time that dolphins and several kinds of fish played upon the banks, or took their pastime in the meadows. The birds had many of them golden beaks, and human voices. The flowers perfumed the air with smells of incense, ambergris, and pulvillios*; and were so interwoven with one another, that they grew up in pieces of embroidery. The winds were filled with sighs and messages of distant lovers. As I was walking to and fro in this enchanted wilderness, I could not forbear breaking out into soliloquies upon the several wonders which lay before me, when to my great surprise, I found there were artificial echoes in every walk, that by repetitions of certain words which I spoke, agreed with me, or contradicted me, in every thing I said. In the midst of my conversation with these invisible companions, I discovered in the centre of a very dark grove a monstrous fabric built after the Gothic manner, and covered with innumerable devices in that barbarous kind of sculpture. I immediately went up to it, and found it to be a kind of heathen temple consecrated to the god of dulness. Upon my entrance I saw the deity of the place dressed in the habit of a monk, with a book in one hand and a rattle in the other. Upon his right hand was Industry, with a lamp burning before her; and on his left Caprice, with a monkey sitting on her shoulder. Before his feet there stood an altar of a very odd make, which, as I afterwards found, was shaped in that manner to comply with

*Fulvillios sweet-scented powders.

the inscription that surrounded it. Upon though perhaps there was not the least rethe altar there lay several offerings of axes, semblance in their faces. By this means an wings, and eggs, cut in paper, and inscribed old man was sometimes mistaken for a boy, with verses. The temple was filled with a woman for a man, and a black-a-moor for votaries, who applied themselves to dif- an European, which very often produced ferent diversions, as their fancies directed great peals of laughter. These I guessed them. In one part of it I saw a regiment to be a party of puns. But being very deof anagrams, who were continually in mo- sirous to get out of this world of magic, tion, turning to the right or to the left, which had almost turned my brain, I left facing about, doubling their ranks, shifting the temple, and crossed over the fields that their stations, and throwing themselves into lay about it with all the speed I could make. all the figures and counter-marches of the I was not gone far before I heard the sound most changeable and perplexed exercises. of trumpets and alarms, which seemed to Not far from these was the body of acros-proclaim the march of an enemy; and, as I tics, made up of very disproportioned per- afterwards found, was in reality what I apsons. It was disposed into three columns, prehended it. There appeared at a great the officers planting themselves in a line on distance a very shining light, and in the the left hand of each column. The officers midst of it, a person of a most beautiful were all of them at least six feet high, and aspect; her name was Truth. On her right made three rows of very proper men; but hand there marched a male deity, who bore the common soldiers, who filled up the several quivers on his shoulders, and graspspaces between the officers, were such ed several arrows in his hand. His name dwarfs, cripples, and scare-crows, that one was Wit. The approach of these two enecould hardly look upon them without laugh-mies filled all the territories of False Wit ing. There were behind the acrostics two or three files of chronograms, which differed only from the former, as their officers were equipped (like the figure of Time) with an hour-glass in one hand, and a scythe in the other; and took their posts promiscuously among the private men whom they commanded.

with an unspeakable consternation, insomuch that the goddess of those regions appeared in person upon her frontiers, with the several inferior deities, and the different bodies of forces which I had before seen in the temple, who were now drawn up in array, and prepared to give their foes a warm reception. As the march of the In the body of the temple, and before the enemy was very slow, it gave time to the very face of the deity, methought I saw the several inhabitants who bordered upon the phantom of Tryphiodorus, the lipogram-regions of Falsehood to draw their forces matist, engaged in a ball with four-andtwenty persons, who pursued him by turns through all the intricacies and labyrinths of a country-dance, without being able to overtake him.

Observing several to be very busy at the western end of the temple, I inquired into what they were doing, and found there was in that quarter the great magazine of rebusses. These were several things of the most different natures tied up in bundles, and thrown upon one another in heaps like faggots. You might behold an anchor, a night-rail, and a hobby-horse bound up together. One of the workmen seeing me very much surprised, told me, there was an infinite deal of wit in several of those bundles, and that he would explain them to me if I pleased; I thanked him for his civility, but told him I was in very great haste at that time. As I was going out of the temple, I observed in one corner of it a cluster of men and women laughing very heartily, and diverting themselves at a game of crambo. I heard several double rhymes as I passed by them, which raised a great deal of mirth.

Not far from these was another set of merry people engaged at a diversion in which the whole jest was to mistake one person for another. To give occasion for these ludicrous mistakes, they were divided into pairs, every pair being covered from head to foot with the same kind of dress,

into a body, with a design to stand upon their guard as neuters, and attend the issue of the combat.

I must here inform my reader, that the frontiers of the enchanted region, which I have before described, were inhabited by the species of Mixt Wit, who made a very odd appearance when they were mustered together in an army. There were men whose bodies were stuck full of darts, and women whose eyes were burning-glasses: men that had hearts of fire, and women that had breasts of snow. It would be endless to describe several monsters of the like nature, that composed this great army; which immediately fell asunder, and divided itself into two parts, the one half throwing themselves behind the banners of Truth, and the other behind those of Falsehood.

The goddess of Falsehood was of a gigantic stature, and advanced some paces before the front of her army: but as the dazzling light which flowed from Truth began to shine upon her, she faded insensi bly; insomuch that in a little space, she looked rather like a huge phantom than a real substance. At length, as the goddess of Truth approached still nearer to her she fell away entirely, and vanished amidst the brightness of her presence; so that there did not remain the least trace or impression of her figure in the place where she had been seen.

As at the rising of the sun the constella

tions grow thin, and the stars go out one after another, till the whole hemisphere is extinguished; such was the vanishing of the goddess: and not only of the goddess herself but of the whole army that attended her, which sympathized with their leader, and shrunk into nothing, in proportion as the goddess disappeared. At the same time the whole temple sunk, the fish betook themselves to the streams, and the wild beasts to the woods, the fountains recovered their murmurs, the birds their voices, the trees their leaves, the flowers their scents, and the whole face of nature its true and genuine appearance. Though I still continued asleep, I fancied myself as it were awakened out of a dream, when I saw this region of prodigies restored to woods and rivers, fields and meadows.

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much distressed to take the proper care they ought of their dress. By degrees it prevailed, that such as had this inward oppression upon their minds, made an apology for not joining with the rest of the world in their ordinary diversions by a dress suited to their condition. This therefore was at first assumed by such only as were un der real distress; to whom it was relief that they had nothing about them so light and gay as to be irksome to the gloom and melancholy of their inward reflections, or that might misrepresent them to others. In process of time this laudable distinction of the sorrowful was lost, and mourning is now worn by heirs and widows. You see nothing but magnificence and solemnity in the equipage of the relict, and an air of release from servitude in the pomp of a son who has lost a wealthy father. This fashion of sorrow is now become a generous part of the ceremonial between princes and sovereigns, who, in the language of all nations, are styled brothers to each other, and put on the purple* upon the death of any potentate with whom they live in amity. Courtiers, and all who wish themselves such, are immediately seized with grief from head to foot upon this disaster to their prince; so that one may know by the very buckles of a gentleman-usher what degree of friendship any deceased monarch maintained with the court to which he belongs. After several which he belongs. A good courtier's habit and behaviour is hieroglyphical on these occasions. He deals much in whispers, and you may see he dresses according to the best intelligence.

Upon the removal of that wild scene of wonders, which had very much disturbed my imagination, I took a full survey of the persons of Wit and Truth; for indeed it was impossible to look upon the first, without seeing the other at the same time. There was behind them a strong compact body of figures. The genius of Heroic Poetry appeared with a sword in her hand, and a laurel on her head. Tragedy was crowned with cypress, and covered with robes dipped in blood. Satire had smiles in her look, and a dagger under her garment. Rhetoric was known by her thunderbolt; and Comedy by her mask. After several other figures, Epigram marched up in the rear, who had been posted there at the beginning of the expedition, that he might not revolt to the enemy, whom he was suspected to favour in his heart. I was very much awed and delighted with the appearance of the god of Wit; there was something so amiable, and yet so piercing in his looks, as inspired me at once with love and terror. As I was gazing on him, to my unspeakable joy he took a quiver of arrows from his shoulder, in order to make me a present of it; but as I was reaching out my hand to receive it of him, I knocked it against a chair, and by that means awaked. C.

No. 64.] Monday, May 14, 1711.

-Hic vivimus ambitiosa
Paupertate omnes-
Juv. Sat. iii. 183.
The face of wealth in poverty we wear.

THE most improper things we commit in the conduct of our lives, we are led into by the force of fashion. Instances might be given, in which a prevailing custom makes us act against the rules of nature, law, and common sense; but at present I shall confine my consideration to the effect it has upon men's minds, by looking into our behaviour when it is the fashion to go into mourning. The custom of representing the grief we have for the loss of the dead by our habits, certainly had its rise from the real sorrow of such as were too

The general affectation among men, of appearing greater than they are, makes the whole world run into the habit of the court. You see the lady, who the day before was as various as a rainbow, upon the time appointed for beginning to mourn, as dark as a cloud. This humour does not prevail only on those whose fortunes can support any change in their equipage, nor on those only whose incomes demand the wantonness of new appearances; but on such also who have just enough to clothe them. An old acquaintance of mine, of ninety pounds a year, who has naturally the vanity of being a man of fashion deep at his heart, is very much put to it to bear the mortality of princes. He made a new black suit upon the death of the King of Spain, he turned it for the King of Portugal, and he now keeps his chamber while it is scouring for the Emperor. He is a good economist in his extravagance, and makes only a fresh black button on his iron-gray suit for any potentate of small territories; he indeed adds his crape hatband for a prince whose exploits he has admired in the gazette. But whatever compliments may be made on these occasions, the true mourners are

* Royal and prince y mourners were usually cad in purple.

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