Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 1.djvu/38

 If Wit be well described by Pope, as being "that which has often thought, but was never before so well expressed," they certainly never attained, nor ever sought it; for, they endeavoured to be singular in their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope's account of Wit is undoubtedly erroneous: he depresses it below its natural dignity, and reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of language.

If by a more noble and more adequate conception that be considered as Wit which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if it be that which he that never found it wonders how he missed; to wit of this kind the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found.

But Wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of dis- Rh