Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 3.djvu/80

76 which can be commended only as they are written for the highest and noblest purpose, the promotion of religion. Blackmore’s prose is not the prose of a poet; for it is languid, sluggish, and lifeless; his diction is neither daring nor exact, his flow neither rapid nor easy, and his periods neither smooth nor strong. His account of Wit will shew with how little clearness he is content to think, and how little his thoughts are recommended by his language.

“As to its efficient cause, Wit owes its production to an extraordinary and peculiar temperament in the constitution of the possessor of it, in which is found a concurrence of regular and animal spirits, refined and rectified to a great degree of purity; whence, being endowed with vivacity, brightness, and celerity, as well in their reflections as direct motions, they become proper instruments for the spritely operations of the mind; by which means the imagination can with great facility range the wide field of Nature, contemplate an infinite variety of objects, and, by observing the similitude and disagreement of their several qualities, "single