Something, whose truth convinc'd at fight we find, NOTES. ned Wit to confist in the afsemblage of ideas, and putting those together, with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any refemblance or congruity, whereby to make up pleasant pictures end agreeable visions in the fancy. But that great Philosopher, in separating Wit from Judgment, as he does in this place, has given us (and he could therefore give us no other) only an account of Wit in general: In which, false Wit, tho' not every species of it, is included. A triking image therefore of Nature, is as Mr. Locke observes, certainly Wit: But this image may strike on feveral accounts, as well as for its truth and amiableness; and the Philosopher has explained the manner how. But it never becomes that Wit which is the ornament of true Poesy, whose end is to represent Nature, but when it dresses that Nature to advantage, and presents her to us in the clearest and most taking light. And to know when Wit has done its office, the poet fubjoins one admirable direction: viz. When we perceive that it gives us back the image of our mind. When it does that, we may be sure it plays no tricks with us: For this image is the creature of the Judgment: and whenever Wit corresponds with Judgment, we may safely pronounce it to be true. Naturam intueamur, bane fequamur: id facillimè accipiunt animi quod agnofcunt. Quintil. lib. viii. c. 3. For works may have more wit than does 'em good, As bodies perish thro' excess of blood. Others for Language all their care express, 305 And value books, as women men, for Dress: COMMENTARY. VER. 305. Others for Language, &c.] He proceeds secondly to those narrow Critics whose whole concern turns upon Language, and shews [from 304 to 337] that this quality, where it holds the principal place, deserves no commendation; because it excludes qualities more effential. And when the abounding Verbiage has excluded the sense, the writer has nothing to do but to to hide the defect, by giving his words all the false colour and gilding he is able. 2. He shews that the Critie who busies himself with this quality alone, is altogether unable to make a right Judgment of it; because true Expreffion is only the dress of Thought; and so, must be perpetually varied according to the subject and manner of thinking. But those who never concern themselves with the Sense, can form no judgment of the correspondence between that and the Language: Expression is the dress of thought, and still Now as these Critics are strangers to all this skill, their whole judgment in Language is reduced to the choice of fingle words; the highest excellence of which is commonly thought to confift in their being antique and obsolete. On which our author has therefore bestow'd t Their praise is still, the Style is excellent: COMMENTARY. a little raillery; concluding with a short and proper direction concerning the use of words, as far as regards their novelty and antiquity. NOTES. * 311. False eloquence, like the prismatic glass, &c.] This fimile is beautiful. For the false colouring, given to objects by the prifmatic glass, is owing to its untwisting, by its obliquities, those threads of light, which nature had put together in order to spread over its works an ingenuous and fimple candor, that should not hide, but only heighten the native complexion of the objects. And false Eloquence is nothing else but the straining and divaricating the parts of true expreffion; and then daubing them over with what the Rhetoricians very properly term, colours; in lieu of that candid light, now loft, which was reflected from them in their natural state while fincere and entire. } But true Expression, like the unchanging Sun, 315 NOTES. * 324. Some by old words, &.] Abolita & abrogata retinere, infolentiæ cujusdam est, & frivolæ in parvis jactantiæ. Quintil. lib. i. c. 6. Opus eft ut verba à vetustate repetita neque crebra fint, neque manifesta, quia nil est odiofius affectatione, nec utique ab ultimis repetita temporibus. Oratio cujus fumma virtus eft perspicuitas, quam fit vitiosa, fi egeat interprete? Ergo ut no vorum optima erunt maxime vetera, ita veterum max= ime nova. Idem. Unlucky, as Fungoso in the Play, Be not the first by whom the new are try'd, 335 OTHE But most by Numbers judge a Poet's fong, And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong; COMMENTARY. VER. 337. But most by Numbers judge, &c.] The last fort are those [from 336 to 384.] whose ears are attached only to the Harmony of a poem. Of which they judge as ignorantly and as perversely as the other fort did of Eloquence; and for the very fame Reason. He first describes that false Harmony with which they are so much captivated; and shews that it is wretchedly flat and unvaried: For Smooth or rough with them is right or wrong. He then describes the true. 1. As it is in itself, constant; with a happy mixture of strength and sweetness, in contradiction to th the roughness and flatness of false Har unlucky as Johnson's Every Man in bis NOTES. 328. Fungofo, &c.] See Ben. Humour, D A・BODL |