faculty; and understanding is made up of both judgment and
Imagination. The Ample or Happy Wit exhibits a fine blend of the two
(_Brief Discourse concerning the Different Wits of Men_, 1669, pp. 10,
17-19). In this sense wit combines quickness and solidity of mind.

In the other, and more restricted sense, wit was made identical with
fancy (or imagination) and distinguished sharply from reason or
judgment. So Hobbes, recording a popular meaning of wit, remarked
(_Leviathan_. I, viii) that people who discover rarely observed
similitudes in objects that otherwise are much unlike, are said to
have a good wit. And judgment, directly opposed to it, was taken to be
the faculty of discerning differences in objects that are
superficially alike. (Between this idea of wit as discovering likeness
in things unlike, and the Platonic idea of discovering the One in the
Many, the Augustans made no connection.) A similar distinction between
wit and judgment was made by Charleton, Robert Boyle, John Locke, and
many others. The full implication lying in Hobbes's definition can be
seen in Walter Charleton, who said (_Brief Discourse_, pp. 20-21) that
imagination (or wit) is the faculty by which "we conceive some certain
similitude in objects really unlike, and pleasantly confound them in
discourse: Which by its unexpected Fineness and allusion, surprizing
the Hearer, renders him less curious of the truth of what is said." In
short, wit is delightful, but, because it leads away from truth,
unprofitable and, it may be, even dangerous.

The identification of wit with fancy gave it a lowly role in Augustan
thinking; and also in literary prose, which was supposed to be the
language of reason (cf. Donald F. Bond, "'Distrust' of Imagination in
English Neo-Classicism," _PQ_, XIV, 54-69). What of its
position in poetry? According to Hobbes, poetry must exhibit both