rhetoric, handed down from the Renaissance, tended to regard tropes
and figures as mere ornament, a means of decorating the surface, an
artful prettifying of a subject in order that it might please. For
this reason wit was likely to be considered out of place in serious
works which called for naturalness and passion. The objection to the
simile in the language of passion was an old note in English criticism
(cf. Dennis, _Critical Works_, I, 424); but the author of the _Essay
on Wit_ in condemning glittering strokes and ingenious prodigalities
in impassioned literature shows by his phrasing that he is following
Father Bouhours (cf. Manlere die Bien Penser, Amsterdam, 1688, pp.
8-9, 234, 296, 388).

In _Spectator_, no. 249, Addison entered the contest known as the
Battle of the Books, and lined himself up squarely on the side of the
Ancients. The ancients, he said, surpassed the moderns in poetry,
painting, oratory, history, architecture, and, in fact, all arts and
sciences which depend more on genius than on experience. It was no
lightening of the judgment when he added that the moderns surpass the
ancients in doggerel, humour burlesque, and all the trivial arts of
ridicule, the arts of the "unlucky little wits." So degraded had wit
become! In the _Adventurer_, nos. 127 and 133, Joseph Warton showed
himself to be essentially in agreement with Addison's verdict,
differing only in thinking that a few moderns might compare with the
ancients in works of genius. He appears somewhat less scornful of wit,
recognizing its part in the arts of civility and the decencies of
conversation; and yet he associates It with ridicule, laughter, and
luxury, and makes it the pleasant plaything of gentlemen.

Occasionally there were attempts to restore wit to its pristine glory,
to the position it had occupied before it was tied to mirth and