with silliness and extravagance, or with indecency and impiety.

The essay from the _Weekly Register_ is one of a large number of
little histories of wit, which appear through the age of Dryden and
Pope and which attempt to relate developments in wit to changes
in fashion, religion, polities, social manners, and taste. These are
rudimentary but important expressions of the idea that literature is
conditioned by changing circumstances and social customs in the lives
of the people from whom it springs.

The _Essay on Wit_, 1748, is reprinted here, by permission,
from a copy in the library of the University of Illinois. Flecknoe's
_Characters_ are reprinted from a copy of _Sixty Nine Enigmatical
Character_ owned by the library of the University of Michigan. The
essays of Joseph Warton is the _Adventurer_, and the typescript copy
of the essay

"Of Wit" from the _Weekly Register_ (as reprinted in the
_Gentleman's Magazine_) are also taken from copies belonging
to the University of Michigan.

Edward Niles Hooker
University of California, Los Angeles

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