The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their
learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show
it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry they only wrote verses, and
very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than
of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only
found to be verses by counting the syllables.

If the father of criticism had rightly denominated poetry [Greek
text], AN IMITATIVE ART, these writers will, without great wrong,
lose their right to the name of poets; for they cannot be said to
have imitated anything; they neither copied nature nor life; neither
painted the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of
intellect.

Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits.
Dryden confesses of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall
below Donne in wit; but maintains that they surpass him in poetry.

If wit be well described by Pope, as being "that which has been
often thought, but was never before so well expressed," they
certainly never attained, nor ever sought it; for they endeavoured
to be singular in their thoughts, and were careless of their
diction. But Pope's account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous; he
depresses it below its natural dignity, and reduces it from strength
of thought to happiness of language.

If by a more noble and more adequate conception, that be considered
as wit which is at once natural and new, that which, though not
obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if
it be that which he that never found it, wonders how he missed; to