wit of this kind the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. Their
thoughts are often new, but seldom natural; they are not obvious,
but neither are they just; and the reader, far from wondering that
he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverseness of
industry they were ever found.

But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more
rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of discordia
concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult
resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined,
they have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked
by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for
illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs,
and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his
improvement dearly bought, and though he sometimes admires, is
seldom pleased.

From this account of their compositions it will be readily inferred
that they were not successful in representing or moving the
affections. As they were wholly employed on something unexpected
and surprising, they had no regard to that uniformity of sentiment
which enables us to conceive and to excite the pains and the
pleasure of other minds: they never inquired what, on any occasion,
they should have said or done; but wrote rather as beholders than
partakers of human nature; as beings looking upon good and evil,
impassive and at leisure; as epicurean deities, making remarks on
the actions of men, and the vicissitudes of life, without interest
and without emotion. Their courtship was void of fondness, and
their lamentation of sorrow. Their wish was only to say what they
hoped had been never said before.