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 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 subtilty
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