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.
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