The only way, therefore, to try a piece of wit
is to translate it into a different language. If it bears the test,
you may pronounce it true; but if it vanishes in the experiment, you
may conclude it to have been a pun. In short, one may say of a pun,
as the countryman described his nightingale, that it is "vox et
praeterea nihil"--"a sound, and nothing but a sound." On the
contrary, one may represent true wit by the description which
Aristaenetus makes of a fine woman:- "When she is dressed she is
beautiful: when she is undressed she is beautiful;" or, as Mercerus
has translated it more emphatically, Induitur, formosa est:
exuitur, ipsa forma est.
NEXT ESSAY
Scribendi recte sapere est et principium, et fons.
HOR., Ars Poet. 309.
Sound judgment is the ground of writing well.--ROSCOMMON.
Mr. Locke has an admirable reflection upon the difference of wit and
judgment, whereby he endeavours to show the reason why they are not
always the talents of the same person. His words are as follow:-
"And hence, perhaps, may be given some reason of that common
observation, 'That men who have a great deal of wit, and prompt
memories, have not always the clearest judgment or deepest reason.'
For wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those
together with quickness and variety wherein can be found any
resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and
agreeable visions in the fancy: judgment, on the contrary, lies
quite on the other side, in separating carefully one from another,
ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid
being misled by similitude, and by affinity to take one thing for
another.
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