Thus, when a poet tells
us the bosom of his mistress is as white as snow, there is no wit in
the comparison; but when he adds, with a sigh, it is as cold too, it
then grows into wit. Every reader's memory may supply him with
innumerable instances of the same nature. For this reason, the
similitudes in heroic poets, who endeavour rather to fill the mind
with great conceptions than to divert it with such as are new and
surprising, have seldom anything in them that can be called wit.
Mr. Locke's account of wit, with this short explanation, comprehends
most of the species of wit, as metaphors, similitudes, allegories,
enigmas, mottoes, parables, fables, dreams, visions, dramatic
writings, burlesque, and all the methods of allusion: as there are
many other pieces of wit, how remote soever they may appear at first
sight from the foregoing description, which upon examination will be
found to agree with it.
As true wit generally consists in this resemblance and congruity of
ideas, false wit chiefly consists in the resemblance and congruity
sometimes of single letters, as in anagrams, chronograms, lipograms,
and acrostics; sometimes of syllables, as in echoes and doggrel
rhymes; sometimes of words, as in puns and quibbles; and sometimes
of whole sentences or poems, cast into the figures of eggs, axes, or
altars; nay, some carry the notion of wit so far as to ascribe it
even to external mimicry, and to look upon a man as an ingenious
person that can resemble the tone, posture, or face of another.
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