The corresponding word which forms the rhyme is not always varied. "Offence" is used three times, and "defence" and "pretence" are each employed twice.
Hazlitt might have remarked, that wit was even more favoured than sense, and was used with greater laxity. A wit, in the reign of Queen Anne was not only a jester, but any author of distinction; and wit, besides its special signification, was still sometimes employed as synonymous with mind. The ordinary generic and specific meanings, already confusing and fruitful in ambiguities, were not sufficient for Pope. A wit with him was now a jester, now an author, now a poet, and now, again, was contradistinguished from poets. Wit was the intellect, the judgment, the antithesis to judgment, a joke, and poetry. The word does duty, with a perplexing want of precision, throughout the essay, and furnishes a dozen rhymes alone:
Nature to all things fixed the limits fit,
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.—lines 52, 3.
One science only will one genius fit;
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.—l. 60, 1.
A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ.—l. 233, 4.
Nor lose for that malignant dull delight,
The gen'rous pleasure to be charmed with wit.—l. 237, 8.
As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
T'avoid great errors, must the less commit.—l. 259, 60.
Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit;
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.—l. 291, 2.
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.—l. 301, 2.
So schismatics the plain believers quit,
And are but damned for having too much wit.—l. 428, 9.