Quel âge a cette Iris, dont on fait tant de bruit?
Me demandoit Cliton n’aguere.
Il faut, dis-je, vous satisfaire,
Elle a vingt ans le jour, et cinquante ans la nuit.
Again,
So like the chances are of love and war,
That they alone in this distinguish’d are;
In love the victors from the vanguish’d fly,
They fly that wound, and they pursue that die.
Waller.
What new-found witchcraft was in thee,
With thine own cold to kindle me?
Strange art; like him that should devise
To make a burning-glass of ice.
Cowley.
Wit of this kind is unsuitable in a serious poem; witness the following line in Pope’s Elegy to the memory of an unfortunate lady:
Cold is that breast which warm’d the world before.
This sort of writing is finely burlesqued by Swift:
Her hands, the softest ever felt,
Though cold would burn, though dry would melt.
Strephon and Chloe.
Taking a word in a different sense from what is meant, comes under wit, because it occasions some slight degree of surprise.
Beatrice. I may sit in a corner, and cry Heigh ho! for a husband.