The present meaning of ‘wit’ as compared with the past, and the period when it was in the act of transition from one to the other, cannot be better marked than in the quotation from Bishop Reynolds which is given below. It is a protest, an impotent one, as such invariably are, against a change in the word’s meaning, going on before his eyes. Cowley’s Ode, Of Wit, is another very important document, illustrating the history of the word.
Who knew the wit of the Lord, or who was his counselour?—Rom. xi. 34. Wiclif.
I take not wit in that common acceptation, whereby men understand some sudden flashes of conceit whether in style or conference, which, like rotten wood in the dark, have more shine than substance, whose use and ornament are, like themselves, swift and vanishing, at once both admired and forgotten. But I understand a settled, constant, and habitual sufficiency of the understanding, whereby it is enabled in any kind of learning, theory, or practice, both to sharpness in search, subtilty in expression, and despatch in execution.—Reynolds, Passions and Faculties of the Soul, c. xxxix.
For the world laghes on man and smyles,
Bot at the last it him bygyles;
Tharfor I hald that man noght witty
That about the world is over bysy.
Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 1092.
I confess notwithstanding, with the wittiest of the school divines, that if we speak of strict justice God could no way have been bound to requite man’s labours in so large and ample manner.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. i. c. 11.
Witch. This was not restrained formerly, as it now is, to the female exerciser of unlawful magical arts, but would have been as freely applied to Balaam or Simon Magus as to her whom we call ‘the Witch of Endor.’ ‘She-witch’ was not uncommon in our Elizabethan literature, when such was intended. In the dialect of Northumbria ‘witches’ are of both sexes still (Atkinson).