Essays on Wit No. 2

by Unknown

Partly to oppose this low opinion of poetry, the neo-Aristotelians among the critics began to stress the view that fable, design, and structure were the really essential elements in poetry, and that these were the product of reason, or judgment. And because reason was the means by which truth was discovered, poetry by virtue of its rational framework became capable of revealing and communicating truth—that is, of instructing. In this conception of poetry there was little glory left for wit. It was relegated to be used for color and adornment in serious poetry, or to furnish the substance of the "little" poetry which could not boast of design or structure. Thus, the Essay on Wit invites the poet. (p. 15):

Have as much Wit as you will, or you can, in a Madrigal, in little light Verses, in the Scene of a Comedy, which is neither passionate or simple, in a Compliment, in a little Story, in a Letter where you would be merry yourself to make your Friends so.

Be witty in these playful varieties of poetry, because wit in a large and serious work would toe insufferable.

"These Sports of the Imagination, these Finesses, these Conceits, these glittering Strokes, these Gaieties, these little cut Sentences, these ingenious Prodigalities" in which wit is expressed might be either sober or funny. Most of the examples in the Essay on Wit are of the sober kind, coming under the order of wit because they are pretty and diverting fancies. But by the 1690's there had been a clear tendency to associate wit with mirth, and often with satire. By 1726 James Arbuckle could write (A Collection of Letters, 1729, II, 72): "... Satire and Ridicule, which are the main Provocatives to Laughter, still keep their ground among us, and are reckoned the chief Embellishments of Discourse by all who aim at the Character of Wits."

The end of wit was to surprise and delight. One may surprise by novelty, but the easiest road to the goal is audacity; and the subjects which lent themselves most readily to audacity were sex and religion. The treatment of the latter proved especially troublesome to good men like Blackmore, and the frequency of portraits and characters of the Profance Wit shows that many people were disturbed. Shaftesbury in Sensus Communis (1709) tried to justify the use of wit in discussing religion. For the rest of the century Shaftesbury's position was the center of heated debate, with Akenside supporting, and John Brown and Warburton opposing, the employment of wit in religion; and the Gentleman's Magazine is full of the arguments of lesser men who took sides. The author of the Essay on Wit places himself firmly beside Shaftesbury when he remarks (p. 14) that "a Subject which will not bear Raillery, is suspicious." The controversy is reviewed in an article by A.O. Aldridge, called "Shaftesbury and the Test of Truth" (PMLA, LX, 129-156).

Wit was taken to be the source, of tropes, and figures of speech, of all the color and adornments of rhetoric; and the old tradition of rhetoric, handed down from the Renaissance, tended to regard tropes and figures as mere ornament, a means of decorating the surface, an artful prettifying of a subject in order that it might please. For this reason wit was likely to be considered out of place in serious works which called for naturalness and passion. The objection to the simile in the language of passion was an old note in English criticism (cf. Dennis, Critical Works, I, 424); but the author of the Essay on Wit in condemning glittering strokes and ingenious prodigalities in impassioned literature shows by his phrasing that he is following Father Bouhours (cf. Manlere die Bien Penser, Amsterdam, 1688, pp. 8-9, 234, 296, 388).

In Spectator, no. 249, Addison entered the contest known as the Battle of the Books, and lined himself up squarely on the side of the Ancients. The ancients, he said, surpassed the moderns in poetry, painting, oratory, history, architecture, and, in fact, all arts and sciences which depend more on genius than on experience. It was no lightening of the judgment when he added that the moderns surpass the ancients in doggerel, humour burlesque, and all the trivial arts of ridicule, the arts of the "unlucky little wits." So degraded had wit become! In the Adventurer, nos. 127 and 133, Joseph Warton showed himself to be essentially in agreement with Addison's verdict, differing only in thinking that a few moderns might compare with the ancients in works of genius. He appears somewhat less scornful of wit, recognizing its part in the arts of civility and the decencies of conversation; and yet he associates It with ridicule, laughter, and luxury, and makes it the pleasant plaything of gentlemen.

Occasionally there were attempts to restore wit to its pristine glory, to the position it had occupied before it was tied to mirth and ridicule, when Atterbury could thus define it: "Wit, indeed, as it implies, a certain uncommon Reach and Vivacity of Thought, is an Excellent Talent; very fit to be employ'd in the Search of Truth...." So the anonymous author of A Satyr upon a Late Pamphlet Entitled, A Satyr against Wit (1700) could rhapsodize:

Wit is a Radiant Spark of Heav'nly Fire,
Full of Delight, and worthy of Desire;
Bright as the Ruler of the Realms of Day,
Sun of the Soul, with in-born Beauties gay....

So Corbyn Morris in his Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Raillery, Satire, and Ridicule, 1744, probably the best and clearest treatment of the subject in the first half of the eighteenth century, wrote (p. 1): "Wit is the Lustre resulting from the quick Elucidation of one Subject, by a just and unexpected Arrangement of it with another Subject." And so the author of the essay "Of Wit" in the Weekly Register for July 22, 1732, ventured his opinion (reprinted in the Gentleman's Magazine, II, 861-862):