Out of the innumerable Branches of mixt Wit, I shall choose one Instance which may be met with in all the Writers of this Class.  The Passion of Love in its Nature has been thought to resemble Fire; for which Reason the Words Fire and Flame are made use of to signify Love.  The witty Poets therefore have taken an Advantage from the doubtful Meaning of the Word Fire, to make an infinite Number of Witticisms. Cowley observing the cold Regard of his Mistress’s Eyes, and at the same Time their Power of producing Love in him, considers them as Burning-Glasses made of Ice; and finding himself able to live in the greatest Extremities of Love, concludes the Torrid Zone to be habitable.  When his Mistress has read his Letter written in Juice of Lemmon by holding it to the Fire, he desires her to read it over a second time by Love’s Flames.  When she weeps, he wishes it were inward Heat that distilled those Drops from the Limbeck.  When she is absent he is beyond eighty, that is, thirty Degrees nearer the Pole than when she is with him.  His ambitious Love is a Fire that naturally mounts upwards; his happy Love is the Beams of Heaven, and his unhappy Love Flames of Hell.  When it does not let him sleep, it is a Flame that sends up no Smoak; when it is opposed by Counsel and Advice, it is a Fire that rages the more by the Wind’s blowing upon it.  Upon the dying of a Tree in which he had cut his Loves, he observes that his written Flames had burnt up and withered the Tree.  When he resolves to give over his Passion, he tells us that one burnt like him for ever dreads the Fire.  His Heart is an AEtna, that instead of Vulcan’s Shop incloses Cupid’s Forge in it.  His endeavouring to drown his Love in Wine, is throwing Oil upon the Fire.  He would insinuate to his Mistress, that the Fire of Love, like that of the Sun (which produces so many living Creatures) should not only warm but beget.  Love in another Place cooks Pleasure at his Fire.  Sometimes the Poet’s Heart is frozen in every Breast, and sometimes scorched in every Eye.  Sometimes he is drowned in Tears, and burnt in Love, like a Ship set on Fire in the Middle of the Sea.

The Reader may observe in every one of these Instances, that the Poet mixes the Qualities of Fire with those of Love; and in the same Sentence speaking of it both as a Passion and as real Fire, surprizes the Reader with those seeming Resemblances or Contradictions that make up all the Wit in this kind of Writing.  Mixt Wit therefore is a Composition of Punn and true Wit, and is more or less perfect as the Resemblance lies in the Ideas or in the Words:  Its Foundations are laid partly in Falsehood and partly in Truth:  Reason puts in her Claim for one Half of it, and Extravagance for the other.  The only Province therefore for this kind of Wit, is Epigram, or those little occasional Poems that in their own Nature are nothing else but a Tissue of Epigrams.  I cannot conclude this Head of mixt Wit, without owning that the admirable Poet out of whom I have taken the Examples of it, had as much true Wit as any Author that ever writ; and indeed all other Talents of an extraordinary Genius.