Edited by Tom Brown and sponsored by Christopher Codrington, this miscellany attempted in scurrilous and often bad verse to laugh the Knight out of literary existence.  Its main distinction lies in the list of contributors, among whom were Sir Charles Sedley, Richard Steele, Tom Brown, and probably John Dennis.  Blackmore’s supporters answered Commendatory Verses with Discommendatory Verses on Those Which are Truly Commendatory, on the Author of the Two Arthurs, and the Satyr against Wit. (1700).  It is not at all certain that Blackmore emerged second best in this exchange of blows in the miscellanies.  At any rate, unabashed he went on to write more epics on Elizabeth, Alfred, Job, and to win himself a doubtful immortality by being pilloried in Pope’s Dunciad.

Throughout his writings Blackmore has a good deal to say about Wit, and much about the abuse of it.  While Swift in the Tale of a Tub scolds the Wits for their addiction to nonsense and irreligion, Blackmore goes still further in the Satyr, seeing Wit as something which, in common practice, is evil and vicious, to be eradicated as quickly as possible.  It is the enemy of virtue and religion (in the Preface to Creation, 1712, he links it with atheism), a form of insanity, in opposition to ‘Right Reason’, and the seducer of young men.  Combatting its iniquities, Blackmore proposes to set up a Bank and Mint of Wit to assure that it will be refined and purified.  By this process, the works of Dryden, Congreve, Southerne, Wycherley, Garth, and Vanbrugh will be melted down to separate the sludge from the pure metal.  In the Nature of Man (1711) he takes a more kindly attitude towards Wit and pairs it with Sense, Reason, Genius, and even Piety.  While he is moderate in his denunciation of Wit in the Essay upon Wit, he does insist that even at its best it can never be noble.  Wit is harmful, he states, because it is often employed in immoral subjects, raillery, ridicule, and satire.  It is chiefly useful as ornamentation:  “The Addition of Wit to Proper Subjects, is like the artful Improvement of the Cook, who by his exquisite Sauce gives to a plain Dish, a pleasant and unusual Relish”.

Addison’s Freeholder essay (No. 45) was inspired by Blackmore’s Essay upon Wit, to which he paid a compliment in his opening remarks (much to the disgust of Swift, who accused him of double-dealing).  Although Addison had praised Blackmore’s Creation warmly in the Spectator No. 339, he had not always been friendly, for earlier Blackmore had sneered at Addison in the Satyr against Wit, a jibe that drew Steele’s reply in Commendatory Verses.

Blackmore’s Essay upon Wit appeared in his Essays upon Several Subjects; the one-volume first edition of this work was published in 1716 and was followed by the second edition, in two volumes, the following year.  The present reprint is from the first edition.  The 1716 Freeholder No. 45 here reproduced is from the edition of 1758.  Both copies are owned by the University of Michigan.