Title:  Essays on Wit No. 2

Author:  Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton

Release Date:  February 8, 2005 [EBook #14973]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

*** Start of this project gutenberg EBOOK essays on wit no. 2 ***

Produced by David Starner and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading
Team.

Series One: 

Essays on Wit

No. 2

Essay on Wit (1748); Richard Flecknoe’s Of one that Zany’s the good Companion and Of a bold abusive Wit (second edition, 1665);

Joseph Warton, The Adventurer, Nos. 127 and 133 (1754); Of Wit
(Weekly Register, 1732).

With an Introduction to the Series on Wit by Edward N. Hooker

The Augustan Reprint Society November, 1946 Price:  75c

Membership in the Augustan Reprint Society entitles the subscriber to six publications issued each year.  The annual membership fee is $2.50.  Address subscriptions and communications to the Augustan Reprint Society in care of one of the General Editors.

General Editors:  Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
Michigan;

Edward N. Hooker, H.I.  Swedenberg, Jr., University of
California, Los Angeles 24, California.

Editorial Advisors:  Louis L. Bredvold, University of Michigan; James
L. Clifford, Columbia University; Benjamin Boyce, University of
Nebraska; Cleanth Brooks, Louisiana State University; Arthur Friedman,
University of Chicago; James R. Sutherland, Queen Mary College
University of London.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES ON WIT

The age of Dryden and Pope was an age of wit, but there were few who could explain precisely what they meant by the term.  A thing so multiform and.  Protean escaped the bonds of logic and definition.  In his sermon “Against Foolish Talking and Jesting” the learned Dr. Isaac Barrow attempted to describe some of the forms which it took; the forms were many, and it is difficult to discover any element which they held in common.  Nevertheless Barrow ventured a summary: 

It is, in short, a manner of speaking out of the simple and plain way, (such as Reason teacheth and proveth things by,) which by a pretty surprizing uncouthness in conceit of expression doth affect and amuse the fancy, stirring in it some wonder, and breeding some delight thereto.

And about sixty years later, despite the work of Hobbes and Locke in calling attention to the importance of semantics, the confusion still existed.  According to John Oldmixon (Essay on Criticism, 1727, p. 21), “Wit and Humour, Wit and good Sense, Wit and Wisdom, Wit and Reason, Wit and Craft; nay, Wit and Philosophy, are with us almost the same Things.”  Some such confusion is apparent in the definition presented by the Essay on Wit (1748, p. 6).