Edward Niles Hooker

“ As no one pleases more than the Man of Wit, none is more liable to offend; therefore he shou'd have a Fancy quick to conceive, Knowledge, good Humour, and Discretion to direct the whole. Wit often leads a Man into Misfortunes, that his Prudence wou'd have avoided; as it is the Means of raising a Reputation, so it sometimes destroys it. He who affects to be always witty, renders himself cheap, and, perhaps, ridiculous. The great Use and Advantage of Wit is to render the Owner agreeable, by making him instrumental to the Happiness of others. ”

“ A Gentleman who had some Knowledge in the human Heart, was consulted about a Tragedy which was going to be acted: He answer'd that there was so much Wit in the Piece that he doubted of its Success.—At hearing such a Judgment, a Man will immediately cry out, What! is Wit then a Fault, at a Time when every Body aims at having it, when nobody writes but to shew he has it; when the Publick applauds even false Thoughts, provided they are shining! ”

“ In such delicate Conversations, Mirth, temper'd with good Manners, is the only Point in View, and we grow gay and polite together; perhaps there's no Moment of our Lives so sincerely happy, certainly none so innocent. Wit is a Quality which some possess, and all covet; Youth affects it, Folly dreads it, Age despises it, and Dulness abhors it. ”

“ According to Hobbes, poetry must exhibit both judgment and fancy, but fancy should dominate; and the work of fancy is to adorn discourse with tropes and figures, to please by extravagance, to disguise meaning, and to create pleasant illusions. One of Hobbes's followers announced that fancy must have the upper hand because all poems please chiefly by novelty. While they made wit the most essential element in poetry, they made it trivial and empty, and thereby helped to bring poetry itself into contempt. ”

“ Lucian is the greatest master of Burlesque among the ancients: but the travels of Gulliver, though indeed evidently copied from his true history, do as evidently excel it. Lucian sets out with informing his readers, that he is in jest, and intends to ridicule some of the incredible stories in Ctesias and Herodotus: this introduction surely enfeebles his satire, and defeats his purpose. The true history consists only of the most wild, monstrous, and miraculous persons and accidents: Gulliver has a concealed meaning, and his dwarfs and giants convey tacitly some moral or political instruction. ”

“ To these three celebrated ancients, I venture to oppose singly the matchless Moliere, as the most consummate master of comedy that former or latter ages have produced. He was not content with painting obvious and common characters, but set himself closely to examine the numberless varieties of human nature: he soon discovered every difference, however minute; and by a proper management could make it striking: his portraits, therefore, though they appear to be new, are yet discovered to be just. ”

“ Shakespear, Corneille, and Racine, are the only modern writers of Tragedy, that we can venture to oppose to Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The first is an author so uncommon and eccentric, that we can scarcely try him by dramatic rules. In strokes of nature and character, he yields not to the Greeks: in all other circumstances that constitute the excellence of the drama, he is vastly inferior. Of the three moderns, the most faultless is the tender and exact Racine: but he was ever ready to acknowledge, that his capital beauties were borrowed from his favourite Euripides ”

“ Comedy, Satire, and Burlesque, being the three chief branches of ridicule, it is necessary for us to compare together the most admired performances of the ancients and moderns, in these three kinds of writing, to qualify us justly to censure or commend, as the beauties or blemishes of each party may deserve. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I know it signifies very little to the Affairs of the World, whether Waller was or was not a great Genius; whether he only made a few pretty Things, or that all his Verses may stand for Models. But we who love the Arts, carry an attentive Eye on that which to the rest of the World is a Matter of mere Indifference. Good Taste is for us in Literature, what it is for Women in Dress ”

“ When such a Person appears among his Friends, an Air of Pleasure and Satisfaction diffuses itself over every Face. Wit, so used, is an Instrument of the sweetest Musick in the Hands of an Artist, commanding, soothing, and modulating the Passions into Harmony and Peace. ”

“ If it be urged, that the nature of modern politics and laws excludes the pathetic and the sublime, and confines the speaker to a cold argumentative method, and a dull detail of proof and dry matters of fact; yet, surely, the Religion of the moderns abounds in topics so incomparably noble and exalted as might kindle the flames of genuine oratory in the most frigid and barren genius much more might this success be reasonably expected from such geniuses as Britain can enumerate ”

“ This art, it is observable; has never been improved in later ages in one single instance; but every just and legitimate edifice is still formed according to the five old established orders, to which human wit has never been able to add a sixth of equal symmetry and strength.
Such, therefore, are the triumphs of the Ancients, especially the Greeks, over the Moderns. They may, perhaps, be not unjustly ascribed to a genial climate, that gave such a happy temperament of body as was most proper to produce fine sensations ”

“ And why avoid an Expression in use, to introduce one which says precisely the same Thing? A new Word is never pardonable, but when it is absolutely necessary, intelligible and sonorous; they are forc'd to make them in Physics: A new Discovery, or a new Machine demands a new Word. But do they make new Discoveries in the human Heart? Is there any other Greatness than that of Shakespear and Milton? Are there any other Passions than those that have been handled by Otway and Dryden? ”

“ Does not the Poet here quite hide his Hero to shew himself?
This brings into my Mind the absurd Custom of finishing the Acts of almost all our modern Tragedies with a Simile; surely in a great Crisis of Affairs, in a Council, in a violent Passion of Love or Wrath, in a pressing Danger, Princes, Ministers, Heroes or Lovers, should not make Poetical Comparisons.—Even Marcia's (or rather Mr. Addison's) beautiful Simile at the End of the first Act of Cato, is scarcely to be forgiven. ”

“ The arts of civility, and the decencies of conversation, as they unite men more closely, and bring them more frequently together, multiply opportunities of observing those incongruities and absurdities of behaviour, on which ridicule is founded. The ancients had more liberty and seriousness; the moderns have more luxury and laughter. ”

“ The assertion of Addison with respect to the first particular, regarding the higher kinds of poetry, will remain unquestionably true, till nature in some distant age, for in the present, enervated with luxury, she seems incapable of such an effort, shall produce some transcendent genius, of power to eclipse the Iliad and the Edipus.
The superiority of the ancient artists in Painting, is not perhaps so clearly manifest. ”

“ We have discourses, indeed, that may be admired, for their perspicuity, purity, and elegance; but can produce none that abound in a sublime which whirls away the auditor like a mighty torrent, and pierces the inmost recesses of his heart like a flash of lightning ”

“ The trite and trivial character of a fop, hath strangely engrossed the English stage, and given an insipid similiarity to our best comic pieces: originals can never be wanting in such a kingdom as this, where each man follows his natural inclinations and propensities, if our writers would really contemplate nature, and endeavour to open those mines of humour which have been so long and so unaccountably neglected. ”

“ The essay from the Weekly Register is one of a large number of little histories of wit, which appear through the age of Dryden and Pope and which attempt to relate developments in wit to changes in fashion, religion, polities, social manners, and taste. These are rudimentary but important expressions of the idea that literature is conditioned by changing circumstances and social customs in the lives of the people from whom it springs. ”

“ I may add, that the imitations of Horace by Pope, and of Juvenal by Johnson, are preferable to their originals in the appositeness of their examples, and in the poignancy of their ridicule. Above all, the Lutrin, the Rape of the Lock, the Dispensary and the Dunciad, cannot be parallelled by any works that the wittiest of the ancients can boast of: for, by assuming the form of the epopea, they have acquired a dignity and gracefulness, which all satires delivered merely in the poet's own person must want, and with which the satirists of antiquity were wholly unacquainted ”

“ When one is thoroughly struck with an Idea, when a Man of Sense, fill'd with Warmth, is in full Possession of his Thought, it comes from him all ornamented with suitable Expressions, as Minerva sprang out, compleatly arm'd, from the Head of Jupiter. ”

“ Some Authors wou'd persuade us, that Wit is owing to a double Cause; one, the Desire of pleasing others, and one of recommending ourselves: The first is made a Merit in the Owners, and is therefore rang'd among the Virtues; the last is stiled Vanity, and therefore a Vice; tho' this is an erroneous Distinction, as Wit was never possess'd by any without both; for no Man endeavours to excell without being conscious of it, and that Consciousness will produce Vanity, let us disguise it how we please. Upon the whole, Vanity is inseparable from the; Heart of Man ”

“ Judges of the truest taste do, however, place the merit of colouring far below that of justness of design, and force of expression. In these two highest and most important excellencies, the ancient painters were eminently skilled, if we trust the testimonies of Pliny, Quintilian, and Lucian; and to credit them we are obliged, if we would form to ourselves any idea of these artists at all ”

“ Few People of Distinction trouble themselves about the Name of Wit, fewer understand it, and hardly any have honoured it with their Example. In the next Class of People it seems best known, most admired, and most frequently practiced; but their Stations in Life are not eminent enough to dazzle us into Imitation. Wit is a Start of Imagination in the Speaker, that strikes the Imagination of the Hearer with an Idea of Beauty, common to both ”

“ CHARACTER. Of a bold abusive Wit.
He talks madly, dash, dash, without any fear at all, and never cares how he bespatters others, or defiles himself; nor ceases he till he has quite run himself out of breath; when no wonder, if to fools he seems to get the start of those who wisely pick out their way, and are as fearful of abusing others as themselves: He has the Buffoons priviledge, of saying or doing anything without exceptions, and he will call a jealous man Cuckold, a childe of doubtful birth Bastard, and a Lady of suspected honor a Whore, and they but laugh at it ”

“ He talks nothing but kennel-raked fluff, and his discourse is rather like fruit cane up rotten from the ground, than freshly gathered from the Tree. He is so far from a courtly wit, as his breeding seems only to have been i' th' Suburbs; or at best, he seems only graduated good company in a Tavern (the Bedlam of wits) where men are mad rather than merry; here one breaking a jest on the Drawer, or a Candlestick ”

“ There is at the same time an humble Ignorance, a modest Weakness, that ought to be spar'd; they are unhappy already in the Consciousness of their own Defects, and 'tis fighting with the Lame and Sick to be severe upon them. The Wit that genteely glances at a Foible, is smartly retorted, or generously forgiven ”

“ Horace got Enemies by it, but he enlightened his Enemies themselves.
This Desire of shining, and to say in a new Manner what others have said before, is the Foundation of new Expressions, as well as of far-fetched Thoughts.
He that cannot shine by a Thought will distinguish himself by a Word. This is their Reason for substituting Placid for Peaceful, Joyous for Joyful, Meandring for Winding; and a hundred more Affectations of the same kind. If they were to go on at this Rate, the Language of Shakespear, Milton, Dryden, Addison and Pope, would soon become quite superannuated. ”

“ So he wears his wit as Bravo's do their swords, to mischief and offend others, not as Gentlemen to defend themselves: and tis crime in him, what is ornament in others; he being onely a wit at that, at which a good wit is a fool. Especially he triumphs over your modest men; and when he meets with a simple body, passes for a wit, but a wit indeed makes a simplician of him ”

“ There's a great deal of Wit in it, and even an Air of Simplicity that imposes upon one. We all see, that these Verses, pronounced with the Art and Enthusiasm of a good Actor never fail of Applause; but I think we may also see, that the Tragedy of the Orphan wrote entirely in this Taste would never have lived long. ”

“ Certainly there's a great Impropriety in putting any kind of Smartness into Pieces of such a Nature as Dr. South's; but what is still worse, we generally find these Smartnesses to be quite vague and superficial; they don't enter, but only play upon the Surface of the Soul. ”