152 SAMUEL JOHNSON

they neither copied nature nor life ; neither painted the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect.

Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden confesses of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne in wit; but maintains, that they surpass him in poetry.

If wit be well described by Pope, as being " that which has been often thought, but was never before so well expressed," they certainly never attained, nor ever sought it ; for they endeavoured to be singular in their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope's account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous : he depresses it below its natural dignity, and re- duces it from strength of thought to happiness of language.

If by a more noble and more adequate con- ception that be considered as wit which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknow- ledged to be just ; if it be that which he that never found it wonders how he missed; to wit of this kind the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural ; they are not obvious, but neither are they just ; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more

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