to tell you, that as I have endeavoured to adorn it with noble Thoughts, fo much more to exprefs thofe Thoughts with Elocution. The Compofition of all Poems is, or ought to be, of Wit, and Wit in the Poet, or Wit Writing, (if you will give me leave to ufe a School Diftination.) is no other than the faculty of Imagination in the Writer, which, like a nimble Spa- niel, beats over and ranges through the Field of Me- mory, till it Springs the Quarry it bunted after; or, without metaphor, which fearches over all the Memo- ry for the Species or Idea's of those things which it defigns to reprefent, Wit written, is that which is well defin'd, the happy refult of Thought, or product of Imagination. But to proceed from Wit, in the ge- meral Notion of it, to the proper Wit of an Heroick or Hiftorical Poem, I judge it chiefly to confift in the delightful imaging of Perfons, Actions, Paffions, or Things. 'Tis not the jerk or fting of an Epigram, nor the feeming Contradiction of a poor Antithefis. (the delight of an ill judging Audience in a Play of Rhyme) nor the gingle of a more poor Paranomafia; neither is it fo much the Morality of a grave Sentence, affected by Lucan, but more (paringly used by Vir- gil; but it is fome lively and apt Defcription, dreffed in fach colours of Speech, that it fets before your Eyes the abfent Object, as perfectly and more delightfully than Nature. So then, the first Happiness of the Poet's Ima gination is properly Invention or finding of the Thought; the fecond is Fancy, or the Variation, deriving or mould- ing of that Thought as the Fudgment reprefents it pro per to the Subject; the third is Elocution, or the Art of clothing and adorning that Thought, fo found and varied, in apt, fignificant and founding Words: The quickness of the Imagination is feen in the Invention,
the fertility in the Fancy, and the accuracy in the
