3.

Upon the Restoration Mr. Waller presented a congratulatory Copy of Verses to King Charles; His Majesty, after reading them, said,—­ Mr.  Waller, these are very good, but not so fine as you made upon the PROTECTOR.—­To which Mr. Waller return’d,—­Your Majesty will please to recollect, that we Poets always write best upon FICTIONS.

The original Subject in this Instance is the superior Excellence of Mr.  WALLER’s Verses upon Cromwell; This he most happily excuses, by starting at once, and arranging along with them, the Remark, that Poets have always excell’d upon Fiction; whereby he unexpectedly exhibits his more excellent Verses to Cromwell, as a plain Elucidation of the fictitious Glory of the Protector; And intimates at the same time, that the Inferiority of his present Performance was a natural Illustration of his Majesty’s real Glory;—­Never was a deep Reproach averted by a more happy Reply; which comprehends both the highest Compliment to his Majesty, and a very firm poetical Excuse of the different Performances.

4.

Leonidas the Spartan General, when he advanced near the Persian Army, was told by one of his own Captains, that their Enemies were so numerous, it was impossible to see the Sun for the Multitude of their Arrows; To which he gallantly reply’d, We shall then have the Pleasure of fighting in the Shade.

The vast Cope of Persian Arrows is here the original Subject; which instead of being observed by Leonidas with Terror, presents to his Fancy the pleasant Idea of a cool Canopy.  There is an Agreement and Affinity between the two Objects, in regard to the Shelter from the Sun, which is at once obvious, and unexpected; And the Cloud of the Enemies Arrows is thus gaily elucidated, by the Arrangement and Comparison of it with so desirable an Object as shady Covering.

This Saying of the Spartan General has been handed through many Ages to the present Time; But the chief Part of the Pleasure it gives us, results not so much from the WIT it contains, as from the Gallantry, and chearful Spirit, discover’d in Danger, by Leonidas.

5.

An Instance of WIT in the Opposition, I remember to have read somewhere in the Spectators; where Sir Roger de Coverley intimating the Splendor which the perverse Widow should have appear’d in, if she had commenced Lady Coverley, says: 

That he would have given her a Coalpit to have kept her in clean Linnen:  And that her Finger should have sparkled with one hundred of his richest Acres.

The joint Introduction of these opposite Objects, as a Coalpit with clean Linnen, and dirty Acres with the Lustre of a Jewel, is just in this Instance, as they really produce each other in their Consequences; The natural Opposition between them, which is strongly elucidated by their Arrangement together, and at the same time their unexpected Connexion in their Consequences, strike us with a Surprize, which exhibits the Brilliancy and Sparkling of WIT.