owley_, more than in any Author that ever wrote. Mr. _Waller_ has
likewise a great deal of it. Mr. _Dryden_ is very sparing in it.
_Milton_ had a Genius much above it. _Spencer_ is in the same Class with
_Milton_. The _Italians_, even in their Epic Poetry, are full of it.
Monsieur _Boileau_, who formed himself upon the Ancient Poets, has
every where rejected it with Scorn. If we look after mixt Wit among the
_Greek_ Writers, we shall find it no where but in the Epigrammatists.
There are indeed some Strokes of it in the little Poem ascribed to
Musoeus, which by that, as well as many other Marks, betrays it self to
be a modern Composition. If we look into the _Latin_ Writers, we find
none of this mixt Wit in _Virgil, Lucretius_, or _Catullus_; very little
in _Horace_, but a great deal of it in _Ovid_, and scarce any thing else
in _Martial_.

Out of the innumerable Branches of _mixt Wit_, I shall choose one
Instance which may be met with in all the Writers of this Class. The
Passion of Love in its Nature has been thought to resemble Fire; for
which Reason the Words Fire and Flame are made use of to signify Love.
The witty Poets therefore have taken an Advantage from the doubtful
Meaning of the Word Fire, to make an infinite Number of Witticisms.
_Cowley_ observing the cold Regard of his Mistress's Eyes, and at the
same Time their Power of producing Love in him, considers them as
Burning-Glasses made of Ice; and finding himself able to live in the
greatest Extremities of Love, concludes the Torrid Zone to be habitable.
When his Mistress has read his Letter written in Juice of Lemmon by
holding it to the Fire, he desires her to read it over a second time by
Love's Flames. When she weeps, he wishes it were inward Heat that
distilled those Drops from the Limbeck. When she is absent he is beyond
eighty, that is, thirty Degrees nearer the Pole than when she is with
him. His ambitious Love is a Fire that naturally mounts upwards; his
happy Love is the Beams of Heaven, and his unhappy Love Flames of Hell.
When it does not let him sleep, it is a Flame that sends up no Smoak;
when it is opposed by Counsel and Advice, it is a Fire that rages the
more by the Wind's blowing upon it. Upon the dying of a Tree in which he
had cut his Loves, he observes that his written Flames had burnt up and
withered the Tree. When he resolves to give over his Passion, he tells
us that one burnt like him for ever dreads the Fire. His Heart is an
_AEtna_,