some of Morris's
definitions obscure, modern readers will find them more precise than
those of most of his predecessors. All who had gone before--Cowley,
Barrow, Dryden, Locke, Addison, and Congreve (he does not mention
Hobbes)--Morris felt had bungled the job. And although he apologizes
for attempting what the great writers of the past had failed to do, he
has no hesitation in setting forth exactly what he believes to be the
proper distinctions in the meanings of such terms as wit, humour,
judgment, invention, raillery, and ridicule. The mathematician and
statistician in Morris made him strive for precise accuracy. It was
all very clear to him, and by the use of numerous anecdotes and
examples he hoped to make the distinctions obvious to the general
reader.

The _Essay_ shows what a man of some evident taste and perspicacity,
with an analytical mind, can do in defining the subtle semantic
distinctions in literary terms. Trying to fix immutably what is
certain always to be shifting, Morris is noteworthy not only because
of the nature of his attempt, but because he is relatively so
successful. As Professor Edward Hooker has pointed out in an
Introduction to an earlier _ARS_ issue (Series I, No. 2), his is
"probably the best and clearest treatment of the subject in the first
half of the eighteenth century." It may be regretted that political
and economic concerns occupied so much of his later life, leaving him
no time for further literary essays.

In the present facsimile edition, for reasons of space, only the
Introduction and the main body of the _Essay_ are reproduced. Although
Morris once remarked to David Hume that he wrote all his books "for
the sake of the Dedications" (_Letters of David Hume_ ed. Greig, I,
380), modern readers need not regret too much the omission of the
fulsome 32 page dedication to Walpole (The Earl of Orford). Morris
insists at the beginning that the book was inspired by a fervent
desire of "attempting a Composition, independent of Politics, which
might furnish an occasional Amusement" to his patron. The praise which
follows, in which Walpole is said to lead "the _Empire_ of _Letters_,"
is so excessive as to produce only smiles in twentieth century
readers. Walpole is praised for not curbing the press while
necessarily curbing the theatre, his aid to commerce and industry,
indeed almost every act of his administration, is lauded to the skies.
The Church of England, in which "the _Exercise_ o