is
dressed she is beautiful: when she is undressed she is beautiful;" or, as
Mercerus has translated it more emphatically, _Induitur_, _formosa est_:
_exuitur_, _ipsa forma est_.

Fifth Paper.

_Scribendi recte sapere est et principium_, _et fons_.

HOR., _Ars Poet._ 309.

Sound judgment is the ground of writing well.--ROSCOMMON.

Mr. Locke has an admirable reflection upon the difference of wit and
judgment, whereby he endeavours to show the reason why they are not
always the talents of the same person. His words are as follow:--"And
hence, perhaps, may be given some reason of that common observation,
'That men who have a great deal of wit, and prompt memories, have not
always the clearest judgment or deepest reason.' For wit lying most in
the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and
variety wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to
make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy: judgment,
on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully
one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least difference,
thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and by affinity to take one
thing for another. This is a way of proceeding quite contrary to
metaphor and allusion, wherein, for the most part, lies that
entertainment and pleasantry of wit which strikes so lively on the fancy,
and is therefore so acceptable to all people."

This is, I think, the best and most philosophical account that I have
ever met with of wit, which generally, though not always, consists in
such a resemblance and congruity of ideas as this author mentions. I
shall only add to it, by way of explanation, that every resemblance of
ideas is not that which we call wit, unless it be such an one that gives
delight and surprise to the reader. These two properties seem essential
to wit, more particularly the last of them. In order, therefore, that
the resemblance in the ideas be wit, it is necessary that the ideas
should not lie too near one another in the nature of things; for, where
the likeness is obvious, it gives no surprise. To compare one man's
singing to that of another, or to represent the whiteness of any object
by that of milk and snow, or the variety of its colours by those of the
rainbow, cannot be called wit, unless, besides this obvious resemblance,
there be some further congruity discovered in the two ideas that is
capable of giving the