Prodigalities" in which wit is expressed might be
either sober or funny. Most of the examples in the _Essay on Wit_ are
of the sober kind, coming under the order of wit because they are
pretty and diverting fancies. But by the 1690's there had been a clear
tendency to associate wit with mirth, and often with satire. By 1726
James Arbuckle could write (_A Collection of Letters_, 1729, II, 72):
"... Satire and Ridicule, which are the main Provocatives to Laughter,
still keep their ground among us, and are reckoned the chief
Embellishments of Discourse by all who aim at the Character of Wits."

The end of wit was to surprise and delight. One may surprise by
novelty, but the easiest road to the goal is audacity; and the
subjects which lent themselves most readily to audacity were sex and
religion. The treatment of the latter proved especially troublesome to
good men like Blackmore, and the frequency of portraits and characters
of the Profance Wit shows that many people were disturbed. Shaftesbury
in _Sensus Communis_ (1709) tried to justify the use of wit in
discussing religion. For the rest of the century Shaftesbury's
position was the center of heated debate, with Akenside supporting,
and John Brown and Warburton opposing, the employment of wit in
religion; and the _Gentleman's Magazine_ is full of the arguments of
lesser men who took sides. The author of the _Essay on Wit_ places
himself firmly beside Shaftesbury when he remarks (p. 14) that "a
Subject which will not bear Raillery, is suspicious." The controversy
is reviewed in an article by A.O. Aldridge, called "Shaftesbury and
the Test of Truth" (_PMLA_, LX, 129-156).

Wit was taken to be the source, of tropes, and figures of speech, of
all the color and adornments of rhetoric; and the old tradition of
rhetoric, handed down from the Renaissance, tended to regard tropes
and figures as mere ornament, a means of decorating the surface, an
artful prettifying of a subject in order that it might please. For
this reason wit was likely to be considered out of place in serious
works which called for naturalness and passion. The objection to the
simile in the language of passion was an old note in English criticism
(cf. Dennis, _Critical Works_, I, 424); but the author of the _Essay
on Wit_ in condemning glittering strokes and ingenious prodigalities
in impassioned literature shows by his phrasing that he is following
Father Bouhours (cf. Manlere die Bien Penser, Amsterdam, 1