graded into Moll Boon, she told him, to his Mercure Gallant; where the author every infinite surprise, that he had mistaken her month gives a list of rhymes to be filled up by sirname, for that it was not Boon, but Bohun. the ingenious, in order to be communicated to The lover was thunder-struck with his misfortune, insomuch that in a little time after he lost his senses, which indeed had been very much impaired by that continual application he had given to his anagram. poem. the public in the Mercure for the succeeding month. That for the month of November last, which now lies before me, is as follows: Lauriers Guerriers Musette Lisette Cæsars Etendars Houlette Folette One would be amazed to see so learned a The acrostic was probably invented about the same time with the anagram, though it is impossible to decide whether the inventor of the one or the other were the greater blockhead. The simple acrostic is nothing but the name or title of a person, or thing, made out of the initial letters of several verses, and by that man as Menage talking seriously on this kind means written, after the manner of the Chinese, of trifle in the following passage: in a perpendicular line. But besides these 'Monsieur de la Chambre has told me, that there are compound acrostics, when the prin- he never knew what he was going to write cipal letters stand two or three deep. I have when he took his pen into his hand; but that seen some of them where the verses have one sentence always produced another. For not only been edged by a name at each ex-my own part, I never knew what I should write tremity, but have had the same name running next when I was making verses. In the first down like a seam through the middle of the place I got all my rhymes together, and was afterwards perhaps three or four months in There is another near relation of the ana-filling them up. I I one day showed Monsieur grams and acrostics, which is commonly called Gombaud a composition of this nature, in a chronogram. This kind of wit appears very which, among others, I had made use of the often on many modern medals, especially those four following rhymes, Amaryllis, Phyllis, of Germany, when they represent in the in-Marne, Arne; desiring him to give me his scription the year in which they were coined. opinion of it. He told me immediately, that Thus we see on a medal of Gustavus Adolphus my verses were good for nothing. And upon the following words, CHRISTVS DUX ERGO my asking his reason, he said, because the TRIVMPHVS. If you take the pains to pick rhymes are too common; and for that reason the figures out of the several words, and range easy to be put into verse. "Marry," says I, them in their proper order, you will find they "if it be so, I am very well rewarded for all amount to MDCXXVII, or 1627, the year in the pains I have been at." But by Monsieur which the medal was stamped: for as some of Gombaud's leave, notwithstanding the severity the letters distinguish themselves from the of the criticism, the verses were good.' Vid. rest, and overtop their fellows, they are to be Menagiana.*-Thus far the learned Menage, considered in a double capacity, both as letters whom I have translated word for word. and as figures. Your laborious German wits The first occasion of these bouts-rimez made will turn over a whole dictionary for one of them in some manner excusable, as they were these ingenious devices. A man would think tasks which the French ladies used to impose they were searching after an apt classical on their lovers. But when a grave author, like term, but instead of that they are looking out a word that has an L, an M, or a D in it. When therefore we meet with any of these inscriptions, we are not so much to look in them for the thought, as for the year of the Lord. him above-mentioned, tasked himself, could there be any thing more ridiculous? Or would not one be apt to believe that the author played booty, and did not make his list of rhymes till he had finished his poem? I shall only add, that this piece of false wit The bouts-rimez were the favourites of the has been finely ridiculed by Monsieur Sarasin, French nation for a whole age together, and in a poem entitled, La Defaite des Bouts-Rimez, that at a time when it abounded in wit and The Rout of the Bouts-Rimez. learning. They were a list of words that I must subjoin to this last kind of wit the rhyme to one another, drawn up by another double rhymes, which are used in doggerel hand, and given to a poet, who was to make a poetry, and generally applauded by ignorant poem to the rhymes in the same order that readers. If the thought of the couplet in such they were placed upon the list: the more un-compositions is good, the rhyme adds little to common the rhymes were, the more extraor-it; and if bad, it will not be in the power of dinary was the genius of the poet that could the rhyme to recommend it. I am afraid that accommodate his verses to them. I do not great numbers of those who admire the incomknow any greater instance of the decay of wit parable Hudibras, do it more on account of and learning among the French (which gene- these doggerel rhymes, than of the parts that rally follows the declension of empire) than really deserve admiration. I am sure I have the endeavouring to restore this foolish kind of heard the wit. If the reader will be at the trouble to see examples of it, let him look into the new 'Pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, Tom. i, p. 174, &c: ed. Amst. 1713. a gentleman whom he looked upon to be the greatest paragrammatist among the moderns. Upon inquiry, I found my learned friend had dined that day with Mr. Swan, the famous punster; and desiring him to give me some account of Mr. Swan's conversation, he told me that he generally talked in the Paranomasia, that he sometimes gave into the Ploce, but that in his humble opinion he shined most in the Antanaclasis. I must not here omit, that a famous university of this land was formerly very much infested with puns; but whether or no this might not arise from the fens and marshes in which it was situated, and which are now drained, I must leave to the determination of more skilful THERE is no kind of false wit which has been so recommended by the practice of all ages, as that which consists in a jingle of naturalists. words, and is comprehended under tha gene- After this short history of punning, one ral name of punning. It is indeed impossible would wonder how it should be so entirely to kill a weed, which the soil has a natural dis-banished out of the learned world as it is at position to produce. The seeds of punning present, especially since it had found a place are in the minds of all men; and though they in the writings of the most ancient polite aumay be subdued by reason, reflection, and thors. To account for this we must consider, good sense, they will be very apt to shoot up that the first race of authors, who were the in the greatest genius that is not broken and great heroes in writing, were destitute of all cultivated by the rules of art. Imitation is the rules and arts of criticism; and for that natural to us, and when it does not raise the reason, though they excel latter writers in mind to poetry, painting, music, or other greatness of genius, they fall short of them more noble arts, it often breaks out in puns and quibbles. in accuracy and correctness. The moderns cannot reach their beauties, but can avoid Aristotle, in the eleventh chapter of his their imperfections. When the world was book of rhetoric, describes two or three kinds furnished with these authors of the first eminof puns, which he calls paragrams, among the ence, there grew up another set of writers, beauties of good writing, and produces instan- who gained themselves a reputation by the ces of them out of some of the greatest authors remarks which they made on the works of in the Greek tongue. Cicero has sprinkled those who preceded them. It was one of the several of his works with puns, and in his employments of these secondary authors, to book where he lays down the rules of oratory, distinguish the several kinds of wit by terms of quotes abundance of sayings as pieces of wit, art, and to consider them as more or less per which also upon examination prove arrant fect, according as they were founded in truth. puns. But the age in which the pun chiefly It is no wonder therefore, that even such auflourished, was in the reign of King James the thors as Isocrates, Plato, and Cicero, should First. That learned monarch was himself a have such little blemishes as are not to be met tolerable punster, and made very few bishops with in authors of a much inferior character, or privy-counsellors that had not sometime or who have written since those several blemishes other signalized themselves by a clinch, or a were discovered. I do not find that there was conundrum. It was therefore in this age that a proper separation made between puns and the pun appeared with pomp and dignity. It true wit by any of the ancient authors, except had been before admitted into merry speeches Quintilian and Longinus. But when this disand ludicrous compositions, but was now de- tinction was once settled, it was very natural livered with great gravity from the pulpit, or for all men of sense to agree in it. As for the pronounced in the most solemn manner at the revival of this false wit, it happened about the council-table. The greatest authors, in their time of the revival of letters; but as soon as most serious works, made frequent use of it was once detected, it immediately vanished puns. The sermons of Bishop Andrews, and and disappeared. At the same time there is the tragedies of Shakespeare, are full of them. no question, but as it has sunk in one age and The sinner was punned into repentance by the former, as in the latter nothing is more usual than to see a hero weeping and quibbling for a dozen lines together. rose in another, it will again recover itself in some distant period of time, as pedantry and ignorance shall prevail upon wit and sense. And, to speak the truth, I do very much apI must add to these great authorities, which prehend, by some of the last winter's producseem to have given a kind of sanction to this tions, which had their sets of admirers, that piece of false wit, that all the writers of our posterity will in a few years degenerate inrhetoric have treated of punning with very to a race of punsters: at least, a man may be great respect, and divided the several kinds very excusable for any apprehensions of this of it into hard names, that are reckoned kind, that has seen acrostics handed about the among the figures of speech, and recommend- town with great secrecy and applause; to which ed as ornaments in discourse. I remember a I must also add a little epigram called the country schoolmaster of my acquaintance told Witches Prayer, that fell into verse when it me once, that he had been in company with was read either backward or forward, except ing only that it cursed one way, and blessed which generally, though not always, consists the other. When one sees there are actually in such a resemblance and congruity of ideas such pains-takers among our British wits, who as this author mentions. I shall only add to it, can tell what it may end in? If we must lash by way of explanation, that every resemblance one another, let it be with the manly strokes of ideas is not that which we call wit, unless it of wit and satire; for I am of the old philoso-be such an one that gives delight and surprise pher's opinion, that if I must suffer from one to the reader. These two properties seem esor the other, I would rather it should be from sential to wit, more particularly the last of the paw of a lion, than from the hoof of an them. In order therefore that the resemblance ass. I do not speak this out of any spirit of party. There is a most crying dulness on both sides. I have seen tory acrostics and whig anagrams, and do not quarrel with either of them, because they are whigs or tories, but because they are anagrams and acrostics. 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 But to return to punning. Having pursued and snow, or the variety of its colours by those the history of a pun, from its original to its of the rainbow, cannot be called wit, unless bedownfall, I shall here define it to be a conceit sides this obvious resemblance, there be some arising from the use of two words that agree in further congruity discovered in the two ideas, the sound, but differ in the sense. The only that is capable of giving the reader some surway therefore to try a piece of wit, is to trans-prise. Thus when a poet tells us the bosom of late it into a different language. If it bears the his mistress is as white as snow, there is no wit test, you may pronounce it true; but if it van-in the comparison; but when he adds with a ishes in the experiment, you may conclude it to sigh, it is as cold too, it then grows into wit. have been a pun. In short, one may say of a Every reader's memory may supply him with pun, as the countryman described his nightin- innumerable instances of the same nature. For gale, that it is 'vox et præterea nihil,'-'a sound, this reason, the similitudes in heroic poets, who and nothing but a sound.' On the contrary, endeavour rather to fill the mind with great one may represent true wit by the description conceptions, than to divert it with such as are which Aristenetus makes of a fine woman; when new and surprising, have seldom any thing in she is dressed she is beautiful; when she is un-them that can be called wit. Mr. Locke's acdressed she is beautiful; or as Mercerus has count of wit, with this short explanation, comtranslated it more emphatically, Induitur. for-prehends most of the species of wit, as metainosa est: exuitur, ipsa forma est.'* No 62.] Friday, May 11, 1711. phors, similitudes, allegories, enigmas, mottos, parables, fables, dreams, visions, dramatic writings, burlesque, and all the methods of allusion. There are many other pieces of wit Hor. Ars Poet. ver. 309. (how remote soever they may appear at first sight from the foregoing description) which upon examination will be found to agree with Scribendi recté sapere est et principium et fons. Sound judgment is the ground of writing well. upon it. As true wit generally consists in this resemblance and congruity of ideas, false wit chiefly consists in the resemblance and congruity sometimes of single letters, as in anagrams, chronograms, lipograms, and acrostics: sometimes of syllables, as in echoes and doggerel rhymes: sometimes of words, as in puns and quibbles; and sometimes of whole sentences or poems, cast into the figures of eggs, axes, or altars: nay, some carry the notion of wit so far, as to ascribe it even to external mimickry; and to look upon a man as an ingenious person, that can resemble the tone, posture, or face of MR. LOCKE has an admirable reflection 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 follows: '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; judg ment, on the contrary, lies quite on the other As true wit consists in the resemblance of side, in separating carefully one from another, ideas, and false wit in the resemblance of words, ideas wherein can be found the least difference, according to the foregoing instances; there is thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and another kind of wit which consists partly in the by affinity to take one thing for another. This resemblance of ideas, and partly in the resemis a way of proceeding quite contrary to meta-blance of words, which for distinction sake I phor and allusion; wherein, for the most part, shall call mixt wit. This kind of wit is that lies that entertainment and pleasantry of wit, which abounds in Cowley, more than in any Mr. Waller has likewhich strikes so lively on the fancy, and is author that ever wrote. therefore so acceptable to all people.' wise a great deal of it. Mr. Dryden is very This is, I think, the best and most philoso-sparing in it. Milton had a genius much above phical account that I have ever met with of wit, it. Spenser is in the same class with Milton. * Dressed she is beautiful, undressed she is Beauty's self. VOL. I. another. The Italians, even in their epic poetry, are full of it. Monsieur Boileau, who formed himself upon the ancient poets, has every where reject 11 ed it with scorn. If we look after mixt wit province therefore for this kind of wit, is epiamong the Greek writers, we shall find it no gram, or those little occasional poems, that in where but in the epigrammatists. There are their own nature are nothing else but a tissue indeed some strokes of it in the little poem as- of epigrams. I cannot conclude this head of cribed to Musæus, which by that, as well as mixt wit, without owning that the admirable many other marks, betrays itself to be a mo- poet, out of whom I have taken the examples dern composition. If we look into the Latin of it, had as much true wit as any author that writers, we find none of this mixt wit in Virgil, ever writ; and indeed all other talents of an Lucretius, or Catullus; very little in Horace, extraordinary genius. but a great deal of it in Ovid, and scarce any thing else in Martial. It may be expected, since I am upon this subject, that I should take notice of Mr. DryOut of the innumerable branches of mixt wit, den's definition of wit: which, with all the deI shall choose one instance which may be met ference that is due to the judgment of so great ́ with in all the writers of this class. The pas- a man, is not so properly a definition of wit as sion of love in its nature has been thought to of good writing in general. Wit, as he defines resemble fire; for which reason the words fire it, is a propriety of words and thoughts adaptand flame are made use of to signify love. The ed to the subject. If this be a true definition witty poets therefore have taken an advantage of wit, I am apt to think that Euclid was the from the double meaning of the word fire, to greatest wit that ever set pen to paper. It is make an infinite number of witticisms. Cowley certain there never was a greater propriety of observing the cold regard of his mistress's eyes, words and thoughts adapted to the subject, than and at the same time their power of producing what that author has made use of in his Elelove in him, considers them as burning-glasses ments. I shall only appeal to my reader, if this made of ice; and finding himself able to live in definition agrees with any notion he has of wit. the greatest extremities of love, concludes the If it be a true one, I am sure Mr. Dryden was torrid zone to be habitable. When his mistress not only a better poet, but a greater wit than had read his letter written in juice of lemon, by Mr. Cowley; and Virgil a much more facetious holding it to the fire, he desires her to read it man than either Ovid or Martial. over a second time by love's flame. When she Bouhours, whom I look upon to be the most weeps, he wishes it were inward heat that dis-penetrating of all the French critics, has taken tilled those drops from the limbec. When she pains to show, that it is impossible for any is absent, he is beyond eighty, that is, thirty thought to be beautiful which is not just, and degrees nearer the pole than when she is with has not its foundation in the nature of things; him. His ambitious love is a fire that natural-that the basis of all wit is truth; and that no ly mounts upwards; his happy love is the beams thought can be valuable of which good sense is of heaven, and his unhappy love flames of hell. not the ground-work. Boileau has endeavourWhen it does not let him sleep, it is a flame that led to inculcate the same notion in several parts sends up no smoke; when it is opposed by of his writings, both in prose and verse. counsel and advice, it is a fire that rages the is that natural way of writing, that beautiful more by the winds blowing upon it. Upon the simplicity, which we so much admire in the dying of a tree, in which he had cut his loves, compositions of the ancients; and which no bohe observed that his written flames had burnt dy deviates from, but those who want strength up and withered the tree. When he resolves to of genius to make a thought shine in its own nagive over his passion, he tells us, that one burnt tural beauties. Poets who want this strength like him for ever dreads the fire. His heart is of genius to give that majestic simplicity to nain Etna, that instead of Vulcan's shop, enclo-ture, which we so much admire in the works of ses Cupid's forge in it. His endeavouring to the ancients, are forced to hunt after foreign drown his love in wine, is throwing oil upon ornaments, and not to let any piece of wit of the fire. He would insinuate to his mistress, what kind soever escape them. I look upon that the fire of love, like that of the sun (which these writers as Goths in poetry, who like those produces so many living creatures,) should not ip architecture, not being able to come up to only warm, but beget. Love in another place the beautiful simplicity of the old Greeks and cooks pleasure at his fire. Sometimes the poet's Romans, have endeavoured to supply its place heart is frozen in every breast, and sometimes with all the extravagancies of an irregular fanscorched in every eye. Sometimes he is drown-cy. Mr. Dryden makes a very handsome obed in tears, and burnt in love, like a ship set on fire in the middle of the sea. This servation on Ovid's writing a letter from Dido to Æneas, in the following words: Ovid,' says The reader may observe in every one of these he, speaking of Virgil's fiction of Dido and instances, that the poet mixes the qualities of Eneas, 'takes it up after him, even in the same fire with those of love; and in the same sen- age, and makes an ancient heroine of Virgil's tence, speaking of it both as a passion and as new created Dido; dictates a letter for her just real fire, surprises the reader with those seem- before her death to the ungrateful fugitive, and ing resemblances or contradictions, that make very unluckily for himself, is for measuring a up all the wit in this kind of writing. Mixt wit sword with a man so much superior in force to therefore is a composition of pun and true wit, him on the same subject. I think I may be and is more or less perfect, as the resemblance judge of this, because I have translated both. lies in the ideas or in the words. Its founda- The famous author of the Art of Love has notions are laid partly in falsehood and partly in thing of his own; he borrows all from a greattruth; reason puts in her claim for one half of er master in his own profession, and which is it, and extravagance for the other. The only worse, improves nothing which he finds. Na ture fails him, and being forced to his old shift, employed. The thoughts will be rising of themhe has recourse to witticism. This passes in-selves from time to time, though we give them deed with his seft admirers, and gives him the no encouragement; as the tossings and fluctupreference to Virgil in their esteem.' ations of the sea continue several hours after the winds are laid. Were not I supported by so great an authority as that of Mr. Dryden, I should not venture It is to this that I impute my last night's to observe, that the taste of most of our English dream or vision, which formed into one continpoets, as well as readers, is extremely Gothic.ued allegory the several schemes of wit, wheHe quotes Monsieur Segrais for a threefold dis-ther false, mixed, or true, that have been the tinction of the readers of poetry; in the first of subject of my late papers. which he comprehends the rabble of readers, Methought I was transported into a country whom he does not treat as such with regard to that was filled with prodigies and enchanttheir quality, but to their numbers and the ments, governed by the goddess of Falsehood, coarseness of their taste. His words are as fol- and entitled the Region of False Wit. There lows: Segrais has distinguished the readers of was nothing in the fields, the woods, and the poetry, according to their capacity of judging, rivers, that appeared natural. Several of the into three classes. [He might have said the trees blossomed in leaf-gold, some of them prosame of writers too, if he had pleased.] In duced bone-lace, and some of them precious the lowest form he places those whom he calls stones. The fountains bubbled in an opera Les Petits Esprits, such things as are our up- tune, and were filled with stags, wild boars, and per-gallery audience in a playhouse; who like mermaids that lived among the waters; at the nothing but the husk and rind of wit, and pre-same time that dolphins and several kinds of fer a quibble, a conceit, an epigram before solid fish played upon the banks, or took their passense and elegant expression. These are mob time in the meadows. The birds had many of readers. If Virgil and Martial stood for par- them golden beaks, and human voices. The liament-men, we know already who would car-flowers perfuined the air with smells of incense, ry it. But though they make the greatest ap- ambergris, and pulvillios;* and were so interpearance in the field, and cry the loudest, the woven with one another, that they grew up in best on it is, they are but a sort of French hu- pieces of embroidery. The winds were filled gonots, or Dutch boors, brought over in herds, with sighs and messages of distant lovers. As but not naturalized; who have not lands of two I was walking to and fro in this enchanted wilpounds per annum in Parnassus, and therefore derness, I could not ferbear breaking out into are not privileged to poll. Their authors are soliloquies upon the several wonders which lay of the same level, fit to represent them on a before me, when, to my great surprise, I found mountebank's stage, or to be masters of the there were artificial echoes in every walk, that ceremonies in a bear-garden: yet these are they by repetitions of certain words which I spoke, who have the most admirers. But it often hap-agreed with me, or contradicted me, in every pens, to their mortification, that as their read-thing I said. In the midst of my conversation. ers improve their stock of sense (as they may with these invisible companions, I discovered by reading better books, and by conversation in the centre of a very dark grove a monstrous. with men of judgment) they soon forsake them.' fabric built after the Gothic manner, and coverI must not dismiss this subject without ob-ed with innumerable devices in that barbarous serving, that as Mr. Locke in the passage kind of sculpture. I immediately went up to it, above-mentioned has discovered the most fruit- and found it to be a kind of heathen temple ful source of wit, so there is another of a quite consecrated to the god of Dulness. Upon my contrary nature to it, which does likewise entrance I saw the deity of the place dressed branch itself out into several kinds. For not only the resemblance, but the opposition of ideas, does very often produce wit; as I could show in several little points, turns, and antithe ses, that I may possibly enlarge upon in some future speculation. C. No. 63.] Saturday, May 12, 1711. in the habit of a monk, with a book in one hand. and a rattle in the other. Upon his right hand was Industry, with a lamp burning before her; and on his left Caprice, with a monkey sitting on her shoulder. Before his feet there stood an altar of a very odd make, which, as I afterwards found, was shaped in that manner to comply with the inscription that surrounded it. Upon the altar there lay several offerings of axes, wings, and eggs, cut in paper; and inscribed with verses. The temple was filled with votaries, who applied themselves to different diversions, as their fancies directed them. In one part of it I saw a regiment of anagrams, Hor. Are Poet. ver. 1.who were continually in motion, turning to the Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam If in a picture, Piso, you should see IT is very hard for the mind to disengage itself from a subject on which it has been long right or to the left, facing about, doubling their ranks, shifting their stations, and throwing themselves into all the figures and countermarches of the most changeable and perplexed exercises. Not far from these was the body of acrostics, made up of very disproportioned persons. It was disposed into three columns, the officers * Pulvillios, sweet-scented powders. |