Essays and Tales Part 4

Newberry, to represent his name by a picture, hung up at his door the sign of a yew-tree, that has several berries upon it, and in the midst of them a great golden N hung upon a bough of the tree, which by the help of a little false spelling made up the word Newberry.

I shall conclude this topic with a rebus, which has been lately hewn out in freestone, and erected over two of the portals of Blenheim House, being the figure of a monstrous lion tearing to pieces a little c.o.c.k. For the better understanding of which device I must acquaint my English reader that a c.o.c.k has the misfortune to be called in Latin by the same word that signifies a Frenchman, as a lion is the emblem of the English nation. Such a device in so n.o.ble a pile of building looks like a pun in an heroic poem; and I am very sorry the truly ingenious architect would suffer the statuary to blemish his excellent plan with so poor a conceit.

But I hope what I have said will gain quarter for the c.o.c.k, and deliver him out of the lion's paw.

I find likewise in ancient times the conceit of making an echo talk sensibly, and give rational answers. If this could be excusable in any writer, it would be in Ovid where he introduces the Echo as a nymph, before she was worn away into nothing but a voice. The learned Erasmus, though a man of wit and genius, has composed a dialogue upon this silly kind of device, and made use of an Echo, who seems to have been a very extraordinary linguist, for she answers the person she talks with in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, according as she found the syllables which she was to repeat in any of those learned languages. Hudibras, in ridicule of this false kind of wit, has described Bruin bewailing the loss of his bear to the solitary Echo, who is of great use to the poet in several distiches, as she does not only repeat after him, but helps out his verse, and furnishes him with rhymes:--

He raged, and kept as heavy a coil as Stout Hercules for loss of Hylas; Forcing the valleys to repeat The accents of his sad regret; He beat his breast, and tore his hair, For loss of his dear crony bear: That Echo from the hollow ground His doleful wailings did resound More wistfully by many times, Than in small poets' splay-foot rhymes, That make her, in their rueful stories, To answer to int'rogatories, And most unconscionably depose Things of which she nothing knows; And when she has said all she can say, 'Tis wrested to the lover's fancy.

Quoth he, "O whither, wicked Bruin, Art thou fled to my"--Echo, _Ruin_?

"I thought th' hadst scorn'd to budge a step For fear." Quoth Echo, _Marry guep_.

"Am I not here to take thy part?"

Then what has quell'd thy stubborn heart?

Have these bones rattled, and this head So often in thy quarrel bled?

Nor did I ever winch or grudge it, For thy dear sake." Quoth she, _Mum budget_.

Think'st thou 'twill not be laid i' th' dish, Thou turn'dst thy back?" Quoth Echo, _Pish_.

To run from those th' hadst overcome Thus cowardly?" Quoth Echo, _Mum_.

"But what a-vengeance makes thee fly From me too as thine enemy?

Or if thou hadst no thought of me, Nor what I have endured for thee, Yet shame and honour might prevail To keep thee thus from turning tail: For who would grudge to spend his blood in His honour's cause?" Quoth she, _A pudding_.

_Part_ I., _Cant._ 3, 183.

Third Paper.

_Hoc est quod palles_? _Cur quis non prandeat_, _hoc est_?

PERS., _Sat._ iii. 85.

Is it for this you gain those meagre looks, And sacrifice your dinner to your books?

Several kinds of false wit that vanished in the refined ages of the world, discovered themselves again in the times of monkish ignorance.

As the monks were the masters of all that little learning which was then extant, and had their whole lives entirely disengaged from business, it is no wonder that several of them, who wanted genius for higher performances, employed many hours in the composition of such tricks in writing as required much time and little capacity. I have seen half the "AEneid" turned into Latin rhymes by one of the _beaux esprits_ of that dark age: who says, in his preface to it, that the "AEneid" wanted nothing but the sweets of rhyme to make it the most perfect work in its kind. I have likewise seen a hymn in hexameters to the Virgin Mary, which filled a whole book, though it consisted but of the eight following words:--

_Tot tibi sunt_, _Virgo_, _dotes_, _quot sidera coelo_.

Thou hast as many virtues, O Virgin, as there are stars in heaven.

The poet rang the changes upon these eight several words, and by that means made his verses almost as numerous as the virtues and stars which they celebrated. It is no wonder that men who had so much time upon their hands did not only restore all the antiquated pieces of false wit, but enriched the world with inventions of their own. It is to this age that we owe the production of anagrams, which is nothing else but a trans.m.u.tation of one word into another, or the turning of the same set of letters into different words; which may change night into day, or black into white, if chance, who is the G.o.ddess that presides over these sorts of composition, shall so direct. I remember a witty author, in allusion to this kind of writing, calls his rival, who, it seems, was distorted, and had his limbs set in places that did not properly belong to them, "the anagram of a man."

When the anagrammatist takes a name to work upon, he considers it at first as a mine not broken up, which will not show the treasure it contains till he shall have spent many hours in the search of it; for it is his business to find out one word that conceals itself in another, and to examine the letters in all the variety of stations in which they can possibly be ranged. I have heard of a gentleman who, when this kind of wit was in fashion, endeavoured to gain his mistress's heart by it. She was one of the finest women of her age, and known by the name of the Lady Mary Boon. The lover not being able to make anything of Mary, by certain liberties indulged to this kind of writing converted it into Moll; and after having shut himself up for half a year, with indefatigable industry produced an anagram. Upon the presenting it to his mistress, who was a little vexed in her heart to see herself degraded into Moll Boon, she told him, to his infinite surprise, that he had mistaken her surname, for that it was not Boon, but Bohun.

--_Ibi omnis_ _Effusus labor_.--

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.

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 t.i.tle of a person, or thing, made out of the initial letters of several verses, and by that means written, after the manner of the Chinese, in a perpendicular line. But besides these there are compound acrostics, when the princ.i.p.al letters stand two or three deep. I have seen some of them where the verses have not only been edged by a name at each extremity, but have had the same name running down like a seam through the middle of the poem.

There is another near relation of the anagrams and acrostics, which is commonly called a chronogram. This kind of wit appears very often on many modern medals, especially those of Germany, when they represent in the inscription the year in which they were coined. Thus we see on a medal of Gustavus Adolphus time following words, CHRISTVS DUX ERGO TRIVMPHVS. If you take the pains to pick the figures out of the several words, and range them in their proper order, you will find they amount to MDCXVVVII, or 1627, the year in which the medal was stamped: for as some of the letters distinguish themselves from the rest, and overtop their fellows, they are to be considered in a double capacity, both as letters and as figures. Your laborious German wits will turn over a whole dictionary for one of these ingenious devices. A man would think they were searching after an apt cla.s.sical 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.

The _bouts-rimes_ were the favourites of the French nation for a whole age together, and that at a time when it abounded in wit and learning.

They were a list of words that rhyme to one another, drawn up by another hand, and given to a poet, who was to make a poem to the rhymes in the same order that they were placed upon the list: the more uncommon the rhymes were, the more extraordinary was the genius of the poet that could accommodate his verses to them. I do not know any greater instance of the decay of wit and learning among the French, which generally follows the declension of empire, than the endeavouring to restore this foolish kind of wit. If the reader will be at trouble to see examples of it, let him look into the new _Mercure Gallant_, where the author every month gives a list of rhymes to be filled up by the ingenious, in order to be communicated to 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 Caesars Etendars Houlette Folette

One would be amazed to see so learned a man as Menage talking seriously on this kind of trifle in the following pa.s.sage:--

"Monsieur de la Chambre has told me that he never knew what he was going to write when he took his pen into his hand; but that one sentence always produced another. For my own part, I never knew what I should write next when I was making verses. In the first place I got all my rhymes together, and was afterwards perhaps three or four months in filling them up. I one day showed Monsieur Gombaud a composition of this nature, in which, among others, I had made use of the four following rhymes, Amaryllis, Phyllis, Maine, Arne; desiring him to give me his opinion of it. He told me immediately that my verses were good for nothing. And upon my asking his reason, he said, because the rhymes are too common, and for that reason easy to be put into verse. 'Marry,' says I, 'if it be so, I am very well rewarded for all the pains I have been at!' But by Monsieur Gombaud's leave, notwithstanding the severity of the criticism, the verses were good." (_Vide_ "Menagiana.") Thus far the learned Menage, whom I have translated word for word.

The first occasion of these _bouts-rimes_ made them in some manner excusable, as they were tasks which the French ladies used to impose on their lovers. But when a grave author, like him above-mentioned, tasked himself, could there be anything 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 has been finely ridiculed by Monsieur Sarasin, in a poem ent.i.tled "La Defaite des Bouts-Rimes."

(The Rout of the Bouts-Rimes).

I must subjoin to this last kind of wit the double rhymes, which are used in doggrel poetry, and generally applauded by ignorant readers. If the thought of the couplet in such compositions is good, the rhyme adds little to it; and if bad, it will not be in the power of the rhyme to recommend it. I am afraid that great numbers of those who admire the incomparable "Hudibras," do it more on account of these doggrel rhymes than of the parts that really deserve admiration. I am sure I have heard the

Pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, Was beat with fist, instead of a stick (Canto I, II),

and--

There was an ancient philosopher Who had read Alexander Ross over

(_Part_ I., _Canto_ 2, 1),

more frequently quoted than the finest pieces of wit in the whole poem.

Fourth Paper.

_Non equidem hoc studeo bullatis ut mihi nugis_ _Pagina turgescat_, _dare pondus idonea fumo_.

PERS., _Sat._ v. 19.

'Tis not indeed my talent to engage In lofty trifles, or to swell my page With wind and noise.

DRYDEN.

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 words, and is comprehended under the general name of punning. It is indeed impossible to kill a weed which the soil has a natural disposition to produce. The seeds of punning are in the minds of all men, and though they may be subdued by reason, reflection, and good sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest genius that is not broken and cultivated by the rules of art. Imitation is natural to us, and when it does not raise the mind to poetry, painting, music, or other more n.o.ble arts, it often breaks out in puns and quibbles.

Aristotle, in the eleventh chapter of his book of rhetoric, describes two or three kinds of puns, which he calls paragrams, among the beauties of good writing, and produces instances of them out of some of the greatest authors in the Greek tongue. Cicero has sprinkled several of his works with puns, and, in his book where he lays down the rules of oratory, quotes abundance of sayings as pieces of wit, which also, upon examination, prove arrant puns. But the age in which the pun chiefly flourished was in the reign of King James the First. That learned monarch was himself a tolerable punster, and made very few bishops or Privy Councillors that had not some time or other signalised themselves by a clinch, or a conundrum. It was, therefore, in this age that the pun appeared with pomp and dignity. It had been before admitted into merry speeches and ludicrous compositions, but was now delivered with great gravity from the pulpit, or p.r.o.nounced in the most solemn manner at the council-table. The greatest authors, in their most serious works, made frequent use of puns. The sermons of Bishop Andrews, and the tragedies of Shakespeare, are full of them. 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.

I must add to these great authorities, which seem to have given a kind of sanction to this piece of false wit, that all the writers of rhetoric have treated of punning with very great respect, and divided the several kinds of it into hard names, that are reckoned among the figures of speech, and recommended as ornaments in discourse. I remember a country schoolmaster of my acquaintance told me once, that he had been in company with 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 in to the _Ploce_, but that in his humble opinion he shone 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 not this might 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 naturalists.