will turn over a whole dictionary for one of these inge nious devices. A man would think they were searching after an apt classical 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 inscrip→ tions, we are not so much to look in them for the thought, as for the year of the Lord.

The bouts rimex 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 the trouble to see examples of it, let him look into the new Mercure Galant; 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

Cesars

Etendars

Houlette

- Folette

One

One would be amazed to see so learned a man as Me nage talking seriously on this kind of trifle in the fol lowing passage.

"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, Ama¬ ryllis, Phyllis, Marne, 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." Vid. Menagiana. Thus far the learned Menage, whom I have translated word for word.

The first occasion of these bouts rimez 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 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 bad finished his poem?

I shall only add, that this piece of false wit has been finely ridiculed by Monsieur Sarasin, in a poem inti

tled

tled La Défaite des Bouts Rimez, The Rout of the Bouts Rimez.

I must subjoin to this last kind of wit the double rhymes, which are used in doggerel 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 doggerel rhymes than of the parts that really deserve admiration. I am sure I have heard the

and

Pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,

Was beat with fist, instead of a stick;

There was an antient fage philosopher

Who had read Alexander Ross over,

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

ADDISON.

ON FALSE WIT. No. 61.

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 very apt to shoot up in the greatest genius that is not broken and cultivated by the rules of art. Imita

be

tion is natural to us; and when it does not raise the mind to poetry, painting, music, or other more noble 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 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 privycounsellors that had not some time or other signalized themselves by a clinch, or a conundrum. It was therefore in this age that the pun appeared with pomp and dignity. It had before been admitted into merry speeches and ludicrous compositions, but was now delivered with great gravity from the pulpit, or pronounced in the most solemn manner at the counciltable. The greatest authors, in their most serious works, made frequent use of puns. The sermons of bishop Andrews, and the tragedies of Shakespear, 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

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 paronomasia, 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 naturalists.

After this short history of punning, one would wonder how it should be so entirely banished out of the learned world as it is at present, especially since it had found a place in the writings of the most antient polite authors. To account for this, we must consider that the first race of authors, who were the great heroes in writing, were destitute of all the rules and arts of criticism; and for that reason, though they excel later writers in greatness of genius, they fall short of them in accuracy and correctness. The moderns cannot reach their beauties, but can avoid their imperfections. When the world was furnished with these authors of the first eminence, there grew up another set of writers, who gained themselves a reputation by the remarks which they made on the works of those who preceded them. It was one of the employments of these secondary authors, to distinguish the several