_Nuds_
De leurs Provinces.
The poetical whim of Cretin, a French poet, brought into fashion punning
or equivocal rhymes. Maret thus addressed him in his own way:--
L'homme, sotart, et _non sçavant_
Comme un rotisseur, _qui lave oye_,
La faute d'autrui, _nonce avant_,
Qu'il la cognoisse, ou _qu'il la voye_, &c.
In these lines of Du Bartas, this poet imagined that he imitated the
harmonious notes of the lark: "the sound" is here, however, _not_ "an
echo to the sense."
La gentille aloüette, avec son tirelire,
Tirelire, à lire, et tireliran, tire
Vers la voute du ciel, puis son vol vers ce lieu,
Vire et desire dire adieu Dieu, adieu Dieu.
The French have an ingenious kind of Nonsense Verses called
_Amphigouries_. This word is composed of a Greek adverb signifying
_about_, and of a substantive signifying _a circle_. The following is a
specimen, elegant in the selection of words, and what the French called
richly rhymed, but in fact they are fine verses without any meaning
whatever. Pope's Stanzas, said to be written by a _person of quality_,
to ridicule the tuneful nonsense of certain bards, and which Gilbert
Wakefield mistook for a serious composition, and wrote two pages of
Commentary to prove this song was disjointed, obscure, and absurd, is an
excellent specimen of these _Amphigouries_.