First Paper.
_Ut pictura poesis erit_--
HOR., _Ars Poet._ 361.
Poems like pictures are.
Nothing is so much admired, and so little understood, as wit. No author
that I know of has written professedly upon it. As for those who make
any mention of it, they only treat on the subject as it has accidentally
fallen in their way, and that too in little short reflections, or in
general declamatory flourishes, without entering into the bottom of the
matter. I hope, therefore, I shall perform an acceptable work to my
countrymen if I treat at large upon this subject; which I shall endeavour
to do in a manner suitable to it, that I may not incur the censure which
a famous critic bestows upon one who had written a treatise upon "the
sublime," in a low grovelling style. I intend to lay aside a whole week
for this undertaking, that the scheme of my thoughts may not be broken
and interrupted; and I dare promise myself, if my readers will give me a
week's attention, that this great city will be very much changed for the
better by next Saturday night. I shall endeavour to make what I say
intelligible to ordinary capacities; but if my readers meet with any
paper that in some parts of it may be a little out of their reach, I
would not have them discouraged, for they may assure themselves the next
shall be much clearer.
As the great and only end of these my speculations is to banish vice and
ignorance out of the territories of Great Britain, I shall endeavour, as
much as possible, to establish among us a taste of polite writing. It is
with this view that I have endeavoured to set my readers right in several
points relating to operas and tragedies, and shall, from time to time,
impart my notions of comedy, as I think they may tend to its refinement
and perfection. I find by my bookseller, that these papers of criticism,
with that upon humour, have met with a more kind reception than indeed I
could have hoped for from such subjects; for which reason I shall enter
upon my present undertaking with greater cheerfulness.
In this, and one or two following papers, I shall trace out the history
of false wit, and distinguish the several kinds of it as they have
prevailed in different ages of the world. This I think the more
necessary at present, because I observed there were attempts on foot last
winter to revive some of those antiquated modes of wit that have been
long exploded out of the commonwealth of letters. There were several
satires and panegyrics handed about in an acrostic, by which means some
of the most arrant undisputed blockheads about the town began to
entertain ambitious thoughts, and to set up for polite authors. I shall
therefore describe at length those many arts of false wit, in which a
writer does not show himself a man of a beautiful genius, but of great
industry.
The first species of false wit which I have met with is very venerable
for its antiquity, and has produced several pieces which have lived very
near as long as the "Iliad" itself: I mean, those short poems printed
among the minor Greek poets, which resemble the figure of an egg, a pair
of wings, an axe, a shepherd's pipe, and an altar.
As for the first, it is a little oval poem, and may not improperly be
called a scholar's egg. I would endeavour to hatch it, or, in more
intelligible language, to translate it into English, did not I find the
interpretation of it very difficult; for the author seems to have been
more intent upon the figure of his poem than upon the sense of it.
The pair of wings consists of twelve verses, or rather feathers, every
verse decreasing gradually in its measure according to its situation in
the wing. The subject of it, as in the rest of the poems which follow,
bears some remote affinity with the figure, for it describes a god of
love, who is always painted with wings.
The axe, methinks, would have been a good figure for a lampoon, had the
edge of it consisted of the most satirical parts of the work; but as it
is in the original, I take it to have been nothing else but the poesy of
an axe which was consecrated to Minerva, and was thought to be the same
that Epeus made use of in the building of the Trojan horse; which is a
hint I shall leave to the consideration of the critics. I am apt to
think that the poesy was written originally upon the axe, like those
which our modern cutlers inscribe upon their knives; and that, therefore,
the poesy still remains in its ancient shape, though the axe itself is
lost.
The shepherd's pipe may be said to be full of music, for it is composed
of nine different kinds of verses, which by their several lengths
resemble the nine stops of the old musical instrument, that is likewise
the subject of the poem.
The altar is inscribed with the epitaph of Troilus the son of Hecuba;
which, by the way, makes me believe that these false pieces of wit are
much more ancient than the authors to whom they are generally ascribed;
at least, I will never be persuaded that so fine a writer as Theocritus
could have been the author of any such simple works.
It was impossible for a man to succeed in these performances who was not
a kind of painter, or at least a designer. He was first of all to draw
the outline of the subject which he intended to write upon, and
afterwards conform the description to the figure of his subject. The
poetry was to contract or dilate itself according to the mould in which
it was cast. In a word, the verses were to be cramped or extended to the
dimensions of the frame that was prepared for them; and to undergo the
fate of those persons whom the tyrant Procrustes used to lodge in his
iron bed: if they were too short, he stretched them on a rack; and if
they were too long, chopped off a part of their legs, till they fitted
the couch which he had prepared for them.
Mr. Dryden hints at this obsolete kind of wit in one of the following
verses in his "Mac Flecknoe;" which an English reader cannot understand,
who does not know that there are those little poems above mentioned in
the shape of wings and altars:--
--Choose for thy command
Some peaceful province in acrostic land;
There may'st thou wings display, and altars raise,
And torture one poor word a thousand ways.
This fashion of false wit was revived by several poets of the last age,
and in particular may be met with among Mr. Herbert's poems; and, if I am
not mistaken, in the translation of Du Bartas. I do not remember any
other kind of work among the moderns which more resembles the
performances I have mentioned than that famous picture of King Charles
the First, which has the whole Book of Psalms written in the lines of the
face, and, the hair of the head. When I was last at Oxford I perused one
of the whiskers, and was reading the other, but could not go so far in it
as I would have done, by reason of the impatience of my friends and
fellow-travellers, who all of them pressed to see such a piece of
curiosity. I have since heard, that there is now an eminent
writing-master in town, who has transcribed all the Old Testament in a
full-bottomed periwig: and if the fashion should introduce the thick kind
of wigs which were in vogue some few years ago, he promises to add two or
three supernumerary locks that should contain all the Apocrypha. He
designed this wig originally for King William, having disposed of the two
Books of Kings in the two forks of the foretop; but that glorious monarch
dying before the wig was finished, there is a space left in it for the
face of any one that has a mind to purchase it.
But to return to our ancient poems in picture. I would humbly propose,
for the benefit of our modern smatterers in poetry, that they would
imitate their brethren among the ancients in those ingenious devices. I
have communicated this thought to a young poetical lover of my
acquaintance, who intends to present his mistress with a copy of verses
made in the shape of her fan; and, if he tells me true, has already
finished the three first sticks of it. He has likewise promised me to
get the measure of his mistress's marriage finger with a design to make a
posy in the fashion of a ring, which shall exactly fit it. It is so very
easy to enlarge upon a good hint, that I do not question but my ingenious
readers will apply what I have said to many other particulars; and that
we shall see the town filled in a very little time with poetical tippets,
handkerchiefs, snuff-boxes, and the like female ornaments. I shall
therefore conclude with a word of advice to those admirable English
authors who call themselves Pindaric writers, that they would apply
themselves to this kind of wit without loss of time, as being provided
better than any other poets with verses of all sizes and dimensions.
Second Paper.
_Operose nihil aguat_.