Busy about nothing.
There is nothing more certain than that every man would be a wit if he
could; and notwithstanding pedants of pretended depth and solidity are
apt to decry the writings of a polite author, as flash and froth, they
all of them show, upon occasion, that they would spare no pains to arrive
at the character of those whom they seem to despise. For this reason we
often find them endeavouring at works of fancy, which cost them infinite
pangs in the production. The truth of it is, a man had better be a
galley-slave than a wit, were one to gain that title by those elaborate
trifles which have been the inventions of such authors as were often
masters of great learning, but no genius.
In my last paper I mentioned some of these false wits among the ancients;
and in this shall give the reader two or three other species of them,
that flourished in the same early ages of the world. The first I shall
produce are the lipogrammatists or letter-droppers of antiquity, that
would take an exception, without any reason, against some particular
letter in the alphabet, so as not to admit it once into a whole poem. One
Tryphiodorus was a great master in this kind of writing. He composed an
"Odyssey" or epic poem on the adventures of Ulysses, consisting of four-
and-twenty books, having entirely banished the letter A from his first
book, which was called Alpha, as _lucus a non lucendo_, because there was
not an Alpha in it. His second book was inscribed Beta for the same
reason. In short, the poet excluded the whole four-and-twenty letters in
their turns, and showed them, one after another, that he could do his
business without them.
It must have been very pleasant to have seen this poet avoiding the
reprobate letter, as much as another would a false quantity, and making
his escape from it through the several Greek dialects, when he was
pressed with it in any particular syllable. For the most apt and elegant
word in the whole language was rejected, like a diamond with a flaw in
it, if it appeared blemished with a wrong letter. I shall only observe
upon this head, that if the work I have here mentioned had been now
extant, the "Odyssey" of Tryphiodorus, in all probability, would have
been oftener quoted by our learned pedants than the "Odyssey" of Homer.
What a perpetual fund would it have been of obsolete words and phrases,
unusual barbarisms and rusticities, absurd spellings and complicated
dialects! I make no question but that it would have been looked upon as
one of the most valuable treasuries of the Greek tongue.
I find likewise among the ancients that ingenious kind of conceit which
the moderns distinguish by the name of a rebus, that does not sink a
letter, but a whole word, by substituting a picture in its place. When
Caesar was one of the masters of the Roman mint, he placed the figure of
an elephant upon the reverse of the public money; the word Caesar
signifying an elephant in the Punic language. This was artificially
contrived by Caesar, because it was not lawful for a private man to stamp
his own figure upon the coin of the commonwealth. Cicero, who was so
called from the founder of his family, that was marked on the nose with a
little wen like a vetch, which is _Cicer_ in Latin, instead of Marcus
Tullius Cicero, ordered the words Marcus Tullius, with a figure of a
vetch at the end of them, to be inscribed on a public monument. This was
done probably to show that he was neither ashamed of his name nor family,
notwithstanding the envy of his competitors had often reproached him with
both. In the same manner we read of a famous building that was marked in
several parts of it with the figures of a frog and a lizard; those words
in Greek having been the names of the architects, who by the laws of
their country were never permitted to inscribe their own names upon their
works. For the same reason it is thought that the forelock of the horse,
in the antique equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, represents at a
distance the shape of an owl, to intimate the country of the statuary,
who, in all probability, was an Athenian. This kind of wit was very much
in vogue among our own countrymen about an age or two ago, who did not
practise it for any oblique reason, as the ancients above-mentioned, but
purely for the sake of being witty. Among innumerable instances that may
be given of this nature, I shall produce the device of one Mr. Newberry,
as I find it mentioned by our learned Camden in his Remains. Mr.
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 cock. For
the better understanding of which device I must acquaint my English
reader that a cock 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 noble 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 cock, 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
transmutation 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 goddess 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 title 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 principal 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 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 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 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,
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 entitled "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.