Ut pictura poësis 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 Troïlus 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.
Operose nihil aguat.
Seneca.
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 à 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar
signifying an elephant in the Punic language. This was
artificially contrived by Cæsar, 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.
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
“Æneid” turned into Latin rhymes by one of the
beaux esprits of that dark age: who says, in his preface
to it, that the “Æneid” 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-rimés 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
Cæsars
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-rimés 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
Défaite des Bouts-Rimés.” (The Rout of
the Bouts-Rimés).
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.
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 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 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 pronounced 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
Plocé, 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.
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 ancient 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 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 kinds of wit by terms of art, and to
consider them as more or less perfect, according as they were
founded in truth. It is no wonder, therefore, that even
such authors as Isocrates, Plato, and Cicero, should have such
little blemishes as are not to be met with in authors of a much
inferior character, who have written since those several
blemishes were discovered. I do not find that there was a
proper separation made between puns and true wit by any of the
ancient authors, except Quintilian and Longinus. But when
this distinction was once settled, it was very natural for all
men of sense to agree in it. As for the revival of this
false wit, it happened about the time of the revival of letters;
but as soon as it was once detected, it immediately vanished and
disappeared. At the same time there is no question but, as
it has sunk in one age and rose in another, it will again recover
itself in some distant period of time, as pedantry and ignorance
shall prevail upon wit and sense. And, to speak the truth,
I do very much apprehend, by some of the last winter’s
productions, which had their sets of admirers, that our posterity
will in a few years degenerate into a race of punsters: at least,
a man may be very excusable for any apprehensions of this kind,
that has seen acrostics handed about the town with great secresy
and applause; to which I must also add a little epigram called
the “Witches’ Prayer,” that fell into verse
when it was read either backward or forward, excepting only that
it cursed one way, and blessed the other. When one sees
there are actually such painstakers among our British wits, who
can tell what it may end in? If we must lash one another,
let it be with the manly strokes of wit and satire: for I am of
the old philosopher’s opinion, that, if I must suffer from
one or the other, I would rather it should be from the paw of a
lion than from the hoof of an ass. I do not speak this out
of any spirit of party. There is a most crying dulness on
both sides. I have seen Tory acrostics and Whig anagrams,
and do not quarrel with either of them because they are Whigs or
Tories, but because they are anagrams and acrostics.
But to return to punning. Having pursued the history of
a pun, from its original to its downfall, I shall here define it
to be a conceit arising from the use of two words that agree in
the sound, but differ in the sense. The only way,
therefore, to try a piece of wit is to translate it into a
different language. If it bears the test, you may pronounce
it true; but if it vanishes in the experiment, you may conclude
it to have been a pun. In short, one may say of a pun, as
the countryman described his nightingale, that it is
“vox et præterea nihil”—“a
sound, and nothing but a sound.” On the contrary, one
may represent true wit by the description which Aristænetus
makes of a fine woman:—“When she is dressed she is
beautiful: when she is undressed she is beautiful;” or, as
Mercerus has translated it more emphatically, Induitur,
formosa est: exuitur, ipsa forma est.
Scribendi recte sapere est et principium,
et fons.
Hor.,
Ars Poet. 309.
Sound judgment is the ground of writing well.—Roscommon.
Mr. Locke has an admirable reflection upon the difference of
wit and judgment, whereby he endeavours to show the reason why
they are not always the talents of the same person. His
words are as follow:—“And hence, perhaps, may be
given some reason of that common observation, ‘That men who
have a great deal of wit, and prompt memories, have not always
the clearest judgment or deepest reason.’ For wit
lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together
with quickness and variety wherein can be found any resemblance
or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable
visions in the fancy: judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on
the other side, in separating carefully one from another, ideas
wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being
misled by similitude, and by affinity to take one thing for
another. This is a way of proceeding quite contrary to
metaphor and allusion, wherein, for the most part, lies that
entertainment and pleasantry of wit which strikes so lively on
the fancy, and is therefore so acceptable to all
people.”
This is, I think, the best and most philosophical account that
I have ever met with of wit, which generally, though not always,
consists in such a resemblance and congruity of ideas as this
author mentions. I shall only add to it, by way of
explanation, that every resemblance of ideas is not that which we
call wit, unless it be such an one that gives delight and
surprise to the reader. These two properties seem essential
to wit, more particularly the last of them. In order,
therefore, that the resemblance in the ideas be wit, it is
necessary that the ideas should not lie too near one another in
the nature of things; for, where the likeness is obvious, it
gives no surprise. To compare one man’s singing to
that of another, or to represent the whiteness of any object by
that of milk and snow, or the variety of its colours by those of
the rainbow, cannot be called wit, unless, besides this obvious
resemblance, there be some further congruity discovered in the
two ideas that is capable of giving the reader some
surprise. Thus, when a poet tells us the bosom of his
mistress is as white as snow, there is no wit in the comparison;
but when he adds, with a sigh, it is as cold too, it then grows
into wit. Every reader’s memory may supply him with
innumerable instances of the same nature. For this reason,
the similitudes in heroic poets, who endeavour rather to fill the
mind with great conceptions than to divert it with such as are
new and surprising, have seldom anything in them that can be
called wit. Mr. Locke’s account of wit, with this
short explanation, comprehends most of the species of wit, as
metaphors, similitudes, allegories, enigmas, mottoes, parables,
fables, dreams, visions, dramatic writings, burlesque, and all
the methods of allusion: as there are many other pieces of wit,
how remote soever they may appear at first sight from the
foregoing description, which upon examination will be found to
agree with it.
As true wit generally consists in this resemblance and
congruity of ideas, false wit chiefly consists in the resemblance
and congruity sometimes of single letters, as in anagrams,
chronograms, lipograms, and acrostics; sometimes of syllables, as
in echoes and doggrel rhymes; sometimes of words, as in puns and
quibbles; and sometimes of whole sentences or poems, cast into
the figures of eggs, axes, or altars; nay, some carry the notion
of wit so far as to ascribe it even to external mimicry, and to
look upon a man as an ingenious person that can resemble the
tone, posture, or face of another.
As true wit consists in the resemblance of ideas, and false
wit in the resemblance of words, according to the foregoing
instances, there is another kind of wit which consists partly in
the resemblance of ideas and partly in the resemblance of words,
which for distinction sake I shall call mixed wit. This
kind of wit is that which abounds in Cowley more than in any
author that ever wrote. Mr. Waller has likewise a great
deal of it. Mr. Dryden is very sparing in it. Milton
had a genius much above it. Spenser is in the same class
with Milton. The Italians, even in their epic poetry, are
full of it. Monsieur Boileau, who formed himself upon the
ancient poets, has everywhere rejected it with scorn. If we
look after mixed wit among the Greek writers, we shall find it
nowhere but in the epigrammatists. There are indeed some
strokes of it in the little poem ascribed to Musæus, which
by that as well as many other marks betrays itself to be a modern
composition. If we look into the Latin writers we find none
of this mixed wit in Virgil, Lucretius, or Catullus; very little
in Horace, but a great deal of it in Ovid, and scarce anything
else in Martial.
Out of the innumerable branches of mixed wit, I shall choose
one instance which may be met with in all the writers of this
class. The passion of love in its nature has been thought
to resemble fire, for which reason the words “fire”
and “flame” are made use of to signify love.
The witty poets, therefore, have taken an advantage, from the
doubtful meaning of the word “fire,” to make an
infinite number of witticisms. Cowley observing the cold
regard of his mistress’s eyes, and at the same time the
power of producing love in him, considers them as burning-glasses
made of ice; and, finding himself able to live in the greatest
extremities of love, concludes the torrid zone to be
habitable. When his mistress has read his letter written in
juice of lemon, by holding it to the fire, he desires her to read
it over a second time by love’s flames. When she
weeps, he wishes it were inward heat that distilled those drops
from the limbec. When she is absent, he is beyond eighty,
that is, thirty degrees nearer the pole than when she is with
him. His ambitious love is a fire that naturally mounts
upwards; his happy love is the beams of heaven, and his unhappy
love flames of hell. When it does not let him sleep, it is
a flame that sends up no smoke; when it is opposed by counsel and
advice, it is a fire that rages the more by the winds blowing
upon it. Upon the dying of a tree, in which he had cut his
loves, he observes that his written flames had burnt up and
withered the tree. When he resolves to give over his
passion, he tells us that one burnt like him for ever dreads the
fire. His heart is an Ætna, that, instead of
Vulcan’s shop, encloses Cupid’s forge in it.
His endeavouring to drown his love in wine is throwing oil upon
the fire. He would insinuate to his mistress that the fire
of love, like that of the sun, which produces so many living
creatures, should not only warm, but beget. Love in another
place cooks Pleasure at his fire. Sometimes the
poet’s heart is frozen in every breast, and sometimes
scorched in every eye. Sometimes he is drowned in tears and
burnt in love, like a ship set on fire in the middle of the
sea.
The reader may observe in every one of these instances that
the poet mixes the qualities of fire with those of love; and in
the same sentence, speaking of it both as a passion and as real
fire, surprises the reader with those seeming resemblances or
contradictions that make up all the wit in this kind of
writing. Mixed wit, therefore, is a composition of pun and
true wit, and is more or less perfect as the resemblance lies in
the ideas or in the words. Its foundations are laid partly
in falsehood and partly in truth; reason puts in her claim for
one half of it, and extravagance for the other. The only
province, therefore, for this kind of wit is epigram, or those
little occasional poems that in their own nature are nothing else
but a tissue of epigrams. I cannot conclude this head of
mixed wit without owning that the admirable poet, out of whom I
have taken the examples of it, had as much true wit as any author
that ever wrote; and indeed all other talents of an extraordinary
genius.
It may be expected, since I am upon this subject, that I
should take notice of Mr. Dryden’s definition of wit,
which, with all the deference that is due to the judgment of so
great a man, is not so properly a definition of wit as of good
writing in general. Wit, as he defines it, is “a
propriety of words and thoughts adapted to the
subject.” If this be a true definition of wit, I am
apt to think that Euclid was the greatest wit that ever set pen
to paper. It is certain there never was a greater propriety
of words and thoughts adapted to the subject than what that
author has made use of in his Elements. I shall only appeal
to my reader if this definition agrees with any notion he has of
wit. If it be a true one, I am sure Mr. Dryden was not only
a better poet, but a greater wit than Mr. Cowley, and Virgil a
much more facetious man than either Ovid or Martial.
Bouhours, whom I look upon to be the most penetrating of all
the French critics, has taken pains to show that it is impossible
for any thought to be beautiful which is not just, and has not
its foundation in the nature of things; that the basis of all wit
is truth; and that no thought can be valuable of which good sense
is not the groundwork. Boileau has endeavoured to inculcate
the same notion in several parts of his writings, both in prose
and verse. This is that natural way of writing, that
beautiful simplicity which we so much admire in the compositions
of the ancients, and which nobody deviates from but those who
want strength of genius to make a thought shine in its own
natural beauties. Poets who want this strength of genius to
give that majestic simplicity to nature, which we so much admire
in the works of the ancients, are forced to hunt after foreign
ornaments, and not to let any piece of wit of what kind soever
escape them. I look upon these writers as Goths in poetry,
who, like those in architecture, not being able to come up to the
beautiful simplicity of the old Greeks and Romans, have
endeavoured to supply its place with all the extravagancies of an
irregular fancy. Mr. Dryden makes a very handsome
observation on Ovid’s writing a letter from Dido to
Æneas, in the following words: “Ovid,” says he,
speaking of Virgil’s fiction of Dido and Æneas,
“takes it up after him, even in the same age, and makes an
ancient heroine of Virgil’s new-created Dido; dictates a
letter for her just before her death to the ungrateful fugitive,
and, very unluckily for himself, is for measuring a sword with a
man so much superior in force to him on the same subject. I
think I may be judge of this, because I have translated
both. The famous author of ‘The Art of Love’
has nothing of his own; he borrows all from a greater master in
his own profession, and, which is worse, improves nothing which
he finds. Nature fails him; and, being forced to his old
shift, he has recourse to witticism. This passes indeed
with his soft admirers, and gives him the preference to Virgil in
their esteem.”
Were not I supported by so great an authority as that of Mr.
Dryden, I should not venture to observe that the taste of most of
our English poets, as well as readers, is extremely Gothic.
He quotes Monsieur Segrais for a threefold distinction of the
readers of poetry; in the first of which he comprehends the
rabble of readers, whom he does not treat as such with regard to
their quality, but to their numbers and the coarseness of their
taste. His words are as follows: “Segrais has
distinguished the readers of poetry, according to their capacity
of judging, into three classes.” [He might have said
the same of writers too if he had pleased.] “In the
lowest form he places those whom he calls Les Petits Esprits,
such things as our upper-gallery audience in a playhouse, who
like nothing but the husk and rind of wit, and prefer a quibble,
a conceit, an epigram, before solid sense and elegant
expression. These are mob readers. If Virgil and
Martial stood for Parliament-men, we know already who would carry
it. But though they made the greatest appearance in the
field, and cried the loudest, the best of it is they are but a
sort of French Huguenots, or Dutch boors, brought over in herds,
but not naturalised: who have not lands of two pounds per annum
in Parnassus, and therefore are not privileged to poll.
Their authors are of the same level, fit to represent them on a
mountebank’s stage, or to be masters of the ceremonies in a
bear-garden; yet these are they who have the most admirers.
But it often happens, to their mortification, that as their
readers improve their stock of sense, as they may by reading
better books, and by conversation with men of judgment, they soon
forsake them.”
I must not dismiss this subject without observing that, as Mr.
Locke, in the passage above-mentioned, has discovered the most
fruitful source of wit, so there is another of a quite contrary
nature to it, which does likewise branch itself into several
kinds. For not only the resemblance, but the opposition of
ideas does very often produce wit, as I could show in several
little points, turns, and antitheses that I may possibly enlarge
upon in some future speculation.
Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam
Jungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas,
Undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum
Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne;
Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?
Credite, Pisones, isti tabulæ, fore
librum
Persimilem, cujus, velut ægri somnia,
vanæ
Fingentur species.
Hor.,
Ars Poet. 1.
If in a picture, Piso, you should see
A handsome woman with a fish’s tail,
Or a man’s head upon a horse’s neck,
Or limbs of beasts, of the most different kinds,
Cover’d with feathers of all sorts of birds,—
Would you not laugh, and think the painter mad?
Trust me, that book is as ridiculous
Whose incoherent style, like sick men’s dreams,
Varies all shapes, and mixes all extremes.
Roscommon.
It is very hard for the mind to disengage itself from a
subject in which it has been long employed. The thoughts
will be rising of themselves from time to time, though we give
them no encouragement: as the tossings and fluctuations of the
sea continue several hours after the winds are laid.
It is to this that I impute my last night’s dream or
vision, which formed into one continued allegory the several
schemes of wit, whether false, mixed, or true, that have been the
subject of my late papers.
Methought I was transported into a country that was filled
with prodigies and enchantments, governed by the goddess of
Falsehood, and entitled the Region of False Wit. There was
nothing in the fields, the woods, and the rivers, that appeared
natural. Several of the trees blossomed in leaf-gold, some
of them produced bone-lace, and some of them precious
stones. The fountains bubbled in an opera tune, and were
filled with stags, wild bears, and mermaids, that lived among the
waters; at the same time that dolphins and several kinds of fish
played upon the banks, or took their pastime in the
meadows. The birds had many of them golden beaks, and human
voices. The flowers perfumed the air with smells of
incense, ambergris, and pulvillios; and were so interwoven with
one another, that they grew up in pieces of embroidery. The
winds were filled with sighs and messages of distant
lovers. As I was walking to and fro in this enchanted
wilderness, I could not forbear breaking out into soliloquies
upon the several wonders which lay before me, when, to my great
surprise, I found there were artificial echoes in every walk,
that, by repetitions of certain words which I spoke, agreed with
me or contradicted me in everything I said. In the midst of
my conversation with these invisible companions, I discovered in
the centre of a very dark grove a monstrous fabric built after
the Gothic manner, and covered with innumerable devices in that
barbarous kind of sculpture. I immediately went up to it,
and found it to be a kind of heathen temple consecrated to the
god of Dulness. Upon my entrance I saw the deity of the
place, dressed in the habit of a monk, with a book in one hand
and a rattle in the other. Upon his right hand was
Industry, with a lamp burning before her; and on his left,
Caprice, with a monkey sitting on her shoulder. Before his
feet there stood an altar of a very odd make, which, as I
afterwards found, was shaped in that manner to comply with the
inscription that surrounded it. Upon the altar there lay
several offerings of axes, wings, and eggs, cut in paper, and
inscribed with verses. The temple was filled with votaries,
who applied themselves to different diversions, as their fancies
directed them. In one part of it I saw a regiment of
anagrams, who were continually in motion, turning to the right or
to the left, facing about, doubling their ranks, shifting their
stations, and throwing themselves into all the figures and
counter-marches of the most changeable and perplexed
exercise.
Not far from these was the body of acrostics, made up of very
disproportioned persons. It was disposed into three
columns, the officers planting themselves in a line on the left
hand of each column. The officers were all of them at least
six feet high, and made three rows of very proper men; but the
common soldiers, who filled up the spaces between the officers,
were such dwarfs, cripples, and scarecrows, that one could hardly
look upon them without laughing. There were behind the
acrostics two or three files of chronograms, which differed only
from the former as their officers were equipped, like the figure
of Time, with an hour-glass in one hand, and a scythe in the
other, and took their posts promiscuously among the private men
whom they commanded.
In the body of the temple, and before the very face of the
deity, methought I saw the phantom of Tryphiodorus, the
lipogrammatist, engaged in a ball with four-and-twenty persons,
who pursued him by turns through all the intricacies and
labyrinths of a country dance, without being able to overtake
him.
Observing several to be very busy at the western end of the
temple, I inquired into what they were doing, and found there was
in that quarter the great magazine of rebuses. These were
several things of the most different natures tied up in bundles,
and thrown upon one another in heaps like fagots. You might
behold an anchor, a night-rail, and a hobby-horse bound up
together. One of the workmen, seeing me very much
surprised, told me there was an infinite deal of wit in several
of those bundles, and that he would explain them to me if I
pleased; I thanked him for his civility, but told him I was in
very great haste at that time. As I was going out of the
temple, I observed in one corner of it a cluster of men and women
laughing very heartily, and diverting themselves at a game of
crambo. I heard several double rhymes as I passed by them,
which raised a great deal of mirth.
Not far from these was another set of merry people engaged at
a diversion, in which the whole jest was to mistake one person
for another. To give occasion for these ludicrous mistakes,
they were divided into pairs, every pair being covered from head
to foot with the same kind of dress, though perhaps there was not
the least resemblance in their faces. By this means an old
man was sometimes mistaken for a boy, a woman for a man, and a
blackamoor for an European, which very often produced great peals
of laughter. These I guessed to be a party of puns.
But being very desirous to get out of this world of magic, which
had almost turned my brain, I left the temple and crossed over
the fields that lay about it with all the speed I could
make. I was not gone far before I heard the sound of
trumpets and alarms, which seemed to proclaim the march of an
enemy: and, as I afterwards found, was in reality what I
apprehended it. There appeared at a great distance a very
shining light, and in the midst of it a person of a most
beautiful aspect; her name was Truth. On her right hand
there marched a male deity, who bore several quivers on his
shoulders, and grasped several arrows in his hand; his name was
Wit. The approach of these two enemies filled all the
territories of False Wit with an unspeakable consternation,
insomuch that the goddess of those regions appeared in person
upon her frontiers, with the several inferior deities and the
different bodies of forces which I had before seen in the temple,
who were now drawn up in array, and prepared to give their foes a
warm reception. As the march of the enemy was very slow, it
gave time to the several inhabitants who bordered upon the
regions of Falsehood to draw their forces into a body, with a
design to stand upon their guard as neuters, and attend the issue
of the combat.
I must here inform my reader that the frontiers of the
enchanted region, which I have before described, were inhabited
by the species of Mixed Wit, who made a very odd appearance when
they were mustered together in an army. There were men
whose bodies were stuck full of darts, and women whose eyes were
burning-glasses; men that had hearts of fire, and women that had
breasts of snow. It would be endless to describe several
monsters of the like nature that composed this great army, which
immediately fell asunder, and divided itself into two parts, the
one half throwing themselves behind the banners of Truth, and the
others behind those of Falsehood.
The goddess of Falsehood was of a gigantic stature, and
advanced some paces before the front of the army; but as the
dazzling light which flowed from Truth began to shine upon her,
she faded insensibly; insomuch that in a little space she looked
rather like a huge phantom than a real substance. At
length, as the goddess of Truth approached still nearer to her,
she fell away entirely, and vanished amidst the brightness of her
presence; so that there did not remain the least trace or
impression of her figure in the place where she had been
seen.
As at the rising of the sun the constellations grow thin, and
the stars go out one after another, till the whole hemisphere is
extinguished; such was the vanishing of the goddess, and not only
of the goddess herself, but of the whole army that attended her,
which sympathised with their leader, and shrunk into nothing, in
proportion as the goddess disappeared. At the same time the
whole temple sunk, the fish betook themselves to the streams, and
the wild beasts to the woods, the fountains recovered their
murmurs, the birds their voices, the trees their leaves, the
flowers their scents, and the whole face of nature its true and
genuine appearance. Though I still continued asleep, I
fancied myself, as it were, awakened out of a dream, when I saw
this region of prodigies restored to woods and rivers, fields and
meadows.
Upon the removal of that wild scene of wonders, which had very
much disturbed my imagination, I took a full survey of the
persons of Wit and Truth; for indeed it was impossible to look
upon the first without seeing the other at the same time.
There was behind them a strong compact body of figures. The
genius of Heroic Poetry appeared with a sword in her hand, and a
laurel on her head. Tragedy was crowned with cypress, and
covered with robes dipped in blood. Satire had smiles
in her look, and a dagger under her garment. Rhetoric was
known by her thunderbolt, and Comedy by her mask. After
several other figures, Epigram marched up in the rear, who had
been posted there at the beginning of the expedition, that he
might not revolt to the enemy, whom he was suspected to favour in
his heart. I was very much awed and delighted with the
appearance of the god of Wit; there was something so amiable, and
yet so piercing in his looks, as inspired me at once with love
and terror. As I was gazing on him, to my unspeakable joy,
he took a quiver of arrows from his shoulder, in order to make me
a present of it; but as I was reaching out my hand to receive it
of him, I knocked it against a chair, and by that means
awaked.