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a Chronogram. This kind of Wit appears very often on many modern medals, especially those of Germany, when they reprefent in the infcription the year in which they were coined. Thus we fee on a medal of Guftavus Adolphus the following words, CHRISTVS DUX ERGO TRIVMPH VS. If you take the pains to pick the figures out of the feveral words, and range them in their proper order, you will find they amount to MDCXXVII, or 1627, the year in which the medal was stamped: for as fome of the letters diftinguish themselves from the reft, and overtop their fellows, they are to be confidered 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 fearching after an apt claffical 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 thefe infcriptions, we are not so much to look in them for the thought, as for the year of the Lord.

The Bouts-Rimez 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 lift 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 fame order that they were placed upon the lift: the more uncommon the rhymes were, the more extraordinary was the genius of the poet that could accommodate his verses to

them.

them. I do not know any greater instance of the decay of wit and learning among the French (which generally follows the declenfion of empire) than the endeavouring to restore this foolish kind of wit. If the reader will be at the trouble to fee 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 fucceding month. That for the month of November laft, which now lies before me, is as follows.

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One would be amazed to fee fo learned a man as Menage talking seriously on this kind of trifle in the following paffage.

"Monfieur 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 fentence always produced another. For "my own part, I never knew what I fhould "write next when I was making verfes. In "the first place I got all my rhymes together, "and was afterwards perhaps three or four

"months

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351

"months in filling them up. I one day fhew"ed Monfieur Gombaud a compofition of this "nature, in which, among others, I had made "ufe of the four following rhymes, Amaryllis, Phyllis, Marne, Arne, defiring him to give me "his opinion of it. He told me immediately, "that my verses were good for nothing. And "upon my asking his reafon, he faid, because "the rhymes are too common; and for that rea"fon eafy to be put into verfe. Marry, fays I, "if it be fo, I am very well rewarded for all the pains I have been at. But by Monfieur Gom"baud's leave, notwithstanding the feverity of

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the criticism, the verfes were good." Vid. Menagiana *. Thus far the learned Menage,

whom I have tranflated word for word.

The firft occafion of thefe Bouts-Rimez made them in fome manner excufable, as they were tafks which the French ladies ufed to impofe on their lovers. But when a grave author, like him above mentioned, tafked himfelf, 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 lift of rhymes till he had finished his poem?

I fhall only add, that this piece of Falfe WIT has been finely ridiculed by Monfieur Sarafin, in a poem intitled, La Defaite des Bouts-Rimez, The Rout of the Bouts-Rimez.

I muft fubjoin to this laft kind of wit the double rhymes, which are used in doggerel poetry, and generally applauded by ignorant rea*Tom. I. p. 174, &c. Ed. Amft. 1713.

ders.

ders. If the thought of the couplet in fuch compofitions 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 thefe doggerel rhymes than of the parts that really deferve admiration. I am fure I have heard the

and

Pulpit, drum ecclefiaftic,
Was beat with fift, inftead of a stick;

There was an ancient fage philofopher
Who had read Alexander Rofs over,

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

N° 61. Thursday, May 10, 1711.

Non equidem ftudeo, bullatis ut mihi nugis
Pagina turgefcat, dare pondus idonea fumo.

C*.

PERS. Sat. v. 19.

'Tis not indeed my talent to engage
In lofty trifles, or to fwell my page
With wind and noise.

TH

DRYDEN.

HERE is no kind of falfe wit which has been fo recommended by the practice of all ages, as that which confifts in a jingle of words, and is comprehended under the general

By ADDISON, dated it is fuppofed from Chelsea. See final Note to N° 7, on ADDISON's Signatures.

name

name of Punning. It is indeed impoffible to kill a weed, which the foil has a natural difpofition to produce. The feeds of Punning are in the minds of all men; and though they may be fubdued by reason, reflection, and good fenfe, 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, mufic, or other more noble arts, it often breaks out in Puns and Quibbles.

Aristotle, in the eleventh chapter of his book of rhetoric, defcribes two or three kinds of Puns, which he calls Paragrams, among the beauties of good writing, and produces inftances of them out of fome of the greatest authors in the Greek tongue. Cicero has fprinkled several of his works with Puns, and in his book where he lays down the rules of Oratory, quotes abundance of fayings as pieces of wit, which alfo 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 Punfter, and made very few bishops or privy-counfellors that had not fome time or other fignalized 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 fpeeches and ludicrous compofitions, but was now delivered with great gravity from the pulpit, or pronounced in the moft folemn manner at the VOL. I. A a council

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