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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 infcribed with the epitaph of TroiJus the son of Heçuba; 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 afcribed; at least I will never be perfuaded, that fo fine a writer as Theocritus could have been the author of any such simple works.

It was impoffible for a man to fucceed in these performances who was not a kind of painter, or at least a designer: he was first of all to draw the out-line of the fubject 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 under

tance, 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 queftion but my ingenious reader will apply what I have said to many other particulars; and that we fhall fee 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 fizes and dimensions.

go the fate of those persons whom the tyrant Pro- N° 59. TUESDAY, MAY 8. crustes 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 obfolete kind of wit in one of the following verses in his Mac Flecno; which an English reader cannot understand, who does not know that there are those little poems abovementioned in the shape of wings and al

tars.

--- Choose for thy command

Some peaceful province in acrostic land;
There may'st thou wings display, and altars

raife,

And torture one poor word a thousannd 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 tranflation 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 Pfalms 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 fo 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 fee fuch a piece of curiosity. I have fince heard, that there is now an eminent writing-master in town, who has transcribed all the Old Testament in a full-bottomed perriwig; and If the fashion should introduce the thick kind of wigs which were in vogue some years ago, he promifes to add two or three fupernumerary locks that shall contain all the Apocrypha. He de figned this wig originally for Ring William, having disposed of the two books of Kings in the two forks of the foretop; but that glorious mona ch 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 finatterers in poetry, that they would imitate their brotaren among the ancients in those ingenious devices. I have communicated this thought to a young poetical lover of my acquain

Operosè nibil agunt.

Busy about nothing.

THE

C

SENECA.

HERE is nothing more certain than that every man would be a wit if he could; and notwithstanding pedants of a pretended depth and solidity are apt to decry the writings of a polite author, as Flash and Froth, they all of them show upon occafion that they would spare no pains to arrive at the character of those whom they feem 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 fuch authors as were often masters of great learning but no genius.

In my last paper I mentioned some of those false wits among the ancients, and in this shall give the reader two or three other species of them, that flourished in the fame 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 Ulyffes, confifting of four-and-twenty books, having entirely banished the letter Afrom his first book, which was called Alpba, as Lucas à non Lucendo, because there was not an Alpba in it. His fecond book was inscribed Bera for the same reason. In short, the poet excluded the whole four-and-twenty letters in their turns, and shewed 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 partí cular fyllable. 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 quoted by our learned pedants, than the Odyffey of Homer. What a perpetual fund would it have been of obsolete words and phrafes, unusual barbarisms and rufticities, absurd spellings, and complicated dialects? I make no question but it would have been looked upon as one of the most valuable treasuries of the Greek tongue.

find likewise among the ancients that ingenious kind of conceit, which the moderns distinguith by the name of a Rebus, that does not fink a letter but a whole word, by substituting a picture in its place. When Cæfar 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 Cæfar signifying an elephant in the Punic language. This was artificially contrived by by Cæfar, because it was not lawful for a private man to stamp his own figure upon the coin of the commonwealth. Cicero, who was fo 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 the 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 or family, notwithstanding the envy of his competitors had often reproached him with both. In the fame manner we read of a famous build. ing 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 infcribe their own names upon their works. For the fame reason it is thought, that the forelock of the horse, in the antique equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, reprefents 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 practife it for any oblique reason, as the ancients abovementioned, but purely for the fake 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 had feveral berries upon it, and in the midst of them a great golden N hung upon the bough of a tree, which by the help of a little false spelling made up the word N-ew-berry.

I shall conclude this topic with a Rebus, which has been lately hewn out of free-stone, 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 fame word that signifies a Frenchman, as a lion is an 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 forry the truly ingenious architect would suffer the statuary to blemish his excellent plan with so poor a conceit: but I hope what I have faid 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 anfwers, If this could be excufable in any wri

ter, 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 Erafmus, though a man of wit and genius, has compofed a dialogue upon this filly kind of device, and made use of an echo who seems to have been a very extraordinary linguist, for the answers the person she talks with in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, according as the found the fyllables which she was to repeat in any of those learned languages. Hudibras, in ridicule of this false kind of wit, has described Orfin bewailing the lofs of his bear to a folitary echo, who is of great use to the poet in several distichs, as the does not only repeat after him, but helps out his verse, and furnishes him with rhymes.

He rag'd, and kept as heavy a coil a
Stout Hercules for loss of Hylas;
Forcing the vallies to repeat
The accents of his fad 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 refound
• More wiftfully, by many times,
• Than in small poets splay-foot rhymes, 1
That make her, in their rueful stories,
To answer to int'rogatories,
And most unconscionably depose
'Things of which the nothing knows:
' And when she has said all the can fay,
"Tis wrefted 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 not I 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 fake? Quoth she, Mum budget
Think'ft thou 'twill not be laid i' th' dish
Thou turn'st thy back? Quoth echo, Pish
To run from those th' hadst overcome
Thus cowardly? Quoth echo, Mum,
• But what a--vengeance makes thee fir
From me too as thine enemy?
Or if thou hadit not thought of me,
Nor what I have endur'd for thee,
Yet shame and honour might prevail
To keep thee thus from turning tail:
• For who could grudge to spend his blood in
• His honour's cause? Quoth she, a Pudding."

C

N°. 60. WEDNESDAY, MAY 9.
Hoc eft quod palles? Cur quis non prandeat, hoc eft?
PERS. Sat. iii. 85.

Is it for this you gain those meagre looks,
And facrifice your dinner to your books?

S

EVERAL kinds of false wit that vanished in the refined ages of the world, difcovered themselves again in the time of mopith ignorance.

As the monks were the masters of all that little learning which was then extant, and had their whole lives disengaged from business, it is no wonder that feveral of them, who wanted genius for higher performances, employed many hours in the composition of fuch tricks in writing as required much time and little capacity. I have feen 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 mothing but the sweets of rhyme to make it the most perfect work in its kind. I have likewife Seen an hymn in hexameters to the Virgin Mary, which filled a whole book, though it consisted but of the eight following words.

Tot, tibi, funt, Virgo, dotes, quot, fidera, Calo.

Thou haft as many virtues, O Virgin, as there are stars in Heaven.

The poet rung the changes upon these eight several words, and by that means made his verses almost as numerous as the virtues and the 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 was 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 forts of composition, shall so direct. I'remember a witty author, in allusion to this kind of writing, calls his rival, who, it seems, was diftorted and had his limbs set in places that did not properly belong to them, The anagram of a

man.

When the anagramist takes a name to work upon, he confiders it at first as a mine not broken up, which will not shew 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 any thing of Mary, by certain liberties indulged to this kind of writing, converted it into Moll: and after having shuthimself 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 fee herself degraded into Mell Boon, the told him, to his infinite surprise, that he had mistaken her furname, for that it was not Boon but Bohun.

Effufus labor

Ibi omnis

The lover was thunder-struck with his misfortune infomuch that in a littletime after he lost his fenfes, which indeed had been very much impaired by that continual application he had given to his ana

gram.

The acrostic was probably invented about the - fame time with the anagram, though it is impoffible to decide whether the inventor of the one or the other were the greater blockhead. The fimple acrostic is nothing but the name or title of a person or thing made out of the initial letters of feveral 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 ftand two or three deep. I have teen fome of them where the verfes 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 infcription the year in which they were coined. Thus we see on a medal of Gustavus Adolphus the following words, CHRISTVS DUX ERGO TRIVMPH VS. 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 fome of the letters distinguish themselves from the rest, and over-top 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 searching after an apt classical term, but instead of that they are looking out a word that has an L, an M, or a Din it. When therefore we meet with any of these inscriptions, we are not fo much to look in 'em 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. I do not know any greater instance of the decay of wit and learning among the French, which generally follows the decienfion 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 Galant; 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 Nor vember last, which now lies before me, is as follows.

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One would be amazed to sce so learned a man as Menage talking, seriously on this kind of trifße in the following passage.

'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 fen 'tence 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 shewed Monfieur Gombaud a compo, fition of this nature, in which among others I hal

⚫ had made use of the four following rhymes, Amaryllis, Phillis, 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 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 fo, I am very well rewarded for all the pains I have been at. But by Monfieur Gombaud's

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 the reign of King James the First. That learned monarch was himself a tolerable punster, and made very few bishops or pri

leave, notwithstanding the severity of the criti-vy-counsellors that had not some time, or other

cifm, the verses were good. Vid. MENAGIANA. Thus far the learned Menage, whom I have translated word for word.

The first occafion of these Bouts Rimez made them in fome manner excusable, as they were tasks which the French ladies used to impose on their lovers. But when a graveauthor, like him abovementioned tasked himself, 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?

1 shall only add, that this piece of false wit has been finely ridiculed by Monfieur Sarafin, in a poem intituled, La Defaite des Bouts-Rimex, The Rout of the Bouts-Rimez.

:

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 fure I have heard the

and

Pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,

Was beat with fift instead of a stick

2

There was an ancient sage philosopher Who had read Alexander Rofs overmore frequently quoted, than the finest pieces wit in the whole poem.

C.

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 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 fermons of Bishop Andrews, and the tragedies of Shakespear, are full of them. The finner was punned into re pentance by the former; as in the latter nothing is more usual than to fee 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 witha 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 defiring 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 into the Ploce, but that in his humble opinion he shined most in the Antanaclafis

I must not here omit, that a famous University of of this land was formerly very much infefted with puns; but whether or no this might not arife from the fens and marshes in which it was fituated, and which are now drained, I must leave to the determination of more skilful naturalifts After this short hiftory of punning, punnin one would wonder how it should be so entirely banished out PERS. Sat. v. 19. of the learned world as it is at present; especially

N° 61: THURSDAY, MAY 10.
Non equidem studeo, bullatis ut mihi nugis
Pagina turgeftat, darc pondus idonea fumo.

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

DRYDEN.

HERE is no kind of false wit which has been so recommended by the practise of all ages, as that which confifts in a jingle of words, and is comprehended under the general name of Punhing. It is indeed impossible to kill a weed, which the foil has a natural disposition to produce. The feeds of punning are in the minds of all men; and though they may be fubdued by reafon, reflection, and good sente, 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.

Ariftotle, 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

gs of the

fince it had found a place in the writings of most ancient polite authors. To account for this we must confider, 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 themfelves a reputation by the remarks which they made on the works of those who preceded them. It was one of the cmployments of these secondary authors to diftinguith the feveral kinds of wit by terms of art, and to confider them as more or less perfect, according as they were founded in truth. It is no wonder therefore, that even fuch authors as Ifocrates, Plato, and Cicero, should have such little blemishes as are not to he met with in authors of a much inferior character, who have written isince those feveral 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 fettled, it was very natural for all men of fenfe to agree in it. As for the revival of this false wit, it happened about the time of the revival of letters; but as foon as it was once detected, it immediately vanished and difappeared. At the same time there is no question, but as it has funk 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 fome 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 fecrecy and applause; to which I must alfo 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 pains-takers 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 fatire; for I am of the old phi losopher'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 the hoof of an ass. I do not speak this out of any spirit of party. There is a most crying dulness on both fides. I have feen Tory Acroftics 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 downfal, I shall here define it to be a conceit arifing from the use of two words that agree in the sound, but differ in the sense. The only way therefore fo 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 & præterea nibil, a sound, and nothing but a sound, On the contrary, one may represent true wit by the description which Aristenetus makes of a fine woman; when she is dressed she is beautiful, when the is undressed she is beautiful; or as - Mercerus has translated it more emphatically, Induitur, formofa est; exuitur, ipfa forma eft.. C

N° 62. FRIDAY, MAY 11.

Scribendi rectè fapere eft & principium & fons.
Hor. Ars Poet. ver. 309.
Sound judgment is the ground of writing well,
ROSCOMMON.

M

R. Locke has an admirable reflection upon the difference of wit and judgment, whereby he endeavours to shew the reason why they are not always the talents of the same perfon. 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 fide, in separating carefully one from another, ideas 'wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by fimilitude, and by 'affinity to take one thing for another. This is 'a way of proceeding quite contrary to metaphor and allusion; therein, 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 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 Surprize 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 finging 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 difcovered in the two ideas that is capable of giving the reader some surprise. Thus when a poet tells us, the bosom of his miftress is as white as snow, there is no wit in the comparison; but when he adds, with a sigh, that it is as cold too, it then grows into wit. Every reader's memory may supply him with innumerable instances of the fame nature. For this reafon the fimilitudes in heroic poets, who endeavour rather to fill the mind with great conceptions, than to divert it with fuch as are new and furprising, have seldom any thing 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, ænigmas, mottos, parables, fables, dreams, visions, dramatic writings, burlesques, and all the methods of allufion: as there are many other pie.. ces 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 refemblance and congruity of ideas, false wit chiefly confifts in the resemblance and congruity fometimes of single letters, as in anagrams, chronograms, lipograms, and acrostics; fometimes of fyllables, as in echos and doggerel rhymes: fometimes of words, as in puns and quibbles; and fometimes of whole fentences or poems, caft into the figure of eggs, axes or altars: nay some carry the notion of wit fo far, as to ascribe it even to external mimicry; and to look upon a man as an ingenious person, that can resemble the tone, pofture, or face of another..

As true wit confifts in the resemblance of ideas, and false wit in the resemblance of words, ac. cording to the foregoing instances; there is ano

ther

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