No. 61. THURSDAY, MAY 10. Non equidem ftudeo, bullatis at mihi nugis 'Tis not indeed my talent to engage 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 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 reafon, reflection, and good fenfe, they will be very apt to fhoot up in the greatcft genius that is not broken and cultivated by the rules of art. Imitation is natural to us, and when it does not raife the mind to poetry, painting, mutic, or other more noble arts, it often breaks out in puns and quibbles. Ariftotle, 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 feveral 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 flouFished, was the reign of King James the Firft. That learned monarch was himself a tolerable punfter, and made very few Bifhops or Privy Coun fellors fellors 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 most folemn manner at the council-table. The greatest authors, in their most serious works, made frequent ufe of puns. The fermons of Bishop Andrews, and the tragedies of Shakespear, are full of them. The finner was punned into repentance by the former, as in the latter nothing is more ufual than to fee a hero weeping and quibbling for a dozen lines together. I must add to these great authorities, which feem to have given a kind of fanction to this piece of falfe wit, that all the writers of rhetoric have treated of punning with very great refpect, and divided the feveral kinds of it into hard names, that are reckoned among the figures of fpeech, and recom. mended as ornaments in difcourfe. 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 greateft Paragrammatist among the moderns. Upon inquiry, I found my learned friend had dined that day with Mr. Swan, the famous punfter; and defiring him to give me fome account of Mr. Swan's converfation, he told me that he generally talked in the Paranomafia, that he fometimes gave into the Plocè, but that, in his humble opinion, he shined most in the Antanaclafis. I must not here omit, that a famous university 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 fhort hiftory of punning, one would Z 2 wonder wonder how it fhould be fo entirely banished out of the learned world as it is at prefent, especially fince it had found a place in the writings of the moft ancient polite authors. To account for this we must confider, that the firft race of authors, who were the great heroes in writing, were deftitute of all rules and arts of criticifm; and for that reason, though they excel later writers in greatness of genius, they fall fhort of them in accuracy and correctnefs. The moderns cannot reach their beauties, but can avoid their imperfections. When the world was furnished with thefe authors of the firft eminence, there grew up another fet 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 thofe fecondary authors, to diftinguish the feveral kinds of wit by terms of art, and to confider them as more or lefs perfect, according as they were founded in truth. It is no wonder, therefore, that even fuch authors as Ifocrates, Plato, and Cicero, fhould have fuch little blemishes as are not to be met with in authors of a much inferior character, who have written fince thofe feveral blemishes were difcovered. I do not find that there was a proper feparation made between puns and true wit by any of the ancient authors, except Quintilian and Longinus. But when this diftinction was once fettled, it was very natural for all men of sense to agree in it. As for the revival of this falfe wit, it happened about the time of the revival of letters; but as foon as it was once detected, it immediately vanished and disappeared. At the fame time there is no queftion, but as it has funk in one age and rofe in another, it will again recover itself in fome diftant period of time, as pedantry and ignorance fhall prevail upon wit and fenfe. And, to speak the truth, I do very much apprehend, by fome of the laft winter's productions, which had their fets of admirers, admirers, that our pofterity will in a few years degenerate into a race of punfters: at leaft, a man may be very excufable for any apprehenfions of this kind, that has feen Acrostics handed about the town with great fecrecy and applaufe; to which I muft alfo add a little epigram called the Witches Prayer, that fell into verfe when it was read either backward or forward, excepting only that it cursed one way and bleffed the other. When one fees there are actually fuch pains-takers among our Britifh wits, who can tell what it may end in? If we muft lafh one another, let it be with the manly ftrokes of wit and fatire; for I am of the old philofopher's opinion, that if I must fuffer from one or the other, I would rather it fhould be from the paw of a lion than the hoof of an afs. I do not fpeak this out of any spirit of party. There is a moft crying dulnefs on both fides. I have seen 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 Acroftics. But to return to punning. Having pursued the history of a pun from its original to its downfal, I fhall here define it to be a conceit arifing from the use of two words that agree in the found, but differ in the fenfe. The only way therefore to try a piece of wit, is to trandate it into a different language: If it bears the teft, you may pronounce it true; but if it vanishes in the experiment, you may conclude it to have been a pun. In fhort, one may say of a pun, as the countryman described his nightingale that it is vox et præterea nihil, a found, and nothing but a found. On the contrary, one may reprefent true wit by the description which Ariftenetus makes of a fine woman; when the is dreffed fhe is beautiful, when he is undreffed the is beautiful; or, as Mercerus has tranflated it more emphatically, Induitur, formofa eft: exuitur, iffa forma eft. Z3 с FRIDAY Sound judgment is the ground of writing well. R. Locke has an admirable reflection upon the M'difference of wit and judgment, whereby he endeavours to fhew the reafon why they are not always the talents of the fame perfon. His words are as follow: And hence, perhaps, may be given fome reafon of that common obfervation, That men who have a great deal of wit and prompt memories, have not always the clearest judgment, or deepest reason. For wit lying moft in the affemblage of ideas, and putting thofe together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable vifions in the fancy; judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on the other fide, in feparating carefully one from another, ideas wherein can be found the leaft 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 allufion; wherein, for the most part, lies that entertainment and pleafantry of wit which strikes fo lively on the fancy, and is therefore fo 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, confifts in fuch a refemblance and congruity of ideas as this author mentions. I fhall only add to it, by way of expla nation, That every refemblance of ideas is not that which we call wit, unlefs it be fuch an one that gives delight and surprise to the reader: these two proper. |