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 the figure of a vetch at the end of them to be inscribed on a public monument. This was done probably to shew that he was neither ashamed of his name or 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 proba bility, was an Athenian. This kind of wit was very much in 1 Addison follows Plutarch in his etymology of Cicer, which Pliny, with far more probability, attributes, like the names of the Fabii, Lentuli, &c., to the reputation their families had acquired for the cultivation of those plants. V. Pliny Hist. Nat, 18, 3, 1; and Middleton, Life of Cicero, v, 1, p. 7.-G. V. vol. 2d, p. 151. Note.-G. vogue among our own countrymen about an age or two ago, who did not practise it for any oblique reason, as the ancients abovementioned, 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 had 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 N-ew-berry. I shall conclude this topic with a Rebus, which has been lately hewn out in 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 same word that signifies a French-man, 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 a solitary echo, who is of great use to the poet in several distichs, 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 Forcing the vallies to repeat He beat his breast, and tore his hair, And most unconscionably depose Things of which she nothing knows: Art thou fled to my -Echo, Ruin? I thought th'hadst scorn'd to budge a step Am I not here to take thy part? Then what has quell'd thy stubborn heart? So often in thy quarrel bled? Nor did I ever winch or grudge it, For thy dear sake?-(Quoth she) Mum budget. Thou turnd'st thy back? quoth Echo, Pish. Thus cowardly? quoth Echo, Mum. Juvenis, Echo-Juvenis consults Echo about his studies, and Echo answers in Latin and Greek, but not in Hebrew. The young man asksQuid captant plerique, qui ambiunt sacerdotium? To which Echo replies -Otium. Præterea nihil habet sacerdos? asks the youth-Kepdos. Juv.Decem jam annos trivi in Cicerone. Echo-Ove. V. Erasm. Colloq. p. 327 & 28, Ed. Lond. 1727.-G, of SEVERAL kinds of false wit that vanished in the refined ages 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 Eneid 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 an 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, Calo. Thou hast 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 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 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 shut himself up for half a year, with indefatigable industry produced an anagram. Upon 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. |