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-rimes 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 Defaite des Bouts-Rimes." (The Rout of the Bouts-Rimes).
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 Non equidem hoc studeo bullatis ut mihi nugis Pagina turgescat, dare pondus idonea fumo.
'Tis not indeed my talent to engage In lofty trifles, or to swell my page With wind and noise.
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 Ploce, 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.
