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this great city will be very much changed for the better by next Saturday night. I fhall endeavour to make what

fay intelligible to ordinary capacities; but if my readers meet with any paper that in fome parts of it may be a little out of their reach, I would not have them difcouraged, for they may affure themfelves the next fhall be much clearer.

As the great and only end of thefe my fpeculations is to banish vice and ignorance out of the territories of Great Britain, I shall endeavour as much as possible to eftablish among us a taste of polite writing. It is with this view that I have endeavourved to fet my readers right in feveral points relating to Operas and Tragedies; and fhall, from time to time, impart my notions of Comedy, as I think they may tend to its refinement and perfection. I find by my bookfeller, that thefe papers of criticifin, with that upon humour, have met with a more kind reception than indeed I could have hoped for from fuch fubjects; for which reafon I thall enter upon my prefent undertaking with greater cheerfulness.

In this, and one or two following papers, I fhall trace out the hiftory of falfe wit, and diftinguith the feveral kinds of it as they have prevailed in different ages of the world. This I think the more neceflary at prefent, becaufe I obferved there were attempts on foot laft winter to revive fome of thofe antiquated modes of wit that have been long exploded out of the commonwealth of letters. There were feveral fatires and panegyrics handed about in acroft c, by which means fome of the moft arrant undifputed blockheads about the town began to entertain ambitious thoughts, and to fet up for polite authors. I thall therefore describe at length those many arts of falfe wit, in which a writer does not thew him elf a man of a beautiful genius, but of great industry.

The firft fpecies of falfe wit which I have met with is very venerable for its a tiquity, and has produced several pieces which have lived very near as long as the Iliad itfelf: Im an thofe fhort poems printed among the minor Greek poets, which relemble the figure of an egg, a pair of wings, an ax, a ihepherd's pipe, and an altar."

As for the first, it is a little oval poem, and may not improperly be called a fcholar's egg. I would endeavour to hatch it, or, in more intelligible language, to tranflate it into English, did not I find the interpretation of it very difficult; for the author feems to have been more intent upon the figure of his poem than upon the sense

of it.

The pair of wings confift of twelve verses, or rather feathers, every verfe decreasing gradually in its measure according to its fituation in the wing. The fubject of it, as in the rest of the poems which follow, bears fome remote affinity with the figure, for it defcribes a god of love, who is always painted with wings.

The ax, methinks, would have been a good figure for a lampoon, had the edge of it confifted of the moft fatirical parts of the work; but as it is in the original, I take it to have been nothing else but the poesy of an ax which was confecrated to Minerva, and was thought to have been the fame that Epeus made use of in the building of the Trojan horse; which is a hint I fhall leave to the confideration of the critics. I am apt to think that the poefy was written originally upon the ax, like those which our modern cutlers infcribe upon their knives; and that therefore the poefy ftill remains in its ancient shape, though the ax itself is loft.

The fhepherd's pipe may be faid to be full of mufic; for it is compofed of nine different kinds of verses, which by their feveral lengths refemble the nine ftops of the old mufical inftrument, that is likewife the fubject of the poem.

The altar is infcribed with the epitaph of Troilus, the fon of Hecuba; which, by the way, makes me believe that thefe falfe 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 Thescritus could have been the author of any fuch fimple works.

It was impoffible for a man to fucceed in thefe performances who was not a kind of painter, or at least a defigner: he was first of all to draw the outline of the

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fubject which ne intended to write upon, and afterwards conform the defcription to the figure of his fubject. The poetry was to contract or dilate itself according to the mould in which it was caft. In a word, the verses were to be cramped or extended to the dimenfions of the frame that was prepared for them; and to undergo the fate of thofe perfons whom the tyrant Procruftes ufed 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 vertes in his Mac Flecno; which an English reader canla undertand who does not know that there are thofe little poems above mentioned in the fhape of wings and altars:

- Choofe for thy command

Some peaceful province in acroftic land;

There may' thou wings display, and altars raife, .
And torture one poor word a thousand ways.

This fashion of falfe wit was revived by feveral poets of the last age, and in particular it may be met with among Mr. Herbert's poems; and, if I am not mistaken, in the tralation of Du Bartas. I do not remember any other kind of work among the moderns which more refembles the performances I have mentioned, than that famous picture of King Charles the Firft, which has the whole book of Pfalms written in the lines of the face and the hair of the head. When I was laft at Oxford, I perufed one of the whifkers; and was reading the other, but could not go fo far in it as I would have done, by reafon of the impatience of my friends and fellow-travellers, who all of them preffed to fee fuch a piece of curiofity. I have fince heard, that there is now an eminent writingmafter in town, who has tranfcribed all the Old Teftameat in a full-bottomed perriwig; and if the fathion fhould introduce the thick kind of wigs which were in vogue fome years ago, he promises to add two or three

fuper

fupernumerary locks, that fhall contain all the Apocrypha. He defigned this wig originally for King William, having difpofed of the two books of Kings in the two forks of the foretop; but that glorious monarch 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 propofe, for the benefit of our modern fmatterers in poetry, that they would imitate their brethren among the ancients in thofe ingeni us devices. I have communicated this thought to a young poetical lover of my acquaintance, who intends to present his miftrefs with a copy of verfes in the fhape of her fan; and, if he tells me true, he has already finished the three first sticks of it. He has likewife promifed me to get the measure of his mistress's marriage-finger, with a defign to make a poefy in the fafhionable ring, which fhall exactly fit it. It is fo very eafy to enlarge upon a good hint, that I do not queftion but my ingenious reader will apply what I have faid to many other particulars; and that we fhall fee the town filled in a very little time with poetical tippets, handkerchiefs, fnuff-boxes, and the like female ornaments. I fhall therefore conclude with a word of advice to thofe admirable English authors who call themfelves Pindaric writers, that they would apply themfelves to this kind of wit without lofs of time, as being provided better than any other poets with verfes of all fizes and dinenfions.

C.

No. LIX. TUESDAY, MAY 8.

Operofe nihil agunt.

Bufy about nothing.

SENECA.

THERE is nothing more certain, than that every man would be a wit if he could; and notwithstanding pedants of a pretended depth and folidity are apt to decry the writings of a polite author, as Flafh and Froth, they all of them fhew upon occafion, that they would

spare

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fpare no pains to arrive at the character of those whom they feem to defpife. For this reafon we often find them endeavouring at works of fancy, which coft them infinite pangs in the production. The truth of it is, a man had better be a galley-flave than a wit, were one to gain that title by thofe elaborate trifles which have been the inventions of fuch authors as were often mafters of great learning, but no genius.

In my laft paper I mentioned fome of thofe falfe wits among the ancients, and in this fhall give the reader two or three other fpecies of them, that flourished in the fame early ages of the world. The firft I fhall produce are the Lipogrammatifts or Letter-droppers of antiquity, that would take an exception, without any reafon, againft fome particular letter in the alphabet, so as not to admit it once into a whole poem. One Tryphiodorus was a great mafter in this kind of writing. He compofed an odyffey, or epic poem, on the adventures of Ulyffes, confifting of four-and-twenty books, having entirely banished the letter A from his first book, which was called Alpha, as Lucus a non Lucendo, because there was not an Alpha in it. His fecond book was infcribed Beta, for the fame reafon. In fhort, the poet excluded the whole four-andtwenty letters in their turns, and fhewed them, one after another, that he could do his bufinefs without them.

It must have been very pleafant to have feen this poet avoiding the reprobate letter, as much as another would a falfe quantity, and taking his efcape from it through the feveral Greek dialects, when he was pressed with it in any particular 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 fhall only obferve upon this head, that if the work I have here inentioned had been now extant, the Odyffey of Tryphiodorus, in all probability, would have been oftener quoted by our learned pedants than the Odyffey of Homer. What a perpetual fund would it have been of obsolete words and phrafes, unufual barbarifms and rufticities, abfurd spellings, and complicated dialects! I make no queftion but it would have been looked upon

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