as one of the most valuable treafuries of the Greek

tongue.

I find likewise among the ancients that ingenious kind of conceit, which the moderns diftinguish by the name of a Rebus, that does not fink a letter but a whole word, by fubftituting a picture in its place. When Cæfar was one of the mafters of the Roman mint, he placed the figure of an elephant upon the reverfe of the public money; the word Cæfar fignifying an elephant in the Punic language. This was artificially contrived by Cæfar, becaufe 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 nofe 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 infcribed on a public monument. This was done probably to fhew 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 building that was marked in feveral parts of it with the figures of a frog and a lizard; th fe 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 reafon it is thought, that the forelock of the horfe, in the antique equestrian ftatue of Marcus Aurelius, reprefents at a diftance the fhape of an owl, to intimate the country of the ftatuary, 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 practise it for any oblique reafon, as the ancients abovementioned, but purely for the fake of being witty. Among innumerable inftances that may be given of this nature, I shall produce the device of one Mr. Newberry, as I find it mentioned by our learned Cambden in his remains. Mr. Newberry, to reprefent his name by a picture, hung up at his door the fign of a yew-tree that had feveral berries upon it, and in the midst of them a great

a great golden N hung upon a bough of the tree, which by the help of a little falfe fpelling made up the word N-ew-berry.

I fhall conclude this topic with a rebus, which has been lately hewn out of free-ftone, and erected over two of the portals of Blenheim houfe, 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 fignifies a Frenchman, as a lion is an emblem of the English nation. Such a device in fo noble a pile of building looks like a pun in an heroic poem; and I am very forry the truly ingenious architect would fuffer the ftatuary to blemish his excellent plan with fo 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 likewife in ancient times the conceit of making an echo talk fenfibly, and give rational anfwers. If this could be excufeable in any writer it would be in Ovid, where he introduces the echo as a nymph, before the 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 ufe of an echo who feems to have been a very extraordinary linguift; for the anfwers the perfon fhe talks with in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, according as the found the fyllables which fhe was to repeat in any of thofe learned languages. Hudibras, in ridicule of this falfe kind of wit, has defcribed Orfin bewailing the lofs of his bear to a folitary echo; who is of great ufe to the poet in feveral diftichs, 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 as
Stout Hercules for lots of Hylas;
Forcing the vallies to repeat
The accents of his fad regret.
He beat his breaft and tore his hair,
For lofs of his dear crony bear,

< That

That echo from the hollow ground
His doleful wailings did refound
More wiftfully, by many times,
Than in fmall poets play-foot rhymes,
That make her, in their rueful ftories,
To anfwer to int'rogatories,
And most unconscionably depofe
Things of which the nothing knows:
And when the has faid all the can fay,
''Tis wrested to the lover's fancy.
Quoth he, O whither, wicked Bruin,
Art thou fled to my-echo, Ruin?
I thought th'had'ft fcorn'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 ftubborn 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 the, Mum budget.
Think'st thou 'twill not be laid i'th'difh,
Thou turn'dft thy back? Quoth echo, Pish.
To run from thofe th'hadft overcome
Thus cowardly! Quoth echo, Mum.
But what a-vengeace makes thee fly
From me too as thine enemy y?
'Or if thou hadft not thought of me,
Nor what I have endur'd for thee,
Yet fhame and honour might prevail
To keep thee thus from turning tail:
For who would grudge to spend his blood in
His honour's caufe? Quoth the, a pudding.'

C.

No. LX.

No. LX. WEDNESDAY, MAY,.

Hoc eft quod palles? Cur quis non prandeat, hoc eft?

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

PERS.

SEVERAL kinds of falfe wit that vanished in the refined ages of the world, discovered themselves again in the time of monkish ignorance.

As the monks were the mafters of all that little learning which was then extant, and had their whole lives difengaged from bufinefs, it is no wonder that feveral of them, who wanted genius for higher performances, employed many hours in the compofition of such tricks in writing as required much time and little capacity. I have feen half the Eneid turned into Latin rhymes by one of the beaux-efprits of that dark age; who fays in his preface to it, that the Eneid wanted nothing but the fweets of rhyme to make it the most perfect work in its kind. I have likewife feen an hymn in hexameters to the Virgin Mary, which filled a whole book, though it confifted but of the eight following words:

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

Thou haft as many virtues, O Virgin, as there are stars in heaven!

The poet rung the changes upon thefe eight feveral 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 fo much time upon their hands, did not only restore all the antiquated pieces of falfe 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 elfe but a tranfmutation of one word into another, or the turning Y

of the fame fet of letters into different words; which may change night into day, or black into white, if Chance, who is the goddess that prefides over these sorts of compofition, fhall fo direct. I remember a witty author, in allufion to this kind of writing, calls his rival, who, it feems was diftorted, and had his limbs fet in places that did not properly belong to them, The Anagram of a Man.

When the anagramatist takes a name to work upon, he confiders it at firft as a mine not broken up, which will not fhew the treasure it contains till he fhall have fpent many hours in the fearch of it; for it is his bufinefs to find out one word that conceals itself in another, and to examine the letters in all the variety of ftations in which they can poffibly 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 fhut himself up for half a year, with indefatigable industry produced an anagram. Upon the prefenting it to his miftrefs, who was a little vexed in her heart to fee herfelf degraded into Moll Boon, she told him, to his infinite furprife, that he had miftaken her furname, for that it was not Boon but Bohun.

Effufus labor

Ibi omnis

The lover was thunder-ftruck with his misfortune, info much that in a little time after he loft his fenfes, which indeed had been very much impaired by that continual application he had given to his anagram.

The acroftic 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 acroftic is nothing but the name or title of a perfon or thing made out of the initial