PROSE MISCELLANIES.

BY

SWIFT AND SHERIDAN.

ARS PUNICA, &c.

THIS piece was composed chiefly by Dr Sheridan, of whose extensive learning and peculiar humour it bears evident tokens. Punning, as Stella said of him on a particular occasion, was his "blind side;" and we learn from Swift's evidence, that he had carefully amassed a large collection of stories, from which he found it easy to illustrate the rules he has here laid down. The treatise, however, was enriched by the contributions of Swift, of Hammond, father to the poet, of Parnel, and of Delany. Like every other collection of mere jests, these protracted and strained efforts at mirth end in being tedious. Some of the rules, however, as well as of the examples, are very humorous.

It seems difficult to conceive how this trifle should have given offence to any one. Nevertheless, Dr Tisdal, called Black Tisdal, who, as Dr Swift remarks in a letter to Dr Jenny, had been long engaged in a kind of flirting war of satiric burlesque verse, Sheridan, and other wags, chose to attack the author in the following satire, which I have printed, not on account of its merit, but as a specimen of the assaults to which Swift and his friends were exposed, and which naturally called down occasionally marks of his resentment.

TOM PUN-SIBI:

OR,

THE GIBER GIB'D.

Mirandi novitate movebere mostri.—OVID.

Tom was a little merry grig,

Fiddled and danced to his own jig.
Good-natured, but a little silly;
Irresolute, and shally-shilly.

What he should do, he con'dn't guess,
Swift used him like a man at chess;
He told him once that he had wit,
But was in jest, and Tom was bit.
Thought himself second son of Phœbus,
For ballad, pun, lampoon and rebus.
He took a draught of Helicon,
But swallowed so much water down,
He got a dropsy; now they say, 'tis,
Turn'd to poetic diabetes.

For all the liquor he has pass'd,
Is without spirit, salt, or taste:
But, since it pass'd, Tom thought it wit,
And so he writ, and writ, and writ:
He writ the famous Panning Art,

The benefit of piss and fart:

:

He writ the Wonder of all Wonders,
He writ the Blunder of all Blunders;
He writ a merry farce or poppet,
Taught actors how to squeak and hop it:
A treatise on the Wooden-man,*
A ballad on the nose of Dan;
The art of making April fools,
And four-and-thirty quibbling rules.
The learned say, that Tom went snacks
With Philomaths, for almanacks;
Tho' they divided are, for some say,
He writ for Whaley, some for Cumpstey.t
Hundreds there are, who will make oath,
That he writ almanacks for both;
And, tho' they made the calculations,
Tom writ the monthly observations!

Such were his writings, but his chatter
Was one continual clitter-clatter.
Swift slit his tongue, and made it talk,
Cry, cup o'sack, and walk, knave, walk!
And fitted little prating Pall

For wier-cage, in Common-Hall:
Made him expert at quibble-jargon,
And quaint at selling of a bargain,
Pall, he could talk in different linguos,
But he could not be taught distinguos;
Swift tried in vain, and angry thereat,
Into a spaniel turn'd the parrot;
Made him to walk on his hind-legs,
He dances, fawns, and paws, and begs;
Then cuts a caper o'er a stick,‡

Lies close, does whine, and creep, and lick:

Swift put a bit upon his snout,

Poor Tom! he daren't look about;

But when that Swift does give the word,

He snaps it up, tho' twere a t---.

Swift strokes his back, and gives him victual,

And then he makes him lick his spittle.

Sometimes he takes him on his lap,

And makes him grin, and snarl, and snap.
He sets the little cur at me;

Kick'd, he leapt upon his knee;

I took him by the neck to shake him,

And inade him void his album Græcum,

"Turn out the stinking cur, pox take him!"

Quoth Swift: tho' Swift could sooner want any

Thing in the world, than a Tanta-ny

And thus not only makes his grig,
A parrot, spaniel, but his pig.

* "The wooden-man is a famed door-post in Dublin." "The famous Irish almanack-makers."

"This is literally true between Swift and Sheridan."

ARS PUN-ICA, SIVE FLOS LINGUARUM.

THE

ART OF PUNNING;

OR,

THE FLOWER OF LANGUAGES:

IN SEVENTY-NINE RULES;

FOR THE FURTHER IMPROVEMENT OF CONVERSATION, AND HELP OF MEMORY.

BY THE LABOUR AND INDUSTRY OF TOM PUN-SIBI.

"Ex ambiguâ dictâ vel argutissima putantur; sed non semper in joco, sæpe etiam in gravitate versantur.-Ingeniosi enim videtur, vim verbi in aliud atque cæteri accipiant, posse ducere."

Cicero, de Oratore, Lib. ii. § 61, 2.

"The seeds of Punning are in the minds of all men."

Addison, Spect. No. 61.