N° 58. Monday, May 7, 1711.

Ut pictura poefis erit- HOR. Ars. Poet. ver. 361. Poems like pictures are.

N

OTHING is fo much admired, and fo little understood, as wit. No author that I know of has written profeffedly upon it; and as for those who make any mention of it, they only treat on the fubject as it has accidentally fallen in their way, and that too in little short reflections, or in general exclamatory flourishes, without entering into the bottom of the matter. I hope therefore I fhall perform an acceptable work to my countrymen, if I treat at large upon this fubject; which I fhall endeavour to do in a manner fuitable to it, that I may not incur the cenfure which a famous critic bestows upon one who had written a treatife on the Sublime in a low grovelling ftile. I intend to lay afide a whole week for this undertaking, that the scheme of my thoughts may not be broken and interrupted; and I dare promife myself, if my readers will give me a week's attention, that this great city will be very much changed for the better by next Saturday night. I fhall endeavour to make what I 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 themselves the next shall be much clearer.

As

As the great and only end of these my Speculations is to banish vice and ignorance out of the territories of Great Britain, I fhall endeavour as much as poffible to establish among us a taste of polite writing. It is with this view that I have endeavoured 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 these Papers of criticifm, with that upon humour, have met with a more kind reception than indeed I could have hoped for from fuch fubjects; for this reafon I fhall enter upon my prefent undertaking with greater chearfulness.

In this, and one or two following Papers, I fhall trace out the hiftory of falfe wit, and diftinguish the several kinds of it as they have prevailed in different ages of the world. of the world. This I think the more neceffary at prefent, because I obferved there were attempts on foot laft winter to revive some of those antiquated modes of wit that have been long exploded out of the commonwealth of letters. There were feveral fatires and panegyrics handed about in acroftic, by which means fome of the most arrant undisputed blockheads about the town, began to entertain ambitious thoughts, and to fet up for polite authors. I fhall therefore describe at length thofe many arts of falfe wit, in which a

writer does not fhew himself a man of a beautiful genius, but of great industry.

The firft fpecies of false wit which I have

met

met with is very venerable for its antiquity, and has produced feveral pieces which have lived very near as long as the Iliad itself: I mean thofe fhort poems printed among the minor Greek poets, which refemble the figure of an egg, a pair of wings, an ax, a fhepherd's pipe, and an altar.

As for the first, it is a little oval poem, and may not improperly be called a scholar'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 the figure of his poem, than upon the fenfe

upon

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 reft 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 most fatirical parts of the work; but as it is in the original, I take it to have been nothing elfe but the poefy 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 horfe; 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

modern cutlers infcribe upon their knives; and that therefore the poesy still remains in its ancient fhape, though the Ax itfelf is loft.

The Shepherd's PIPE may be faid to be full of mufic, for it is compofed of nine different kinds of verfe, 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 these false 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 Theocritus 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 out-line of the fubject which he intended to write upon, and afterwards conform the description 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 verfes 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 Procruftus ufed to lodge in his iron bed; if they were too fhort, he ftretched 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.

VOL. I.

Z

Mr.

Mr. Dryden hints at this obsolete kind of wit in one of the following verfes in his Mac Flecno; which an English reader cannot understand, who does not know that there are those little poems above mentioned in the shape of Wings and Altars.

"Some peaceful province in Acroftic land; "There may'st thou Wings difplay, 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 may be met with among Mr. Herbert's poems; and, if I am not mistaken, in the tranflation 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 First, which has the whole book of Pfalms written in the lines of the face, and the hair of the head. When I was last at Oxford I perused one of the whiskers, 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 fellowtravellers, who all of them preffed to see such a piece of curiofity. I have fince heard, that there is now an eminent writing-mafter in town, who has tranfcribed all the Old Teftament in a Fullbottomed PERIWIG; and if the fashion should introduce the thick kind of Wigs, which were in vogue fome few years ago, he promises to add

two