two or three fupernumerary locks that should contain all the Apocrypha. He defigned this Wig originally for King William, having dispofed 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 fpace 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 ingenious devices. I have communicated this thought to a young poetical lover of my acquaintance, who intends to prefent his mistress with a copy of verfes made in the fhape of her Fan; and, if he tells me true, has already finished the three firft fticks of it. He has likewife promised me to get the measure of his mistress's marriage finger, with a defign to make a pocfy in the fashion of a 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 readers will apply what I have faid to many other particulars: and that we shall 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 themselves to this kind of wit without lofs of time, as being provided

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vided better than any other poets with verfes of all fizes and dimenfions.

C*.

T

N° 59. Tuesday, May 8, 1711.

Operofe nihil agunt.

Bufy about nothing.

SENECA.

"HERE 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 flash and froth, they all of them fhew, upon occafion, that they would spare 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 those 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 these Falfe WITS among the ancients, and in this shall 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

* By ADDISON, dated it feems from Chelsea. See final Note to N° 7; N° 221, and Note on LETTERS, &c.

Lipogrammatifts or Letter-droppers of antiquity, that would take an exception, without any rea fon, against fome particular letter in the alphabet, fo as not to admit it once into a whole poem. One Tryphiodorus was a great master 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 à non lucendo) because there was not an Alpha in it. His fecond book was infcribed Beta for the fame reason. In short, the poet excluded the whole four and twenty letters in their turns, and fhewed them, one after another, that he could do his bufinefs without them.

It must have been very pleasant to have seen this poet avoiding the reprobate letter, as much as another would a falfe quantity, and making his escape from it through the feveral Greek dialects, when he was preffed with it in any particular Syllable. For the moft 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 mentioned had been now extant, the Odyssey of Tryphiodorus, in all probability, would have been oftener quoted by our learned pedants, than the Odyssey of Homer. What a perpetual fund would it have been of obfolete words and phrafes, unufual barbarifms and rufticities, abfurd spellings and complicated dialects? I

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make

make no queftion but it would have been looked upon as one of the moft valuable treafuries of the Greek tongue.

I find likewife 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 reverse of the public money; the word Cafar fignifying an Elephant in the Punic language. This was artificially contrived by Cæfar, because it was not lawful for a private man to ftamp 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) inftead of Marcus Tullius Cicero, ordered the words Marcus Tullius, with a 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 afhamed 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; thofe 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 statue of Marcus Aurelius, reprefents at a distance the fhape of an owl, to intimate the country of the statuary, 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 antients above mentioned, but purely for the fake of being Witty. Among innumerable inftances that may be given of this nature, I fhall produce the device of one Mr. Newberry, as I find it mentioned by our learned Camden in his Remains. Mr. Newberry, to represent his name by a picture, hung up at his door the fign of a yew-tree, that had several berries upon it, and in the midst of them a great golden N hung upon a bough of the tree, which by the help of a little false spelling 'made up the word N-cw-berry.

I fhall conclude this topic with a Rebus, which has been lately hewn out in free-ftone, and erected over two of the portals of Blenheim House, being the figure of a monftrous 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 fame word that fignifies a Frenchman, as a lion is the 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