This was artificially contrived by Caesar, because it was not lawful for a private man to stamp his own figure upon the coin of the commonwealth. Cicero, who was so called from the founder of his family, that was marked on the nose with a little wen like a vetch, which is Cicer in Latin, instead of Marcus Tullius Cicero, ordered the words Marcus Tullius, with a figure of a vetch at the end of them, to be inscribed on a public monument. This was done probably to show that he was neither ashamed of his name nor family, notwithstanding the envy of his competitors had often reproached him with both. In the same manner we read of a famous building that was marked in several parts of it with the figures of a frog and a lizard; those words in Greek having been the names of the architects, who by the laws of their country were never permitted to inscribe their own names upon their works. For the same reason it is thought that the forelock of the horse, in the antique equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, represents at a distance the shape 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 reason, as the ancients above-mentioned, but purely for the sake of being witty. Among innumerable instances that may be given of this nature, I shall 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 sign of a yew-tree, that has 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 Newberry.
I shall conclude this topic with a rebus, which has been lately hewn out in freestone, and erected over two of the portals of Blenheim House, 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 signifies a Frenchman, as a lion is the emblem of the English nation. Such a device in so noble a pile of building looks like a pun in an heroic poem; and I am very sorry the truly ingenious architect would suffer the statuary to blemish his excellent plan with so poor a conceit. But I hope what I have said will gain quarter for the cock, and deliver him out of the lion's paw.
I find likewise in ancient times the conceit of making an echo talk sensibly, and give rational answers. If this could be excusable in any writer, it would be in Ovid where he introduces the Echo as a nymph, before she was worn away into nothing but a voice. The learned Erasmus, though a man of wit and genius, has composed a dialogue upon this silly kind of device, and made use of an Echo, who seems to have been a very extraordinary linguist, for she answers the person she talks with in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, according as she found the syllables which she was to repeat in any of those learned languages. Hudibras, in ridicule of this false kind of wit, has described Bruin bewailing the loss of his bear to the solitary Echo, who is of great use to the poet in several distiches, as she does not only repeat after him, but helps out his verse, and furnishes him with rhymes:-He raged, and kept as heavy a coil as Stout Hercules for loss of Hylas;Forcing the valleys to repeat The accents of his sad regret;He beat his breast, and tore his hair, For loss of his dear crony bear:
That Echo from the hollow ground His doleful wailings did resound More wistfully by many times, Than in small poets' splay-foot rhymes, That make her, in their rueful stories, To answer to int'rogatories, And most unconscionably depose Things of which she nothing knows;And when she has said all she can say, 'Tis wrested to the lover's fancy.
Quoth he, "O whither, wicked Bruin, Art thou fled to my"--Echo, Ruin?
"I thought th' hadst scorn'd to budge a step For fear." Quoth Echo, Marry guep.
"Am I not here to take thy part?"
Then what has quell'd thy stubborn 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 sake." Quoth she, Mum budget.
Think'st thou 'twill not be laid i' th' dish, Thou turn'dst thy back?" Quoth Echo, Pish.
To run from those th' hadst overcome Thus cowardly?" Quoth Echo, Mum.
"But what a-vengeance makes thee fly From me too as thine enemy?
Or if thou hadst no thought of me, Nor what I have endured for thee, Yet shame and honour might prevail To keep thee thus from turning tail:
For who would grudge to spend his blood in His honour's cause?" Quoth she, A pudding.
Hoc est quod palles? Cur quis non prandeat, hoc est?
Is it for this you gain those meagre looks, And sacrifice your dinner to your books?
Several kinds of false wit that vanished in the refined ages of the world, discovered themselves again in the times of monkish ignorance.
As the monks were the masters of all that little learning which was then extant, and had their whole lives entirely disengaged from business, it is no wonder that several of them, who wanted genius for higher performances, employed many hours in the composition of such tricks in writing as required much time and little capacity. Ihave seen half the "AEneid" turned into Latin rhymes by one of the beaux esprits of that dark age: who says, in his preface to it, that the "AEneid" wanted nothing but the sweets of rhyme to make it the most perfect work in its kind. I have likewise seen a hymn in hexameters to the Virgin Mary, which filled a whole book, though it consisted but of the eight following words Tot tibi sunt, Virgo, dotes, quot sidera coelo.
Thou hast as many virtues, O Virgin, as there are stars in heaven.
