Essays and Tales

J >> Joseph Addison >> Essays and Tales

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After this short history of punning, one would wonder how it should
be so entirely banished out of the learned world as it is at
present, especially since it had found a place in the writings of
the most ancient polite authors. To account for this we must
consider that the first race of authors, who were the great heroes
in writing, were destitute of all rules and arts of criticism; and
for that reason, though they excel later writers in greatness of
genius, they fall short of them in accuracy and correctness. The
moderns cannot reach their beauties, but can avoid their
imperfections. When the world was furnished with these authors of
the first eminence, there grew up another set of writers, who gained
themselves a reputation by the remarks which they made on the works
of those who preceded them. It was one of the employments of these
secondary authors to distinguish the several kinds of wit by terms
of art, and to consider them as more or less perfect, according as
they were founded in truth. It is no wonder, therefore, that even
such authors as Isocrates, Plato, and Cicero, should have such
little blemishes as are not to be met with in authors of a much
inferior character, who have written since those several blemishes
were discovered. I do not find that there was a proper separation
made between puns and true wit by any of the ancient authors, except
Quintilian and Longinus. But when this distinction was once
settled, it was very natural for all men of sense to agree in it.
As for the revival of this false wit, it happened about the time of
the revival of letters; but as soon as it was once detected, it
immediately vanished and disappeared. At the same time there is no
question but, as it has sunk in one age and rose in another, it will
again recover itself in some distant period of time, as pedantry and
ignorance shall prevail upon wit and sense. And, to speak the
truth, I do very much apprehend, by some of the last winter's
productions, which had their sets of admirers, that our posterity
will in a few years degenerate into a race of punsters: at least, a
man may be very excusable for any apprehensions of this kind, that
has seen acrostics handed about the town with great secresy and
applause; to which I must also add a little epigram called the
"Witches' Prayer," that fell into verse when it was read either
backward or forward, excepting only that it cursed one way, and
blessed the other. When one sees there are actually such
painstakers among our British wits, who can tell what it may end in?
If we must lash one another, let it be with the manly strokes of wit
and satire: for I am of the old philosopher's opinion, that, if I
must suffer from one or the other, I would rather it should be from
the paw of a lion than from the hoof of an ass. I do not speak this
out of any spirit of party. There is a most crying dulness on both
sides. I have seen Tory acrostics and Whig anagrams, and do not
quarrel with either of them because they are Whigs or Tories, but
because they are anagrams and acrostics.

But to return to punning. Having pursued the history of a pun, from
its original to its downfall, I shall here define it to be a conceit
arising from the use of two words that agree in the sound, but
differ in the sense. The only way, therefore, to try a piece of wit
is to translate it into a different language. If it bears the test,
you may pronounce it true; but if it vanishes in the experiment, you
may conclude it to have been a pun. In short, one may say of a pun,
as the countryman described his nightingale, that it is "vox et
praeterea nihil"--"a sound, and nothing but a sound." On the
contrary, one may represent true wit by the description which
Aristaenetus makes of a fine woman:- "When she is dressed she is
beautiful: when she is undressed she is beautiful;" or, as Mercerus
has translated it more emphatically, Induitur, formosa est:
exuitur, ipsa forma est.

NEXT ESSAY

Scribendi recte sapere est et principium, et fons.
HOR., Ars Poet. 309.

Sound judgment is the ground of writing well.--ROSCOMMON.

Mr. Locke has an admirable reflection upon the difference of wit and
judgment, whereby he endeavours to show the reason why they are not
always the talents of the same person. His words are as follow:-
"And hence, perhaps, may be given some reason of that common
observation, 'That men who have a great deal of wit, and prompt
memories, have not always the clearest judgment or deepest reason.'
For wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those
together with quickness and variety wherein can be found any
resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and
agreeable visions in the fancy: judgment, on the contrary, lies
quite on the other side, in separating carefully one from another,
ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid
being misled by similitude, and by affinity to take one thing for
another. This is a way of proceeding quite contrary to metaphor and
allusion, wherein, for the most part, lies that entertainment and
pleasantry of wit which strikes so lively on the fancy, and is
therefore so acceptable to all people."

This is, I think, the best and most philosophical account that I
have ever met with of wit, which generally, though not always,
consists in such a resemblance and congruity of ideas as this author
mentions. I shall only add to it, by way of explanation, that every
resemblance of ideas is not that which we call wit, unless it be
such an one that gives delight and surprise to the reader. These
two properties seem essential to wit, more particularly the last of
them. In order, therefore, that the resemblance in the ideas be
wit, it is necessary that the ideas should not lie too near one
another in the nature of things; for, where the likeness is obvious,
it gives no surprise. To compare one man's singing to that of
another, or to represent the whiteness of any object by that of milk
and snow, or the variety of its colours by those of the rainbow,
cannot be called wit, unless, besides this obvious resemblance,
there be some further congruity discovered in the two ideas that is
capable of giving the reader some surprise. Thus, when a poet tells
us the bosom of his mistress is as white as snow, there is no wit in
the comparison; but when he adds, with a sigh, it is as cold too, it
then grows into wit. Every reader's memory may supply him with
innumerable instances of the same nature. For this reason, the
similitudes in heroic poets, who endeavour rather to fill the mind
with great conceptions than to divert it with such as are new and
surprising, have seldom anything in them that can be called wit.
Mr. Locke's account of wit, with this short explanation, comprehends
most of the species of wit, as metaphors, similitudes, allegories,
enigmas, mottoes, parables, fables, dreams, visions, dramatic
writings, burlesque, and all the methods of allusion: as there are
many other pieces of wit, how remote soever they may appear at first
sight from the foregoing description, which upon examination will be
found to agree with it.

As true wit generally consists in this resemblance and congruity of
ideas, false wit chiefly consists in the resemblance and congruity
sometimes of single letters, as in anagrams, chronograms, lipograms,
and acrostics; sometimes of syllables, as in echoes and doggrel
rhymes; sometimes of words, as in puns and quibbles; and sometimes
of whole sentences or poems, cast into the figures of eggs, axes, or
altars; nay, some carry the notion of wit so far as to ascribe it
even to external mimicry, and to look upon a man as an ingenious
person that can resemble the tone, posture, or face of another.

As true wit consists in the resemblance of ideas, and false wit in
the resemblance of words, according to the foregoing instances,
there is another kind of wit which consists partly in the
resemblance of ideas and partly in the resemblance of words, which
for distinction sake I shall call mixed wit. This kind of wit is
that which abounds in Cowley more than in any author that ever
wrote. Mr. Waller has likewise a great deal of it. Mr. Dryden is
very sparing in it. Milton had a genius much above it. Spenser is
in the same class with Milton. The Italians, even in their epic
poetry, are full of it. Monsieur Boileau, who formed himself upon
the ancient poets, has everywhere rejected it with scorn. If we
look after mixed wit among the Greek writers, we shall find it
nowhere but in the epigrammatists. There are indeed some strokes of
it in the little poem ascribed to Musaeus, which by that as well as
many other marks betrays itself to be a modern composition. If we
look into the Latin writers we find none of this mixed wit in
Virgil, Lucretius, or Catullus; very little in Horace, but a great
deal of it in Ovid, and scarce anything else in Martial.

Out of the innumerable branches of mixed wit, I shall choose one
instance which may be met with in all the writers of this class.
The passion of love in its nature has been thought to resemble fire,
for which reason the words "fire" and "flame" are made use of to
signify love. The witty poets, therefore, have taken an advantage,
from the doubtful meaning of the word "fire," to make an infinite
number of witticisms. Cowley observing the cold regard of his
mistress's eyes, and at the same time the power of producing love in
him, considers them as burning-glasses made of ice; and, finding
himself able to live in the greatest extremities of love, concludes
the torrid zone to be habitable. When his mistress has read his
letter written in juice of lemon, by holding it to the fire, he
desires her to read it over a second time by love's flames. When
she weeps, he wishes it were inward heat that distilled those drops
from the limbec. When she is absent, he is beyond eighty, that is,
thirty degrees nearer the pole than when she is with him. His
ambitious love is a fire that naturally mounts upwards; his happy
love is the beams of heaven, and his unhappy love flames of hell.
When it does not let him sleep, it is a flame that sends up no
smoke; when it is opposed by counsel and advice, it is a fire that
rages the more by the winds blowing upon it. Upon the dying of a
tree, in which he had cut his loves, he observes that his written
flames had burnt up and withered the tree. When he resolves to give
over his passion, he tells us that one burnt like him for ever
dreads the fire. His heart is an AEtna, that, instead of Vulcan's
shop, encloses Cupid's forge in it. His endeavouring to drown his
love in wine is throwing oil upon the fire. He would insinuate to
his mistress that the fire of love, like that of the sun, which
produces so many living creatures, should not only warm, but beget.
Love in another place cooks Pleasure at his fire. Sometimes the
poet's heart is frozen in every breast, and sometimes scorched in
every eye. Sometimes he is drowned in tears and burnt in love, like
a ship set on fire in the middle of the sea.

The reader may observe in every one of these instances that the poet
mixes the qualities of fire with those of love; and in the same
sentence, speaking of it both as a passion and as real fire,
surprises the reader with those seeming resemblances or
contradictions that make up all the wit in this kind of writing.
Mixed wit, therefore, is a composition of pun and true wit, and is
more or less perfect as the resemblance lies in the ideas or in the
words. Its foundations are laid partly in falsehood and partly in
truth; reason puts in her claim for one half of it, and extravagance
for the other. The only province, therefore, for this kind of wit
is epigram, or those little occasional poems that in their own
nature are nothing else but a tissue of epigrams. I cannot conclude
this head of mixed wit without owning that the admirable poet, out
of whom I have taken the examples of it, had as much true wit as any
author that ever wrote; and indeed all other talents of an
extraordinary genius.

It may be expected, since I am upon this subject, that I should take
notice of Mr. Dryden's definition of wit, which, with all the
deference that is due to the judgment of so great a man, is not so
properly a definition of wit as of good writing in general. Wit, as
he defines it, is "a propriety of words and thoughts adapted to the
subject." If this be a true definition of wit, I am apt to think
that Euclid was the greatest wit that ever set pen to paper. It is
certain there never was a greater propriety of words and thoughts
adapted to the subject than what that author has made use of in his
Elements. I shall only appeal to my reader if this definition
agrees with any notion he has of wit. If it be a true one, I am
sure Mr. Dryden was not only a better poet, but a greater wit than
Mr. Cowley, and Virgil a much more facetious man than either Ovid or
Martial.

Bouhours, whom I look upon to be the most penetrating of all the
French critics, has taken pains to show that it is impossible for
any thought to be beautiful which is not just, and has not its
foundation in the nature of things; that the basis of all wit is
truth; and that no thought can be valuable of which good sense is
not the groundwork. Boileau has endeavoured to inculcate the same
notion in several parts of his writings, both in prose and verse.
This is that natural way of writing, that beautiful simplicity which
we so much admire in the compositions of the ancients, and which
nobody deviates from but those who want strength of genius to make a
thought shine in its own natural beauties. Poets who want this
strength of genius to give that majestic simplicity to nature, which
we so much admire in the works of the ancients, are forced to hunt
after foreign ornaments, and not to let any piece of wit of what
kind soever escape them. I look upon these writers as Goths in
poetry, who, like those in architecture, not being able to come up
to the beautiful simplicity of the old Greeks and Romans, have
endeavoured to supply its place with all the extravagancies of an
irregular fancy. Mr. Dryden makes a very handsome observation on
Ovid's writing a letter from Dido to AEneas, in the following words:
"Ovid," says he, speaking of Virgil's fiction of Dido and AEneas,
"takes it up after him, even in the same age, and makes an ancient
heroine of Virgil's new-created Dido; dictates a letter for her just
before her death to the ungrateful fugitive, and, very unluckily for
himself, is for measuring a sword with a man so much superior in
force to him on the same subject. I think I may be judge of this,
because I have translated both. The famous author of 'The Art of
Love' has nothing of his own; he borrows all from a greater master
in his own profession, and, which is worse, improves nothing which
he finds. Nature fails him; and, being forced to his old shift, he
has recourse to witticism. This passes indeed with his soft
admirers, and gives him the preference to Virgil in their esteem."

Were not I supported by so great an authority as that of Mr. Dryden,
I should not venture to observe that the taste of most of our
English poets, as well as readers, is extremely Gothic. He quotes
Monsieur Segrais for a threefold distinction of the readers of
poetry; in the first of which he comprehends the rabble of readers,
whom he does not treat as such with regard to their quality, but to
their numbers and the coarseness of their taste. His words are as
follows: "Segrais has distinguished the readers of poetry,
according to their capacity of judging, into three classes." [He
might have said the same of writers too if he had pleased.] "In the
lowest form he places those whom he calls Les Petits Esprits, such
things as our upper-gallery audience in a playhouse, who like
nothing but the husk and rind of wit, and prefer a quibble, a
conceit, an epigram, before solid sense and elegant expression.
These are mob readers. If Virgil and Martial stood for Parliament-
men, we know already who would carry it. But though they made the
greatest appearance in the field, and cried the loudest, the best of
it is they are but a sort of French Huguenots, or Dutch boors,
brought over in herds, but not naturalised: who have not lands of
two pounds per annum in Parnassus, and therefore are not privileged
to poll. Their authors are of the same level, fit to represent them
on a mountebank's stage, or to be masters of the ceremonies in a
bear-garden; yet these are they who have the most admirers. But it
often happens, to their mortification, that as their readers improve
their stock of sense, as they may by reading better books, and by
conversation with men of judgment, they soon forsake them."

I must not dismiss this subject without observing that, as Mr.
Locke, in the passage above-mentioned, has discovered the most
fruitful source of wit, so there is another of a quite contrary
nature to it, which does likewise branch itself into several kinds.
For not only the resemblance, but the opposition of ideas does very
often produce wit, as I could show in several little points, turns,
and antitheses that I may possibly enlarge upon in some future
speculation.

NEXT ESSAY

Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam
Jungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas,
Undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum
Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne;
Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?
Credite, Pisones, isti tabulae, fore librum
Persimilem, cujus, velut aegri somnia, vanae
Fingentur species.
HOR., Ars Poet. 1.

If in a picture, Piso, you should see
A handsome woman with a fish's tail,
Or a man's head upon a horse's neck,
Or limbs of beasts, of the most different kinds,
Cover'd with feathers of all sorts of birds, -
Would you not laugh, and think the painter mad?
Trust me, that book is as ridiculous
Whose incoherent style, like sick men's dreams,
Varies all shapes, and mixes all extremes.
ROSCOMMON.

It is very hard for the mind to disengage itself from a subject in
which it has been long employed. The thoughts will be rising of
themselves from time to time, though we give them no encouragement:
as the tossings and fluctuations of the sea continue several hours
after the winds are laid.

It is to this that I impute my last night's dream or vision, which
formed into one continued allegory the several schemes of wit,
whether false, mixed, or true, that have been the subject of my late
papers.

Methought I was transported into a country that was filled with
prodigies and enchantments, governed by the goddess of Falsehood,
and entitled the Region of False Wit. There was nothing in the
fields, the woods, and the rivers, that appeared natural. Several
of the trees blossomed in leaf-gold, some of them produced bone-
lace, and some of them precious stones. The fountains bubbled in an
opera tune, and were filled with stags, wild bears, and mermaids,
that lived among the waters; at the same time that dolphins and
several kinds of fish played upon the banks, or took their pastime
in the meadows. The birds had many of them golden beaks, and human
voices. The flowers perfumed the air with smells of incense,
ambergris, and pulvillios; and were so interwoven with one another,
that they grew up in pieces of embroidery. The winds were filled
with sighs and messages of distant lovers. As I was walking to and
fro in this enchanted wilderness, I could not forbear breaking out
into soliloquies upon the several wonders which lay before me, when,
to my great surprise, I found there were artificial echoes in every
walk, that, by repetitions of certain words which I spoke, agreed
with me or contradicted me in everything I said. In the midst of my
conversation with these invisible companions, I discovered in the
centre of a very dark grove a monstrous fabric built after the
Gothic manner, and covered with innumerable devices in that
barbarous kind of sculpture. I immediately went up to it, and found
it to be a kind of heathen temple consecrated to the god of Dulness.
Upon my entrance I saw the deity of the place, dressed in the habit
of a monk, with a book in one hand and a rattle in the other. Upon
his right hand was Industry, with a lamp burning before her; and on
his left, Caprice, with a monkey sitting on her shoulder. Before
his feet there stood an altar of a very odd make, which, as I
afterwards found, was shaped in that manner to comply with the
inscription that surrounded it. Upon the altar there lay several
offerings of axes, wings, and eggs, cut in paper, and inscribed with
verses. The temple was filled with votaries, who applied themselves
to different diversions, as their fancies directed them. In one
part of it I saw a regiment of anagrams, who were continually in
motion, turning to the right or to the left, facing about, doubling
their ranks, shifting their stations, and throwing themselves into
all the figures and counter-marches of the most changeable and
perplexed exercise.

Not far from these was the body of acrostics, made up of very
disproportioned persons. It was disposed into three columns, the
officers planting themselves in a line on the left hand of each
column. The officers were all of them at least six feet high, and
made three rows of very proper men; but the common soldiers, who
filled up the spaces between the officers, were such dwarfs,
cripples, and scarecrows, that one could hardly look upon them
without laughing. There were behind the acrostics two or three
files of chronograms, which differed only from the former as their
officers were equipped, like the figure of Time, with an hour-glass
in one hand, and a scythe in the other, and took their posts
promiscuously among the private men whom they commanded.

In the body of the temple, and before the very face of the deity,
methought I saw the phantom of Tryphiodorus, the lipogrammatist,
engaged in a ball with four-and-twenty persons, who pursued him by
turns through all the intricacies and labyrinths of a country dance,
without being able to overtake him.

Observing several to be very busy at the western end of the temple,
I inquired into what they were doing, and found there was in that
quarter the great magazine of rebuses. These were several things of
the most different natures tied up in bundles, and thrown upon one
another in heaps like fagots. You might behold an anchor, a night-
rail, and a hobby-horse bound up together. One of the workmen,
seeing me very much surprised, told me there was an infinite deal of
wit in several of those bundles, and that he would explain them to
me if I pleased; I thanked him for his civility, but told him I was
in very great haste at that time. As I was going out of the temple,
I observed in one corner of it a cluster of men and women laughing
very heartily, and diverting themselves at a game of crambo. I
heard several double rhymes as I passed by them, which raised a
great deal of mirth.

Not far from these was another set of merry people engaged at a
diversion, in which the whole jest was to mistake one person for
another. To give occasion for these ludicrous mistakes, they were
divided into pairs, every pair being covered from head to foot with
the same kind of dress, though perhaps there was not the least
resemblance in their faces. By this means an old man was sometimes
mistaken for a boy, a woman for a man, and a blackamoor for an
European, which very often produced great peals of laughter. These
I guessed to be a party of puns. But being very desirous to get out
of this world of magic, which had almost turned my brain, I left the
temple and crossed over the fields that lay about it with all the
speed I could make. I was not gone far before I heard the sound of
trumpets and alarms, which seemed to proclaim the march of an enemy:
and, as I afterwards found, was in reality what I apprehended it.
There appeared at a great distance a very shining light, and in the
midst of it a person of a most beautiful aspect; her name was Truth.
On her right hand there marched a male deity, who bore several
quivers on his shoulders, and grasped several arrows in his hand;
his name was Wit. The approach of these two enemies filled all the
territories of False Wit with an unspeakable consternation, insomuch
that the goddess of those regions appeared in person upon her
frontiers, with the several inferior deities and the different
bodies of forces which I had before seen in the temple, who were now
drawn up in array, and prepared to give their foes a warm reception.
As the march of the enemy was very slow, it gave time to the several
inhabitants who bordered upon the regions of Falsehood to draw their
forces into a body, with a design to stand upon their guard as
neuters, and attend the issue of the combat.

I must here inform my reader that the frontiers of the enchanted
region, which I have before described, were inhabited by the species
of Mixed Wit, who made a very odd appearance when they were mustered
together in an army. There were men whose bodies were stuck full of
darts, and women whose eyes were burning-glasses; men that had
hearts of fire, and women that had breasts of snow. It would be
endless to describe several monsters of the like nature that
composed this great army, which immediately fell asunder, and
divided itself into two parts, the one half throwing themselves
behind the banners of Truth, and the others behind those of
Falsehood.

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