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,
T