Mis
Comme des Princes,
Après être venus
Nuds
De leurs Provinces.
The poetical whim of Cretin, a French poet, brought into fashion punning or equivocal rhymes. Maret thus addressed him in his own way:—
L'homme, sotart, et non sçavant
Comme un rotisseur, qui lave oye,
La faute d'autrui, nonce avant,
Qu'il la cognoisse, ou qu'il la voye, &c.
In these lines of Du Bartas, this poet imagined that he imitated the harmonious notes of the lark: "the sound" is here, however, not "an echo to the sense."
La gentille aloüette, avec son tirelire,
Tirelire, à lire, et tireliran, tire
Vers la voute du ciel, puis son vol vers ce lieu,
Vire et desire dire adieu Dieu, adieu Dieu.
The French have an ingenious kind of Nonsense Verses called Amphigouries. This word is composed of a Greek adverb signifying about, and of a substantive signifying a circle. The following is a specimen, elegant in the selection of words, and what the French called richly rhymed, but in fact they are fine verses without any meaning whatever. Pope's Stanzas, said to be written by a person of quality, to ridicule the tuneful nonsense of certain bards, and which Gilbert Wakefield mistook for a serious composition, and wrote two pages of Commentary to prove this song was disjointed, obscure, and absurd, is an excellent specimen of these Amphigouries.