To return to pleasanter follies. Des Fontaines, the journalist, who had wit and malice, inserted the fragment of a letter which the poet Rousseau wrote to the younger Racine whilst he was at the Hague. These were the words: "I enjoy the conversation within these few days of my associates in Parnassus. Mr. Piron is an excellent antidote against melancholy; but"—&c. Des Fontaines maliciously stopped at this but. In the letter of Rousseau it was, "but unfortunately he departs soon." Piron was very sensibly affected at this equivocal but, and resolved to revenge himself by composing one hundred epigrams against the malignant critic. He had written sixty before Des Fontaines died: but of these only two attracted any notice.
Towards the conclusion of the fifteenth century, Antonio Cornezano wrote a hundred different sonnets on one subject, "the eyes of his mistress!" to which possibly Shakspeare may allude, when Jaques describes a lover, with his
Woeful ballad,
Made to his mistress' eyebrow.
Not inferior to this ingenious trifler is Nicholas Franco, well known in Italian literature, who employed himself in writing two hundred and eighteen satiric sonnets, chiefly on the famous Peter Aretin. This lampooner had the honour of being hanged at Rome for his defamatory publications. In the same class are to be placed two other writers. Brebeuf, who wrote one hundred and fifty epigrams against a painted lady. Another wit, desirous of emulating him, and for a literary bravado, continued the same subject, and pointed at this unfortunate fair three hundred more, without once repeating the thoughts of Brebeuf! There is a collection of poems called "La PUCE des grands jours de Poitiers." "The FLEA of the carnival of Poietiers." These poems were begun by the learned Pasquier, who edited the collection, upon a FLEA which was found one morning in the bosom of the famous Catherine des Roches!
Not long ago, a Mr. and Mrs. Bilderdyk, in Flanders, published poems under the whimsical title of "White and Red."—His own poems were called white, from the colour of his hair; and those of his lady red, in allusion to the colour of the rose. The idea must be Flemish!
Gildon, in his "Laws of Poetry," commenting on this line of the Duke of Buckingham's "Essay on Poetry,"
Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well:
very profoundly informs his readers "That what is here said has not the least regard to the penmanship, that is, to the fairness or badness of the handwriting," and proceeds throughout a whole page, with a panegyric on a fine handwriting! The stupidity of dulness seems to have at times great claims to originality!
Littleton, the author of the Latin and English Dictionary, seems to have indulged his favourite propensity to punning so far as even to introduce a pun in the grave and elaborate work of a Lexicon. A story has been raised to account for it, and it has been ascribed to the impatient interjection of the lexicographer to his scribe, who, taking no offence at the peevishness of his master, put it down in the Dictionary. The article alluded to is, "Concurro, to run with others; to run together; to come together; to fall foul of one another; to Con-cur, to Con-dog."
Mr. Todd, in his Dictionary, has laboured to show the "inaccuracy of this pretended narrative." Yet a similar blunder appears to have happened to Ash. Johnson, while composing his Dictionary, sent a note to the Gentleman's Magazine to inquire the etymology of the word curmudgeon. Having obtained the information, he records in his work the obligation to an anonymous letter-writer. "Curmudgeon, a vicious way of pronouncing cœur méchant. An unknown correspondent." Ash copied the word into his dictionary in this manner: "Curmudgeon: from the French cœur unknown; and méchant, a correspondent." This singular negligence ought to be placed in the class of our literary blunders; these form a pair of lexicographical anecdotes.