more ridiculous? Or would not
one be apt to believe that the Author played [booty [10]], and did not
make his List of Rhymes till he had finished his Poem?

I shall only add, that this Piece of false Wit has been finely ridiculed
by Monsieur _Sarasin,_ in a Poem intituled, _La Defaite des Bouts-Rimez,
The Rout of the Bouts-Rimez._ [11]

I must subjoin to this last kind of Wit the double Rhymes, which are
used in Doggerel Poetry, and generally applauded by ignorant Readers. If
the Thought of the Couplet in such Compositions is good, the Rhyme adds
[little [12]] to it; and if bad, it will not be in the Power of the
Rhyme to recommend it. I am afraid that great Numbers of those who
admire the incomparable _Hudibras_, do it more on account of these
Doggerel Rhymes than of the Parts that really deserve admiration. I am
sure I have heard the

Pulpit, Drum Ecclesiastick,
Was beat with fist instead of a Stick,

and

There was an ancient sage Philosopher
Who had read Alexander Ross over,

more frequently quoted, than the finest Pieces of Wit in the whole Poem.

C.

[Footnote 1: chymes]

[Footnote 2: This is an error. [Greek: Anagramma] meant in old Greek
what it now means. Lycophron, who lived B.C. 280, and wrote a Greek poem
on Cassandra, was famous for his Anagrams, of which two survive. The
Cabalists had a branch of their study called Themuru, changing, which
made mystical anagrams of sacred names.]

[Footnote 3: was called]

[Footnote 4: The invention of Acrostics is attributed to Porphyrius
Optatianus, a writer of the 4th century. But the arguments of the
Comedies of Plautus are in form of acrostics, and acrostics occur in the
original Hebrew of the 'Book of Psalms'.]

[Footnote 5: was]

[Footnote 6: known by the name of]

[Footnote 7: The Chronogram was popular also, especially among the
Germans, for inscriptions upon marble or in books. More than once, also,
in Germany and Belgium a poem was written in a hundred hexameters, each
yielding a chronogram of the date it was to celebrate.]

[Footnote 8: Bouts rimes are said to have been suggested to the wits of
Paris by the complaint of a verse turner named Dulot, who grieved one
day over the loss of three hundred sonnets; and when surprise was
expressed at the large number, said they were the 'rhymed ends,' that
only wanted filling up.]

[Footnote 9: Menagiana, vol. I. p. 174, ed. Amst. 1713. The Menagiana
were published in 4