volumes, in 1695 and 1696. Gilles Menage died at
Paris in 1692, aged 79. He was a scholar and man of the world, who had a
retentive memory, and, says Bayle,

'could say a thousand good things in a thousand pleasing ways.'

The repertory here quoted from is the best of the numerous collections
of 'ana.']

[Footnote 10: double]

[Footnote 11: Jean Francois Sarasin, whose works were first collected by
Menage, and published in 1656, two years after his death. His defeat of
the Bouts-Rimes, has for first title 'Dulot Vaincu' is in four cantos,
and was written in four or five days.]

[Footnote 12: nothing]

* * * * *

No. 61. Thursday, May 10, 1711. Addison.

'Non equidem studeo, bullalis ut mihi nugis
Pagina turgescal, dare pondus idonea fumo.'

Pers.

There is no kind of false Wit which has been so recommended by the
Practice of all Ages, as that which consists in a Jingle of Words, and
is comprehended under the general Name of _Punning_. It is indeed
impossible to kill a Weed, which the Soil has a natural Disposition to
produce. The Seeds of Punning are in the Minds of all Men, and tho' they
may be subdued by Reason, Reflection and good Sense, they will be very
apt to shoot up in the greatest Genius, that is not broken and
cultivated by the Rules of Art. Imitation is natural to us, and when it
does not raise the Mind to Poetry, Painting, Musick, or other more noble
Arts, it often breaks out in Punns and Quibbles.

_Aristotle_, in the Eleventh Chapter of his Book of Rhetorick, describes
two or three kinds of Punns, which he calls Paragrams, among the
Beauties of good Writing, and produces Instances of them out of some of
the greatest Authors in the _Greek_ Tongue. _Cicero_ has sprinkled
several of his Works with Punns, and in his Book where he lays down the
Rules of Oratory, quotes abundance of Sayings as Pieces of Wit, which
also upon Examination prove arrant Punns. But the Age in which _the
Punn_ chiefly flourished, was the Reign of King _James_ the First. That
learned Monarch was himself a tolerable Punnster, and made very few
Bishops or Privy-Counsellors that had not some time or other signalized
themselves by a Clinch, or a _Conundrum_. It was therefore in this Age
that the Punn appeared with Pomp and Dignity. It had before been
admitted into merry Speeches and ludicrous Compositions, but was now