Page images
PDF
EPUB

176

XXV. PUNNING UPON NAMES,

OR SPECIMENS OF MONKISH WIT.

ALEXANDER NEQUAM, called " the learnedest Englishman of his age,” was born at St. Albans. He entered a monastery, and became an abbot of Gloucester in the reign of John or Richard the First. Innumerable jokes were made on his unlucky name, which induced him to change it to Neckam. The following are preserved in Winstanley:

At one time of his life he wished to become a monk at St. Albans, and wrote thus laconically to the abbot, Si vis, veniam; sin autem, tu autem.

To which the abbot replied,

Si bonus sis, venias; si nequam, nequaquam.

"Bishop Godwin, in his Catalogue of the Bishops of Lincoln," says Winstanley, "makes mention of a passage of wit between him and Philip Repington, bishop of Lincoln, the latter sending the challenge:

Et niger, et Nequam, cum sis cognomine Nequam,
Nigrior esse potes, Nequior esse nequis.

Which Winstanley renders,

Both black and bad, whilst Bad the name to thee,
Blacker thou mayst, but worse thou canst not be.

To which Nequam, punning on the bishop's Christian name, replied:

Or,

PHI nota fœtoris, Lippus malus omnibus horis :
PHI malus, et Lippus ; totus malus ergo Philippus.

Stinks are branded with a Phi, Lippus, Latin for Blear-eye, Phi and Lippus bad as either, then Philippus worse together. Neckam died in 1217; but even death could not save his name from monkish wit.

According to some accounts, he was buried at Worcester with this monkish inscription, which, though meant to be serious, (as Heaven knows, it is complimentary enough,) still plays with his name,

Eclipsim patitur Sapientia, Sol sepelitur;

Cui si par unus, minus esset flebile funus :
Vir bene discretus, et in omni more facetus,
Dictus erat Nequam, vitam duxit tamen æquam,
Wisdom's eclips'd, sky of the Sun bereft;
Yet less the loss if like alive were left;

A man discreet, in matters debonnair,

Bad name, black face, but carriage good and fair. According to other accounts, he was buried at Saint Albans; "where," says Winstanley, who was infected by antithesis and alliteration," he found Repulse when living, but Repose when dead."

XXVI. THE ABBE GALIANI;

A WITTY POLITICAL ECONOMIST !

An impertinent Frenchman of the last century seriously put this question: "Est ce qu'un Allemand peut avoir de l'esprit ?"

With better reason, some people may ask, "Was there ever a witty political economist ?" We can answer in the affirmative:-there once was one.

Ferdinando Galiani was not more distinguished in his day by his many excellent writings, chiefly on subjects connected with what we now call political economy, than he was by the readiness and playfulness of his wit and his exquisite humour. Unfortunately, the best of his

VOL. I.

N

sayings perished with him, or with his cotemporaries and associates.

He was born at Chieti, the capital of the province of Abruzzo, in the kingdom of Naples, at the end of the year 1728, and came into the world sadly deformed. He went through his studies in the city of Naples, where, from his early youth, his gay and facetious spirit made his society to be much courted. At that time the Neapolitans had a number of poetic academies and hackneyed literary societies, which did a great deal of harm to poetry and literature, and finished, like the Arcadia of Rome, by becoming thoroughly ridiculous. The abbe's brother, the Marquis Galiani, who had distinguished himself by a translation of Vitruvius, had to deliver in one of these academies an oration on the Miraculous Conception of the Virgin Mary; but, being unexpectedly obliged to set off on a journey, he begged the abbé to supply his place. The abbé accordingly composed a panegyric on the Virgin in the usual forms; but, when he presented himself among the academicians, the president, a certain Neapolitan advocate called John-Anthony Sergio, (whose name has been preserved from oblivion solely by Galiani's witty revenge,) sternly forbade him to recite it. All those pedantic and puerile conclaves were open to ridicule on a hundred sides; but a lucky coincidence afforded Galiani a most stinging point.

It was the tiresome custom of the academies to publish cumbrous collections of prose and verse, at the death of every grand or titled personage. A simple cavalier might get off with a duodecimo, a baron with an octavo, but when you came to marquises, dukes, and princes, (particularly if they died rich,) nothing less than a quarto would

suffice; and as for princes and princesses of the bloodroyal, kings, queens, emperors and empresses, a folio full of sighs and tears, eulogiums and comparisons, was considered a light weight to lay upon their tombs. There was no possibility for a person of any fortune, or name, or fame of any kind, to escape, and go quietly and modestly to the grave, without their shades being made to blush at the hyperboles and extravagant eulogiums of these shameless incorporated poetasters. A hundred sonnets, to say nothing of elegies and eclogues, often arose out of the demise of an antiquated maid-of-honour; and we have seen an equal number devoted to the immortal memory of the King's first fiddler. In order not to be taken unawares, or to be pressed for time, these academicians were accustomed to prepare beforehand, and there was scarcely one among them but (like the Persian poet in Anastasius) could at any moment have said to his friends or patrons, "Gentlemen! you may all die perfectly easy; I have an epitaph for every one of you ready in my pocket."

A few days after Galiani's quarrel with the president John-Anthony, who was one of the most prolific of these panegyrists of little-great people, the Jack-Ketch of Naples chanced to die; and this event furnished the abbé with the opportunity of revenging himself, and exposing an absurd custom at the same time.

Having set diligently to work, Galiani soon produced a volume under the following title: "Various compositions for the death of Dominick Jannacone, hangman of the grand court of the Vicaria;* collected and published by John-Anthony Sergio, Neapolitan advocate."

The humorous imitations of style, the general felicity * The Newgate of Naples.

+

of this piece of burlesque, filled all Italy with laughter ; and if it did not destroy, it tended to diminish the academical nuisances described above. At the present day, though not always, ladies may pretty generally get married and be brought to bed, fall sick and recover, and gentlemen may come into the world and go out of it, without causing any hubbub in the court of Apollo and the Muses, or being gibbeted in bad rhymes and unmerited praises.

Among his numerous studies Galiani turned his attention to Mineralogy and Volcanoes; and having formed a complete collection of the stones, lava, and other volcanic materials ejected during different eruptions by Mount Vesuvius, he packed it up as a present for the Pope, and being miserably poor at the time, he wrote on the large chest, Beatissime Pater, fac ut lapides isti panes fiant.

The Pope thus addressed was Benedict XIV, better known among us by his family name Ganganelli. Like several other of the Roman pontiffs, he was a wit himself and a warm admirer of wit in other men, and “he performed the miracle asked of him," (as the Italian biographers say,) by giving Galiani a canonry which was worth four hundred ducats a-year.

His admirable talent for business as well as for conversation recommended Galiani to a congenial spirit, the witty Marquis of Caracciolo, at whose request (in 1765) the abbé was sent to Paris in quality of secretary of embassy.

In the absence of the ambassador, Galiani presented himself alone at the court of Louis XV. In stature he was a dwarf, and a prominent hump did not add to the

« PreviousContinue »