Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 8.djvu/432

But, after all, give me leave to lament, that I cannot have the honour of being the sole inventor of this incomparable Rule: though I solemnly protest, upon the word of an author (if an author may have credit), that I never had the least hint toward it, any more than the ladies letters and young childrens pronunciation, till a year after I had proposed this Rule to Dr. ——, who was an excellent judge of the advantage it might be to the publick; when, to my great surprise, tumbling over the third tome of Alstedius, p. 71, right loth to believe my eyes, I met with the following passage: "Ambigua multum faciunt ad hanc rem, cujusmodi exempla plurima reperiuntur apud Plautum, qui in ambiguis crebro ludit. Joci captantur ex permutatione syllabarum & vocum, ut pro Decretum, Discretum; pro Medicus, Mendicus & Merdicus: pro Polycarpus, Polycopros. Item ex Syllabarum ellipsi, ut ait Althusius, cap. iii, civil, convers. pro Casimirus, Frus.; pro Marcus, Arcus; pro Vinosus, Osus: pro Sacerdotium, Otium. Sic, additione literæ, pro Urbanus, Turbanus. Which exactly corresponded to every branch and circumstance of my Rule. Then, indeed, I could not avoid breaking out into the following exclamations, and that after a most pathetick manner: "Wretched Tom Pun-Sibi! Wretched indeed! Are all thy nocturnal lucubrations come to this? Must another, for being a hundred years before thee in the world, run away with the glory of thy own invention? It is true, he must. Happy Alstedius! who, I thought, would have stood me in all-stead, upon consulting thy method of joking! All's tedious to me now, since thou hast robbed me of that honour which

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