at his door the sign of a yew-tree, that has several berries upon
it, and in the midst of them a great golden N hung upon a bough of
the tree, which by the help of a little false spelling made up the
word Newberry.

I shall conclude this topic with a rebus, which has been lately hewn
out in freestone, and erected over two of the portals of Blenheim
House, being the figure of a monstrous lion tearing to pieces a
little cock. For the better understanding of which device I must
acquaint my English reader that a cock has the misfortune to be
called in Latin by the same word that signifies a Frenchman, as a
lion is the emblem of the English nation. Such a device in so noble
a pile of building looks like a pun in an heroic poem; and I am very
sorry the truly ingenious architect would suffer the statuary to
blemish his excellent plan with so poor a conceit. But I hope what
I have said will gain quarter for the cock, and deliver him out of
the lion's paw.

I find likewise in ancient times the conceit of making an echo talk
sensibly, and give rational answers. If this could be excusable in
any writer, it would be in Ovid where he introduces the Echo as a
nymph, before she was worn away into nothing but a voice. The
learned Erasmus, though a man of wit and genius, has composed a
dialogue upon this silly kind of device, and made use of an Echo,
who seems to have been a very extraordinary linguist, for she
answers the person she talks with in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew,
according as she found the syllables which she was to repeat in any
of those learned languages. Hudibras, in ridicule of this false
kind of wit, has described Bruin bewailing the loss of his bear to
the solitary Echo, who is of great use to the poet in several