"Monsieur de la Chambre has told me that he never knew what he was
going to write when he took his pen into his hand; but that one
sentence always produced another. For my own part, I never knew
what I should write next when I was making verses. In the first
place I got all my rhymes together, and was afterwards perhaps three
or four months in filling them up. I one day showed Monsieur
Gombaud a composition of this nature, in which, among others, I had
made use of the four following rhymes, Amaryllis, Phyllis, Maine,
Arne; desiring him to give me his opinion of it. He told me
immediately that my verses were good for nothing. And upon my
asking his reason, he said, because the rhymes are too common, and
for that reason easy to be put into verse. 'Marry,' says I, 'if it
be so, I am very well rewarded for all the pains I have been at!'
But by Monsieur Gombaud's leave, notwithstanding the severity of the
criticism, the verses were good." (Vide "Menagiana.") Thus far the
learned Menage, whom I have translated word for word.

The first occasion of these bouts-rimes made them in some manner
excusable, as they were tasks which the French ladies used to impose
on their lovers. But when a grave author, like him above-mentioned,
tasked himself, could there be anything more ridiculous? Or would
not one be apt to believe that the author played booty, 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 entitled "La Defaite des
Bouts-Rimes." (The Rout of the Bouts-Rimes).

I must subjoin to this last kind of wit the double rhymes, which are