I have already stated the point of view in which we ought to consider this sportive play upon words.  I shall here, therefore, merely deliver a few observations respecting the playing upon words in general, and its poetical use.  A thorough investigation would lead us too far from our subject, and too deeply into considerations on the essence of language, and its relation to poetry, or rhyme, etc.

There is in the human mind a desire that language should exhibit the object which it denotes, sensibly, by its very sound, which may be traced even as far back as in the first origin of poetry.  As, in the shape in which language comes down to us, this is seldom perceptibly the case, an imagination which has been powerfully excited is fond of laying hold of any congruity in sound which may accidentally offer itself, that by such means he may, for the nonce, restore the lost resemblance between the word and the thing.  For example, how common was it and is it to seek in the name of a person, however arbitrarily bestowed, a reference to his qualities and fortunes—­to convert it purposely into a significant name.  Those who cry out against the play upon words as an unnatural and affected invention, only betray their own ignorance of original nature.  A great fondness for it is always evinced among children, as well as with nations of simple manners, among whom correct ideas of the derivation and affinity of words have not yet been developed, and do not, consequently, stand in the way of this caprice.  In Homer we find several examples of it; the Books of Moses, the oldest written memorial of the primitive world, are, as is well known, full of them.  On the other hand, poets of a very cultivated taste, like Petrarch, or orators, like Cicero, have delighted in them.  Whoever, in Richard the Second, is disgusted with the affecting play of words of the dying John of Gaunt on his own name, should remember that the same thing occurs in the Ajax of Sophocles.  We do not mean to say that all playing upon words is on all occasions to be justified.  This must depend on the disposition of mind, whether it will admit of such a play of fancy, and whether the sallies, comparisons, and allusions, which lie at the bottom of them, possess internal solidity.  Yet we must not proceed upon the principle of trying how the thought appears after it is deprived of the resemblance in sound, any more than we are to endeavor to feel the charm of rhymed versification after depriving it of its rhyme.  The laws of good taste on this subject must, moreover, vary with the quality of the languages.  In those which possess a great number of homonymes, that is, words possessing the same, or nearly the same, sound, though quite different in their derivation and signification, it is almost more difficult to avoid, than to fall on such a verbal play.  It has, however, been feared, lest a door might be opened to puerile witticism, if they were not rigorously proscribed.  But I