Paper Will Not Refuse Ink

Abstract

A writer who cannot coin a phrase soon learns that rhyme does not pay. This need not deter him, however. Lacking the ability to prey upon words, he can continue to play with words. In short, he can aspire to become Jack of all charades and good at pun. The imbecility of Jack of all japes was thoroughly exposed by Joseph Addison in several early issues of The Spectator. Isaac D'Israeli added further analyses and good illustrations in his Curiosities of Literature. A more comprehensive inventory of type vice is interwoven in the verses of the second book of Richard Owen Cambridge's satirical poem, The Scribleriad. Cambridge singled out for extinction acrostics, the amphisbaena, anagrams, antitheses, boutsrimés, centos, chronograms, conundrums, crambos, doggerels, echoes, fustian, lipograms, macaronic compositions, puns, quibbles, reciprocal verses (likewise known as retrograde or recurrent verses, including palindromes), the rhopalic sequence, riddle and rebus (“Riddle's dearest son”), and finally, rondeaus. He overlooked several other forms of literary laceration judged by Addison to be “tricks in writing as required much time and little capacity.”

Citation

BAUER, H.C. (1962), "Paper Will Not Refuse Ink", Library Review, Vol. 18 No. 5, pp. 348-351. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb012361