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 distiches, as she does not only repeat after him, but helps out his verse, and furnishes him with rhymes:-- He raged, and kept as heavy a coil as Stout Hercules for loss of Hylas; Forcing the valleys to repeat The accents of his sad regret; He beat his breast, and tore his hair, For loss of his dear crony bear: That Echo from the hollow ground His doleful wailings did resound More wistfully by many times, Than in small poets' splay-foot rhymes, That make her, in their rueful stories, To answer to int'rogatories, And most unconscionably depose Things of which she nothing knows; And when she has said all she can say, 'Tis wrested to the lover's fancy. Quoth he, "O whither, wicked Bruin, Art thou fled to my"--Echo, _Ruin_? "I thought th' hadst scorn'd to budge a step For fear." Quoth Echo, _Marry guep_. "Am I not here to take thy part?" Then what has quell'd thy stubborn heart? Have these bones rattled, and this head So often in thy quarrel bled? Nor did I ever winch or grudge it, For thy dear sake." Quoth she, _Mum budget_. Think'st thou 'twill not be laid i' th' dish, Thou turn'dst thy back?" Quoth Echo, _Pish_. To run from those th' hadst overcome Thus cowardly?" Quoth Echo, _Mum_. "But what a-vengeance makes thee fly From me too as thine enemy? Or if thou hadst no thought of me, Nor what I have endured for thee, Yet shame and honour might prevail To keep thee thus from turning tail: For who would grudge to spend his blood in His honour's cause?" Quoth she, _A pudding_. _Part_ I., _Cant._ 3, 183. Third Paper. _Hoc est quod palles_? _Cur quis non prandeat_, _hoc est_? PERS., _Sat._ iii. 85. Is it for this you gain those meagre looks, And sacrifice your dinner to your books? Several kinds of false wit that vanished in the refined ages of the world, discovered themselves again in the times of monkish ignorance.