Mr. White tells us that _on_ and _one_ were pronounced alike, because Speed puns upon their assonance. He inclines to the opinion that _o_ had commonly the long sound, as in _tone_, and supposes both words to have been pronounced like _own_. But was absolute identity in sound ever necessary to a pun, especially in those simpler and happier days? Puttenham, in his "English Poesy," gives as a specimen of the art in those days a play upon the words _lubber_ and _lover_, appreciable now only by Ethiopian minstrels, but interesting as showing that the tendency of _b_ and _v_ to run together was more sensible then than now.[L] But Shakspeare unfortunately rhymes _on_ with _man_, in which case we must either give the one word the Scotch pronunciation of _mon_, or Hibernicize the other into _ahn_. So we find _son_, which according to Mr. White would be pronounced _sone_, coquetting with _sun_; and Dr. Donne, who ought to have called himself Doane, was ignorant enough to remain all his life Dr. Dunn. But the fact is, that rhymes are no safe guides, for they were not so perfect as Mr. White would have us believe. Shakspeare rhymed _broken_ with _open_, _sentinel_ with _kill_, and _downs_ with _hounds_,--to go no farther. Did he, (dreadful thought!) in that imperfect rhyme of _leap_ and _swept_, (_Merry Wives_,) call the former _lape_ and the latter (_Yankicè_) _swep'_? This would jump with Mr. White's often-recurring suggestion of the Elizabethanism of our provincial dialect. [Footnote L: Everybody remembers how Scaliger illustrated it in the case of the Gascons,--_Felices, quibus vivere est bibere_.]