This was done probably to
show that he was neither ashamed of his name or family,
notwithstanding the envy of his competitors had often reproached
him with both. In the same manner we read of a famous building that
was marked in several parts of it with the figures of a frog and a
lizard; these words in Greek having been the names of the
architects, who by the laws of their country were never permitted
to inscribe their own names upon their works. For the same reason,
it is thought that the forelock of the horse in the antique
equestrian statute of Marcus Aurelius, represents at a distance the
shape of an owl, to intimate the country of the statuary, who in
all probability was an Athenian. This kind of wit was very much in
vogue among our own countrymen about an age or two ago, who did not
practise it for any oblique reason, as the ancients above
mentioned, but purely for the sake of being witty. Among
innumerable instances that may be given of this nature, I shall
produce the device of one, Mr. Newberry, as I find it mentioned by
our learned Camden, in his remains. Mr. Newberry, to represent his
name by a picture, hung up at his door the sign of a yew-tree that
had several berries upon it, and in the midst of them a great
golden N hung upon the bough of the tree, which by the help of a
little false spelling made up the word N-ew-berry.
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