The art of making riddles is so antique, that it bears date almost with our earliest accounts of time, and is a diversion with which Sampson, the strongest of all mankind, amused himself. Nor has it been confined to common people, as a certain author supposes; for Kings, and even some of the wisest of them, are said to have been adepts in the science; for such was the ever-to-be-remembered King Solomon, and such was his friend Hiram the King of Tyre.
Riddling, if I am not mistaken, is the art of both dissembling and undissembling, and, if what a great Politician has asserted to be true, that he who knows not how to dissemble knows not how to reign, this art must be eminently useful to Princes, and their Ministers, and not to them only, but to all those who are any ways connected with courts, or concerned in political transactions; for as people in high life do not always speak as they mean, nor promise what they intend to perform; or, in other words, as dissembling is held in such high estimation among the Great, and practised with applause every day, the art of undissembling, should, I think, be called in to the aid of those whose heads may render them subject to imposition.—A squeeze by the hand is a dumb riddle, which may induce any one unskilled in this art to dance attendance for years; while an adept takes the unmeaning sign to pieces, and, like a Free-mason, returns the compliment by another squeeze, to let the Ænigmatist know that he is in the secret. All Cyphers used by Politicians are Riddles; and were Ambassadors, and those to whom Cyphers are sent, but skilled in this science, few blunders would be made from that mystical manner of conveyance; for the meaning, without a key, would be as obvious to them, as to the most profound decypherer of them all.
Not that I would have this science confined to political affairs;—No, its utility is unbounded, and may be extended with propriety and benefit to every part of life, and every branch of learning. It is a kind of natural Logic,