learned languages. Hudibras,' in ridicule of this false kind of wit, has described Bruin bewailing the loss of his bear to a solitary echo, who is of great use to the poet in several distichs, 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 scorned to budge a step
For fear.' Quoth Echo, Marry guep.'
'Am not I here to take thy part!

Then what has quelled 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

C.

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.'

No. 60. Wednesday, May 9, 1711

[ADDISON.

Hoc est quod palles? Cur quis non prandeat, Hoc est ? -PER., Sat. iii. 85.

SEV

EVERAL kinds of false wit that vanished in the refined ages of the world discovered themselves again in the times of monkish ignorance.

As the monks were the masters of all that little learning which was then extant, and had their whole lives entirely disengaged from business, it is no wonder that several of them, who wanted genius for higher performances, employed many hours in the composition of such tricks in writing as required much time and little capacity. I have seen half the Æneid turned into Latin rhymes by one of the beaux esprits of that dark age, who says in his preface to it that the Æneid wanted nothing but the sweets of rhyme to make it the most perfect work in its kind. I have likewise seen an hymn in hexameters to the Virgin Mary, which filled a whole book, though it consisted but of the eight following words :

Tot, tibi, sunt, virgo, dotes, quot, sidera, cœlo.

Thou hast as many virtues, O virgin, as there are stars in heaven. The poet rung the changes1 upon these eight several 1 Chimes' (folio).

words, and by that means made his verses almost as numerous as the virtues and the stars which they celebrated. It is no wonder that men who had so much time upon their hands, did not only restore all the antiquated pieces of false wit, but enriched the world with inventions of their own. It was to this age that we owe the production of anagrams, which is nothing else but a transmutation of one word into another, or the turning of the same set of letters into different words; which may change night into day, or black into white, if Chance, who is the goddess that presides over these sorts of composition, shall so direct. I remember a witty author, in allusion to this kind of writing, calls his rival, who it seems was distorted, and had his limbs set in places that did not properly belong to them, the anagram of a man.

When the anagrammatist takes a name to work upon, he considers it at first as a mine not broken up, which will not show the treasure it contains till he shall have spent many hours in the search of it: for it is his business to find out one word that conceals itself in another, and to examine the letters in all the variety of stations in which they can possibly be ranged. I have heard of a gentleman who, when this kind of wit was in fashion, endeavoured to gain his mistress's heart by it. She was one of the finest women of her age, and known by the name of the Lady Mary Boon. The lover not being able to make anything of Mary, by certain liberties indulged to this kind of writing converted it into Moll; and after having shut himself up for half-a-year, with indefatigable industry produced an anagram. Upon the presenting it to his mistress, who was a little 1 Was called' (folio).

1

vexed in her heart to see herself degraded into Moll Boon, she told him, to his infinite surprise, that he had mistaken her surname, for that it was not Boon but Bohun.

Ibi omnis

Effusus labor

The lover was thunderstruck with his misfortune, insomuch that in a little time after he lost his senses, which indeed had been very much impaired by that continual application he had given to his anagram.

The acrostic was probably invented about the same time with the anagram, though it is impossible to decide whether the inventor of the one or the other were1 the greater blockhead. The simple acrostic is nothing but the name or title of a person or thing made out of the initial letters of several verses, and by that means written, after the manner of the Chinese, in a perpendicular line. But besides these there are compound acrostics, where the principal letters stand two or three deep. I have seen some of them where the verses have not only been edged by a name at each extremity, but have had the same name running down like a seam through the middle of the poem.

There is another near relation of the anagrams and acrostics, which is commonly called a chronogram. This kind of wit appears very often on many modern medals, especially those of Germany, when they represent in the inscription the year in which they were coined. Thus we see on a medal of Gustavus Adolphus the following words :

CHRISTVS DUX ERGO TRIVMPHVS.

1 Was' (folio).

2 Known by the name of' (folio).

If you take the pains to pick the figures out of the several words, and range them in their proper order, you will find they amount to MDCXVVVII, or 1627, the year in which the medal was stamped: for as some of the letters distinguish themselves from the rest, and overtop their fellows, they are to be considered in a double capacity, both as letters and as figures. Your laborious German wits will turn over a whole dictionary for one of these ingenious devices. A man would think they were searching after an apt classical term, but instead of that they are looking out a word that has an L, an M, or a D in it. When therefore we meet with any of these inscriptions, we are not so much to look in them for the thought, as for the year of the Lord.

The Bouts-Rimés were the favourites of the French nation for a whole age together, and that at a time when it abounded in wit and learning. They were a list of words that rhyme to one another, drawn up by another hand, and given to a poet, who was to make a poem to the rhymes in the same order that they were placed upon the list: the more uncommon the rhymes were, the more extraordinary was the genius of the poet that could accommodate his verses to them. I do not know any greater instance of the decay of wit and learning among the French (which generally follows the declension of empire) than the endeavouring to restore this foolish kind of wit. If the reader will be at the trouble to see examples of it, let him look into the new Mercure Galant; where the author every month gives a list of rhymes to be filled up

1 The new Mercure Galant, by M. Du Fresny de la Rivière, was commenced in June 1710. The earlier periodical of that name was published in 1673 and following years.