to admit that his heart, however unregenerate, however unaided from above, would stray naturally into these devious paths of dulness. Though one's better self may revolt at the grotesque horrors of the medieval hell, one feels that not even the theological mind has ever conceived of a punishment severe enough to castigate these trespassers on our patience. And as we must long in vain for a new Dante to consign them to some as yet unimagined deep of deeps, one rejoices at the castigation, severe in itself, yet mild in comparison, which the critics have occasionally inflicted. Our heart goes out with a great leap of joy to honest Samuel Butler when he takes Edward Benlowes, formerly known as "the excellently learned," places him across his paternal knee, and trounces him in the following fashion: "There is no feat of activity, nor gambol of wit, that ever was performed by man, from him that vaults on Pegasus to him that tumbles through the hoop of an anagram, but Benlowes has got the mastery of it, whether it be high-rope wit or low-rope wit. He has all sorts of echoes, rebuses, chronograms, etc. As for altars and pyramids in poetry, he has outdone all men that way; for he has made a gridiron and a frying pan in verse, that besides the likeness in shape, the very tone and sound of the words did perfectly represent the noise that is made by these utensils. When he was a captain, he made all the furniture of his horse, from the bit to the crupper, in the beaten poetry, every verse being fitted to the proportion of the thing; as the bridle of moderation, the saddle of content, and the crupper of constancy; so that the same thing was both epigram and emblem, even as the mule is both horse and ass." (Character of a Small Poet.) Rare Ben Jonson too has his fling at these pattern-cutting poets, who he says could fashion

A pair of scissors and a comb in verse.

Dryden has scoffed at them, and Addison has gibbeted them above all other offenders on the pillory which he constructed for the manufacturers of false wit. But what is the method of this offence? It consists in pieces of verse so constructed, by due arrangements of short and long lines, as to exhibit the shapes of certain physical objects, such as bottles, glasses, axes, fans, hearts, eggs, saddles, a pair of gloves, a pair of pot-hooks, a pair of spectacles. And, alas that we must acknowledge it, in spite of the degradation of the offence, great names in the past, great names even in the immediate present, must be grouped among the offenders. Indeed, so highly was it thought of at one time that the very name of the reputed inventor has been preserved to us. Let us hasten to place it beside that of the rash youth who fired the Ephesian dome. Simmias of Rhodes (flourished about B.C. 324),-how does that look on the same line as Erostratus?

He has left us three good-sized poems cast in these Procrustean moulds, "The Wings," "The Egg," and "The Hatchet." The shape of every stanza in each poem corresponds with its title. So greatly were these esteemed in the seventeenth century that an Italian named Fortunio Liceti compiled an encyclopædia (published in Paris, 1635) whose contents were entirely devoted to the exploitation of their beauties.

Classic antiquity has left us other evidences of the fact that these outrages had a certain vogue even at the most flourishing period of Greek poetry. To the honor of the Augustan age of the Romans it should be added that the Latin specimens that have come down to us belong to the decadence of the Empire or to medieval times. The only portion of the globe where emblematic verses still survive is in the East, especially in China and Japan, where we are told that they are still held in high esteem, so that poems are still fashioned in the form of men's faces or the bodies of cows or other animals. The following curious specimen is given by Mr. W. R. Alger as an effort of Hindoo ingenuity. The lines of this erotic triplet are so arranged

that the first represents a bow, the second its string, the third an arrow aimed at the heart of the poet's Dulcinea.

Those charms to win, with all my empire I would gladly part.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the golden age of emblematical poetry in Europe. And heading the list of English word-torturers stands so good and great a man as George Herbert. We quote two specimens, and then pass on with our eyes veiled, to avoid gazing too intently on a good man's shame :

THE ALTAR.

The next is quaint enough, but one has to make believe a good deal in order to detect the emblematic resemblance :

The following anonymous effort explains itself to the eye at once:

THE CROSS.

Blest they who seek,
While in their youth,
With spirit meek,
The way of truth;

To them the sacred Scriptures now display
Christ as the only true and living way.
His precious blood on Calvary was given
To make them heirs of endless bliss in heaven;
And e'en on earth the child of God can trace
The glorious blessings of his Saviour's grace.
For them He bore
His Father's frown;
For them He wore
The thorny Crown;
Nailed to the Cross,
Endured its pain,
That His life's loss
Might be their gain.
Then haste to choose
That better part,
Nor dare refuse
The Lord thy heart,
Lest He declare,
"I know you not,
And deep despair
Should be your lot.

Now look to Jesus, who on Calvary died,

And trust on Him alone who there was crucified.

The following appears to us, on the whole, the best in the language:

Bad,
Sad,

Three-quarters mad!
Money gone,
Credit none;
Duns at door,
Half a score ;
Head in pain,
Rack'd again;
Children ailing,
Mother railing,
Billy whooping,
Betsy crouping,
Besides poor Joe
With festered toe.
Come, then, my fiddle,
Come, my time-worn friend,
With gay and brilliant sounds
Me sweet though transient solace lend.
Thy polished neck in close embrace
I clasp while joy illumes my face.
When o'er thy strings I draw my bow,
My drooping spirit pants to rise;
A lively strain I touch,-and lo!
I seem to mount above the skies.
There on Fancy's wings I soar,
Heedless of the duns at door.
Oblivious all! I feel my woes no more;
But skip o'er the strings,
As my old fiddle sings,
"Cheerily, O merrily go!
Presto! good master,
You very well know,
I will find music,
If you will find bow,

From E up in alto, to G down below."
Fatigued, I pause to change the time
For some adagio solemn and sublime.
With graceful action moves the sinuous arm;
My heart, responsive to the soothing charm,
Throbs equally, whilst every health-corroding care
Lies prostrate, vanquished, by the mellifluous air.
More and more plaintive grown, my eyes with tears o'erflow,
And Resignation mild soon smooths my wrinkled brow.
Reedy Hautboy may squeak, wailing Flauto may squall,
The Serpent may grunt, and the Trombone may bawl;
But thou, my old Fiddle, art prince of them all.
Could e'en Dryden return thy praise to rehearse,
His Ode to Cecilia would seem rugged verse.
Now to thy case, in flannel warm to lie,
Till called again to pipe thy master's
eye.

Here, as an offset, we give a specimen where all the rules of the game, such as they are, are violated. The sole ingenuity in this form of literary trifling consists in so adjusting the length of poetical lines that the printer by merely following "copy" will produce the desired emblem or figure. But the subjoined example is simply prose arbitrarily broken up into appropriate lengths, the whole ingenuity being on the part of the printer. Yet such specimens are not uncommon in England.

The French rarely offend in this fashion. Pannard, who was an expert, has given us an emblematic wineglass which is a wineglass, for it could be printed in no other shape without violating its poetical integrity:

A rhomboidal dirge, by George Wither, is good enough of its kind:

Farewell,

Sweet groves, to you

You hills that highest dwell,

And all you humble vales, adieu!

You wanton brooks and solitary rocks,

My dear companions all, and you, my tended flocks!
Farewell, my pipe! and all those pleasing songs whose strains
Delighted once the fairest dancing nymphs upon the plains.
You discontents, whose deep and over-deadly smart
Have without pity broke the truest heart,

Sighs, tears, and every sad annoy,

That erst did with me dwell,

And others joy.

Farewell!