to repeat in any of those 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 vallies 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 scorn'd to budge a step
For fear-(Quoth Echo) Marry guep.
Am I not here to take thy part?

Then what has quell'd 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 turnd'st thy back? quoth Echo, Pish.
To run from those th'hadst overcome

Thus cowardly? quoth Echo, Mum.

1 Juvenis, Echo-Juvenis consults Echo about his studies, and Echo answers in Latin and Greek, but not in Hebrew. The young man asks— Quid captant plerique, qui ambiunt sacerdotium? To which Echo replies -Otium. Præterea nihil habet sacerdos? asks the youth-Kepdos. Juv.Decem jam annos trivi in Cicerone. Echo-Ove. V. Erasm. Colloq. p. 327 & 28, Ed. Lond. 1727.-G,

SEVERAL 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 Eneid 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, Calo.

'Thou hast as many virtues, O virgin, as there are stars in heaven.'

The poet rung the changes upon these eight several 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.'

6

When the anagrammatist takes a name to work upon, he considers it at first as a mine not broken up, which will not shew 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 any thing 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 presenting it to his mistress, who was a little 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.

Effusus labor

-Ibi omnis

The lover was thunder-struck 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 were 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, when 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 open 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. If you take the pains to pick the figures out of the several words, and range them in their proper order, you will find them 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 over-top 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 for 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-Rimez 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 Gallant, where the author every month gives a list of rhymes to be filled up by the ingenious, in order to be communicated to the public in the Mercure for the succeeding month. That for the month of November last, which now lies before me, is as follows:

One would be amazed to see so learned a man as Menage talking

seriously on this kind of trifle in the following passage.