The "true" modern critics on our elder writers are apt to thunder their
anathemas on innocent heads: little versed in the eras of our
literature, and the fashions of our wit, popular criticism must submit
to be guided by the literary historian.
Kippis condemns Sir Symonds D'Ewes for his admiration of two anagrams,
expressive of the feelings of the times. It required the valour of
Falstaff to attack extinct anagrams; and our pretended English Bayle
thought himself secure in pronouncing all anagrammatists to be wanting
in judgment and taste: yet, if this mechanical critic did not know
something of the state and nature of anagrams in Sir Symonds' day, he
was more deficient in that curiosity of literature which his work
required, than plain honest Sir Symonds in the taste and judgment of
which he is so contemptuously deprived. The author who thus decides on
the tastes of another age by those of his own day, and whose knowledge
of the national literature does not extend beyond his own century, is
neither historian nor critic. The truth is, that ANAGRAMS were then the
fashionable amusements of the wittiest and the most learned.
Kippis says, and others have repeated, "That Sir Symonds D'Ewes's
judgment and taste, with regard to wit, were as contemptible as can well
be imagined, will be evident from the following passage taken from his
account of Carr Earl of Somerset, and his wife: 'This discontent gave
many satirical wits occasion to vent themselves into stingie [stinging]
libels, in which they spared neither the persons nor families of that
unfortunate pair. There came also two anagrams to my hands, _not
unworthy to be owned by the rarest wits of this age_.' These were, one
very descriptive of the lady, and the other, of an incident in which
this infamous woman was so deeply criminated.
FRANCES HOWARD. THOMAS OVERBURIE.
_Car finds a Whore. O! O! base Murther_."
This sort of wit is not falser at least than the criticism which infers
that D'Ewes' "judgment and taste were as contemptible as can well be;"
for he might have admired these anagrams, which, however, are not of the
nicest construction, and yet not have been so destitute of those
qualities of which he is so authoritatively divested.
Camden has a chapter in his "Remains" on ANAGRAMS, which he defines to
be a dissolution of a (person's) name into its letters, as its elements;
and a new connexion into words is formed by their transposition, if
possible, without addition, subtraction, or change of the letters: and
the words must make a sentence applicable to the person named. The
Anagram is complimentary or satirical; it may contain some allusion to
an event, or describe some personal characteristic.[113]
Such difficult trifles it may be convenient at all times to discard;
but, if ingenious minds can convert an ANAGRAM into a means of
exercising their ingenuity, the things themselves will necessarily
become ingenious. No ingenuity can make an ACROSTIC ingenious; for this
is nothing but a mechanical arrangement of the letters of a name, and
yet this literary folly long prevailed in Europe.
As for ANAGRAMS, if antiquity can consecrate some follies, they are of
very ancient date. They were classed, among the Hebrews, among the
cabalistic sciences; they pretended to discover occult qualities in
proper names; it was an oriental practice; and was caught by the Greeks.
Plato had strange notions of the influence of _Anagrams_ when drawn out
of persons' names; and the later Platonists are full of the mysteries of
the anagrammatic virtues of names. The chimerical associations of the
character and qualities of a man with his name anagrammatised may often
have instigated to the choice of a vocation, or otherwise affected his
imagination.
Lycophron has left some on record,--two on Ptolemæus Philadelphus, King
of Egypt, and his Queen Arsinöe. The king's name was thus
anagrammatised:--
ΠΤΟΛΕΜΑΙΟΣ,
Ἁπὁ μελιτος, MADE OF HONEY:
and the queen's,
ΑΡΣΙΝΟΗ,
Ἡρας ιον, JUNO'S VIOLET.
Learning, which revived under Francis the First in France, did not
disdain to cultivate this small flower of wit. Daurat had such a
felicity in making these trifles, that many illustrious persons sent
their names to him to be anagrammatised. Le Laboureur, the historian,
was extremely pleased with the anagram made on the mistress of Charles
the Ninth of France. Her name was
_Marie Touchet_.
JE CHARME TOUT:
which is historically just.
In the assassin of Henry the Third,
_Frère Jacques Clement_,
they discovered