I preserve a few specimens of some of our own anagrams. The mildness of
the government of Elizabeth, contrasted with her intrepidity against the
Iberians, is thus picked out of her title; she is made the English
ewe-lamb, and the lioness of Spain:--
_Elizabetha Regina Angliæ_.
ANGLIS AGNA, HIBERIÆ LEA.
The unhappy history of Mary Queen of Scots, the deprivation of her
kingdom, and her violent death, were expressed in this Latin anagram:--
_Maria Steuarda Scotorum Regina_:
TRUSA VI REGNIS, MORTE AMARA CADO:
and in
_Maria Stevarta_
VERITAS ARMATA.
Another fanciful one on our James the First, whose rightful claim to the
British monarchy, as the descendant of the visionary Arthur, could only
have satisfied genealogists of romance reading:--
_Charles James Steuart_.
CLAIMS ARTHUR'S SEAT.
Sylvester, the translator of Du Bartas, considered himself fortunate
when he found in the name of his sovereign the strongest bond of
affection to his service. In the dedication he rings loyal changes on
the name of his liege, _James Stuart_ in which he finds _a just master!_
The anagram on Monk, afterwards Duke of Albemarle, on the restoration
of Charles the Second, included an important date in our history:--
_Georgius Monke, Dux de Aumarle.
Ego regem reduxi An°Sa_. MDCLVV.
A slight reversing of the letters in a name produced a happy compliment;
as in _Vernon_ was found _Renoun_; and the celebrated Sir Thomas _Wiat_
bore his own designation in his name, _a Wit_.[114] Of the poet _Waller_
the anagrammatist said,
His brows need not with Lawrel to be bound,
Since in his _name_ with _Lawrel_ he is crown'd.
_Randle Holmes_, who has written a very extraordinary volume on
heraldry, was complimented by an expressive anagram:--
_Lo, Men's Herald!_
These anagrams were often devoted to the personal attachments of love or
friendship. A friend delighted to twine his name with the name of his
friend. _Crashawe_, the poet, had a literary intimate of the name of
_Car_, who was his posthumous editor; and, in prefixing some elegiac
lines, discovers that his late friend Crashawe was Car; for so the
anagram of _Crashawe_ runs: _He was Car._ On this quaint discovery, he
has indulged all the tenderness of his recollections:--
Was Car then Crashawe, or was Crashawe Car?
Since both within one name combined are.
Yes, Car's Crashawe, he Car; 'tis Love alone
Which melts two hearts, of both composing one,
So Crashawe's still the same, &c.
A happy anagram on a person's name might have a moral effect on the
feelings: as there is reason to believe, that certain celebrated names
have had some influence on the personal character. When one _Martha
Nicholson_ was found out to be _Soon calm in Heart_, the anagram, in
becoming familiar to her, might afford an opportune admonition. But,
perhaps, the happiest of anagrams was produced on a singular person and
occasion. Lady Eleanor Davies, the wife of the celebrated Sir John
Davies, the poet, was a very extraordinary character. She was the
Cassandra of her age; and several of her predictions warranted her to
conceive she was a prophetess. As her prophecies in the troubled times
of Charles I. were usually against the government, she was at length
brought by them into the court of High Commission. The prophetess was
not a little mad, and fancied the spirit of Daniel was in her, from an
anagram she had formed of her name--
ELEANOR DAVIES.
REVEAL O DANIEL!
The anagram had too much by an L, and too little by an s; yet _Daniel_
and _reveal_ were in it, and that was sufficient to satisfy her
inspirations. The court attempted to dispossess the spirit from the
lady, while the bishops were in vain reasoning the point with her out of
the scriptures, to no purpose, she poising text against text:--one of
the deans of the Arches, says Heylin, "shot her thorough and thorough
with an arrow borrowed from her own quiver:" he took a pen, and at last
hit upon this elegant anagram:
DAME ELEANOR DAVIES.
NEVER SO MAD A LADIE!
The happy fancy put the solemn court into laughter, and Cassandra into
the utmost dejection of spirit. Foiled by her own weapons, her spirit
suddenly forsook her; and either she never afterwards ventured on
prophesying, or the anagram perpetually reminded her hearers of her
state--and we hear no more of this prophetess!
Thus much have I written in favour of Sir Symonds D'Ewes's keen relish
of a "stingie anagram;" and on the error of those literary historians,
who do not enter into the spirit of the age they are writing on.
We find in the Scribleriad, the ANAGRAMS appearing in the land of false
wit.
But with still more disorder'd march advance,
(Nor march it seem'd, but wild fantastic dance,)
The uncouth ANAGRAMS, distorted train,
Shifting, in double mazes, o'er the plain.
C. ii. 161.
The fine humour of Addison was never more playful than in his account of
that anagrammatist, who, after shutting himself up for half a year, and
having taken certain liberties with the name of his mistress,
discovered, on presenting his anagram, that he had misspelt her surname;
by which he was so thunderstruck with his misfortune, 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.
One Frenzelius, a German, prided himself on perpetuating the name of
every person of eminence who died by an anagram; but by the description
of the bodily pain he suffered on these occasions, when he shut himself
up for those rash attempts, he seems to have shared in the dying pangs
of the mortals whom he so painfully celebrated. Others appear to have
practised this art with more facility. A French poet, deeply in love, in
one day sent his mistress, whose name was _Magdelaine_, three dozen of
anagrams on her single name!
Even old Camden, who lived in the golden age of anagrams, notices the
_difficilia quæ pulchra_, the charming difficulty, "as a whetstone of
patience to them that shall practise it. For some have been seen to bite
their pen, scratch their heads, bend their brows, bite their lips, beat
the board, tear their paper, when their names were fair for somewhat,
and caught nothing therein." Such was the troubled happiness of an
anagrammatist: yet, adds our venerable author, notwithstanding "the sour
sort of critics, good anagrams yield a delightful comfort and pleasant
motion in honest minds."[115]
When the mania of making ANAGRAMS prevailed, the little persons at court
flattered the great ones at inventing anagrams for them; and when the
wit of the maker proved to be as barren as the letters of the name, they
dropped or changed them, raving with the alphabet, and racking their
wits. Among the manuscripts of the grave Sir Julius Cæsar, one cannot
but smile at a bundle emphatically endorsed "Trash." It is a collection
of these court-anagrams; a remarkable evidence of that ineptitude to
which mere fashionable wit can carry the frivolous.
In consigning this intellectual exercise to oblivion, we must not
confound the miserable and the happy together. A man of genius would not
consume an hour in extracting even a fortunate anagram from a name,
although on an extraordinary person or occasion its appositeness might
be worth an epigram. Much of its merit will arise from the association
of ideas; a trifler can only produce what is trifling, but an elegant
mind may delight by some elegant allusion, and a satirical one by its
causticity. We have some recent ones, which will not easily be
forgotten.
A similar contrivance, that of ECHO VERSES, may here be noticed. I have
given a specimen of these in a modern French writer, whose sportive pen
has thrown out so much wit and humour in his ECHOES.[116] Nothing ought
to be contemned which, in the hands of a man of genius, is converted
into a medium of his talents. No verses have been considered more
contemptible than these, which, with all their kindred, have been
anathematised by Butler, in his exquisite character of "a small poet" in
his "Remains," whom he describes as "tumbling through the hoop of an
anagram" and "all those gambols of wit." The philosophical critic will
be more tolerant than was the orthodox church wit of that day, who was,
indeed, alarmed at the fantastical heresies which were then prevailing.
I say not a word in favour of unmeaning ACROSTICS; but ANAGRAMS and ECHO
VERSES may be shown capable of reflecting the ingenuity of their makers.
I preserve a copy of ECHO VERSES, which exhibit a curious picture of the
state of our religious fanatics, the Roundheads of Charles I., as an
evidence, that in the hands of a wit even such things can be converted
into the instruments of wit.
At the end of a comedy presented at the entertainment of the prince, by
the scholars of Trinity College, Cambridge, in March, 1641, printed for
James Calvin, 1642, the author, Francis Cole, holds in a print a paper
in one hand, and a round hat in the other. At the end of all is this
humorous little poem.