Temple.
_Anagrams_ (Vol. iv., pp. 226. 297.).--MR. BREEN put another Query
besides "Where shall we find six good anagrams?" He asked, "How comes it
that a species of composition once so popular should have become
extinct?"
Let me venture to refer MR. BREEN to _The Spectator_ for an answer
to this inquiry; where, in Addison's brilliant papers on "False
Wit" (Nos. 58. &c.), he will find the whole family of ingenious
quibblings,--anagrams, acrostics, chronograms, puns, bouts-rimes,
&c.,--mown down to their just level. And MR. BREEN cannot, I am sure, as
a man of taste, fail to be delighted, even although he may think the
following passage (which I quote chiefly as a warning against the rise
of an anagrammatric epidemic among your correspondents) a little severe
on his old friends:
"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."
It is a tempting folly I admit for an idle hour, and I must plead guilty
to having (in consequence of MR. BREEN'S letter) wasted nearly a whole
evening in discovering that
"NOTES AND QUERIES"
"Enquires on Dates!"
and also offers the following warning to its contributors--
"Send quite Reason;"
while as an encouragement it observes (so an ingenious friend informs
us)--
"O send in a Request."