[The information required by our correspondent is more quaint and
curious than difficult to supply. The four lines with which the title
concludes form a chronogram, or an inscription comprising a certain
date and number, expressed by those letters inserted in larger
characters; which are to be taken separately and added together,
according to their value as Roman numerals. When the arithmetical
letters occurring in the first two lines are thus taken, they will be
found to compose the year 1660, when the Lady Farewell died, {586} as
the words declare; and when the numerals are selected from the last two
lines, they exhibit 74, her age at the time, as they also indicate; in
the following manner:--
D 500 I 1
LL 100 VIXI 17
II 2 I 1
MI 1001 VL 55
LVI 56 --
I 1 74
---- --
1660
The lady who is commemorated in this inscription was the daughter of
Sir Edwald Seymour of Berrie Castle, in Devonshire, Baronet, and wife
of "the excellently-accomplished Sir George Farewell, Knight, who died
May 14, 1647;" as it is recorded on his monument at Hill-Bishops. In
the same epitaph it is stated, that she was the mother of twenty
children, and that she died Dec. 13, 1660; and the inscription
concludes with these verses to the united memory of Sir George and Lady
Farewell:
"A person graceful, learn'd, humble, and good,
Well match'd with beautie, virtue, and high blood:
Yet, after sufferings great and long, both dead
To mind us where great worth is honouréd."
Collinson's _Somersetshire_, vol. iii. p. 255.
The practice of making chronograms for the expressing of dates in
books, epitaphs, and especially on medals, was extremely common in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One of the most remarkable is that
commemorating the death of Queen Elizabeth:--
"My Day Is Closed In Immortality:"
the arithmetical formula of which is M = 1000 + D = 500 + C = 100 + III
= 3 = A. D. 1603. In the second paper by Addison on the different
species of false wit (_Spectator_, No. 60) is noticed the medal that
was struck of Gustavus Adolphus, with the motto:
"ChrIstVs DuX ergo trIVMphVs."
"If you take the pains," continues the author, "to pick the figures out
of the several words, and range them in their proper order, you will
find they amount to MDCXVVVII, or 1627; the year in which the medal was
stamped."
There is one peculiarity in the chronogram sent by our correspondent,
which singularly illustrates a passage in Shakspeare, and by which also
it is most amusingly illustrated. It will be observed, that the Rev. G.
Newton takes advantage of the double letters at the end of Farewell, to
express 100: and it will be remembered that "good M. Holofernes," in
_Love's Labour's Lost_, introduces the same thought into his sonnet as
an exquisite and far-fetched fancy:
"If Sore be sore, then _L to Sore_
_Makes Fifty Sores_: Oh sore L!
Of _One_ sore I _an Hundred_ make,
By adding but _One more L_."]
_Sir E. K. Williams._--Will any gentleman refer me to the pedigree of
Lieut.-Gen. Sir Edmund Kenyon Williams, a distinguished Peninsular officer,
who died about three years ago? And also, where can I find or obtain such a
book as the _History of Aberystwith, or Blaina Gwent?_