ANAGRAMS.
But with still more disordered march advance
(Nor march it seemed, but wild fantastic dance)
The uncouth Anagrams, distorted train,
Shifting in double mazes o’er the plain.—Scribleriad.
Camden, in a chapter in his Remains, on this frivolous and now almost obsolete intellectual exercise, defines Anagrams to be a dissolution of a name into its letters, as its elements; and a new connection into words is formed by their transposition, if possible, without addition, subtraction, or change of the letters: and the words should make a sentence applicable to the person or thing named. The anagram is complimentary or satirical; it may contain some allusion to an event, or describe some personal characteristic. Thus, Sir Thomas Wiat bore his own designation in his name:—
Wiat—A Wit.
Astronomer may be made Moon-starer, and Telegraph, Great Help. Funeral may be converted into Real Fun, and Presbyterian may be made Best in prayer. In stone may be found tones, notes, or seton; and (taking j and v as duplicates of i and u) the letters of the alphabet may be arranged so as to form the words back, frown’d, phlegm, quiz, and Styx. Roma may be transposed into amor, armo, Maro, mora, oram, or ramo. The following epigram occurs in a book printed in 1660:
Hate and debate Rome through the world has spread;
Yet Roma amor is, if backward read:
Then is it strange Rome hate should foster? No;
For out of backward love all hate doth grow.
It is said that the cabalists among the Jews were professed anagrammatists, the third part of their art called themuru (changing) being nothing more than finding the hidden and mystical meaning in names, by transposing and differently combining the letters of those names. Thus, of the letters of Noah’s name in Hebrew, they made grace; and of the Messiah they made he shall rejoice.
Lycophron, a Greek writer who lived three centuries before the Christian era, records two anagrams in his poem on the siege of Troy entitled Cassandra. One is on the name of Ptolemy Philadelphus, in whose reign Lycophron lived:—
ΠΤΟΛΕΜΑΙΣ ΑΠΟ ΜΕΛΙΤΟΣ—Made of honey.
The other is on Ptolemy’s queen, Arsinoë:—
ΑΡΣΙΝΟΕ. ΕΡΑΣ ΙΟΝ—Juno’s violet.
Eustachius informs us that this practice was common among the Greeks, and gives numerous examples; such, for instance, as the transposition of the word Αρετη, virtue, into Ερατη, lovely.
Owen, the Welsh epigrammatist, sometimes called the British Martial, lived in the golden age of anagrammatism. The following are fair specimens of his ingenuity:—
Galenus—Angelus.
Angelus es bonus anne malus; Galene! salutis
Humana custos, angelus ergo bonus,
De Fide—Anagramma quincuplex.
Recta fides, certa est, arcet mala schismata, non est,
Sicut Creta, fides fictilis, arte caret.
Brevitas—Anagramma triplex.
Perspicua brevitate nihil magis afficit aures
In verbis, ubi res postulat, esto brevis.
In a New Help to Discourse, 12mo, London, 1684, occurs an anagram with a very quaint epigrammatic “exposition:”—
TOAST—A SOTT.
A toast is like a sot; or, what is most
Comparative, a sot is like a toast;
For when their substances in liquor sink,
Both properly are said to be in drink.
Cotton Mather was once described as distinguished for—
“Care to guide his flock and feed his lambs
By words, works, prayers, psalms, alms, and anagrams.”
Sylvester, in dedicating to his sovereign his translation of Du Bartas, rings the following loyal change on the name of his liege:—
James Stuart—A just master.
Of the poet Waller, the old anagrammatist said:—
His brows need not with Lawrel to be bound,
Since in his name with Lawrel he is crowned.
The author of an extraordinary work on heraldry was thus expressively complimented:—
Randle Holmes.
Lo, Men’s Herald!
The following on the name of the mistress of Charles IX. of France is historically true:—
Marie Touchet,
Je charme tout.
In the assassin of Henry III.,
Frère Jacques Clement,
they discovered
C’est l’enfer qui m’a crée.
The French appear to have practised this art with peculiar 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.
The father Pierre de St. Louis became a Carmelite monk on discovering that his lay name—
Ludovicus Bartelemi—
yielded the anagram—
Carmelo se devovet.
Of all the extravagances occasioned by the anagrammatic fever when at its height, none equals what is recorded of an infatuated Frenchman in the seventeenth century, named André Pujom, who, finding in his name the anagram Pendu à Riom, (the seat of criminal justice in the province of Auvergne,) felt impelled to fulfill his destiny, committed a capital offence in Auvergne, and was actually hung in the place to which the omen pointed.
The anagram on General Monk, afterwards Duke of Albemarle, on the restoration of Charles II., is also a chronogram, including the date of that important event:—
Georgius Monke, Dux de Aumarle,
Ego Regem reduxi Ano. Sa. MDCLVV.
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 lamb and the Spanish lioness.
Elizabetha Regina Angliæ,
Anglis Agna, Hiberiæ Lea.
The unhappy history of Mary Queen of Scots, the deprivation of her kingdom, and her violent death, are expressed in the following Latin anagram:—
Maria Steuarda Scotorum Regina.
Trusa vi Regnis, morte amara cado.
In Taylor’s Suddaine Turne of Fortune’s Wheele, occurs the following very singular example:—
But, holie father, I am certifyed
That they your power and policye deride;
And how of you they make an anagram,
The best and bitterest that the wits could frame.
As thus:
Supremus Pontifex Romanus.
Annagramma:
O non sum super petrum fixus.
The anagram on the well-known bibliographer, William Oldys, may claim a place among the first productions of this class. It was by Oldys himself, and was found by his executors among his MSS.
In word and WILL I AM a friend to you;
And one friend OLD is worth a hundred new.
The following anagram, preserved in the files of the First Church in Roxbury, was sent to Thomas Dudley, a governor and major-general of the colony of Massachusetts, in 1645. He died in 1653, aged 77.
THOMAS DUDLEY.
Ah! old must dye.
A death’s head on your hand you neede not weare,
A dying head you on your shoulders beare.
You need not one to mind you, you must dye,
You in your name may spell mortalitye.
Younge men may dye, but old men, these dye must;
’Twill not be long before you turne to dust.
Before you turne to dust! ah! must! old! dye!
What shall younge doe when old in dust doe lye?
When old in dust lye, what N. England doe?
When old in dust doe lye, it’s best dye too.
In an Elegy written by Rev. John Cotton on the death of John Alden, a magistrate of the old Plymouth Colony, who died in 1687, the following phonetic anagram occurs:—
John Alden—End al on hi.
The Calvinistic opponents of Arminius made of his name a not very creditable Latin anagram:—
Jacobus Arminius,
Vani orbis amicus;
(The friend of a false world.)
while his friends, taking advantage of the Dutch mode of writing it, Harminius, hurled back the conclusive argument,
Habui curam Sionis.
(I have had charge of Zion.)
Perhaps the most extraordinary anagram to be met with, is that on the Latin of Pilate’s question to the Saviour, “What is truth?”—St. John, xviii. 38.
Quid est veritas?
Est vir qui adest.
(It is the man who is before you.)
Live, vile, and evil, have the self-same letters;
He lives but vile, whom evil holds in fetters.
If you transpose what ladies wear—Veil,
’Twill plainly show what bad folks are—Vile.
Again if you transpose the same,
You’ll see an ancient Hebrew name—Levi.
Change it again, and it will show
What all on earth desire to do—Live.
Transpose the letters yet once more,
What bad men do you’ll then explore—Evil.
PERSIST.
A lady, being asked by a gentleman to join in the bonds of matrimony with him, wrote the word “Stripes,” stating at the time that the letters making up the word stripes could be changed so as to make an answer to his question. The result proved satisfactory.
When I cry that I sin is transposed, it is clear,
My resource Christianity soon will appear.
The two which follow are peculiarly appropriate:—
Florence Nightingale,
Flit on, charming angel.
John Abernethy,
Johnny the bear.
T I M E
I T E M
M E T I
E M I T
This word, Time, is the only word in the English language which can be thus arranged, and the different transpositions thereof are all at the same time Latin words. These words, in English as well as in Latin, may be read either upward or downward. Their signification as Latin words is as follows:—Time—fear thou; Item—likewise; Meti—to be measured; Emit—he buys.
Some striking German and Latin anagrams have been made of Luther’s name, of which the following are specimens. Doctor Martinus Lutherus transposed, gives O Rom, Luther ist der schwan. In D. Martinus Lutherus may be found ut turris das lumen (like a tower you give light). In Martinus Lutherus we have vir multa struens (the man who builds up much), and ter matris vulnus (he gave three wounds to the mother church). Martin Luther will make lehrt in Armuth (he teaches in poverty).
Jablonski welcomed the visit of Stanislaus, King of Poland, with his noble relatives of the house of Lescinski, to the annual examination of the students under his care, at the gymnasium of Lissa, with a number of anagrams, all composed of the letters in the words Domus Lescinia. The recitations closed with a heroic dance, in which each youth carried a shield inscribed with a legend of the letters. After a new evolution, the boys exhibited the words Ades incolumis; next, Omnis es lucida; next, Omne sis lucida; fifthly, Mane sidus loci; sixthly, Sis columna Dei; and at the conclusion, I scande solium.
A TELEGRAM ANAGRAMMATISED.
Though but a late germ, with a wondrous elation,
Yet like a great elm it o’ershadows each station.
Et malgré the office is still a large fee mart,
So joyous the crowd was, you’d thought it a glee mart;
But they raged at no news from the nation’s belligerent,
And I said let’m rage, since the air is refrigerant.
I then met large numbers, whose drink was not sherbet,
Who scarce could look up when their eyes the gas-glare met;
So when I had learned from commercial adviser
That mere galt for sand was the great fertilizer,
I bade Mr. Eaglet, although ’twas ideal,
Get some from the clay-pit, and so get’m real;
Then, just as my footstep was leaving the portal,
I met an elm targe on a great Highland mortal,
With the maid he had woo’d by the loch’s flowery margelet,
And row’d in his boat, which for rhyme’s sake call bargelet,
And blithe to the breeze would have set the sail daily,
But it blew at that rate which the sailors term gale, aye;
I stumbled against the fair bride he had married,
When a merle gat at large from a cage that she carried;
She gave a loud screech! and I could not well blame her,
But lame as I was, I’d no wish to get lamer;
So I made my escape—ne’er an antelope fleeter,
Lest my verse, like the poet, should limp through lag metre.
Anagrams are sometimes found in old epitaphial inscriptions. For example, at St. Andrews:—
Catharine Carstairs,
Casta rara Christiana.
Chaste, rare Christian.
At Newenham church, Northampton:—
William Thorneton.
O little worth in man.
At Keynsham:—
Mrs. Joane Flover.
Love for anie.
At Mannington, 1631:—
Katherine Lougher,
Lower taken higher.
Maitland has the following curious specimen:—
How much there is in a word—monastery, says I: why, that makes nasty Rome; and when I looked at it again, it was evidently more nasty—a very vile place or mean sty. Ay, monster, says I, you are found out. What monster? said the Pope. What monster? said I. Why, your own image there, stone Mary. That, he replied, is my one star, my Stella Maris, my treasure, my guide! No, said I, you should rather say, my treason. Yet no arms, said he. No, quoth I, quiet may suit best, as long as you have no mastery, I mean money arts. No, said he again, those are Tory means; and Dan, my senator, will baffle them. I don’t know that, said I, but I think one might make no mean story out of this one word—monastery.