CHRONOGRAMS.
Addison, in his remarks on the different species of false wit, (Spect. No. 60,) thus notices the chronogram. “This kind of wit appears very often on modern medals, especially those of Germany, when they represent in the inscription the year in which they were coined. Thus we see on a medal of Gustavus Adolphus the following words:—
ChrIstVs DuX ergo trIVMphVs.
If you take the pains 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; for as some of the letters distinguish themselves from the rest and overtop their fellows, they are to be considered in a double capacity, both as letters and as figures. Your laborious German wits will turn over a whole dictionary for one of these ingenious devices. A man would think they were searching after an apt classical term; but instead of that they are looking out a word that has an L, an M, or a D, in it. When therefore we meet with any of these inscriptions, we are not so much to look in them for the thought as for the year of the Lord.”
Apropos of this humorous allusion to the Germanesque character of the chronogram, it is worthy of notice that European tourists find far more numerous examples of it in the inscriptions on the churches on the banks of the Rhine than in any other part of the continent.
On the title-page of “Hugo Grotius his Sophompaneas” the date, 1652, is not given in the usual form, but is included in the name of the author, thus:—
franCIs goLDsMIth.
Howell, in his German Diet, after narrating the death of Charles, son of Philip II. of Spain, says:—
If you desire to know the year, this chronogram will tell you:
fILIVs ante DIeM patrIos InqVIrIt In annos.
MDLVVIIIIIIII, or 1568.
The following commemorates the death of Queen Elizabeth:—
My Day Is Closed In Immortality. (1603.)
A German book was issued in 1706, containing fac-similes and descriptions of more than two hundred medals coined in honor of Martin Luther. An inscription on one of them expresses the date of his death, 1546, as follows:—
ECCe nVnc MorItVs IVstVs In paCe ChrIstI exItV tVto et beato.
The most extraordinary attempt of this kind that has yet been made, bears the following title:—
Chronographica Gratulatio in Felicissimum adventum Serenissimi Cardinalis Ferdinandi, Hispaniarum Infantis, a Collegio Soc. Jesu.
A dedication to St. Michael and an address to Ferdinand are followed by one hundred hexameters, every one of which is a chronogram, and each gives the same result, 1634. The first and last verses are subjoined as a specimen.
AngeLe CæLIVogI MIChaëL LUX UnICa CætUs.
VersICULIs InCLUsa, fLUent In sæCULa CentUM.