The age that would rhyme a grammar would rhyme an arithmetic, and Record's example was followed and enlarged upon. Thomas Hylles published one in 1620, The Arte of Vulgar Arithmiteke, written in dialogue, with the rules and theorems in verse. This is an example of his poesy:—
"The Partition of a Shilling into his Aliquot Partes.
"A farthing first finds forty-eight
A Halfpeny hopes for twentiefoure
Three farthings seeks out 16 streight
A peny puls a dozen lower
Dicke dandiprat drewe 8 out deade
Twopence took 6 and went his way
Tom trip a goe with 4 is fled
But Goodman grote on 3 doth stay
A testerne only 2 doth take
Moe parts a Shilling cannot make."
Noah Webster's "American Selection"
In 1633 Nicholas Hunt added to his rules and tables an "Arithmetike-Rithmeticall or the Handmaid's Song of Numbers," which rhymes are simply unspeakable. These attempts did not end with the seventeenth century. In 1801 Richard Vyse had a Tutor's Guide with problems in rhyme.
"When first the Marriage Knot was tied
Between my Wife and Me
My age did hers as far exceed
As three times three does three.
But when Ten years and half ten Years
We man and wife had been
Her age came up as near to mine
As eight is to sixteen.
Now tell me I pray
What were our Ages on our Wedding Day?"
The earliest date of the old rhyme,—