—feriam sidera vertice,
by a strange elevation of CAPITALS the chronogrammatist compels even Horace to give the year of our Lord thus,
—feriaM siDera VertIce. MDVI.
The Acrostic and the Chronogram are both ingeniously described in the mock epic of the Scribleriad.[82] The initial letters of the acrostics are thus alluded to in the literary wars:—
Firm and compact, in three fair columns wove,
O'er the smooth plain, the bold acrostics move;
High o'er the rest, the TOWERING LEADERS rise
With limbs gigantic, and superior size.[83]
But the looser character of the chronograms, and the disorder in which they are found, are ingeniously sung thus:—
Not thus the looser chronograms prepare
Careless their troops, undisciplined to war;
With rank irregular, confused they stand,
The CHIEFTAINS MINGLING with the vulgar band.
He afterwards adds others of the illegitimate race of wit:—
To join these squadrons, o'er the champaign came
A numerous race of no ignoble name;
Riddle and Rebus, Riddle's dearest son,
And false Conundrum and insidious Pun.
Fustian, who scarcely deigns to tread the ground,
And Rondeau, wheeling in repeated round.
On their fair standards, by the wind display'd,
Eggs, altars, wings, pipes, axes, were pourtray'd.
I find the origin of Bouts-rimés, or "Rhyming Ends," in Goujet's Bib. Fr. xvi. p. 181. One Dulot, a foolish poet, when sonnets were in demand, had a singular custom of preparing the rhymes of these poems to be filled up at his leisure. Having been robbed of his papers, he was regretting most the loss of three hundred sonnets: his friends were astonished that he had written so many which they had never heard. "They were blank sonnets," he replied; and explained the mystery by describing his Bouts-rimés. The idea appeared ridiculously amusing; and it soon became fashionable to collect the most difficult rhymes, and fill up the lines.