Leave writing plays, and chuse for thy command,
Some peaceful province in Acrostic land.
There thou may'st wings display, and altars raise,
And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.—P. [440].
Among other efforts of gentle dulness, may be noticed the singular fashion which prevailed during the earlier period of the 17th century, of writing in such changes of measure, that by the different length and arrangement of the lines, the poem was made to resemble an egg, an altar, a pair of wings, a cross, or some other fanciful figure. This laborious kind of trifling was much akin to the anagrams and acrostics. Those who are curious to read, or rather to see, a specimen of such whimsies, (for they are rather addressed to the eye than the understanding,) may find a dirge of Mr George Withers, arranged into the figure of a rhomboid, in Ellis's "Specimens of the Early English Poets," Vol. III. p. 100. They are mentioned with anagrams, acrostics, rebuses, and other exercises of false wit, in the "Spectator," No. 63.
END OF THE TENTH VOLUME.
Edinburgh,
Printed by James Ballantyne & Co.