The initials MDCIII. give 1603, the year of Queen Elizabeth's death. Sometimes the Chronogram is employed to express a date on coins or medals; but oftener it is simply used as a riddle:
A poet who in blindness wrote; another lived in Charles's reign; a third called the father of English verse; a Spanish dramatist; the scolding wife of Socrates; and the Prince of Latin poets,—their initials give the year of the Great Plague—MDCLXV.—1665: Milton, Dryden, Chaucer, Lope-de-Vega, Xantippe, Virgil.
The word comes from
Chronos
, time, and
gramma
, a letter.
Begin Well and End Better.
56. Conundrums