In No. 59 of the Spectator, Addison, descanting on the different species of wit, observes, “The first I shall produce are the Lipogrammatists, or letter droppers of antiquity, that would take an exception, without any reason, against some particular letter in the alphabet, so as not to admit it once in a whole poem. One Tryphiodorus was a great master in this kind of writing. He composed an Odyssey, or Epic Poem, on the adventures of Ulysses, consisting of four-and-twenty-books, having entirely banished the letter A from his first book, which was called Alpha, (as lucus a non lucendo,) because there was not an alpha in it. His second book was inscribed Beta, for the same reason. In short, the poet excluded the whole four-and-twenty letters in their turns, and showed them that he could do his business without them. It must have been very pleasant to have seen this Poet avoiding the reprobate letter as much as another would a false quantity, and making his escape from it, through the different Greek dialects, when he was presented with it in any particular syllable; for the most apt and elegant word in the whole language was rejected, like a diamond with a flaw in it, if it appeared blemished with the wrong letter.”
In No. 63, Addison has again introduced Tryphiodorus, in his Vision of the Region of False Wit, where he sees the phantom of this poet pursued through the intricacies of a dance by four-and-twenty persons, (representatives of the alphabet,) who are unable to overtake him.
Addison should, however, have mentioned that Tryphiodorus is kept in countenance by no less an authority than Pindar, who, according to Athenæus, wrote an ode from which the letter sigma was carefully excluded.
This caprice of Tryphiodorus has not been without its imitators. Peter de Riga, a canon of Rheims, wrote a summary of the Bible in twenty-three sections, and throughout each section omitted, successively, some particular letter.
Gordianus Fulgentius, who wrote “De Ætatibus Mundi et Hominis,” has styled his book a wonderful work, chiefly, it may be presumed, from a similar reason; as from the chapter on Adam he has excluded the letter A; from that on Abel, the B; from that on Cain, the C; and so on through twenty-three chapters.
Gregorio Letti presented a discourse to the Academy of Humorists at Rome, throughout which he had purposely omitted the letter R, and he entitled it the exiled R. A friend having requested a copy as a literary curiosity, (for so he considered this idle performance,) Letti, to show it was not so difficult a matter, replied by a copious answer of seven pages, in which he observed the same severe ostracism against the letter R.
Du Chat, in the “Ducatiana,” says “there are five novels in prose, of Lope de Vega, similarly avoiding the vowels; the first without A, the second without E, the third without I, the fourth without O, and the fifth without U.”
The Orientalists are not without this literary folly. A Persian poet read to the celebrated Jami a ghazel of his own composition, which Jami did not like; but the writer replied it was, notwithstanding, a very curious sonnet, for the letter Aliff was not to be found in any of the words! Jami sarcastically answered, “You can do a better thing yet; take away all the letters from every word you have written.”
This alphabetical whim has assumed other shapes, sometimes taking the form of a fondness for a particular letter. In the Ecloga de Calvis of Hugbald the Monk, all the words begin with a C. In the Nugæ Venales there is a Poem by Petrus Placentius, entitled Pugna Porcorum, in which every word begins with a P. In another performance in the same work, entitled Canum cum cattis certamen, in which “apt alliteration’s artful aid” is similarly summoned, every word begins with a C.
Lord North, one of the finest gentlemen in the Court of James I., has written a set of sonnets, each of which begins with a successive letter of the alphabet. The Earl of Rivers, in the reign of Edward IV., translated the Moral Proverbs of Christiana of Pisa, a poem of about two hundred lines, almost all the words of which he contrived to conclude with the letter E.