Even more artificial are the anagrams which transform one verse into another. Thus an Italian scholar beheld in a dream the line from Horace: Grata superveniet, quae non sperabitur, hora. This a friend changed to the anagram: Est ventura Rhosina parataque nubere pigro. This induced the scholar, though an old man, to marry an unknown lady by the name of Rosina.—Heis, Eduard.
Algebraische Aufgaben (Köln, 1898), p. 331.
[2156]. The following verses read the same whether read forward or backward:—
Aspice! nam raro mittit timor arma, nec ipsa
Si se mente reget, non tegeret Nemesis;[13]
also,
Sator Arepo tenet opera rotas.
—Heis, Eduard.
Algebraische Aufgaben (Köln, 1898), p. 328.
[2157]. There is a certain spiral of a peculiar form on which a point may have been approaching for centuries the center, and have nearly reached it, before we discover that its rate of approach is accelerated. The first thought of the observer, on seeing the acceleration, would be to say that it would reach the center sooner than he had before supposed. But as the point comes near the center it suddenly, although still moving under the same simple law as from the beginning, makes a very short turn upon its path and flies off rapidly almost in a straight line, out to an infinite distance. This illustrates that apparent breach of continuity which we sometimes find in a natural law; that apparently sudden change of character which we sometimes see in man.—Hill, Thomas.