Among the moderns, the French have most cultivated the anagram. Camden says: “They exceedingly admire the anagram, for the deep and far-fetched antiquity and mystical meaning therein. In the reign of Francis the First (when learning began to revive), they began to distil their wits therein.” There is a curious anecdote of an anagrammatist who presented a king of France with the two following upon his name of Bourbon:
| Borbonius, | or | Borbonius, |
| Bonus orbi; | Orbus boni; |
That is, “Bourbon good to the world;” or “Bourbon destitute of good;” while on another celebrated Frenchman we have—
| Voltaire, O alte vir. |
Southey, in his “Doctor,” says that “anagrams are not likely ever again to hold so high a place among the prevalent pursuits of literature as they did in the seventeenth century. But no person,” he continues, “will ever hit upon an apt one without feeling that degree of pleasure with which any odd coincidence is remarked.” In that century, indeed, the artifice appears to have become the fashionable literary passion of the day—the amusement of the learned and the wise, who sought
| “To purchase fame, In keen iambics and mild anagram.” |
While Andreas Rudiger was yet a student at college, and intending to become a physician, he one day pulled the Latinised form of his name to pieces, Andreas Rudigeras, and borrowing an i, transposed it into Arare Rus Dei Dignus (“Worthy to cultivate the land of God”). He fancied from this that he had a divine call to become an ecclesiastic, and thereupon gave up the study of medicine for theology. Soon after, Rudiger became tutor in the family of the philosopher Thomasius, who one day told him “that he would greatly benefit the journey of his life by turning it towards physic.” Rudiger confessed that his tastes lay rather in that direction than to theology, but having looked upon the anagram of his name as an indication of a divine call, he had not dared to turn away from theology. “How simple you have been,” replied Thomasius; “it is just that very anagram which calls you towards medicine—‘Rus Dei,’ the land of God (God’s acre), what is that but the cemetery—and who labours so bravely for the cemetery as a physician does?” Rudiger could not resist this, returned to medicine, and became famous as a physician.
An anagram on Monk, afterwards Duke of Albemarle on the restoration of Charles II., forms also a chronogram, including the date of the event it records—
| Georgius Monke, Dux de Aumarle— Ego Regem reduxi, anno sa MDCLVV. |
In this anagram the c takes the place of the k.