The old Puritan biographer, Cotton Mather, claims for John Wilson—the subject of one of his lives—the kingship of anagrammatising. “Of all the anagrammatisers,” he says in the third book of his “Magnalia Christi Americana,” “that have been trying their fancies for the 2000 years that have run out since the days of Lycophron, or the more than 5000 since the days of our first father, I believe there never was a man that made so many, or so nimbly, as our Mr. Wilson; who, together with his quick turns upon the names of his friends, would ordinarily fetch, and rather than lose, would even force, devout instructions out of his anagrams. As one, upon hearing my father (Increase Mather) preach, Mr. Wilson immediately gave him that anagram upon his name ‘Crescentius Matherus,’ Eu! Christus Merces Tua (Lo! Christ is thy reward). There would scarcely occur the name of any remarkable person without an anagram raised thereupon.”
This said John Wilson “forced instruction” out of his own name—first rendering it into Latin, Johannes Wilsonus, he found this anagram in it, “In uno Jesu nos salvi” (We are saved in one Jesus). This mode of Latinising names was common enough among those who liked this literary folly; thus we have Sir Robert Viner, or Robertus Vinerus, rendered “Vir Bonus et Rarus” (a good and rare man). The disciples of Descartes made a perfect anagram upon the Latinised name of their master, “Renatus Cartesius,” one which not only takes up every letter, but which also expresses their opinion of that master’s speciality—“Tu scis res naturæ” (Thou knowest the things of nature).
Pierre de St. Louis became a Carmelite monk on discovering that his name yielded a direction to that effect:
| Ludovicus Bartelemi— Carmelo se devolvit. |
And, in the seventeenth century, André Pujom, finding that his name spelled Pendu à Riom, fulfilled his destiny by cutting somebody’s throat in Auvergne, and was actually hung at Riom, the seat of justice in that province.
Occasionally when the anagram of a name did not make sense, there was added a rhyme to bring out a meaning. Thus, in a sermon preached by Dr. Edward Reynolds upon Peter Whalley, and entitled “Death’s Advantage,” every letter of the name is to be found in the first line of this verse:
| “They reap well, That Heaven obtain; Who sow like thee, Ne’er sow in vain.” |
In this sermon Peter Whalley is also anagrammatised into A Whyte Perle—this would not be a bad one, if orthography were of as little consequence as many of the old triflers in this way used to account it.
We read that when Alexander the Great was baffled before the walls of Tyre, and was about to raise the siege, he had a dream wherein he saw a satyr leaping about and trying to seize him. He consulted his sages, who read in the word Satyrus (the Greek for satyr), “Sa Tyrus”—“Tyre is thine!” Encouraged by this interpretation, Alexander made another assault and carried the city.
In a “New Help to Discourse” (London, 1684), there is one with a very quaint exposition: