Macaronic Poetry. Collected, with an Introduction, by James Appleton Morgan, A.M. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1872.
Of the many excellent specimens of the typography of the Riverside Press, the above-named work is one of the handsomest; and this merit is enhanced by the fact that the great variety of languages and characters, ancient and modern, used in its pages called for the best efforts of typographical skill and resources.
The title of the work gives but a modest idea of the wealth and diversity of its contents, which are creditable to the taste and industry of the author. We find in it not only all the most celebrated macaronic masterpieces, from the “Pugna Porcorum,” of about three hundred lines, every word of which begins with the letter P, thus:
“Plaudite, Porcelli, Porcorum pigra propago
Progreditur, plures Porci pinguedine pleni.
Pugnantes pergunt, pecudum pars prodigiosa,” etc., etc.,
down to Dr. Maginn’s “Second Ode to Horace,” commencing,
“Blest man, who far from busy hum,
Ut prisca gens mortalium.”
Then there are the literary trifles of the dipogrammatists and the pangrammatists, and curiosities in acrostics, telestics, anagrams, palindromes, sidonians, rhymed bagatelles, cento verses, chain verses, alliterative verses, and epitaphs. There are also some specimens of queer prescriptions, the whole family of which are but imitations of the celebrated recipe pasted on the door of the pharmacy in the Convent of the Capuchin Friars at Messina:
“Pro presenti corporis et æterna animæ salute.
RECIPE.
“Radicum fidei
Florum spei
Rosarum charitatis
Liliorum puritatis
Absynthé contritionis
Violarum humilitatis
Agarici satisfactionis
Ano quantum potes:
Misceatur omnia cum syrupe confessionis;
Terentur in mortario conscientiæ;
Solvantur in aqua lacrymarum;
Coquantur in igne tribulationis, et fiat potus.
Recipe de hoc mane et sera.”