of

my mistress's eye-lash," the merit next to the choice of the subject, must have been the arrange ment or the disarrangement of the whole poem into the form of a heart. With a pair of wings many a sonnet fluttered, and a sacred hymn was expressed by the mystical triangle; acrostics are formed from the initial letters of every verse, but a different conceit regulated chronograms, which were used to describe dates; the numeral letters in whatever part of the word they stood were distinguished from other letters by being written in capitals. Mr. Harris gives an example.

To mark

by a chronogram the date 1506 he finds the following from Horace:

- feriam sidera vertice,

And by a strange elevation of CAPITALS the Chronogrammatist compels even Horace to give the year of our Lord thus,

- feriaM si Dera VertIce. MDVI.

The ACROSTIC and the CHRONOGRAM are both ingeniously described in the mock Epic of the The initial letters of the acrostics are

Scribleriad.

thus alluded to in the literary wars,

Firm and compact, in three fair columns wove
O'er the smooth plain, the bold acrostics move,
High o'er the rest, the towering leaders rise
With limbs gigantic, and superior size.

But the looser character of the chronogram, and the disorder in which they are found, are ingeniously sung thus,

Not thus the looser chronograms prepare,
Careless their troops, undisciplined to war;
With rank irregular, confused they stand,
The chieftains mingling with the vulgar band.

He afterwards adds others of the illegitimate races of wit:

To join these squadrons, o'er the champain came,

A numerous race of no ignoble name;

Riddle, and rebus, riddle's dearest son,
And false conundrum and insidious pun.

Fustian, who scarcely deigns to tread the ground,
And rondeau, wheeling in repeated round.

On their fair standards by the wind displayed,
Eggs, altars, wings, pipes, axes were pourtrayed.

The Charade of recent birth had not yet made its grotesque appearance.

Anagrams were another whimsical invention; with the letters of any name they contrived to make out some entire word, descriptive of the character of the person who bore the name. These anagrams, therefore, were either injurious or complimentary. Scioppius imagined himself fortunate that his adversary Scaliger was perfectly Sacrilege in all the oblique cases of the Latin language. On this principle Sir John Wiat was made out to his own satisfaction, a wit. They were not always correct when

a great compliment was required; the poet John Cleveland was strained at to make Heliconian dew.

Verses of grotesque forms have sometimes been contrived to convey ingenious thoughts. M. Pannard has tortured his agreeable vein of poetry into such forms. He has made some of his bacchanalian songs take the figures of bottles, and others of glasses. These objects are perfectly drawn by the various measures of the verses which form the songs, He has also introduced an echo in his verses which he contrives shall not injure their sense. This was practised by the old French bards in the age of Marot, and this poetical whim is ridiculed by Butler in his Hudibras, Part I. Canto 3. Verse 190. I give an example of these poetical echos. The following ones are ingenious, lively, and satirical.

Pour nous plaire, un plumet

Met

Tout en usage:

Mais on trouve souvent

Vent

Dans son langage.

On y voit des Commis

Mis

Comme des Princes,

Après être Venus

Nuds

De leurs Provinces,

I must notice the poetical whim of Cretin, a

great poet in his day: he died in 1525. He brought

into fashion punning or equivocal rhimes, such as these which Marot addressed him, and which indulging the same rhiming folly as his own, are superior for a glimpse of sense, though very unworthy of their author :

L'homme sotart, et non sçavant
Comine un Rotisseur, qui lave oye,
La faute d'autrui, nonce avant

Qu'il la cognoisse, ou qu'il la voye, &c.

I give one more instance in the following nonsensical lines of Du Bartas, in which this poet imagined that he imitated the harmonious notes of the lark:

La gentille alouette, avec son tirelire,

Tirelire à lire, et tireliran tire,

Vers la voute du ciel, puis son vol vers ce lieu,
Vire et desire dire adieu Dieu, adieu Dieu.

The French have an ingenious kind of Nonsense Verses called Amphigourie. The word is composed of a Greek adverb signifying about, and of a substantive signifying a circle. The following is a specimen it is elegant in the selection of words, and what the French called richly rhimed-in fact it is fine poetry, but it has no meaning whatever. Pope's Stanzas, said to be written by a person of quality, to ridicule the tuneful nonsense of certain Bards, and which Gilbert Wakefield mistook for a serious composition, and wrote two

pages of Commentary to prove this song was disjointed, obscure and absurd, is an excellent specimen of these Amphigouries.

AMPHIGOURIE.

Qu'il est heureux de se defendre

Quand le cœur ne s'est pas rendu !
Mais qu'il est facheux de se rendre
Quand le bonheur est suspendu !
Par un discours sans suite et tendre,
Egarez un cœur eperdu ;

Souvent par un mal-entendu

L'amant adroit se fait entendre.

IMITATED.

How happy to defend our heart
When Love has never thrown a dart!
But ah! unhappy when it bends,
If pleasure her soft bliss suspends!
Sweet in a wild disordered strain,
A lost and wandering heart to gain!
Oft in mistaken language wooed
The skilful lover's understood.

These verses have such a resemblance to meaning, that Fontenelle having listened to the song imagined he had a glimpse of sense, and requested to have it repeated. "Don't you perceive (said Madame Tencin) that they are Nonsense Verses ?" The malicious wit, who was never without a retort, replied "They are so much like the fine verses I have heard here, that it is not surprising I should be for once mistaken!"

In the "Scribleriad" we find a good account of