way, are very loyal to the house of Hanover;
but, read from column to column, they change
into a piece of rank Jacobinism:
   I love with all my heart                 The Tory party here
   The Hanoverian part                   Most hateful do appear
   And for that settlement                I ever have denied
   My conscience gives consent     To be on James's side, &c.

Mr. Wheatley has given several specimens;
but he has missed one which is in our opinion
among the best, notwithstanding its want of
gallantry. It is a little poem on matrimony;
and the subjoined are the first two stanzas:

        That man must lead a happy life
         Who is directed by a wife;
         Who's free from matrimonial chains
         Is sure to suffer for his pains.
         Adam could find no solid peace
         Till he beheld a woman's face;
         When Eve was given for a mate
         Adam was in a happy state.

At first sight this seems very complimentary
to the sex; but read the lines alternately, and
you will see what a quintessence of poison the
savage old bachelor or henpecked husband (as
the case may be) has contrived to wrap up in
the heart of his rosebud.

Our author might have given us a chapter on
Nonsense Verses, which were at one time popular;
but of Shaped Verses he tells some curious
stories. The English poets of the time of James the
First and Charles the First were fond of displaying
their ingenuity this way, and certainly rode their
hobby to death. One Edward Benlowes made
verses in the shape of altars, of pyramids, of
gridirons and frying-pans (wherein, "besides the
likeness in shape," as an old writer records,
"the very tone and sound of the words did
perfectly represent the noise that is made by those
utensils, such as the old poet called sartago
loquendi"), of bridles, saddles, cruppers, and
bits. Mr. Wheatley does not mention the
achievements in this way of "silver-tongued
Sylvester," who translated the works of the
French poet Du Bartas, and literally wrote
"columns" of poetry; but he was in truth
surpassed by others. The freak was a genuine
product of the age which, while giving birth to
Shakespeare and Bacon, Spenser and Ben
Jonson, delighted in cutting trees into the
similitude of peacocks and ships, box-edgings into
hour-glasses, and men's beards into spades,
forks, and hammer-heads. Yet, in this as in
other matters, we must go to the East for the
greatest marvels. Shahin Ghiraz, Khan of the
Crimea in the last century, composed an ode in
Turkish, in the form of an orb, from the centre
of which flow thirteen rays, intertwining with
each other; and the manner of reading the poem
is thus described in vol. xviii. of the Journal
of the Asiatic Society: "The letter at the
centre is the first and last letter of every distich;
the letters in the radii are the penultimates of
each distich, and, read inversely, follow the
initials in the next succeeding distich. The
words in the intersectiorial compartments are
common to each of the intersecting verses. The
ode begins and ends at the centre through the
radir.s which points directly upwards."

Acrostics are among the most curious of these
literary amusements. They seem to have become
common in the early Christian ages; and Eusebius,
Bishop of Cæsarea, who died in the fourth
century, professed to have discovered a copy of
verses by the Erythræan Sybil, the initial letters
of which make up the Greek words corresponding
to "Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour."
The poem describes the coming of the Day of
Judgment, and what renders the acrostic more
noteworthy is the fact that the initial letters of
the five Greek words forming the sentence give
the Greek word for "fish," which St. Augustine
says is to be understood as a mystical epithet of
Christ, "who lived in this abyss of mortality
without contracting sin, in like manner as a fish
exists in the midst of the sea without acquiring
any flavour of salt from the salt water." The
passage has been translated into Latin
hexameters, so as to give the words "Jesus Christus,
Dei Filius, Servator;" but the allusion to the
fish is lost. Addison, in his Essay on False
Wit, says that "there are compound acrostics,
where the principal letters stand two or three
deep. I have seen some of them where the
verses have not only been edged by a name at
each extremity, but have had the same name
running down like a seam through the middle of
the poem." Some writers have even carried
their triumphs so far as to produce pentacrostics,
in which the name is repeated five
times. A strange instance of an involuntary
or accidental acrostic occurred in the reign
of Charles the Second, when the initials of the
five ministers of the king after the fall of Lord
Clarendon—viz. Clifford, Ashley, Buckingham,
Arlington, and Lauderdale—formed the word
Cabal, which had already been used as the
designation of the cabinet. It is commonly
supposed in these days that the word originated in
the way alluded to; but this is a mistake. The
expression existed previously, and seems to
have been derived by us, through the French,
from the Cabala of the Hebrews, signifying
something occult and hidden from the vulgar.

Simply to write acrostics in the shape of
poems requires no great ability, for we find that
they are frequently put forth in the handbills of
shopkeepers, who cannot be supposed to
command the services of very illustrious wits. But
to execute them with grace of style, elegance of
thought, and poetical feeling, is quite another
matter; and in this way there are few if any
equals of Sir John Davies, poet and judge, who,
towards the close of the sixteenth century, wrote
twenty-six acrostic hymns on Queen Elizabeth,
the initial letters in each of which form the
name and title of "Elisabetha Regina." Two of
these in particular (the fifth and seventh) are so
charming, that, as they are not generally known,
and are not included in Mr. Wheatley's volume,
we quote them here. The fifth is addressed to
the lark, and runs thus:

              E  arly, cheerful, mounting lark,
              L   ight's gentle usher, morning's clerk,
               I   n merry notes delighting;
              S   tint awhile thy song, and hark,
              A   nd learn my new inditing.