B   ear up this hymn, to Heav'n it bear,
              E   'en up to Heav'n, and sing it there;
              T   o Heav'n each morning bear it;
              H   ave it set to some sweet sphere,
              A   nd let the angels hear it.

              R   enown'd Astrea, that great name,
              E   xceeding great in worth and fame,
              G   reat worth hath so renown'd it;
               I    t is Astrea's name I praise:
              N   ow then, sweet lark, do thou it raise,
              A    nd in high Heav'n resound it.

The seventh hymn, addressed to the rose, is as
follows:

              E   ye of the garden, queen of flow'rs,
              L   ove's cup, wherein lie nectar's pow'rs,
              I   ngender'd first of nectar;
              S   weet nurse-child of the spring's young hours,
              A   nd beauty's fair character;
              B   est jewel that the earth doth wear,
              E   'en when the brave young sun draws near,
              T   o her hot love pretending;
              H   imself likewise like form doth bear,
              A   t rising and descending.

              R  ose, of the Queen of Love belov'd!
              E   ngland's great kings, divinely mov'd,
              G   ave roses in their banner:
              I     t show'd that beauty's rose indeed,
              N   ow in this age should them succeed,
              A   nd reign in more sweet manner

A very ingenious species of acrostic is the
Telestich—verses in which two words of opposite
meaning are to be indicated by the first and last
letters of the lines taken consecutively; while,
to make the difficulty still greater, the words
are to be composed of precisely the same letters.
We might fairly suppose such a feat impossible;
but we have met with the following
specimen:

   U-nite and untie are the same so say yo-U.
   N-ot in wedlock, I ween, has the unity bee-N.
   I-n the drama of marriage, each wandering gou-T
   T-o a new face would fly all except you and I,
   E-ach seeking to alter the spell in their scen-E.

Anagrams are extremely ancient. They were
known to the Greeks, who were taught by Plato
to discover in these transpositions of names a
mystical meaning typifying the character or fate
of the persons concerned. The later Platonists
carried the theory to a still greater extent than
their original master, as in many other matters;
and the Cabalists ranked anagrams among the
elements of their secret wisdom. Camdeu says
that the Erench of his time leant much to the
same opinion, "and so enforced the matter with
strong words and weak proofs, that some credu-
lous young men, hovering between hope and
fear, might easily be carried away by them into
the forbidden superstition of Onomantia, or
Soothsaying by names." The same writer calls
anagrammatism "the only quintessence that
hitherto the alchemy of wit could draw out of
names." and he tells us what amount of latitude
is permitted to those who practise the science.
The more precise only make free with the letter
H, which they either omit or retain, because it
cannot challenge the right of a letter. Those
who are more lax in their principles allow
themselves to double or reject a letter, to use E
for Æ, V for W, S for Z, C for K, and
vice versa. It is to be feared that a large
number of anagrams are referable to the latter class;
and in some the meaning elicited by the
transposition of the letters is not sufficiently
applicable to the original subject. When, however,
an anagram is perfect in every respect, it may
really claim a place among the achievements of
wit. Of such was the answer discovered by a
mediæval anagrammatist to Pontius Pilate's
question, Quid est veritas? ("What is truth?")
Transposed in due order, the letters composing
these words give the sentence, Est vir qui adest
("It is the man who is here.") But one of the
happiest of anagrams was made on the name of
a certain lady of the time of Charles I., widow of
the Sir John Davies already alluded to. Sir John,
as we have seen, was great in acrostics: his wife
was equally so in anagrams, which she used as a
means of prophecy, and, owing to one or two
successes, obtained a name in this species of
divination, though ultimately doomed to be
discomfited in the same way. There can be little
doubt that she was insane; and her libels on
several persons of distinction gave so much
annoyance to her husband that he threw her MSS.
into the fire. Thereupon, she prophesied that
he would die within three years, at the expiration
of which time she put on mourning. Sir
John died suddenly of apoplexy, and the widow
soon after married again. Her second husband,
however, treated her writings in the same fashion
as the first; but the lady went on with her pro-
phecies and her libels, until she was prosecuted
before the Court of High Commission. She
seems, unlike Davies, to have inclined to the
Puritanical side; and she endeavoured to con-
vince the court that the spirit of the prophet
Daniel was within her, because she had found
in her maiden name (Eleanor Audeley) the
words, "Reveal, Daniel!" The judges tried
in vain to argue her out of so ridiculous a
fancy; but at length the Dean of Arches, one
Lamb (who must surely have been an ancestor
of Elia), discovered in her first married name
(Dame Eleanor Davies) the sentence "Never
so mad a ladie!" This he read aloud, throwing
the court into extreme laughter, and the poor
prophetess into such utter confusion of spirits
that she appears never to have recovered her
former confidence.

The discovery of prophecies in anagrams
has at all times been rather common. Thomas
Billon, a Provençal, who was specially retained
by Louis the Thirteenth as an anagrammatist,
with a pension of 1200 livres, made a set of
prophecies in this way; and Cotton Mather, the
fanatic New England minister and witch-persecutor
(whose name one can hardly mention without
a shudder of abhorrence), found a good deal
of religious teaching, after his fashion, in the art
of verbal transposition. When carried to such
extremes, these ingenious exercises become a
pernicious folly; and, in a purely literary sense,
all such freaks of fancy must be sparingly and
modestly used, or they do an injury to more