several words, and by that
means made his verses almost as numerous as the virtues and stars which
they celebrated. It is no wonder that men who had so much time upon
their hands did not only restore all the antiquated pieces of false wit,
but enriched the world with inventions of their own. It is to this age
that we owe the production of anagrams, which is nothing else but a
transmutation of one word into another, or the turning of the same set of
letters into different words; which may change night into day, or black
into white, if chance, who is the goddess that presides over these sorts
of composition, shall so direct. I remember a witty author, in allusion
to this kind of writing, calls his rival, who, it seems, was distorted,
and had his limbs set in places that did not properly belong to them,
"the anagram of a man."

When the anagrammatist takes a name to work upon, he considers it at
first as a mine not broken up, which will not show the treasure it
contains till he shall have spent many hours in the search of it; for it
is his business to find out one word that conceals itself in another, and
to examine the letters in all the variety of stations in which they can
possibly be ranged. I have heard of a gentleman who, when this kind of
wit was in fashion, endeavoured to gain his mistress's heart by it. She
was one of the finest women of her age, and known by the name of the Lady
Mary Boon. The lover not being able to make anything of Mary, by certain
liberties indulged to this kind of writing converted it into Moll; and
after having shut himself up for half a year, with indefatigable industry
produced an anagram. Upon the presenting it to his mistress, who was a
little vexed in her heart to see herself degraded into Moll Boon, she
told him, to his infinite surprise, that he had mistaken her surname, for
that it was not Boon, but Bohun.

--_Ibi omnis_
_Effusus labor_.--

The lover was thunder-struck with his misfortune, insomuch that in a
little time after he lost his senses, which, indeed, had been very much
impaired by that continual application he had given to his anagram.

The acrostic was probably invented about the same time with the anagram,
though it is impossible to decide whether the inventor of the one or the
other were the greater blockhead. The simple acrostic is nothing but the
name or title of a person, or thing, made out of the initial letters of
several verses, and by that means