written, after the manner of the
Chinese, in a perpendicular line. But besides these there are compound
acrostics, when 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.

There is another near relation of the anagrams and acrostics, which is
commonly called a chronogram. This kind of wit appears very often on
many modern medals, especially those of Germany, when they represent in
the inscription the year in which they were coined. Thus we see on a
medal of Gustavus Adolphus time following words, CHRISTVS DUX ERGO
TRIVMPHVS. If you take the pains to pick the figures out of the several
words, and range them in their proper order, you will find they amount to
MDCXVVVII, or 1627, the year in which the medal was stamped: for as some
of the letters distinguish themselves from the rest, and overtop their
fellows, they are to be considered in a double capacity, both as letters
and as figures. Your laborious German wits will turn over a whole
dictionary for one of these ingenious devices. A man would think they
were searching after an apt classical term, but instead of that they are
looking out a word that has an L, an M, or a D in it. When, therefore,
we meet with any of these inscriptions, we are not so much to look in
them for the thought, as for the year of the Lord.

The _bouts-rimes_ were the favourites of the French nation for a whole
age together, and that at a time when it abounded in wit and learning.
They were a list of words that rhyme to one another, drawn up by another
hand, and given to a poet, who was to make a poem to the rhymes in the
same order that they were placed upon the list: the more uncommon the
rhymes were, the more extraordinary was the genius of the poet that could
accommodate his verses to them. I do not know any greater instance of
the decay of wit and learning among the French, which generally follows
the declension of empire, than the endeavouring to restore this foolish
kind of wit. If the reader will be at trouble to see examples of it, let
him look into the new _Mercure Gallant_, where the author every month
gives a list of rhymes to be filled up by the ingenious, in order to be
communicated to the public in the _Mercure_ for the succeeding month.
That for the month of November last, which now lies before me,