Curiosities of Literature (Vol. 1-3). Disraeli Isaac
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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. In the following chronogram from Horace,
—feriam sidera vertice,
by a strange elevation of CAPITALS the chronogrammatist compels even Horace to give the year of our Lord thus,
—feriaM siDera VertIce. MDVI.
The Acrostic and the Chronogram are both ingeniously described in the mock epic of the Scribleriad.82 The initial letters of the acrostics are 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.83
But the looser character of the chronograms, 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 race of wit:—
To join these squadrons, o'er the champaign 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 display'd, Eggs, altars, wings, pipes, axes, were pourtray'd.
I find the origin of Bouts-rimés, or "Rhyming Ends," in Goujet's Bib. Fr. xvi. p. 181. One Dulot, a foolish poet, when sonnets were in demand, had a singular custom of preparing the rhymes of these poems to be filled up at his leisure. Having been robbed of his papers, he was regretting most the loss of three hundred sonnets: his friends were astonished that he had written so many which they had never heard. "They were blank sonnets," he replied; and explained the mystery by describing his Bouts-rimés. The idea appeared ridiculously amusing; and it soon became fashionable to collect the most difficult rhymes, and fill up the lines.
The Charade is of recent birth, and I cannot discover the origin of this species of logogriphes. It was not known in France so late as in 1771; in the great Dictionnaire de Trévoux, the term appears only as the name of an Indian sect of a military character. Its mystical conceits have occasionally displayed singular felicity.
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 satirical or complimentary. When in fashion, lovers made use of them continually: I have read of one, whose mistress's name was Magdalen, for whom he composed, not only an epic under that name, but as a proof of his passion, one day he sent her three dozen of anagrams all on her lovely name. 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 hard to make Heliconian dew. This literary trifle has, however, in our own times produced several, equally ingenious and caustic.
Verses of grotesque shapes have sometimes been contrived to convey ingenious thoughts. Pannard, a modern French poet, has tortured his agreeable vein of poetry into such forms. He has made some of his Bacchanalian songs to 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 so as not to 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 echoes. 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.
The poetical whim of Cretin, a French poet, brought into fashion punning or equivocal rhymes. Maret thus addressed him in his own way:—
L'homme, sotart, et non sçavant Comme un rotisseur, qui lave oye, La faute d'autrui, nonce avant, Qu'il la cognoisse, ou qu'il la voye, &c.
In these lines of Du Bartas, this poet imagined that he imitated the harmonious notes of the lark: "the sound" is here, however, not "an echo to the sense."
La gentille aloüette, 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 Amphigouries. This word is composed of a Greek adverb signifying about, and of a substantive signifying a circle. The following is a specimen, elegant in the selection of words, and what the French called richly rhymed, but in fact they are fine verses without any 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 éperdu;
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 that 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 retorted, "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 the Cento. A Cento primarily signifies a cloak made of patches. In poetry it