Chapter CLXXIX

THE SUBJECT OF ANAGRAMS CONTINUED; A TRUE OBSERVATION WHICH MANY FOR WANT OF OBSERVATION WILL NOT DISCOVER TO BE SUCH, VIZ., THAT THERE IS A LATENT SUPERSTITION IN THE MOST RATIONAL OF MEN.—LUCKY AND UNLUCKY—FITTING AND UNFITTING—ANAGRAMS, AND HOW THE DOCTOR'S TASTE IN THIS LINE WAS DERIVED FROM OUR OLD ACQUAINTANCE JOSHUA SYLVESTER.

Anagrams are not likely ever again to hold so high a place among the prevalent pursuits of literature as they did in the seventeenth century, when Louis XIII. appointed the Provençal Thomas Billen to be his Royal Anagrammatist, and granted him a salary of 1200 livres. But no person will ever hit upon an apt one without feeling that degree of pleasure and surprize with which any odd coincidence is remarked. Has any one who knows Johnny the Bear heard his name thus anagrammatized without a smile? we may be sure he smiled and growled at the same time when he first heard it himself.

Might not Father Salvator Mile, and Father Louis Almerat, who were both musicians, have supposed themselves as clearly predestined to be musical, as ever seventh son of a Septimus thought himself born for the medical professions, if they had remarked what Penrose discovered for them, that their respective names, with the F. for Friar prefixed, each contained the letters of the six musical notes ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, and not a letter more or less?

There is, and always hath been, and ever will be, a latent superstition in the most rational of men. It belongs to the weakness and dependence of human nature. Believing as the scriptures teach us to believe, that signs and tokens have been vouchsafed in many cases, is it to be wondered at that we seek for them sometimes in our moods of fancy, or that they suggest themselves to us in our fears and our distress? Men may cast off religion and extinguish their conscience without ridding themselves of this innate and inherent tendency.

Proper names have all in their origin been significant in all languages. It was easy for men who brooded over their own imaginations, to conceive that they might contain in their elements a more recondite, and perhaps, fatidical signification; and the same turn or twist of mind which led the Cabbalists to their extravagant speculations have taken this direction, when confined within the limits of languages which have no supernatural pretensions. But no serious importance was attached to such things, except by persons whose intellects were in some degree deranged. They were sought for chiefly as an acceptable form of compliment, sometimes in self-complacency of the most offensive kind, and sometimes for the sting which they might carry with them. Lycophron is said to have been the inventor of this trifling.

The Rules for the true discovery of perfect anagrams, as laid down by Mrs. Mary Fage,¹ allowed as convenient a license in orthography as the Doctor availed himself of in Greek.

¹ In her Fames Roule, or the names of King Charles, his Queen and his most hopeful posterity; together with the names of the Dukes, Marquisses, &c., anagrammatized, and expressed by acrostick lines on their lives. London, 1637, R. S.

Two of the luckiest hits which anagrammatists have made were on the Attorney General William Noy, I moyl in law; and Sir Edmundbury Godfrey I find murdered by rogues. Before Felton's execution it was observed that his anagram was No, flie not.

A less fortunate one made the Lady Davies mad, or rather fixed the character of her madness. She was the widow of Sir John Davies, the statesman and poet, and having anagrammatized Eleanor Davies into Reveal O Daniel, she was crazy enough to fancy that the spirit of the Prophet Daniel was incorporated in her. The Doctor mentioned the case with tenderness and a kind of sympathy. “Though the anagram says Dr. Heylyn, had too much by an L and too little by an S, yet she found Daniel and Reveal in it, and that served her turn.” Setting up for a Prophetess upon this conceit, and venturing upon political predictions in sore times, she was brought before the Court of High Commission, where serious pains were preposterously bestowed in endeavouring to reason her out of an opinion founded on insanity. All, as might have been expected, and ought to have been foreseen, would not do, “till Lamb, then Dean of the Arches, shot her through and through with an arrow borrowed from her own quiver.” For while the Divines were reasoning the point with her out of scripture, he took a pen into his hand, and presently finding that the letters of her name might be assorted to her purpose, said to her, Madam, I see that you build much on anagrams, and I have found out one which I hope will fit you: Dame Eleanor Davies,—Never so mad a Ladie! He then put it into her hands in writing, “which happy fancy brought that grave Court into such a laughter, and the poor woman thereupon into such a confusion, that afterwards she either grew wiser, or was less regarded.”—This is a case in which it may be admitted that ridicule was a fair test of truth.

When Henri IV. sent for Marshal Biron to court, with an assurance of full pardon if he would reveal without reserve the whole of his negociations and practices, that rash and guilty man resolved to go and brave all dangers, because certain Astrologers had assured him that his ascendant commanded that of the King, and in confirmation of this some flattering friend discovered in his name Henri de Bourbon this anagram De Biron Bonheur. Comme ainsi fust, says one of his contemporaries, qu'il en fist gloire, quelque Gentilhomme bien advisé là present—dit tout bas à l'oreille d'un sien amy, s'il le pense ainsi il n'est pas sage, et trouvera qu'il y a du Robin dedans Biron. Robin was a name used at that time by the French as synonymous with simpleton. But of unfitting anagrams none were ever more curiously unfit than those which were discovered in Marguerite de Valois, the profligate Queen of Navarre; Salve, Virgo Mater Dei; ou, de vertu royal image! The Doctor derived his taste for anagrams from the poet with whose rhymes and fancies he had been so well embued in his boyhood, old Joshua Sylvester, who as the translator of Du Bartas, signed himself to the King in anagrammatical French Voy Sire Saluste, and was himself addressed in anagrammatical Latin as Vere Os Salustii.

“Except Eteostiques,” say Drummond of Hawthornden, “I think the Anagram the most idle study in the world of learning. Their maker must be homo miserrimæ patientiæ, and when he is done, what is it but magno conatu nugas magnas agere! you may of one and the same name make both good and evil. So did my Uncle find in Anna Regina, Ingannare, as well as of Anna Britannorum Regina, Anna Regnantium Arbor: as he who in Charles de Valois, found Chassè la dure loy, and after the massacre found Chasseur desloyal. Often they are most false, as Henri de Bourbon, Bonheur de Biron. Of all the anagrammatists and with least pain, he was the best who, out of his own name, being Jacques de la Chamber, found La Chamber de Jacques, and rested there: and next to him, here at home, a Gentleman whose mistress's name being Anna Grame, he found it an Anagrame already.”