Dr. Burney very happily transformed the name of the great English admiral into a truthful Latin sentence,— Horatio Nelson, Honor est a Nilo. TIME ITEM ΜΕΤΙ This word, Time, is the only word in the English language which can be thus arranged, and the different transpositions thereof are all at the same time Latin words. These words, in English as well as in Latin, may be read either upward or downward. Their signification as Latin words is as follows:Time-fear thou; Item-likewise; Meti-to be measured; Emit he buys. Some striking German and Latin anagrams have been made of Luther's name, of which the following are specimens. Doctor Martinus Lutherus transposed, gives O Rom, Luther ist der schwan. In D. Martinus Lutherus may be found ut turris das lumen (like a tower you give light). In Martinus Lutherus we have vir multa struens (the man who builds up much), and ter matris vulnus (he gave three wounds to the mother church). Martin Luther will make lehrt in Armuth (he teaches in poverty). Jablonski welcomed the visit of Stanislaus, King of Poland, with his noble relatives of the house of Lescinski, to the annual examination of the students under his care, at the gymnasium of Lissa, with a number of anagrams, all composed of the letters in the words Domus Lescinia. The recitations closed with a heroic dance, in which each youth carried a shield inscribed with a legend of the letters. After a new evolution, the boys exhibited the words Ades incolumis; next, Omnis est lucida; next, Omne sis lucida; fifthly, Mane sidus loci; sixthly, Sis columna Dei; and at the conclusion, I scande solium. Maitland has the following curious specimen : How much there is in a word-monastery, says I: why, that makes nasty Rome; and when I looked at it again, it was evidently more nasty—a very vile place or mean sty. Ay, monster, says I, you are found out. What monster? said the Pope. What monster? said I. Why, your own image there, stone Mary. That, he replied, is my one star, my Stella Maris, my treasure, my guide! No, said I, you should rather say, my treason. Yet no arms, said he. No, quoth I, quiet may suit best, as long as you have no mastery, I mean money arts. No, said he again, those are Tory means; and Dan, my senator, I will baffle them. I don't know that, said I, but I think one might make no mean story out of this one word—monastery. CHRONOGRAMS. ADDISON, in his remarks on the different species of false wit, (Spect. No. 60,) thus notices the chronogram. "This kind of wit appears very often on 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 the 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 in scriptions, we are not so much to look in them for the thought as for the year of the Lord." Apropos of this humorous allusion to the Germanesque character of the chronogram, it is worthy of notice that European tourists find far more numerous examples of it in the inscriptions on the churches on the banks of the Rhine than in any other part of the continent. On the title-page of "Hugo Grotius his Sophompaneas," the date, 1652, is not given in the usual form, but is included in the name of the author, thus : FRANCIS GOLDSMITH. Howell, in his German Diet, after narrating the death of Charles, son of Philip II. of Spain, says :— If you desire to know the year, this chronogram will tell you: FILIVS ANTE DIEM PATRIOS INQVIRIT IN ANNOS. MDLVVIIIIIIII, or 1568. A German book was issued in 1706, containing fac-similes and descriptions of more than two hundred medals coined in honor of Martin Luther. An inscription on one of them expresses the date of his death, 1546, as follows: ECCe nVnc MorItVs IVstVs In paCe ChrIstI exItV tVto et beato. The most extraordinary attempt of this kind that has yet been made, bears the following title: Chronographica Gratulatio in Felicissimum adventum Serenissimi Cardinalis Ferdinandi, Hispaniarum Infantis, a Collegio Soc. Jesu. A dedication to St. Michael and an address to Ferdinand are followed by one hundred hexameters, every one of which is a chronogram, and each gives the same result, 1634. The first and last verses are subjoined as a specimen. AngeLe CæLIVogI MIChaëL LUX UnICa Cæt Us. Palindromes. RECIPROCAL AND REVERSIBLE WORDS AND VERSES. THE only fair specimen we can find of reciprocal words, or those which, read backwards or forwards, are the same, is the following couplet, which, according to an old book, cost the author a world of foolish labor : Odo tenet mulum, Madidam mappam tenet anna. The following much-admired reciprocal lines of Sidoneus Apollinaris, the reader will find on perusal, either backwards or forwards, precisely the same :— Signa te signa temere me tangis et angis.* Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor. The Greek inscription on the mosque of St. Sophia, in Constantinople, Νίψον ανομήματα μὴ μόναν ὄψιν, presents the same words, whether read from left to right, or from right to left. So also the expressions Name no one man. Snug & raw was I ere I saw war & guns. The absence of a letter renders this example slightly defect ive : : Lewd did I live, evil I did dwel. The reversal in the following palindrome, it will be seen, alters the sense: Meek Bob Dew did wed Hannah Semmes, Dean Swift wrote a letter to Dr. Sheridan, composed of Latin words strung together as mere gibberish; but each word, when Cross yourself; at your peril you annoy and threaten me,-what the monk said to the devil. † Meaning in substance, Purify the mind as well as the body. read backwards, makes passable English. Take for example the following short sentences: Mi sana, telo me Flaccus; odioso ni mus rem.-Moto ima os illud a illuc? I dama nam? (I'm an ass. O let me suck calf; O so I do in summer.O Tom, am I so dull, I a cully; I a madman?) The subjoined Latin verses, which are composed with great ingenuity, are reversible, and will be found to embody opposite meanings by commencing with the last word and reading backwards : Prospicimus modo, quod durabunt tempore longo, Diffugiet cito pax patriæ, nec fœdera longo, Tempore durabunt, quod modo prospicimus. The following hexameter refers to the sacrifice of Abel (Gen. iv. 4). Reversed, it is a pentameter, and refers to the sacrifice of Cain (iv. 3). Sacrum pingue dabo non macrum sacrificabo, The subjoined distich arose from the following circumstance. A tutor, after having explained to his class one of the odes of Horace, undertook to dictate the same in hexameter verses, as an exercise (as he said). It cost him considerable trouble: he hesitated several times, and occasionally substituted other words, but finally succeeded. Some of his scholars thought he would not accomplish his task; others maintained that, having begun, it was a point of honor to complete it. Retro mente labo, non metro continuabo; Addison mentions an epigram called the Witches' Prayer, that "fell into verse when it was read either backward or forward, excepting only that it cursed one way, and blessed the other." |