s occasion to vent themselves into stingie [stinging]
libels, in which they spared neither the persons nor families of that
unfortunate pair. There came also two anagrams to my hands, _not
unworthy to be owned by the rarest wits of this age_.' These were, one
very descriptive of the lady, and the other, of an incident in which
this infamous woman was so deeply criminated.

FRANCES HOWARD. THOMAS OVERBURIE.
_Car finds a Whore. O! O! base Murther_."

This sort of wit is not falser at least than the criticism which infers
that D'Ewes' "judgment and taste were as contemptible as can well be;"
for he might have admired these anagrams, which, however, are not of the
nicest construction, and yet not have been so destitute of those
qualities of which he is so authoritatively divested.

Camden has a chapter in his "Remains" on ANAGRAMS, which he defines to
be a dissolution of a (person's) name into its letters, as its elements;
and a new connexion into words is formed by their transposition, if
possible, without addition, subtraction, or change of the letters: and
the words must make a sentence applicable to the person named. The
Anagram is complimentary or satirical; it may contain some allusion to
an event, or describe some personal characteristic.[113]

Such difficult trifles it may be convenient at all times to discard;
but, if ingenious minds can convert an ANAGRAM into a means of
exercising their ingenuity, the things themselves will necessarily
become ingenious. No ingenuity can make an ACROSTIC ingenious; for this
is nothing but a mechanical arrangement of the letters of a name, and
yet this literary folly long prevailed in Europe.

As for ANAGRAMS, if antiquity can consecrate some follies, they are of
very ancient date. They were classed, among the Hebrews, among the
cabalistic sciences; they pretended to discover occult qualities in
proper names; it was an oriental practice; and was caught by the Greeks.
Plato had strange notions of the influence of _Anagrams_ when drawn out
of persons' names; and the later Platonists are full of the mysteries of
the anagrammatic virtues of names. The chimerical associations of the
character and qualities of a man with his name anagrammatised may often
have instigated to the choice of a vocation, or otherwise affected his
imagination.

Lycophron has left some on record,--two on Ptolemaeus Philadelphus, King
of Egypt, and his Queen Arsinoee. The king's name