o the left,
facing about, doubling their ranks, shifting their stations, and throwing
themselves into all the figures and counter-marches of the most
changeable and perplexed exercise.

Not far from these was the body of acrostics, made up of very
disproportioned persons. It was disposed into three columns, the
officers planting themselves in a line on the left hand of each column.
The officers were all of them at least six feet high, and made three rows
of very proper men; but the common soldiers, who filled up the spaces
between the officers, were such dwarfs, cripples, and scarecrows, that
one could hardly look upon them without laughing. There were behind the
acrostics two or three files of chronograms, which differed only from the
former as their officers were equipped, like the figure of Time, with an
hour-glass in one hand, and a scythe in the other, and took their posts
promiscuously among the private men whom they commanded.

In the body of the temple, and before the very face of the deity,
methought I saw the phantom of Tryphiodorus, the lipogrammatist, engaged
in a ball with four-and-twenty persons, who pursued him by turns through
all the intricacies and labyrinths of a country dance, without being able
to overtake him.

Observing several to be very busy at the western end of the temple, I
inquired into what they were doing, and found there was in that quarter
the great magazine of rebuses. These were several things of the most
different natures tied up in bundles, and thrown upon one another in
heaps like fagots. You might behold an anchor, a night-rail, and a hobby-
horse bound up together. One of the workmen, seeing me very much
surprised, told me there was an infinite deal of wit in several of those
bundles, and that he would explain them to me if I pleased; I thanked him
for his civility, but told him I was in very great haste at that time. As
I was going out of the temple, I observed in one corner of it a cluster
of men and women laughing very heartily, and diverting themselves at a
game of crambo. I heard several double rhymes as I passed by them, which
raised a great deal of mirth.

Not far from these was another set of merry people engaged at a
diversion, in which the whole jest was to mistake one person for another.
To give occasion for these ludicrous mistakes, they were divided into
pairs, every pair being covered from head to foot with the same kind of
dress, though perhaps there was