ists, and the
title obtained from what the author asserts to be the words of
condemnation then frequently applied by them to all who differed from
their creed. The second is a satirical attack on the prevalent follies
and vices of the day, which form the surest "guide," in the opinion of
the author, to the bottomless pit.]

LITERARY FOLLIES.

The Greeks composed lipogrammatic works; works in which one letter of
the alphabet is omitted. A lipogrammatist is a letter-dropper. In this
manner Tryphiodorus wrote his Odyssey; he had not [Greek: alpha] in his
first book, nor [Greek: beta] in his second; and so on with the
subsequent letters one after another. This Odyssey was an imitation of
the lipogrammatic Iliad of Nestor. Among other works of this kind,
Athenaeus mentions an ode by Pindar, in which he had purposely omitted
the letter S; so that this inept ingenuity appears to have been one of
those literary fashions which are sometimes encouraged even by those who
should first oppose such progresses into the realms of nonsense.

There is in Latin a little prose work of Fulgentius, which the author
divides into twenty-three chapters, according to the order of the
twenty-three letters of the Latin alphabet. From A to O are still
remaining. The first chapter is with out A; the second without B; the
third without C; and so with the rest. There are five novels in prose of
Lopes de Vega; the first without A, the second without E, the third
without I, &c. Who will attempt to verify them?

The Orientalists are not without this literary folly. A Persian poet
read to the celebrated Jami a gazel of his own composition, which Jami
did not like: but the writer replied, it was notwithstanding a very
curious sonnet, for the _letter Aliff_ was not to be found in any one of
the words! Jami sarcastically replied, "You can do a better thing yet;
take away _all the letters_ from every word you have written."

To these works may be added the _Ecloga de Calvis_, by Hugbald the monk.
All the words of this silly work begin with a C. It is printed in
Dornavius. _Pugna Porcorum_; all the words beginning with a P, in the
Nugae Venales. _Canum cum cattis certamen_; the words beginning with a C:
a performance of the same kind in the same work. Gregorio Leti presented
a discourse to the Academy of the Humorists at Rome, throughout which he
had purposely omitted the letter R, and he entitled it the exiled R. A
friend having requested a copy,