of Poesie," p. 75, gives several odd specimens of poems in the forms of
lozenges, rhomboids, pillars, &c. Puttenham has contrived to form a
defence for describing and making such trifling devices. He has done
more: he has erected two pillars himself to the honour of Queen
Elizabeth; every pillar consists of a base of eight syllables, the shaft
or middle of four, and the capital is equal with the base. The only
difference between the two pillars consists in this; in the one "ye must
read upwards," and in the other the reverse. These pillars,
notwithstanding this fortunate device and variation, may be fixed as two
columns in the porch of the vast temple of literary folly.

It was at this period, when _words_ or _verse_ were tortured into such
fantastic forms, that the trees in gardens were twisted and sheared into
obelisks and giants, peacocks, or flower-pots. In a copy of verses, "To
a hair of my mistress's eye-lash," the merit, next to the choice of the
subject, must have been the arrangement, or the disarrangement, of the
whole poem into the form of a heart. With a pair of wings many a sonnet
fluttered, and a sacred hymn was expressed by the mystical triangle.
_Acrostics_ are formed from the initial letters of every verse; but a
different conceit regulated _chronograms_, which were used to describe
_dates_--the _numeral letters_, in whatever part of the word they stood,
were distinguished from other letters by being written in capitals. In
the following chronogram from Horace,

--_feriam sidera vertice_,

by a strange elevation of CAPITALS the _chronogrammatist_ compels even
Horace to give the year of our Lord thus,

--feriaM siDera VertIce. MDVI.

The Acrostic and the Chronogram are both ingeniously described in the
mock epic of the Scribleriad.[82] The _initial letters_ of the
acrostics are thus alluded to in the literary wars:--

Firm and compact, in three fair columns wove,
O'er the smooth plain, the bold _acrostics_ move;
_High_ o'er the rest, the TOWERING LEADERS rise
With _limbs gigantic_, and _superior size_.[83]

But the looser character of the _chronograms_, and the disorder in which
they are found, are ingeniously sung thus:--

Not thus the _looser chronograms_ prepare
Careless their troops, undisciplined to war;
With _rank irregular, confused_ they stand,
The CHIEFTAINS MINGLING with the vulgar band.

He afterwards adds others of the illegitimate race of wi