cultivated by the most celebrated poets of the time, Spenser
included, and not deemed beneath the dignity of the learned Camden to
expound.

A few examples of this "alchemy of wit," as Camden calls it, will
reconcile our modern notions of the [Greek: to trepon] with the
puerile ingenuity thought graceful, at that unripe period of our
literature, by some of the most accomplished writers and readers of
the day. Let us take an extravagant instance. Sir Philip Sidney,
having abridged his own name into _Phil. Sid._, anagrammatized it
into _Philisides_. Refining still further, he translated _Sid_.,
the abridgment of _sidus_, into [Greek: astron], and, retaining
the _Phil_., as derived from [Greek: philos], he constructed
for himself another pseudonym and adopted the poetical name of
_Astrophil_. Feeling, moreover, that the Lady Rich, celebrated
in his sonnets, was the loadstar of his affections, he designates her,
in conformity with his own assumed name, _Stella_. Christopher Marlow's
name is transmuted into _Wormal_, and the royal Elizabetha is
frequently addressed as _Ah-te-basile!_ Doctor Thomas Lodge,
author of "Rosalinde; or Euphues, his Golden Legacy," (which
Shakspeare dramatized into "As you like it,") has anagrammatized his
own name into _Golde_,--and that of Dering into _Ringde_. The author
of "Dolarney's Primrose" was a Doctor _Raynolde_. John Hind, in his
"Eliosto Libidinoso," transmutes his own name into _Dinchin_ Matthew
Roydon becomes _Donroy_. And Shakspeare, even, does not scruple to
alchemize the Resolute John, or John Florio, into the pedantic
_Holofernes_ of "Love's Labor's Lost." A thousand such fantastic
instances of "trifling with the letter" might be quoted; and even so
late as the reign of Queen Anne we find this foolish wit indulged.
The cynical Swift[2] stoops to change Miss Waring into _Varina_;
Esther (_quasi_ Aster, a star) Johnson is known as _Stella_; Essy
Van-homrigh figures as _Vanessa_; while Cadenus, by an easy change
of syllables, is resolved into _Decanus_, or the Dean himself
_in propria persona_ and canonicals.

In the "Shepherd's Calendar," the very poem in which Spenser's
unknown mistress figures as Rosalinde, the poet has alchemized
Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury, into _Algrind_, and made Ellmor,
Bishop of London, _Morell_, (it is to be hoped he was so before,) by
merely transposing the letters. What wonder, then, if, complying
with an art so general and convenient, he should b