anagrammatized, and each anagram illustrated by an equally curious acrostic. The following may serve as a specimen of her manner.

"To the Right Hon. John, Earl of Weymes, Lord Weymes.

n your great honour, free from all alloy,
O truly noble Weymes, you shew men joy;
Having your vertues in their clearer sight,
Nothing there is can breed them more delight.

With joy your wisdome so doth men content,
E ver we pray it might be permanent;
Your virtuous life doth breed so great delight,
M en wish you endless joy, you to requite;
Eternall joy may unto you succeede,

S hewing men joy who do your comfort breed.”

In a

"New Help to Discourse," 12mo. Lond. 1684, we have an English anagram, with a very quaint epigrammatic "exposition."

A toast is like a sot; or, what is most
Comparative, a sot is like a toast;

For when their substances in liquor sink,
Both properly are said to be in drink."

Anagrams," says Mr. D'Israeli, "were often › devoted to the personal attachments of love or friendship, a friend delighted to twine his name with that of his friend. Crashawe, the poet, had a literary intimate of the name of Car, who was his posthumous editor; and in prefixing some elegiac lines, discovers that his best friend Crashawe was Car; for so the anagram of Crashawe runs he was Car. On this quaint discovery, he has indulged all the tenderness of his recollections:

"Was Car, then, Crashawe, or was Crashawe Car?
Since both within one name combined are.

Yes, Car's Crashawe, he 's Car: 'tis love alone
Which melts two hearts, of both composing one,
So Crashawe 's still the same," &c.

SOAME JENYNS.

In the very amusing memoirs of his own life, Cumberland has given a characteristic sketch of Soame Jenyns, whose early infidelity, and subsequent conversion, together with the singular and highly original work which he published in vindication of the Christian religion, are better known than his poetical productions, which, however, form part of "Chalmers'

Collection," and are distinguished by that graceful ease and sprightly wit by which his conversation was characterised.

"A disagreement about a name or a date,” says Cumberland, "will mar the best story that was ever put together. Sir Joshua Reynolds luckily could not hear an interrupter of this. sort; Johnson would not hear, or, if he heard, would not heed him; Soame Jenyns heard him, heeded him, set him right, and took up his tale where he had left it, without any diminution of its humour, adding only a few more twists to his snuff-box, a few more taps upon the lid of it, with a prefatory grunt or two, the invariable forerunner of the amenity that was at the heels of them. He was the man who bore his part in all societies with the most even temper and undisturbed hilarity, of all the good companions whom I ever knew. He came into your house at the very moment you had put upon your card. He dressed himself, to do your party honour, in all the colours of the jay: his lace, indeed, had long since lost its lustre ; but his coat had faithfully retained its cut since the days when gentlemen embroidered figured velvets with short sleeves, boot cuffs, and buckram

skirts. As nature had cast him in the exact mould of an ill-made pair of stiff stays, he followed her so close in the fashion of his coat, that it was doubted if he did not wear them :because he had a protuberant wen just under his poll, he wore a wig that did not cover above half his head. His eyes were protruded like the eyes of the lobster, who wears them at the end of his feelers; and yet there was room between one of these and his nose for another wen, that added nothing to his beauty; yet I heard this man very innocently remark, when Gibbon published his history, that he wondered any body so ugly could write a book.'

"Such was the exterior of a man who was the charm of the circle, and gave a zest to every company he came into; his pleasantry was of a sort peculiar to himself; it harmonized with every thing; it was like the bread to our dinner; you did not, perhaps, make it the whole, or principal part, of your meal, but it was an admirable and wholesome auxiliary to your other viands. Soame Jenyns told you no long stories, engrossed not much of your attention, and was not angry with those that did. His thoughts were original, and were apt to have a very

whimsical affinity to the paradox in them. He wrote verses upon dancing, and prose upon the origin of evil; yet he was a very indifferent metaphysician, and a worse dancer. Ill-nature and personality, with the single exception of his lines upon Johnson, I never heard fall from his lips; these lines I have forgotten, though I believe I was the first person to whom he recited them. They were very bad; but he had been told, that Johnson ridiculed his metaphysics; and some of us had just then been making extemporary epitaphs upon each other. Though his wit was harmless, yet the general cast of it was ironical: there was a terseness in his repartee that had a play of words as well as of thought; as, when speaking of the difference between laying out money upon land, or purchasing into the funds, he said, 'One was principal without interest, and the other interest without principal.' Certain it is, he had a brevity of expression that never hung upon the ear, and you felt the point in the very moment that he made the push.

"It was rather to be lamented that his lady, Mrs. Jenyns, had so great a respect for his good sayings, and so imperfect a recollection of