Chapter CLXXVII

SOMETHING ON THE SCIENCE AND MYSTERY OF NUMBERS WHICH IS NOT ACCORDING TO COCKER.—REVERIES OF JEAN D'ESPAGNE, MINISTER OF THE FRENCH-REFORMED CHURCH IN WESTMINSTER, AND OF MR. JOHN BELLAMY.—A PITHY REMARK OF FULLER'S AND AN EXTRACT FROM HIS PISGAH SIGHT OF PALESTINE, TO RECREATE THE READER.

None are so surely caught, when they are catch'd
As wit turn'd fool: folly, in wisdom hatch'd
Hath wisdom's warrant, and the help of school,
And wit's own grace to grace a learned fool.

LOVE'S LABOUR LOST.

It may easily be supposed that the Doctor was versed in the science of numbers; not merely that common science which is taught at schools and may be learnt from Cocker's Arithmetic, but the more recondite mysteries which have in all ages delighted minds like his; and of which the richest specimens may be seen in the writings of the Hugonot Minister Jean de l'Espagne, and in those of our contemporary Mr. John Bellamy, author of the Ophion, of various papers in the Classical Journal, and defender of the Old and New Testament.

_Cet auteur est assez digne d'etre lu_, says Bayle of Jean de l'Espagne, and he says it in some unaccountable humour, too gravely for a jest. The writer who is thus recommended was Minister of the Reformed French Church in Westminster, which met at that time in Somerset Chapel, and his friend Dr. De Garencieres, who wrote commendatory verses upon him in French, Latin and Greek, calls him

_Belle lumiere des Pasteurs,
Ornement du Siecle ou nous sommes,
Qui trouve des admirateurs
Par tout ou il y a des hommes._

He was one of those men to whom the Bible comes as a book of problems and riddles, a mine in which they are always at work, thinking that whatever they can throw up must needs be gold. Among the various observations which he gave the world without any other order, as he says, than that in which they presented themselves to his memory, there may be found good, bad and indifferent. He thought the English Church had improperly appointed a Clerk to say Amen for the people. Amen being intended, among other reasons, as a mark whereby to distinguish those who believed with the officiating Priest from Idolaters and Heretics. He thought it was not expedient that Jews should be allowed to reside in England, for a Jew would perceive in the number of our tolerated sects, a confusion worse than that of Babel; and as the multitude here are always susceptible of every folly which is offered, and the more monstrous the faith, to them the better mystery, it was to be feared, he said, that for the sake of converting two or three Jews we were exposing a million Christians to the danger of Judaizing; or at least that we should see new religions start up, compounded of Judaism with Christianity. He was of opinion, in opposition to what was then generally thought in England that one might innocently say God bless you, to a person who sneezed, though he candidly admitted that there was no example either in the Old or New Testament, and that in all the Scriptures only one person is mentioned as having sneezed, to wit the Shunamite's son. He thought it more probable from certain texts that the Soul at death departs by way of the nostrils, than by way of the mouth according to the vulgar notion:—had he previously ascertained which way it came in, he would have had no difficulty in deciding which way it went out. And he propounded and resolved a question concerning Jephtha which no person but himself ever thought of asking: _Pourquoy Dieu voulant delivrer les Israelites, leur donna pour liberateur, voire pour Chef et Gouverneur perpetuel, un fils d'une paillarde?_ “O Jephtha, Judge of Israel,” that a Frenchman should call thee in filthy French _fils d'une putain!_

But the peculiar talent of the _Belle Lumiere des Pasteurs_ was for cabalistic researches concerning numbers, or what he calls _L'Harmonie du Temps_. Numbers, he held, (and every generation, every family, every individual was marked with one,) were not the causes of what came to pass, but they were marks or impresses which God set upon his works, distinguishing them by the difference of these their cyphers. And he laid it down as a rule that in doubtful points of computation, the one wherein some mystery could be discovered was always to be preferred. QUOY?—(think how triumphantly his mouth opened and his nose was erected and his nostrils were dilated, when he pronounced that interrogation)—QUOY? _la varieté de nos opinions qui provient d'imperfection, aneantira-t-elle les merveilles de Dieu?_ In the course of his Scriptural computations he discovered that when the Sun stood still at the command of Joshua, it was precisely 2555 years after the Creation, that is seven years of years, a solar week, after which it had been preordained that the Sun should thus have its sabbath of rest: _Ceci n'est il pas admirable?_ It was on the tenth year of the tenth year of the years that the Sun went back ten degrees, which was done to show the chronology: _ou est le stupide qui ne soit ravi en admiration d'une si celeste harmonie?_ With equal sagacity and equal triumph he discovered how the generations from Adam to Christ went by twenty-twos; and the generations of Christ by sevens, being 77 in all, and that from the time the promise of the Seed was given till its fulfilment there elapsed a week of years, seven times seventy years, seventy weeks of years, and seven times seventy weeks of years by which beautiful geometry, if he might be permitted to use so inadequate a term, the fullness of time was made up.

What wonderful significations also hath Mr. Bellamy in his kindred pursuits discovered and darkly pointed out! Doth he not tell us of seven steps, seven days, seven priests, seven rams, seven bullocks, seven trumpets, seven shepherds, seven stars, seven spirits, seven eyes, seven lamps, seven pipes, seven heads, four wings, four beasts, four kings, four kingdoms, four carpenters; the number three he has left unimproved,—but for two,—

which number Nature framed
In the most useful faculties of man,
To strengthen mutually and relieve each other,
Two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs and feet,
That where one failed the other might supply,

for this number Mr. Bellamy has two cherubims, two calves, two turtles, two birds alive, two [1], two baskets of figs, two olive trees, two women grinding, two men in the fields, two woes, two witnesses, two candlesticks; and when he descends to the unit, he tells us of one tree, one heart, one stick, one fold, one pearl,—to which we must add one Mr. John Bellamy the Pearl of Commentators.

[Footnote 1: The blank is in the MS.]

But what is this to the exquisite manner in which he elucidates the polytheism of the Greeks and Romans, showing us that the inferior Gods of their mythology were in their origin only men who had exercised certain departments in the state, a discovery which he illustrates in a manner the most familiar, and at the same time the most striking for its originality. Thus, he says, if the Greeks and Romans had been Englishmen, or if we Englishmen of the present day were Greeks and Romans, we should call our Secretary at War, Lord Bathurst for instance, Mars; the Lord Chancellor (Lord Eldon to wit) Mercury,—as being at the head of the department for eloquence.—(But as Mercury is also the God of thieves may not Mr. Bellamy, grave as he is, be suspected of insinuating here that the Gentlemen of the Long Robe are the most dextrous of pickpockets?)—The first Lord of the Admiralty, Neptune. The President of the College of Physicians, Apollo. The President of the Board of Agriculture, Janus. Because with one face he looked forward to the new year, while at the same time he looked back with the other on the good or bad management of the agriculture of the last, wherefore he was symbolically represented with a second face at the back of his head. Again Mr. Bellamy seems to be malicious, in thus typifying or seeming to typify Sir John Sinclair between two administrations with a face for both. The ranger of the forests he proceeds, would be denominated Diana. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Minerva;—Minerva in a Bishop's wig! The first Lord of the Treasury, Juno; and the Society of Suppression of Vice,—Reader, lay thy watch upon the table, and guess for three whole minutes what the Society for the Suppression of Vice would be called upon this ingenious scheme, if the Greeks and Romans were Englishmen of the present generation, or if we of the present generation were heathen Greeks and Romans. I leave a _carte blanche_ before this, lest thine eye outrunning thy judgement, should deprive thee of that proper satisfaction which thou wilt feel if thou shouldst guess aright. But exceed not the time which I have affixed for thee, for if thou dost not guess aright in three minutes, thou wouldest not in as many years.

* * * * *

VENUS. Yes Reader. By Cyprus and Paphos and the Groves of Idalia. By the little God Cupid,—by all the Loves and Doves,—and by the lobbies of the London theatres—he calls the Society for the Suppression of Vice, VENUS!

Fancy, says Fuller, runs riot when spurred with superstition. This is his marginal remark upon a characteristic paragraph concerning the Chambers about Solomon's Temple, with which I will here recreate the reader. “As for the mystical meaning of these chambers, Bede no doubt, thought he hit the very mark—when finding therein the three conditions of life, all belonging to God's Church: in the ground chamber, such as live in marriage; in the middle chamber such as contract; but in the _excelsis_ or third story, such as have attained to the sublimity of perpetual virginity. Rupertus in the lowest chamber lodgeth those of practical lives with Noah; in the middle—those of mixed lives with Job; and in the highest—such as spend their days with Daniel in holy speculations. But is not this rather _lusus_, than _allusio_, sporting with, than expounding of scriptures? Thus when the gates of the Oracle are made _five square_, Ribera therein reads our conquest over the five senses, and when those of the door of the Temple are said to be _four square_, therein saith he is denoted the _quaternion_ of Evangelists. After this rate, Hiram (though no doubt dexterous in his art) could not so soon fit a pillar with a fashion as a Friar can fit that fashion with a mystery. If made three square, then the Trinity of Persons: four square, the cardinal virtues: five square, the _Pentateuch of Moses_: six square, the _Petitions_ or the _Lord's Prayer_: seven square, their _Sacraments_: eight square, the _Beatitudes_: nine square, the Orders of Angels: ten square, the Commandments: eleven square, the moral virtues: twelve square, the articles of the creed are therein contained. In a word—for matter of numbers—fancy is never at a loss—like a beggar, never out of her way, but hath some haunts where to repose itself. But such as in expounding scriptures reap more than God did sow there, never eat what they reap themselves, because such grainless husks, when seriously thrashed out, vanish all into chaff.”[2]

[Footnote 2: Pisgah Sight of Palestine, Book iii. c. vii.]

CLXXVIII.

THE MYSTERY OF NUMBERS PURSUED, AND CERTAIN CALCULATIONS GIVEN WHICH MAY REMIND THE READER OF OTHER CALCULATIONS EQUALLY CORRECT—ANAGRAMMATIZING OF NAMES, AND THE DOCTOR'S SUCCESS THEREIN.

“There is no efficacy in numbers, said the wiser Philosophers; and very truly,”—saith Bishop Hacket in repeating this sentence; but he continues,—“some numbers are apt to enforce a reverent esteem towards them, by considering miraculous occurrences which fell out in _holy Scripture_ on such and such a number.—_Non potest fortuitò fieri, quod tam sæpe fit_, says Maldonatus whom I never find superstitious in this matter. It falls out too often to be called contingent; and the oftener it falls out, the more to be attended.”[1]

[Footnote 1: On referring to Bishop Hacket's Sermons I find this Motto it not copied out _Verbatim_. See p. 245.]

This choice morsel hath led us from the science of numbers. Great account hath been made of that science in old times. There was an epigrammatist who discovering that the name of his enemy Damagoras amounted in numerical letters to the same sum as _Λοιμὸς_ the plague, inferred from thence that Damagorus and the Plague were one and the same thing; a stingless jest serving like many satires of the present age to show the malice and not the wit of the satirist. But there were those among the ancients who believed that stronger influences existed in the number of a name, and that because of their arithmetical inferiority in this point, Patroclus was slain by Hector, and Hector by Achilles. Diviners grounded upon this a science which they called Onomantia or Arithmomantia. When Maurice of Saxony to the great fear of those who were most attached to him, engaged in war against Charles V, some one encouraged his desponding friends by this augury, and said that if the initials of the two names were considered, it would be seen that the fortunes of Maurice preponderated over those of Charles in the proportion of a thousand to a hundred.

A science like this could not be without attractions for the Doctor; and it was with no little satisfaction that he discovered in the three Ds with which his spoons and his house linen were marked, by considering them as so many capital Deltas, the figures 444, combining the complex virtues of the four thrice told. But he discovered greater secrets in the names of himself and his wife when taken at full length. He tried them in Latin and could obtain no satisfactory result, nor had he any better success in Greek when he observed the proper orthography of _Δανιὴλ_ and _Δεββῶρα_.[2] But anagrammatists are above the rules of orthography, just as Kings, Divines and Lawyers are privileged, if it pleases them, to dispense with the rules of grammar. Taking these words therefore letter by letter according to the common pronunciation (for who said he pronounces them Danieel and Deboarah?) and writing the surname in Greek letters instead of translating it, the sum which it thus produced was equal to his most sanguine wishes, for thus it proved

Daniel and Deborah Dove.
_Δανιὲλ_ _Δεβόῥα_ _Δοὺε_.

_Δανιὲλ_
_Δ_ 4
_α_ 1
_ν_ 50
_ι_ 10
_ε_ 5
_λ_ 30
-—-
Daniel 100

_Δεβόῥα_
_Δ_ 4
_ε_ 5
_β_ 2
_ο_ 70
_ρ_ 100
_α_ 1
-—-
Deborah 182

_Δοὺε_
_Δ_ 4
_ο_ 70
_υ_ 400
_ε_ 5
-—-
Dove 479

The whole being added together gave the following product

Daniel 100
Deborah 182
Dove 479
—--
761

[Footnote 2: _Δεβόῥῥα_ Gen. xxxv. 8., _Δεββῶρα_ Judges iv. 4. The double _ῥ_ will not affect the mystery!]

Here was the number 761 found in fair addition, without any arbitrary change of letters, or licentious innovation in orthography. And herein was mystery. The number 761 is a prime number; from hence the Doctor inferred that as the number was indivisible, there could be no division between himself and Mrs. Dove; an inference which the harmony of their lives fully warranted. And this alone would have amply rewarded his researches. But a richer discovery flashed upon him. The year 1761 was the year of his marriage, and to make up the deficient thousand there was M for marriage and matrimony. These things he would say must never be too explicit; their mysterious character would be lost if they lay upon the surface; like precious metals and precious stones you must dig to find them.

He had bestowed equal attention and even more diligence in anagrammatizing the names. His own indeed furnished him at first with a startling and by no means agreeable result; for upon transposing the component letters of Daniel Dove, there appeared the words _Leaden void!_ Nor was he more fortunate in a Latin attempt, which gave him _Dan vile Deo_. _Vel dona Dei_ as far as it bore a semblance of meaning was better; but when after repeated dislocations and juxta positions there came forth the words _Dead in love_, Joshua Sylvester was not more delighted at finding that Jacobus Stuart made _justa scrutabo_, and James Stuart _A just Master_, than the Doctor,—for it was in the May days of his courtship. In the course of these anagrammatical experiments he had a glimpse of success which made him feel for a moment like a man whose lottery ticket is next in number to the £20,000 prize. Dove failed only in one letter of being Ovid. In old times they did not stand upon trifles in these things, and John Bunyan was perfectly satisfied with extracting from his name the words _Nu hony in a B_,—a sentence of which the orthography and the import are worthy of each other. But although the Doctor was contented with a very small sufficit of meaning, he could not depart so violently from the letters here. The disappointment was severe though momentary: it was, as we before observed, in the days of his courtship; and could he thus have made out his claim to be called Ovid, he had as clear a right to add Naso as the Poet of Sulmo himself, or any of the Nasonic race, for he had been at the promontory, “and why indeed Naso,” as Holofernes has said?—Why not merely for that reason ‘looking toward Damascus’ which may be found in the second volume of this work in the sixty-third chapter and at the two hundred and thirtieth page, but also “for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention?”[3]

[Footnote 3: Love's Labour Lost, Act iv. Sc. ii.]

Thus much for his own name. After marriage he added his wife's with the conjunction copulative, and then came out _Dear Delia had bound one_: nothing could be more felicitous, Delia as has already been noticed, having been the poetical name by which he addressed the object of his affections. Another result was _I hadden a dear bond-love_, but having some doubts as to the syntax of the verb, and some secret dislike to its obsolete appearance, he altered it into _Ned, I had a dear bond-love_, as though he was addressing his friend Dr. Miller the organist, whose name was Edward.

CLXXIX.

THE SUBJECT OF ANAGRAMS CONTINUED; A TRUE OBSERVATION WHICH MANY FOR WANT OF OBSERVATION WILL NOT DISCOVER TO BE SUCH, VIZ., THAT THERE IS A LATENT SUPERSTITION IN THE MOST RATIONAL OF MEN. LUCKY AND UNLUCKY—FITTING AND UNFITTING—ANAGRAMS, AND HOW THE DOCTOR'S TASTE IN THIS LINE WAS DERIVED FROM OUR OLD ACQUAINTANCE JOSHUA SYLVESTER.

Ha gran forza una vecchia opinione;
E bisogna grand' arte, e gran fatica,
A cavarla del capo alle persone.

BRONZINO PITTORE.

Anagrams are not likely ever again to hold so high a place among the prevalent pursuits of literature as they did in the seventeenth century, when Louis XIII. appointed the Provençal Thomas Billen to be his Royal Anagrammatist, and granted him a salary of 1200 _livres_. But no person will ever hit upon an apt one without feeling that degree of pleasure and surprize with which any odd coincidence is remarked. Has any one who knows Johnny the Bear heard his name thus anagrammatized without a smile? we may be sure he smiled and growled at the same time when he first heard it himself.

Might not Father Salvator Mile, and Father Louis Almerat, who were both musicians, have supposed themselves as clearly predestined to be musical, as ever seventh son of a Septimus thought himself born for the medical professions, if they had remarked what Penrose discovered for them, that their respective names, with the F. for Friar prefixed, each contained the letters of the six musical notes _ut_, _re_, _mi_, _fa_, _sol_, _la_, and not a letter more or less?

There is, and always hath been, and ever will be, a latent superstition in the most rational of men. It belongs to the weakness and dependence of human nature. Believing as the scriptures teach us to believe, that signs and tokens have been vouchsafed in many cases, is it to be wondered at that we seek for them sometimes in our moods of fancy, or that they suggest themselves to us in our fears and our distress? Men may cast off religion and extinguish their conscience without ridding themselves of this innate and inherent tendency.

Proper names have all in their origin been significant in all languages. It was easy for men who brooded over their own imaginations, to conceive that they might contain in their elements a more recondite, and perhaps, fatidical signification; and the same turn or twist of mind which led the Cabbalists to their extravagant speculations have taken this direction, when confined within the limits of languages which have no supernatural pretensions. But no serious importance was attached to such things, except by persons whose intellects were in some degree deranged. They were sought for chiefly as an acceptable form of compliment, sometimes in self-complacency of the most offensive kind, and sometimes for the sting which they might carry with them. Lycophron is said to have been the inventor of this trifling.

The Rules for the true discovery of perfect anagrams, as laid down by Mrs. Mary Fage,[1] allowed as convenient a license in orthography as the Doctor availed himself of in Greek.

E may most—what conclude an English word,
And so a letter at a need afford.
H is an aspiration and no letter;
It may be had or left which we think better.
I may be I or Y as need require;
Q ever after doth a U desire;
Two Vs may be a double U; and then
A double U may be two Vs again.
X may divided be, and S and C
May by that letter comprehended be.
Z a double S may comprehend:
And lastly an apostrophe may ease
Sometimes a letter when it doth not please.

[Footnote 1: In her Fames Roule, or the names of King Charles, his Queen and his most hopeful posterity; together with the names of the Dukes, Marquisses, &c., anagrammatized, and expressed by acrostick lines on their lives. London, 1637, R. S.]

Two of the luckiest hits which anagrammatists have made were on the Attorney General William Noy, _I moyl in law_; and Sir Edmundbury Godfrey _I find murdered by rogues_. Before Felton's execution it was observed that his anagram was _No, flie not_.

A less fortunate one made the Lady Davies mad, or rather fixed the character of her madness. She was the widow of Sir John Davies, the statesman and poet, and having anagrammatized Eleanor Davies into Reveal O Daniel, she was crazy enough to fancy that the spirit of the Prophet Daniel was incorporated in her. The Doctor mentioned the case with tenderness and a kind of sympathy. “Though the anagram says Dr. Heylyn, had too much by an L and too little by an S, yet she found Daniel and Reveal in it, and that served her turn.” Setting up for a Prophetess upon this conceit, and venturing upon political predictions in sore times, she was brought before the Court of High Commission, where serious pains were preposterously bestowed in endeavouring to reason her out of an opinion founded on insanity. All, as might have been expected, and ought to have been foreseen, would not do, “till Lamb, then Dean of the Arches, shot her through and through with an arrow borrowed from her own quiver.” For while the Divines were reasoning the point with her out of scripture, he took a pen into his hand, and presently finding that the letters of her name might be assorted to her purpose, said to her, Madam, I see that you build much on anagrams, and I have found out one which I hope will fit you: Dame Eleanor Davies,—_Never so mad a Ladie!_ He then put it into her hands in writing, “which happy fancy brought that grave Court into such a laughter, and the poor woman thereupon into such a confusion, that afterwards she either grew wiser, or was less regarded.”—This is a case in which it may be admitted that ridicule was a fair test of truth.

When Henri IV. sent for Marshal Biron to court, with an assurance of full pardon if he would reveal without reserve the whole of his negociations and practices, that rash and guilty man resolved to go and brave all dangers, because certain Astrologers had assured him that his ascendant commanded that of the King, and in confirmation of this some flattering friend discovered in his name _Henri de Bourbon_ this anagram _De Biron Bonheur_. _Comme ainsi fust_, says one of his contemporaries, _qu'il en fist gloire, quelque Gentilhomme bien advisé là present—dit tout bas à l'oreille d'un sien amy, s'il le pense ainsi il n'est pas sage, et trouvera qu'il y a du_ Robin _dedans_ Biron. _Robin_ was a name used at that time by the French as synonymous with simpleton. But of unfitting anagrams none were ever more curiously unfit than those which were discovered in Marguerite de Valois, the profligate Queen of Navarre; _Salve, Virgo Mater Dei; ou, de vertu royal image!_ The Doctor derived his taste for anagrams from the poet with whose rhymes and fancies he had been so well embued in his boyhood, old Joshua Sylvester, who as the translator of Du Bartas, signed himself to the King in anagrammatical French _Voy Sire Saluste_, and was himself addressed in anagrammatical Latin as _Vere Os Salustii_.

“Except Eteostiques,” say Drummond of Hawthornden, “I think the Anagram the most idle study in the world of learning. Their maker must be _homo miserrimæ patientiæ_, and when he is done, what is it but _magno conatu nugas magnas agere!_ you may of one and the same name make both good and evil. So did my Uncle find in Anna Regina, _Ingannare_, as well as of Anna Britannorum Regina, _Anna Regnantium Arbor_: as he who in Charles de Valois, found _Chassè la dure loy_, and after the massacre found _Chasseur desloyal_. Often they are most false, as Henri de Bourbon, _Bonheur de Biron_. Of all the anagrammatists and with least pain, he was the best who, out of his own name, being Jacques de la Chamber, found _La Chamber de Jacques_, and rested there: and next to him, here at home, a Gentleman whose mistress's name being Anna Grame, he found it an _Anagrame_ already.”