INTRODUCTION. THE following collection comprises the best specimens of Macaronic poetry, containing a few that are but little known; and although in some instances the difficult nature of the composition may be the principal recommendation to notice, yet in others will be found genuine wit and humour. The substance of this introduction has already appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine in the course of last year. Previously to mentioning the Macaronic authors, it may not be out of character to refer shortly to some other peculiar and affected styles of writing, having some affinity to their labours. Many of the examples will probably be familiar to the reader, and others will readily suggest themselves. The classic writers contain specimens of accidental alliteration, as Εν πεδίω πεπόλιστο, πόλις μερόπων ἀνθρώπων. Εσωσά σ', ως ἴσασιν Ἑλλήνων ὅσοι. Homer. Medea, Euripid. Libera lingua loquuntur ludis liberalibus. Nor must we overlook Cicero's unlucky line, O fortunatam natam me consule Romam, Horace. Nævius. which, with the satirist's remark upon it, is well known to the readers of Juvenal, though probably only to a small B portion of those who are so fond of using the "si sic omnia." But affected alliteration alone is akin to the present purpose, as the line of Ennius— O Tite, tute, Tati, tibi tanta, Tyranne, tulisti : to which may be added, and Machina multa minax minitatur maxima muris; At Tuba terribili tonitru taratantara trusit. The following are attributed to Porson : Cane decane cane, ne tu cane cane decane, The lines on Cardinal Wolsey are old acquaintance.— How high his Highness holds his haughty head! The lipogrammatists were writers who excluded some particular letter of the alphabet from their compositions, like skilful chess-players giving up a piece to an inferior antagonist. Of these, Tryphiodorus, a Greek poet and grammarian of Egypt, in the sixth century, was the most laborious. Anxious to outdo Homer, he wrote a poem on the destruction of Troy, in twenty-four books, from the first of which thea was carefully excluded; from the second book the ß, and so on through the alphabet. D'Israeli, in his "Curiosities of Literature," mentions a prose work by Fulgentius, in twenty-three chapters, wherein a similar system of exclusion is adopted for the Latin alphabet: also an ode of Pindar, where the letter is purposely omitted; and five novels by Lopes de Vega, the first of which is without the letter a, the second without e, &c. Gregorio Leti presented a discourse to the Academy of the Humorists at Rome, wherein the letter r was excluded; and a friend having requested a copy as a literary curiosity, he replied by a copious answer of seven pages, written in the same manner. An anecdote given by D'Israeli, after stating that the Orientalists have this literary folly, may illustrate these lipogrammatists. "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 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.'" In the Anthologia Græca, edit. H. Steph. i. 58, are poems in praise of Bacchus, and of Apollo, on a different plan. They consist of twenty-four lines, each word in the first line beginning with a, in the second line with ẞ, and so on, e. gr. (from poem to Bacchus.) Εις Βάκχον. Μέλπωμεν βασιλῆα φιλεύνιον, ειραφιώτην, There are some English lines in the same style, ridiculing the siege of Belgrade, beginning An Austrian army awfully array'd, Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade. Lord North, a polished courtier in the time of James the First, wrote a set of sonnets, each beginning with a successive letter of the alphabet. A pedantic specimen appears in the Bannatyne Ancient Scottish Poems, being one of the stanzas from "Ane New Yere Gift, To the Quene, quhen scho come first hame, 1562," by Alexander Scott. Fresch, fulgent, flurist, fragrant flour, formois, Cherie maist chaist, cheif charbucle and chois; This dull indyte, dulce, dowble dasy deir, Sent be thy sempill servand Sanderis Scott, Greiting grit God to grant thy Grace guid year. This sort of absurdity is humorously exposed by Kennedy in his invective addressed to Dunbar. St. 37. Deilbeir, thy speir of weir, but feir thow yeild, |