Gleanings for the Curious from the Harvest-fields of Literature

home or abroad; as a companion by the fireside, or the seaside, amid the hum of the city, or in the solitude of rural life; as a means of relaxation for the mind jaded by business activities, it may be safely commended to acceptance.

The aim of this collation is not to be exhaustive, but simply to be well compacted. The restrictive limits of an octavo require the

winnowings of selection in place of the bulk of expansion. Gargantua, we are told by Rabelais, wrote to his son Pantagruel, commanding him to learn Greek, Latin, Chaldaic, and Arabic; all history, geometry, arithmetic, music, astronomy, natural philosophy, etc., "so that there be not a river in the world thou dost not know the name and nature of all its fishes; all the fowls of the air; all the several kinds of shrubs and herbs; all the metals hid in the bowels of the earth, all gems and precious stones. I would furthermore have thee study the Talmudists and Cabalists, and get a perfect knowledge of man. In brief, I would have thee a bottomless pit of all knowledge." While this book does not aspire to such Gargantuan comprehensiveness, it seeks a higher grade of merit than that which attaches to those who "chronicle small beer," or to him who is merely “a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles."

Quaint old Burton, in describing the travels of Paulus Emilius, says, "He took great content, exceeding delight in that his voyage, as who doth not that shall attempt the like? For peregrination charms our senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety, that some count him unhappy that never traveled, a kind of prisoner, and pity his case that from his cradle to his old age beholds the same still; still, still, the same, the same." It is the purpose of these GLEANINGS to compass such "sweet variety" by conducting the reader here, through the green lanes of freshened thought, and there, through by-paths neglected and gray with the moss of ages; now, amid cultivated fields, and then, adown untrodden ways; at one time, to rescue from oblivion fugitive thoughts which the world should not "willingly let die," at another, to restore to sunlight gems which have been too long "underkept and down supprest." The compiler asks the tourist to accompany him, because with him, as with Montaigne and Hans Andersen, there is no pleasure without communication, and though all men may find in these Collectanea some things which they will recognize as old acquaintances, yet will they find many more with which they are unfamiliar, and to which their attention has never been awakened.

THE

Table of Contents.

Alphabetical Whims.

HE literary follies known as Lipogrammata and Pangrammata ;-
In the first, a particular letter is dropped; in the second, all the

letters of the alphabet are crowded into single verses or sentences; or,

one vowel may be retained, to the exclusion of all the other vowels.—

Diversions of alphabetic humor, especially of the aspirate H.- Uni-

vocalic Verse.—Alliteration.—Acrostic; artificial arrange-

ment of this old-fashioned, yet still popular form of verse; sometimes

doubled in the middle or reversed in the end, as in the telistich; some-

times used to point alliteration or pasquinade; sometimes constructed

in emblematic forms.—Anagram, with its transposition of the letters

of a name, so as to frame a new word, caustic, or complimentary, or

purely whimsical.—Chronogram, by means of which a date or

epoch is expressed in the Roman numeral letters which occur in the

course of an inscription, title, or dedication.

FEW

Palindromes.

NEW words in any language spelled backwards the same as for-
wards, although every language offers facilities for reversible lines

or verses. Specimens of the palindromic writing of literary triflers.-

Sometimes called Sotatic verse, from Sotades, the inventor.-The com-

plete reversal of meaning which frequently occurs on the backward read-

ing, also called Sidonian verse, such having been first constructed by

Sidonius..

Equivoque.

(ROSS-READINGS with their two-fold meaning, a convenient

CROSS-READINGS with their two-fold mean the disguise our ex

pressions of opposite signification.-Illustrative of this form of mots a

double entente, are Richelieu's letter of introduction.-Love-letter subter-
fuges.-The Jesuit's Creed, as it was formerly called.-Verses adapted
to either side in the American Revolutionary war, the English conten-
tion between the Stuart party and the Hanover party, the French Rev-
olution, and the late sectional war in the United States.-The ingenui-
ties of non-committal.

The Cento.

ITERARY Mosaics afford instructive as well as entertaining pas-
time. In framing such patch work, so many authors must be
consulted that the labor is both pleasing and profitable. The cento de-
serves to be assigned a higher rank than that of mere literary confec-
tionery.

"TH

Macaronic Verse.

HE writing of macaronic poetry," says Hallam, (Middle Ages,)
"is a folly with which every nation has been inoculated in its

turn.”—The sandwiching or intermingling of one language with an-

other said to bear the same relation to literature that opera bouffe does

to music. Dr. Maginn's pleasant expedient of translating alternate

lines of a favorite poem, as a sort of burlesque on its stately march.

Chain Verse.

NEW good specimens extant of this conceit, in which the last word

FEW