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_.