Enquire within upon everything by Robert Kemp Philp

55. Chronograms or Chrono-graphs

are riddles in which the letters of the Roman notation in a sentence or series of words are so arranged as to make up a date. The following is a good example: My Day Closed Is In Immortality. The initials MDCIII. give 1603, the year of Queen Elizabeth's death. Sometimes the Chronogram is employed to express a date on coins or medals; but oftener it is simply used as a riddle: A poet who in blindness wrote; another lived in Charles's reign; a third called the father of English verse; a Spanish dramatist; the scolding wife of Socrates; and the Prince of Latin poets,--their initials give the year of the Great Plague--MDCLXV.--1665: Milton, Dryden, Chaucer, Lope-de-Vega, Xantippe, Virgil. The word comes from _Chronos_, time, and _gramma_, a letter. [BEGIN WELL AND END BETTER.]