342|The Green Bag.|}}

What must have been the feelings of this Five others supplied pentameters in the privileged circle when they learned that same way. Each was composed of ten ver some lawless genius had invented a method tical columns and from six to twelve hori of making Latin verses that was open to zontal lines, forming thus sixty to one everybody who knew the alphabet, and hundred and twenty squares, in each of could count up to ten on his fingers, — by which was a letter of the alphabet or a blank. which the rich cockney who had bought a The modus operandi was simple in the ex country-house and a seat in Parliament, treme; like a modern code of procedure, it or the smart attorney who set up for a was adapted to the meanest capacity. You statesman, or even their own valets and had only to write down the first six digits in any order you chose; thus 3, 5, 1, 4, 6, 2, or footmen could turn out unlimited hexam eters and pentameters of the most correct 4, 1, 3, 2, 6, 5. The arrangement being abso lutely indifferent, and the six digits represent and the genteelest form, with no other equip ment than just half-a-dozen small tables on ing the six tables, it is evident that an almost unlimited number of combinations may be which the letters of the alphabet were ar ranged apparently at random! Strange and formed. To this, indeed, the poet is in portentous as the invention seemed, it debted for the pleasing variety which con worked. The verses were genuine Latin, stitutes the charm of his poem. Having grammatically correct, scanning perfectly, fixed his digits, he then proceeds to con struct the first word of the line from the and moreover making good sense,— a require ment which, it must be owned, even the first table. The proper digit being 3 universities could not always guarantee in (in fiVst row above), he counts the first letter the hand-made verses of their graduates. in that table (at the upper left-hand corner; Moreover, the supply was unlimited; the as 4, the next as 5, and so on up to inventor himself said that his tables were 9. The ninth letter will be m, which will therefore constitute the first letter of capable of producing more than three hun the poem. (The inventor is careful to tell dred thousand different verses, or the equiva the poet to write it with a capital, evidently lent of about fifty /Eneids. This remarkable device has long ago foreseeing that his tables may be used by sunk into such profound oblivion that many to whom little conventionalities of many of my readers may suppose it but a that sort are yet unfamiliar.) To find the second letter, he counts nine creation of my own fancy, if I do not de scribe it a little more fully. Besides it is again from his m, and finds an a; then nine more to an /-; and so on till he has made very needful that they should all compre hend its working; for it was this, as I very out the word martia. If he had chosen the candidly own, that first suggested to me the second rank of digits and begun with 4, his invention which the present article is chiefly word formed from the same table in the same way would have been aspera. In both cases meant to describe, and which will undoubt the last count of nine would land him in a edly work a complete revolution in the prac tice of law and the entire administration of blank compartment, and thus warn him that the word was already complete, — a very justice. The " tables " mentioned above were very necessary precaution, since the poets who use simple affairs, and less complicated in their these tables are not supposed to know the operation than the " multiplication table " of first rudiments of Latin, of grammar, or of our childhood. Six of them answered for a prosody. I will not bore the reader by going through hexameter line, each table producing a word which was also a perfect " foot," — dactyl the six tables to construct the entire line. or spondee as its place on the line required. The order of digits first given above (and