THE CABBALA.
Cabbala Algebraica. Auctore Gul. Lud. Christmann. Stuttgard, 1827, 4to.
Eighty closely printed pages of an attempt to solve equations of every degree, which has a process called by the author cabbala. An anonymous correspondent spells cabbala as follows, , and makes 666 out of its letters. This gentleman has sent me since my Budget commenced, a little heap of satirical communications, each having a 666 or two; for instance, alluding to my remarks on the spelling of chemistry, he finds the fated number in . With these are challenges to explain them, and hints about the end of the world. All these letters have different fantastic seals; one of them with the legend "keep your temper,"—another bearing "bank token five pence." The only signature is a triangle with a little circle in it, which I interpret to mean that the writer confesses himself to be the round man stuck in the three-cornered hole, to be explained as in Sydney Smith's joke.
There is a kind of Cabbala Alphabetica which the investigators of the numerals in words would do well to take up: it is the formation of sentences which contain all the letters of the alphabet, and each only once. No one has done it with v and j treated as consonants; but you and I can do it. Dr. Whewell and I amused ourselves, some years ago, with attempts. He could not make sense, though he joined words: he gave me
Phiz, styx, wrong, buck, flame, quid.
I gave him the following, which he agreed was "admirable sense": I certainly think the words would never have come together except in this way:
I, quartz pyx, who fling muck beds.
I long thought that no human being could say this under any circumstances. At last I happened to be reading a religious writer—as he thought himself—who threw aspersions on his opponents thick and threefold. Heyday! came into my head, this fellow flings muck beds; he must be a quartz pyx. And then I remembered that a pyx is a sacred vessel, and quartz is a hard stone, as hard as the heart of a religious foe-curser. So that the line is the motto of the ferocious sectarian, who turns his religious vessels into mudholders, for the benefit of those who will not see what he sees.
I can find no circumstances for the following, which I received from another:
Fritz! quick! land! hew gypsum box.
From other quarters I have the following:
Dumpy quiz! whirl back fogs next.
This might be said in time of haze to the queer little figure in the Dutch weather-toy, which comes out or goes in with the change in the atmosphere. Again,
Export my fund! Quiz black whigs.
This Squire Western might have said, who was always afraid of the whigs sending the sinking-fund over to Hanover. But the following is the best: it is good advice to a young man, very well expressed under the circumstances:
Get nymph; quiz sad brow; fix luck.
Which in more sober English would be, Marry; be cheerful; watch your business. There is more edification, more religion in this than in all the 666-interpretations put together.
Such things would make excellent writing copies, for they secure attention to every letter; v and j might be placed at the end.
ON GODFREY HIGGINS.
The Celtic Druids. By Godfrey Higgins, Esq. of Skellow Grange, near Doncaster. London, 1827, 4to.
Anacalypsis, or an attempt to draw aside the veil of the Saitic Isis: or an inquiry into the origin of languages, nations, and religions. By Godfrey Higgins, &c..., London, 1836, 2 vols. 4to.
The first work had an additional preface and a new index in 1829. Possibly, in future time, will be found bound up with copies of the second work two sheets which Mr. Higgins circulated among his friends in 1831: the first a "Recapitulation," the second "Book vi. ch. 1."
The system of these works is that—
"The Buddhists of Upper India (of whom the Phenician Canaanite, Melchizedek, was a priest), who built the Pyramids, Stonehenge, Carnac, &c. will be shown to have founded all the ancient mythologies of the world, which, however varied and corrupted in recent times, were originally one, and that one founded on principles sublime, beautiful, and true."
These works contain an immense quantity of learning, very honestly put together. I presume the enormous number of facts, and the goodness of the index, to be the reasons why the Anacalypsis found a permanent place in the old reading-room of the British Museum, even before the change which greatly increased the number of books left free to the reader in that room.