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.
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