The acrostic was probably invented about the same time with the
anagram, though it is impossible to decide whether the inventor of
the one or the other were the greater blockhead. The simple
acrostic is nothing but the name or title of a person, or thing,
made out of the initial letters of several verses, and by that means
written, after the manner of the Chinese, in a perpendicular line.
But besides these there are compound acrostics, when the principal
letters stand two or three deep. I have seen some of them where the
verses have not only been edged by a name at each extremity, but
have had the same name running down like a seam through the middle
of the poem.

There is another near relation of the anagrams and acrostics, which
is commonly called a chronogram. This kind of wit appears very
often on many modern medals, especially those of Germany, when they
represent in the inscription the year in which they were coined.
Thus we see on a medal of Gustavus Adolphus time following words,
CHRISTVS DUX ERGO TRIVMPHVS. If you take the pains to pick the
figures out of the several words, and range them in their proper
order, you will find they amount to MDCXVVVII, or 1627, the year in
which the medal was stamped: for as some of the letters distinguish
themselves from the rest, and overtop their fellows, they are to be
considered in a double capacity, both as letters and as figures.
Your laborious German wits will turn over a whole dictionary for one
of these ingenious devices. A man would think they were searching
after an apt classical term, but instead of that they are looking
out a word that has an L, an M, or a D in it. When, therefore, we
meet with any of these inscriptions, we are not so much to look in
them for the thought, as for the year of the Lord.