136 



THE REV. W. YATES' ESSAY 



The letters repeated, when read downwards, form the word Jesus three 

 times, i. e. at the begmning, m the middle, and at the end. 



Among the writers of this description in Europe, Aldhelm is one of 

 the most celebrated. He lived at the time of the Saxon Heptarchy, and was 

 thirty years governor of the monastery of Malmsbury. He devoted much 

 time to the study of Latin prosody and alliteration. ; and is said to have 

 produced a piece, which whether read upwards or downwards, forwards or 

 backwards, was the same, like the third example of stanzas in artificial 

 forms occurring in this essay. There is reason however to believe, though 

 many ingenious pieces were produced in Europe, that alliteration was 

 never reduced to a system as in Asia ; and that Aldhelm, though one of the 

 first writers of this class there, will not bear a strict comparison with KXl! dasa 

 of this country. 



It is generally believed, that the celebrated poetKALioXsA lived near the 

 commencement of the Christian era. He was one of the nine splendid gems 

 that adorned the court of Vikramaditya, and by the epithet Kolijita, con- 

 queror of millions, which was applied to him, it would seem that he was 

 the chief. He wrote the NaUdaya for the purpose of exhibiting his 

 unbounded skill in alliteration. In four books, containing on the average 

 fifty-four stanzas each, he has given such illustrations of this subject as can 

 never be surpassed. 



This work has lately been published in Europe, with a Latin transla- 

 tion by a continental scholar, Ferdinandus Benary : but from the manner 

 in which the text is printed, the grand design of KALfoASA is completely 

 sacrificed ; and from the manner in which the translation is made, his mean- 

 ing appears to be, in many instances, most obscurely expressed, and some- 

 times entirely mistaken. No reason can be imagined, why Kalidasa should 

 again write the history of King Nala and Damayanti , after it had been so 

 elegantly written in flowing verse by Vyasa Deva, except that he intended 

 in this simple story to shew forth his ingenuity in alliteration ; yet as his work 

 has been printed in Europe, no person would suppose that it contained a sin- 

 gle instance of such ingenuity. Since then it was the particular design of 



