55. Chronograms or Chronographs 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.