Chapter Cipher to Civilis of C by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Cipher to Civilis

Cipher. The Rev. R. Egerton Warbarton, being asked for his cipher by a lady, in 1845, wrote back—

A O u O I O thee. Oh! O no O but O me; Yet thy O my O one O go, Till u d O the O u O so.

A cipher you sigh-for, I sigh-for thee. Oh! sigh-for no cipher, but sigh-for me; Yet thy sigh-for my cipher one ci-for go [on-ce I for-go]. Till you de-cipher the cipher you sigh-for so.

(Erroneously ascribed to Dr. Whewell.)

Dr. Whewell’s cipher is as follows:—

A headless man had a letter [O] to write; He who read it [naught] had lost his sight; The dumb repeated it [naught] word for word; And deaf was the man who listened and heard
[naught].

Not equal to the above is the Epitaph on a Fifer—

Hic	jacet		1	5	4	(one small Fifer)
0	4	1	2	8		(hate)
0	4	1	2	0		(sigh for)
0	2	8	0	8
0	2	4	5	4

Circe , a sorceress who metamorphosed the companions of Ulysses into swine. Ulysses resisted the enchantment by means of the herb moly, given him by Mercury.

Who knows not Circe, The daughter of the sun, whose charmed cup Whoever tasted lost his upright shape, And downward fell into a grovelling swine?
   —Milton: Comus (1634).

Circuit (Serjeant), in Foote’s farce called The Lame Lover (1770).

Circumlocution Office, a term applied by Dickens, in Little Dorrit (1855), to our public offices, where the duty is so divided and subdivided that the simplest process has to pass through a whole series of officials. The following, from baron Stockmar, will illustrate the absurdity:—

In the English palace the lord steward finds the fuel and lays the fire, but the lord chamberlain lights it. The baron says he was once sent by the queen [Victoria] to sir Frederick Watson (master of the household), to complain that the drawing-room was always cold. Sir Frederick replied, “You see, it is not my fault, for the lord steward only lays the fire, it is the lord chamberlain who lights it.”

Again he says—

The lord chamberlain provides the lamps, but the lord steward has to see that they are trimmed and lighted.

Here, therefore, the duty is reversed. Again—

If a pane of glass or the door of a cupboard in the kitchen needs mending, the process is as follows: (1) A requisition must be prepared and signed by the chief cook. (2) This must be countersigned by the clerk of the kitchen. (3) It is then taken to the master of the household. (4) It must next be authorized at the lord chamberlain’s office. (5) Being thus authorized, it is laid before the clerk of the works under the office of Woods and Forests. So that it would take months before the pane of glass or cupboard could be mended.—Memoirs, ii. 121, 122.

(Some of this foolery has been recently abolished.)

Cirrha, one of the summits of Parnassus, sacred to Apollo. That of Nysa, another eminence in the same mountain, was dedicated to Bacchus.

My vows I send, my homage, to the seats Of rocky Cirrha.
   —Akenside: Hymn to the Naiads (1767).