Alcala Y Henares, Alphonso De

, a Spanish poet of the seventeenth century, who was born at Lisbon in 1599, and carried on the business of a merchant. Devoting his leisure hours to literature, he wrote a work entitled “Viridarium anagrammaticum,” and five “Novels,” which procured him, it is said, much reputation, not from their merit, but from their originality. In each of these novels, the author has contrived to get rid of one or other of the vowels: a is not to be found in the first, nor e in the second, &c. But this idle whim was not original, the same having been practised by Tryphiodorus, whom Addison so pleasantly ridicules as one of the lipogrammatists, or letterdroppers of antiquity. Moreri gives us the title of another work by this author, printed at Lisbon, 1664. “Psalteriurn quadruplex anagrammaticum, angelicum, immaculatum, Marianum, Deiparse dicatum, sexaginta anagrammata Latina complectens.” Alcala died Nov. 21, 1682. ²