Most of his ideas were ingenious, though many were entirely useless from a practical point of view.  For instance, he has an entry in his Diary on November 8, 1872:  “I wrote to Calverley, suggesting an idea (which I think occurred to me yesterday) of guessing well-known poems as acrostics, and making a collection of them to hoax the public.”  Calverley’s reply to this letter was as follows:—­

My dear Sir,—­I have been laid up (or laid down) for the last few days by acute lumbago, or I would have written before.  It is rather absurd that I was on the point of propounding to you this identical idea.  I realised, and I regret to add revealed to two girls, a fortnight ago, the truth that all existing poems were in fact acrostics; and I offered a small pecuniary reward to whichever would find out Gray’s “Elegy” within half an hour!  But it never occurred to me to utilise the discovery, as it did to you.  I see that it might be utilised, now you mention it—­and I shall instruct these two young women not to publish the notion among their friends.

This is the way Mr. Calverley treated Kirke White’s poem “To an early Primrose.”  “The title,” writes C.S.C. “might either be ignored or omitted.  Possibly carpers might say that a primrose was not a rose.”

    Mild offspring of a dark and sullen sire! 
    Whose modest form, so delicately fine, Wild
        Was nursed in whistling storms Rose
        And cradled in the winds!

    Thee, when young Spring first questioned Winter’s sway,
    And dared the sturdy blusterer to the fight, W a R
        Thee on this bank he threw
        To mark his victory.

    In this low vale, the promise of the year,
    Serene thou openest to the nipping gale,
        Unnoticed and alone I ncognit O
        Thy tender elegance.

    So Virtue blooms, brought forth amid the storms
    Of chill adversity, in some lone walk
        Of life she rears her head L owlines S
        Obscure and unobserved.

    While every bleaching breeze that on her blows
    Chastens her spotless purity of breast,
        And hardens her to bear D isciplin E
        Serene the ills of life.

In the course of their correspondence Mr. Calverley wrote a Shakespearian sonnet, the initial letters of which form the name of William Herbert; and a parody entitled “The New Hat.”  I reproduce them both.

        When o’er the world Night spreads her mantle dun,
          In dreams, my love, I see those stars, thine eyes,
        Lighting the dark:  but when the royal sun
          Looks o’er the pines and fires the orient skies,
        I bask no longer in thy beauty’s ray,
          And lo! my world is bankrupt of delight.