AENIGMA denotes any dark saying, wherein some well-known thing is concealed under obscure language. The word is Greek, Αίνιγμα, formed of aivιrησβαι, obscure innuere, to hint a thing darkly, and of αινος, an obscure speech or discourse. The popular name is riddle ; from the Belgic raeden, or the Saxon araethan, to interpret.

Painted Aenigmas are representations of the works of nature or art, concealed under human figures, drawn from history or fable.

A Verbal Aenigma is a witty, artful, and abstruse description of any thing. In a general sense, every dark saying, every difficult question, every parable, may pass for an aenigma. Hence obscure laws are called oenigma-ta juris. The alchemists are great dealers in the aenig-matic language, their processes for the philosopher’s stone being generally wrapt up in riddles: e. g. Fac ex mare et faeniina circulum, inde quadrangulum, hinc triangulum, fac circulum, et habebis lapidem philosophorum.

F. Menestrier has attempted to reduce the composition and resolution of aenigmas to a kind of art, with fixed rules and principles, which he calls the philosophy of (enigmatic images. ΙΙιe Sulycct of an Aenigma, or the thing to be concealed and made a mystery of, he justly observes, ought not to be such in itself; but, on the contrary, common, obvious, and easy to be conceived. It is to be taken either from nature, as the heaven or stars; or from art, as painting, the compass, a mirror, or the like.

The Form of Aenigmas consists in the words which, whether they be in prose or verse, contain either some description, a question, or a prosopopoeia. The last kind are the most pleasing, inasmuch as they give life and action to things which otherwise have them not. To make an aenigma, therefore, two things are to be pitched on which bear some resemblance to each other, as the sun and a monarch, or a ship and a house; and on this resemblance is to be raised a superstructure of contrarieties, to amuse and perplex. It is easier to find great subjects for aenigmas in figures than in words, inasmuch as painting attracts the eye and excites the attention to discover the sense. The subjects of aenigmas in painting are to be taken either from history or fable: the composition here is a kind of metamorphosis, wherein, e. g. human figures are changed into trees, and rivers into metals. It is essential to aenigmas, that the history or fable under which they are presented be known to every body, otherwise it will be two aenigmas instead of one; the first of the history or fable, the second of the sense in which it is to be taken. Another essential rule of the aenigma is, that it only admits· of one sense. Every aenigma which is susceptive of different interpretations, all equally natural, is so far imperfect. What gives a kind of erudition to an aenigma, is the invention of figures in situations, gestures, colours, &c. authorized by passages of the poets, the customs of artists in statues, basso-relievos, inscriptions, and medals.

As to the solution of aenigmas, it may be observed, that those expressed by figures are more difficult to explain than those consisting of words, because images may signify more things than words can; so that to fix them to a particular sense, we must apply every situation, symbol, &c. and without omitting a circumstance. As there are few persons in history or mythology without some particular character of vice or virtue, we are, before all things, to attend to this character, in order to divine what the figure of a person represented in a painting signifies, and to find what agreement this may have with the subject whereof we would explain it. Thus, if Proteus be represented in a picture, it may be taken to denote inconstancy, and applied either to a physical or moral subject, whose character is to be changeable, e. g. an almanack, which expresses tfie weather, the seasons, heat, cold, storms, and the like. The colours of figures may also help to unriddle what they mean; white, for instance, is a mark of innocence, red of modesty, green of hope, black of sorrow, &c. When figures are accompanied with symbols, they are less precarious; these being, as it were, the soul of aenigmas, and the key that opens the mystery of them.