AN ESSAY ON EPIGRAMS. WHO nowadays writes epigrams? The species epigrammatist seems to be well-nigh extinct. Now and then some Herr Professor, whose learning is less ponderous than common, after due incubation hatches what he calls a Sinngedicht. But his achievement is too often a paraphrase, if not a literal translation, of some Latin original. At intervals, too, Thorold Rogers, clergyman and social reformer, flings into London journals some explosive squib couched in verse, but the missile is tolerably harmless, and draws far less attention than a telegram. No doubt before the invention of the newspaper the epigram, so easy to remember and so incisive in its effect, was no mean engine of cajolery, or calumny. But the days are gone when such weapons were effective in the political arena, and either conquered a pension or provoked a lettre de cachet. Byron, who worshipped Pope, and deemed every thing his master had done worth doing, sometimes ventured into Martial's province, but rarely successfully, except in Don Juan. A score of epigrams might be culled from that poem which would answer all the conditions of a rigorous definition. Since Byron, no poet of eminence has condescended to this form of art. Tennyson indeed is terse and telling, as is proved by the facility with which we quote him; yet he seems as incapable of epigrams as Morris, of whom most of us, much as we like him, can with difficulty remember a line. Browning might write them if he chose, but he does not choose, and so it is that the old epigrammalist lingers only in some isolated representative, as the dodo did in Madagascar, or like that Tasmanian survivor whose present existence is clouded with a doubt. Epigrammatists may perish from the face of the earth, but the epigram is immortal. It well deserves to be so. What form of wit imparts so much pleasure to so many persons? If the world could be fairly polled, it might be found that some tiny epigram has yielded more genuine delight than the most ambitious works of genius, as, for instance, the Paradise Lost. If there is one Latin author who is still read for hearty amusement, it is Martial, and even the candid schoolboy who declines to be charmed by the Iliad can see some fun in the Anthology. It would probably pose most persons to be suddenly called on to define an epigram. And no wonder, for every great scholar since the manuscripts of Martial were recovered in Western Europe has tried his hand at a definition, and none except Lessing has grasped it. The literal meaning is, of course, inscription, and the word was originally applied to the writing on a monument or tomb. But in later times the word obtained in Greek rhetoric and poetry the peculiar significance which in English distinguishes the epigram from an epitaph, and in German the Sinngedicht from a mere Aufschrift or Ueberschrift. We shall at once lay our finger on this peculiar significance by answering the question, why the Greeks had but one word where the Germans have two? We need hardly say that it could! be neither a poverty of language nor a contempt for precision which led the former to content themselves with the original term. If there is any thing notorious, it is that the Athenian never suffered a new idea, or the finest shade of deviation from an old idea, to shiver in the cold of paraphrase, but straightway clothed it with a snug, warm word, cut and fitted to the shape. We may be sure that a sense of some nice propriety, the recognition, perhaps, of some just and suggestive metaphor, induced him to attach the name of epigram to a particular class of little poems, without any direct reference to their fitness for inscription on memorial stones. The fact is, that every genuine epigram is divisible into two distinct parts, of which the first answers precisely to the monument or tomb on which the primitive epigram was written, and the second to the inscription proper which the monument bore. To surprise, and thereupon to explain, to secure the twofold delight which springs in curiosity and ripens in gratification, was the purpose of the inscribed monument, and is still the aim of the true epigram. Let us apply this to some faultless type, like that stanza by Sir William Jones: On parent knees, a naked new-born child, Weeping thou sat'st, while all around thee smiled; So live that, sinking to thy last long sleep, On the he will find it essential to t gram that both these feeling longing of expectation and th faction of it, should be evoke in this order. All the other ties which have been Su to be peculiar to the epigra are really common to many s short and witty poems, may b deduced from this definition. the more terse and vigorous lines which introduce the sub more potent will be their al curiosity, and the more to their hold upon our interest. tecturally, the monument more impressive. hand, the more novel and d is the concluding thought, more felicitous and pointed pression of it, the more o is our satisfaction, the mor do we feel repaid for ou in deciphering the inscripti follows likewise that the seco or thought, of the epigram terpret the fact embodied in otherwise the inscription, in explaining the particular m which bears it, serves merely us to another. So much veritable Sinngedicht. Of the epigram there are many vari the two commonest are tho awaken curiosity without a it, or else instruct withou ing attention. Without sto Thou then may'st smile when all around thee point out the flaws in m weep. It is plain that the first two lines awaken curiosity, excite interest. They answer to the graceful shaft which arrests the eye and allures the step. They win us to approach and investigate, to look for some further revelation, to ponder on the lesson which the last two lines convey. In a word, attention is first secured, and then rewarded. Let the reader test this analysis in other instances, and poems, more or less witty, less compact, which are fals epigrams, we shall perceive curacy and value of the ab nition by glancing at som models of the true form. examples we may cite, we the originals, that they wh like our version may make for themselves. Let us begin with a cou Wenicke, who has written and so well in this way as to merit the name of the German Martial: Du liebest Geld und Gut, noch so, dass dein Erbarmen Der Armen fühlt. Du fliehst die Armuth, nicht die Armen. We have not been able in this instance to preserve both the rhyme and the metre, and prefer to keep the latter. The lines convey a noble eulogy. Thou lovest gold and goods, yet so that thy compassion Feels for the needy still, shunning need, and not the needy. Here are two more from German sources. We have forgotten who wrote them, but our readers may remember. The turn of the thought in the second is novel and rather pretty: Ihr sagt, die Zeit vergeht! We say, Time passes! Is it so? Schon vier Mal kam ich, deine Diener sprachen Dwells in a poet the child, who still with a feeling of wonder Eyes the familiar; to him still looks familiar the strange. The grand-master of epigrammatists, Martial, with the proud humility of conscious power, confessed himself a pupil of Catullus. But it was rather his purity of diction and Brauchst du dich ja nicht unsichtbar zu machen." naïve simplicity which Martial bor Four times I called, the servant said, The greatest of German poets are not ashamed to stoop to epigram, and sometimes aim to reproduce the metre which Martial preferred. Of the following essays in elegiacs the first three are by Schiller, the others by Emanuel Geibel : Gaubt mir, es ist kein Märchen, die Quelle von Jugend sie rinnet Wirklich und immer! Ihr fragt, wo? In der dichtenden Kunst! Trust me, 'tis more than a fable; the Fountain of Youth springeth ever Jocund and fresh as of old! Where? In the art of the bard! Glücklicher Säuglung! Dir ist ein unendlicher Raum noch die Wiege! Werde Mann, und dir wird eng die unendliche Welt. rowed from the elder poet, not the point and sparkle of his epigrams, which are of right his own. The minor poems of Catullus include few which are strictly epigrams, and of these only two or three admit of distillation into a modern language. We give one which is addressed, like most of his amatory verse, to Lesbia. In this instance we abandon the attempt to reproduce the Latin elegi acs. Lesbia mi dicit semper male, nec tacet unquam Assidue, verum dispeream, nisi amo. Always my Lesbia treats me ill, By this I'll swear she loves me well! While we are on the subject of lover's whims and inconsistencies, we venture to give an experiment of our own. At least we may claim the expression, although the thought, if we remember rightly, belongs to Moore: Love halts, you said, but will not stay, Before we come to Martial, let us pause a moment over the Greek Anthology, of which some parts, no doubt, were written later than his day, but others must share with Catullus the ty-which is very like an absu The true idea, and one that point and beauty to the compli is rather this, that since a prime of the Pythagoreans was the m nance of a thoughtful silence: wise reserve, it would have beer to the mental posture of the and therefore bad art (suppos to have been possible) to have sented him otherwise than in sp less meditation. We have att ed to give some such turn t thought in English elegiacs. There Pythagoras stands to the life! we should hear him lence to muse. It is no mean honor to be in tably the first in any line of a honor of suggesting to the brilliant Speak-but Pythagoras taught wisdor Spaniard the right conception of the epigram, as well as the appropriate treatment. Unlike Horace, however, Martial rarely condescended to borrow either thought or expression from a foreign source. We may say of him, and more truthfully, what Denham said of Cowley, that he "melted not the ancient gold." Perhaps the most famous epigram in the Anthology is that on a picture of Pythagoras. It has been a dozen times translated into Latin or expanded in Greek, but generally with indiffer ent success : Αὐτὸν Πυθαγόρην ὁ ζωγράφος ὂν μετὰ φωνής Most of the versions require four certainly within the field of th gram Martial is prince of poets conceived the form of poe which he devoted his life to much more of dignity and imp than we incline to allow it, a He held towards previous e did much to make good his matists the same commanding tion which Dante holds towar Ipsum Pythagoram dat cernere pictor et ipsum simple justice what Bulwer Audires sed enim non cupit ipse loqui. Addison: Exquisite genius, to whose chiselled To hope to reflect in a tran the gleam and edge of Martia be absurd. We shall merely a general way, while preserv metre, to sketch the outlines of the central thought. If our readers miss the bloom on the rose, we at least cannot help them. They must seek the garden where it grew, and pluck it for themselves. In the course of a long residence in Rome, Martial seems to have suffered the usual vicissitudes of authors, and sometimes in moments of eclipse found his friends more willing to reproach than to relieve him. He fancies he detects a reason for it: Genus, Aucte, lucri divites habent iram. Auctus, the rich count wrath a gain: in the time of Domitian a round portion was as essential to the marriage of a Roman virgin as it is now with French ladies of condition, who must either endow or derogate. The Latin prototype of the Belgravian mother must have had grievous cause of complaint when the state bestowed prizes on such as were at once husbands and fathers. The following epigram, however, takes a more elevated view, and strikes the key-note of Tennyson's rhapsody in the well-known lines of The Princess: Uxorem quare locupletem ducere nolim Why so reluctant, you ask, to wed with a wo. man of fortune? Friend, I would marry a wife, not have a wife marry me! Trust me, the rule is sound, let the woman owe all to her husband, No epigram of Martial's is more admired, and none seems to us more admirable, than that which chronicles the magnanimous act of Arria, who showed her husband the way to death. She lived in the time of Messalina, but the deed was worthy of Lucrece. Perhaps the traditional. fortitude and fashionable stoicism of Rome might have paused contented with the historical fact, but modern sentiment cannot fail to welcome the touch of tenderness in the concluding line. We place beside it The Death of Portia because the two poems are pitched in the same key. The latter, however, is a mere historiette, told with rare force and fervor, but without the point and turn which distinguish a true epigram. To re cur to our metaphor, the monument is a noble one, but the superscription that Martial's Portia follows her husis wanting. Our readers will observe band to the grave, while she precedes him in Shakespeare's play. Casta suo gladium cum traderet Arria Paeto, Paetus reluctant to die wavered; him Arria marking Brued in her bosom the sword, which to her husband she gave: Think not, she cried, that my wound bears with it aught that is painful! That which thou dealest thyself, that will be painful to me! Conjugis audisset fatum cum Porcia Bruti, Thus shall they, man and wife, each owe the I nunc, et ferrum, turba molesta, nega! other nothing. Here is a playful innuendo which Nubere vis Prisco, non miror, Paula, sapisti! Jl fancies Jack for a husband-truly a sensible Jack has no fancy for Jill-truly a sensible man! Portia, thy Brutus is dead! they told her. She in her anguish Silently sought for a sword-kindness had hid it from her. Dream ye, officious, she cried, that death will ad mit of denial! Truly I trusted my sire, Cato, had taught ye better! Pausing she thrust in her mouth live coals, and eagerly swallowed; Go, ye officious, refuse Portia a useless weapon! In so far as the modern epigram is modelled upon Martial, we should |