the car, the train stops, and then backs up on the siding, where it remains for half an hour while the engineer repairs a dislocated valve. The anger which burns in my bosom as I reflect upon what now is proved to have been the folly of that race is increased as I look out of the window and observe the speckled dog engaged with his companions in an altercation over a bone. A man who permits his dog to roam about the streets nipping the legs of every one who happens to go at a more rapid gait than a walk, is unfit for association with civilized beings. He ought to be placed on a desert island in mid-ocean, and be compelled to stay there. MAX ADELER. THE BABY'S DEBUT. [From the Rejected Addresses of Horace and James Smith. It is an imitation, and an extremely successful one, of Wordsworth's most simple style, and Lord Jeffrey's criticism upon it is very accurate: The author does not,' Jeffrey wrote in the Edinburgh Review, 'in this instance, attempt to copy any of the higher attri butes of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry; but has succeeded perfectly in the imitation of his mawkish affectations of childish simplicity and nursery stammering.'] 'Thy lisping prattle and thy mincing gait, CUMBERLAND. [Spoken in the character of Nancy Lake, a girl eight years Jack's in the pouts, and this it is,- Quite cross, a bit of string I beg, And bang, with might and main, This made him cry with rage and spite: To draw his peg-top's tooth! And cried, 'Oh naughty Nancy Lake, Aunt Hannah heard the window break, Thus to distress your aunt: And trotted down the street. The chaise in which poor brother Bill Stood in the lumber-room: And brush'd it with a broom. My uncle's porter, Samuel Hughes, (I always talk to Sam): So what does he, but takes, and drags Me in the chaise along the flags, And leaves me where I am. My father's walls are made of brick, But not so tall, and not so thick As these; and, goodness me! But never, never half so good My father's beams are made of wood, As those that now I see. What a large floor! 'tis like a town! Won't hide it, I'll be bound; They keep them on the ground. 'You've only got to curtsey, whisp- Then why not Nancy Lake?' But while I'm speaking, where's papa? And now, good gentlefolks, I go I curtsey, like a pretty miss, There's the camel, Humpty-dumpty; Neck-orNothing, the giraffe; Jolly Gnash, the old hyena, with his idiotic laugh. EPIGRAMS. A MODERN writer, speaking of the old monarchy of France, just before the Revolution, defined it as a despotism limited by epigrams." If there were found force and virtue enough in epigrams to limit such a despotism as that, we may well spend a half hour in investigating the nature and the varieties of the Epigram. 66 Like so many others of our good things, we owe the word Epigram" and the idea for which it stands to the Greeks,the most ingenious, the most subtle, and the most cultivated of all the nations of absurd narrowness, define the epigram to antiquity. Our dictionary-makers, with be "a short poem, treating only of one nious and natural thought." But by this thing, and ending with some lively, ingedefinition, half the epigrams which have acquired popular currency must be excluded from the category of epigrams, because they are not in verse. This definiLet our lexicographers stick to their tion manifestly is as unfair as it is narrow. significance of terms, defining and not province and report the true usage and confining the ir meaning. An epigram, then, is a pithy or pointed saying, either in prose or verse, so expressed as to amuse or to impress the mind. Less didactic than the proverb, less sententious than the aphorism, the To make the perfect epigram, wit and epigram enlivens while it instructs us. ly blended. sense should be evenly and harmoniousBut as Alexander Smith sought, and sought in vain for “a poem I mark the restless motions of the more fero-round and perfect as a star," so the per cious lots,How the tigers shift their places, and the leopards change their spots; I visit, too, the burly bear, and give my wonted dole (N. B. The polar bear is not the bear that climbs the pole.) Then let us be to every beast a patron and a friend; Each tells his tale, each has his aim, as sure as he's his end. A lesson's to be learned from them, and man himself may steal Some new light from the tapir, some impression from the seal. fect epigram is far to seek and hard to find. The French, who have the credit of being the liveliest and the most volatile nathan any other. But the great majority of tion in the world, have more epigrams those we find in the French Ana and Memoirs are local and personal, while nearly all of them lose their flavor in being transplanted to our English tongue. Some few sayings, like Fouché's "It was worse than a crime, it was a blunder;" or "After me the deluge or Voltaire's "God is on the side of the of Louis XV.; heaviest battalions," (a saying, by the C way, attributed to Napoleon, but real- that less knowledge must therefore be still ly as old as Tacitus-Deos fortioribus more dangerous? adesse") are familiar in the mouths of When the poet Burns turned over the multitudes. Not so common is this of richly dressed books in the library of a Talleyrand, and his friend Montrond: "Do lordly ignoramus, who had suffered the you know," said Talleyrand, one day, moths to feast upon what he never "why I esteem M. Montrond? It is be- touched, he wrote on the fly leaf of a cause he has so few prejudices." This moth-eaten volume this stinging combeing repeated to Montrond himself, "Do ment: you know," he replied, "why I love M. de Talleyrand? Because he has none at all." Another epigram ascribed to Talleyrand is this of the Bourbons, or French Emigrants: "They have learned nothing, and they have forgotten nothing." A circle of savants one day discussing the vexed question of the antiquity of the globe, Voltaire reserved his opinion: but presently launched at them this bon mot For my part, gentlemen, I believe the world is like an old coquette, who conceals her age." Many epigrams have been aimed books and reading, as this: Heaps of knowledge load our shelves, Or this from Punch: at Great Bulwer's works fell on Miss Bas- And in a moment, lo! the maid was dead! A very poor writer who was perpetually fishing for compliments, was gravely assured by Charles Lamb that his works would be admired when Shakspeare and Milton were forgotten, but not till then. And it was said of a certain dignitary who always wore a look of profound wisdom, but printed a shallow book, that "if he had not published himself for a fool. he might have passed for a philosopher." As too much eating does not make a man healthy, so it is very certain that too much reading will not make him wise. "If I had read as many books as other men," said Hobbes of Malmesbury, "I should have been as ignorant as they." But does it never occur to those who are always quoting with approval, Pope's well-worn line A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, Through and through the inspired leaves, Here is an epigram on a wretched psalm singer, who dealt out Sternhold and Hopkins with a strong nasal accompaniment, much to the disgust of a hearer who revenged himself by writing the following on the pew door: Sternhold and Hopkins had great qualms; If it had been poor David's fate We are often told of some wonderful man who has forgotten more than most other men ever knew, but here is a saying more paradoxical still and yet a veritable truth: "There is no man knows so much as some men are ignorant of." This sounds like a metaphysical conundrum and has proved a choke-pear to some small wits. But it is plain that some men are ignorant of almost all that can be known, and of all that can not be: and as no man lives who can pretend to know even the half of what is knowable, of course there is no one who knows as much as some men are ignorant of. Pope has hit off the empty-headedness of many would-be wits in the following epigram: You beat your pate and fancy wit will Here is an epigram founded on a wellknown passage in Macbeth: Shakspeare has said in his immortal way, That when the brains were out, the man would die; I do not like to say he tells a lie, But I saw Nincompoop alive to-day. Perhaps the larger number of epigrams which find favor, have grown out of the difference of the sexes, and the relations between them. Inexhaustible themes as they are for the moralist, the philosopher, and the reformer, the conditions of social and domestic life furnish yet more fruitful ground for the satirist to work upon. Here is an epigram aimed at the femi nine sex, en masse, through no less a person than old father Adam: He laid him down and slept,-and from his side A woman in her magic beauty rose; Dazzled and charmed, he called that woman bride, And his first sleep became his last repose. The poet Saxe thus gently satirizes the wilfulness of women: Men dying make their wills-but wives Why should they make what all their lives Here is a warning against interference in family broils: When man and wife at odds fall out, What should one be but neuter? The follies and vanities of women, the utter frivolity of the lives of many, and the arts of dress and decoration which in all ages have been so assiduously and sometimes overweeningly cultivated, have given point to many a biting epigram at the expense of the weaker specimens of the sex. Pope well depicts the emptiness of the woman of fashion of his own time in these lines: Virtue she finds too painful an endeavor, Content to dwell in decencies forever. Here is a short hit at flirting: "Sir, can you flirt a fan?" Once asked a coquette pert; "I never tried," replied the man, "But I can fan a flirt." From the following epigram of the last century it would appear that modern fashions of wearing everybody's hair but one's own are by no means new: The golden hair that Julia wears Is her's-who would have thought it? She swears 't is her's, and true she swears, For I know where she bought it! Many jokes have been perpetrated about the first temptation, and the share of woman in the fall of man: Thus When Beelzebub first to make mischief began, He the woman attacked, and she gulled the poor man; This Moses asserts, and from hence would infer The damsel, fairly understood, A woman of gallantry, becoming old, and dangerously ill, sent for her confessor, who came and said to her, "Madam, it is now time for you to forget your past life, and to think upon loving God alone." That woman rules man, and the devil rules" Alas!" replied she, "at my age, how can I think of any new amours.' her. Professional epigrams abound, and the Which a woman has well enough an- clergy, the bar, and the medical professwered by the following: 'Tis said that we caused man to grieve; The devil it was who tempted Eve, sion furnish perpetual quarries for the sayers of sharp things. When Brougham, Lord Chancellor of England, was in the zenith of his manysided career, writing books for the Society for diffusion of useful knowledge, presiding Dean Swift was guilty of the following over Social Science conventions, harangu good thing: Said Celia to a reverend Dean, "What reason can be given, Since marriage is a holy thing, That they have none in heaven?" "They have," said he, "no women there:" "As instruments sound sweetest when they be touched softest: so women are the best when they be used mildest;" for which bit of quaint philosophy we are beholden to Clement of Alexandria. The question of woman's suffrage is not without its epigrams, as witness this: Should women sit in Congress halls, A great part of the nation then deed. Here is a hint for ladies who are risers: late ing Parliament, contributing to the Encyclopædia and the Edinburgh Review, and attending to law cases by the dozen, a witty barrister said of him one day---“ What a splendid fellow Brougham would be, if he only knew a little law!" The poet, Saxe, thus relieves the dryness of law cases: My wonder is really boundless, That among the queer cases we try, A land-case should often be groundless, And a water-case always be dry! Two lawyers pleading on different sides of a case, defined the land in dispute between their respective clients, by a map, which they exhibited to the judge with "my Lord, we lie on this side; "-and "my Lord, we lie on this side" whereupon his Honor broke out with" What, what, if you lie on both sides I can believe neither of you." During the trial of Thelwall for high in-treason, he wrote the following note, and handed it to Lord Erskine, his counsel: "I am determined to plead my cause myself." Mr. Erskine wrote under it-" If you do, you'll be hanged:" to which Thelwall instantly returned the reply, "I'll be hanged, then, if I do." Myrtilla, rising with the dawn, A certain lawyer's definition of a prima facie case characterized it as a case And here is one on the philosophy of which is very good in front, but very bad kissing, by John G. Saxe: When Sarah Jane, the moral miss, in the rear." 66 A lawyer," said Lord Brougham, in a facetious mood, "is a learned gentleman who rescues your estate from your enemies, and-keeps it himself." |