Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/498

Rh 478 &quot; I cannot tell thee who lies buried here ; No man that knew him followed by his bier ; The winds and waves conveyed him to this shore, Then ask the winds and waves to tell thee more.&quot; ANONYMOUS. &quot; Wherefore should I vainly try. To teach thee what my love will be In after years, when thou and I Have both grown old in company, If words are vain to tell thee how, Mary, 1 do love thee now ? &quot; ANONYMOUS. &quot; Bruscus, cease our aching ears to vex, With thy loud railing at the softer sex ; No accusation worse than this could be, That once a woman did give birth to thee.&quot; ACILIUS. &quot;Treason doth never prosper. What s the reason ? For if it prospers none dare call it treason. HAIUUNGTON. &quot; Ward has no heart they say, but I deny it ; He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it.&quot; KOGERS. From its very brevity there is no small danger of the epigram passing into childish triviality : the paltriest pun, a senseless anagram, is considered stuff enough and to apare. For proof of this there is unfortunately no need to look far; but perhaps the reader could not find a better collection ready to his hand than the second twenty-five of the Epigrammatum Centuries of Samuel Erichius ; by the time he reaches No. 11 of the 47th century, he will be quite ready to grant the appropriateness of the identity maintained between the German Seele, or soul, and the German Esel, or ass. Of the epigram as cultivated by the Greeks a detailed account has been given in the article on the ANTHOLOGIES, those wonderful collections which bid fair to remain the richest of their kind. The delicacy and simplicity of so much of what has been preserved is perhaps their most striking feature ; and one cannot but be surprised at the number of poets proved capable of such work. In Latin literature, on the other hand, the epigrammatists are com paratively few, and though several of them, as Catullus and Martial, are men of high literary genius, too much of what they have left behind is vitiated by brutality and obscenity. On the subsequent history of the epigram, indeed, Martial has exercised an influence as baneful as it is extensive, and he may fairly be counted the far-off pro genitor of a host of scurrilous verses which he himself would almost have blushed to write. Nearly all the learned Latiriists of the 16th and 17th centuries may claim admittance into the list of epigrammatists, Bembo and Scaliger, Buchanan and More, Stroza and Sannazariu3. Melanchthon, who succeeded in combining so much of Pagan culture with his Reformation Christianity, has left us some graceful specimens, but his editor, Joannes Major Jaochimus, has so little idea of what an epigram is, that he includes in his collection some translations from the Psalms. John Owen, or, as he Latinized his name, Johannes Audoenus, a Cambro-Briton, attained quite an unusual celebrity in this department, and is regularly dis tinguished as Owen the Epigrammatist. The tradition of the Latin epigram has been kept alive in England by such men as Person, Vincent Bourne, and Walter Savage Landor ; and at one at least of our universities there is an annual prize for the best original specimen. Happily there is now little danger of any too personal epigrammatist suffering the fate of Niccolo Franco, who paid the forfeit of his life for having launched his venomous Latin against Pius V., though he may still incur the milder penalty of having his name inserted in the Index JExpurgatorius, and find, like John Owen, that_ he consequently has lost an inheritance. In English literature proper there is no writer like Martial in Latin or Logau in German, whose fame is entirely due to his epigrams ; but several even of those whose names can perish never have not disdained thia diminutive form. The designation epigram, however, is used by our earlier writers with excessive laxity, and givea or withheld without apparent reason. The collection which bears the title of One and thyrtye Epigrammes, ivherein are bryefly touched so many abuses that may and ought to be put away : Compiled and Imprinted by Robert Crouiey, 1550, is of almost no literary value, consisting of rugged and in many cases vulgar and pointless attempts at satire. Those of Henry Parrot, published in 1613 as Laquei ridiculosi, or Springes to catch Woodcocks, are only not quite as worthless, though, as far as the mere form goes, they better deserve the name they assume ; for, according to the author s poetical simile &quot; We make our ejngrammes as men taste cheese, Which hath his relish in the last farewell.&quot; John Weever s collection (1599) is of interest mainly be cause of its allusion to Shakespeare. Ben Jonson furnishes a number of noble examples in his Underwoods ; and one or two of Spenser s little poems and a great many of Herrick s are properly classed as epigrams. Turberville is just as graceful in this department as he is in everything else ; but he has left one at least which is not without value &quot; A miser s mind thou hast, Thou hast a prince s pelf, Which makes thee wealthy to thine heir, A beggar to thyself.&quot; A few quaint specimens may be culled from the pages of Thomas Fuller ; but most of the fifty-nine epigrams recently published by Mr Grosart are poor affairs at the best. Cowley, Waller, Dryden, Prior, Parnell, Swift, Addison, Johnson, Goldsmith, and Young have all been at times successful in their epigrammatical attempts ; but perhaps none of them has proved himself so much &quot; to the manner born &quot; as Pope, whose name indeed is almost identified with the epigrammatical spirit in our literature. Few of our modern poets have followed in his footsteps, and though nearly all might plead guilty to an epigram or two, there is no one who has a distinct reputation as an epigrammatist. Such a reputation might certainly have been Landor s, had he not chosen to write the best of his minor poems in Latin, and thus made his readers nearly as select as his language. The French are undoubtedly the most successful cul tivators of the &quot; salt &quot; and the &quot; vinegar &quot; epigram ; and from the time of Marot downwards many of their principal authors have earned no small celebrity in this department. It is enough to mention the names of J. B. Rousseau, Lebrun, Voltaire, Marmontel, Piron, and Che nier. In spite of Rapin s dictum that a man ought to be content if he succeeded in writing one really good epigram, those of Lebrun alone number upwards of 600, and a very fair pro portion of them would doubtless pass muster even with Rapin himself. If Piron was never anything better, &quot; pas meme academicien,&quot; he appears at any rate in Grimm s phrase to have been &quot; une machine a saillies, & epigrammes, et a bou-mots.&quot; Perhaps more than anywhere else the epigram has been recognized in France as a regular weapon in literary and political contests, and it might not be alto gether a hopeless task to compile an epigrammatical history from the Revolution to the present time. While any fair collection of German epigrams will furnish examples that for keenness of wit would be quite in place in a French anthology, the Teutonic tendency to the moral and didactic has given rise to a class but sparingly represented in French. The very name of