The object of this paper will be to show the general principles which regulate the Modern Epigram, and to bring out the beauties and structure of our English epigrams, with such reference to compositions of that kind in other languages as may suggest the influences under which our native epigrammatists have written, and the sources from which their manner or materials have been derived.

We have scarcely any eminent English poet that can be styled an epigrammatist. Ben Jonson has a book of 133 epigrams, but not many of them are quotable, or ever quoted, except some of a serious cast, which are not truly epigrammatic. Harrington's epigrams have merit; but they also, for the most part, are harsh and obsolete. By far our best writer of epigrams is Prior, though his epigrams are comparatively few in number, and some of them are of inferior merit. The great bulk of this commodity among us is supplied by authors unknown, or better known for other things; and by translations or paraphrases of favourite epigrams from Martial and from modern French writers.

We subjoin here a few of the best English epigrams, not for their novelty, but as illustrating the rules as to this mode of composition which we before indicated, and showing the different ways in which curiosity and suspense, surprise and satisfaction, may be produced, as well as the occasional deviations that occur from the right standard.

We begin with two or three of Harrington's Epigrams, the first of which is one of the best in the language, and is often quoted, but very seldom referred to its author.

Abstinet

Aeger,
Egens,

Cupidus,
Gula,

Simia,

Virtus.

"OF TREASON.

"Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none doth call it Treason."

"OF SIXE SORTS OF FASTERS.

Sixe sorts of folks I find use fasting days,
But of these sixe, the sixt I only prayse.
The sick man fasts, because he cannot eat.
The poore doth fast, because he hath no meat.
The miser fasts, with mind to mend his store;
The glutton, with intent to eat the more;
The Hypocrite, thereby to seeme more holy.
The Virtuous, to prevent or punish folly.

Now he that eateth fast, and drinks as fast,
May match these fasters, any but the last."

"OF ENCLOSING A COMMON.

"A lord that purposed for his more avayle,
To compasse in a common with a vayle,

Was reckoning with his friend about the cost
And charge of every rayle, and every post;
But he (that wisht his greedy humour crost)
Sayd, Sir, provide you posts, and without fayling,
Your neighbours round about, will find you rayling."

"OF TWO WELSH GENTLEMEN.

"Two Squires of Wales arrived at a towne,
To seek their lodging when the sun was down;
And (for the In-keeper his gates had locked),
In haste, like men of some account they knocked.
The drowzy Chamberlaine doth aske who's there?
They told, that Gentlemen of Wales they were.
How many (quoth the man) are there of you?
They sayd, Heer's John ap Rees, ap Rise, ap Hew;
And Nicholas ap Giles, ap Stephen, ap Davy:
Then Gentlemen, adieu, (quoth he) God save yee.
Your Worships might have had a bed or twaine,
But how can that suffice so great a traine?"

Those that follow we give almost at random, and without reference to chronology :

:

"DUM VIVIMUS VIVAMUS."

"Live while you live,' the epicure would say,
'And seize the pleasure of the present day.'
'Live while you live,' the sacred preacher cries,
'And give to God each moment as it flies.'
Lord, in my view let both united be,

I live in pleasure while I live to Thee."

Doddridge.

"None, without hope, e'er loved the brightest fair:
But love can hope where reason would despair."

Lord Lyttleton.

"On parents' knees, a naked new-born child,
Weeping thou sat'st, while all around thee smiled;
So live, that sinking in thy last long sleep,
Calm thou may'st smile, while all around thee weep."

Sir W. Jones, from the Persian.

"I loved thee, beautiful and kind,
And plighted an eternal vow;
So altered are thy face and mind,
"Twere perjury to love thee now.'

Lord Nugent.

"If all be true that I do think,
There are five reasons we should drink :

"The little boy, to show his might and pow'r,
Turn'd Io to a cow, Narcissus to a flow'r;
Transform'd Apollo to a homely swain,
And Jove himself into a golden rain.
These shapes were tolerable; but by th' mass
H' as metamorphosed me-into an ass.'

"If man might know

The ill he must undergo,

And shun it so,

Then it were good to know:
But if he undergo it,

Tho' he know it,

What boots him know it?

He must undergo it."

Suckling.

Suckling.

"Rich Gripe does all his thoughts and cunning bend
To increase that wealth he wants the soul to spend :
Poor Shifter! does his whole contrivance set
To spend that wealth he wants the sense to get.
Kind Fate and Fortune! blend them, if you can;
And of two wretches make one happy man."

Walsh.

"Jack eating rotten cheese did say,
'Like Samson I my thousands slay.'
'I vow,' quoth Roger, so you do,
And with the selfsame weapon, too."

1 This is a translation of the following lines:

ܙܙ

Anonymous.

"Si bene commemini, causæ sunt quinque bibendi :
Hospitis adventus; præsens sitis; atque futura;
Et vini bonitas; et quælibet altera causa."

2 This is a translation of the Greek lines :

Εἰ μὲν ἦν μαθεῖν

'Α δεῖ παθεῖν,
Καὶ μὴ παθεῖν,

Καλὸν ἦν τὸ μαθεῖν.

Εἰ καὶ δεῖ παθεῖν

Α δεῖ μαθεῖν,

Τί δεῖ μαθεῖν ;
Χρὴ γὰρ παθεῖν.

"Brutus unmoved heard how his Portia fell;
Should Jack's wife die, he would behave as well."

Anonymous.

"When late I attempted your pity to move,
What made you so deaf to my prayers?
Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love;
But why did you kick me down stairs ?"

Anonymous.

"When Tadloe treads the streets, the paviours cry,
God bless you, Sir!-and lay their rammers by."
Anonymous.

This last epigram seems to have been a great favourite with our forefathers. It is the last quoted in his preliminary essay by the worthy editor of the Festoon, Mr. Richard Graves, the author of the Spiritual Quixote. He gives it as an innocent and allowable allusion to personal peculiarities, nowise derogatory from the maxims in those lines which he so earnestly cites to us, "Cursed be the verse," etc., and we quite agree with him.

One writer there is, of English, or rather of Welsh birth, who wrote exclusively in Latin, and who is well entitled to the name of epigrammatist. John Owen, or Audoenus, a native of Caernarvonshire, an Oxford scholar, and ultimately a poor country schoolmaster, published four successive sets of epigrams, which were collected into one volume, about the year 1620, and were received with great approbation both in this country and on the Continent. He appears to have been patronized and pensioned

VOL. XLII.-NO. LXXXIII.

D

to some extent by Henry Prince of Wales, to whom some of his books were dedicated. He died in 1622.

A regular epigrammatist must, we suspect, be a singular and rather unhappy sort of man, with some of the idiosyncrasies and sorrows of a comic actor, a paid writer in Punch, or a professed punster. What is other men's amusement is his business. He is perpetually in pursuit of materials to make epigrams of. The various incidents and relations of life, whether serious or ludicrous, are regarded by him in only one point of view: as affording secret analogies or antitheses that may be put into an epigrammatic form. Owen seems to have been thoroughly imbued with this spirit. An epigram was to him everything. All the arts, all the sciences, all ranks, all professions in life, all things in heaven or on earth, human and divine, were epigrammatized by him. He seems, like Antony, to have been ready and willing to lose everything for the Cleopatra of his affections, and a remarkable instance is given of a sacrifice thus incurred by him. One of his epigrams, alluded to by all his biographers, is in these terms:

"An Petrus fuerit Romæ, sub judice lis est:
Simonem Romæ nemo fuisse negat."

"If Peter ever was at Rome,

By many has been mooted:

That Simon there was quite at home,
Has never been disputed."

This playful allusion to the double relation of the name SIMON had a twofold effect on Owen's fate. It gained him a place in the Pope's Index Expurgatorius, and it lost him one in the will of a rich Catholic uncle. The same general idea we have seen elsewhere embodied in these lines

"The Pope claims back to Apostolic sources;

But when I think of Papal crimes and courses,
It strikes me the resemblance is completer
To Simon Magus than to Simon Peter."

It has been observed by Lessing that it is impossible to read much of Owen at a time without a strong feeling of weariness, which he ascribes to the fact that the style of his epigrams is pedantic, and that he deals too much in abstract ideas, without the life-like pictures that a man of the world would have presented. There may be something in this view; but it should be remembered that epigrams are not food, but condiment, and that any large dose of them is both repulsive and unwholesome. The continued tension in which the mind is kept, and the rapid and renewed exertion that is constantly occasioned by passing