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, Cupidus, Simia, Virtus. "OF TREASON. "Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? "OF SIXE SORTS OF FASTERS. Sixe sorts of folks I find use fasting days, Now he that eateth fast, and drinks as fast, "OF ENCLOSING A COMMON. "A lord that purposed for his more avayle, Was reckoning with his friend about the cost "OF TWO WELSH GENTLEMEN. "Two Squires of Wales arrived at a towne, Those that follow we give almost at random, and without reference to chronology : : "DUM VIVIMUS VIVAMUS." "Live while you live,' the epicure would say, I live in pleasure while I live to Thee." Doddridge. "None, without hope, e'er loved the brightest fair: Lord Lyttleton. "On parents' knees, a naked new-born child, Sir W. Jones, from the Persian. "I loved thee, beautiful and kind, Lord Nugent. "If all be true that I do think, "The little boy, to show his might and pow'r, "If man might know The ill he must undergo, And shun it so, Then it were good to know: Tho' he know it, What boots him know it? He must undergo it." Suckling. Suckling. "Rich Gripe does all his thoughts and cunning bend Walsh. "Jack eating rotten cheese did say, 1 This is a translation of the following lines: ܙܙ Anonymous. "Si bene commemini, causæ sunt quinque bibendi : 2 This is a translation of the Greek lines : Εἰ μὲν ἦν μαθεῖν 'Α δεῖ παθεῖν, Καλὸν ἦν τὸ μαθεῖν. Εἰ καὶ δεῖ παθεῖν Α δεῖ μαθεῖν, Τί δεῖ μαθεῖν ; "Brutus unmoved heard how his Portia fell; Anonymous. "When late I attempted your pity to move, Anonymous. "When Tadloe treads the streets, the paviours cry, 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: "If Peter ever was at Rome, By many has been mooted: That Simon there was quite at home, 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 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 |