from one unconnected set of ideas to another, produce the same sense of fatigue that we feel in an exhibition of pictures, even when the individual works are of high excellence.

Owen's epigrams, which are many hundreds in number, are of very various merit; but they display a large amount of ingenuity and fertility of thought and fancy, with much rectitude of feeling, great neatness and terseness of expression, and no inconsiderable degree of learning and acquaintance with affairs. Some of them are not worth translating, and some are untranslatable, such as those which turn on mere verbal wit, as where Jacob and Esau are each said to have given omne jus suum to his brother. Others are excellent exercises in versification, and several translations of a great part of them have appeared. It is not within our purpose to dwell long upon them here; but we venture to subjoin a few of the more remarkable as a specimen :

"Vis bonus esse? velis tantum, fiesque volendo:
Is tibi posse dabit, qui tibi velle dedit."

"Would you be good? then will to be; you'll be so from that hour; For He that gave you first the Will, will give you then the Power." Or thus:

"Would you be good? the will is all you want:
By merely willing it, your wish is gained:
For He the needful Power will straightway grant
From whom the rightful Will you first obtained."

"VOTUM SALOMONIS.

"Cur Regis sapientis erat Sapientia votum?
Optasset Salomon, si sapuisset, opes :

Non optavit opes Salomon; sapientius optat :"
Nam sapere optavit: Cur? quia non sapuit."

"Solomon, had he been wise, would for Wealth have preferred his petition;

Needless it were to have wished what he already had got: Wisely he asked not for Wealth, but for Wisdom to mend his condition;

Was it because he was wise? No, but because he was not."

"Dat Galenus opes, dat Justinianus honores,
Dum ne sit Patiens iste, nec ille Cliens."

"Physic brings wealth, and Law promotion,
To followers able, apt, and pliant;
But very seldom, I've a notion,
Either to Patient or to Client."

"Hoc quod adest Hodie, quod nomen habebat heri? Cras.
Cras Hodie quodnam nomen habebit? Heri.

Cras lentum, quod adest nunquam, nec abest procul unquam,
Quonam appelletur nomine cras? Hodie."
"This day which now you call To-day,
What yesterday you called it, say:'
We called it then To-morrow.
'And what its name to-morrow, pray?'
Why then, the name of Yesterday
"Twill be compell'd to borrow.
"To-morrow, too, which ne'er is here,
But ever is advancing near,

A like fate will befall it:

It will to-morrow change its name,
And quite another title claim:
To-day we then must call it."

Theiologis animam subjecit lapsus Adami,
Et corpus Medicis, et bona Juridicis."

"From Adam's fall behold what sad disasters!
Both us and ours it sells to various masters :
Our soul to Priests, our body to the Doctors,

Our lands and goods to Pleaders and to Proctors."

While on the subject of Latin epigrams written by Englishmen, we may notice one of considerable merit, occasioned by the remarkable controversial incident said to have happened in the sixteenth century to the two Reynoldses, William and John: "Of which two brothers, by the way," so Peter Heylyn tells us in his Cosmographie (p. 303), "it is very observable, that William was at first a Protestant of the Church of England, and John trained up in Popery beyond the seas. William, out of an honest zeal to reduce his brother to this Church, made a journey to him; where, on a conference between them, so fell it out that John, being overcome by his brother's argument, returned into England, where he became one of the more strict or rigid sort of the English Protestants; and William, being convinced by his brother John, stayed beyond the seas, where he proved a very violent and virulent Papist: of which strange accident, Dr. Alabaster, who had made trial of both religions, and amongst many notable whimsies, had some fine abilities, made the following epigram, which, for the excellency thereof and the rareness of the argument, I shall here subjoin:"

"Lis et Victoria mutua.

Bella inter geminos plusquam civilia fratres
Traxerat ambiguus Religionis apex:
Ille Reformatæ Fidei pro partibus instat,
Iste reformandam denegat esse fidem.

Propositis causæ rationibus, alterutrinque
Concurrêre pares et cecidêre pares.
Quod fuit in votis, fratrem capit alteruterque,
Quod fuit in fatis, perdit uterque fidem.
Captivi Gemini nullos habuêre triumphos,1
Sed victor victi transfuga castra petit.

Quod genus hoc pugnæ est? ubi victus gaudet uterque,
Et tamen alteruter se superâsse dolet."

"Religious discord, when such feuds were rife,
Two brothers roused to worse than civil strife.
On Reformation's side the one was ranged;
The other wished the Ancient Faith unchanged.
In wordy war, th' opponents, nothing loath,
Rush'd on to battle, and were vanquish'd both.
Each, as he wish'd, the other's doctrine shook,
But each, as fate decreed, his own forsook :
No triumph from such victory could flow,
When both were found deserting to the foe.
Strange combat! where defeat with joy was hail'd,
And where the conquerors grieved they had prevail'd!"
Another of the same.

"Upon opposite sides of the Popery question
(The story's a fact, though it's hard of digestion),
Two Reynoldses argued, the one with the other,
Till each by his reasons converted his brother.
With a contest like this did you e'er before meet,

Where the vanquish'd were victors, the winners were beat!"

We shall here add a single but very celebrated epigram by one who received from a brother poet the highest possible tribute of praise

("Poet and Saint! to thee alone are given

The two most sacred names of earth and heaven :") Crashaw, to whom we allude, is not, we think, very happy in his English epigrams; but his Latin ones contain much beauty, and that which we have selected is among the best and most famous, though, strange to say, it is often misquoted.

"AQUÆ IN VINUM VERSÆ.

"Unde rubor vestris et non sua purpura lymphis?
Quæ rosa mirantes tam nova mutat aquas?
Numen (convivæ) præsens agnoscite numen;
Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit."

Heylyn's reading is

Captivi gemini sine captivante fuerunt."

But we prefer what we have given in the text, which is taken from another

source.

"Why shine these waters with a borrowed glow?
What rose has tinged the stream as forth it gushed?
Ye Guests, a present Deity thus know;

The modest Nymph beheld her God, and blushed."

There is, perhaps, a fault in this epigram, as introducing in the close, by the use of the word Nympha, a mythological idea into a sacred scene; and the line would perhaps be in better taste if we adopted the common but incorrect reading

"Lympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit."

Of which there could be no better translation than the schoolboy's impromptu :—

"The modest water, awed by power divine,

Beheld its God, and blushed itself to wine."

That our own countrymen may here not wholly be overlooked, we shall give one Latin epigram, if it be not rather an epitaph, by a Scottish writer, who belongs, indeed, to the post-Augustan age; but the specimen we select had the honour to be trans lated by the greatest English poet of his age or party. Dr. Archibald Pitcairn, whose writings, if well illustrated, would reveal a good many curious particulars as to his own times, was a thorough Jacobite and a firm Episcopalian; though these opinions were, by his enemies at least, thought to be quite compatible with an absence of any genuine religious belief. We insert his lines upon the Death of the Viscount of Dundee, with Dryden's version:--

"IN MORTEM VICECOMITIS TAODUNENSIS.
"Ultime Scotorum, potuit quo sospite solo
Libertas patriæ salva fuisse tuæ :
Te moriente, novos accepit Scotia cives,
Accepitque novos, te moriente, Deos.
Illa tibi superesse negat, tu non potes illi :
Ergo Caledoniæ nomen inane vale;
Tuque vale, gentis priscæ fortissime ductor,

Ultime Scotorum, atque ultime Grame, vale."

"Oh last and best of Scots! who didst maintain
Thy country's freedom from a foreign reign;
New people fill the land now thou art gone,
New gods the temples, and new kings the throne.
Scotland and thee did each in other live;
Nor wouldst thou her, nor could she thee survive.
Farewell, who dying didst support the state,
And couldst not fall but with thy country's fate."

Dryden.

If British epigrammatists who have written in Latin are

rather beyond our present beat, those of other countries who have done so are still more excluded. It would indeed be an endless task to review the innumerable writers of epigrams that the Continent has produced. We do not profess to have equalled the industry or undergone the sufferings of a very respectable compiler, who made. a collection for the use of Eton School, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and who declares that, in the performance of his task, he had read as many as 20,000 epigrams, the most of which would have been rather a disgrace than an ornament to his book. He is particularly severe on the ineffable silliness of those which occur in the Delicia of the German poets: " Ingentibus voluminibus ingentem absurdissimorum Epigrammatum numerum complexas." This criticism is perhaps too indiscriminate. There are some excellent epigrams in several of the Italian and other Continental Latinists who are not Germans; and although the German mind is not peculiarly epigrammatic, we are disposed to believe that there, too, some pearls might be found hid among the rubbish. Of all collections we fear the rule must be what Martial at first laid down, Sunt mala plura. The writing of epigrams is like the casting of a net; we must be satisfied if an occasional good throw compensates for many failures.

We shall not, however, dismiss these Continental followers of Martial without giving a specimen of their compositions; and we shall first select for that purpose two of a peculiar character, which are models of their kind; but which are rather pointed descriptions of famous scenes than proper epigrams. The first is the celebrated description of Venice by Sannazarius, for which the Venetian Senate remunerated him at the rate of a handsome sum of gold for every line:

"DE MIRABILI URBE VENETIIS.

"Viderat Hadriacis Venetam Neptunus in undis
Stare urbem, et toto ponere jura mari;

'Nunc mihi Tarpejas quantumvis, Jupiter, arces
Objice, et illa tui monia Martis,' ait:

'Si pelago Tibrim præfers, urbem aspice utramque;
Illam homines dices, hanc posuisse Deos.''

"Neptune saw Venice on the waters stand,

And all o'er ocean stretch her wide command:

Now, Jove,' he cried, boast those Tarpeian steeps
Where thy son Mars his state majestic keeps ;

Could Tiber match the sea, look here and own

That city men could build, but this the Gods alone.'"

1 Epigrammatum Delectus Ex omnibus tum veteribus, tum recentioribus poetis accuratè decerptus. In usum Scholæ Etonensis. Londini, 1686.