Part 1 — AN ESSAY ON EPIGRAMS.

Who nowadays writes epigrams? The species epigrammatist seems to be well-nigh extinct. Now and then some Herr Professor, whose learning is less ponderous than common, after due incubation hatches what he calls a Sinngedicht. But his achievement is too often a paraphrase, if not a literal translation, of some Latin original. At intervals, too, Thorold Rogers, clergyman and social reformer, flings into London journals some explosive squib couched in verse, but the missile is tolerably harmless, and draws far less attention than a telegram. No doubt before the invention of the newspaper the epigram, so easy to remember and so incisive in its effect, was no mean engine of cajolery, or calumny. But the days are gone when such weapons were effective in the political arena, and either conquered a pension or provoked a lettre de cachet. Byron, who worshipped Pope, and deemed everything his master had done worth doing, sometimes ventured into Martial’s province, but rarely successfully, except in Don Juan. A score of epigrams might be culled from that poem which would answer all the conditions of a rigorous definition. Since Byron, no poet of eminence has condescended to this form of art. Tennyson indeed is terse and telling, as is proved by the facility with which we quote him; yet he seems as incapable of epigrams as Morris, of whom most of us, much as we like him, can with difficulty remember a line. Browning might write them if he chose, but he does not choose, and so it is that the old epigrammatist lingers only in some isolated representative, as the dodo did in Madagascar, or like that Tasmanian survivor whose present existence is clouded with a doubt.

Epigrammatists may perish from the face of the earth, but the epigram is immortal. It well deserves to be so. What form of wit imparts so much pleasure to so many persons? If the world could be fairly polled, it might be found that some tiny epigram has yielded more genuine delight than the most ambitious works of genius, as, for instance, the Paradise Lost. If there is one Latin author who is still read for hearty amusement, it is Martial, and even the candid schoolboy who declines to be charmed by the Iliad can see some fun in the Anthology.

It would probably pose most persons to be suddenly called on to define an epigram. And no wonder, for every great scholar since the manuscripts of Martial were recovered in Western Europe has tried his hand at a definition, and none except Lessing has grasped it. The literal meaning is, of course, inscription, and the word was originally applied to the writing on a monument or tomb. But in later times the word obtained in Greek rhetoric and poetry the peculiar significance which in English distinguishes the epigram from an epitaph, and in German the Sinngedicht from a mere Aufschrift or Ueberschrift. We shall at once lay our finger on this peculiar significance by answering the question, why the Greeks had but one word where the Germans have two?

We need hardly say that it could be neither a poverty of language nor a contempt for precision which led the former to content themselves with the original term. If there is anything notorious, it is that the Athenian never suffered a new idea, or the finest shade of deviation from an old idea, to shiver in the cold of paraphrase, but straightway clothed it with a snug, warm word, cut and fitted to the shape. We may be sure that a sense of some nice propriety, the recognition, perhaps, of some just and suggestive metaphor, induced him to attach the name of epigram to a particular class of little poems, without any direct reference to their fitness for inscription on memorial stones.

The fact is, that every genuine epigram is divisible into two distinct parts, of which the first answers precisely to the monument or tomb on which the primitive epigram was written, and the second to the inscription proper which the monument bore. To surprise, and thereupon to explain, to secure the twofold delight which springs in curiosity and ripens in gratification, was the purpose of the inscribed monument, and is still the aim of the true epigram. Let us apply this to some faultless type, like that stanza by Sir William Jones:

It is plain that the first two lines awaken curiosity, excite interest. They answer to the graceful shaft which arrests the eye and allures the step. They win us to approach and investigate, to look for some further revelation, to ponder on the lesson which the last two lines convey. In a word, attention is first secured, and then rewarded. Let the reader test this analysis in other instances, and he will find it essential to the epigram that both these feelings, the longing of expectation and the satisfaction of it, should be evoked, and in this order. All the other qualities which have been supposed to be peculiar to the epigram, but are really common to many sorts of short and witty poems, may be easily deduced from this definition. Thus, the more terse and vigorous are the lines which introduce the subject, the more potent will be their appeal to curiosity, and the more tenacious their hold upon our interest. Architecturally, the monument will be more impressive. On the other hand, the more novel and delightful is the concluding thought, or the more felicitous and pointed the expression of it, the more complete is our satisfaction, the more amply do we feel repaid for our pains in deciphering the inscription. It follows likewise that the second half, or thought, of the epigram must interpret the fact embodied in the first, otherwise the inscription, instead of explaining the particular monument which bears it, serves merely to point us to another. So much for the veritable Sinngedicht. Of the pseudo-epigram there are many varieties, but the two commonest are those which awaken curiosity without appeasing it, or else instruct without enlisting attention. Without stopping to point out the flaws in many little poems, more or less witty, more or less compact, which are falsely called epigrams, we shall perceive the accuracy and value of the above definition by glancing at some famous models of the true form. In all the examples we may cite, we will give the originals, that they who do not like our version may make a better for themselves.

Let us begin with a couplet from Wenicke, who has written so much and so well in this way as to merit the name of the German Martial:

We have not been able in this instance to preserve both the rhyme and the metre, and prefer to keep the latter. The lines convey a noble eulogy.

Here are two more from German sources. We have forgotten who wrote them, but our readers may remember. The turn of the thought in the second is novel and rather pretty:

The greatest of German poets are not ashamed to stoop to epigram, and sometimes aim to reproduce the metre which Martial preferred. Of the following essays in elegiacs the first three are by Schiller, the others by Emanuel Geibel:

The grand-master of epigrammatists, Martial, with the proud humility of conscious power, confessed himself a pupil of Catullus. But it was rather his purity of diction and naïve simplicity which Martial borrowed from the elder poet, not the point and sparkle of his epigrams, which are of right his own. The minor poems of Catullus include few which are strictly epigrams, and of these only two or three admit of distillation into a modern language. We give one which is addressed, like most of his amatory verse, to Lesbia. In this instance we abandon the attempt to reproduce the Latin elegiacs.

While we are on the subject of lover’s whims and inconsistencies, we venture to give an experiment of our own. At least we may claim the expression, although the thought, if we remember rightly, belongs to Moore:

Before we come to Martial, let us pause a moment over the Greek Anthology, of which some parts, no doubt, were written later than his day, but others must share with Catullus the honor of suggesting to the brilliant Spaniard the right conception of the epigram, as well as the appropriate treatment. Unlike Horace, however, Martial rarely condescended to borrow either thought or expression from a foreign source. We may say of him, and more truthfully, what Denham said of Cowley, that he “melted not the ancient gold.” Perhaps the most famous epigram in the Anthology is that on a picture of Pythagoras. It has been a dozen times translated into Latin or expanded in Greek, but generally with indifferent success:

Most of the versions require four lines, and some eight, to project the idea, and only two that we have seen matches the original in compression; here is one of them, by Hugo Grotius:

The objection to this is—and it lies to the Greek as well—we are asked to imagine that Pythagoras expressly desired to be depicted silent, in other words, requested the painter not to perform an impossibility—which is very like an absurdity. The true idea, and one that gives point and beauty to the compliment, is rather this, that since a prime tenet of the Pythagoreans was the maintenance of a thoughtful silence and a wise reserve, it would have been false to the mental posture of the man, and therefore bad art (supposing it to have been possible) to have represented him otherwise than in speechless meditation. We have attempted to give some such turn to the thought in English elegiacs.

It is no mean honor to be indisputably the first in any line of art, and certainly within the field of the epigram Martial is prince of poets. He conceived the form of poetry to which he devoted his life to possess much more of dignity and importance than we incline to allow it, and he did much to make good his claim. He held towards previous epigrammatists the same commanding position which Dante holds towards Sicilian and Provençal poets, or Marot towards the Trouvères, and he wrought the epigram to that climax of perfection from which progress means nothing but decline. He filed and fitted his lines with a punctilious care which we should expect to betray itself, yet his verse flows with a limpid ease through which the eye seeks in vain the labor that smoothed the channel. We may call him in simple justice what Bulwer called Addison:

To hope to reflect in a translation the gleam and edge of Martial would be absurd. We shall merely aim in a general way, while preserving the metre, to sketch the outlines of the central thought. If our readers miss the bloom on the rose, we at least cannot help them. They must seek the garden where it grew, and pluck it for themselves.

In the course of a long residence in Rome, Martial seems to have suffered the usual vicissitudes of authors, and sometimes in moments of eclipse found his friends more willing to reproach than to relieve him. He fancies he detects a reason for it:

In the time of Domitian a round portion was as essential to the marriage of a Roman virgin as it is now with French ladies of condition, who must either endow or derogate. The Latin prototype of the Belgravian mother must have had grievous cause of complaint when the state bestowed prizes on such as were at once husbands and fathers. The following epigram, however, takes a more elevated view, and strikes the key-note of Tennyson’s rhapsody in the well-known lines of The Princess:

Here is a playful innuendo which has often been copied. Marot’s version is exceedingly neat, but somewhat coarse, so our readers must take ours in place of it:

No epigram of Martial’s is more admired, and none seems to us more admirable, than that which chronicles the magnanimous act of Arria, who showed her husband the way to death. She lived in the time of Messalina, but the deed was worthy of Lucrece. Perhaps the traditional fortitude and fashionable stoicism of Rome might have paused contented with the historical fact, but modern sentiment cannot fail to welcome the touch of tenderness in the concluding line. We place beside it The Death of Portia because the two poems are pitched in the same key. The latter, however, is a mere historiette, told with rare force and fervor, but without the point and turn which distinguish a true epigram. To recur to our metaphor, the monument is a noble one, but the superscription is wanting. Our readers will observe that Martial’s Portia follows her husband to the grave, while she precedes him in Shakespeare’s play.

In so far as the modern epigram is modelled upon Martial, we should expect it to flourish with especial luxuriance in the classic literature of France. Modern French, of all the daughters of Latin, inherits the most terseness and precision, and adapts herself with peculiar ease to a compact and pregnant style. The burst of admiration for the ancients which deserved the name of Renaissance, and rose in Ronsard and Du Bellay to a fervent and naïve enthusiasm, was tempered by Malherbe and Boileau to a cautious study of principles and the elaborate finish of expression. It is a significant fact that Malherbe during the most fruitful period of his life, from twenty to forty-five, composed on the average but thirty-three lines a year. Waller had such examples in his mind when he urged his countrymen to prune their style:

Malherbe himself made but few epigrams, and none comparable to the familiar stanza in the elegy which he wrote to console a friend. Translating it is like handling a butterfly:

Of French epigrammatists, the most voluminous are Clement Marot and Jean Baptiste Rousseau. The latter has left four books of epigrams which are rarely deficient in point, but often diffuse and cold. Here is one:

We have seen that French and German are rich in epigrams, but we incline to think our own literature richer still. From Sir John Harrington downwards the line of epigrammatists was unbroken, until it succumbed to the contempt with which the Lake poets regarded a style so repugnant to their own. It might be not uninteresting to trace the growth of this modest flower in our English soil, but we have already overrun the limit we had set ourselves, and the English epigram must wait another opportunity. But one word more. The initial lines of an epigram, which are addressed to curiosity, whether from ignorance or a mistaken love of conciseness, are often omitted, and a clumsy substitute is provided in the lemma, or explanatory title. Should this happen to be changed or lost, the poem becomes absurd or unintelligible. Take, for instance, this from the German:

This would seem sheer nonsense if we did not know that it was written on two children, who, otherwise lovely, had but one eye apiece. The Greek quatrain from which this couplet was extracted is a perfect epigram, and, needing no introduction, contains in itself both the fact and the thought. Even in the case of an epitaph, honestly designed to be graven on a tomb, the best models require no lemma. It is so, for instance, with Ben Jonson’s lines on the Countess of Pembroke: