modified, enriched, and idiomatised by the presence of the clerkly Latin. But the revivalists of the Renaissance were epigrammatists of the second kind, who studied the purity of the classical idiom, in order to free not only the Latin but the vulgar tongues from the sing-song and jingle, the alliterations and antithesis of sound, which the scholastic Latin had brought into vogue. Sir Thomas More has three epigrams relating to a singing man, whose son begged an epitaph for his father. The poet wrote one in the revived classical style; the son was dissatisfied; so More sat down and scribbled another in the vigorous medieval sing-song, with which the young man was delighted. He wrote a third epigram to apologise for his treason to the new learning, and to give an account of the circumstances that led to his temporary apostasy from the faith of the revivalists. Purity of diction was the highest aim of this school. One has only to read a volume of their empty poetry, prefaced by the usual complimentary epigrams, and made up mainly of the author's replies to his friends' praises, to see that the humanists were not the people to endow European civilisation with a single idea, but only to deck out the vulgar tongues in a classical garb. They taught Frenchmen and Englishmen to speak LatinFrench and Greek-English. They are answerable for the euphuism of Lilly, the stilo-culto of Gongora, and the classical affectations of the Pleiad in France and Opitz in Germany. Against the vapid vacuity of the humanists, who were chiefly adepts in the art of spreading out a thin thought over page after page of laboured verbiage, the Latin epigrammatists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries made some reaction, by restoring a meaning to language which had degenerated into mere sound. Their numbers were prodigious; their names would fill pages. In Italy the most epigrammatic of them was Sannazarius, who wrote on Cæsar Borgia: "Aut nihil, aut Cæsar vult dici Borgia. Quidni? In France one of the best was Nicolas Bourbon, who, among a number of good epigrams, wrote one to his readers beginning: "Qui legit has nugas, oro sit candidus”— a line which provoked our Owen to the sarcasm: "Quas tu dixisti nugas, non esse putasti: Beza was a still better epigrammatist; his epitaph on the "Amplissimus vir hic jacet." Joachim du Bellay, the founder of the Pleiad, wrote well in Latin, e.g.: "Paulle, tuum inscribis Nugarum nomine librum : In toto libro nil melius titulo." Passerat and Rapin were pointed epigrammatists. Pasquier was another, who wrote an excellent epigram on Beza's three wives, the point of which is stolen in an epigram printed by Mr. Booth, with the title "On his three marriages, by Thomas Bastard, Esq., of New College, Oxford:" "Though marriage by some folks be reckoned a curse, The first for her person, the next for her purse, And the third for a warming-pan, doctor, and nurse.” In Portugal there were Barbosa and Pimenta; in Great Britain and Ireland there had been a line of epigrammatists almost throughout the Middle Ages. Of St. Malachi, 1132, we have: "Spernere mundum, spernere sese, spernere nullum, Henry of Lincoln, 1153, left eight books of epigrams; and "Quid jus sit, Rex, atque pium considerat æquus— On the theme, "Where I do well, there I dwell," he writes: "Illa mihi Patria est ubi pascor, non ubi nascor; His applications of trite sayings are often excellent : "Tempore quod nostro Ratio sit recta dolendum; He condoles with a noble and beautiful lady, whom, on account of her poverty, no one would marry, with the reflection: "Prima categorias inter, substantia sola Plus in amore valet quam genus et species." Of his serious epigrams we will give but one: Non placet; est vero nil mihi, Paule, prius. Among the Scots, Buchanan was much admired. Latin epigrammatists abounded in Germany and the Netherlands. They may be divided into two schools; the panegyrical courtpoets, whose epigrams were gross flatteries, bitter satires, or jokes to season suppers; and the didactic school, which regarded epigrams as the ultimate atoms by the concurrence of which a poem was made. The Jesuits made their pupils rise by steps through the epigram, the epitaph, the ode, the elegy, and the epic, to the tragedy. Every great holiday had to be celebrated with epigrams, inscriptions, and odes. Many Jesuits, therefore, became the best epigrammatists of their day. So prolific were they, that Father Klein published, in 1757, a selection of a thousand epigrams, written by Jesuits of the Austrian province, and announced another thousand as being ready for the press. Among them is the epigram of F. Christopher Kissenpfenning (1656), which Mr. Booth chooses for his motto: "Omne epigramma sit instar apis, sit aculeus illi, One of the best-known Jesuit epigrammatists is Bernard Bauhusius, a Dutchman, who amused himself with making hexameter lines which would suffer from 40,000 to 3,628,800 permutations without ceasing to be verses. Like Owen, he was a punster— "Is bonus est medicus sibi Qui fuerit modicus cibi ;" and he delighted in ingenious anatomies of words"Cernitur amicus amore, more, et ore, et re." If we turn to our English poets, we shall find the three stages of epigram which we have noticed. In Chaucer we see the clear idea spontaneously striking out the proper expression. Diffuse and gossiping as he generally is, he has many lines in which our language exhibits all its vigour. A single line is often a striking picture— "The smiler with a knife under his cloak." The prologue to the Canterbury Tales abounds in such epigraphical sketches; the knight is thus drawn: "And though that he was worthy, he was wise, The monk: "He was a lord full fat, and in good point." The merchant: "His reasons spake he full solempnély." The man of laws : "No where a busier man than he there n'as, Here there is no show of art, no endeavour to compress thoughts into couplets or stanzas, each containing an independent picture, something in the way of Alciatus' emblems,such as came out in Skelton, in Sir Thomas More's emblems and ballets, in Sackville's Mirror for Magistrates, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, and in Shakespeare's Sonnets,-which represent the Greek epigram or Italian madrigal. The third or scholastic stage began in 1562, when John Heywood published his six hundred epigrams, followed by Turberville with his epitaphs, epigrams, songs, and sonnets, in 1567. These first attempts in imitation of Martial were rude enough. The English taste was modified by the publication of Lilly's Euphues in 1579, when the fashionable poets began to accumulate constrained witticisms, to express poetic conceits in far-fetched similes and curious images, and to strive after sharpness, piquancy, and logical perspicuity, through perpetual antithesis and pointed turns. We see the influence of euphuism even in Shakespeare,-not so much in the civil war of wit in his earlier plays, which naturally hinges on the pun and quibble, as in the pathetic scenes where he plays upon words. No doubt there is a touch of nature here; strong feeling may dwell upon a rhythm or jingle as upon a spell of magical power, even though the meaning may be inappropriate; we knew a poor woman who found great comfort during a cruel operation in muttering the two lines, 66 Religion never was designed To make our pleasures less." So anger sometimes breaks out into the most figurative language. The mind desires that the sound of the words should really represent the idea; when they seem too weak, the excited imagination will lay hold of a rhyme when it seems to supply the lack of reason. It finds its omen in a name, like the dying John of Gaunt in Shakespeare, or Ajax in Sophocles. Hence it is that some of the best and most powerful epigrams are those which express a serious reality or a strong feeling in a play upon words. Shakespeare's epigrammatic manner is only found in his poems and earlier plays. He outgrew it as his genius matured. But his contemporaries could not get beyond it. From the Euphuists descended, in legitimate succession, the "metaphysical" poets,-Donne, Jonson, Cowley,-who yoked together the most heterogeneous ideas, and ransacked nature and art for the most far-fetched illustrations. At the same time there was an endeavour made to force not only euphuist diction but classical metre upon the English tongue. There were besides many professed epigrammatists. Of Bastard of Blandford (1598) we have already given an example. Weever's epigrams, "in the oldest cut and newest fashion" (1599), and those of Davis-which were published with some of Christopher Marlowe's—are referred to by Jonson in an epigram to his "mere English censurer:"8 "To thee my way in epigrams seems new, The "mere English" critic expected a book of epigrams to be racy reading: "Thou shouldst be bold, licentious, full of gall, Wormwood and sulphur, sharp and toothed withal, As madmen stones; not caring whom they hit." But Davis's epigrams were at least as good as Jonson's. Here is one: "When Priscus, raised from low to high estate, Rode through the street in pompous jollity, Caius, his poor familiar friend of late, Bespake him thus: Sir, now you know not me. They Jonson's own old-new manner was an attempt to restore a "When was there contract better drawn by fate, |