Drunk gots Loser twice a day:
Bibo once o'erwets his clay:
Do not either drunker call.

Bibo drunk, is drunk for ever,
For his sober fit comes never,
And his once, is once-for-all.'

Henry Stephens, who is generally somewhat dull and heavy in his epigrams, rises above his usual self in this 'Upon a Wilful Helpmate,' which has some pretensions to class among the humorous epigrams :—

Dum quædam cerebrosa diu reprehenditur uxor,

Nec satis officii dicitur esse memor,

"Quid de me queritur conjux? Quod vult volo," dicit;

66

Imperium is sibi vult: id volo et ipsa mihi.'

'A headstrong wife who oft came in for blame,

When charged with scant obedience, would reply,
"Why snarls my spouse? Our wishes are the same:
He would the ruler be: and so would I."'

Humour and satire are combined in the following by Stephanus Paschasius, levelled at some who dabbled in the healing art:'Gratuitas operas mihi qui promittitis ægro,

Parcite non tanti est æger ut esse velim.'

'Say not, be sick, and gratis I'll prescribe: Sickness prepense requires a stronger bribe!' and in another of a similar scope, by the same hand :Ægrotum visis, sanum me visere cessas.

O utinam nunquam, Candide, te videam!' 'You call when I am sick, but leave me quite

When well. I wish you'd always cut me, White!'

Another of this class by one Macentinus accounts in a very plausible way for a not uncommon physiological fact:

6

"Candidior cur barba," Lycus, "sit crine" rogatus,
"Sæpe fatigor" ait, "gutture, non cerebro!"

Lycus was ask'd the reason, it is said,

His beard was so much whiter than his head.
"The reason," he replied, "my friend, is plain:
I work my throat much harder than my brain!

We may rank, too, in the same category a distich of Euricius Cordus, a German physician and poet, who was a friend of Erasmus and Luther, and active in the Reformation. He also was indebted for his poetical taste and cultivation to his connexion with Mantua, Florence, Venice, Rome, and the knot of

men

men in those cities who devoted themselves to Latin literature. He addresses the following to Philomusus :

'Si nisi defunctos laudas, Philomuse, poetas,
Me tibi perpetuo displicuisse velim.'
If only when they're dead, you poets praise,
I own I'd rather have your blame always.'

The original of this may possibly have been Martial's epigram
(viii. 69), Miraris veteres Vacerra, solos,' &c. Cordus could
occasionally throw off couplets in which severity and a caustic
vein are the chief ingredients. We quote one of these, which
probably had a fair amount of truth in it, but which certainly
was not softened down through any predilection of the writer for
the subject of it. It is entitled ' De medico monacho :'—
'Medicum frequentes feminæ monachum petunt.
Nil suspicare! gros domi viros habent.'

To Esculapian monks the good-wives roam.

What marvel! They have husbands sick at home.'

Few epigrams of this date are more severe than this, though one or two might be adduced of a like pungency, which, as has been observed, is a later and less amiable development of the epigram. In fact, such ebullitions are satires in brief,' and are only to be justified by the existence of some crying vice at which they are directed, or by the writer's precaution to avoid even the semblance of personality. We cannot, for instance, see much to recommend this of Paulus Thomas, 'In Testylum :'Testylus est lippis oculis, quis plurimus humor Sicut inexhaustis fontibus usque fluit.

6

Hunc patrio lacrimas fundentem in funere laudas?
Desine; hic est morbus, Pontice, non pietas.'

Weak eyes hath Testyl, whence a copious spring
Of running moisture flows eternally;

Praise of his tears o'er his dead sire why sing?
Pooh! "Tis his ailment, not his piety.'

Or that of Georgius Anselmus, a physician of Parma, directed against a practitioner of whose licence to practise surgery the existence may have been problematical :·

'De lanio medicus fit Sosilus: haud nova res est:

Fecit enim lanius quod facit et medicus.'

'Sosil, the butcher, has become a leech. "Tis nothing new.
For what he did when butchering, as doctor he will do.'

This last is manifestly founded upon an epigram of Martial

(i. 47).

More

More harmless is the joke of the Frenchman Béllay (who was noticed by Francis I. and Margaret of Navarre, and who earned in his day the title of 'Pater elegantiarum, pater omnium leporum') on one of the literary fraternity:

'Paule, tuum inscribis nugarum nomine librum :

In toto libro nil melius titulo.'

"The title "trifles" on Paul's book is writ.

I've read it through, and found no happier hit.'

Others on misers, quack doctors, and sorry poets occur in tolerable frequency among the epigrams of these Latinists, many of which are pointed, if not stinging. This is not the best feature in them; but even in this they are not so biting and offensive as the epigrams of Martial's day. And it may be said generally of epigrams of the date of those which we have been quoting, that they are mostly unmarked by bitterness and partiality. More frequently some little elegance of thought is clothed in a fitting couplet, as e. g. in the epigram of Cunradinus 'On a Fly engraved in a golden Drinking-cup':

'Aurato in cyatho dum Corsica gusto, nequivi

Suavius extingui, splendidiusve tegi.'

Deep down I drew my latest breath in a gold cup of wine. Could I have wish'd a sweeter death, or a more splendid shrine?' Or some little pun on a difference of letter in two words is turned into a compliment or saw. Such are these of the Jesuit Bernard Bauhusius (A.D. 1620), whose volume lies before us :— 'Omne solum forti patria est: fortem excipe nautam : Pontivagis nautis omne salum patria est.'

To render this pun in English is next to impossible. We might harp on the alliteration of soil and sail; but it would not meet the requirements of the epigrammatist. Giving up the pun, we translate

Says the saw, every soil is a home to the brave:

Nay, nay, the brave sailor finds home on each wave.'

Again, the same author has an epigram on 'Vitrum et vinum :'

'Vitrum proditor, atque vinum est:

Hoc animi speculum, illud oris.
Quod formæ solet esse vitrum

Hoc animo solet esse vinum.'

'Glass doth bewray, and even so doth wine.

This shows the mind, and that the form's outline.
As crystal represents the body's grace,

So the mind's features in men's cups we trace.'

If Sir Thomas More's title to fame had rested on his epigrains, it may be doubted whether it would have secured him an enduring immortality. The author of the 'Utopia' developes little in these Parerga, of the boldness, humour, and inventive genius which his great prose work exhibits. A large portion of his book of epigrams consists of translations from the Greek, none of them very polished or very metrical, and of epigrams on some set 'thesis' or other, thrown off in different lengths, for the gratification apparently of both those who value quantity, and those who prefer quality. It is a tedious and fruitless task to wade through many of these, and to mark the Chancellor's shifts to expand an idea into six or eight verses, which he has already quite sufficiently expressed in a couplet. Mr. Booth, in his Collection, has given one or two specimens of Sir Thomas More s labours in this field in a translated form, but it would have been the part of more careful editing to have stated that the couplet

'If evils come not then our fears are vain;
And if they do, fear but augments the pain,'

is an equivalent for only two lines of an epigram which in the Latin consists of four :

'Cur patimur stulti? Namque hæc vecordia nostra,
Urat ut indomitus pectora nostra metus.

Seu mala non venient, jam nos metus urit inanis
Sin venient, aliud fit metus ipse malum.'

Modern collectors, however, do not seem to us to have selected the best of Sir Thomas More's epigrams. For instance, they do not preserve that one on the Union of the White and Red Roses' (De utrâque rosâ in unum coalitâ), which, unless it is condemned on the score of lacking brevity, is happier than most which we can recall. In twelve lines Sir Thomas contrives to turn at least half-a-dozen pretty compliments; winding up all with a suggestion to such as are not content to acquiesce in the settlement of differences between the Houses of York and Lancaster, that the new parti-coloured Rose is one which has its thorns, and that the disaffected will have to heed the argument of fear, if they regard not that of love. Of his more humorous vein we may quote one or two good specimens; e. g. that ‘On a runaway Soldier who wore a Ring' (p. 108):

'Aureus iste manus, miles, cur annulus ornat,
Jure tuos ornet qui meliore pedes?

Utilior nuper meliorque in Marte feroci
Planta tibi palmis una duabus erat.'

Why

'Why doth a golden ring thy finger grace?
Soldier, thy foot had been its fitter place.
For that, thou know'st, be-sted thee better far
Than both thy hands but lately, in the war.'

Another, to a seemingly somewhat dissimilar character, runs

thus:

6

Quam tibi mens levis est, tibi si pes tam levis esset,
In medio leporem posses prævertere campo."

'If thy foot were as light as thy mind, I declare

In a course we should see thee outstripping the hare.'

Passing on from More, we turn to the famous Cambro-Briton John Owen, who has contrived to earn a considerable celebrity by his achievements in epigram-writing. John Owen—or, as he loved to call himself, Audoenus-was educated at Winchester and at New College, and was chosen Master of Warwick School in 1594. Previously, he appears to have kept a small school at Trylegh (Trelleck ?), in Monmouthshire, and, if we mistake not, his volumes of epigrams still hold an honoured place on the shelves of Monmouth School Library. His genius developed itself in the direction of satire, and his own idea of an epigram, which is taken from the Latin rather than the Greek type, is to be seen in the following lines of his :

'Nil aliud Satiræ quam sunt Epigrammata longa.
Est præter Satiram nil Epigramma brevem.
Nil Satire, si non sapiant Epigrammata, pungunt:
Ni Satiram sapiat, nil Epigramma juvat.'

After this manifesto one knows what to expect in his amusing pages: much satirical humour, many severe hits, and a not overkindly estimate of man or woman in general. For example, he has a hit at the Germans in the following:

'Mersum in nescio quo Verum latitare profundo
Democritus, nemo quod reperiret, ait,
Si latet in vino verum, ut proverbia dicunt,
Invenit Verum Teuto, vel inveniet.'

'Democritus said-Truth lay buried low

Down in a well, whose opening none might know.
But if Truth's hid in Wine, as proverbs tell,

I'll warrant me the Germans find this well.'

And one of his mildest epigrams anent womankind is this, to
Phillis:-

'Basia, Philli, aliis dare non vis: at data sumis.
Nimirum scis hæc accipiendo dari.'

'Kisses