EPIGRAM

This article appears in Volume V09, Page 690 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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EPIGRAM , properly speaking, anything that is inscribed. Nothing could be more hopeless, however, than an attempt to discover or devise a definition wide enough to include the vast multitude of little poems which at one time or other have been honoured with the title of epigram, and precise enough to exclude all others. Without taking account of its evident misapplications, we find that the name has been givenfirst, in strict accordance with its Greek etymology, to any actual inscription on monument, statue or building; secondly, to verses never intended for such a purpose, but assuming for artistic reasons the epigraphical form; thirdly, to verses expressing with something of the terseness of an inscription a striking or beautiful thought; and fourthly, by unwarrantable restriction, to a little poem ending in a "point," especially of the satirical kind. The last of these has obtained considerable popularity from the well-known lines
" The qualities rare in a bee that we meet
In an epigram never should fail;
The

body

BODY

should always be little and sweet,
And a sting should be left in its tail "
which represent the older Latin of some unknown writer" Omne epigramma sit instar

apis

APIS

: sit aculeus illi; Sint sua mella; sit et corporis exigui."
Attempts not a few of a more elaborate kind have been made to state the essential

element

ELEMENT (Lat. elementum)

of the epigram, and to classify existing specimens; but, as every lover of epigrams must feel, most of them have been attended with very partial success. Scaliger, in the third book of his Poetics, gives a fivefold division, which displays a certain ingenuity in the nomenclature but is very superficial: the first class takes its name from mel, or honey, and consists of adulatory specimens; the second from fel, or gall; the third from acetum, or vinegar; and the fourth from sal, or salt; while the fifth is styled the condensed, or multiplex. This classification is adopted by Nicolaus Mercerius in his De conscribendo epigrammate (Paris, 1653); but he supplemented it by another of much more scientific value, based on the figures of the ancient rhetoricians. Lessing, in the

preface

PREFACE (Med. Lat. prefatia, for classical praefatio, praefari, to speak beforehand)

to his own epigrams, gives an interesting treatment of the theory, his principal doctrine being practically the same as that of several of his less eminent predecessors, that there ought to be two parts more or less clearly distinguished,the first awakening the reader's attention in the same way as an actual monument might do, and the other satisfying his curiosity in some unexpected manner. An attempt was made by Herder to increase the comprehensiveness and precision of the theory; but as he him-self confesses, his classification is rather vaguethe expository, the paradigmatic, the pictorial, the impassioned, the artfully turned, the illusory, and the swift. After all, if the arrangement according to authorship be rejected, the simplest and most satisfactory is according to subjects. The epigram is one of the most catholic of literary forms, and lends itself to the expression of almost any feeling or thought. It may be an elegy, a

satire

SATIRE (Lat. satira, satura; see below)

, or a love-poem in miniature, an embodiment
' For an

illustration

ILLUSTRATION

, see Kathleen Schlesinger, Orchestral

Instruments

INSTRUMENTS

, part ii. " Precursors of the

Violin

VIOLIN

Family," fig. 165, p. 219.
s Athenaeus, iv. p. 183 d. and xiv. p. 638 a.
3 Dialogo

delta

DELTA (from the shape of the Gr. letter A, delta, originally used of the mouth of the Nile)

musica antica e moderna, ed. 1602, p. 4o.of the wisdom of the ages, a bon-mot set off with a couple of rhymes.
" I cannot tell thee who lies buried here;
No man that knew him followed by his bier;
The winds and waves conveyed him to this shore, Then ask the winds and waves to tell thee more."

ANONYMOUS

ANONYMOUS

-" Wherefore should I vainly try
To teach thee what my love will be
In after years, when thou and I
Have both grown old in company,
If words are vain to tell thee how,
Mary, I do love thee now? "

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