tiful supply of false quantities; "Nam nos Britones non curamus quantitates syllabarum :”— Hic jacet Erasmus, qui quondam bonus erat mus. Some one attempted to improve it, by substituting for bonus, pravus; but his prosody reached no farther. The following epigram contains a severe satire: Hic jacet Ugo senex, sed qui prius inde recessit, The following is an epitaph on one Master Jean le Veau : O Deus omnipotens Vituli miserere Joannis, Marot has paraphrased it into eight lines. With a slight change, it has been applied to one Count Vitelli, killed in the civil wars of the Low Countries. There was a Cordelier at Paris, by name, Pierre Cornu, or Corne, in Latin, Doctor de Cornibus. This person died at Paris in 1542, and was the subject of several epitaphs; among the number the following macaronic : Faut-il hélas, O Doctor optime, 66 Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay," neither stopped a bung-hole, nor patched a wall : but he was put to nearly as base a use, when he became the subject of the following epitaph: MISCELLANEOUS EPIGRAMS. WHEN the pretensions of birth are not immoderately urged, the public are disposed to treat it with all due respect. On the other hand, persons of low origin, raised to a high station, if they give not themselves the airs of aboriginal aristocracy, if they shrink not from the remembrance of what they once were, will not be painfully reminded of it by others. Agathocles, king of the Syracusans, was entitled to much credit in that respect. The acts of tyranny committed by him were indeed atrocious; but somewhat of the censure attaching to his general character is softened, by his remembrance without shame, in his prosperous fortune, that he was the son of a potter. That the circumstance might never be absent from his mind, as well as in honour of his father's memory, and of his own origin, his side-board was set out with earthen dishes introduced among the gold and silver plate. Ausonius has made this the subject of an elegant epigram: Fama est fictilibus cœnasse Agathoclea regem, Quærenti causam, respondit: Rex ego qui sum Rabelais is elegantly complimented by Beza, in a celebrated epigram among his Juvenilia : Qui sic nugatur, tractantem ut seria vincat, Barbers were brought to Rome from Sicily by Publius Ticinius Mena. For upwards of 400 years, the ancient Romans never shaved. has an epigram on long beards: Εἰ τὸ τρέφειν πώγωνα δοκεῖς σοφίαν περιποιεῖν, Philo reasons thus on a foolish old age: Αἱ γὰρ ἄτες νοῦ, Μᾶλλον τῶν πολλῶν εἰσὶν ὄνειδος ἐτῶν· Lucian Massinger, in The Old Law, seems to have had his eye on Lucian's epigram, in the observations of a courtier on the Duke of Epire's proposed reformation: It will have heats though, when they see the painting Go an inch deep i' the wrinkle, and take up A box more than their gossips: but for men, my lord, That should be the sole bravery of a palace, To walk with hollow eyes and long white beards, With clothes as if they sat on their backs on purpose That lives i' the fashion; where our diseased fathers, Brought up your paned hose first, which ladies laugh'd at, They love a doublet that's three hours a buttoning, And his soul mutter half a day; yet these are those The value of Martial is to the full as great to the classical antiquary, as to the searcher after wit. The following passage from one of the epigrams states the various uses of the Endromis : Seu lentum ceroma teris, tepidumve trigona, Sive levem cursu vincere quæris Atham. Wooden toothpicks, made of the lentisk, were preferred to quills by the Romans : Lentiscum melius: sed si tibi frondea cuspis Defuerit, dentes penna levare potest. Lib. xiv. epig. 22. |