[1] Michael Praetorius, _Syntagma musicum_, tom. 1, c. 13, p. 380:
Salomon van Til, _Sing-Dicht und Spiel-Kunst_, p. 95.
[2] Pollux, _Onomasticon_, lib. iv. cap. 9, 59.
[3] For an illustration, see Kathleen Schlesinger, _Orchestral
Instruments_, part ii. "Precursors of the Violin Family," fig. 165,
p. 219.
[4] Athenaeus, iv. p. 183 d. and xiv. p. 638 a.
[5] _Dialogo della musica antica e moderna_, ed. 1602, p. 40.
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 given--first, 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 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: 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 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 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
himself confesses, his classification is rather vague--the 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, or a love-poem in miniature, an embodiment 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."