Show THE EPIGRAM iff history an epigram in its primary signify cation was nothing more nor less than an inscription writes edmund gosse in harpers magazine it was something written to mark a spot or an event it was the form of words attached to an altar or a monument an image to show whose image or monument or altar it was it you a secular elm to pan you pinned an epigram on the bark to an bounce that fact it you presented to a friend an amethyst cup engraved with a figure ol 01 bachus you embed led in an epigram your sentiments it Is a mistake to suppose that these pieces were in their first inception satirical but the komans made them so and as time went on the trick of writing them in latin as well as jin greek involved an attention to concentrated effect the epigram matist tried to fill his little glass as itell as possible and there were bub bles of malice round the brim grad lually the idea grew that an epigram ought to finish with a snap that the very end of the last line ought to contain the essence of the lampoon this type of the form was amusingly defined by dr edward walsh a poet of the latter half of the eighteenth century an epigram should be if right short simple pointed keen and bright A lively little thing A wasp with taper body bound by lines not many neat and round all ending in a st ng the poetical shape was always preserved since without it an epigram would scarcely have been anything at all A french wit la said that an epigram in prose Is a cavalryman dismounted but a large proportion 0 the elizabethan and jacobean epigrams were beggars on horseback who if they had been turned off their rhyme would have been beggars and nothing else the idea was that a joke or a statement of tact whether grave or gay had but to be rhymed to become a pece of literature worthy to be printed and preserved in the archives of a poet s writings |