An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams Part 3

But it is not only faulty and unpolished to offer the reader a shameful and obscene picture but also in general to depict whatever is cheap, ugly, and unwelcome. Hence those epigrams cannot be regarded as beautiful and polished whose subject is a toothless hag, a poetaster with a threadbare cloak, a rank old goat, a filthy nose, or a glutton vomiting on the table--all of which are a fertile ground of jokes for actors--since ugliness of that sort can never be redeemed by the point.

For this reason we have admitted none of such kind in the epigrams of Martial which we have subjoined to this treatise, and a good many epigrams that we have run across we have put aside, such as Buchanan's in which he depicts the unattractive and unpleasant picture of a lank old man:

While Naevolus yells he can outbellow Stentor, And roars and roars, "All men are animals,"

He has slipped by almost his ninetieth year And bent senility shakes his weak step.

Now three hairs only cling to his smooth head, And he sees what a night-owl sees at dawn.

The snot is dripping from his frosty nose, And stringed saliva falls on his wet breast-- Not an odd tooth in his defenceless gums, Not an old ape so engraved with wrinkles.

Naevolus, for shame leave this frivolity And no more cry, "All men," since you are none.[19]

Again, the baseness of the subject and the hardly pleasant or civilized image of a hanging man is a fault in this epigram of Sannazaro's, although it has an element of humor:

In your desire to learn your fortune, sir, You questioned every tripod, every rune; "You'll stand out above G.o.ds and men," at last Answered the G.o.d in truth-revealing voice.

What arrogance you drew from this! You were Immediately lord of the universe.

Now you ascend the cross. G.o.d was no cheat: The whole world lies spread out beneath your feet.[20]

This is fairly respectable and merely low. But the cynical license of Martial and Catullus, by which they speak of many things that are not simply morally foul but such as decent society demands be removed from sight and hearing, must be regarded as altogether shameless and vulgar. For this reason men of taste never mention favorably Catullus'

_Annales Volusi cacata charta_, or Martial's

et desiderio coacta ventris gutta pallia non fefellit una[21]

And there are many others a good deal more despicable which cannot be adduced even as examples of a fault. a.s.suredly Antiquity was too forbearing toward this sort of thing, and I have often wondered how Cicero could have been tolerated in the Roman Senate when he inveighed against Piso:

Do you not remember, blank, when I came to see you about the fifth hour with Gaius Piso, you were coming out of some dirty shack, slippers on your feet and your face and beard covered; and when you breathed on us that low tavern air from your fetid mouth, you apologized on grounds of ill health, saying that you were taking a kind of wine treatment? When we had accepted your explanation--what else could we do?--we stood a while in the smell and fume of the joints you patronize until you kicked us out by the impudence of your answers and the stench of your belches.[22]

_On spiteful epigrams._

Men with some gentleness of nature have an inborn hatred of spite, especially of such as mocks bodily flaws or reversals of fortune, or, finally, anything that happens beyond the individual's responsibility.

For, since no man feels himself free of such strokes of chance, he will not take it easily when they are torn down and laughed at. The Vergilian Dido spoke with human feeling when she said: _Not unaware of ill I learned to aid misfortune._[23] and the good will of the reader rises quietly in her favor. Likewise, Seneca says nicely: _It is not witty to be spiteful._[24] On the other hand they act inhumanely who triumph over misfortune and upbraid what was not guiltily effected, to such an extent that they arouse a feeling of aversion and alienation in the hearts of their readers.

Accordingly we have admitted only a few of this kind, and have rejected a great many, as, for example, Owen's frigid and spiteful epigram:

Look, not a hair remains on your bright skull.

The hairs on your inconstant brow are null.

With every last hair lost behind, ahead, What has the bald man left to lose? His head.[25]

Nor do we greatly care for many of the same kind in Martial, which nevertheless were not omitted for the reasons given above.[26]

_On wordy epigrams._

It would be a long task to a.s.semble all the natural aversions, nevertheless we may add a few more which have removed a whole host of epigrams from this anthology. Beyond those already mentioned, nature finds distasteful long circ.u.mlocutions and the piling up of a single point with varying phrase; for nature burns with a desire to find out, ever hastens to the conclusion, and is impatient at being detained by much talk unless there is a special reward. Consequently wordy epigrams beget a good deal of loathing, especially those that do not sufficiently balance their length with the magnitude of the idea. Some of Martial's are burdened with this fault; sometimes they acc.u.mulate too many commonplace compliments or are too petty in enumeration. For example, in this epigram to what point are so many trite similes piled up?

Her voice was sweeter than the aged swan, None would prefer the Eastern pearl before her, Or the new-polished tooth of Indic beasts, Or the first snow, lilies untouched by hand; She who breathed fragrance of the Paestan rose, Compared with whom the peac.o.c.k was but dull, The squirrel uncharming, and unrare the phoenix, Erotion, is still warm on a new pyre.[27]

Similarly, why in another well-known epigram is the same idea repeated again and again?

Oh not unvalued object of my love, Flaccus, the darling of Antenor's hearth, Forego Pierian songs, the sisters' dances: No girl among them ever gave a dime.

Phoebus is nought; Minerva has the cash, Is shrewd, is only usurer to the G.o.ds.

What's there in Bacchus' ivy? The black tree Of Pallas bends with mottled leaves and weight.

On Helicon there's only water, wreaths, The divine lyres, and profitless applause.

Why do you dream of Cirrha, bare Permessis?

The forum is more Roman and more rich.

There the coins clink, but round the sterile chairs And desks of poets only kisses rustle.[28]

In the same way that nature is displeased with wordiness, she is displeased with ideas that are too commonplace, for it is a kind of loquacity to bubble on with the commonplace and trite, since it is the purpose of speech to reveal what isn't known, not to repeat what is known and worn-out. Countless epigrams have been excluded from this selection for this fault, but since there is nothing more common I will omit offering examples.

_On trifling wit, and plays on words._

Not a little displeasing, also, is an a.s.siduity in trifling which withdraws the mind from solid subject-matter out of which true beauty springs. Plays on words, puns and other playing around of that kind, unless they come to the judgement of the pen within the bounds of art, are not so much figures of speech as faults of style, and in those epigrams where the point rests solely in these there is nothing thinner, especially when they are so peculiar to one language that they cannot be translated into another. On this basis we have pa.s.sed over such frivolous witticisms as Owen's:

Rope ends the robber, death is his last haul; The gallows gets the gangster--if not all, If many get away, G.o.d gives no hope: It's an odd thief dies with no coffin rope.[29]

A little more humorous is that of another poet on the Swiss killed at night, though it too is faulty:

Annihilated in night snow by a nut stick, I snow, night, nut, now, and annihilation know.[30]

_In what way natural inclinations are to be gratified._

We must carefully avoid all these natural sources of aversion and no less gratify natural inclinations if we wish to attain that beauty we aim at. For self-love is so strong in men that they can hear nothing with pleasure unless it flatters them with their own feelings. For which reason those epigrams have correctly been judged best that penetrate deeper into those feelings and present to the reader's mind an idea recognised not only by the interior light but also by the interior feeling as quite true, so that he can be seduced into embracing it: for example, Martial's:

I scorn the fame purchased with easy blood And praise the man who can be praised alive.[31]

For, since everyone hates death and longs for praise and glory, there is no one who would not be glad if he could be praised without dying.

Another example is that of the old poet:

Put high disdain, deciduous hope put by: Live with yourself who with yourself must die.[32]

For nature has, as Quintilian said, a kind of elevation intolerant of anything above it[33] that fawns on anyone who bids it be contemptuous of a pride in riches.

This much on the general sources of beauty and ugliness will be sufficient for pa.s.sing judgement on any _genre_ of poems.

Nevertheless, this should be adapted to the particular nature, laws, and principles of the epigram, and so it will not be out of point to add a few remarks on the epigram itself.

_The origin of the name epigram. Its definition, form, and laws._

"Epigram", as Scaliger observes, is the same thing as "inscription"; but since there are inscriptions of a good many things the former word has been applied to short poems inasmuch as epigrams of that sort used to be inscribed on monuments and statues;[34] and from this the word has been extended generally to short poems. The epigram is defined, then, as a short poem directly pointing out some thing, person, or deed.[35]

There are those who locate its formal principle in the serious or witty idea that forms the conclusion, and so insist on this that they deny anything is an epigram that lacks such a conclusion.[36] But this is an error. There are some epigrams, and highly cultivated ones, that have an equable elevation throughout and nothing of especial note in the conclusion, as in this of a contemporary writer:

That on insurgent serpents breathing peace, On unplumed eagles trembling, on tame pards, And lions whose low necks accept the yoke, Louis looks out, sublime on a bronze horse, Nor fingers shaped this nor the craftsman's forge But worth and G.o.d's fortune accomplished it.

The armed venger of faith, trustee of peace, Ordained, for all to reverence, this, and bade Rise in the royal place the reverend bronze, That, the long perils past of civil strife, And enemies subdued by prosperous arms, Louis should ever triumph in the master city.[37]

Again, in some epigrams there is a straightforward neatness and a gentle and dry humor that pleases, as may be seen in some of Catullus'

epigrams which we have put in this anthology.