MR. DODD'S EPIGRAMMATISTS.*

NOT one volume, though it does contain nearly six hundred large and closely-printed pages, but twenty, would have befitted the vast compass of such an undertaking as Mr. Dodd's title announces, —" The Epigrammatists"! And, but for what some witty person has called the "too common shallowness of the human purse," we should have welcomed twenty. Anyhow, the one that we have gives us some very pleasant reading, reading of old favourites whom we meet again with delight, and of not a few admirable pieces which Mr. Dodd's research has rescued from obscurity. From some of our author's criticism we differ ; some omissions be has made which even the limitation of his space scarcely accounts for ; but his selection is, on the whole, judicious. He chooses good versions of Greek and Latin originals, having also a particu- larly able coadjutor in a translator whom he calls "C.," of whose work we propose to give one or two specimens. And his notes are full of interesting illustrations. Altogether, the Epigram- ntatists is an acquisition to the library of the "Belles Lettres."

Mr. Dodd's conception of an epigram, or rather of the ideal epigram, is not by any means that which we have in the well- known quatrain :—

"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."

It is the Greek model that he favours ; and, as he says, "nothing was required to constitute a Greek epigram but brevity and unity of thought. There is no point such as is found in modern times." And he is very severe on Martial, to whose influence he attributes the modern feeling that without a point the epigram cannot be. So he writes :—

"In the fifteen hundred epigrams which Martial has left the gems are few and far between. They lie hid amid a mass of servility, scurrility, indecency, and puerility."

And again,— " The effect of Martial's influence on oar epigrammatic literature has been most disastrous. The pithy fullness, the elegant simplicity, the graceful turn, the sound sense, the guileless humour, and the inoffensive point which characterized the epigram in its ancient home among the Greeks, has been exchanged for the redundant wordiness, the coarse conceit, the rough satire' the puerile imbecility, the unchaste wit, and the stinging point of the Roman school."

Some of this language is, we think, a great deal too strong. As to the word itself, it is only a question of names. The Greeks gave the name to any short poem, short enough to be inscribed on a column, a tablet, or a tomb. The Romans and the moderns, generally following the Roman practice, limited the application of it, though not rigidly, to such poems as had a certain application either of satire or of compliment. But they did not, therefore, cease to write short poems of the Greek type. Indeed, many of

* The Epigrammatists: a Selection from the Epigrammatic Literature of Ancient, Medi:mat, and Modern Times. By the Rey. Henry Philip Dodd, M.A., of Pembroke College, Oxford. London: Bell and Daldy. 1870.

the Epigrammata of Martial are quite of the " pointless " sort, and have all the softer qualities which Mr. Dodd ascribes to the best pieces of the Greek anthology. Such are the epigrams addressed to Julius and Quintilian (i. 15, and ii. 90), such the graceful description of the "lull jugera panes Martians " (iv. (34). And not a few of the Greek, again, have as much point, we may say sting, as Martial himself could have given them. As for speaking of "redundant wordiness" and "juvenile imbecility" as being

characteristic of Martial, it seems to us a great mistake. The poet's estimate of his own works the "bona pauca, qualam

mediocria, mala plura," has generally been held too modest. His indecency is only too notorious, though we might, if we chose to dwell on so unsavoury a subject, retort the charge on some of Mr. Dodd's Greek friends. Nor can we defend his servility, though after all Domitian was his friend, and we may perhaps pardon his gratitude. The tyrant had some love of letters ; "Et apes et ratio studiorum in Caesar° tantum," Juvenal himself had said of hint, and a man of letters might even have some sincere feeling in praising him.

On the whole, we may perhaps accept the Younger Pliny's verdict concerning him :—" Erat homo ingeniosus, acutus, acer, et qui plurimum in scribendo et sails haberet et fellis nee candoris minus."

What some of the omissions to which we have alluded are may be seen from the following passage of the introduction :—

" The writing of Latin epigrams never gained a firm hold in Great Britain. When to More and Owen have been added the Scotchmen, Buchanan and Ninian Paterson, and, at a later period, Vincent Bourne, the rusher of Westminster School, the list is complete of those who obtained any eminence as Latin epigrammatists."

Scarcely "complete," we think, when it omits such names as Richard Crashaw, the writer of some of the most famous and exquisitely constructed Latin epigrams of modern times, two of which we quoted in these columns when reviewing the Sertum Carthusianum ; George Herbert, whose Latin verses, though full of mannerism, are forcible and ingenious, and Thomas Warton, whose "In Somnum," a real epigram, as it was, or was meant to be, actually inscribed, we cannot resist the temptation of giving (though, by the way, its authorship is not authenticated) :—

" Somne veni, et quanquam certissima mortis imago es, Consortem cupio te tamen ease tori !

Hun ades, hand abitnre cite ; nam sic sine vita Yivere, quam suave eat, sic sine morte mori."

And might we not add the names of Milton and Johnson, both famous Latinists, though their Latin was not formed exactly after classical models ?

But it is time that we should give some specimens of Mr. Dodd's work. Here is a translation of the "Venus Anadyomene " of Leonidas of Tarentum by Mr. Dodd's coadjutor, "C " :—

" Fresh rising from the ocean foam, Her mother's breast, her native home, Apelles saw Love's Queen display Her matchless form bedashed with spray. Each grace he saw, and drawing near, On breathing canvas flx'd them here. See, from her hair her slender fingers Press out the salt dew where it lingers ; See in those mild, love-breathing eyes, Her soft glance languishingly die; Whilst shows each gently-swelling breast, Like the ripe apples of the west: And Juno weeps, and Pallas sighs— She's lovelier far ! We yield the prize."

Among " C.'s" other contributions is this, a rendering of ltufinus:— Take, take this flowering wreath from me,

Twin'd by these hands, and twin'd for thee.

Here blends the daffodil's soft hue With lilies and the violet's blue ; Here the moist wind flower darkly blows, Entwining with the opening rose ; And whilst it binds thy pensive brow, Let pride to gentler feelings bow, At thought of that no distant day, When thou, as these, must fade away."

Mr. Dodd himself also translates with neatness and grace, witness the following, an epigram by Nossis of Locri :—

" This breathing image shows Melinna's grace, Her own sweet form, I see her speaking face ; Her mother's youth's recalled, the father blest Beholds his honour in his child ccnfest."

When we come to choose from the many hundreds of epigrams of more recent date which Mr. Dodd has brought together, we feel no little embarrassment. Our selection must be made almost at random. Dr. Abel Evans, who wrote the famous epitaph on Sir John Vanbrugh, "Lie heavy on him, Earth," &c., and one less known on the bridge at Blenheim,—a bridge, it must be under- stood, which had then, at least, a slender stream beneath it :—

"The lofty arch his high ambition shows ;

The stream, fit emblem of his beauty, flows,"

—was himself the subject of a sufficiently sharp attack, not unde- served, if, as is said, he cut down some very fine trees belonging to St. John's College, Oxford, of which he was Bursar :-

"Indulgent nature to each kind bestows

A secret instinct to discern its foes.

The goose, a silly bird, yet knows the fox; Hares fly from dogs, and sailors steer from rocks ; This rogue the gallows for his fate foresees, And bears a like antipathy to trees."

"The Monument" is one of Samuel Wesley's :— "A monster, in a course of vice grown old,

Leaves to his gaping heir his ill gained gold ; Straight breathes his bast, straight are his virtues shown, Their date commencing with the sculptured stone.

If on his specious marble we rely, Pity a worth like his should ever die !

If credit to his real life we give,

Pity a wretch like him should ever live !"

Lord Chesterfield's compliment to Miss Ambrose is prettily turned :—

" Say, lovely Tory, what the jest Of wearing orange on thy breast, When that same breast betraying shows The whiteness of the rebel rose."

Dr. Samuel Bishop (sometime Head Master of Merchant Taylors' School) is very happy in his" Consistency " :—

" Though George, with respect to the wrong and the right,

Is of twenty opinions 'twixt morning and night ; If you call him a turn-coat, you injure the man, He's the pink of consistency, on his own plan, While to stick to the strongest is always his trim ; 'Tis not he changes side, the side changes him."

And in his "Audi Alteram Partem."— " When quacks, as quacks may by good luck, to be sure, Blunder out at hap-hazard a desperate cure, In the prints of the day, with due pomp and parade, Case, patient, and doctor are amply displayed:— All this is quite just, and no mortal can blame it ; If they save a man's life they've a right to proclaim it ; But there's reason to think they might save more lives still, Did they publish a list of the numbers they kill I"

We may conclude with an epigram and its translation, "Papal Aggression," by the new Dean of Rochester, Dr. Scott ;—

" Cum Sapiente Pins nostras jaravit in aras ; Impius hen! Sapiens, desipiensque Pius :" "Pius with Wiseman tries

Our English Church to ban ; 0 Pins, man unwise !

0 impious Wise-man !"

ANNIE JENNINGS.* Tars is a story of all the ills that befell from the pride of ancestry of the Hon. and Rev. Daniel Merton, minister in spiritual things in the city of Edinburgh. No doubt these ills were sufficiently severe for the sufferers, but we require something more than the immolation of two old ladies and one eminent physician, or even than the moral ruin of a handsome young officer,—besides, he comes all right again,—to satisfy the cravings of a morbid appetite ; if we are not to have the triumphant happi- ness of at least one lovely and feminine favourite, may we not claim as a right the utter destruction of her hopes, or her early death, with the interesting revelations which precede it ? But we have absolutely no favourite at all, for the heroine—though exquisitely beautiful—has many years and few feelings ; she begins by being twenty-seven, and ends by marrying a second time—and not even her first love—as soon as decency permits. Very little can be said in justification of a plot so barren of all thrill and expectation ; but the sketches of character are much better. It is particularly to be regretted that, in the interests of the story, the two old ladies had to be sacrificed so early, not in their, but in its career ; for it is in old women and in clergymen— who are sometimes asserted to be "no better "—that the author shines.

The story opens with a curious mistake, so that—on the principle that extremes meet—the end of the third volume leaves the heroine where she is found at the beginning of the first; it is not material, except that we look with a certain unsatisfied expectation for the close of what, we conclude, is a widow's retrospective history, and for the commencement of the real tale, till it dawns gradually

* Annie Jennings. By Leslie Gore. London : Richard Bentley.

upon us—towards the end of the first volume—that this cannot be all introduction, and that the author has made a mistake. The widow lady, then,—whose past history only, it appears, we are to hear—had been left an orphan, some thirty-five years before her widowhood commenced, to the care of "Aunt Jane ;" and, like Aunt Janes in real life, this one is good and unselfish, and full of eimple-hearted credulity and readiness to laugh and to be laughed at. She sits under' the Episcopalian clergyman already men- tioned, with whom she is—in a sort of old-maidish, reverential fashion—half in love, and to whom, in an evil hour, she introduces her beautiful niece "Annie, with the Madonna face ;" he half falls in love with Annie, and his ward—and near relative, observe—a handsome young officer, does so wholly, and, of course, leaves his guardian nowhere at all' in the pursuit ; a secret engagement follows and is discovered, and the guardian—in the pride of ancestry—comes down upon poor Aunt Jane with cruel and impertinent astonishment at the presumption of her niece and herself ; with a much more laudable and pardonable pride aunt and niece break off the engagement ; but the niece, whose instincts tell her truly that the honourable and reverend -clergyman was partly influenced by jealousy—was, in fact, an honourable and reverend dog-in-the-manger—marries, to spite him, an old admirer—a cousin, the eminent physician ; hence -come wars and fightings ; the young lady's old aunt Jane, admonishes her pastor on the lust of pride and dies ; and the young gentleman's old aunt Merton, justifies her son the pastor's pride, and dies also—at the tale of her nephew's unexampled svickidness ; for the young officer, in one night, changes from oaint to devil in a very tragic and striking manner ; the eminent physician discovers too late that his early love and second wife has an early love of her own, but he never told his discovery, but let -concealment, like a worm in the bud, feed on his manly cheek, .and, having broken his leg, drooped and died also ; then the Hon. and Rev. Daniel takes heart, and unmindful of his de- -ceased mother's noble pride—now that her aristocratic scorn is tio longer lifted up against him—recalls Aunt Jane's sentiments on humility and strikes in for the physician's wealthy widow ; and with his success the story closes.

All this, and much more that concerns lesser celebrities, is told -with very varying ability. There is much that is very bad ; -unmeaning nonsense about love and fate ; exaggerated representa- tions of passion that stamps locks of hair into powder, and of pride that expects to smell the slaughter-house about an officer of ignoble descent ; there are sudden fallings-in-love and assignations and engagements that outrage common-sense as well as common decency ; there are mistakes, such as putting the legacies at the end of a will and making primroses and verbenas flower at the same time ; there are passages intended to be humorous that run into farce, and temptations to excite a :smile, by the constant repetition of an absurd phrase, which are _yielded to too often. Nevertheless, there are many touches of very real humour; as, for instance, the description of the considera- tion which the beautiful Annie bestows on her nose, having a care, -even in her deepest grief, not to tint its delicate tip by weeping ; the wariness with which she examines her dead husband's wardrobe —stealing a march on his valet—that she may send back to the tradesmen the unworn garments, and transfer to her own apart- snents such things as she can use herself ; the calmness with which, during her lover's proposals, she calculates how many stitches she will have to set on for his stockings, and remembers that her deceased physician only wore socks ; Lady Julia's habit of calling her troublesome relations by the titles that fix them on others rather than on herself, as—when she wants to marry again—"It is ten snonths since your poor brother's death," meaning her own hus- band's, and—when she wants to leave her little boy in his aunt's .charge—" Your little nephew is just six years and ten months ;" and Mrs. Elliot's impatience witn Lady Julia, and desire to alap her face ; and many more.

But there are better passages than these ; the perception of the humorous side of life is not the only power displayed ; Aunt Jane's conscious respect for her minister's office, and unconscious love of himself and awe of his rank, and yet her childlike sim- plicity and courage in admonishing him on her death-bed of his pride, and the abashed confusion of the clergyman and wounded oelf-love of the aristocrat, in finding that, instead of coming to speak to her of sin and pardon, be is sent for to be told of his own sins, and admonished to seek for humility, and ask for pardon himself, and yet his ultimate complete surrender to con- trition, all show great insight in to the deeper strata of human feeling ; we wish the passage were not too long to extract. The clergyman is altogether a clever sketch ; his pride of rank and dignity of office, his belief in himself, in his height and in his goodness, and the external manifestation of this belief in his erect carriage,—his head always thrown well back,—his small proprieties, his sneaking inclination for the pretty women of his flock, his complete subjection to his haughty mother, and his - superior and virtuous air to his young ward, are all consistent, and life-like, and exceedingly well described. So, also, are the quali- ties of the lady whom he ultimately selects for his wife ; not pretending more feeling than she has, and relieved at not being called upon to love beyond the capacity of her consciously small powers ; neat, clever, kindly, cool, and business-like, but parsimonious and worldly, and only moved much by a fear of that which is strange ; one of the cleverest passages in the book is where the urn is presented to her which contains the ashes of her husband, for we must explain that the eminent physician'arranged that he should be burned. Why this very unpleasant incident is introduced at all we have been unable to discover, except that it gives occasion for the passage we speak of, where the painful, but inevitable humour of the position comes out strongly. A friend of her husband brings in the urn under his cloak :—

" Mrs. Jennings,' he began, with a nervous twitch about the corners of his mouth, and shutting the door, have scarcely a moment to spare, so I must rather abruptly tell you that all is accomplished as ear beloved friend desired, and into your hands I give this ' (he drew a silver urn forward), which I had prepared with inscription—name—and dates all correct, it contains his sacred ashes,' and Doctor WEvoy offered to place it in her hands, but Annie shrank back with blanched lips, putting her hands behind her. Doctor M'Evoy was in a great hurry, he could not wait—Time and Tide, and to this may be added, Train, wait for no man—so finding that Annie would not free his hand, he laid the urn in the very centre of the dinner-table as if it were an epergne, and hastened away. Annie stood as if rooted to the spot, and with eyes riveted on that centre-piece. Her pupils dilated with terror, and her teeth chattered. 'That Andrew Jennings! my husband—Penelope's father—the great doctor—the man of science—Edinburgh's pride. Does that urn indeed contain his mortal body?' It was too much for her understanding, too much for her belief, and she sobbbed and laughed wildly by turns. Penelope and Billie, who had just entered the house, heard that awful laugh, and turned with scared faces to one another."

Perhaps the author wanted to throw ridicule on the movement, and yet we think not, for ultimately the urn is reverentially placed beneath the great man's picture in the gloom and sanctity of his study ; moreover, the doctor is evidently a pet creation of the author's—as we think, very undeservedly, for he is a reckless murderer in the interests of science, and the circumstances of his professional life seem to us altogether absurd, and his character, as far as we can read it from the story, is anything but " great " and "noble," as it is incessantly called ; 'secretive' and 'unctuous' are adjectives that would describe him with greater truth.

Of the other leading characters, the young officer is just as

unreal ; at page 97 (vol. II.) he is the pattern man of his regiment —the chaplain's right hand, reading by the sick and dying, and helping his juniors to repentance and virtue—and at page 107—

because he has heard that he is jilted—he has become madly wicked, and remains so till nearly the last page of the story. The children are equally unnatural; they are, indeed, hopelessly absurd ; children do not say, "The morning advances," "Do not cry, lady," &c., and a boy;who has been brought up by a sporting clergyman in the Highlands would scarcely be remarkably timid and a regular lady's man at fifteen, —kneeling before his sweetheart, and saying, in sober seriousness, "Do not tarn aside," "Oh, how your breath comes and goes so quick," and raising his cap to her on leaving her. Nor is a young lady—the daughter of a fashionable physician, brought up in the capital—likely to be shy, or when fifteen, for lack of seeing enough of men, to fall desperately and immodestly in love, at first sight, with a man nearly old enough to be her father, and to meet him half-way in the most passionate familiarities. We fancy Leslie Gore has only seen children through the medium of a romantic imagination.

It is not fair to criticize the English of an author who writes under the shadow of Arthur's seat, but it is painfully bad to Southern ears, and the grammar, at least, cannot claim the allow- ance which the Northern idiom may. We have two crows to pluck with the publisher also ; there are a very great many misprints; and we are deprived of that recreation—cutting open the leaves— with which we are accustomed to solace ourselves from time to time, while we work conscientiously through our books ; this is the unkindest cut of all.