THE USE AND ABUSE OF EPIGRAM.
THE power of epigram in literature has been great. We are largely ruled by phrases, and some of the most pregnant sentences of the antique world have an influence over our mind to-day. As a matter of fact, most epigrams have come down to us from antiquity, those that have not being mostly French. This is no accident, but is mainly due to two causes. In the first place, the Greek and Latin languages are far better vehicles of brief, terse expression than any of the modern languages. It would be impossible to express in a sentence in English what can be easily expressed in leas than a sentence by Aristophanes or Lucian. It is true that American slang is expressive in a high degree, but then it is slang, and not good literary English ; whereas the Greek of Aristophanes or Lucian is literary Greek. Even in the kind of literature which is least literature and most expressive of thought, this terseness is of the essence of Greek writing. Let the philosophic treatises, e.g., of Aristotle be compared with the philosophic treatises of Kant or Spinoza, or even with Hume and Berkeley, the most literary of modern philosophic writers, and one sees at a glance the remarkable difference in facile power of expression. One finds a single line of Aris- totle packed with thought, just as one finds a single line of Dante and Shakespeare, the two moderns who have shared this ancient power. The words are closely wedded to the thought, and the thought is so mirrored in the language that the whole expression stands out clearly, and yet is so crammed with ideas that the mind, familiar with modern writing in which a single idea is spread over pages of type, is almost bewildered by the compact simplicity of the ancient writer. To turn from the " Ethics" of Aristotle to any contem- porary ethical treatise is like losing oneself in a dense thicket after one has surveyed a noble group of lofty trees clearly outlined on a prominent hill against the blue sky.
But it is not only the language of Greece and Rome which is so efficient for the purpose of clear-cut, epigrammatic phraseology ; it is also the condition of ancient thought and life. What girl, asks Matthew Arnold, can read in her bosom thoughts as clear and pellucid as Rebecca by the ancient well, while meeting her future husband ? What seer can read so clearly as the ancient founder of Israel in the "star-lit Arabian waste" the thoughts of the divine Being, and can follow that divine will? Compare our modern histories with those matchless narratives of Plutarch, and see how the modern hero or statesman is environed by compli- cated incidents, how his mind is worked on by varied and complex motives, and therefore how his action lacks that simplicity and spontaneity which we find in the great figures of the antique world. Speech or writing is an expression of life, of thought. If the life or thought is simple, the expres- sion is simple, and in the main the life and thought of Greece and early Rome are very simple, very clear. But the stream of modern life is no pellucid brook, dashing down from some highland fastness in pristine purity; rather is it a mighty river charged with the waters of many tributaries, turbid, full, many-mouthed, albeit, to quote Arnold once more, "with murmurs and scents of the infinite sea." We are so choked with multitudinous and conflicting emotions, so beset by diverse problems, so bewildered by all manner of ideas and considerations which never suggested themselves to the youth of mankind, that we have lost that "large utter- ance of the early gods," and can but express ourselves in the speech of a complex civilisation. Compare Plato's profound but simple argument for Theism with corresponding argu- ments by modern philosophic writers, and note the immense change which environment has made on the modern mind.
Have we really lost, however, on the whole, in the in- capacity for epigram which may be said to characterise our modern world ? We have said that the French are the one people in modern times who have exemplified this epigram- matic tendency, though many English writers and statesmen have used it with effect. Burke used it when he said of the New Englanders that they exemplified "the dissidence of
Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion"; Canning when he said that he had "called in the New World to redress the balance of the Old "; Bright in the famous "Cave of Adullam" reference and in many another telling sentence. No finer saying is to be found in English literature than that of Steele,—" To love her is a liberal education." An excellent and pungent epigram was that of Gibbon with reference to Roman religions,—" The philosophers esteemed them equally false, the people equally true, and the Magistrates equally useful." But, while many epigrammatic phrases can be found in English literature, our writings exhibit the tendency to that dominance over spontaneous expressions of the " pale cast of thought" which is inevitable when the earlier unity of man's intellectual and spiritual nature has been broken up by the impact of previously unfelt conceptions. To-day we suspect it is the simple, uncultivated man who is best able to furnish short, pregnant sayings. After reading the drawn-out platitudes of some politician, how refreshing it is to find that "a voice" in the gallery so often puts the whole case in a nutshell, and performs for the audience and the country what the orator was unable to do. What we call culture is, in a word, usually unable to express clearly and truthfully simple, direct, spontaneous thought; we must go to an unburdened mind for that. Now, the French epigram, so clever, so quotable, generally so cynical, the brilliant utterances of Voltaire, Rochefoucauld, and other nimble minds, appear to us in the main to yield the Greek facility and terseness of expression without the Greek pro- fundity, simplicity, and truthfulness. It is the external brilliance and the superficial polish of the epigram which we get, rather than the simple, direct idea which so often was as a beacon to the Greek mind. The sentences of Thales or Pythagoras afforded a foundation for great social structures, whereas the most brilliant sentences of the most brilliant Frenchmen are but part of the glittering ornaments of the cultivated salon.
It must inevitably be so in the main, because of the different nature of the modern world. A little child often coins a simple phrase which becomes a household word for many years, and which no adult could have invented to save his life. It is not that we have gone back (although we doubt whether the modern mind is so fine or powerful as the mind of the ancient world), but it is that the conditions of thinking have changed with the multitudinous ideas which impinge on the thinking apparatus of the modern man. There is one de- partment of life in which epigram plays a part, and ever will, —viz., in the unrestrained intercourse of cultivated men who are not afraid to say what they think. The conversation of Johnson, as recorded by Boswell, affords perhaps the best examples of genuine epigram in the English language. When Johnson had, as he said, "his talk out," he gave us terse sayings which ought to last as long as the language. This was because the two necessary conditions were fulfilled,—complete mental freedom and that strong simple, direct character devoid of any mental nuance which is far more important for epigram- matic purposes than mere brilliance. For the French epigram, born of exceedingly acute mental power, misses, as we have said, the moral strength of ancient epigram; while the vigorous, direct, truthful, moral power of Johnson went always straight to the mark. Epigram, then, in the modern world, cannot usually be a power, because of our acquired complexity of feelings and ideas; and in the case of the French, while it is brilliant enough, we know all along that it is mere trifling, as a rule. But there is still room for it when it can be wielded by a simple, powerful, elemental nature.
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