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Their affinities are necessarily few; they are not fit for many uses, nor capable of expressing many ideas. The heroic couplet, now too much derided, is a form of this kind. Its compactness and inevitableness make it excellent for an epigram and adequate it for a satire, but its perpetual snap and unvarying rhythm are thin for an epic, and impossible for a song.

They were thought so excellent, several men of learning set about translating them into French, particularly Du Vair, afterwards Keeper of the Seals; Rapin, grand Provost of the Constabulary, and Stephen Pasquier. Malherbe himself, the Oracle of the French Parnassus, did not think it beneath him to put this Epigram into French verse: and Casaubon translated it into Greek.

EMIRE: Que pouvez-vous, Madame? O Ciel! ALZIRE: Je puis mourir. Hardly was the epigram out of her mouth when the door opened, and an emissary of Don Gusman announced to her that she must consider herself under arrest. She demanded an explanation in vain, and was immediately removed to the lowest dungeon. Act V. It was not long before the unfortunate princess learnt the reason of her arrest.

She was naturally quick-witted, and her intellect had been developed by an excellent education. The conversation turned upon Lafontaine's epigram, of which I had only recited the first ten verses, as the rest is too licentious; and she said, "But I suppose it is only a poet's fancy, at which one could but smile." "Possibly, but I did not care to wound your ears."

It is therefore not to be wondered at that Lincoln's single term in the House of Representatives at Washington added practically nothing to his reputation. He did not attempt to shine forth in debate by either a stinging retort or a witty epigram, or by a sudden burst of inspired eloquence.

It may make rhyme jingle in your ears, but it will never make sterling coin jink in your pockets. Even the immortal Homer had to sing his own verses about the streets; and ye have heard the epigram 'Seven cities now contend for Homer dead, Through which the living Homer begg'd his bread.

* I showed my "Witch" and "Dying Lover" to Dyer last night; but George could not comprehend how that could be poetry which did not go upon ten feet, as George and his predecessors had taught it to do; so George read me some lectures on the distinguishing qualities of the Ode, the Epigram, and the Epic, and went home to illustrate his doctrine by correcting a proof-sheet of his own Lyrics, George writes odes where the rhymes, like fashionable man and wife, keep a comfortable distance of six or eight lines apart, and calls that "observing the laws of verse," George tells you, before he recites, that you must listen with great attention, or you 'll miss the rhymes.

And I can formulate my own conception of the work of habit building in education no better than by paraphrasing Klesmer's epigram.

"When he comes," she said, "I shall tell him what Clyde says in his new play that unpunctuality for breakfast and overpunctuality for dinner are two of the signs of advancing age." "I shouldn't," her mother advised. "He hates anything that sounds like an epigram, and I noticed that he avoided any allusion to his birthday last month. Any news, dear?" "None at all, mother.

Sometimes they merely exhibit the character of the man. He once said of himself that his biography "would go into an epigram." His sayings require greater space. Some of those which have been circulated are apocryphal. The following are taken chiefly from his letters, and from my own recollections. Speaking of Don Quixote, he calls him "the errant Star of Knighthood, made more tender by eclipse."