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As a littérateur Erskine met with meagre success; but some of his squibs and epigrams are greatly above the ordinary level of 'vers de société. For instance this is his: "I may not do right, though I ne'er can do wrong; I never can die, though I can not live long; My jowl it is purple, my hand it is fat Come, riddle my riddle. What is it? What? What?"
'But you're not alone here? he inquired suddenly; 'not absolutely alone? 'Yes, said Lawford. 'But there's plenty to think about and read. I haven't thought or read for years. 'No, nor I; after thirty, my dear boy, one merely annotates, and the book's called Life. Bless me, his solemn old voice is grinding epigrams out of even this poor old parochial barrel-organ.
The "insane and outrageous expenses" in which the nuptials had involved her, the rebukes of her husband, the sneers of the seigniors, the undutiful epigrams of her son, the ridicule of the people, affected her spirits to such a degree, harassed as she was with grave matters of state, that she kept her rooms for days together, weeping, hour after hour, in the most piteous manner.
Victor accused her of paying too much heed to Colney Durance's epigrams upon their friends. He quite joined with his English world in its opinion, that epigrams are poor squibs when they do not come out of great guns. Epigrams fired at a venerable nation, are surely the poorest of popgun paper pellets.
Definitions, because they must not be inexact or incomprehensive, sweep too wide, and the poet is not held within them; and out of the mere describer's range and capture he may escape by as many doors as there are outlets from a forest. But much ready-made platitude brings about the world's guesses at a poet, and false and flat thought lies behind its epigrams.
The penny bi-weekly broadside of session 1823-4 was almost wholly dedicated to Momus. Epigrams, pointless letters, amorous verses, and University grievances are the continual burthen of the song. But Mr. Tatler was not without a vein of hearty humour; and his pages afford what is much better: to wit, a good picture of student life as it then was.
But at Westminster these convictions and, confound it! they were the convictions of England, after all met with scurrilous derision; and here Master Randall nursed a dull and inarticulate resentment in a world out of joint, where the winning side was a butt for epigrams. To win, and be laughed at!
Some of those pub. along with his are by other hands. Epigrammatist, b. at Plas Dhu, Carnarvonshire, ed. at Winchester and Oxf., and became head master of King Henry VIII. School at Warwick. His Latin epigrams, which have both sense and wit in a high degree, gained him much applause, and were translated into English, French, German, and Spanish.
Epigrams slightly frayed, a jest or two a trifle stale, humorous inversions of well-known maxims, a biting retort, the originality of which was not entirely free from suspicion, were his contributions to the festivities. Later Kelter's nicely modulated voice and almost affectionate manner restrained Quest from hurling his glass at the inflamed countenance of Mr. Dumont.
But the twelve books of Epigrams, while they include work of all degrees of goodness and badness, are invaluable from the vivid picture which they give of actual daily life at Rome in the first century.
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