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Updated: July 24, 2025
Not to save his life could he have suppressed the hastily conceived distich, or have let slip such a justifiable claim to applause. So, without heeding Melissa's remonstrance, he flung his sky-blue mantle about him in fresh folds, and declaimed with comical emphasis: "Down to earth did the god cast his son: but with mightier hand Through it, to Hades, Caesar flung his brother the dwarf."
Mechanically speaking, he is a disciple in the same school as Ovid, but his success in the Ovidian distich is insignificant; for he has nothing of the epigrammatist in him, and his finest lines all seem to have come by accident, or at any rate without effort. His excessive reverence for the Alexandrines Callimachus and Philetas, has cramped his muse.
"Eternal gratitude to our old schoolmasters," cried Elgar, "who thrashed us through the Eton Latin grammar! What is Italy to the man who cannot share our feelings as we murmur that distich? I marvel that I was allowed to learn this heathen tongue. Had my parents known what it would mean to me, I should never have chanted my hic, haec, hoc."
The following distich shows what each forbodes: 'One sorrow, two mirth, three a wedding, four death. This bird, indeed, appears to have taken the same place with us, as an omen of evil, that the owl had amongst the ancients. The nurse is often heard to declare that she has lost all hopes of her charge when she has observed a piannet on the house-top.
So saying, he flew off at a tangent, and our knight could not help smiling at the peculiar virulence of his disposition. Sir Launcelot then endeavoured to enter into conversation with his attendant, by asking how long Mr. Distich had resided in the house; but he might as well have addressed himself to a Turkish mute.
The cart halted at last at a miserable-looking hut, which the signpost announced to be an inn that afforded good accommodation to travellers; to which announcement was annexed the following epigrammatic distich: "Old Tom, he is the best of gin; Drink him once, and you'll drink him agin!"
The people of Holbein's day not only saw in this subject the beginning of that toil which is the lot of humankind, but, as they looked upon the common ancestors of all men, laboring for the means of life, they asked, in the words of an old distich, "When Adam delved and Eve span, Where was then the gentleman?" The fifth composition seems to represent a general rejoicing over the Triumph of Death.
This distich, it is said, was written in Chaldaic characters on the wings of those locusts which first appeared at the call of Moses, and always reappear when the Lord would abase the pride of man. Everyone knew this saying.
In the old town is a hall, in which Mary Queen of Scots lodged whilst visiting the Buxton waters for her health, as a prisoner under charge of the Earl of Shrewsbury. A Latin distich, a farewell to Buxton, scratched on the window of one of the rooms, is attributed to the hand of that unhappy princess.
A rough sketch followed of a savage wolf, in pursuit of a beautiful girl, trying to pounce upon her as he wished to devour her. This was the burden of the distich: Thy mate is like a savage wolf prowling among the hills; His wish once gratified a haughty spirit his heart fills! Though fair thy form like flowers or willows in the golden moon, Upon the yellow beam to hang will shortly be its doom.
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