The epigram is of considerable antiquity. The Greeks placed on their monuments, statues, and tombs, short poetical inscriptions, written in a simple style, and it was from this practice that we derive the epigram. In the earlier examples we fail to find any traces of satire which is now its chief characteristic. The Romans were the first to give a satirical turn to this class of literature. Amongst the writers of Latin epigrams, Catullus and Martial occupy leading places. The French are, perhaps, the most gifted writers of epigrams. German epigrammatists have put into verse moral proverbs. Schiller and Goethe did not, however, follow the usual practice of their countrymen, but wrote many satirical epigrams, having great force. Many of our English poets have displayed a fine faculty of writing epigrams.

The birthplace of Homer is a disputed point, and has given rise to not a few essays and epigrams. Thomas Heywood, in one of his poetical publications, published in 1640, wrote:—

“Seven cities warr’d for Homer, being dead,
Who, living, had no roof to shroud his head.”

Much in the same strain wrote Thomas Seward, a century and a half later:—

“Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead,
Through which the living Homer begg’d his bread.”

The two writers have not stated fully the number of cities which claim to have given birth to Homer. The number is nearer twenty than seven. Pope, in his translation of Homer, was assisted by a poet named William Broome, a circumstance which prompted John Henley to pen the following:—

“Pope came off clean with Homer; but, they say,
Broome went before, and kindly swept the way.”

Butler, the author of “Hudibras,” was much neglected during his life. It is true that Charles II. and his courtiers read and were delighted with his poem, but they did not extend to him any patronage. The greater part of his days were passed in obscurity and poverty. He had been buried about forty years when a monument was placed in Westminster Abbey to his memory, by John Barber, a printer, and afterwards an Alderman and Lord Mayor of London. Samuel Wesley wrote on the memorial the following lines:—

“Whilst Butler, needy wretch! was yet alive,
No gen’rous patron would a dinner give;
See him, when starved to death, and turn’d to dust,
Presented with a monumental bust!
The poet’s fate is here in emblem shown,—
He asked for bread, and he receiv’d a stone.”

An epitaph similar in sentiment to the foregoing was placed by Horace Walpole over the remains of Theodore, King of Corsica, who, after many trials and disappointments, ended his life as a prisoner for debt in King’s Bench, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Anne’s, Westminster:—

“The grave, great teacher, to a level brings
Heroes and beggars, galley slaves and kings.
But Theodore this moral learn’d ere dead;
Fate pour’d its lesson on his living head;
Bestow’d a kingdom, and denied him bread.”

The fourth Earl of Chesterfield, on seeing a whole-length portrait of Nash between the busts of Sir Isaac Newton and Pope in the rooms at Bath, wrote as follows:—

“Immortal Newton never spoke
More truth than here you’ll find;
Nor Pope himself e’er penn’d a joke
More cruel on mankind.
The picture, plac’d the busts between,
Gives satire all its strength:
Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
But Folly at full length.”Stephen Duck’s poetry and progress in life gave rise to some lively lines by the lampooners of the eighteenth century. He was an agricultural labourer, having a thirst for knowledge and some skill as a writer of verse. This humble and self-taught student was brought under the notice of Queen Caroline, who was much interested in his welfare, and pleased with his poetry; she granted him a pension of £30 a year. He was next made a yeoman of the guard, an appointment he did not long retain, for he was advanced to the position of a clergyman in the Church of England, and presented to the living of Byfleet, Surrey. It is to be feared that his education was not sufficiently liberal for a clerk in holy orders. Dean Swift assailed the poor poet as follows:—

“The thresher Duck could o’er the Queen prevail;
The proverb says ‘No fence against a flail.’
From threshing corn he turns to thresh his brains,
For which Her Majesty allows him grains.
Though ’tis confess’d that those who ever saw
His poems, think them all not worth a straw.
Thrice happy Duck, employed in threshing stubble!
Thy toil is lessen’d and thy profits doubled.”

The want of dignity displayed in the foregoing is unworthy of Swift, and the reply as follows made by Duck is certainly much to his credit:—

“You think it, censor, mighty strange
That, born a country clown,
I should my first profession change
And wear a chaplain’s gown!
If virtue honours the low race
From which I was descended,
If vices your high birth disgrace
Who should be most commended?”

Duck wrote the epitaph for the tombstone over the remains of Joe Miller of mirthful memory. The following is a copy of the lines:—

“If humour, wit, and honesty could save
The hum’rous, witty, honest from the grave;
The grave had not so soon this tenant found
Whom honesty, and wit, and humour crowned.
Or could esteem and love preserve our breath,
And guard us longer from the stroke of death,
The stroke of death on him had later fell,
Whom all mankind esteem’d and lov’d so well.”

The poet-preacher was advanced to the chaplaincy of a regiment of Dragoon Guards. Sad to relate, in the year 1756, in a fit of insanity, he took his own life.

During the Gordon riots on the 7th of January, 1780, Lord Mansfield’s house in Bloomsbury Square was burnt, and in the flames perished his valuable library, which he commenced collecting when a lad at school. It included many valuable volumes and materials for memoirs of his times. Cowper thus wrote on the subject:—

“So then—the Vandals of our isle,
Sworn foes of sense and law,
Have burnt to dust a nobler pile
Than ever Roman saw!
And Murray sighs o’er Pope and Swift,
And many a treasure more,
The well-judged purchase, and the gift
That graced his letter’d store.
Their pages mangled, burnt, and torn,
The loss was his alone;
But ages yet to come shall mourn
The burning of his own.”

A pleasing and playful epigram on Robert Bloomfield, the author of “The Farmer’s Boy,” was written by Henry Kirke White:—

“Bloomfield, thy happy omen’d name
Ensures continuance of thy fame;
Both sense and truth this verdict give,
While fields shall bloom thy name shall live.”

The residences of Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge near the English Lakes suggested the title of lake poets, and of their works the Rev. Henry Townshend wrote:—

“They come from the lakes—an appropriate quarter
For poems diluted with plenty of water.”

Surely Lord Holland was a little wide of the mark when he penned the following epigram, complaining that Southey did not write sufficient laureate poems; the fact is, he wrote too many to sustain his reputation as a poet:—

“Our Laureate Bob defrauds the King—
He takes his cash and will not sing;
Yet on he goes, I know not why,
Singing for us who do not buy.”

In the Diary of Thomas Moore, under date of September 4, 1825, it is stated: “Lord H. full of an epigram he had just written on Southey, which we all twisted and turned into various shapes; he is as happy as a boy during the operation. He suggests the following as the last couplet:—

“And for us, who will not buy,
Goes singing on eternally.”

It has been truthfully observed that William Wordsworth “found poetry in the most common-place events of life, and described them in familiar language; he naturally contended that there was little real difference between poetry and prose.” Byron thus rallies him on the theory:—

“The simple Wordsworth, framer of a lay
As soft as evening in his favourite May,
Who warns his friend, ‘to shake off toil and trouble,
And quit his books, for fear of growing double;’
Who, both by precept and example, shows
That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose;
Convincing all, by demonstration plain,
Poetic souls delight in prose inane.”

Theodore Hook produced some pungent verses; here is a slight example on Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound”:—

“Shelley styles his new poem Prometheus Unbound,
And ’tis like to remain so while time circles round;
For surely an age would be spent in the finding
A reader so weak as to pay for the binding!”

Scott wrote a poem which was published in 1815, under the title of The Field of Waterloo, and prefaced it thus: “It may be some apology for the imperfections of this poem, that it was composed hastily, and during a short tour upon the Continent, where the author’s labours were liable to frequent interruption; but its best apology is, that it was written for the purpose of assisting the Waterloo subscription.”

This plea did not disarm hostile criticism. Thomas, Lord Erskine, expressed himself as follows:—

“On Waterloo’s ensanguined plain
Lie tens of thousands of the slain;
But none by sabre or by shot
Fell half so flat as Walter Scott.”Wrote Thomas Moore in his Diary: “I have read Walter-loo. The battle murdered many, and he has murdered the battle; ’tis sad stuff.”

The Earl of Carlisle wrote a sixpenny pamphlet advocating small theatres; and on the day it was issued the newspapers contained the announcement that he had given a large subscription to a public fund, a circumstance which formed the theme of the following epigram by his cousin, Lord Byron:

“Carlisle subscribes a thousand pounds
Out of his rich domains;
And for sixpence circles round
The product of his brains:
’Tis thus the difference you may hit
Between his fortune and his wit.”

Byron made his unhappy marriage the subject of at least three epigrams. Here are two of them as follows:—

On His Wedding-day.

“Here’s a happy new year! But with reason
I beg you’ll permit me to say—
Wish me many returns of the season,
But as few as you please of the day.”