the Spaniard. In Belgium, Anna Byns, a nun of Antwerp, the "spiritual nightingale" of Flanders, had before used it (1553) as a weapon against the "accursed Lutheran sect." The same thing was done by an English priest, who in 1634 printed at Paris a set of epigrams entitled "The Mirror of the New Reformation." They are learned and dull, but probably they gave Dryden some hints for his Hind and Panther. The religious and controversial use of the epigram is most characteristic of the Teutonic nations, as its panegyrical use is most characteristic of the Italians. In Italy, after the formation of the vulgar tongue by Dante and his school, the satirical genius of the nation came out in the Strambotti of Aquila (1466-1500), Guidalotto (1504), Accolti (1513), Lappoli (1522), and Aretino, whose strambotti alla villanesca (1544) finally disgraced this kind of poetry, though it continued to flourish in pasquils, often with great epigrammatic effect. Some of the best of these are in Latin, such as that on Urban VIII., who stripped the bronze off the Pantheon: "Quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini;" and that on Benedict XIV.: "Magnus in folio, parvus in solio." One of the commonest and most successful forms of pasquil is the ingenious application of a trite saying or text to the person satirised. This is a known figure for epigrams: thus we may talk of the "howling wilderness" of parochial psalmody. The application is made more pointed by a slight perversion, as in Sir Humphry Davy's line, "the Highland chiefs were marching bag and bagpipe," where the ear expects "baggage." The scholastic epigram took two forms in Italy; those after the model of the Greeks and Catullus were called madrigals, sonnets, and the like. The great madrigalisti were Navagero, Strozzi, Tansillo, Tasso, Guarini, Baldi, and Marini. The Pastor Fido is a string of madrigals, and its interlocutors mere epigrammatists. The following specimen from Petrarca will give an idea of the ingenious badinage of these compo sitions : "Or vedi, Amor, che giovinetta donna Tuo regno sprezza, e del mio mal non cura, Tu se' armato, ed ella in treccie e' in gonna Epigrams in Martial's manner were not relished in Italy at the Renaissance. Dante had written two; but the thing was considered an inferior article, and a token of false and frenchi fied taste. The first and most classical epigrammatist of this school was Alamanni (1530), from whom Quadrio gives the following epigrams as models: "Tornata a Menelao l'ingiusta Elena Dicea, di pianto e di vergogna piena: Ben fu rapita esta terrena salma, Ma sempre, il cielo il sa, restò tua l'alma. Riprendea Clitennestra la sorella, Che no fu sì pudica come bella. The new style of epigram introduced by Leporeo was simply an attempt to naturalise in Italian the rhymed cæsuras of the medieval Latin: "Io cortegiano, insano, un mal mestiere Elessi, e sottomessi il mio volere : Vendei la libertà: credei gioire: Ma provai mille guai da non ridere," &c. Among the Italians it is often the metre only by which strambotti, epigrams, and madrigals are distinguished. All definitions of epigrams agree in calling them poems, yet collectors can scarcely overcome the temptation of including some in prose. In the Latin anthology we have a riddle on a rope-dancer,"Vidi hominem pendere cum via, cui latior erat planta quam semita." Of Beza we have the epitaph on Du Prat. In Mr. Booth's volume we find epitaphs such as "Here lies Fuller's earth," "Here lie Walker's particles," "Peace to his [Soyer's] hashes," and Mr. Thackeray's characters of the Four Georges in a kind of rhythmical prose. French col lectors cannot bring themselves to exclude Castel's epigrammatic definition, "La vie est une épigramme dont la mort est la pointe." All who have read Bacon's and Lamb's essays, Howell's, Pope's, or Byron's letters, Andrewes' or Barrow's sermons, or the Latin of Kempis, St. Bernard, St. Augustine, Boethius, Tacitus, or Seneca, know what epigrammatic prose is; and it is hard to say why a well-balanced antithesis is not as good an epigram in prose as in verse. Schlözer's saying, "La statistique est une histoire qui s'arrête, tandis que l'histoire est une statistique que marche;" Sir F. Walsingham's, "Chastity is the honesty of women, and honesty the chastity of men," Seneca's, "Academicorum nova scientia, nihil scire;" Chamfort's division of mankind into "those who have more dinner than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinner," and of friends into "those who love you, those who don't care for you, and those that hate you;" Heine's classification of all that is into "eatable and not eatable;" Bazin's description of the Princess de Condé, who "lived happily with her husband from that time till his death -which happened shortly after;" Burke's saying, "Chatham's forte was fancy, while his feeble was ignorance;" Byron's, "Dr. Polidori has no more patients, for his patients are no more;" and Canning's apophthegm on Addington's government, "Every thing is at sea but the fleet;"-all these sentences only want rhyme to be acknowledged epigrams. Every jest, every pasquil, every facetious application of a trite saying to a person or thing, every lusty hyperbole or tart irony, is matter for an epigram. Cicero somewhere says, "se ipsum amans sine rivali," Buchanan, "the busy bee" sucks the honey, and lays it up in an epigrammatic cell "Qui te. Sed sine rivali, Posthume, solus amas.” Another epigrammatist advises a person who wants a new subject for poetry-" things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme"-to write a panegyric on himself. St. Gelais writes: "On dit que tu es amoureux, Mais que c'est de ta fantasie: S'il est vrai, tu es bien heureux; Maynard takes up his parable and says, "Je conseil à ce grand cheval, Puisqu'il veut aimer sans rival, De n'aimer jamais que soi-même." La Fontaine thought the idea was better in its first simplicity, so he wrote about "Un homme qui s'aimoit sans avoir de rivaux." And finally, Coquard thought it might be expressed still more sharply, so he wrote an epigram on "Guy," who "Est devenu, dit-on, amoureux de soi-même- Probably a careful search through several collections of epigrams would give as many more imitations of Cicero's thought as we chose to get together. But when all is done, the question remains, are any of these lines more really epigrammatic than Cicero's original scrap of prose? Those who maintain that rhyme or rhythm is essential to epigrams must settle how epigrams can be made in languages where the poetry has no measures and no rhymes, or whether the people who speak such tongues cannot have epigrams at all. Hebrew poetry is recognised not by its prosody, but by its syntax and logical antithesis. The distich, "A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, And a rod for the fool's back," no more scans or rhymes in Hebrew than in English; yet it is as much verse in Hebrew as Bauhusius' epigram is in Latin: "Nux, asinus, campana, piger, sine verbere cessant: Hæc dura, hic tardus, hæc tacet, ille jacet. Hæc cadit, hic pergit, hæc sonat, ille studet." The Arabic anthologies are said to be richer in rhyme than ours. Both the Arabic and Persian poets, if we may take the following translations as specimens, are acquainted with our epigrammatic forms: "When I sent you my melons, you cried out with scorn, When I offer'd myself, whom those graces adorn, "On parent knees a naked new-born child Weeping thou sat'st, while all around thee smiled. Calm thou mayst smile, while all around thee weep."13 12 From the Arabic, Booth, p. 139. 13 From the Persian by Sir Wm. Jones. ORIENTALISM AND EARLY CHRISTIANITY. AMONG the hostile influences against which Christianity had to struggle during the first three or four centuries of its existence, the best modern ecclesiastical writers, both Protestant and Catholic, have been almost unanimous in reckoning Orientalism, in some more or less definite form. That Christian missionaries in Eastern countries came into conflict with the local religions is of course evident. But, over and above this, it is assumed, as an undeniable historical fact, that throughout the Roman empire itself Oriental influences were widely prevalent; and the teaching of the Christian Church is supposed to have been considerably modified by them. It is well known how the demand for new and foreign religious rites was supplied by a large influx from all quarters of the East,-how numerous in Rome were the proselytes to Judaism,-how popular were the worships of Isis and Mithra,-how utterly powerless was all legislation against Chaldæans and mathematici,-how entire cities and provinces resorted to the atonement of the taurobolia. But, independent of the direct action of foreign religions and superstitions, each of which had, after all, but a limited circle of votaries, the very air is imagined to have been rife with Oriental influences; and it is by them that some of the most remarkable phenomena in the contemporaneous histories of Heathenism, Judaism, and Christianity have been explained. "Asiatic influences," says Dean Milman, "have worked more completely into the body of Christianity than any other foreign element; and it is by no means improbable that tenets which had their origin in India have for many centuries predominated, or materially affected the Christianity of the whole Western world." Another well-known English writer speaks of "that awful mistress of the ancient world-the Oriental theosophy-which, under a hundred changeful colours, held the religious mind in thrall during a period of two thousand years," and calls it "a pestilence born in the mud of the Ganges, and spreading death to the shores of the Atlantic." He describes it as having held "possession of the religious mind, almost universally, along the shores of the Mediterranean during full seven hundred years." If these and other writers who agree with them are correct in their interpretation of historical phenomena, M. Renan is certainly fully justified in asking whether Buddhist influences are not visible in the Gospel itself. |