A good modern epigram describes a miser's feast, in the form of "Grace after dinner," ascribed to both Rochester and Swift :

Thanks for this miracle! it is no less
Than finding manna in the wilderness.
In midst of famine we have had relief,
And seen the wonder of a chine of beef;

Chimneys have smok'd that never smok'd before,

And we have din'd-where we shall dine no more.

But how poor are both Martial's and the modern epigram in comparison with the Greek, which in the compass of two lines contains so much-the obligation which the miser felt he was under to give a feast, possibly to some rich man's heir, to whom he lent money at usurious interest;-the horror of the expense, which took such hold upon him, that it followed him even into sleep:-the despair with which the dream of utter ruin filled his soul, and the dread influence of which was so great, that while yet asleep he adjusted the rope, and hurried himself to the shades below.

In reference to Martial's distich, may be quoted the following passage from Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel" on a well-known character of the day:

Chaste were his cellars, and his shrieval board

The grossness of a city feast abhorr'd:

His cooks with long disuse their trade forgot;

Cool was his kitchen, though his brain was hot.

The satire is on Slingsby Bethel, an Independent and a Republican, one of the most active of the party who wished to exclude the Duke of York from the throne. Parsimony was habitual to him, and when sheriff of London, in 1680, the frugality of his entertainments was generally censured. (See Granger's "Biog. Hist. of England," 1779, III. 409.)

THE MISER AND THE MOUSE (Jacobs III. 50, civ.).

Translated by Dr. Jortin.

"Thou little rogue, what brings thee to my house?" Said a starv'd miser to a straggling mouse.

"Friend," quoth the mouse," thou hast no cause to fear; I only lodge with thee, I eat elsewhere."

This humorous epigram recalls a modern anonymous one, said to have been presented to the learned Dr. Bentham, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, who was famous for treating his horses much as Lucillius's miser treated the mouse-gave them lodging, but no corn. For some trifling offence he had ordered an undergraduate to write verses on the subject, "Ignotum omne pro magnifico." The arch youth gave up the following ("Select Epigrams," II. 163, note; and Kett's "Flowers of Wit," II. 139):

Averse to pamper'd and high-mettled steeds,
His own upon chopt straw Avaro feeds:
Bred in his stable, in his paddock born,
What vast ideas they must have of corn!

THE FEAR OF DEATH (Jacobs III. 54, cxxiii.).
Translated by Cowper.

Far happier are the dead, methinks, than they
Who look for death, and fear it every day.

Shakespeare has the same sentiment in several places. In "Measure for Measure" (Act III. sc. 1):

Dar'st thou die?

The sense of death is most in apprehension.

Again, in "Julius Cæsar" (Act II. sc. 2), Cæsar says:
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come, when it will come.

PLUTO AND THE PHYSICIAN (Jacobs III. 54, cxxiv.).
Translated by C.

When Magnus pass'd below, Dis, trembling said,
He comes, and will to life restore my dead.

The very contrary of this compliment to an eminent physician, is given in the form of an epitaph on a quack, in "Nuga Canoræ, or Epitaphian Mementos, &c.," 1827, by William Wadd, a London surgeon of celebrity in his day (Epitaph 55):

This quack to Charon would his penny pay:
The grateful ferryman was heard to say-
"Return, my friend! and live for ages more,
Or I must haul my useless boat ashore."

Of a similar turn to Lucillius' epigram, is an anonymous one on Marshal Sexe ("Poetical Farrago," I. 153):

Th' eternal ferryman of fate,

When Saxe, unconquerably great,
Approach'd within his ken,

Scowl'd at his freight, a trembling crowd,
And, "Turn out ghosts," he roar'd aloud,
"Here's Hercules agen."

The "Magnus" of Lucillius' epigram is in a translation among Epigrams from the German of Lessing," published in 1825, changed to "Mead." Hackett (the editor of a volume of Epigrams, in 1757) has an epigram equally complimentary to that celebrated physician of the reigns of George I. and II., but with a different point (Ep. 17):

Mead's not dead then, you say; only sleeping a little-
Why, egad! sir, you've hit it off there to a tittle.
Yet, friend, his awaking I very much doubt,
Pluto knows who he's got, and will ne'er let him out.

NICARCHUS.

Flourished in the second century. He was, by birth, a Samian,

THE GREAT CONTENTION (Jacobs III. 62, xvi.).
Translated by C.

Three dwarfs contended by a state decree,
Which was the least and lightest of the three.
First, Hermon came, and his vast skill to try,
With thread in hand leap'd through a needle's eye.
Forth from a crevice Demas then advanc'd,
And on a spider's web securely danc'd.

What feat show'd Sospiter in this high quarrel?--
No eyes could see him, and he won the laurel.

With this amusing epigram, where a dwarf is too small to be seen, may be compared a more modern one, where a poet is too spiritual to be seen. Theophile, a French poet, born about 1590, was obliged to leave France on account of his impiety and debaucheries, and came to England, where he solicited an audience of King James I., which the monarch refused. Theophile turned the affront to his own glory in an epigram, which has been thus translated by Lovelace (Lovelace's Poems): If James, the king of wit,

To see me thought not fit,

Sure this the cause hath been,
That, ravish'd with my merit,
He thought I was all spirit,
And so not to be seen.

Compare also Sir Thomas More:

A cobweb serv'd a tiny elf,
Despising life, to hang himself.

A VOICE FROM THE GRAVE (Jacobs III. 65, xxvii.).

Translated by C.

Phido nor hand nor touch to me applied;
Fever'd, I thought but of his name and died.

The germ probably of Martial's epigram of like character (Book VI. 53), which Elphinston thus translates:

He bath'd with us, brisk; and he supp'd with us, gay;
Next morn, with the dead, Athenagoras lay.

The cause, do you ask, of the sudden transition?

In sleep he Hermocrates saw, the physician.

The epigrams on doctors are numberless, but there are very few modern ones which have the humour of those by Nicarchus and Martial. There is a celebrated one by Prior, on Radcliffe, who was noted for his singular powers of conversation, and the rough independence of his manners. It is entitled, "The remedy worse than the disease":

I sent for Radcliffe; was so ill,

That other doctors gave me over;
He felt my pulse, prescrib'd his pill,
And I was likely to recover.
But when the wit began to wheeze,
And wine had warm'd the politician,
Cur'd yesterday of my disease

I died last night of my physician.

RUFINUS.

Of this author nothing is known. His epigrams are placed here in accordance with the chronological position assigned to him by Brunck and Jacobs.

THE TRANSITORINESS OF YOUTH AND BEAUTY

(Jacobs III. 102, xv.).

Translated by C.

Take, take this flow'ring wreath from me,
Twin'd by these hands, and twin'd for thee.
Here blends the daffodil's soft hue,

With lilies, and the violet's blue;

Here the moist wind-flower darkly blows,
Entwining with the opening rose;

And whilst it binds thy pensive brow,
Let pride to gentler feelings bow,
At thought of that no distant day,

When thou, as these, must fade away.

There are several epigrams in the Anthology, in which youth and beauty are compared with the short-lived flowers. The following is by Strato, who is supposed to have flourished early in the third century (Jacobs III. 85, lxxiii.), translated by Shepherd:

Boast'st thou of beauty? The sweet-scented rose,
The garden's pride, in blushing beauty glows;
But pass some few fast-fleeting hours, are found
Its purple petals scatter'd on the ground.

The rose and beauty, when they reach their prime,
Alike are wither'd by the breath of time.

Compare the "Faërie Queene," Book II. Canto xii. 74:
Ah! see, whoso fayre thing doest faine to see,
In springing flowre the image of thy day!
Ah! see the virgin rose, how sweetly she
Doth first peepe foorth with bashfull modestee,
That fairer seems the lesse you see her may !
Lo! see, soone after how more bold and free
Her bared bosome she doth broad display,

Lo! see soone after how she fades and falls away!

Pope has, in some measure, reproduced the same idea, though with especial reference to beauty, not life, in his Epistle to Miss Blount.

THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE A REASON FOR ENJOYING IT (Jacobs III. 102, xvi.).

Translated by Fawkes.

Let us, my friend, in joy refine,

Bathe, crown our brows, and quaff the wine:
Short is the space for human joys;

What age prevents not, death destroys.

This is a favourite subject with the Greek epigrammatists. Anacreon, in several of his odes, enforces the enjoyment of life during the short space allotted to man on earth, and that his advice should not be forgotten, Julianus Ægyptus, in an epitaph on him, makes him repeat the same lesson after he was dead (Jacobs III. 208, lxi.). The translation is by Fawkes :

What oft alive I sung, now dead I cry

Loud from the tomb, "Drink, mortals, ere you die."