40. In the Epigram* the mind is roused by a conflict or contradiction between the form of the language and the meaning really conveyed. "The child is father to the man" is an epigram. The language contradicts itself, but the meaning is apparent. "Beauty, when unadorned, 's adorned the most," is an epigrammatic form of saying that natural beauty is better without artificial decoration.

This is a figure of frequent occurrence. It is naturally confounded with Antithesis, from the presence of an element of contrariety. The intention, however, is not to elucidate a truth otherwise than by awakening the attention through the form given to it. Any contradiction gives a shock of surprise, which is a state favorable to receiving an impression.

The following are examples of the epigram in its most usual form, as now defined:—

"When you have nothing to say, say it."

"Conspicuous for its absence."

Grote says of the legendary age, that "it was a past that never was present." The seeming contradiction conveys a real and important meaning.

"We cannot see the wood for trees," is an impressive illustration of the difficulty of attaining a general view, when engrossed with the details.

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Verbosity is cured by a wide vocabulary." This intimates a truth under the guise of a self-contradiction. By the

It

*"Epigram" signified originally an inscription on a monument. came next to mean a short poem, containing some single thought pointedly expressed, the subjects being very various—amatory, convivial, moral, eulogistic, satirical, humorous, &c. Of the various devices for brevity and point employed in such compositions, especially in modern times, the most frequent is a play upon words. Under whatever name described, this is a well-marked and distinct effect; and, as all the other modes of giving point have separate designations (metaphor, balance, &C.), I have regarded it as the principal form of epigram, and named it accordingly.

command of a wide vocabulary, we can make so happy a selection as to give our meaning in few words.

Hesiod, illustrating the desirableness of simplicity of life, exclaims, "How much is the half greater than the whole!" "By indignities men come to dignities," is a characteristic saying of Bacon.

"The favorite has no friend."

"Some people are too foolish to commit follies."

"A soul of goodness in things evil."

"The better is the enemy of good," is a German proverb, intended to reprove aspirations after impracticable improvements. It is analogous to the homely saying, "More haste, worse speed."

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By merit raised to that bad eminence."

"One secret in education is to know how wisely to lose time." (Herbert Spencer.)

"Nothing so fallacious as facts, except figures." (Canning.) Every man desires to live long; but no man would be

old."

"Language is the art of concealing thought."

"'Tis all thy business, business how to shun."
"He surpassed himself."

"Out-heroding Herod."

"He is so good that he is good for nothing," is a play upon the word good; in the one clause it means mere amiability of disposition, in the other the power of being useful. Pope is especially fertile in epigrams:— "And most contemptible to shun contempt."

"And now the chapel's silver bell you hear,
That summons you to all the pride of prayer."
"Nature, like liberty, is best restrained,

By the same laws which first herself ordained."

41. The effect of the Epigram in giving a shock of surprise may be produced by the Identical Assertion: as, "Fact is fact;" "What I have written, I have written; "Bread is bread."

To say that a thing is what it is, conveys no additional in

formation, and we are surprised that any one should make so unmeaning an assertion. We then cast about, and find that there are two senses in the words, and that the subject takes one, and the predicate another. "What I have written," means simply the inscription as set up by Pilate; the second clause "I have written" is intended to insinuate the further meaning, not necessarily conveyed, that the inscription is written finally, and is not to be amended or reconsidered. When Johnson said "Sensation is sensation," it was his way of expressing that his uneasy feeling on the occasion was too great to be done away with by reasoning, or mastered by mere resolution.

Bentham made an emphatic statement of the principle of the equal rights of men, in the apparently identical proposition, "Everybody to count for one, and nobody to count for more than one."

"His coming was an event;" that is, something unusual.

42. Seeming Irrelevance, also, has the effect of an epigrammatic surprise.

When Emerson says, "Where snow falls, there is a freedom," he puts together two things that have no obvious connection; the proposition appears not so much contradictory as irrelevant and nonsensical. When we reflect a little, we see that he means to describe the influences of tropical heat in debilitating the energies of men, and so preparing them for political slavery.

43. When a familiar saying is unexpectedly turned into a new form which completely changes the meaning, we may class it as an epigram.

As in the saying of Horace Walpole: "Summer has set in with its usual severity." We might invert Spenser's designation of the old English, and say, "the well of English unpurified." "Do unto others, as ye would not that they should do unto you."

In such a case as this last, it is known that the speaker

does not mean to contradict the highest maxim of morality, and therefore it is necessary to look out for his real drift, which is probably ironical.

The following example is from Kinglake's History of the Crimean War: "In the eyes of the Czar, Lord Stratford's way of keeping himself eternally in the right and eternally moderate was the mere contrivance, the inverted Jesuitism, of a man resolved to do good that evil might come—resolved to be forbearing and just, for the sake of doing a harm to the church."

"He went to his imagination for his facts, and to his memory for his tropes," is renowned as a cutting insinuation, or sarcasm. It is an epigrammatic inversion of the province of each of the two faculties named.

44. The use of the arrestive conjunctions gives something of the force of the epigram. "We hate the sin, but pity the sinner." "The world will tolerate many vices, but not their diminutives."

"Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull."

The epigram is evidently dependent upon a plurality of significations in the same word. Many words have, besides the obvious or familiar sense, some other acceptation that reconciles the seeming contradiction, and gives a real and valuable meaning. When Milton describes the leader of the Satanic host, as "by merit raised to that bad eminence," the double epigram turns upon the words merit and eminence; these, in their first and obvious meaning, express qualities that we admire and approve, but they are also employed to denote unusual superiority of body or mind, although exhibited in ways that we disapprove.

45. The Paronomasia, or Pun, is well known in ordinary conversation, and in comic writing, but rarely enters into serious composition. It is a variety of the Epigram; being a play on the various meanings of the same word. It is occasionally brought in with effect.

Ferrier, in his Philosophy, terms our Faculty of Sense a

Faculty of Nonsense, availing himself of the double meaning of the word to suggest a doctrine.

The Conundrum pushes to the utmost limits the playing at cross purposes with the meaning of words.

HYPERBOLE.

46. Hyperbole consists in magnifying objects beyond their natural bounds, so as to make them more impressive or intelligible. "Swift as the wind;" "rivers of blood and hills of slain," are hyperbolical expressions.

So far as the feelings are concerned, the tendency to hyperbole or exaggeration may be referred mainly to two causes.

1. Every strong passion magnifies whatever concerns it. Love, fear, hatred, exaggerate their several objects in proportion to their intensity. The Psalmist expresses his devotion by the sentence, "A day in Thy courts is better than a thousand." Affection has always been permitted to enhance its objects far above their reality. Fear exaggerates danger. Hatred intensifies, and even creates, bad qualities in the person or thing hated.

This has to be attended to in depicting character. Any one under strong passion is represented as magnifying the object of the passion. The terrified scout, in Ossian, is made to describe the enemy thus: "I saw their chief tall as a rock of ice; his spear the blasted fir; his shield the rising moon; he sat on the shore, like a cloud of mist on the hill." Satan's despair is portrayed in the famous passage, "Me miserable," &c. Flattery and Adulation are names for the figure in one particular application.

2. Human desire is naturally illimitable. Hence, whatever pleases us in poetry, or in the fine arts generally, is magnified as far as can be done without offending our sense of reality and truth.

Wordsworth, in his praise of Duty, exclaims,

"And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong."