It is difficult to recover scraps like these, fragmentary of their own nature, and scattered over every country of the earth. I have sought in vain for oriental specimens, although the Cardinal distributed numbers of them to the students of the Propaganda at their leaving college. In a sheet of autographs prefixed to this volume will be found verses in sixteen different languages. A few others are given in the appendix. I shall jot down here two or three specimens of his classical epigrams which have fallen in my way.
Most of them arose out of the very circumstance of his being asked for such a token of remembrance.
For instance, on one occasion when the request was addressed to him in Greek, he wrote:
Ἑλλάδος ἠρώτας ἐμε ῥήμασιν. Ἑλλάδος ἁυδήν
Ἐκχὲω, οὐδ’ ἄλλην χρή ἀπαμειβόμενον.
Οὐ φθόγγος φθόγγοισιν ἀμείβεται, εί μὴ ὁμοῖος,
Ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ συμφώνων γίγνεται ἁρμονίη.
Νῦν δέ τίνα Γνώμην δώσω ἀιτοῦντι; τιν ἄλλην
Ἡ—— ’Θεὸν ἐν πάσῃ, δὲι φιλέειν κραδίῃ.’
So again, when a visitor begged him to write his name in an album, he gave, instead, this pretty couplet.