EPIGRAMS.
Pages 75-8. Of the epigrams sixteen are given in all the editions, 1633-69. Of these, thirteen are in A18, N, TC, none in D, H49, Lec. Of the remaining three, two are in W, one in HN, both good authorities. I have added three of interest from W, of which one is in HN, and all three are in O'F. W includes among the Epigrams the short poem On a Jeat Ring Sent, printed generally with the Songs and Sonets. In HN there is one and in the Burley MS. are three more. Of these the one in HN and two of those in Bur are merely coarse, and there is no use burdening Donne with more of this kind than he is already responsible for. The last in Bur runs:
Why are maydes wits than boyes of lower strayne?
Eve was a daughter of the ribb not brayne.
Donne's epigrams were much admired, and some of his elegies were classed with them as satirical 'evaporations of wit'. Drummond says: 'I think if he would he might easily be the best epigrammatist we have found in English; of which I have not yet seen any come near the Ancients. Compare his Marry and Love with Tasso's stanzas against beauty; one shall hardly know who hath best.' The stanzas referred to are entitled Sopra la bellezza, and begin:
Questo che tanto il cieco volgo apprezza.
Page 75. Pyramus and Thisbe. The Grolier Club edition prints the first line of this epigram,
Two by themselves each other love and fear,