On wordy epigrams.
It would be a long task to assemble all the natural aversions, nevertheless we may add a few more which have removed a whole host of epigrams from this anthology. Beyond those already mentioned, nature finds distasteful long circumlocutions and the piling up of a single point with varying phrase; for nature burns with a desire to find out, ever hastens to the conclusion, and is impatient at being detained by much talk unless there is a special reward. Consequently wordy epigrams beget a good deal of loathing, especially those that do not sufficiently balance their length with the magnitude of the idea. Some of Martial's are burdened with this fault; sometimes they accumulate too many commonplace compliments or are too petty in enumeration. For example, in this epigram to what point are so many trite similes piled up?
Her voice was sweeter than the agëd swan,
None would prefer the Eastern pearl before her,
Or the new-polished tooth of Indic beasts,
Or the first snow, lilies untouched by hand;
She who breathed fragrance of the Paestan rose,
Compared with whom the peacock was but dull,
The squirrel uncharming, and unrare the phoenix,
Erotion, is still warm on a new pyre.[27]
Similarly, why in another well-known epigram is the same idea repeated again and again?
Oh not unvalued object of my love,
Flaccus, the darling of Antenor's hearth,
Forego Pierian songs, the sisters' dances:
No girl among them ever gave a dime.
Phoebus is nought; Minerva has the cash,
Is shrewd, is only usurer to the gods.
What's there in Bacchus' ivy? The black tree
Of Pallas bends with mottled leaves and weight.
On Helicon there's only water, wreaths,
The divine lyres, and profitless applause.
Why do you dream of Cirrha, bare Permessis?
The forum is more Roman and more rich.
There the coins clink, but round the sterile chairs
And desks of poets only kisses rustle.[28]
In the same way that nature is displeased with wordiness, she is displeased with ideas that are too commonplace, for it is a kind of loquacity to bubble on with the commonplace and trite, since it is the purpose of speech to reveal what isn't known, not to repeat what is known and worn-out. Countless epigrams have been excluded from this selection for this fault, but since there is nothing more common I will omit offering examples.
On trifling wit, and plays on words.
Not a little displeasing, also, is an assiduity in trifling which withdraws the mind from solid subject-matter out of which true beauty springs. Plays on words, puns and other playing around of that kind, unless they come to the judgement of the pen within the bounds of art, are not so much figures of speech as faults of style, and in those epigrams where the point rests solely in these there is nothing thinner, especially when they are so peculiar to one language that they cannot be translated into another. On this basis we have passed over such frivolous witticisms as Owen's:
Rope ends the robber, death is his last haul;
The gallows gets the gangster—if not all,
If many get away, God gives no hope:
It's an odd thief dies with no coffin rope.[29]
A little more humorous is that of another poet on the Swiss killed at night, though it too is faulty: