Annihilated in night snow by a nut stick,
I snow, night, nut, now, and annihilation know.[30]
In what way natural inclinations are to be gratified.
We must carefully avoid all these natural sources of aversion and no less gratify natural inclinations if we wish to attain that beauty we aim at. For self-love is so strong in men that they can hear nothing with pleasure unless it flatters them with their own feelings. For which reason those epigrams have correctly been judged best that penetrate deeper into those feelings and present to the reader's mind an idea recognised not only by the interior light but also by the interior feeling as quite true, so that he can be seduced into embracing it: for example, Martial's:
I scorn the fame purchased with easy blood
And praise the man who can be praised alive.[31]
For, since everyone hates death and longs for praise and glory, there is no one who would not be glad if he could be praised without dying. Another example is that of the old poet:
Put high disdain, deciduous hope put by:
Live with yourself who with yourself must die.[32]
For nature has, as Quintilian said, a kind of elevation intolerant of anything above it[33] that fawns on anyone who bids it be contemptuous of a pride in riches.
This much on the general sources of beauty and ugliness will be sufficient for passing judgement on any genre of poems. Nevertheless, this should be adapted to the particular nature, laws, and principles of the epigram, and so it will not be out of point to add a few remarks on the epigram itself.
The origin of the name epigram. Its definition, form, and laws.
"Epigram", as Scaliger observes, is the same thing as "inscription"; but since there are inscriptions of a good many things the former word has been applied to short poems inasmuch as epigrams of that sort used to be inscribed on monuments and statues;[34] and from this the word has been extended generally to short poems. The epigram is defined, then, as a short poem directly pointing out some thing, person, or deed.[35]]