[1] Michael Praetorius, Syntagma musicum, tom. 1, c. 13, p. 380: Salomon van Til, Sing-Dicht und Spiel-Kunst, p. 95.
[2] Pollux, Onomasticon, lib. iv. cap. 9, 59.
[3] For an illustration, see Kathleen Schlesinger, Orchestral Instruments, part ii. “Precursors of the Violin Family,” fig. 165, p. 219.
[4] Athenaeus, iv. p. 183 d. and xiv. p. 638 a.
[5] Dialogo della musica antica e moderna, ed. 1602, p. 40.
EPIGRAM, properly speaking, anything that is inscribed. Nothing could be more hopeless, however, than an attempt to discover or devise a definition wide enough to include the vast multitude of little poems which at one time or other have been honoured with the title of epigram, and precise enough to exclude all others. Without taking account of its evident misapplications, we find that the name has been given—first, in strict accordance with its Greek etymology, to any actual inscription on monument, statue or building; secondly, to verses never intended for such a purpose, but assuming for artistic reasons the epigraphical form; thirdly, to verses expressing with something of the terseness of an inscription a striking or beautiful thought; and fourthly, by unwarrantable restriction, to a little poem ending in a “point,” especially of the satirical kind. The last of these has obtained considerable popularity from the well-known lines—
| “The qualities rare in a bee that we meet In an epigram never should fail; The body should always be little and sweet, And a sting should be left in its tail”— |
which represent the older Latin of some unknown writer—
| “Omne epigramma sit instar apis: sit aculeus illi; Sint sua mella; sit et corporis exigui.” |