I owe you now the quotation from the "Anthology," which I promised above. Among the Greek epigrams of all epochs, of which this collection is composed, there is one which relates precisely to the custom of which we speak. The Zeu Soson of this epigram is the translation of the Jupiter adsit of the Latins. I say the translation and not the original. For this is not one of those fragments which may be of an epoch anterior to that in which we have placed, and in which we have a right to place master Pomponius and his little adventure. In extending their empire over the countries of the Greek tongue, the Romans imported there a great number of their customs and social habits: the Jupiter adsit must have been of this number, and therefore we find it under Greek pens. I dare not venture here upon the Greek text of the "Anthology," which would perhaps frighten our fair readers, and I give only the Latin translation in two couplets:
Dic cur Sulpicius nequeat sibi mungere nasum?
Causa est quod naso sit minor ipsa manus.
Cur sibi sternutans, non clamat, Jupiter adsit?
Non nasum audit qui distat ab aure nimis.
Very well! I yet have scruples in regard to my Latin, which may not be understood by some of the ladies and especially by the bachelors of the bifurcation. Therefore, to put it into good French verse, I have had recourse to the politeness of our friend Pomponius, and the excellent man has willingly given the following translation of the second distich, which alone relates to the circumstance:
On demande pourquoi notre voisin Sulpice
Eternue, et jamais ne dit: Dien me bénisse!
Serait-ce, par hasard, qu'll n'entend pas tres-blen?
Du tout, l'oreille est bonne et fonctionne à merveille;
Mais son grand nez s'en va--si loin de son oreille,
Que quand il fait--ad--sit! celle-ce n'entend rien.
You demand why our neighbor Sulpice
Sneezes and never says, God bless me!
It is, perhaps, because he does not hear well:
Not at all, his ear is good, and acts to a marvel;
But his great nose goes away--so far from his ear,
That when he makes--ad--sit! this last hears nothing.
This epigram, undoubtedly, is not much more than two thousand years old; and why may it not have been written by Pomponius the ancient? For the Pomponius of our day, to him also, "how often and whenever," he shall sneeze--and without that even, God bless him!
[ORIGINAL.]