Paetus reluctant to die wavered; him Arria marking
Brued in her bosom the sword, which to her husband she gave;
Think not, she cried, that my wound bears with it aught that is painful!
That which thou dealest thyself, that will be painful to me!
Conjugis audisset fatum cum Porcia Bruti,
Et subtracta sibi quæreret arma dolor,
Nondum scitis, ait, mortem non posse negari
Credideram satis hoc vos docuisse patrem
Dixit et ardentes avido bibit ore favillas,
I nunc, et ferrum, turba molesta, nega!
Portia, thy Brutus is dead! they told her. She in her anguish
Silently sought for a sword—kindness had hid it from her.
Dream ye, officious, she cried, that death will admit of denial!
Truly I trusted my sire, Cato, had taught ye better!
Pausing she thrust in her mouth live coals, and eagerly swallowed;
Go, ye officious, refuse Portia a useless weapon!
In so far as the modern epigram is modelled upon Martial, we should expect it to flourish with especial luxuriance in the classic literature of France. Modern French, of all the daughters of Latin, inherits the most terseness and precision, and adapts herself with peculiar ease to a compact and pregnant style. The burst of admiration for the ancients which deserved the name of Renaissance, and rose in Ronsard and Du Bellay to a fervent and naïve enthusiasm, was tempered by Malherbe and Boileau to a cautious study of principles and the elaborate finish of expression. It is a significant fact that Malherbe during the most fruitful period of his life, from twenty to forty-five, composed on the average but thirty-three lines a year. Waller had such examples in his mind when he urged his countrymen to prune their style:
Our lines reformed and not composed in haste,
Like marble polished, would like marble last.
Malherbe himself made but few epigrams, and none comparable to the familiar stanza in the elegy which he wrote to console a friend. Translating it is like handling a butterfly:
She bloomed in a world where the sweetest that blows
Is the first to decay;
And rosebud, her life was the life of a rose,
The space of a day.
Of French epigrammatists, the most voluminous are Clement Marot and Jean Baptiste Rousseau. The latter has left four books of epigrams which are rarely deficient in point, but often diffuse and cold. Here is one:
They burn my books, you say, they give
Death to the child who only asked to live:
Your own in peace will draw their breath,
They’re sure to die a natural death.