g.
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]

There are those who locate its formal principle in the serious or
witty idea that forms the conclusion, and so insist on this that they
deny anything is an epigram that lacks such a conclusion.[36] But this
is an error. There are some epigrams, and highly cultivated ones, that
have an equable elevation throughout and nothing of especial note in
the conclusion, as in this of a contemporary writer:

That on insurgent serpents breathing peace,
On unplumed eagles trembling, on tame pards,
And lions whose low necks accept the yoke,
Louis looks out, sublime on a bronze horse,
Nor fingers shaped this nor the craftsman's forge
But worth and God's fortune accomplished it.
The armed venger of faith, trustee of peace,
Ordained, for all to reverence, this, and bade
Rise in the royal place the reverend bronze,
That, the long perils past of civil strife,
And enemies subdued by prosperous arms,
Louis should ever triumph in the master city.[37]

Again, in some epigrams there is a straightforward neatness and a
gentle and dry humor that pleases, as may be seen in some of Catullus'
epigrams which we have put in this anthology.

Some go to the contrary extreme and not only do not require such
conclusions but even scorn them. These are for the most part the
outrageous lovers of Catullus who,