th what I do?
You read verse if I stand or sit;
You read it if I run or sing;
And in the baths you read me verse;
I try the pool, and swim in verse;
I haste to dine, you go my way;
I order, and you read me out;
Worn out, I take my rest with verse.
You want to know what harm you do?
Just, upright, harmless, you're a pest.[50]

The conclusion is pleasantly witty, but the special charm of the poem
derives from the preceding enumeration.

This finishes the account of what we looked to in selecting these
epigrams. You will find what else is pertinent to this book in the
preface.

_Notes_

I have silently emended a few passages; otherwise the text translated
is that of _Epigrammatum Delectus_, Paris, 1659. It is regrettable
that the Latin text, at least of the poems cited, could not be printed
with the translation.

[1] _De nat. deor._ 2.2.5

[2] _Aen._ 5.481 and 8.596

[3] 177-8, 173

[4] All three passages are from epigrams by Gaspar Conrad in Janus
Gruter, _Delitiae poetarum germanorum_, 6 v., Frankfort, 1612: II,
1065-6, lines 1-6 of a twelve line epigram, "In symbolum Iacobi
Monavi"; II, 1077, the concluding lines of an eight line epigram, "Ad
Valentinum Maternum"; and II, 1079, the concluding couplet of a six
line epigram, "Ad Georgum Menhadum Philophilum." The second passage is
hardly construable.

[5] _Ars. poet._ 141-2, the paraphrase of Homer, and 143-4. The other
quotations in this passage are from the opening of the _Aeneid_,
_Thebaid_, _Rape of Proserpine_, and the _Pharsalia_.

[6] _Inst. orat._ 8.6.14

[7] "Manes Dousici," IV "Ad solem" and V "Ad sidera," _Poemata_,
Leyden, 1613, p. 166. Nicole reads _tandem_ for _rursus_ in the last
line of the second poem. Douza is the younger Janus Douza (1571-1596).

Nicole's criticism of these poems is just but superficial. The
difficulty with such poems lies in the method, which consists in the
establishment by amplification of one pole, followed by the briefest
statement of the contrary pole. But the latter is of personal concern
and is the essential subject of the poem. Thus the subject is
deliberately avoided for the greater part of the poem, and hence there
is in the amplification no principle of order to control the detail
and its accumulation. This accounts for the features Nicole censures;
however, he himself makes a similar point below in condemning negative
descriptions.

[8] I have been unable to f