But if the envious person is an unhappy being without talents, jealous of merit as the poor are of the rich; if under the pressure at once of indigence and baseness he writes "News from Parnassus," "Letters from a Celebrated Countess," or "Literary Annals," the creature displays an envy which is in fact absolutely good for nothing, and for which even Mandeville could make no apology. Descartes said: "Envy forces up the yellow bile from the lower part of the liver, and the black bile that comes from the spleen, which diffuses itself from the heart by the arteries." But as no sort of bile is formed in the spleen, Descartes, when he spoke thus, deserved not to be envied for his physiology. A person of the name of Poet or Poetius, a theological blackguard, who accused Descartes of atheism, was exceedingly affected by the black bile. But he knew still less than Descartes how his detestable bile circulated through his blood. Madame Pernelle is perfectly right: "_Les envieux mourront, mais non jamais l'envie_."--The envious will die, but envy never. ("_Tartuffe_," Act V, Scene 3.) That it is better to excite envy than pity is a good proverb. Let us, then, make men envy us as much as we are able. EPIC POETRY. Since the word "_epos_," among the Greeks, signified a discourse, an epic poem must have been a discourse, and it was in verse because it was not then the custom to write in prose. This appears strange, but it is no less true. One Pherecydes is supposed to have been the first Greek who made exclusive use of prose to compose one of those half-true, half-false histories so common to antiquity. Orpheus, Linus, Thamyris, and Musæus, the predecessors of Homer, wrote in verse only. Hesiod, who was certainly contemporary with Homer, wrote his "Theogony" and his poem of "Works and Days" entirely in verse. The harmony of the Greek language so invited men to poetry, a maxim turned into verse was so easily engraved on the memory that the laws, oracles, morals, and theology were all composed in verse. _Of Hesiod._ He made use of fables which had for a long time been received in Greece. It is clearly seen by the succinct manner in which he speaks of Prometheus and Epimetheus that he supposes these notions already familiar to all the Greeks. He only mentions them to show that it is necessary to labor, and that an indolent repose, in which other mythologists have made the felicity of man to consist, is a violation of the orders of the Supreme Being. Hesiod afterwards describes the four famous ages, of which he is the first who has spoken, at least among the ancient authors who remain to us. The first age is that which preceded Pandora--the time in which men lived with the gods. The iron age is that of the siege of Thebes and Troy. "I live in the fifth," says he, "and I would I had never been born." How many men, oppressed by envy, fanaticism, and tyranny, since Hesiod, have said the same!