We find this epithet used by several Greek writers; it is even as old as _Homer's_ time, for we read in the _Odyssey_, μείδησε δὲ θυμῷ σαρδάνιον μάλα τοῖον, "but he laughed in his soul a very bitter laugh." The word was written indifferently σαρδάνιος and σαρδόνιος; and some lexicographers derive it from the verb σαίρω, of σέσηρα, "to show the teeth, grin like a dog:" especially in scorn or malice. The more usual derivation is from σαρδόνιον, a plant of Sardinia (Σαρδώ), which was said to distort the face of the eater. In the English of the present day, a Sardonic laugh means a derisive, fiendish laugh, full of bitterness and mocking; stinging with insult and rancour. Lord Byron has hit it off in his portraiture of the Corsair, Conrad: "There was a laughing devil in his sneer, That rais'd emotions both of _rage_ and _fear_." In Izaak Walton's ever delightful _Complete Angler_, Venator, on coming to Tottenham High Cross, repeats his promised verse: "it is a copy printed among some of Sir Henry Wotton's, and doubtless made either by him or by a lover of angling." Here is the first stanza:-- "Quivering fears, heart-tearing cares, Anxious sighs, untimely tears, Fly, fly to courts, Fly to fond worldlings' sports, Where strained _Sardonic_ smiles are glosing still, And Grief is forced to laugh against her will; Where mirth's but mummery, And sorrows only real be." In Sir J. Hawkins's edition is the following note on the word "Sardonic" in these lines: "Feigned, or forced smiles, from the word _Sardon_, the name of an herb resembling smallage, and growing in Sardinia, which, being eaten by men, contracts the muscles, and excites laughter even to death. Vide _Erasmi Adagia_, tit. RISUS." _Sardonic_, in this passage, means "forced, strained, unusual, artificial;" and is not taken in the worst sense. These lines of Sir H. Wotton's bring to mind some of Lorenzo de Medici's in a platonic poem of his, when he contrasts the court and country. I quote Mr. Roscoe's translation:-- "What the heart thinks, the tongue may here disclose, Nor inward grief with outward smiles is drest; Not like the world--where wisest he who knows To hide the secret closest in his breast." The _Edinburgh Review_, July, 1849, in an article on Tyndale's _Sardinia_, says: