It forms by no means the least singular of survivals that the names of several of the members of the Sixty Club have been preserved--just a tenth, including that of one who was nicknamed the _Lobster_. The Sixty were to Athenian society what the Literary Club was to London in the days of Reynolds and Johnson--possibly more; for it was a greater novelty and a fresher influence. But the Literary Club itself was far more than the successor of other institutions, of which earlier men, like Beaumont and Dryden, Addison and Steele, had been the ornament and the life. The modern manner of epigrammatic wit may be intrinsically similar to that of the Greeks, but certainly diverges from it widely enough in point of detail and colour. I am only at present, however, dealing with the _principia_ of the subject, and shewing, as well as I can, to what extent the ancients laid the foundations of the wealth in this branch of culture of which we find ourselves the possessors. But the strong influence of local atmosphere and idiom is illustrated by that epigram of Burns to Mr. Ferguson:-- “The king’s poor blackguard slave am I, And scarce dare spare a minute; But I’ll be wi’ you by-and-by, Or else the devil’s in it;” which strikes both sides of the Tweed as intelligible and clever, but would have fallen as flatly on the ear of a Greek as some of the traditional sayings in Athenæus, at which the Sixty would have clapped their hands, do on that of a modern Englishman. The epigram lends itself with tolerable readiness to the service of the joking guild, and the rhythmical form often communicates an elegance of turn and a happiness of finish not reachable in prose. The distich of Dr. Joseph Warton on the aphorism of his friend Dr. Balguy, _that wisdom was sorrow_, is to the point here:-- “If what you advance, dear Doctor, be true, That wisdom is sorrow, how wretched are you!” where in a couplet we see combined jest, sentiment, and philosophy: a sparkling antithesis and a compliment worthy of Pope. Sometimes the epigrammatic jest of later days confines itself to mere verbal quibble; as, for instance:-- “The French have taste in all they do, Which we are quite without; For nature, which to them gave _goût_, To us gave only gout.” A small thesis on international pronunciation, for which its metric dress partly helps as a passport: how lamely it would read in prose! [Illustration] CHAPTER VII. FORMULATION OF THE JEST--EDITORIAL TREATMENT OF STORIES--SOPHISTICATED VERSIONS.