in poetry, a short poem in verse, treating only of one thing, and ending with some lively, ingenious, and natural thought or point. The word is formed of επιγραφή inscription, of επιγράφειν to inscribe or write upon.

Epigrams then, originally, signify inscriptions, and they derive their origin from those inscriptions placed by the ancients on their tombs, statues, temples, triumphal arches, &c. These, at first, were only simple monograms; afterwards, increasing their length, they made them in verse, to be the more easily retained: Herodotus, and others, have transmitted to us several of them. Such little poems retained the name of epigrams, even after the design of their first institution was varied, and people began to use them for the relation of little facts and accidents, the characterizing of persons, &c. The point or turn is a quality much insisted on by the critics, who require the epigram constantly to clothe with something poignant and unexpected, to which all the rest of the composition is only preparatory; while others, on the contrary, exclude the point, and require the thought to be equally diffused throughout the poem, without laying the whole stress on the close: the former is usually Martial's practice, and the latter that of Catullus.

The Greek epigrams have scarce anything of the point or briskness of the Latin ones: those collected in the Anthology, have most of them a remarkable air of ease and simplicity, attended with something just and witty; witty; such as we find in a sensible peasant, or a child that has wit. They have nothing that bites, but something that tickles. Though they want the salt of Martial, yet to a good taste they are not insipid; except a few of them, which are quite flat and spiritless. However, the general faintness and delicacy of the pleasantry in them, has given occasion for a Greek epigram, or epigram à la Grecque, to denote, among the French, an epigram void of salt or sharpness.

The epigram admits of great variety of subjects: some are made to praise, and others to satirize; which last are much the easiest, ill-nature serving instead of point and wit. Boileau's epigrams are all satires on one or another; those of des Reaux are all made in honour of his friends; and those of Mad. Scudery are so many eloges. The epigram being only a single thought, it would be ridiculous to express it in a great number of verses.