12 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



From Martial's pages we may evoke all the old familiar faces of 

 jest and epigram with no magician's wand to aid us : 



The golden hair that Galla wears 

 Is hers. Who would have thought it ? 



She swears 'tis hers and true she swears, 

 For I know where she bought it. 



'Twas that mellowest of epigrammatists, Sir John Harrington, that 

 gave Galla her English dress ; but Martial had presented her in Latin. 

 And here I must break my paragraph to apologize to the spirit of old Sir 

 John for all the countless throng who have forgotten or never learned 

 that he was the author of that peerless flower of Enghsh epigrams : 



Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason ? 

 For if it prospers none dare call it treason. 



In Galla's train come all the women who have sought to remedy the 

 unkindness of nature by the ingenuity of man, and they have been many. 

 "Thais has black teeth, Laecania white; the former has her own, the 

 latter wears purchased ones." These two ladies have appeared often 

 enough in English garb, but even more often in French : 



Rien de plus noir que les dents d'Alizon, 



Rien de plus blanc que les dents de Fanchette. 



Devinez-vous quelle en est la raison ? 

 L'une a ses dents, et I'autre les achate. 



Such is the adaptation by M. de Morvilliers; but more than a score 

 of others in French are known to me, and there are doubtless as many 

 others that I have missed. A purchaser of ivory teeth and false hair in 

 the world of letters is the plagiarist who wishes to be thought a poet by 

 the aid of Martial's verses. "In the same way in which you are a poet 

 you may have tresses when you are bald." This summons before us the 

 man of "shining hairless pate" at whom Martial wings many merciless 

 jests which do not seem nearly so laughable to me now. Straight back 

 to Homer and the Old Testament can we trace this mocking at the foot- 

 prints of age ; but not often do the avenging bears appear. However, if 

 Martial was often witty on a theme unwelcome to many of us, he was not 

 less often witty on a theme over which his heart was not always hght. 



