Epigram on an Epigram
Printed, says the Oxford Sausage, “from the original MSS. preserved in the ARCHIVES of the Jelly-bag Society,” is somewhere said to have been written by Dr. Ralph Bathurst, when an Oxford scholar:—
One day in Christ-church meadows walking,
Of poetry and such things talking,
Says Ralph, a merry wag,
An EPIGRAM, if right and good,
In all its circumstances should
Be like a JELLY-BAG.
Your simile, I own, is new,
But how dost make it out? quoth Hugh.
Quoth Ralph, I’ll tell you, friend:
Make it at top both wide and fit
To hold a budget full of wit,
And point it at the end.