EPIGLOTTIS

isa cartilaginous plate behind the tongue, which covers the glottis like a lid during the act of swallowing, and thus prevents foreign bodies from entering the larynx. In its ordinary position during respiration it is pointed upwards, but in the act 202 EPIGRAM of swallowing it is pre ed downwards and backwards by the drawing up of the windpipe beneath the base of the tongue, and thus closes the entrance to the air-pa ages. See LARYNX. _EPIGRAM (Gr. epi, upon, graphein, to write), in a restricted sense, a short poem or piece in verse, which has only one subject, and finishes by a witty or ingenious turn of thought; in a general sense, a pointed or witty and antithetical saying. The term was originally given by the Greeks to a poetical inscription placed upon a tomb or public monument, and was afterwards extended to every little piece of verse expre ing with precision a delicate or ingenious thought, as the pieces in the Greek Anthology. In Roman cla ical poetry the term was somewhat indiscriminately used, but the epigrams of Martial contain a great number with the modern epigrammatic character. Epigrams fiourished in modern times after the Revival of Learning period, and all the Hlizabethan versifiers tried their hand at them. Pope was a great master of the epigram, and the art was practised by Clément Marot, Boileau, Voltaire, Schiller, Goethe, Byron, and Moore, and more recently by Sir William Watson, Cole ridge’s definition of an epigram, which itself is an epigram, may be given as an example: What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole, Its body brevity, and wit its soul. —C. Dodd, Hpigrammatists of Medieval and Modern Times.