He tried to make epigrams all the time, and I got so nervous, expecting them, you know, that I spilt the tea--and he made an epigram about that!" The epigram cannot be gainsayed; but the necessity is a thing that does not exist. In the society in which she lived such plain statements produced the effect of the wittiest epigram . Dryden's general quality and a large part of his achievement are happily summarized in Lowell's epigram that he 'was the greatest poet who ever was or ever could be made wholly out of prose.' The epigram , with its faint whiff of the eighties, meant nothing.