Ben Jonson both wrote and translated a great number of very short stanzas--two lines and four lines; but Jonson was a satirist in these forms.

Herrick, as you know, delighted in very short poems; but he was greatly influenced by Jonson, and many of his couplets and of his quatrains are worthless satires or worthless jests.

However, you will find some short verses in Herrick that almost make you think of a certain class of Japanese poems.

After the Elizabethan Age, also, the miniature poems were still used in the fashion set by the Roman writers,--then the eighteenth century deluged us with ill-natured witty epigrams of the like brief form.

It was not until comparatively modern times that our Western world fully recognized the value of the distich, triplet or quatrain for the expression of beautiful thoughts, rather than for the expression of ill-natured ones.