[Julie Steiner]

Okay, you've redeemed yourself with that one, Erik.

[Susan McLean]

Since we are on a Cunningham streak, here is one of my favorites of his (content warning!), which is very Martial-like but not a translation.

Lip was a man who used his head.
He used it when he went to bed
With his friend's wife, and with his friend,
With either sex at either end.

--J. V. Cunningham

[Erik Olson]

In this epigram Jonson satirizes a spiteful "courtling" who condemns his work with a fashionable faintness of approbation, or sets himself up as a censorious critic to gain a reputation for wit. The same thing Jonson satirizes here is found in Lucian's recommendation to the courtier in The Rhetorician's Vade Mecum, Fowler:

And then do not wave your hand too much-warm approval is rather low: and as to jumping up, never do it more than once or twice. A slight smile is your best expression; make it clear that you do not think much of the thing.

So, Pope's "Damn with faint praise," &c.*

LII. — To Censorious Courtling

COURTLING, I rather thou shouldst utterly
Dispraise my work, than praise it frostily:
When I am read, thou feign'st a weak applause,
As if thou wert my friend, but lackd'st a cause.
This but thy judgement fools: the other way
Would both thy folly, and thy spite betray.

*An Epistle to Arbuthnot

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; [...]
.