unished; a shrewd observation, which occurred to him from his
recollection of the fate of Stratocles. This person persuaded the
Athenians to perform a public sacrifice and thanksgiving for a victory
obtained at sea, though he well knew at the time that the Athenian fleet
had been totally defeated. When the calamity could no longer be
concealed, the people charged him with being an impostor: but Stratocles
saved his life and mollified their anger by the pleasant turn he gave
the whole affair. "Have I done you any injury?" said he. "Is it not
owing to me that you have spent three days in the pleasures of victory?"
I think that this spreader of good, but fictitious news, should have
occupied the wheel of the luckless barber, who had spread bad but true
news; for the barber had no intention of deception, but Stratocles had;
and the question here to be tried, was not the truth or the falsity of
the reports, but whether the reporters intended to deceive their
fellow-citizens? The "Chronicle" and the "Post" must be challenged on
such a jury, and all the race of news-scribes, whom Patin characterises
as _hominum genus audacissimum mendacissimum avidissimum_. Latin
superlatives are too rich to suffer a translation. But what Patin says
in his Letter 356 may be applied: "These writers insert in their papers
things they do not know, and ought not to write. It is the same trick
that is playing which was formerly played; it is the very same farce,
only it is exhibited by new actors. The worst circumstance, I think, in
this is, that this trick will continue playing a long course of years,
and that the public suffer a great deal too much by it."

OF SUPPRESSORS AND DILAPIDATORS OF MANUSCRIPTS.

Manuscripts are suppressed or destroyed from motives which require to be
noticed. Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation: they may
blush at their artifices, and deserve the pillory, but their practices
do not incur the capital crime of felony. Serassi, the writer of the
curious Life of Tasso, was guilty of an extraordinary suppression in his
zeal for the poet's memory. The story remains to be told, for it is but
little known.

Galileo, in early life, was a lecturer at the university of Pisa:
delighting in poetical studies, he was then more of a critic than a
philosopher, and had Ariosto by heart. This great man caught the
literary mania which broke out about his time, when the Cruscans so
absurdly began their "Controvers