* * * *

_A Warning to Critics._--Zoilus, the critic, was called the
rhetorical dog: rhetorical, as his style was elegant, and dog, from
his practice of snarling.--Vitruvius tells us, that when he visited
Alexandria, he recited his writings against the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_ of Homer to King Ptolemy, which gave the king such
offence, that he would take no notice of him; and afterwards, when,
urged by indigence, he solicited charity, Ptolemy pulsed him with this
contemptuous reflection, that if Homer, who had been dead one thousand
years, could by his works give maintenance to many thousand people,
a writer so much his superior might surely maintain himself.

P.T.W.

* * * * *

Some years since, an eccentric gentleman built himself a villa upon the
brow of one of the loftiest of the Surrey hills, to avoid annoyance from
the curious; but the odd situation of his residence drew scores of
visiters. This reminds us of some lines by Cowley--

I should have then this only fear,
Lest men, when they my pleasures see,
Should hither throng to live like me,
And so make a city here.

* * * * *

_Imperial Ignorance._--Alexius Comnenus, Emperor of Constantinople,
was an arrant dunce: Fuller says, "he hated a booke more than a monster
did a looking-glasse; and when his tutor endeavoured to play him into
scholarship, by presenting pleasant authors unto him, he returned, that
learning was beneath the greatnesse of a prince, who, if wanting it,
might borrow it from his subjects, being better stor'd; _for_
(saith hee) _if they will not lend me their braines, I'll take away
their heads!_"

* * * * *

_Party Spirit._--Fuller did not think party madness; for, he says
such men as will side with neither party "hope, though the great vessel
of the state be wrecked, in a private fly-boat of neutrality, to waft
their own private adventure safe to the shore. But who ever saw dancers
on ropes so equally poise themselves, that at last they fall not down
and break their necks?"

* * * * *

_A Court Jester._--Fuller thus describes one: "Of this fellow, his
body, downwards, was a fool, his head a knave, who did carefully note,
and cunningly vent, by the privileges of his coat, many state-passages,
uttering them, in a _wary twilight_, betwixt sport and earnest."