nd to the
Latin and Greek. Even Milton has been justly censured for his free use
of Latinisms and Grecisms.

The blunders of modern antiquaries on sepulchral monuments are numerous.
One mistakes _a lion_ at a knight's feet for a _curled water dog_;
another could not distinguish _censers_ in the hands of angels from
_fishing-nets_; _two angels_ at a lady's feet were counted as her two
cherub-like _babes_; and another has mistaken a _leopard_ and a
_hedgehog_ for a _cat_ and a _rat!_ In some of these cases, are the
antiquaries or the sculptors most to be blamed?[93]

A literary blunder of Thomas Warton is a specimen of the manner in which
a man of genius may continue to blunder with infinite ingenuity. In an
old romance he finds these lines, describing the duel of Saladin with
Richard Coeur de Lion:--

A _Faucon brode_ in hande he bare,
For he thought he wolde thare
Have slayne Richard.

He imagines this _Faucon brode_ means a _falcon bird_, or a hawk, and
that Saladin is represented with this bird on his fist to express his
contempt of his adversary. He supports his conjecture by noticing a
Gothic picture, supposed to be the subject of this duel, and also some
old tapestry of heroes on horseback with hawks on their fists; he
plunges into feudal times, when no gentleman appeared on horseback
without his hawk. After all this curious erudition, the rough but
skilful Ritson inhumanly triumphed by dissolving the magical fancies of
the more elegant Warton, by explaining a _Faucon brode_ to be nothing
more than a _broad faulchion_, which, in a duel, was certainly more
useful than a _bird_. The editor of the private reprint of Hentzner, on
that writer's tradition respecting "the Kings of Denmark who reigned in
England" buried in the Temple Church, metamorphosed the two Inns of
Court, _Gray's Inn_ and _Lincoln's Inn_, into the names of the Danish
kings, _Gresin_ and _Lyconin_.[94]

Bayle supposes that Marcellus Palingenius, who wrote the poem entitled
the _Zodiac_, the twelve books bearing the names of the signs, from this
circumstance assumed the title of _Poeta Stellatus_. But it appears that
this writer was an Italian and a native of _Stellada_, a town in the
Ferrarese. It is probable that his birthplace originally produced the
conceit of the title of his poem: it is a curious instance how critical
conjecture may be led astray by its own ingenuity, when ignorant of the
real fact.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote