less would I have
you brag of an exclusive intimacy with them. Speak of the moderns without
contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry; judge them all by their
merits, but not by their ages; and if you happen to have an Elzevir
classic in your pocket neither show it nor mention it.

Some great scholars, most absurdly, draw all their maxims, both for
public and private life, from what they call parallel cases in the
ancient authors; without considering, that, in the first place, there
never were, since the creation of the world, two cases exactly parallel;
and, in the next place, that there never was a case stated, or even
known, by any historian, with every one of its circumstances; which,
however, ought to be known, in order to be reasoned from. Reason upon the
case itself, and the several circumstances that attend it, and act
accordingly; but not from the authority of ancient poets, or historians.
Take into your consideration, if you please, cases seemingly analogous;
but take them as helps only, not as guides. We are really so prejudiced
by our education, that, as the ancients deified their heroes, we deify
their madmen; of which, with all due regard for antiquity, I take
Leonidas and Curtius to have been two distinguished ones. And yet a solid
pedant would, in a speech in parliament, relative to a tax of two pence
in the pound upon some community or other, quote those two heroes, as
examples of what we ought to do and suffer for our country. I have known
these absurdities carried so far by people of injudicious learning, that
I should not be surprised, if some of them were to propose, while we are
at war with the Gauls, that a number of geese should be kept in the
Tower, upon account of the infinite advantage which Rome received IN A
PARALLEL CASE, from a certain number of geese in the Capitol. This way of
reasoning, and this way of speaking, will always form a poor politician,
and a puerile declaimer.

There is another species of learned men, who, though less dogmatical and
supercilious, are not less impertinent. These are the communicative and
shining pedants, who adorn their conversation, even with women, by happy
quotations of Greek and Latin; and who have contracted such a familiarity
with the Greek and Roman authors, that they, call them by certain names
or epithets denoting intimacy. As OLD Homer; that SLY ROGUE Horace; MARO,
instead of Virgil; and Naso, Instead of Ovid. These are often imitated by
coxco