face that he was well assured that ere long he should see him king;
suggesting suspicions and preparing the way for an accusation of him, as
though he had made away with his nephew, if the child should chance
to fail, though by a natural death. Words of the like import were
designedly cast abroad by the queen-mother and her adherents.

Troubled at this, and not knowing what it might come to, he thought
it his wisest course to avoid their envy by a voluntary exile, and to
travel from place to place until his nephew came to marriageable
years, and, by having a son, had secured the succession. Setting sail,
therefore, with this resolution, he first arrived at Crete, where,
having considered their several forms of government, and got an
acquaintance with the principal men amongst them, some of their laws
he very much approved of, and resolved to make use of them in his own
country; a good part he rejected as useless. Amongst the persons there
the most renowned for their learning and their wisdom in state matters
was one Thales, whom Lycurgus, by importunities and assurances of
friendship, persuaded to go over to Lacedaemon; where, though by his
outward appearance and his own profession he seemed to be no other than
a lyric poet, in reality he performed the part of one of the ablest
lawgivers in the world. The very songs which he composed were
exhortations to obedience and concord, and the very measure and cadence
of the verse, conveying impressions of order and tranquillity, had
so great an influence on the minds of the listeners that they were
insensibly softened and civilized, insomuch that they renounced their
private feuds and animosities, and were reunited in a common admiration
of virtue. So that it may truly be said that Thales prepared the way for
the discipline introduced by Lycurgus.

From Crete he sailed to Asia, with design, as is said, to examine the
difference betwixt the manners and rules of life of the Cretans, which
were very sober and temperate, and those of the Ionians, a people
of sumptuous and delicate habits, and so to form a judgment; just as
physicians do by comparing healthy and diseased bodies. Here he had
the first sight of Homer's works, in the hands, we may suppose, of
the posterity of Creophylus; and, having observed that the few loose
expressions and actions of ill example which are to be found in his
poems were much outweighed by serious lessons of state and rules of
morality, he set himse