people inclined to what is
little and careless.[301] To those who are building a stone wall or
coping it matters not if they lay on any chance wood or common stone, or
some tombstone that has fallen down, as bad workmen do, heaping and
piling up pell-mell every kind of material; but those who have made some
progress in virtue, whose life "has been wrought on a golden base,"[302]
like the foundation of some holy or royal building, undertake nothing
carelessly, but lay and adjust everything by the line and level of
reason, thinking the remark of Polycletus superlatively good, that that
work is most excellent, where the model stands the test of the
nail.[303]

[249] See Erasmus, Adagia, "Eadem pensari trutina."

[250] Euripides, "Iphigenia in Tauris," 569.

[251] See Ovid, "Metamorphoses," xii. 189, sq.

[252] See Erasmus, "Adagia," p. 1103.

[253] Compare Shakspere, "Tempest," A. i. Sc. i. 63,
"And gape at widest to glut him."

[254] Hesiod, "Works and Days," 361, 362. Quoted again
by our author, "On Education," Sec. 13.

[255] "In via ad virtutem qui non progreditur, is non
stat et manet, sed regreditur."--_Wyttenbach._

[256] Adopting the reading of Hercher. See Pausanias, x.
37, where the oracle is somewhat different.

[257] For the town which parleys surrenders.

[258] From Homer, "Iliad," xix. 386.

[259] Compare Aristotle, _Rhetoric_, i. 11. [Greek: kai
arche de tou erotos gignetai aute pasin, otan me monon
parontos chairosin, alla kai apontos memnemenoi erosin.]

[260] The line is a Fragment of Sophocles.

[261] See Hesiod, "Works and Days," 289-292.

[262] The well-known Cynic philosopher.

[263] Bergk. fr. 15. Compare Homer, "Iliad," vi. 339.
[Greek: nike d' epameibetai andras].

[264] We are told by Diogenes Laeertius, v. 37, that
Theophrastus had 2000 hearers sometimes at once.

[265] "Republic," vii. p. 539, B.

[266] Sentences borrowed from some author or other,
such, as we still possess from the hands of Hermogenes
and Aphthonius; compare the collection of bon-mots of
Greek courtesans in Athenaeus.

[267] A reference to AEsop's Fable, [Greek: Leon kai
Halopez]. Cf. Horace, "Epistles," i. i. 73-75.

[268] This passage is alluded to also in "On Love to
one's Offspring." Sec. ii.

[269] Madvig's text.

[270] Thucydides, i. 18.

[271] Hom