gher, it by no means followed
that the gnat could not fly at all, etcetera, etcetera. He was ashamed,
however, to dwell on such trivialities, and thus to swell a gnat into an
elephant; but, for his own part, would only add that he had nothing
deceitful or double about him, neither was he to be caught when present
by the false blandishments of those who slandered him in his absence,
agreeing rather with a Homeric sentiment on that head--which furnished a
Greek quotation to serve as powder to his bullet.

The quarrel could not end there. The logic could hardly get worse, but
the secretary got more pompously self-asserting, and the scholarly
poet's temper more and more venomous. Politian had been generously
willing to hold up a mirror, by which the too-inflated secretary,
beholding his own likeness, might be induced to cease setting up his
ignorant defences of bad Latin against ancient authorities whom the
consent of centuries had placed beyond question,--unless, indeed, he had
designed to sink in literature in proportion as he rose in honours, that
by a sort of compensation men of letters might feel themselves his
equals. In return, Politian was begged to examine Scala's writings:
nowhere would he find a more devout admiration of antiquity. The
secretary was ashamed of the age in which he lived, and blushed for it.
_Some_, indeed, there were who wanted to have their own works praised
and exalted to a level with the divine monuments of antiquity; but he,
Scala, could not oblige them. And as to the honours which were
offensive to the envious, they had been well earned: witness his whole
life since he came in penury to Florence. The elegant scholar, in
reply, was not surprised that Scala found the Age distasteful to him,
since he himself was so distasteful to the Age; nay, it was with perfect
accuracy that he, the elegant scholar, had called Scala a branny
monster, inasmuch as he was formed from the off-scourings of monsters,
born amidst the refuse of a mill, and eminently worthy the long-eared
office of turning the paternal millstones (_in pistrini sordibus natus
et quidem pistrino dignissimus_)!

It was not without reference to Tito's appointed visit that the papers
containing this correspondence were brought out to-day. Here was a new
Greek scholar whose accomplishments were to be tested, and on nothing
did Scala more desire a dispassionate opinion from persons of superior
knowledge than on that Greek epigram of