Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/284

156 like a vitiated stomach, converted every kindness to the nourishment of his disease; and it was the whole business of his life to revile Homer, and those by whom he himself subsisted. In this humour he had days, which were so given up to impatient ill-nature, that he could neither write any thing, nor converse with any one. These he sometimes employed in throwing stones at children; which was once so unhappily returned upon him, that he was taken up for dead: and this occasioned the report in some authors, of his being stoned to death in Egypt. Or, sometimes he conveyed himself into the library, where he blotted the name of Homer wherever he could meet it, and tore the best editions of several volumes; for which the librarians debarred him the privilege of that place. These and other mischiefs made him universally shunned; nay, to such an extravagance was his character of envy carried, that the more superstitious Egyptians imagined they were fascinated by him, if the day were darker, or themselves a little heavier than ordinary; some wore sprigs of rue, by way of prevention; and others, rings made of the hoof of a wild ass for amulets, lest they should suffer, by his fixing an eye upon them.

It was now near the time when that splendid temple which Ptolemy built in honour of Homer was to be opened with a solemn magnificence: for this the men of genius were employed in finding a proper pageant. At last, they agreed by one