Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/292

164 which has a preface annexed to it accounting for its preservation. It seems, when he parted from Macedon, he left this behind him where he lodged, and where no one entered for a long time, in detestation of the odiousness of his character, until Mævius arriving there in his travels, and being desirous to lie in the same room, luckily found it, and brought it away with him. This the author of the preface imagines the reason of Horace's wishing Mævius, in the tenth epode, such a shipwreck as Homer describes; as it were with an eye to his having done something disadvantageous to that poet. From Mævius, the piece came into the hand of Carbilius Pictor (who, when he wrote against Virgil, called his book, with a respectful imitation of Zoilus, the Æneidomastix) and from him into the hands of others who are unknown, because the world applied to them no other name than that of Zoilus, in order to sink their own in oblivion. Thus it ever found some learned philologist or critic to keep it secret from the rage of Homer's admirers; yet not so secret, but that it has still been communicated among the literati. I am of opinion, that our great Scaliger borrowed it, to work him up when he writ so sharply against Cardan; and perhaps Le Clerc too, when he proved Q. Curtius ignorant of every particular branch of learning.

This formal account made me give attention to what the book contained; and I must