Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/161

 certainer predictions may be made by curious men, in serener and more regular climates, which will take off from that admiration that otherwise would be paid to those profound philosophers, even though we should allow that all those stories which are told of their skill are exactly true.

Besides there is reason to believe that we have the result of all the observations of these weather-wise sages in Aratus's Diosemeia and Vergil's Georgics, such as those upon the snuffs of candles, the croaking of frogs, and many others quite as notable as the English farmer's 'living weather glass,' his 'red cow that pricked up her tail'—an infallible presage of a coming shower.

Sir William Temple's method leads me now to consider, what estimate ought to be made of the learning of those nations from which he derives all the knowledge of these ancient Greeks. I shall only, therefore, give a short specimen of those discoveries with which these ancient sages enriched the ages in which they lived, as I have already done of the Pythagoreans, and then proceed.

Diogenes Laertius informs us of Empedocles's skill in magic, by the instance of his stopping those pesti-