Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/185

Rh to Himera with mighty application and address, and soon after writes a second letter of thanks for so singular a kindness. Upon the fame of this, one Pelopidas entreats him, that he would procure the like favour for a friend of his; but meets with a repulse. Now, whether there was any poem upon Clearista among the works of Stesichorus, whence our sophist might take the plot and ground-work of this story, or whether all is entirely his own invention and manufacture, I will not pretend to guess. But let those believe that can, that such stuff as this busied the head of the tyrant: at least they must confess then, though the letters would represent him as a great admirer, and judge too, of poetry, that he was a mere asinus ad lyram. For, in the seventy-ninth epistle, he calls this poem upon Clearista and, which must here (as it almost ever does) signify a lyric ode, since it is spoken of Stesichorus a melic or lyric poet. But in the hundred and forty-fourth he calls it an elegy, ; which is as different from, as Theognis is from Pindar, or Tibullus from Horace. What! the same copy of verses both an ode and an elegy? Could not some years acquaintance