Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/286

212 sent to Castelvetro by a private friend at Rome, who desired his judgement of them, he returned him some short censures, desiring they should neither be published, nor shewn to any one as his. But by chance they got abroad and were printed, and brought such a violent faction against him as made the poor man weary of Italy. The very first lines of Caro's verses are—

where the Muses are invited to come under the shade of flower-de-luces. Upon which Castelvetro remarked that the Muses must be less than pigmies, if they could be shadowed by flower-de-luces, which were scarce shelter enough for little insects. Who can have the folly to deny that this censure was just?—"Quis tam Lucili fautor ineptus Ut neget hoc?" And yet this fault, and others as plain as this, were stoutly maintained by Caro and his party. For the advantage of Caro was that he was member of an Academy, and a whole College was engaged for him; and when neither reason nor truth was of their side, they confided in their numbers—