Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/297

Rh drawn up an "account," not of Mr B. but "of his performance, by way of synopsis." But when I saw such a multitude of errors concentred together, the sight was so deformed and disagreeable, miseranda vel hosti, that no resentment could prevail with me to return him his own compliment.

[pp. 487-506]

Mr B. begins the examination of this article [XV], with a pedantic digression and common place about pedantry; which I will not now meddle with, but reserve for a more proper place; that I may not, as he has done, interrupt the business of this section with an impertinent excursion, that has no manner of relation to't.

The first absurdity that I noted in the matter of the Epistles, was the Himeraeans going to war with the Catanaeans about Stesichorus's ashes, and calling in Phalaris to their assistance, against Stesichorus's own advice in a case exactly like it. Now the Examiner pretends to answer this; but, with greater craft than ingenuity, he drops the principal part of it. "What is there," says he, "in this story either absurd or improbable, that the Himeraeans should be so con-