Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/307

Rh which pretend he vanquished the Leontini, and the Tauromenites, and Zanclaeans their allies? If Mr B. pleases to take all these into the account, he may allow his prince to have been master of a million of subjects; though Agrigentum should not be so populous as Laertius represents it. And why now would Mr B. deal so unkindly with him, to make him a petty prince of one city only, when such credible authors assign him many more? Is there not, as I have often observed, a certain fatality in this gentleman's errors, so that whether he talks for Phalaris or against him, on both sides he is always mistaken?

He goes on and tells me, that there have been tyrants with many millions of subjects that have employed themselves about poems. "Has not the Doctor seen," says he, "the fragments of Augustus's letters to Horace, pressing and obliging that poet to write?" Never was piece of history more aptly applied: I can heartily now forgive him all he has said about me, when I see how judicious and exact he is in bestowing names and characters. Phalaris is a Sicilian prince with him, and Augustus is a tyrant. Methinks that Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, had been