Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/310

236 Aristotle in the very place where he tells Stesichorus's. And if Æsop, a poor slave, could make apologues at Samos, relating to public affairs, why must Stesichorus's apologue at Himera prove him one of the greatest men in Sicily? The Arundel marble gives us a date, when Stesichorus the poet went into Greece. Now, means to travel into Greece to get money, as his brother poets did, who were to make their fortunes by their pen. When Homer was very poor, says Herodotus, some persuaded him to go into Greece; and he designed it, but died in Ios, before he began the voyage. And the readers will be apt to suspect, for all the greatness that Mr B. dreams of, that Stesichorus had no other errand to Greece, than Homer had before him, and Simonides and others after him.

I had made another censure upon the Epistles for calling the same copy of verses both and. The Examiner replies, that by the different cast of his head, he should have reasoned just the other way, and have inferred something in favour of the letters. First, he says, a Sophist would not have confounded the words. True, a learned Sophist would