Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/316

242 occasion to speak of it. Now the Examiner accounts for Lucian's silence; because he had said enough, in naming Pythagoras, and to have added Stesichorus's name, would have made the piece look stiff and unnatural. Wonderfully nice and exact: he can tell you to a single word, when a treatise will be stiff; like the gardener that could determine to a minute, when his melons were ripe. How many have I saved, says Phalaris in Lucian, who plotted against me, and were convicted, as Acanthus that stands here, and, and Leogoras his brother? Now according to the letters, Stesichorus too was taken plotting, and yet the tyrant saved his life, and made him his friend. But, says Mr B., if Lucian here had added Stesichorus to the other three, that single name would have made the discourse as stiff as any buckram. And yet allowing that Lucian himself had as nice a sensation of stiffness as Mr B. appears to have, and therefore would not put down four names, but three only, yet methinks, he might have spared one of those three, and put Stesichorus in his room; unless Mr B. will shew that Timocrates or Leogoras (whom nobody ever heard of) were as famous as Stesichorus, and their examples