Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/317

Rh as memorable. But Mr B. adds further, that "if Lucian's silence be an exception to Stesichorus's acquaintance with Phalaris, it is to Abaris's too: which yet our critic has before, for the sake of Aristotle and Jamblichus, been graciously pleased to allow." Now without the Examiner's telling us, we might guess, that he was not awake sometimes in his work; for surely the man that writ this must have been fast asleep, or else he could never have talked so wildly. There is not one word in that place that his margin refers to, about Phalaris's friendship with Abaris. And how could I allow it for the sake of Aristotle, who says not the least syllable of it, or if I should allow it for the sake of Jamblichus, what would that be to Lucian? for according to Jamblichus, the tyrant was killed by Abaris's means upon their first acquaintance; how then could Phalaris in Lucian have magnified himself to the Delphians upon the past friendship of that Hyperborean? If Lucian had believed the story, as Jamblichus tells it, that the tyrant was deposed by Pythagoras and Abaris at their first visit; his mentioning Abaris or Pythagoras in Phalaris's speech at Delphi, had been very absurd.