Library Notes by Russell Addison Peale 1826-1912

Author:Russell Addison Peale 1826-1912 [1826-1912, Russell Addison Peale]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781313680837
Publisher: HardPress Publishing
Published: 2012-06-15T23:29:24.499213+00:00

De Foe moralizes in memorable language: "I know too much of the world to expect good in it, and have learned to value it too little to be concerned at the evil. I have gone through a life of wonders, and am the subject of a vast variety of providences. I have been fed more by miracles than Elijah when the ravens were his purveyors. I have some time ago summed up the scenes of my life in this distich:—

'No man has tasted differing fortunes more;

And thirteen times I have been rich and poor.'

In the school of affliction I have learnt more philosophy than at the academy, and more divinity than from the pulpit. In prison I have learnt that liberty does not consist in open doors and the egress and regress of locomotion. I have seen the rough side of the world as well as the smooth; and have in less than half a year tasted the difference between the closet of a king and the dungeon of Newgate. I have suffered deeply for cleaving to principles, of which integrity I have lived to say, none but those I suffered for ever reproached me with."

We are told by Middleton that "before Cicero left Sicily, at the end of his term as quæstor, he made the tour of the island, to see everything in it that was curious, and especially the city of Syracuse, which had always made the principal figure in its history. Here his first request to the magistrates, who were showing him the curiosities of the place, was to let him see the tomb of Archimedes, whose name had done so much honor to it; but to his surprise, he perceived that they knew nothing at all of the matter, and even denied that there was any such tomb remaining; yet as he was assured of it beyond all doubt, by the concurrent testimony of writers, and remembered the verses inscribed, and that there was a sphere with a cylinder engraved on some part of it, he would not be dissuaded from the pains of searching it out. When they had carried him, therefore, to the gate where the greatest number of their old sepulchres stood, he observed, in a spot overgrown with shrubs and briers, a small column, whose head just appeared above the bushes, 'with the figure of a sphere and a cylinder upon it; this, he presently told the company, was the thing they were looking for; and sending in some men to clear the ground of the brambles and rubbish, he found the inscription also which he expected, though the latter part of all the verses was effaced. Thus,' says he, 'one of the noblest cities of Greece, and once likewise the most learned, had known nothing of the monument of its most deserving and ingenious citizen, if it had not been discovered to them by a native of Arpinum.'"

Anaxagoras knew the short memory of the people, and chose a happy way to lengthen it, and at the same time to perpetuate himself.

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