this note, without giving you an instance of its practice in the great Julius Scaliger: he has been free enough with Homer in the remarks he makes upon him; but when he speaks of himself, I desire my reader would take notice of his modesty; I give his own words, Lib. 3. Poet. Cap. 112. In Deum Patrem Hymnum cum scriberemus, tanquam rerum omnium conditorem, ab orbis ipsius creatione ad nos nostraque usque duximus.—In quo abduximus animum nostrum a corporis carcere ad liberos campos contemplationis, quae me in illum transformaret. Tum autem sanctissimi Spiritus ineffabilis vigor ille tanto ardore celebratus est, ut cum lenissimis numeris esset inchoatus Hymnus, repentino divini ignis impetu conflagravit.
P. 49. v. 4. The circled loaves.]Zoilus here finds fault with the mention of loaves, tripes, bacon, and cheese, as words below the dignity of the epic, as much (says he) as it would be to have opprobrious names given in it. By which expression we easily see, he hints at the first book of the Iliad. Now, we must consider in answer, that it is a mouse which is spoken of, that eating is the most apparent characteristic of that creature, that these foods are such as please it most; and to have described particular pleasures for it in any other way, would have been as incongruous as to have described a haughty loud anger without those names which it throws out in its fierceness, and which raise it to its pitch of
