sufficiant invenire, quod in aliorum scriptis vertant vitio_, all fools
with them that cannot find fault; they correct others, and are hot in a
cold cause, puzzle themselves to find out how many streets in Rome, houses,
gates, towers, Homer's country, Aeneas's mother, Niobe's daughters, _an
Sappho publica fuerit? ovum [731]prius extiterit an gallina! &c. et alia
quae dediscenda essent scire, si scires_, as [732]Seneca holds. What
clothes the senators did wear in Rome, what shoes, how they sat, where they
went to the close-stool, how many dishes in a mess, what sauce, which for
the present for an historian to relate, [733]according to Lodovic. Vives,
is very ridiculous, is to them most precious elaborate stuff, they admired
for it, and as proud, as triumphant in the meantime for this discovery, as
if they had won a city, or conquered a province; as rich as if they had
found a mine of gold ore. _Quosvis auctores absurdis commentis suis
percacant et stercorant_, one saith, they bewray and daub a company of
books and good authors, with their absurd comments, _correctorum
sterquilinia_ [734]Scaliger calls them, and show their wit in censuring
others, a company of foolish note-makers, humble-bees, dors, or beetles,
_inter stercora ut plurimum versantur_, they rake over all those rubbish
and dunghills, and prefer a manuscript many times before the Gospel itself,
[735]_thesaurum criticum_, before any treasure, and with their deleaturs,
_alii legunt sic, meus codex sic habet_, with their _postremae editiones_,
annotations, castigations, &c. make books dear, themselves ridiculous, and
do nobody good, yet if any man dare oppose or contradict, they are mad, up
in arms on a sudden, how many sheets are written in defence, how bitter
invectives, what apologies? [736]_Epiphilledes hae sunt ut merae, nugae_.
But I dare say no more of, for, with, or against them, because I am liable
to their lash as well as others. Of these and the rest of our artists and
philosophers, I will generally conclude they are a kind of madmen, as [737]
Seneca esteems of them, to make doubts and scruples, how to read them
truly, to mend old authors, but will not mend their own lives, or teach us