The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton
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page 42 of 2094 (02%)
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stilo, non diversa fide_. Our poets steal from Homer; he spews, saith
Aelian, they lick it up. Divines use Austin's words verbatim still, and our story-dressers do as much; he that comes last is commonly best, ------"donec quid grandius aetas Postera sorsque ferat melior."------[102] Though there were many giants of old in physic and philosophy, yet I say with [103]Didacus Stella, "A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself;" I may likely add, alter, and see farther than my predecessors; and it is no greater prejudice for me to indite after others, than for Aelianus Montaltus, that famous physician, to write _de morbis capitis_ after Jason Pratensis, Heurnius, Hildesheim, &c., many horses to run in a race, one logician, one rhetorician, after another. Oppose then what thou wilt, "Allatres licet usque nos et usque Et gannitibus improbis lacessas." I solve it thus. And for those other faults of barbarism, [104]Doric dialect, extemporanean style, tautologies, apish imitation, a rhapsody of rags gathered together from several dunghills, excrements of authors, toys and fopperies confusedly tumbled out, without art, invention, judgment, wit, learning, harsh, raw, rude, fantastical, absurd, insolent, indiscreet, ill-composed, indigested, vain, scurrile, idle, dull, and dry; I confess all ('tis partly affected), thou canst not think worse of me than I do of myself. 'Tis not worth the reading, I yield it, I desire thee not to lose time in perusing so vain a subject, I should be peradventure loath myself to read him or thee so writing; 'tis not _operae, pretium_. All I say is this, that I have [105]precedents for it, which Isocrates calls _perfugium |
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