In the Nemaean Ode, the reader must, in mere justice to Pindar,
observe, whatever is said of the original new moon, her tender
forehead and her horns, is superadded by his paraphrast, who has
many other plays of words and fancy unsuitable to the original, as,


The table, free for ev'ry guest,
No doubt will thee admit,
And feast more upon thee, than thou on it


He sometimes extends his author's thoughts without improving them.
In the Olympionic an oath is mentioned in a single word, and Cowley
spends three lines in swearing by the Castalian Stream. We are told
of Theron's bounty, with a hint that he had enemies, which Cowley
thus enlarges in rhyming prose:


But in this thankless world the giver
Is envied even by the receiver;
'Tis now the cheap and frugal fashion
Rather to hide than own the obligation:
Nay, 'tis much worse than so;
It now an artifice does grow
Wrongs and injuries to do,
Lest men should think we owe.


It is hard to conceive that a man of the first rank in learning and
wit, when he was dealing out such minute morality in such feeble