likeness he found between you and Prometheus; he meant to commend your
innovating originality: at a time when human beings did not exist,
Prometheus conceived and fashioned them; he moulded and elaborated
certain living things into agility and beauty; he was practically
their creator, though Athene assisted by putting breath into the clay
and bringing the models to life.' So says my some one, giving your
remark its politest possible turn. Perhaps he has hit the true
meaning; not that I can rest content, however, with the mere credit of
innovation, and the absence of any original to which my work can be
referred; if it is not good as well as original, I assure you I shall
be ashamed of it, bring down my foot and crush it out of existence;
its novelty shall not avail (with me at least) to save its ugliness
from annihilation. If I thought otherwise, I admit that a round dozen
of vultures would be none too many for the liver of a dunce who could
not see that ugliness was only aggravated by strangeness.

Ptolemy, son of Lagus, imported two novelties into Egypt; one was a
pure black Bactrian camel, the other a piebald man, half absolutely
black and half unusually white, the two colours evenly distributed; he
invited the Egyptians to the theatre, and concluded a varied show with
these two, expecting to bring down the house. The audience, however,
was terrified by the camel and almost stampeded; still, it _was_
decked all over with gold, had purple housings and a richly jewelled
bridle, the spoil of Darius' or Cambyses' treasury, if not of Cyrus'
own. As for the man, a few laughed at him, but most shrank as from a
monster. Ptolemy realized that the show was a failure, and the
Egyptians proof against mere novelty, preferring harmony and beauty.
So he withdrew and ceased to prize them; the camel died forgotten, and
the parti-coloured man became the reward of Thespis the fluteplayer
for a successful after-dinner performance.