e scholars of the day; and not long after the publication
of the book, Casaubon received from Joseph Scaliger a friendly but
gasconading letter, in which that great scholar brought forward a new
reading--namely, [Greek: entakto], to which he assigned a profound technical
value as a musical term. No person even affected to understand Scaliger.
Casaubon himself, while treating so celebrated a man with kind and
considerate deference, yet frankly owned that, in all his vast reading, he
had never met with this strange Greek word. But, without entering into any
dispute upon that verbal question, and conceding to Scaliger the word and
his own interpretation of the word, no man could understand in what way this
new resource was meant to affect the ultimate question at issue--namely, the
extrication of the passage from that thick darkness which overshadowed it.

'_As you were_' (to speak in the phraseology of military drill), was in
effect the word of command. All things reverted to their original condition.
And two centuries of darkness again enveloped this famous perplexity of
Roman literature. The darkness had for a few moments seemed to be unsettling
itself in preparation for flight: but immediately it rolled back again; and
through seven generations of men this darkness was heavier, because less
hopeful than before.

Now then, I believe, all things are ready for the explosion of the
catastrophe; 'which catastrophe,' I hear some malicious reader whispering,
'is doubtless destined to glorify himself' (meaning the unworthy writer of
this little paper). I cannot deny it. A truth _is_ a truth. And, since no
medal, nor riband, nor cross, of any known order, is disposable for the most
brilliant successes in dealing with desperate (or what may be called
_condemned_) passages in Pagan literature, mere sloughs of despond that yawn
across the pages of many a heathen dog, poet and orator, that I could
mention, the more reasonable it is that a large allowance should be served
out of boasting and self-glorification to all those whose merits upon this
field national governments have neglected to proclaim. The Scaligers, both
father and son, I believe, acted upon this doctrine; and drew largely by
anticipation upon that reversionary bank which they conceived to be
answerable for such drafts. Joseph Scaliger, it strikes me, was drunk when
he wrote his letter on the present occasion, and in that way failed to see
(what Casaubon saw clearly en