r D. O., some years ago, lying on the table of the room where he had
destroyed himself. The suicide was a man of classical acquirements: he
left no other paper behind him.'

Another of these proverbial sayings,

_Incidit in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim,_

I, in a note on a passage in _The Merchant of Venice_ [act iii. sc. 5],
traced to its source. It occurs (with a slight variation) in the
_Alexandreis_ of Philip Gualtier (a poet of the thirteenth century),
which was printed at Lyons in 1558. Darius is the person addressed:--

--Quo tendis inertem,
Rex periture, fugam? nescis, heu! perdite, nescis
Quern fugias: hostes incurris dum fugis hostem;
_Incidis in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim._

A line not less frequently quoted was suggested for enquiry in a note on
_The Rape of Lucrece:--

Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris--_:

But the author of this verse has not, I believe, been discovered.
MALONE. The 'Greek lambick' in the above note is not Greek. To a learned
friend I owe the following note. 'The _Quem Jupiter vult perdere_, &c.,
is said to be a translation of a fragment of _Euripides_ by Joshua
Barnes. There is, I believe, no such fragment at all. In Barnes's
_Euripides_, Cantab. 1694, fol. p. 515, is a fragment of Euripides with
a note which may explain the muddle of Boswell's correspondent:--

"[Greek: otau de daimonn handri porsunae kaka ton noun heblapse proton,]"

on which Barnes writes:--"Tale quid in Franciados nostrae [probably his
uncompleted poem on Edward III.] l. 3. _Certe ille deorum Arbiter
ultricem cum vult extendere dextram Dementat prius._"' See _ante_, ii.
445, note 1. Sir D. O. is, perhaps, Sir D'Anvers Osborne, whose death is
recorded in the _Gent. Mag._ 1753, p. 591. 'Sir D'Anvers Osborne, Bart.,
Governor of New York, soon after his arrival there; _in his garden.'
Solamen miseris, &c._, is imitated by Swift in his _Verses on Stella's
Birthday_, 1726-7:--

'The only comfort they propose,
To have companions in their woes.'

Swift's _Works_, ed. 1803, xi. 22. The note on _Lucrece_ was, I
conjecture, on line 1111:--

'Grief best is pleased with grief's society.'

[571]

'FAUSTUS--
"Tu quoque, ut hic video, non es ignarus amorum."
'FORTUNATUS--
"Id commune malum; semel insanivimus omnes."'

Baptistae Mantuani Carmelitae _Adolescentia, seu Bucolica_. Ecloga I,
published in 1498. 'Scaliger,' says Johnson (_Works_