ious
composition. In a most copious commentary, he proves that every line
seems unconnected with its brothers, and that the whole reflects
disgrace on its author! A circumstance which too evidently shows how
necessary the knowledge of modern literary history is to a modern
commentator, and that those who are profound in verbal Greek are not the
best critics on English writers.

The Abbe Bizot, the author of the medallic history of Holland, fell into
a droll mistake. There is a medal, struck when Philip II. set forth his
_invincible Armada_, on which are represented the King of Spain, the
Emperor, the Pope, Electors, Cardinals, &c., with their eyes covered
with a bandage, and bearing for inscription this fine verse of
Lucretius:--

O caecas hominum menteis! O pectora caeca!

The Abbe, prepossessed with the prejudice that a nation persecuted by
the Pope and his adherents could not represent them without some insult,
did not examine with sufficient care the ends of the bandages which
covered the eyes and waved about the heads of the personages represented
on this medal: he rashly took them for _asses' ears_, and as such they
are engraved!

Mabillon has preserved a curious literary blunder of some pious
Spaniards, who applied to the Pope for consecrating a day in honour of
_Saint Viar_. His holiness, in the voluminous catalogue of his saints,
was ignorant of this one. The only proof brought forward for his
existence was this inscription:--

S. VIAR.

An antiquary, however, hindered one more festival in the Catholic
calendar, by convincing them that these letters were only the remains of
an inscription erected for an ancient surveyor of the roads; and he read
their saintship thus:--

PRAEFECTUS VIARUM.

Maffei, in his comparison between Medals and Inscriptions, detects a
literary blunder in Spon, who, meeting with this inscription,

Maximo VI Consule

takes the letters VI for numerals, which occasions a strange
anachronism. They are only contractions of _Viro Illustri_--V I.

As absurd a blunder was this of Dr. Stukeley on the coins of Carausius;
finding a battered one with a defaced inscription of

FORTVNA AVG.

he read it

ORIVNA AVG.

And sagaciously interpreting this to be the _wife_ of Carausius, makes
a new personage start up in history; he contrives even to give some
_theoretical Memoirs_ of the _August Oriuna_.[92]

Father Sirmond was of opinion that St. Ursula and her e