contraband prophet gets a few followers: it is a great point to make
these sequacious people into Buridan's asses, which they will become when
prophets are so numerous that there is no choosing.

{162}

SIR G. C. LEWIS.

An historical survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients. By the Rt. Hon.
Sir G. C. Lewis.[282] 8vo. 1862.

There are few men of our day whom I admire more than the late Sir G. Lewis:
he was honest, earnest, sagacious, learned, and industrious. He probably
sacrificed his life to his conjunction of literature and politics: and he
stood high as a minister of state in addition to his character as a man of
letters. The work above named is of great value, and will be read for its
intrinsic merit, consulted for its crowd of valuable references, quoted for
its aid to one side of many a discussion, and opposed for its force against
the other. Its author was also a wit and a satirist. I know of three
classical satires of our day which are inimitable imitations: Mr.
Malden's[283] _Pragmatized Legends_, Mr. Mansel's[284] _Phrontisterion_,
and Sir G. Cornewall Lewis's _Inscriptio Antiqua_. In this last,
HEYDIDDLEDIDDLETHECATANDTHEFIDDLE etc. is treated as an Oscan inscription,
and rendered into Latin by approved methods. As few readers have seen it, I
give the result:

"Hejus dedit libenter, dedit libenter. Deus propitius [est], deus
[donatori] libenter favet. Deus in viarum {163} junctura ovorum dape
[colitur], deus mundi. Deus in litatione voluit, benigno animo, haedum,
taurum intra fines [loci sacri] portandos. Deus, bis lustratus, beat
fossam sacrae libationis."[285]

How then comes the history of astronomy among the paradoxes? Simply because
the author, so admirably when writing about what he knew, did not know what
he did not know, and blundered like a circle-squarer. And why should the
faults of so good a writer be recorded in such a list as the present? For
three reasons: First, and foremost, because if the exposure be not made by
some one, the errors will gradually ooze out, and the work will get the
character of inaccurate. Nothing hurts a book of which few can fathom the
depths so much as a plain blunder or two on the surface. Secondly, because
the reviews either passed over these errors or treated them too gently,
rather implying their existence than exposing them. Thirdly, because they
strongly illustrate the melancholy truth, that no one knows enough to write
about