SWAINE.
A Warning to Critics.—Zoilus, the critic, was called the rhetorical dog: rhetorical, as his style was elegant, and dog, from his practice of snarling.—Vitruvius tells us, that when he visited Alexandria, he recited his writings against the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer to King Ptolemy, which gave the king such offence, that he would take no notice of him; and afterwards, when, urged by indigence, he solicited charity, Ptolemy pulsed him with this contemptuous reflection, that if Homer, who had been dead one thousand years, could by his works give maintenance to many thousand people, a writer so much his superior might surely maintain himself.