[25] "A satirist is always to be suspected, who to make vice odious dwells upon all its acts and minutest circumstances with a sort of relish and retrospective fondness."—Lamb.
[26] Palindromes, such as "Tibi subito motibus ibit." We have some in English, as where our forefather addresses his wife "Madam, I'm Adam."
[27] Pyrogenes has a double meaning, "born of corn," and "born of fire," alluding to Bacchus' mother having been burnt. Bromos is a kind of cereal, Bromion a name for Bacchus.
[28] A man of Capreæ, having caught an unusually large barbel, presented it to Tiberius, who was so enraged at his being able to find him in his retreat, that he ordered his face to be scrubbed with the fish.
[29] Some of the pagans put off Christian baptism till the last moment under this idea.
[30] There seems to me to be several reasons for drawing this conclusion.
[31] "Semel minusne, an bis minus; non sat scio, An utrumque eorum, ut quondam audivi dicier Jovi ipsi regi noluit concedere."
[32] The answers to these enigmas are rose, fleas, sea-mew, visions, wheels.
[33] As late as the fourteenth century there were only four classical works in the Royal Library at Paris.
[34] Ritson characteristically observes, "There is this distinction between the heathen deities and Christian saints, that the fables of the former were indebted for their existence to the flowing inspiration of the sublime poet, and the legends of the latter to the gloomy fanaticism of a lazy monk or a stinking priest."