[59] "Legatus est vir bonus, peregrè missus ad mentiendum reipublicæ causa;" a sentence which Sir Henry wrote in the Album of Christopher Flecamore, as he passed through Germany, when he went as ambassador to Venice. These words, says his biographer, Isaac Walton, "he could have been content should have been thus Englished: An ambassador is an honest man, sent to lie abroad for the good of his country: but the word mentiendum not admitting of a double meaning, like lie, (which at that time signified to sojourn, as well as to utter criminal falshood,) this pleasantry brought my Lord Ambassador into some trouble; Jasper Scioppius, a Romanist, about eight years afterwards, asserting in one of his works, that this was an acknowledged principle of the religion professed by King James, and those whom he employed as his representatives in foreign countries." See the Life of Sir Henry Wotton, p. 38. edit. 1670.—Malone, p. 486. Note.
[60] See the "Translation of Dido's Epistle to Æneas," Vol. xii. p. 34.
[61] The emperor Augustus divorced Scribonia, his second wife, in order to make room for his marriage with Livia. But the argument of our author from the Æneïd seems far-fetched.
[62] This original and expressive word for a poet was long retained in Scotland.—See Dunbar's Lament for the Death of the Makyrs.
[63] Mr Malone reads—so strong; but strange here seems to signify alarming, or startling.
[64] Dacier.
[65] I fear there is something in this objection. Virgil, who lived in a peaceful court, does not draw his battles with the animation and reality of Homer, who, if he was not himself a warrior, was the poet of a rude and warlike age.
[66] Unquestionably the description, in the passage quoted, and the simile, aid each other with great mutual effect.
[67] Commentators on the Scripture, mentioned by our author in the "Religio Laici," where, speaking of Dickenson's translation of Pere Simon's "Critical History of the Old Testament," he calls it
A treasure, which, if country curates buy,
They Junius and Tremellius may defy.—Vol. X. p. 44.