And veriest touch of powers primordial
That any hour-girt life may understand.
D. G. Rossetti.
The gods are on the side of the strongest.
Tacitus (Hist. 4, 17).
De Rabutin, Comte de Bussy, said in 1677, “God is on the side of the heaviest battalions.” Voltaire again said, in 1770, that there are far more fools than wise men, “and they say that God always favours the heaviest battalions” (Letter to Le Riche). Gibbon wrote, “The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators” (Ch. LXVIII). (I owe part of this note to King’s Classical and Foreign Quotations.)
THE OCTOPUS
By ALGERNON SINBURN