L.B.L.

Footnote A: [(return)]

To obviate the difficulties arising from capricious spelling, I assumed that which I thought to be the correct one, and entered all of the name under that one, placing, however, in parenthesis, the actual mode of spelling adopted in the instance in question, and also entering the name, as actually spelt, in its proper place, with reference to the place where the searcher would find it; e.g. In my register, the name of "Caiser" appears under more than twenty varieties of form. I enter them all under "Cayser". In the margin, opposite the first of these entries, I write consecutively the different modes of spelling the name—"Caisar", "Caiser", "Casiar", "Kayser", &c. &c. &c. In the table itself, I write,

Cayser, John.
[Casiar] John.
[Kaysar] John, &c. &c. &c.

Then, "Casiar", "Kaysar", &c., appear in their respective places sic, "Casiar", v. "Cayser", "Kaysar", v. "Cayser", &c., nearly on the plan adopted by Mr. Duffus Hardy in his admirable indices to the Close Rolls.

Cayser, John.
[Casiar] John.
[Kaysar] John, &c. &c. &c.

THE HUDIBRASTIC VERSE.

"He that fights and runs away," &c.—Your correspondent MELANION may be assured that the orations of Demosthenes do not afford any trace of the proverbial senarius, ανηρ δ φευγων και παλιν μαχησεται; and it does not appear quite clear how the apophthegm containing it (which has been so generally attributed to Plutarch) has been concocted. Heeren, in doing full justice to the biographical talent of the Chæronean, has yet observed, "We may easily see that in his Lives he only occasionally indicates his authorities, because his own head was so often the source." It is in the life of Demosthenes that the story of his flight is told, but briefly; and for that part which relates to the inscription on the shield of Demosthenes, he says, 'ως ελεγε Πυθεας. The other life among those of the Ten Orators, the best critics think not to be Plutarch's; and the relation in it is too ridiculous for credit; yet it is repeated by Photius.

The first writer in which the story takes something of the form in which Erasmus gives it is Aulus Gellius (Noct. Att. l. xvii. c. 21.):—

"Post inde aliquanto tempore Philippus apud Chaeroneam proelio magno Athenienses vicit. Tum Demosthenes orator ex eo proelio salutem fuga quaesivit: quumque id ei, quod fugerat, probrose objiceretur; versu illo notissimo elusit, ανηρ δ φευγων, inquit, και παλιν μαχησεται."

We here see that the senarius is designated as a well-known verse, so that it must have been in the mouths of the people long before it was applied to this piece of gossip. I have hitherto not been able to trace it to an earlier writer.