W. BARNES.
Dorchester.
"Felix quem faciunt," &c. (Vol. iii., pp. 373. 431.).
—The passage cited by C. H. P. as assigned to Plautus, and which he says he cannot find in that author, occurs in one of the interpolated scenes in the Mercator, which are placed in some of the old editions between the 5th and 6th Scenes of Act IV. In the edition by Pareus, printed at Neustadt (Neapolis Nemetum) in 1619, 4to., it stands thus:
"Verum id dictum est: Feliciter is sapit, qui periculo alieno sapit."
I was wrong in attributing it to Plautus, and should rather have called it Plautine. By a strange slip of the pen or the press, periculum is put instead of periculo in my note. Niebuhr has a very interesting essay on the interpolated scenes in Plautus, in the first volume of his Kleine Historische und Philologische Schriften, which will show why these scenes and passages, marked as supposititious in some editions, are now omitted. It appears that they were made in the fifteenth century by Hermolaus Barbarus. See a letter from him to the Bishop of Segni, in Angeli Politiani Epistolæ, lib. xii. epist. 25.
To the parallel thoughts already cited may be added the following:
"Ii qui sciunt, quid aliis acciderit, facile ex aliorum eventu, suis rationibus possunt providere."
Rhetoric. ad Herennium, L. 4. c. 9.
"I' presi esempio de' lor stati rei,