Your having, sir, inserted certain “[Antipathies]” which I communicated to your work, encourages me to hope you will find some “Casualties” not unacceptable.
Anacreon, according to Pliny and Valerius Maximus, was choked with the kernel of a raisin, and Tarquinius Priscus with a fishbone; the senator Fabius with a hair; and the very sight of a physician in a dream, frighted Andragorus out of his life. Homer, Rutilius, Rusciacus, and Pomperanus were overwhelmed with grief. Zeuxis and Philemon died with laughing; the one at the picture of an old woman which himself had drawn, the other at an ass eating of figs. Polycryta,[428] Philippides, and Diagorus were carried away with a sudden joy; and the tyrant Dionysius and Sophocles by excessive triumph at the news of a victory. The bald head of Æschylus cost him dearly; for an eagle hovering over it mistook it for a stone, and thinking to break an oyster upon it, gave him a mortal wound.[429] Archimedes was killed by a soldier, as he was making diagrams in the sand; and Pindar, in the theatre, by his repose as he lay on the knees of his dear Theoxenus.[430]
Like the people in Pliny, we pay tribute for a shadow. Every age, condition, and family has its peculiar evils. Cares and sorrows intermingle with our possessions and gratifications. We taste myrrh in our wine; and while we crop rosebuds to crown our heads, we prick our fingers. We do not so properly enjoy our pleasures, as suffer them.
“The portion of man is like that of a rose, which at first is fair as the morning, when it newly springs from the clefts of its hood, and full with the dew of heaven as the fleece of a lamb; but when a ruder breath has forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its retirements, it begins to decline to the symptoms of a sickly age; it bows the head and breaks the stalk, and at night having lost some of its leaves, and all its beauty, falls into the lap of noisome weeds.”[431]
ΠΡΙ
[428] Agellius, lib. iii. cap. 15.
[429] Suidas, Aristoph. in Ranis, lib. x. cap. 3. et Max. ibid.
[430] Θεοξενου γονατα, Suidas.
[431] Bishop Taylor