Sophocles himself, that
celebrated tragic poet, who, for the sweetness of his versification,
was styled Melitta, or "the Bee," in his old age, suffered the same
accusation from his own children. who, seeing him neglect his family
affairs, and devote himself entirely to poetry, carried him before
the magistrate, as a man whose intellects were so much impaired by
the infirmities of age, that he was no longer fit to manage his
domestic concerns; upon which the reverend bard produced his tragedy
of Oidipus epi Kolono, as a work he had just finished; which being
perused, instead of being declared unsound of understanding, he
was dismissed with admiration and applause. I wish your beard and
whiskers had been sanctioned by the like authority; though I am
afraid you would have been in the predicament of those disciples of
a certain philosopher, who drank decoctions of cummin seeds, that
their faces might adopt the paleness of their master's complexion,
hoping that, in being as wan, they would be as learned as their
teacher." The painter, stung by this sarcasm, replied, "or like
those virtuosi, who, by repeating Greek, eating sillikicaby, and
pretending to see visions, think they equal the ancients in taste
and genius.
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