Page:Studies of a Biographer 1.djvu/116

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102
STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER

example, he had made a variety of conjectural emendations of Horace, obviously rash, if not altogether absurd. But it could have entered into no less whimsical head to put the arguments for them into rhyme. He suggests unum for nonum in the familiar passage,

I take the correction, unumque prematur,
'Let it lie for one twelvemonth'—Ah, that may hold water!

and argues the point through twelve eight-lined stanzas. Another 'poem' is an antiquarian discussion, showing that St. Gregory and not St. George was the patron saint of England; he proves in another that the locusts eaten by the Baptist were fruit, not insects; in a third, that the miracle at the Pentecost was worked upon the hearers, not the speakers.

'Are not these,' said the men, the devout of each land,
'Galileans that speak, whom we all understand?'
As much as to say, 'By what wonderful powers
Does the tongue Galilean become to us ours?'

With equal readiness he enters into an elaborate exegetical discussion, defending Sherlock against Conyers Middleton; expounds the orthodox doctrine of the fall of man and justification by faith; condemns Jonathan Edwards's arguments