Lope de Vega curses the inventor of looking glasses—
O quanto mal han hecho espejos vanos!
Maldiga el cielo el inventor primero.
from whence it may be inferred that he did not, like Zebedee, shave himself. But he goes on to say, that if Venetian mirrors had not been invented, water would have been applied to the same purpose.
Mas que inportaran vidros Venecianos
Si el agua supo hazer caso tan fiero.
No poet or romancer with whom I am acquainted has made so beautiful a use of the looking glass, as Francisco Botello in his Alphonso. (Salamanca edition L. 7, st. 20.) Cydipe is contemplating herself in one, and by the agency of Venus, the living portraiture is rendered permanent in the mirror.
2. Etymology of Dunce.
Dunce is said by Samuel Johnson to be a word
