came an indigent stranger thither, according to the letters; and by degrees rising from one employment to another, at last had opportunity and power to effect that design. Besides, in the sixty-ninth letter, she is at Crete with her son; and in the fifty-first, she is poisoned (I suppose) at Astypalaea, for there her poisoner dwelt; and 'tis expressly said, she designed, but could not follow her husband: which seems an intimation, that the Sophist believed Astypalaea to be a city in Crete. 'Tis certain, our diligent editors, by comparing these two passages together, made that discovery in geography, for it could not be learned anywhere else; and 'tis an admirable token, both that the Epistles are old and genuine, and that commentators are not inferior to, nor unworthy of, their author.
What a scene of putid and senseless formality are the seventy-eighth, seventy-ninth, and hundred and forty-fourth Epistles? Nicocles, a Syracusan, a man of the highest rank and quality, sends his own brother a hundred miles with a request to Phalaris, that he would send to Stesichorus, another hundred miles, and beg the favour of a copy of verses upon Clearista his wife, who was lately dead. Phalaris accordingly sends
