Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/275

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
SECOND DISSERTATION
201

coequal, coeternal: but before a consonant they either retain the n, as contemporary, constitution; or melt it into another letter, as collection, comprehension. So that the Examiner's cotemporary, is a word of his own coposition, for which the learned world will cogratulate him.

3. "Another token of a pedant, is the use of Greek and Latin proverbs."

But, however, I'll run the risk of it once more, and make bold to use one proverbial saying—

Homine imperito nunquam quicquam injustius,
Qui nisi quod ipse fecit, nihil rectum putat.

Why, forsooth, is it more pedantry in me, to use Latin proverbs in English discourse, than in Cicero to use Greek ones in Latin? Nay, do not even Greek proverbs make as good a figure now in English, as then they did in Latin? If Mr B. can spare any time from his Phalaris's Epistles to look into Cicero's, he will find him in every page among the herd of pedants. If I had used proverbs in my Sermons against Atheism, or upon any solemn argument or occasion, the Examiner's censure had been more just: but to blame the use of them in an epistle or a dissertation, which