It is
from Gualtier de Lille, as has been remarked by Galeottus Martius and
Paquier in their researches. This Gualtier flourished in the thirteenth
century. The verse is extracted from a poem in ten books, called the
"Alexandriad," and it is the 301st of the 5th book; it relates to the
fate of Darius, who, flying from Alexander, fell into the hands of
Bessus. It runs thus:--
"-- Quo flectis inertem
Rex periture, fugam? Nescis, heu perdite, nescis,
Quem fugias; hostes incurris dum fugis hostem;
_Incidis in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim_"
As honest JOHN BUNYAN, to his only bit of Latin which he quotes, places
a marginal note: "The Latin which I borrow,"--a very honest way; so I I
beg to say that I never saw this "Alexandriad," and that the above is an
excerpt from _Menagiana_, pub. 1715, edited by Bertrand de la Monnoie,
wherein may also be found much curious reading and research.
JAMES H. FRISWELL.
* * * * *
A NOTE OF ADMIRATION!
Sir Walter Scott, in a letter to Miss Johanna Baillie, dated October 12,
1825, (Lockhart's _Life of Sir W. S._, vol. vi. p. 82.), says,--
"I well intended to have written from Ireland, but alas! as some
stern old divine says, 'Hell is paved with good intentions.'
There was such a whirl of laking, and boating, and wondering,
and shouting, and laughing, and carousing--" [He alludes to his
visiting among the Westmoreland and Cumberland lakes on his way
home, especially] "so much to be seen, and so little time to see
it; so much to be heard, and only two ears to listen to twenty
voices, that upon the whole I grew desperate, and gave up all
thoughts of doing what was right and proper on post-days, and so
all my epistolary good intentions are gone to Macadamise, I
suppose, 'the burning marle' of the infernal regions.
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