the acme of madness. Yet such is the conduct of curious people. They neglect many gay sights, fail to hear much that would be well worth hearing, lose much fine sport and pastime, to break open private letters, to put their ears to their neighbour's walls, and to whisper to their slaves and women-servants, practices always low, and frequently dangerous.
§ x. It will be exceedingly useful, therefore, to deter the curious from these propensities, for them to remember their past experience. Simonides used to say that he occasionally opened two chests for rewards and thanks that he had by him, and found the one full for rewards, but the one for thanks always empty.15 So if anyone were to open occasionally the stores that curiosity had amassed, and observe what a cargo there was of useless and idle and unlovely things, perhaps the sight of all this poor stuff would inspire him with disgust. Suppose someone, in studying the writings of the ancients, were to pick out only their worst passages, and compile them into a volume, as Homer's imperfect lines, and the solecisms of the tragedians, and Archilochus' indecent and bitter railings against women, by which he so exposed himself, would he not be worthy of the curse of the tragedian,