Omniana/Volume 1/Aristotle
13. Aristotle.
Aristotle has been libelled in all ages. The ancient calumniators said of him that he spent his patrimony in riotous gluttony, then turned soldier, and proving a coward, betook himself to the safer method of destroying men as an apothecary. He has been accused of poisoning Alexander, for which reason, a Frenchman[1] of more Greek learning than usually falls to the share of a learned man in France, calls him equally a poisoner of soul and body. Martin Luther[2] was of opinion that he was certainly dead and damned. There is a scurvy jest of him in the Gesta Romanorum, how his mistress saddled and bridled him like an ass, and rode upon his back. In our own country, he meets with still worse usage from those dirty booksellers, who fall under the notice of the Society for the suppression of vice. I was once in a shop when a fellow from the country came in with a written order for Harry Stottel's Master-Piece.