With these and such like bits of Latin they will take you for a grammarian at all events, and that nowadays is no small honor and profit.
"With regard to adding annotations at the end of the book, you may safely do it in this way. If you mention any giant in your book contrive that it shall be the giant Goliath, and with this alone, which will cost yon almost nothing, you have a grand note, for you can put—The giant Golias or Goliath was a Phillistine whom the shepherd David slew by a mighty stone-cast in the Terebinth valley, as is related in the Book of Kings—in the chapter where you find it written.
"Next, to prove yourself a man of erudition in polite literature and cosmography, manage that the river Tagus shall be named in your story, and there you are at once with another famous annotation, setting forth—The river Tagus was so called after a King of Spain: it has its source in such and such a place and falls into the ocean, kissing the walls of the famous city of Lisbon, and it is a common belief that it has golden sands, etc.[1] If you should have anything to do with robbers, I will give you the story of Cacus, for I have it by heart; if with loose women, there is the Bishop of Mondoñedo, who will give you the loan of Lamia, Laida, and Flora, any reference to whom will bring you great credit;[2] if with hardhearted ones, Ovid will furnish you with Medea; if with witches or enchantresses. Homer has Calypso, and Virgil Circe; if with valiant captains, Julius Cæsar himself will lend you himself in his own 'Commentaries,' and Plutarch will give you a thousand Alexanders. If you should deal with love, with two ounces you may know of Tuscan you can go to Leon the Hebrew, who will supply you to your heart's content;[3] or if you should not care to go to foreign countries you have at home Fonseca's 'Of the Love of God,' in which is condensed all that you or the most imaginative mind can want on the subject.[4] In short, all you have to do is to manage to quote these names, or refer to these stories I have mentioned,
- ↑ In the Index of Proper Names to Lope's Arcadia there is a description of the Tagus in very nearly these words.
- ↑ The Bishop of Mondoñedo was Antonio de Guevara, in whose epistles the story referred to appears. The introduction of the Bishop and the "creditable reference" is a touch after Swift's heart.
- ↑ Author of the Dialoghi di Amore, a Portuguese Jew, who settled in Spain, but was expelled and went to Naples in 1492.
- ↑ Amor di Dios, by Cristobal de Fonseca, printed in 1594.
