Sorrows and tears most commonly are seenFor, they say, he says not of men simply, or of all men, that the Gods weave for them the fatal web of a sorrowful life; but he affirms it only of foolish and imprudent men, whom, because their vices make them such, he therefore calls wretched and miserable.
To be the Gods' rewards to wretched men :—
The Gods, who have no cause themselves to grieve,
For wretched man a web of sorrow weave.
1
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Nor are we to omit in our reading those hints which,
from some other words or phrases bordering on those that
offend us, may help to rectify our apprehensions. But as
physicians use cantharides, believing that, though their
bodies be deadly poison, yet their feet and wings are medicinal and can even kill the poison of the flies themselves,
so must we deal with poems. If any noun or verb near at
hand may assist to the correction of any such saying, and
preserve us from putting a bad construction upon it, we
should take hold of it and employ it to assist a more favorable interpretation. As some do in reference to those
verses of Homer,—
1 Odyss. IV. 197; Il. XXIV. 526.
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