The word _demento_ is of no authority, either as a verb
active or neuter.--After a long search for the purpose of deciding a
bet, some gentlemen of Cambridge found it among the fragments of
Euripides, in what edition I do not recollect, where it is given as a
translation of a Greek Iambick: [Greek: Ou Theos thelei apolesoi'
apophreuai.]
'The above scrap was found in the hand-writing of a suicide of fashion,
Sir D. O., some years ago, lying on the table of the room where he had
destroyed himself. The suicide was a man of classical acquirements: he
left no other paper behind him.'
Another of these proverbial sayings,
_Incidit in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim,_
I, in a note on a passage in _The Merchant of Venice_ [act iii. sc. 5],
traced to its source. It occurs (with a slight variation) in the
_Alexandreis_ of Philip Gualtier (a poet of the thirteenth century),
which was printed at Lyons in 1558. Darius is the person addressed:--
--Quo tendis inertem,
Rex periture, fugam? nescis, heu! perdite, nescis
Quern fugias: hostes incurris dum fugis hostem;
_Incidis in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim.
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