account of the first reporter.  He was condemned as a spreader of false news, and a disturber of the public quiet; for the Athenians could not imagine but that they were invincible!  The barber was dragged to the wheel and tortured, till the disaster was more than confirmed.  Bayle, referring to this story, observes, that had the barber reported a victory, though it had proved to be false, he would not have been punished; a shrewd observation, which occurred to him from his recollection of the fate of Stratocles.  This person persuaded the Athenians to perform a public sacrifice and thanksgiving for a victory obtained at sea, though he well knew at the time that the Athenian fleet had been totally defeated.  When the calamity could no longer be concealed, the people charged him with being an impostor:  but Stratocles saved his life and mollified their anger by the pleasant turn he gave the whole affair.  “Have I done you any injury?” said he.  “Is it not owing to me that you have spent three days in the pleasures of victory?” I think that this spreader of good, but fictitious news, should have occupied the wheel of the luckless barber, who had spread bad but true news; for the barber had no intention of deception, but Stratocles had; and the question here to be tried, was not the truth or the falsity of the reports, but whether the reporters intended to deceive their fellow-citizens?  The “Chronicle” and the “Post” must be challenged on such a jury, and all the race of news-scribes, whom Patin characterises as hominum genus audacissimum mendacissimum avidissimum.  Latin superlatives are too rich to suffer a translation.  But what Patin says in his Letter 356 may be applied:  “These writers insert in their papers things they do not know, and ought not to write.  It is the same trick that is playing which was formerly played; it is the very same farce, only it is exhibited by new actors.  The worst circumstance, I think, in this is, that this trick will continue playing a long course of years, and that the public suffer a great deal too much by it.”

OF SUPPRESSORS AND DILAPIDATORS OF MANUSCRIPTS.

Manuscripts are suppressed or destroyed from motives which require to be noticed.  Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation:  they may blush at their artifices, and deserve the pillory, but their practices do not incur the capital crime of felony.  Serassi, the writer of the curious Life of Tasso, was guilty of an extraordinary suppression in his zeal for the poet’s memory.  The story remains to be told, for it is but little known.