charmingness of their own performances, that Nicias, as he was
drawing the Evocation of Ghosts in Homer, often asked his servants
whether he had dined or no, and when King Ptolemy had sent him
threescore talents for his piece, after it was finished, he neither
would accept the money nor part with his work; what and how great
satisfactions may we then suppose to have been reaped from geometry
and astronomy by Euclid when he wrote his Dioptrics, by Philippus
when he had perfected his demonstration of the figure of the moon,
by Archimedes when with the help of a certain angle he had found
the sun's diameter to make the same part of the largest circle that
that angle made of four right angles, and by Apollonius and
Aristarchus who were the inventors of some other things of the like
nature? The bare contemplating and comprehending of all these now
engender in the learners both unspeakable delights and a marvellous
height of spirit. And it doth in no wise beseem me, by comparing
with these the fulsome debauchees of victualling-houses and stews,
to contaminate Helicon and the Muses,--

Where swain his flock ne'er fed,
Nor tree by hatchet bled.
(Euripides, "Hippolytus," 75.)

But these are the verdant and untrampled pastures of ingenious
bees; but those are more like the mange of lecherous boars and
he-goats. And though a voluptuous temper of mind be naturally
erratic and precipitate, yet never any yet sacrificed an ox for joy
that he had gained his will of his mistress; nor did any ever wish
to die immediately, might he but once satiate himself with the
costly dishes and comfits at the table of his prince. But now
Eudoxus wished he might stand by the sun, and inform himself of the