iambics. Yet every physician is prone to exaggerate the
inveterate nature of the disease which he has cured.]

[Footnote 27: I confess myself deeply indebted to the two lives
of Gregory Nazianzen, composed, with very different views, by
Tillemont (Mem. Eccles. tom. ix. p. 305 - 560, 692 - 731) and Le
Clerc, (Bibliotheque Universelle, tom. xviii. p. 1 - 128.)]
[Footnote 28: Unless Gregory Nazianzen mistook thirty years in
his own age, he was born, as well as his friend Basil, about the
year 329. The preposterous chronology of Suidas has been
graciously received, because it removes the scandal of Gregory's
father, a saint likewise, begetting children after he became a
bishop, (Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. ix. p. 693 - 697.)]

[Footnote 29: Gregory's Poem on his own Life contains some
beautiful lines, (tom. ii. p. 8,) which burst from the heart, and
speak the pangs of injured and lost friendship.

In the Midsummer Night's Dream, Helena addresses the same
pathetic complaint to her friend Hermia: -

Is all the counsel that we two have shared.
The sister's vows, &c.

Shakspeare had never read the poems of Gregory Nazianzen; he was
ignorant of the Greek language; but his mother tongue, the
language of Nature, is the same in Cappadocia and in Britain.]
[Footnote 30: This unfavorable portrait of Sasimae is drawn by
Gregory Nazianzen, (tom. ii. de Vita sua, p. 7, 8.) Its precise
situation, forty- nine miles from Archelais, and thirty-two from