Polycrates

When Homer so many ages since did the like with the battle of frogs and mice, Virgil with the gnat and puddings, Ovid with the nut.

When Polycrates and his corrector Isocrates extolled tyranny, Glauco injustice, Favorinus deformity and the quarten egg, Synesius baldness, Lucian the fly and flattery.

When Seneca made such sport with Claudius' canonizations, Plutarch with his dialogue between Ulysses and Gryllus, Lucian and Apuleius with the ass, and some other, I know not who, with the hog that made his last will and testament, of which also even St. Jerome makes mention.

And therefore, if they please, let them suppose I played at tables for my diversion, or if they had rather have it so, that I rode on a hobby-horse.

Tis that excellent person! Lie on booksellers' stalls, and in the top of every page have three hard words read, but chiefly exotic and next degree to conjuring.

Which, by the immortal gods, what are they but mere words? And again, if you consider the world, by how few understood, and praised by fewer, for even among the unlearned there are different palates.

Or what is it that their own very names are often counterfeit or borrowed from some books of the ancients? When one styles himself Telemachus, another Sthenelus, a third Laertes, a fourth Polycrates, a fifth Thrasymachus.

So that there is no difference whether they title their books with the tale of a tub, or, according to the philosophers, by Alpha Beta.