L. VIVES.
TOo (a) strange] Insolens for insolitum, vn-accustomed. Salusts worde (that antiquary) and * 1.1 Gellius, his ape. (b) When is he] Oh Saint Augustine, by your fauor, your witts edge is too blunt! here you not our rare schoole diuines? the first is, the first is not, the last is, the last is not: death is not in this instant for now it is done: conceiue you not? Why thus: It was but now, and now it is not: not yet? then thus—but you must into the schooles, and learne of the boies: for those bables are fitter for them then for men. But you and I will haue a great deale of good talke of this, in some other place.] (c) Custome] The mistresse of speach, whom all artes ought to obserue. (d) Iudge none] Like Solons saying. No man can bee called blessed, and he be dead: because hee knowes not what may befall him. (e) Grammari∣ans] You are too idle in this chapter, Saint Augustine: First in commanding vs to apply our speech to the common sence: and secondly, in naming gramarians in a matters of diuini∣ty: how much more in drawing any argument pertayning to this question from them. If a∣ny smatterer of our diuines had done it, hee should haue beene hissed out of our schooles: but you follow the old discipline, and keepe the artes combined: mixing each others ornament and no way disioyning them. (f) Orior] That comparison holdes in grammar it is a great * 1.2 question, and much tossed. Aristarchus, a great grammarian defended it, and Crates building vpon Chrisippus his Perianomalia, did oppose it. Varro's fragments herevpon, lay downe both their reasons: and Quintilian disputes of it. Caius Caesar wrote also to Cicero concerning Analogie. Doubtlesse it must be allowed in many things but not in all: otherwise, that art can∣not stand, nor hardly worldly discourse. (g) Declined] Alluding to the ambiguity of the worde, declinari: it cannot bee declined, that is avoided, nor declined, that is varied by cases.