Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects:
Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or Æneas. With historians it is quite the contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little regard the authors.
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The expression in Apocrypha about Tobit and his dog following him I have often heard ridiculed, yet Homer has the same words of Telemachus more than once; and Virgil says something like it of Evander. And I take the book of Tobit to be partly poetical.
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The Stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
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Augustus meeting an ass with a lucky name foretold himself good fortune. I meet many asses, but none of them have lucky names.
