Philosophical Dictionary (Vol. 2)

Nothing is more common in most of our new little books than to see old witticisms attributed to our contemporaries, or inscriptions and epigrams made for certain princes applied to others.

It is stated in that same Philosophical History, etc. original: "Histoire philosophique et politique du commerce dans les deux Indes", volume I, page 63, that when the Dutch drove the Portuguese from Malacca, the Dutch captain asked the Portuguese commander when he would return; to which the vanquished replied: When your sins are greater than ours. This reply had already been attributed to an Englishman in the time of the King of France, Charles VII, and previously to a Saracen emir in Sicily. Besides, this response is more fitting for a Capuchin friar than a politician. It is not because the French were greater sinners than the English that the latter took Canada from them.

The author of this same Philosophical History, etc., seriously recounts, volume V, page 197, a short tale invented by Steele and inserted into the Spectator, and he tries to pass this tale off as one of the real causes of the wars between the English and the savages. Here is the little story that Steele contrasts with the much more pleasant little story of the Matron of Ephesus. The point is to prove that men are no more constant than women. But in Petronius, the Matron of Ephesus has only an amusing and forgivable weakness, whereas the merchant Inkle, in the Spectator, is guilty of the most hideous ingratitude.

This young traveler Inkle is on the point of being captured by the Caribs on the continent of America, without it being said in what location or on what