Now follows his ridiculous apology for _adducis malleum, ut occidas muscam_. The cause why he did use that proverb, of his own phrasing, was this. Mr. Hobbes had taken a great deal of pains to demonstrate what Dr. Wallis thought he could have proved in short; upon this occasion he objects, _adducis malleum ut occidas muscam_, which I shall suppose he intended to English thus, _you bring a beetle to kill a fly_. Mr. Hobbes retorted, that _adduco_ was not used in that sense. The Doctor vindicates himself thus: _duco_, _deduco_, _reduco_, _perduco_, _produco_, &c. signify the same thing, ergo, _adduco_ may be used in that sense; which is a most ridiculous kind of arguing, where we are but to take up our language from others, and not to coin new phrases. It is not the grammar that shall secure the Doctor, nor weak analogies, where elegance comes in contest. To justify his expression he must have showed it _usu tritum_, or alleged the authority of some author of great note for it. I have not the leisure to examine his impertinent citations about those other compounds, nor yet of that simple verb _duco_; nay, to justify his saying he hath not brought one parallel example. He talks indeed very high, that _duco_, with its compounds, is a word of a large signification, and amongst the rest _to bring_, _fetch_, _carry_, &c. is so exceeding frequent in all authors, Plautus, Terence, Tully, Cæsar, Tacitus, Pliny, Seneca, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Claudian, &c. that he must needs be either maliciously blind, or a very stranger to the Latin tongue, that doth not know it, or can have the face to deny it. I read, what will be my doom for not allowing his Latin; yet I must profess I dare secure the Doctor for having read all authors, notwithstanding his assertion, and I hope he will do the like for me. And for those which he hath read, had he brought no better proofs than these, he had, I am sure, been whipped soundly in Westminster School, for his impudence as well as ignorance, by the learned master thereof at present. But I dare further affirm, the Doctor hath not read in this point any, but only consulted with Robert Stephen’s _Thesaurus Linguæ Latinæ_, whence he hath borrowed his allegations in _adduco_; and for the other, I had not so much idle time as to compare them. And, lest the fact might be discovered, he hath sophisticated those authors whence Stephen cites the expressions, and imposed upon them others. If it be not so, or that the Doctor could not write it right when the copy was right before him, let him tell me where he did ever read in Plautus, _adducta res in fastidium_. I find the whole sentence in Pliny’s preface to Vespasian (out of whom in the precedent paragraph he cites it) about the middle: _alia vero ita multis prodita, ut in factidium sint adducta_, which is the very example Stephanus useth, although he doth premise his _adducta res in fastidium_. Let the Doctor tell where he ever did read in Horace, _Ova noctuæ_, &c.