At the time when the "Fragments of Petronius" made a great noise in the literary world, Meibomius, a noted learned man of Lübeck, read in the printed letter of another learned man of Bologna: "We have here an entire Petronius, which I have seen with my own eyes and admired." _Habemus hic Petronium integrum, quem vidi meis oculis non sine admiratione._ He immediately set out for Italy, hastened to Bologna, went to the librarian Capponi, and asked him if it were true that they had the entire Petronius at Bologna. Capponi answered that it was a fact which had long been public. "Can I see this Petronius? Be so good as to show him to me." "Nothing is more easy," said Capponi. He then took him to the church in which the body of St. Petronius was laid. Meibomius ordered horses and fled. If the Jesuit Daniel took a warlike abbot, _abbatem martialem_, for the abbot Martial, a hundred historians have fallen into still greater mistakes. The Jesuit d'Orleans, in his "Revolutions of England," wrote indifferently _Northampton_ or _Southampton_, only mistaking the north for the south, or _vice versa_. Metaphysical terms, taken in their proper sense, have sometimes determined the opinion of twenty nations. Every one knows the metaphor of Isaiah, _How hast thou fallen from heaven, thou star which rose in the morning?_ This discourse was imagined to have been addressed to the devil; and as the Hebrew word answering to the planet _Venus_ was rendered in Latin by the word _Lucifer_, the devil has ever since been called Lucifer. Much ridicule has been bestowed on the "Chart of the Tender Passion" by Mdlle. Cuderi. The lovers embark on the river _Tendre_; they dine at _Tendre sur Estime_, sup at _Tendre sur Inclination_, sleep at _Tendre sur Désir_, find themselves the next morning at _Tendre sur Passion_, and lastly at _Tendre sur Tendre_. These ideas may be ridiculous, especially when _Clelia, Horatius Cocles_, and other rude and austere Romans set out on the voyage; but this geographical chart at least shows us that love has various lodgings, and that the same word does not always signify the same thing. There is a prodigious difference between the love of Tarquin and that of Celadon--between David's love for Jonathan, which was stronger than that of women, and the Abbé Desfontaines' love for little chimney-sweepers. The most singular instance of this abuse of words--these voluntary _equivoques_--these misunderstandings which have caused so many quarrels--is the Chinese _King-tien_. The missionaries having violent disputes about the meaning of this word, the Court of Rome sent a Frenchman, named _Maigrot_, whom they made the imaginary bishop of a province in China, to adjust the difference. Maigrot did not know a word of Chinese; but the emperor deigned to grant that he should be told what he understood by _King-tien_. Maigrot would not believe what was told him, but caused the emperor of China to be condemned at Rome!