Complete. “Attic Nights,” Book X., Chap. xvii.

IT is told, in the records of Grecian history, that the philosopher Democritus, a man to be reverenced beyond all others, and of high authority, voluntarily deprived himself of sight, because he thought his contemplations and the exercises of his mind would be more exact in examining the laws of nature, if he should free them from the allurements of sight and the burden of his eyes. The poet Laberius, in a play called “The Rector,” has described in some elegant and finished verses, this fact, and the manner in which, by an ingenious contrivance, he became blind. But he has feigned another instance of voluntary blindness, and has applied it not without elegance to his own purpose. The character which speaks them in Laberius is that of a rich and covetous man, lamenting the excessive extravagance and dissipation of his son. The verses are these:—

  “Democritus, Abdera’s far-fam’d son,
Plac’d a bright mirror ’gainst the star of day,
That his fair sight might perish by the blaze;
And thus his eyes, extinguish’d by the sun,
Might ne’er the wicked prosperous behold;
So do I with the splendor of my gold,
My life’s remoter limit to obscure,
Rather than see my prodigal possess it.”