APELLES AND THE COBBLER.

It was customary with Apelles to expose to public view the works which he had finished, and to hide himself behind the canvass, in order to hear the remarks made by spectators. He once overheard himself blamed by a shoemaker for a fault in the slippers of some figure; having too much good sense to be offended with any objection, however trifling, which came from a competent judge, he corrected the fault which the man had noticed. On the following day, however, the shoemaker began to animadvert upon the leg; on which Apelles, with some anger, looked out from the canvass, and reproved him in these words, which are also become a proverb, “ne sutor ultra crepidam”—“let the cobbler keep to his last,” or “every man to his trade.”