Note 570 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 3)

With the following elucidation of the saying-Quos Deus (it should rather be-Quem Jupiter) vult perdere, prius dementat-Mr. Boswell was furnished by Mr. Pitts:—'Perhaps no scrap of Latin whatever has been more quoted than this. It occasionally falls even from those who are scrupulous even to pedantry in their Latinity, and will not admit a word into their compositions, which has not the sanction of the first age. The word demento is of no authority, either as a verb active or neuter.—After a long search for the purpose of deciding a bet, some gentlemen of Cambridge found it among the fragments of Euripides, in what edition I do not recollect, where it is given as a translation of a Greek Iambick: [Greek: Ou Theos thelei apolesoi' apophreuai.]