Note 526 — NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OR NEW CANAAN. (continued 3)

T. W. Higginson, who in 1866 published a translation of Epictetus, furnishes me the following note on this allusion: “The phrase ‘bear and forbear’ has always been received as the formula especially characteristic of Epictetus. It is most explicitly preserved to us in the Noctes Atticæ of Aulus Gellius (B. XVII. ch. xix. §§ 5-6). Gellius says: ‘Verba duo dicebat: Ἀνέχου καὶ ἀπέχου,’ having previously explained their meaning. There was in 1634 no English translation of any portion of Epictetus containing the phrase; nor was he an author then much read at the English universities. Morton probably, therefore, got the quotation from the Latin of Aulus Gellius; if, indeed, he did not pick it up in listening to the talk of some more scholarly man,—possibly Ben Jonson.”