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and talked to the schoolmaster. Worse still was the λoyozós, who dealt in rumours, and spread scandal-who was asking 'Is there nothing new?' Often, says Theophrastus, while gathering crowds round them in the baths, these gossips have lost their clothes.

To this corrupted taste for an enjoyment very profitable in its healthy condition, the ancients owed a class of table-talkers whom it would be improper to pass over, more particularly as they are represented in considerable force in modern Europe,—a class of diners-out. The wag was well known in antiquity, from the simple yeλwToads or laughter-maker, who attended suppers professionally, up to the smart conversationist who paid for the good things which he ate by the good things which he said. Of this gentleman, for so we call him in these polite times, there are excellent specimens in Plautus. Sometimes when invitations ran slack, he complained that the age was getting rude and unpolished, and had no taste for elegant pleasures. The same kind of character is to be traced in every generation; and ages after the men we have been speaking of had crackled on their pyres, Martial saw their representatives flourishing in Rome. A rival of these parasites was the aretalogus, whom we know not how to match in our own days. He combined the diner-out and moral philosopher, and used to talk at suppers of the summum bonum, and the Good and the Beautiful, for the amusement of those who thought the scurra and the parasite frivolous. The Emperor Augustus was particularly fond of these philosophical declaimers. They seem principally to have been Stoics or Cynics, and were remarkable for their loquacity, their love of eleemosynary provender, and their long beards. Between them and the comic writers there was deadly war.

Fond as the ancients were of conversation, it is not wonderful that they should have left books which may justly be included under the head of Table-Talk. At the head of these must be placed the Memorabilia' of Socrates by Xenophon, which, indeed, the ingenious Frenchman who has edited the TableTalk' of Ménage was inclined to call Socratiana.' It is, no doubt, the prosaic aspect of Socrates which we have from Xenophon; but in the clear steel-mirror of his lucid style, the face of the philosopher is reflected with a truth, of which nobody can lose the impression. We see the man as he appeared to his friends, to his wife, and are well pleased to lose a little ideal beauty for the sake of the homely reality. We commonly,' says Pascal, picture Plato and Aristotle in stately robes, and as personages always grave and solemn. They were good fellows, who laughed like others with their friends; and when they composed

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their laws and treatises of policy it was done smilingly and to divert themselves. It was the least philosophic and serious part of their life. Their highest philosophy was to live simply and tranquilly. Now, it is just the charm of the Memorabilia that it gives us the daily existence of Socrates; his constant public activity; his incessant and irresistible dialectics in the agora, in the gymnasia, in the shop of the corslet-maker, in the studio of the statuary, at the table. All that beautiful scene of human life, with its temples, its trees, its soft sky, and the hum and colour of its lively population, floats in the air about. We are in the presence of Socrates, in his habit as he lived'barefooted, plainly clad, invincibly reasonable and moral, and the incarnation of common sense. Xenophon is so anxious to show him as a good citizen that he even makes him talk what we, in our modern conceit, fancy rather obvious morality. The kindly reverent disciple wants to show how excellent his master's intentions were; how obedient he was to the laws; how soundly conservative in fact. He could not foresee that it would ever be argued that the sage was justly executed by the populace as a bore!

If, then, we set down the Memorabilia' as the earliest and most important book of Table-Talk extant, we shall be beginning well. The ancients had other collections, but they have perished; and we must search for the scattered fragments in Athenæus, Macrobius, Plutarch, and Aulus Gellius. A passage which the latter quotes from Varro would alone establish the taste of the ancients in colloquial matters :-' Guests should be neither loquacious nor silent; because eloquence is for the forum, and silence for the bed-chamber.' And he goes on to say that 'conversation at such times should not be about anxious nor difficult affairs, but pleasant, attractive, and useful.

In these old store-houses we shall find more than one bon-mot, which now adorns the brazen front of the plagiary. There are few better sayings attributed to Foote than his reply to Lord Stormont, who was boasting the great age of the wine which, in his parsimony, he had caused to be served in extremely small glasses, It is very little of its age.' Yet this identical witticism is in Athenæus, where it is assigned to one Gnathana, whose jokes were better than her character. Cicero relates that Nasica called upon Ennius, and was told by the servant that he was out. Shortly afterwards Ennius returned the visit, when Nasica exclaimed from within that he was not at home. What,' replied Ennius, do not I know your own voice?' 'You are an impudent fellow,' retorted Nasica; 'when your servant told me that you were not at home, I believed her, but you will not believe

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me though I tell you so myself.' This, in modern jest-books, is said to have passed between Quin and Foote. Wit, like gold, is circulated sometimes with one head on it and sometimes with another, according to the potentates who rule its realm. Few situations are more trying than to sit at dinner and hear a raconteur telling the capital thing said by Louis XIV.' to soand-so, with a distinct recollection that the same thing was said by Augustus to a provincial. You cannot quote Macrobius without the imputation of pedantry, even if you were capable of the cruelty; and you grin pleasant approbation with the consciousness that you are a hypocrite.

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We have lost a good deal in Cæsar's Apophthegms;' for his taste was fine and his knowledge great. His own conversation must have been exquisite, and some of his sallies on public occasions show us how dexterous he must have been in repartee. The sayings of one great man never come to us with such force as when they are illuminated by the admiring comments of another, and the dicta of Cæsar are best read by the light of the torch held to them by Bacon.

'If I should enumerate divers of his speeches, as I did those of Alexander, they are truly such as Solomon noteth, when he saith, "The words of the wise are as goads;" whereof I will only recite three, not so delectable for elegancy, but admirable for vigour and efficacy. As, first, it is reason he be thought a master of words, that could with one word appease a mutiny in his army, which was thus :-The Romans, when their generals did speak to their army, did use the word "Milites," but when the magistrates spake to the people, they did use the word "Quirites." The soldiers were in tumult, and seditiously prayed to be cashiered; not that they so meant, but by expostulation thereof to draw Cæsar to other conditions; wherein he being resolute not to give way, after some silence, he began his speech,— "Ego, Quirites," which did admit them already cashiered; wherewith they were so surprised, crossed, and confused, as they would not suffer him to go on in his speech, but relinquished their demands, and made it their suit to be again called by the name of "Milites." The second speech was thus: Cæsar did extremely affect the name of king; and some were set on, as he passed by, in popular acclamation to salute him king: whereupon, finding the cry weak and poor, he put it off thus, in a kind of jest, as if they had mistaken his surname ; "Non rex sum, sed Cæsar;" I am not King, but Cæsar ;-a speech, that if it be searched, the life and fulness of it can scarce be expressed: for, first, it was a refusal of the name, but yet not serious. Again, it did signify an infinite confidence and magnanimity, as if he presumed Cæsar was the greater title, as by his worthiness it is come to pass till this day: but chiefly it was a speech of great allurement toward his own purpose; as if the state did strive with him but for a name, whereof mean families were vested; for Rex was a surname with the Romans, as well as King

is with us. The last speech which I will mention was used to Metellus: when Cæsar, after war declared, did possess himself of the city of Rome, at which time entering into the inner treasury to take the money there accumulated, Metellus, being tribune, forbade him: whereunto Cæsar said, "That if he did not desist, he would lay him dead in the place." And presently, taking himself up, he added, "Young man, it is harder for me to speak than to do it.' A speech compounded of the greatest terror and greatest clemency that could proceed out of the mouth of man.'

Cæsar knew at once whether a Cicero was genuine, and dismissed a spurious one with the calm contempt of a connoisseur. Wit, as we have already intimated, was one of the great orator's chief endowments. Quintilian celebrates his urbanitas, the word by which the ancients expressed that peculiar elegance of humour which smacks of the cultivation of a capital; which distinguished high Roman society in the days of Cicero, as it did French society in the time of Ménage, and English society in that of Chesterfield; which arrived at its perfection in Talleyrand and Louis XVIII., and still survives like other traditions in the circles of Legitimacy. But Cicero's humour was very various; nor did he abstain from coarse facetiousness, and downright puns. When he at last, after infinite irresolution, joined Pompey, they told him, sneeringly, 'You come late.' How late since I find nothing ready?' was his answer. This was urbanitas. When Pompey, who had married Cæsar's daughter, asked, on the same occasion, referring to Dolabella, who had joined Cæsar's party, Where is your son-in-law?' Cicero retorted, With your father-in-law. This, too, was urbanitas. But he stooped to an 'arrant clench' when, in allusion to the Oriental custom of boring the ears of slaves, he replied to the man of Eastern and servile descent, who complained he could not hear him, 'Yet you have holes in your ears.' This was NOT urbanitas. Such personalities, however, were addressed ad populum; and when political excitement harassed him, even Canning was coarse.

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Talk all wit would be as disagreeably monotonous as a dinner all champagne. When a man is always witty, it is a proof that he has no other quality equally conspicuous, and the person who is spoken of, as par excellence'a wit,' is a second rate conversationist. He was so well drest,' said somebody to Brummell, 'that people would turn and look at him.' Then he was not well drest,' replied that great master of the art. We venture to apply the doctrine to Table-Talk. It should not want wit, but it should not exceed in it; the epigrams should be sprinkled over it with the natural grace of daisies on a meadow. If we regret that the 'Liber Jocularis' is lost, we regret still more that

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no regular 'Ciceroniana' exists, reflecting the daily conversation, grave as well as gay, of the orator; such a book as the Ménagiana, or Eckerman's Goethe, or the Table-Talk of Selden and Luther.

First in time of the modern Ana, first in rank, infinitely valuable and exquisitely curious, the Table-Talk of Luther naturally takes the place of honour. It was printed in the original German in 1566, and spread at once. A Latin selection quickly followed; an English translation appeared in 1652. It exhibits all the qualities of the class in the highest form: it admits us to his company with a letter of introduction. To the Table-Talk, more than to any other work, Europe owes the personal familiarity which it has with the Reformer, and nobody but a good man could have borne the test of this kind of revelation. Yet it is upon the reports of his conversation, according to Bayle, that most of the calumnies against Luther were originally founded. We cheerfully allow his enemies to make the most, as they have taken care to do, of his out-spoken heartiness, of his homely humour, of the peasant-like rusticity which accompanied his intense earnestness. Beyond all question, Dr. Martin was violent and coarse, and loved a glass of beer. But the more we get at his intimacy the more we like him, for he has the charm of nature. Of the most delicate wine a man is sometimes tired; but water is eternally fresh and new, as welcome the thousandth time as the first. His adversaries seem to have gone to work with something like system. If they found him in familiar discourse with three or four persons, they called them his 'pot-companions.' If he laughed, they called him a profane scoffer. If he neither talked nor laughed, a dumb-devil possessed him. It could not possibly be the case, in Father Garasse's opinion, that he was a man like other people, with human appetites and a human temper, and not a saint in a picture. But the struggles, the infirmities of such heroes, are the most instructive studies possible; the more you dwell on them, the more you wonder at the mighty works they performed.

The interest of Luther's Table-Talk is that it is a perfect portrait of the human and material side of one of the greatest spiritual men that the world ever saw. Fancy, for that was one of his ways, Luther rebuking Satan in the style of Squire Western. It was his firm conviction that the Evil one may be driven away by jeering, because he is a haughty spirit and cannot bear contempt.' There are marvellous things in the chapter on the Devil and his Works.' For example:

'Dr. Luther said he had heard from the elector of Saxony, John Frederic,