se.

The fabular relations of the poets are so careful of decorum, that they
never leave a Hercules destitute of necessaries; but those still spring,
as out of some fountain, as well for him as for his companions. But he
that hath received of the Stoics Amalthaea becomes indeed a rich man,
but he begs his victuals of other men; he is a king, but resolves
syllogisms for hire; he is the only man that hath all things, but yet
he pays rent for the house he lives in, and oftentimes buys bread with
borrowed money, or else begs it of those that have nothing themselves.

The king of Ithaca begs with a design that none may know who he is, and
makes himself

As like a dirty sorry beggar
("Odyssey," xvi. 273.)

as he can. But he that is of the Portico, while he bawls and cries out,
It is I only that am a king, It is I only that am a rich man, is yet
many times seen at other people's doors saying:--

On poor Hipponax, pray, some pity take,
Bestow an old cast coat for heaven's sake;
I'm well-nigh dead with cold, and all o'er quake.

END OF FOUR---------------

SYMPOSIACS.

BOOK 1.

Some, my dear Sossius Senecio imagine that this sentence, [Greek
omitted] was principally designed against the stewards of a feast, who
are usually troublesome and press liquor too much upon the guests. For
the Dorians in Sicily (as I am informed) called the steward, [Greek
omitted] a REMEMBRANCER. Others think that this proverb admonisheth
the guests to forget everything that is spoken or done in company; and
agreeably to this, the ancients used to consecrate forgetfulness with a
ferula to Bacchus, thereby intimating that we should either not remember
any irregularity committed in mirth and company, or apply a gentle and
childish correction to the faults. But because you are of opinion (as
Euripides says) that to forget absurdities is indeed a piece of wisdom,
but to deliver over to oblivion all sort of discourse that merry
meetings do usually produce is not only repugnant to that endearing
quality that most allow to an entertainment, but against the known
practice of the greatest philosophers (for Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle,
Speusippus, Epicurus, Prytanis, Hieronymus, Dion the Academic, have
thought it a worthy and noble employment to deliver down to us those
discourses they had at table), and since it is your pleasure that I
should gather up the chiefest of those scattered topics which both at
Rome an