do the same with those that are serious, and still seem in earnest.
For as in Euripides, the Bacchae, though unprovided of iron weapons and
unarmed, wounded their invaders with their boughs, thus the very jests
and merry talk of true philosophers move those that are not altogether
insensible.

I think there are topics fit to be used at table, some of which reading
and study give us, others the present occasion; some to incite to study,
others to piety and great and noble actions, others to make us rivals
of the bountiful and kind; which if a man cunningly and without any
apparent design inserts for the instruction of the rest, he will free
these entertainments from many of those considerable evils which usually
attend them. Some that put borage into the wine, or sprinkle the floor
with water in which verbena and maiden-hair have been steeped, as good
raise mirth and jollity in the guests (in imitation of Homer's Helen,
who with some medicament diluted the pure wine she had prepared), do not
understand that that fable, coming from round Egypt, after a long way
ends at last in easy and fit discourse. For whilst they were drinking
Helen relates the story of Ulysses,

How Fortune's spite the hero did control,
And bore his troubles with a manly soul.
("Odyssey," iv. 242.)

For that, in my opinion, was the Nepenthe, the care-dissolving
medicament, viz, that story exactly fitted to the then disasters and
juncture of affairs. The pleasing men, though they designedly and
apparently instruct, draw on their maxims rather with persuasive and
smooth arguments, than the violent force of demonstrations. You see that
even Plato in his Symposium, where he disputes of the chief end, the
chief good, and is altogether on subjects theological, doth not lay down
strong and close demonstrations; he doth not make himself ready for the
contest (as he is wont) like a wrestler, that he may take the firmer
hold of his adversary and be sure of giving him the trip; but draws
men on by more soft and pliable attacks, by pleasant fictions and pat
examples.

Besides the questions should be easy, the problems known, the
interrogations plain, familiar, and not intricate and dark that they
might neither vex the unlearned, nor fright them from the disquisition.
For--as it is allowable to dissolve our entertainment into a dance, but
if we force our guests to toss quoits or play at cudgels, we shall not
only make our feast unpleasant, but