ored and invited as
well as he. Yet sometimes we must deal with our friend as petitioners do
when they make addresses to a god; they offer vows to all that belong
to the same altar and the same shrine, though they make no particular
mention of their names. For no dainties, wine, or ointment can incline
a man to merriment, as much as a pleasant agreeable companion. For as
it is rude and ungenteel to inquire and ask what sort of meat, wine,
or ointment the person whom we are to entertain loves best; so it is
neither disobliging nor absurd to desire him who hath a great many
acquaintance to bring those along with him whose company he likes most,
and in whose conversation he can take the greatest pleasure. For it is
not so irksome and tedious to sail in the same ship, to dwell in the
same house, or be a judge upon the same bench, with a person whom we do
not like, as to be at the same table with him; and the contrary is
fully as pleasant. An entertainment is a communion of serious or merry
discourse or actions; and therefore, to make a merry company, we should
not pick up any person at a venture, but take only such as are known to
one another and sociable. Cooks, it is true, mix sour and sweet juices,
rough and oily, to make their sauces; but there never was an agreeable
table or pleasant entertainment where the guests were not all of a
piece, and all of the same humor. Now, as the Peripatetics say, the
first mover in nature moves only and is not moved, and the last moved
is moved only but does not move, and between these there is that which
moves and is moved by others; so there is the same analogy between those
three sorts of persons that make up a company,--there is the simple
inviter, the simple invited and the invited that invites another. We
have spoken already concerning the inviter, and it will not be improper,
in my opinion, to deliver my sentiments about the other two. He that
is invited and invites others, should, in my opinion, be sparing in
the number that he brings. He should not, as if he were to forage in
an enemy's country, carry all he can with him; or, like those who go to
possess a new-found land, by the excessive number of his own friends,
incommode or exclude the friends of the inviter, so that the inviter
must be in the same case with those that set forth suppers to Hecate
and the gods who turn away evil, of which neither they nor any of their
family partake, except of the smoke and trouble. It is true