made them forget their meat and drink. Yet Xenophon thought
it not indecent to bring in to Socrates, Antisthenes, and the like the
jester Philip; as Homer doth an onion to make the wine relish. And
Plato brought in Aristophanes's discourse of love, as a comedy, into his
entertainment; and at the last, as it were drawing all the curtains,
he shows a scene of the greatest variety imaginable,--Alcibiades drunk,
frolicking, and crowned. Then follows that pleasant raillery between him
and Socrates concerning Agatho, and the encomium of Socrates; and when
such discourse was going on, good gods! Had it not been allowable, if
Apollo himself had come in with his harp ready to desire the god to
forbear till the argument was out? These men, having such a pleasant
way of discoursing, used these arts and insinuating methods, and graced
their entertainment's by such facetious raillery. But shall we, being
mixed with tradesmen and merchants, and some (as it now and then
happens) ignorants and rustics, banish out of our entertainments this
ravishing delight, or fly the musicians, as if they were Sirens, as soon
as we see them coming? Clitomachus the wrestler, rising and getting
away when any one talked of love, was much wondered at; and should not
a philosopher that banisheth music from a feast, and is afraid of a
musician, and bids his link boy presently light his link and be gone, be
laughed at, since he seems to abominate the most innocent pleasures,
as beetles do ointment? For, if at any time, certainly over a glass of
wine, music should be permitted, and then chiefly the harmonious god
should have the direction of our souls; so that Euripides, though I like
him very well in other things, shall never persuade me that music, as
he would have it, should be applied to melancholy and grief. For there
sober and serious reason, like a physician, should take care of the
diseased men; but those pleasures should be mixed with Bacchus, and
serve to increase our mirth and frolic. Therefore it was a pleasant
saying of that Spartan at Athens, who, when some new tragedians were
to contend for the prize, seeing the preparations of the masters of the
dances, the hurry and busy diligence of the instructors, said, the city
was certainly mad which sported with so much pains. He that designs
to sport should sport, and not buy his case and pleasure with great
expense, or the loss of that time which might be useful to other things;
but whilst he is feast