of the wise men of old is to be taken in evidence of the value and antiquity of the art, look only at Homer, a witness whom, the speaker hopes, every one will admit. He makes some of his greatest heroes parasites—old Nestor, always a guest at the table of the King of Men, and Patroclus, who was nothing more or less than the parasite of Achilles, and whom it took the combined power of two mortal warriors and a god to kill,[1] whereas Paris alone proved a match for his master Achilles, as Achilles had for Hector. Listen, he says, to the poet's own words touching this great school of the table:—
Than is a people's gladness, when good cheer
Reigns, and all listening pause in deep delight,
When in mid feast the bard his song doth rear,
What time the board with all good things is dight."
And, as if this were not praise enough, he adds again—
"Methinks that nothing can more lovely be!"[2]
By such ingenious arguments, not at all an unfair burlesque upon the style of Plato and Aristotle, Simo succeeds in convincing his friend of the superiority in every way of the art which he himself follows with so much success. His listener determines to come to him for instruction, and hopes, as he is his first pupil, that he will teach him gratis.
But besides this lower class of parasites, who sought
