_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ You had better not bring on many of them at once, nor ask many similar questions, or the chorus of ghostly laughter will be overwhelming. I imagine the answer would be something like Hamlets: 'You yourselves, sirs, shall be as wise as we were, if, like crabs, you could go backward.' It is thought something wonderful that uneducated persons should believe in witchcraft in the nineteenth century: as if educated persons did not believe in grosser follies: such as this same spirit-rapping, unknown tongues, clairvoyance, table-turning, and all sorts of fanatical impositions, having for the present their climax in Mormonism. Herein all times are alike. There is nothing too monstrous for human credulity. I like the notion of the Aristophanic comedy. But it would require a numerous company, especially as the chorus is indispensable. The _tenson_ may be carried on by two. _Mr. Gryll._ I do not see why we should not have both. _Miss Gryll._ Oh pray, doctor! let us have the comedy. We hope to have a houseful at Christmas, and I think we may get it up well, chorus and all. I should so like to hear what my great ancestor, Gryllus, thinks of us: and Homer, and Dante, and Shakespeare, and Richard the First, and Oliver Cromwell. _The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ A very good _dramatis personae_. With these, and the help of one or two Athenians and Romans, we may arrive at a tolerable judgment on our own immeasurable superiority to everything that has gone before us. Before we proceed further, we will give some account of our interlocutors. CHAPTER II THE SQUIRE AND HIS NIECE FORTUNA . SPONDET . MULTA . MULTIS . PRESTAT . NEMINI . VIVE . IN . DIES . ET . HORAS . NAM . PROPRIUM . EST . NIHIL.{1} Marmor vetus apud Feam, ad Hor. Epist. i. ii, 23. Fortune makes many promises to many, Keeps them to none. Live to the days and hours, For nothing is your own. Gregory Gryll, Esq., of _Gryll Grange_ in Hampshire, on the borders of the New Forest, in the midst of a park which was a little forest in itself, reaching nearly to the sea, and well stocked with deer, having a large outer tract, where a numerous light-rented and well-conditioned tenantry fattened innumerable pigs, considering himself well located for what he professed to be, _Epicuri de grege porcus_,{2} and held, though he found it difficult to trace the pedigree, that he was lineally descended from the ancient and illustrious Gryllus, who maintained against Ulysses the superior happiness of the life of other animals to that of the life of man.{3} 1 This inscription appears to consist of comic senarii, slightly dislocated for the inscriptional purpose. Spondet Fortuna multa multis, praestat nemini. Vive in dies et horas: nam proprium est nihil.