Nor are the examples cited by Athenæus under _Parodies_, which might seem at first blush to belong to the same genus or family, more felicitous or impressive. There, as in the other sections devoted to _Courtesans_ and _Jesters_, the double meaning and the quibble preponderate, and some of the points demand a solution which nearly amounts to a gloss or an essay. There is positively nothing worth copying. But I have entered into these details because I can then finally dismiss the _Deipnosophistæ_, which offers no parallels to the modern _Ana_, save and except the hackneyed tale of the little cask of great age, which Taylor, the Water Poet, in his _Wit and Mirth_, applies to “a proper gentlewoman” in his own rather clumsy fashion. Of semi-serious epigrams in prose-form the author of the _Deipnosophistæ_ supplies us with at least one noteworthy specimen, where he speaks of Myrtilus as discoursing on every subject as if he had studied that alone. This fine sentiment is akin to the description of Aristippus:-- “Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res,” and to the “Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit,” which has been applied to our Goldsmith. The epigram is by nature and necessity unliteral. It is an _ex-officio_ extravagance or hyperbole, from which you must take a liberal discount. One of the mediæval worthies, Alanus ab Insulis, was designated the _Universal Doctor_. It was a complimentary _façon de parler_. We are here somehow reminded of the account which Macaulay makes Charles II. give of Sydney Godolphin, that he was such an excellent courtier, “because he was never in the way, and never out of the way.” Then, again, we get it in such forms as “the Admirable Crichton,” “Single-Speech Hamilton,” “Capability Brown,” or “Athenian Stuart,” where a real or reputed specialism is summed up in a word. So that the editor of books of epigrams, who does not go beyond the ordinary familiar types, leaves a good deal of the field unreaped. The _Deipnosophistæ_ constituted a work, which most naturally suggested to mediæval and later compilers miscellanies formed on an analogous basis, but adapted from time to time to the changing demands of public taste. The most remarkable of these productions, perhaps, was the _Mensa Philosophica_, of which the authorship is a matter of dispute, but which was constructed to some extent out of the _Saturnalia_ of Macrobius, and of which there is an Elizabethan counterpart, entitled _The Schoolmaster or Teacher of Table Philosophy_. This, and the _Convivial Discourses_ elsewhere mentioned, seem to breathe the air of a social system, when men lingered over the dinner or supper table, or adjourned, as was not unusual, after the actual meal to indulge in wine and conversation.