I shall now proceed to treat the _Greek Anthology_, the _Noctes Atticæ_, and the _Lives of the Philosophers_, which, like Lucian and Athenæus, are simply of value as the foundations and pioneers of the class of literature which I am examining, and as introductory to the leading purpose in view. It must become evident that the sources of the vein of wit which pervades modern literature and society is to be sought elsewhere--in circumstances and conditions of life altogether different--in our political development, climate and blood. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER V. THE “NOCTES ATTICÆ”--PECULIAR VALUE OF THE WORK--THE “LIVES OF THE PHILOSOPHERS,” BY DIOGENES LAERTIUS--CHARACTER OF THE BOOK--THE GOLDEN TRIPOS. To the same class of production as the _Deipnosophistæ_ belongs the _Attic Nights_ of Aulus Gellius. The information which the latter affords is kindred in scope and character; and, though somewhat less voluminous, it is almost equally multifarious and discursive. But the _Noctes Atticæ_ did not profess, like the others, to be the offspring of an imaginary scheme, in the same way as the _Decameron_ and the _Arabian Nights_; its pages preserve to us, and to all who come after us, the literary _Collectanea_ of a Roman jurist, scholar and antiquary, and it will remain for ever one of the most delightful and instructive of books in any language or any literature. It is certainly remarkable that the same obscurity which surrounds the personal history of Diogenes Laertius hangs over that of the Roman. That they both lived about the same time, in the first or second century of our era, seems to be settled; but a clear approximation, much less any biographical _minutiæ_, are not forthcoming in either case. Some few matters the two writers exhibit in common; which is the less surprising when we consider their nearness in time to each other, and bear in mind the plan on which Gellius at least worked. His preface commences thus:-- “More pleasing works than the present may certainly be found; but my object in writing this was to provide my children as well as myself with that kind of amusement in which they might properly relax and indulge themselves, at the intervals from more important business.... Whatever book came into my hand, _whether it was Greek or Latin_, or whatever I heard that was either worthy of being recorded or agreeable to my fancy, I wrote down without distinction and without order.” The result to us is, that we possess such a commonplace book as stands fairly by itself without a rival, looking at its date, in Roman literature, in the same way that Athenæus does in Greek.