A capital anecdote, assuredly; but the cue is too sustained for a casual encounter. It has the air of a hint taken and worked humorously out. As there are cases in which matters of fact are edited _ad hoc_, so does it occasionally happen that a joke is invented to suit certain given conditions. The name of a person or place, coupled with some flexible incident, suggests to an ingenious mind an _ex post facto_ happy phrase or figure, as we see in the commonly accepted tradition of the actor, Andrew Cherry, who informed a manager that he had been bitten by him once, and that he was resolved he should not make _two bites of A. Cherry_. The story of Diogenes and Alexander, where the former asks the king as a favour to stand from between him and the sun, is obviously a literary evolution from the accredited character of the so-called cynic; and the same may be predicated of that where Diogenes flings away the cup on seeing some one drink water from his conjoined hands. The office of biographer, from the dearth of material and stock-in-trade, had already become merged in those of inventor and romancist. I have elsewhere taken occasion to suggest that the philosopher’s so-called tub was some Hellenic pleasantry at the expense of a, no doubt, very humble and contracted dwelling. So we are accustomed to speak of a man living in a box or a crib. The _dits_ with which we are so liberally regaled about exalted personages and crowned heads, are interesting in their way, and here and there may have come down to us pretty nearly as they left the mouths of the reputed authors--as, for example, the annexed:-- “The town of Chartres was besieged by Henry IV. of France, and capitulated. The magistrate of the town, on giving up the keys, addressed his Majesty: ‘This town belongs to your highness by divine law, and by human law.’ ‘And by _cannon_ law,’ replied the king.” The only difficulty is, that _cannon law_ is not the phrase which the speaker would have used. An English translator has for once improved his original.