The Tirynthians were never excelled, except by the people of Phæstum, who, by all other Cretans, were reckoned as the first jesters in the world. In the days of those merry fellows, it may be observed, that the cleverest of them had to exercise their vocation on melancholy occasions. When Petronius Arbiter was committing slow suicide by alternately opening and closing his veins, nothing excited him to more laughter than the sharply comic epigrams uttered by the jokers who stood around him. Under the cloak of folly, good service has been rendered by wise men. By feigning want of wit, the elder Brutus saved himself to save his country; revenged a wrong, and converted regal Rome into a republic. We have another notable instance in the case of Solon, who, when the Athenian law forbade mention of the subject of Salamis, that island which gave Athens such an infinite world of trouble, assumed the bearing of one out of his wits, and, in better verse than a fool could have indited, told truths that led to great consequences, and exhibited the patriotic courage and humour of the celebrated sage. Assuredly Solon was no fool, for he refused to be a king, and he invented taxation. I will revert for a moment to Aristippus, the lover of Laïs, and the flatterer of Dionysius,--the rosy philosopher who only cared for the present moment, but who had of the jester only his liberty of speech. When thrust into an inferior seat at table, and being asked, if he liked it as well as his higher place of the day before: “Ay, truly,” said he to Dionysius; “for the place I held yesterday, I despise today, since I hold it no longer. I honoured the seat, the seat did not honour me. So, today’s seat, which, yesterday, was without dignity, because I was not in it, is now dignified by holding me.” The court laughed; but the wit and the wisdom of the speech seem to be of the very mildest nature.