The boldness of some of the old poets was quite on a par with their wit. Their absolute freedom of speech, like that of their official successors, the fools, was as useful and fearless as the modern freedom of the press. There were very few of the parasites and jesters of Dionysius who would venture to tell that disagreeable person beneficial truths. Antiphon, his poet, was an exception. The monarch once asked him, “What brass was the best?” and Antiphon answered, “That of which the statues of Aristogiton and Harmodius were made.” Considering that these were two patriots who rescued Athens from the tyranny of the Pisistratidæ, the answer was as daring as it was witty. Dionysius disregarded the wit, and resented the audacity;--in a sneaking way, however, for he put Antiphon to death because he refused to praise the writings of the despot. In one respect, Dionysius was like Cardinal Richelieu, he looked with spiteful feelings on every man who ventured to doubt his ability for writing tragedies. But in another sense, the “tyrannus” was superior to the cardinal, for he at least wrote his own tragedies, whereas those of Richelieu were written for him by his buffoon, Boisrobert, who might well afford to praise them. For a better reason than that which induced Richelieu to patronize Boisrobert (who, buffoon as he was, founded the French Academy), Philadelphus patronized the comic poet Aristonymus, whom the king made Keeper of the Library at Alexandria, and who kept the king in good humour by his joyous conversation. Aristonymus did not forget that he held a double office; and as the Bards censured as well as commended the behaviour of the people, so he scattered eulogy or blame on the conduct of his patron, according to the latter’s deserts. We shall find, in subsequent pages, instances of kings going into mourning on the death of their fools, and of the royal patrons raising tombs to them. In ancient times we also have instances of a whole people cherishing their poets quite as fondly as some monarchs did their jesters. I will only cite the case of Eupolis, that comic poet of Athens, whose unlicensed wit was so very little to the taste of Alcibiades, and who ultimately perished in a naval engagement between the Athenians and the Lacedemonians. His countrymen were so afflicted at losing a man whose wit and poetry were as new life to them, that they passed a decree whereby it was ordered that no poet should ever afterwards go to war. Artaxerxes did not mourn more truly for his witty but then deceased slave Tiridates, than the Athenians mourned for Eupolis. But Artaxerxes did not mourn half so long. He sat weeping, indeed, for three days, but he found consolation when Aspasia offered her ivory shoulder to support his aching head. So Henry II., of France, mourned for his dead jester Thony, even commissioning Ronsard to write his epitaph, but forgetting poet, fool, and epitaph in contemplating the mature beauty of Diana of Poictiers.