142 PEOSB HALIETJTICS. 



poet, demanded what he was about; on which, after 

 carefully replacing the fish on his plate, the poet replied, 

 that beiag just then engaged in collecting materials for 

 his tale of ' Galatea,^* he was anxious to make a right 

 use of the monarch's bounty in placing such a luxury 

 before him, by asking the little mullet a few questions 

 touching Nereus, the heroine's father; but he continued, 

 my informant is unsatisfactory: muUet of such very di- 

 minutive dimensions, he says, are not presented at the 

 sea-king's court, and so my tiny friend can only suggest 

 that, if I want information, I should apply to his elder 

 brother, lying there before your majesty, who, as he tells 

 me, is fiiUy competent to furnish it. Dionysius enjoy- 

 ing the joke more than the fish, sent the bigger speci- 

 men to his facetious guest. 



Martial shows such a predilection for triglia that his 

 pages seem to smell fishy, and the frequency of their in- 

 troduction iuto his writings seems to point them out 

 as essential to 'Epigram' as the wolf or eagle are to 

 ' Fable.' Most of these epigrammatic jeuia d' esprit are 

 by no means very piquant even in the original, and be- 

 come, of course, more flat in an off-hand English version 

 (though they deserve nothing more elaborate) ; our ob- 

 ject however being merely to show, by a few citations, 

 the strange craving of the S.P.Q.R. for this particu- 

 lar dish, we subjoin one or two specimens, leaving the 

 others to be inferred : — 



I. 



Lampas, when he's gorged and swill'd. 



Till his paunch is over-fill'd, 



* To xmderstand this allusion to Galatea, the reader may be re- 

 minded that Dionysius had oast his dithyrambic friend into pri- 

 son for the seduction of a favourite singer. During his captivity, 

 like Tasso, he wrote poetry, and composed an allegoric^ piece 

 called ' Cyclops,' in which he dehneated his royal incarcerator 

 under the name of Polyphemiis, and his mistress as ' Galatea.' 

 The poem procured him his liberty, and the mullet. 



