OPSOPHA&Y. 509 



certainly no water-drinker by choice, can, if necessary, 

 and my entertainer be hydrophUously disposed, trans- 

 mute myself instantly into a frog ; or if he be fond (nasty 

 fellow !) of cabbages, I can help him to demolish them 

 like a caterpillar or snail. Is there an early errand to 

 be run ? behold me in my shirt-,sleeves, bare-legged as a 

 crane, ready to start at any moment. Is ray dinner served 

 me under a hedge in December? blithe as any black- 

 bird, I eat it carolling. Am, I called on to expose my 

 bald unprotected pate to a midsummer sun ? see me then, 

 in apparent enjoyment of the glare, basking like a lizard 

 on a baked wall. Or is my patron sleepless, yet tired 

 of being read to ? I can in such a case sit by his side, 

 broad awake as an owl, and never blink once the night 

 through. All friends have foibles, which it is a parasite's 

 duty to pass over ; some who call and consider them- 

 selves mine, provide me neither ointment, garum, nor 

 soap. Here I content myself with these reflections, that 

 the first, had it been provided, might have turned out 

 rancid ; that the omission of garum may have been only 

 an oversight, for which I shall have more than an equi- 

 valent at dinner J and as for soap, that he has learnt 

 mighty little philosophy who cannot defer the ceremony 

 of washing for a single day. Such little solecisms in 

 taste as these, never break the friendly relations which 

 subsist between me and a wealthy host : the very same 

 day sometimes sees me at his table, coaxing churlish, and 

 reconciling angry guests ; or, if an enlevement be on the 

 tapis, generously offering myself either as a battering 

 ram to stave in the door of some refractory belle, or else, 

 like a Capaneus, to plant a scaling-ladder against her 

 window ; or should the fair require cajolery rather than 

 force to subdue her scruples, I am the smoke* her ad- 



* Smoke was supposed to follow tlie prettiest girl of a party, 

 or, as the Frencli proverb says, ' La ftun^e cherclie les beaux.' 



