518 PROSE HAJjIEUTICS. 



raised eyebrows and abstracted air, as immersed in lofty 

 thought, and, as long as they find any remaining scraps 

 to pull from the bones, you will be amazed and amused to 

 see how entirely public teachers of sobriety can forget 

 their own precepts.' Nor were the disciples a whit less 

 greedy than their philosophical iastructors : 



If, aa Epiovirus sings, 



AH oiir joy from eating springs, 



Him will most enjoyment foEow 



Wto'B widest mouth and longest swallow, 



says one of them; foUowiag out which idea, another 

 Epicurean sighs for an oesophagus a la giraffe, partly that 

 he might thereby retard the progress of the food as it 

 passed downward to his stomach, and partly because each 

 savoury morsel having so many additional inches of pipe 

 to traverse, the points of contact would be multiplied, and 

 the pleasurable sensation diffiised over a larger surface. 

 After this, we need not wonder to find the vault of the 

 palate, or epicure's heaven, designated (at a time when 

 aU the world were epicures) by the same word as the 

 vault of the sky, both being called indifierently ovpavo<;. 

 As the pleasure of eating could not be prolonged by pro- 

 longation of the oesophagus, nor by any enlargement of 

 the organs of taste, the earliest epicures sought to aug- 

 ment their gratification by bringing other members of 

 the body to join sympathetically in the act, so that it 

 was not the mouth only, but almost the whole man, that 

 was engaged in eating. Hercules, the prince of gour- 

 mets, is represented at feeding-time as not only making 

 fiill use of his teeth and a great noise with his lips, but 

 also as swelling out and distorting both eyes and cheeks 

 in an extraordinary manner : his nostrils snort, his ears 

 rise up like those of a horse snuifing oats, or a rabbit 

 munching cabbage ; the corrugators of both brows con- 

 tract, the scalp itself seems to move, and there is no 



