“I perceive that you have been more miscellaneous in your arrangement of the upper table.”
“I have placed before you a chine of beef, because Menelaus set that dish before Telemachus at the marriage-feast of his son.”
“And I rejoice to see a salad for its neighbour,” said the major.
“Ay, truly an Attic salad, with garlic, leeks, and cheese: you no doubt remember that the poetical salad served up in the comedy of the Peace of Aristophanes was of this composition,” added the vicar.
“I wish to know what seats are to be appropriated to my young friends the little Seymours?” said the major.
“I regret extremely to say, that they cannot with propriety join our party,” replied the vicar, gravely.
“Not join the party! zounds, sir, but I insist upon it;--not join the party!”--
“Be calm, major; and believe me that I shall feel the privation as keenly as yourself; but would you countenance a measure, which is decidedly in opposition to every classical authority? Never, as Suetonius has expressly declared, did the young Cæsars, Caius and Lucius, eat at the table of Augustus, until they had assumed the toga virilis.”
“A fig for Suetonius; he is not to be trusted: has it not been said, that, while he exposed the deformities of the Cæsars, he wrote with all the licentiousness and extravagance with which they lived? Besides, can we trust the opinion of a man, on a subject of etiquette, who was banished from the court for want of attention and respect to the Empress Sabina? You must produce some better authority, my dear Mr. Twaddleton: search the Grecian writers; depend upon it that some direct or implied sanction to the plan is to be discovered; the oracles of old may generally be so interpreted as to meet the wishes of the translator.”
“Gently, Major Snapwell; speak not so irreverently of the luminaries of antiquity; nor expect me to distort passages from their original and intended significations. An idea, however, has just struck me, which may, possibly, be turned to your advantage; and yet there are many difficulties; for it cannot be that this feast has been conducted with the utmost frugality; and, therefore, must not be compared with the Lacedemonian ‘Syssitia,’ or public entertainments, whither the youths were obliged, by the lawgiver, to repair as to schools of temperance and sobriety, and where, by the example and discourse of the elder men, they were trained to good manners and useful knowledge.”