often to shout aloud that an easy life had been given by the
gods to men, but they had covered it from sight in their search for
honey-cakes and perfumes and such things.

The musician who was always left alone by his hearers he greeted with
"Good morning, cock!" When the other asked him the reason, he said,
"Because your music starts everybody up."

When an exceedingly superstitious man said to him, "With one blow I
will break your head!" he retorted, "And with a sneeze at your left
side I will make you tremble."

When asked what animal had the worst bite, he said, "Of wild beasts,
the sycophant; and of tame creatures, the flatterer."

Being asked when was the proper time to marry, he responded, "For
young men, not yet; and for old men, not at all."

When he was asked what sort of wine he enjoyed drinking, he answered,
"Another man's." [Of a different temper was Dante, who knew too well
"how salt the bread of others tastes!"]

Some one advised him to hunt up his runaway slave. But he replied, "It
is ridiculous if Manes lives without Diogenes, but Diogenes cannot
without Manes."

When asked why men give to beggars, but not to philosophers, he said,
"Because they expect themselves to become lame and blind; but
philosophers, never!"

CLEANTHES

When a comic actor apologized for having ridiculed him from
the stage, he answered gently, "It would be preposterous, when
Bacchus and Hercules bear the raillery of the poets without
showing any anger, if I should be indignant when I chance to
be attacked."

PYTHAGORAS

_Precepts_

Do not stir the fire with a sword.
Do not devour your heart.
Always have your bed packed up.
Do not walk in the main street.
Do not cherish birds with crooked talons.
Avoid a sharp sword.
When you travel abroad, look not back at your own borders.
[Diogenes explains this: be resigned to death.]
Consider nothing exclusively your own.
Destroy no cultivated tree, or harmless animal.
Modesty and decorum consist in never yielding to laughter,
and yet not looking stern. [_Cf._ Emerson on Manners.]

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by
William C. Lawton.

ISAAC D'ISRAELI

(1766-1848)

[Illustration: ISAAC D'ISRAELI]

Among the writers whose education and whose tastes were the outcome
of the classicism of the eighteenth century, yet whose literary life
lapped over into the Victorian epoch, was Isaac