Then the scene changed to the pomp and circumstance attendant upon funerals and testamentary dispositions. ‘Only once in his life’ (he observed) ‘does your thoroughbred Roman say what he means; and then,’ meaning, in his will, ‘it comes too late for him to enjoy the credit of it.’ I could not help laughing when he told me how they thought it necessary to carry their follies with them to the grave, and to leave the record of their inanity behind them in black and white; some stipulating that their clothes or other treasures should be burnt with them, others that their graves should be watched by particular servants, or their monuments crowned with flowers;—sapient end to a life of sapience!

‘Of their doings in this world,’ said he, ‘you may form some idea from their injunctions with reference to the next. These are they who will pay a long price for an entrée; whose floors are sprinkled with wine and saffron and spices; who in midwinter smother themselves in roses, ay, for roses are scarce, and out of season, and altogether desirable; but let a thing come in its due course, and oh, ’tis vile, ’tis contemptible. These are they whose drink is of costly essences.’ He had no mercy on them here. ‘Very bunglers in sensuality, who know not her laws, and confound her ordinances, flinging down their souls to be trampled beneath the heels of luxury! As the play has it, door or window, all is one to them.

Such pleasures are rank solecism.’ One observation of his in the same spirit fairly caps the famous censure of Momus. Momus found fault with the divine artificer for not putting his bull’s horns in front of the eyes. Similarly, Nigrinus complained that when these men crown themselves in their banquets, they put the garlands in the wrong place; if they are so fond of the smell of violets and roses, they should tie on their garlands as close as may be under their nostrils; they could then snuff up the smell to their hearts’ content.