part of the body is idle, which thing causeth gross and cold humors to gather together and vex scholars very much; the mind is altogether bent and set on work.  A pastime then must be had where every part of the body must be labored, to separate and lessen such humors withal; the mind must be unbent, to gather and fetch again his quickness withal.  Thus pastimes for the mind only be nothing fit for students, because the body, which is most hurt by study, should take away no profit thereat.  This knew Erasmus very well, when he was here in Cambridge; which, when he had been sore at his book (as Garret our book-binder had very often told me), for lack of better exercise, would take his horse and ride about the market-hill and come again.  If a scholar should use bowls or tennis, the labor is too vehement and unequal, which is condemned of Galen; the example very ill for other men, when by so many acts they be made unlawful.  Running, leaping, and quoiting be too vile for scholars, and so not fit by Aristotle’s judgment; walking alone into the field hath no token of courage in it, a pastime like a simple man which is neither flesh nor fish.  Therefore if a man would have a pastime wholesome and equal for every part of the body, pleasant and full of courage for the mind, not vile and unhonest to give ill example to laymen, not kept in gardens and corners, not lurking on the night and in holes, but evermore in the face of men, either to rebuke it when it doeth ill, or else to testify on it when it doth well, let him seek chiefly of all other for shooting.

ATHENAEUS

(Third Century A.D.)

Little is known that is authentic about the Graeco-Egyptian Sophist or man of letters, Athenaeus, author of the ‘Deipnosophistae’ or Feast of the Learned, except his literary bequest.  It is recorded that he was born at Naucratis, a city of the Nile Delta; and that after living at Alexandria he migrated to Rome.  His date is presumptively fixed in the early part of the third century by his inclusion of Ulpian, the eminent jurist (whose death occurred A.D. 228) among the twenty-nine guests of the banquet whose wit and learning furnished its viands.  He was perhaps a contemporary of the physician Galen, another of the putative banqueters, who served as a mouthpiece of the author’s erudition.

Probably nothing concerning him deserved preservation except his unique work, the ‘Feast of the Learned.’  Of the fifteen books transmitted under the above title, the first two, and portions of the third, eleventh, and fifteenth, exist only in epitome—­the name of the compiler and his time being equally obscure; yet it is curious that for many centuries these garbled fragments were the only memorials of the author extant.  The other books, constituting the major portion of the work, have been pronounced authentic by eminent scholars with Bentley at their head.  Without the slightest pretense of literary skill, the ’Feast