The company was ushered in to a table covered with the
most elegant art and the greatest profusion; all that the
silver-smith, the shewer, the confectioner, or the cook could produce.
While the company was examining and admiring this delicate display,
the viands of course grew cold, and unfit for such choice palates.
The whole, therefore, called the _ante-supper_, was suddenly removed,
and another supper quite hot, and forming the exact duplicate of the
former, was served in its place.
So, in those days as in these, your Trimalchio was ennobled; though,
to do King James justice, he had a string of coronets for his Giton
also. The latter and his companions are still only emerging from a
long period of oblivion in literature and obscurity in life. Like the
pagan deities who have shrunk in peasant mythology to be elves and
pooks and suchlike mannikins, these creatures, banished from the
polite reading of the Victorians, reappeared instantly in that
grotesque microcosm of life which the Victorians invented as an outlet
for one of their tightest repressions, the School Story. I shall not
press the analogy between Lycas and Steerforth, but merely remind you
how, years before you ever heard the name (unless it is mentioned
there) of Petronius Arbiter, you welcomed Giton's acquaintance in the
pages of _Eric, or Little by Little_, where he is known as Wildney,
and painted in the most attractive colours, and were rather bored
whenever old Eumolpus walked into the School Library as Mr.
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