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"We may see their character, too, in their very jests. For they did not throw them out at random, but the very wit of them was grounded upon something or other worth thinking about. For instance, one, being asked to go hear a man who exactly counterfeited the voice of a nightingale, answered, "Sir, I have heard the nightingale itself." Another, having read the following inscription upon a tomb-

"Seeking to quench a cruel tyranny, They, at Selinus, did in battle die,"

said, it served them right; for instead of trying to quench the tyranny, they should have let it burn out."

Plutarch again, Dryden translation.