David Carnegie Andrew Agnew

“ A learned author calls it a heaven full of asterismes — a body full of eyes — in which, if there be any defect, it is the too many beauties crowded together, and like a banquet of sweetmeats, must be tasted at intervals, lest it prove over-lushious and cloy, and one thing impare the relish of the other, though each be exquisite in its self. ”

“ The volume is a collection of aphorisms and repartees, sometimes explaining the circumstances in which they were uttered. But having been taken from the Greek and Latin Classics, they introduce us not to modern society but to “the ancients.”
He further explains, “The foundation of this work is taken from Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius, &c. But I have not omitted the addition of a great many others gathered from Erasmus, and such as Lycosthenes hath reduced into chapters. ... I do not know any piece of antiquity that stood in greater need of being revised and corrected. . . . ”