7. When we desire to confine our words, we commonly say they are spoken under the Rose; which expression is commendable, if the Rose from any natural property may be the Symbole of silence, as _Nazianzene_ seems to imply in these translated verses:
_Utq; latet Rosa Verna suo putamine clausa, Sic os vincla ferat, validisq; arctetur habenis, Indicatq; suis prolixa silentia labris:_
And is also tolerable, if by desiring a secrecy to words spoke under the Rose, we only mean in society and compotation, from the ancient custom in Symposiack meetings, to wear chaplets of Roses about their heads: and so we condemn not the _German_ custom, which over the Table describeth a Rose in the cieling. But more considerable it is, if the original were such as _Lemnius_, and others have recorded; that the Rose was the flower of _Venus_, which _Cupid_ consecrated unto _Harpocrates_ the God of silence, and was therefore an Emblem thereof, to conceal the pranks of Venery; as is declared in this Tetrastick;
_Est Rosa flos veneris, cujus quo facta laterent, Harpocrati matris, dona dicavit Amor; Inde Rosam mensis hospes suspendit Amicis. Convivæ ut sub eâ dicta tacenda sciant._
8. That smoak doth follow the fairest, is an usual saying with us, and in many parts of _Europe_; whereof although there seem no natural ground, yet it is the continuation of a very ancient opinion, as _Petrus Victorius_ and _Causabon_ have observed from a passage in _Athenæus_: wherein a _Parasite_ thus describeth himself:
_To every Table first I come, Whence Porridge I am cal'd by some: A Capaneus at Stares I am, To enter any Room a Ram; Like whips and thongs to all I ply, Like smoake unto the Fair I fly._
9. To sit cross leg'd, or with our fingers pectinated or shut together, is accounted bad, and friends will perswade us from it. The same conceit religiously possessed the Ancients, as is observable from _Pliny_. _Poplites alternis genibus imponere nefas olim_; and also from _Athenæus_, that it was an old veneficious practice, and _Juno_ is made in this posture to hinder the delivery of _Alcmena_. And therefore, as _Pierius_ observeth, in the Medal of _Julia Pia_, the right hand of _Venus_ was made extended with the inscription of _Venus, Genetrix_; for the complication or pectination of the fingers was an Hieroglyphick of impediment, as in that place he declareth.