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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Imaginary Conversations and Poems, by 
+Walter Savage Landor
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Imaginary Conversations and Poems
+       A Selection
+
+Author: Walter Savage Landor
+
+Release Date: May 28, 2007 [EBook #21628]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS AND POEMS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sam W. and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+      IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS
+      AND POEMS: A SELECTION
+
+               By
+       WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS
+
+          Marcellus and Hannibal
+
+          Queen Elizabeth and Cecil
+
+          Epictetus and Seneca
+
+          Peter the Great and Alexis
+
+          Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn
+
+          Joseph Scaliger and Montaigne
+
+          Boccaccio and Petrarca
+
+          Bossuet and the Duchess de Fontanges
+
+          John of Gaunt and Joanna of Kent
+
+          Leofric and Godiva
+
+          Essex and Spenser
+
+          Lord Bacon and Richard Hooker
+
+          Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble
+
+          Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney
+
+          Southey and Porson
+
+          The Abbé Delille and Walter Landor
+
+          Diogenes and Plato
+
+          Alfieri and Salomon the Florentine Jew
+
+          Rousseau and Malesherbes
+
+          Lucullus and Caesar
+
+          Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa
+
+          Dante and Beatrice
+
+          Fra Filippo Lippi and Pope Eugenius the Fourth
+
+          Tasso and Cornelia
+
+          La Fontaine and de La Rochefoucault
+
+          Lucian and Timotheus
+
+          Bishop Shipley and Benjamin Franklin
+
+          Southey and Landor
+
+          The Emperor of China and Tsing-Ti
+
+          Louis XVIII and Talleyrand
+
+          Oliver Cromwell and Sir Oliver Cromwell
+
+          The Count Gleichem: the Countess: their Children, and Zaida
+
+
+THE PENTAMERON
+
+          First Day's Interview
+
+          Third Day's Interview
+
+          Fourth Day's Interview
+
+          Fifth Day's Interview
+
+
+POEMS
+
+       I. She I love (alas in vain!)
+
+      II. Pleasure! why thus desert the heart
+
+     III. Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives
+
+      IV. Ianthe! you are call'd to cross the sea!
+
+       V. The gates of fame and of the grave
+
+      VI. Twenty years hence my eyes may grow
+
+     VII. Here, ever since you went abroad
+
+    VIII. Tell me not things past all belief
+
+      IX. Proud word you never spoke, but you will speak
+
+       X. Fiesole Idyl
+
+      XI. Ah what avails the sceptred race
+
+     XII. With rosy hand a little girl prest down
+
+    VIII. Ternissa! you are fled!
+
+     XIV. Various the roads of life; in one
+
+      XV. Yes; I write verses now and then
+
+     XVI. On seeing a hair of Lucretia Borgia
+
+    XVII. Once, and once only, have I seen thy face
+
+   XVIII. To Wordsworth
+
+     XIX. To Charles Dickens
+
+      XX. To Barry Cornwall
+
+     XXI. To Robert Browning
+
+    XXII. Age
+
+   XXIII. Leaf after leaf drops off, flower after flower
+
+    XXIV. Well I remember how you smiled
+
+     XXV. I strove with none, for none was worth my strife
+
+    XXVI. Death stands above me, whispering low
+
+   XXVII. A Pastoral
+
+  XXVIII. The Lover
+
+    XXIX. The Poet who Sleeps
+
+     XXX. Daniel Defoe
+
+    XXXI. Idle Words
+
+   XXXII. To the River Avon
+
+
+
+
+IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS
+
+
+
+
+MARCELLUS AND HANNIBAL
+
+
+_Hannibal._ Could a Numidian horseman ride no faster? Marcellus! oh!
+Marcellus! He moves not--he is dead. Did he not stir his fingers?
+Stand wide, soldiers--wide, forty paces; give him air; bring water;
+halt! Gather those broad leaves, and all the rest, growing under the
+brushwood; unbrace his armour. Loose the helmet first--his breast
+rises. I fancied his eyes were fixed on me--they have rolled back
+again. Who presumed to touch my shoulder? This horse? It was surely
+the horse of Marcellus! Let no man mount him. Ha! ha! the Romans, too,
+sink into luxury: here is gold about the charger.
+
+_Gaulish Chieftain._ Execrable thief! The golden chain of our king
+under a beast's grinders! The vengeance of the gods hath overtaken the
+impure----
+
+_Hannibal._ We will talk about vengeance when we have entered Rome,
+and about purity among the priests, if they will hear us. Sound for
+the surgeon. That arrow may be extracted from the side, deep as it is.
+The conqueror of Syracuse lies before me. Send a vessel off to
+Carthage. Say Hannibal is at the gates of Rome. Marcellus, who stood
+alone between us, fallen. Brave man! I would rejoice and cannot. How
+awfully serene a countenance! Such as we hear are in the islands of
+the Blessed. And how glorious a form and stature! Such too was theirs!
+They also once lay thus upon the earth wet with their blood--few other
+enter there. And what plain armour!
+
+_Gaulish Chieftain._ My party slew him; indeed, I think I slew him
+myself. I claim the chain: it belongs to my king; the glory of Gaul
+requires it. Never will she endure to see another take it.
+
+_Hannibal._ My friend, the glory of Marcellus did not require him to
+wear it. When he suspended the arms of your brave king in the temple,
+he thought such a trinket unworthy of himself and of Jupiter. The
+shield he battered down, the breast-plate he pierced with his
+sword--these he showed to the people and to the gods; hardly his wife
+and little children saw this, ere his horse wore it.
+
+_Gaulish Chieftain._ Hear me; O Hannibal!
+
+_Hannibal._ What! when Marcellus lies before me? when his life may
+perhaps be recalled? when I may lead him in triumph to Carthage? when
+Italy, Sicily, Greece, Asia, wait to obey me? Content thee! I will
+give thee mine own bridle, worth ten such.
+
+_Gaulish Chieftain._ For myself?
+
+_Hannibal._ For thyself.
+
+_Gaulish Chieftain._ And these rubies and emeralds, and that
+scarlet----?
+
+_Hannibal._ Yes, yes.
+
+_Gaulish Chieftain._ O glorious Hannibal! unconquerable hero! O my
+happy country! to have such an ally and defender. I swear eternal
+gratitude--yes, gratitude, love, devotion, beyond eternity.
+
+_Hannibal._ In all treaties we fix the time: I could hardly ask a
+longer. Go back to thy station. I would see what the surgeon is about,
+and hear what he thinks. The life of Marcellus! the triumph of
+Hannibal! what else has the world in it? Only Rome and Carthage: these
+follow.
+
+_Marcellus._ I must die then? The gods be praised! The commander of a
+Roman army is no captive.
+
+_Hannibal._ [_To the Surgeon._] Could not he bear a sea voyage?
+Extract the arrow.
+
+_Surgeon._ He expires that moment.
+
+_Marcellus._ It pains me: extract it.
+
+_Hannibal._ Marcellus, I see no expression of pain on your
+countenance, and never will I consent to hasten the death of an enemy
+in my power. Since your recovery is hopeless, you say truly you are no
+captive.
+
+[_To the Surgeon._] Is there nothing, man, that can assuage the mortal
+pain? for, suppress the signs of it as he may, he must feel it. Is
+there nothing to alleviate and allay it?
+
+_Marcellus._ Hannibal, give me thy hand--thou hast found it and
+brought it me, compassion.
+
+[_To the Surgeon._] Go, friend; others want thy aid; several fell
+around me.
+
+_Hannibal._ Recommend to your country, O Marcellus, while time permits
+it, reconciliation and peace with me, informing the Senate of my
+superiority in force, and the impossibility of resistance. The tablet
+is ready: let me take off this ring--try to write, to sign it, at
+least. Oh, what satisfaction I feel at seeing you able to rest upon
+the elbow, and even to smile!
+
+_Marcellus._ Within an hour or less, with how severe a brow would
+Minos say to me, 'Marcellus, is this thy writing?'
+
+Rome loses one man: she hath lost many such, and she still hath many
+left.
+
+_Hannibal._ Afraid as you are of falsehood, say you this? I confess in
+shame the ferocity of my countrymen. Unfortunately, too, the nearer
+posts are occupied by Gauls, infinitely more cruel. The Numidians are
+so in revenge: the Gauls both in revenge and in sport. My presence is
+required at a distance, and I apprehend the barbarity of one or other,
+learning, as they must do, your refusal to execute my wishes for the
+common good, and feeling that by this refusal you deprive them of
+their country, after so long an absence.
+
+_Marcellus._ Hannibal, thou art not dying.
+
+_Hannibal._ What then? What mean you?
+
+_Marcellus._ That thou mayest, and very justly, have many things yet
+to apprehend: I can have none. The barbarity of thy soldiers is
+nothing to me: mine would not dare be cruel. Hannibal is forced to be
+absent; and his authority goes away with his horse. On this turf lies
+defaced the semblance of a general; but Marcellus is yet the regulator
+of his army. Dost thou abdicate a power conferred on thee by thy
+nation? Or wouldst thou acknowledge it to have become, by thy own sole
+fault, less plenary than thy adversary's?
+
+I have spoken too much: let me rest; this mantle oppresses me.
+
+_Hannibal._ I placed my mantle on your head when the helmet was first
+removed, and while you were lying in the sun. Let me fold it under,
+and then replace the ring.
+
+_Marcellus._ Take it, Hannibal. It was given me by a poor woman who
+flew to me at Syracuse, and who covered it with her hair, torn off in
+desperation that she had no other gift to offer. Little thought I that
+her gift and her words should be mine. How suddenly may the most
+powerful be in the situation of the most helpless! Let that ring and
+the mantle under my head be the exchange of guests at parting. The
+time may come, Hannibal, when thou (and the gods alone know whether as
+conqueror or conquered) mayest sit under the roof of my children, and
+in either case it shall serve thee. In thy adverse fortune, they will
+remember on whose pillow their father breathed his last; in thy
+prosperity (Heaven grant it may shine upon thee in some other
+country!) it will rejoice thee to protect them. We feel ourselves the
+most exempt from affliction when we relieve it, although we are then
+the most conscious that it may befall us.
+
+There is one thing here which is not at the disposal of either.
+
+_Hannibal._ What?
+
+_Marcellus._ This body.
+
+_Hannibal._ Whither would you be lifted? Men are ready.
+
+_Marcellus._ I meant not so. My strength is failing. I seem to hear
+rather what is within than what is without. My sight and my other
+senses are in confusion. I would have said--this body, when a few
+bubbles of air shall have left it, is no more worthy of thy notice
+than of mine; but thy glory will not let thee refuse it to the piety
+of my family.
+
+_Hannibal._ You would ask something else. I perceive an inquietude not
+visible till now.
+
+_Marcellus._ Duty and Death make us think of home sometimes.
+
+_Hannibal._ Thitherward the thoughts of the conqueror and of the
+conquered fly together.
+
+_Marcellus._ Hast thou any prisoners from my escort?
+
+_Hannibal._ A few dying lie about--and let them lie--they are Tuscans.
+The remainder I saw at a distance, flying, and but one brave man among
+them--he appeared a Roman--a youth who turned back, though wounded.
+They surrounded and dragged him away, spurring his horse with their
+swords. These Etrurians measure their courage carefully, and tack it
+well together before they put it on, but throw it off again with
+lordly ease.
+
+Marcellus, why think about them? or does aught else disquiet your
+thoughts?
+
+_Marcellus._ I have suppressed it long enough. My son--my beloved son!
+
+_Hannibal._ Where is he? Can it be? Was he with you?
+
+_Marcellus._ He would have shared my fate--and has not. Gods of my
+country! beneficent throughout life to me, in death surpassingly
+beneficent: I render you, for the last time, thanks.
+
+
+
+
+QUEEN ELIZABETH AND CECIL
+
+
+_Elizabeth._ I advise thee again, churlish Cecil, how that our Edmund
+Spenser, whom thou callest most uncourteously a whining whelp, hath
+good and solid reason for his complaint. God's blood! shall the lady
+that tieth my garter and shuffles the smock over my head, or the lord
+that steadieth my chair's back while I eat, or the other that looketh
+to my buck-hounds lest they be mangy, be holden by me in higher esteem
+and estate than he who hath placed me among the bravest of past times,
+and will as safely and surely set me down among the loveliest in the
+future?
+
+_Cecil._ Your Highness must remember he carouseth fully for such
+deserts: fifty pounds a year of unclipped moneys, and a butt of canary
+wine; not to mention three thousand acres in Ireland, worth fairly
+another fifty and another butt, in seasonable and quiet years.
+
+_Elizabeth._ The moneys are not enough to sustain a pair of grooms and
+a pair of palfreys, and more wine hath been drunken in my presence at
+a feast. The moneys are given to such men, that they may not incline
+nor be obligated to any vile or lowly occupation; and the canary, that
+they may entertain such promising wits as court their company and
+converse; and that in such manner there may be alway in our land a
+succession of these heirs unto fame. He hath written, not indeed with
+his wonted fancifulness, nor in learned and majestical language, but
+in homely and rustic wise, some verses which have moved me, and haply
+the more inasmuch as they demonstrate to me that his genius hath been
+dampened by his adversities. Read them.
+
+_Cecil._
+
+      How much is lost when neither heart nor eye
+        Rosewinged Desire or fabling Hope deceives;
+      When boyhood with quick throb hath ceased to spy
+        The dubious apple in the yellow leaves;
+
+      When, rising from the turf where youth reposed,
+        We find but deserts in the far-sought shore;
+      When the huge book of Faery-land lies closed,
+        And those strong brazen clasps will yield no more.
+
+_Elizabeth._ The said Edmund hath also furnished unto the weaver at
+Arras, John Blanquieres, on my account, a description for some of his
+cunningest wenches to work at, supplied by mine own self, indeed, as
+far as the subject-matter goes, but set forth by him with figures and
+fancies, and daintily enough bedecked. I could have wished he had
+thereunto joined a fair comparison between Dian--no matter--he might
+perhaps have fared the better for it; but poets' wits--God help
+them!--when did they ever sit close about them? Read the poesy, not
+over-rich, and concluding very awkwardly and meanly.
+
+_Cecil._
+
+      Where forms the lotus, with its level leaves
+        And solid blossoms, many floating isles,
+      What heavenly radiance swift descending cleaves
+        The darksome wave! Unwonted beauty smiles
+
+      On its pure bosom, on each bright-eyed flower,
+        On every nymph, and twenty sate around,
+      Lo! 'twas Diana--from the sultry hour
+        Hither she fled, nor fear'd she sight or sound.
+
+      Unhappy youth, whom thirst and quiver-reeds
+        Drew to these haunts, whom awe forbade to fly!
+      Three faithful dogs before him rais'd their heads,
+        And watched and wonder'd at that fixèd eye.
+
+      Forth sprang his favourite--with her arrow-hand
+        Too late the goddess hid what hand may hide,
+      Of every nymph and every reed complain'd,
+        And dashed upon the bank the waters wide.
+
+      On the prone head and sandal'd feet they flew--
+        Lo! slender hoofs and branching horns appear!
+      The last marr'd voice not e'en the favourite knew,
+        But bay'd and fasten'd on the upbraiding deer.
+
+      Far be, chaste goddess, far from me and mine
+        The stream that tempts thee in the summer noon!
+      Alas, that vengeance dwells with charms divine----
+
+_Elizabeth._ Pshaw! give me the paper: I forewarned thee how it
+ended--pitifully, pitifully.
+
+_Cecil._ I cannot think otherwise than that the undertaker of the
+aforecited poesy hath chosen your Highness; for I have seen painted--I
+know not where, but I think no farther off than Putney--the
+identically same Dian, with full as many nymphs, as he calls them, and
+more dogs. So small a matter as a page of poesy shall never stir my
+choler nor twitch my purse-string.
+
+_Elizabeth._ I have read in Plinius and Mela of a runlet near Dodona,
+which kindled by approximation an unlighted torch, and extinguished a
+lighted one. Now, Cecil, I desire no such a jetty to be celebrated as
+the decoration of my court: in simpler words, which your gravity may
+more easily understand, I would not from the fountain of honour give
+lustre to the dull and ignorant, deadening and leaving in its tomb the
+lamp of literature and genius. I ardently wish my reign to be
+remembered: if my actions were different from what they are, I should
+as ardently wish it to be forgotten. Those are the worst of suicides,
+who voluntarily and propensely stab or suffocate their fame, when God
+hath commanded them to stand on high for an example. We call him
+parricide who destroys the author of his existence: tell me, what
+shall we call him who casts forth to the dogs and birds of prey its
+most faithful propagator and most firm support? Mark me, I do not
+speak of that existence which the proudest must close in a ditch--the
+narrowest, too, of ditches and the soonest filled and fouled, and
+whereunto a pinch of ratsbane or a poppy-head may bend him; but of
+that which reposes on our own good deeds, carefully picked up,
+skilfully put together, and decorously laid out for us by another's
+kind understanding: I speak of an existence such as no father is
+author of, or provides for. The parent gives us few days and
+sorrowful; the poet, many and glorious: the one (supposing him
+discreet and kindly) best reproves our faults; the other best
+remunerates our virtues.
+
+A page of poesy is a little matter: be it so; but of a truth I do tell
+thee, Cecil, it shall master full many a bold heart that the Spaniard
+cannot trouble; it shall win to it full many a proud and flighty one
+that even chivalry and manly comeliness cannot touch. I may shake
+titles and dignities by the dozen from my breakfast-board; but I may
+not save those upon whose heads I shake them from rottenness and
+oblivion. This year they and their sovereign dwell together; next
+year, they and their beagle. Both have names, but names perishable.
+The keeper of my privy seal is an earl: what then? the keeper of my
+poultry-yard is a Caesar. In honest truth, a name given to a man is no
+better than a skin given to him: what is not natively his own falls
+off and comes to nothing.
+
+I desire in future to hear no contempt of penmen, unless a depraved
+use of the pen shall have so cramped them as to incapacitate them for
+the sword and for the council chamber. If Alexander was the Great,
+what was Aristoteles who made him so, and taught him every art and
+science he knew, except three--those of drinking, of blaspheming, and
+of murdering his bosom friends? Come along: I will bring thee back
+again nearer home. Thou mightest toss and tumble in thy bed many
+nights, and never eke out the substance of a stanza; but Edmund, if
+perchance I should call upon him for his counsel, would give me as
+wholesome and prudent as any of you. We should indemnify such men for
+the injustice we do unto them in not calling them about us, and for
+the mortification they must suffer at seeing their inferiors set
+before them. Edmund is grave and gentle: he complains of fortune, not
+of Elizabeth; of courts, not of Cecil. I am resolved--so help me,
+God!--he shall have no further cause for his repining. Go, convey unto
+him those twelve silver spoons, with the apostles on them, gloriously
+gilded; and deliver into his hand these twelve large golden pieces,
+sufficing for the yearly maintenance of another horse and groom.
+Beside which, set open before him with due reverence this Bible,
+wherein he may read the mercies of God toward those who waited in
+patience for His blessing; and this pair of crimson silk hose, which
+thou knowest I have worn only thirteen months, taking heed that the
+heel-piece be put into good and sufficient restoration, at my sole
+charges, by the Italian woman nigh the pollard elm at Charing Cross.
+
+
+
+
+EPICTETUS AND SENECA
+
+
+_Seneca._ Epictetus, I desired your master, Epaphroditus, to send you
+hither, having been much pleased with his report of your conduct, and
+much surprised at the ingenuity of your writings.
+
+_Epictetus._ Then I am afraid, my friend----
+
+_Seneca._ _My friend!_ are these the expressions--Well, let it pass.
+Philosophers must bear bravely. The people expect it.
+
+_Epictetus._ Are philosophers, then, only philosophers for the people;
+and, instead of instructing them, must they play tricks before them?
+Give me rather the gravity of dancing dogs. Their motions are for the
+rabble; their reverential eyes and pendant paws are under the
+pressure of awe at a master; but they are dogs, and not below their
+destinies.
+
+_Seneca._ Epictetus! I will give you three talents to let me take that
+sentiment for my own.
+
+_Epictetus._ I would give thee twenty, if I had them, to make it
+thine.
+
+_Seneca._ You mean, by lending it the graces of my language?
+
+_Epictetus._ I mean, by lending it to thy conduct. And now let me
+console and comfort thee, under the calamity I brought on thee by
+calling thee _my friend_. If thou art not my friend, why send for me?
+Enemy I can have none: being a slave, Fortune has now done with me.
+
+_Seneca._ Continue, then, your former observations. What were you
+saying?
+
+_Epictetus._ That which thou interruptedst.
+
+_Seneca._ What was it?
+
+_Epictetus._ I should have remarked that, if thou foundest ingenuity
+in my writings, thou must have discovered in them some deviation from
+the plain, homely truths of Zeno and Cleanthes.
+
+_Seneca._ We all swerve a little from them.
+
+_Epictetus._ In practice too?
+
+_Seneca._ Yes, even in practice, I am afraid.
+
+_Epictetus._ Often?
+
+_Seneca._ Too often.
+
+_Epictetus._ Strange! I have been attentive, and yet have remarked but
+one difference among you great personages at Rome.
+
+_Seneca._ What difference fell under your observation?
+
+_Epictetus._ Crates and Zeno and Cleanthes taught us that our desires
+were to be subdued by philosophy alone. In this city, their acute and
+inventive scholars take us aside, and show us that there is not only
+one way, but two.
+
+_Seneca._ Two ways?
+
+_Epictetus._ They whisper in our ear, 'These two ways are philosophy
+and enjoyment: the wiser man will take the readier, or, not finding
+it, the alternative.' Thou reddenest.
+
+_Seneca._ Monstrous degeneracy.
+
+_Epictetus._ What magnificent rings! I did not notice them until thou
+liftedst up thy hands to heaven, in detestation of such effeminacy and
+impudence.
+
+_Seneca._ The rings are not amiss; my rank rivets them upon my
+fingers: I am forced to wear them. Our emperor gave me one,
+Epaphroditus another, Tigellinus the third. I cannot lay them aside a
+single day, for fear of offending the gods, and those whom they love
+the most worthily.
+
+_Epictetus._ Although they make thee stretch out thy fingers, like the
+arms and legs of one of us slaves upon a cross.
+
+_Seneca._ Oh, horrible! Find some other resemblance.
+
+_Epictetus._ The extremities of a fig-leaf.
+
+_Seneca._ Ignoble!
+
+_Epictetus._ The claws of a toad, trodden on or stoned.
+
+_Seneca._ You have great need, Epictetus, of an instructor in
+eloquence and rhetoric: you want topics, and tropes, and figures.
+
+_Epictetus._ I have no room for them. They make such a buzz in the
+house, a man's own wife cannot understand what he says to her.
+
+_Seneca._ Let us reason a little upon style. I would set you right,
+and remove from before you the prejudices of a somewhat rustic
+education. We may adorn the simplicity of the wisest.
+
+_Epictetus._ Thou canst not adorn simplicity. What is naked or
+defective is susceptible of decoration: what is decorated is
+simplicity no longer. Thou mayest give another thing in exchange for
+it; but if thou wert master of it, thou wouldst preserve it inviolate.
+It is no wonder that we mortals, little able as we are to see truth,
+should be less able to express it.
+
+_Seneca._ You have formed at present no idea of style.
+
+_Epictetus._ I never think about it. First, I consider whether what I
+am about to say is true; then, whether I can say it with brevity, in
+such a manner as that others shall see it as clearly as I do in the
+light of truth; for, if they survey it as an ingenuity, my desire is
+ungratified, my duty unfulfilled. I go not with those who dance round
+the image of Truth, less out of honour to her than to display their
+agility and address.
+
+_Seneca._ We must attract the attention of readers by novelty, and
+force, and grandeur of expression.
+
+_Epictetus._ We must. Nothing is so grand as truth, nothing so
+forcible, nothing so novel.
+
+_Seneca._ Sonorous sentences are wanted to awaken the lethargy of
+indolence.
+
+_Epictetus._ Awaken it to what? Here lies the question; and a weighty
+one it is. If thou awakenest men where they can see nothing and do no
+work, it is better to let them rest: but will not they, thinkest thou,
+look up at a rainbow, unless they are called to it by a clap of
+thunder?
+
+_Seneca._ Your early youth, Epictetus, has been, I will not say
+neglected, but cultivated with rude instruments and unskilful hands.
+
+_Epictetus._ I thank God for it. Those rude instruments have left the
+turf lying yet toward the sun; and those unskilful hands have plucked
+out the docks.
+
+_Seneca._ We hope and believe that we have attained a vein of
+eloquence, brighter and more varied than has been hitherto laid open
+to the world.
+
+_Epictetus._ Than any in the Greek?
+
+_Seneca._ We trust so.
+
+_Epictetus._ Than your Cicero's?
+
+_Seneca._ If the declaration may be made without an offence to
+modesty. Surely, you cannot estimate or value the eloquence of that
+noble pleader?
+
+_Epictetus._ Imperfectly, not being born in Italy; and the noble
+pleader is a much less man with me than the noble philosopher. I
+regret that, having farms and villas, he would not keep his distance
+from the pumping up of foul words against thieves, cut-throats, and
+other rogues; and that he lied, sweated, and thumped his head and
+thighs, in behalf of those who were no better.
+
+_Seneca._ Senators must have clients, and must protect them.
+
+_Epictetus._ Innocent or guilty?
+
+_Seneca._ Doubtless.
+
+_Epictetus._ If I regret what is and might not be, I may regret more
+what both is and must be. However, it is an amiable thing, and no
+small merit in the wealthy, even to trifle and play at their leisure
+hours with philosophy. It cannot be expected that such a personage
+should espouse her, or should recommend her as an inseparable mate to
+his heir.
+
+_Seneca._ I would.
+
+_Epictetus._ Yes, Seneca, but thou hast no son to make the match for;
+and thy recommendation, I suspect, would be given him before he could
+consummate the marriage. Every man wishes his sons to be philosophers
+while they are young; but takes especial care, as they grow older, to
+teach them its insufficiency and unfitness for their intercourse with
+mankind. The paternal voice says: 'You must not be particular; you are
+about to have a profession to live by; follow those who have thriven
+the best in it.' Now, among these, whatever be the profession, canst
+thou point out to me one single philosopher?
+
+_Seneca._ Not just now; nor, upon reflection, do I think it feasible.
+
+_Epictetus._ Thou, indeed, mayest live much to thy ease and
+satisfaction with philosophy, having (they say) two thousand talents.
+
+_Seneca._ And a trifle to spare--pressed upon me by that godlike
+youth, my pupil Nero.
+
+_Epictetus._ Seneca! where God hath placed a mine, He hath placed the
+materials of an earthquake.
+
+_Seneca._ A true philosopher is beyond the reach of Fortune.
+
+_Epictetus._ The false one thinks himself so. Fortune cares little
+about philosophers; but she remembers where she hath set a rich man,
+and she laughs to see the Destinies at his door.
+
+
+
+
+PETER THE GREAT AND ALEXIS
+
+
+_Peter._ And so, after flying from thy father's house, thou hast
+returned again from Vienna. After this affront in the face of Europe,
+thou darest to appear before me?
+
+_Alexis._ My emperor and father! I am brought before your Majesty, not
+at my own desire.
+
+_Peter._ I believe it well.
+
+_Alexis._ I would not anger you.
+
+_Peter._ What hope hadst thou, rebel, in thy flight to Vienna?
+
+_Alexis._ The hope of peace and privacy; the hope of security; and,
+above all things, of never more offending you.
+
+_Peter._ That hope thou hast accomplished. Thou imaginedst, then, that
+my brother of Austria would maintain thee at his court--speak!
+
+_Alexis._ No, sir! I imagined that he would have afforded me a place
+of refuge.
+
+_Peter._ Didst thou, then, take money with thee?
+
+_Alexis._ A few gold pieces.
+
+_Peter._ How many?
+
+_Alexis._ About sixty.
+
+_Peter._ He would have given thee promises for half the money; but the
+double of it does not purchase a house, ignorant wretch!
+
+_Alexis._ I knew as much as that: although my birth did not appear to
+destine me to purchase a house anywhere; and hitherto your liberality,
+my father, hath supplied my wants of every kind.
+
+_Peter._ Not of wisdom, not of duty, not of spirit, not of courage,
+not of ambition. I have educated thee among my guards and horses,
+among my drums and trumpets, among my flags and masts. When thou wert
+a child, and couldst hardly walk, I have taken thee into the arsenal,
+though children should not enter according to regulations: I have
+there rolled cannon-balls before thee over iron plates; and I have
+shown thee bright new arms, bayonets and sabres; and I have pricked
+the back of my hands until the blood came out in many places; and I
+have made thee lick it; and I have then done the same to thine.
+Afterward, from thy tenth year, I have mixed gunpowder in thy grog; I
+have peppered thy peaches; I have poured bilge-water (with a little
+good wholesome tar in it) upon thy melons; I have brought out girls to
+mock thee and cocker thee, and talk like mariners, to make thee
+braver. Nothing would do. Nay, recollect thee! I have myself led thee
+forth to the window when fellows were hanged and shot; and I have
+shown thee every day the halves and quarters of bodies; and I have
+sent an orderly or chamberlain for the heads; and I have pulled the
+cap up from over the eyes; and I have made thee, in spite of thee,
+look steadfastly upon them, incorrigible coward!
+
+And now another word with thee about thy scandalous flight from the
+palace, in time of quiet, too! To the point! Did my brother of Austria
+invite thee? Did he, or did he not?
+
+_Alexis._ May I answer without doing an injury or disservice to his
+Imperial Majesty?
+
+_Peter._ Thou mayest. What injury canst thou or any one do, by the
+tongue, to such as he is?
+
+_Alexis._ At the moment, no; he did not. Nor indeed can I assert that
+he at any time invited me; but he said he pitied me.
+
+_Peter._ About what? hold thy tongue; let that pass. Princes never
+pity but when they would make traitors: then their hearts grow
+tenderer than tripe. He pitied thee, kind soul, when he would throw
+thee at thy father's head; but finding thy father too strong for him,
+he now commiserates the parent, laments the son's rashness and
+disobedience, and would not make God angry for the world. At first,
+however, there must have been some overture on his part; otherwise
+thou are too shamefaced for intrusion. Come--thou hast never had wit
+enough to lie--tell me the truth, the whole truth.
+
+_Alexis._ He said that if ever I wanted an asylum, his court was open
+to me.
+
+_Peter._ Open! so is the tavern; but folks pay for what they get
+there. Open, truly! and didst thou find it so?
+
+_Alexis._ He received me kindly.
+
+_Peter._ I see he did.
+
+_Alexis._ Derision, O my father! is not the fate I merit.
+
+_Peter._ True, true! it was not intended.
+
+_Alexis._ Kind father! punish me then as you will.
+
+_Peter._ Villain! wouldst thou kiss my hand, too? Art thou ignorant
+that the Austrian threw thee away from him, with the same indifference
+as he would the outermost leaf of a sandy sunburnt lettuce?
+
+_Alexis._ Alas! I am not ignorant of this.
+
+_Peter._ He dismissed thee at my order. If I had demanded from him his
+daughter, to be the bedfellow of a Kalmuc, he would have given her,
+and praised God.
+
+_Alexis._ O father! is his baseness my crime?
+
+_Peter._ No; thine is greater. Thy intention, I know, is to subvert
+the institutions it has been the labour of my lifetime to establish.
+Thou hast never rejoiced at my victories.
+
+_Alexis._ I have rejoiced at your happiness and your safety.
+
+_Peter._ Liar! coward! traitor! when the Polanders and Swedes fell
+before me, didst thou from thy soul congratulate me? Didst thou get
+drunk at home or abroad, or praise the Lord of Hosts and Saint
+Nicholas? Wert thou not silent and civil and low-spirited?
+
+_Alexis._ I lamented the irretrievable loss of human life; I lamented
+that the bravest and noblest were swept away the first; that the
+gentlest and most domestic were the earliest mourners; that frugality
+was supplanted by intemperance; that order was succeeded by confusion;
+and that your Majesty was destroying the glorious plans you alone were
+capable of devising.
+
+_Peter._ I destroy them! how? Of what plans art thou speaking?
+
+_Alexis._ Of civilizing the Muscovites. The Polanders in part were
+civilized: the Swedes, more than any other nation on the Continent;
+and so excellently versed were they in military science, and so
+courageous, that every man you killed cost you seven or eight.
+
+_Peter._ Thou liest; nor six. And civilized, forsooth? Why, the robes
+of the metropolitan, him at Upsal, are not worth three ducats, between
+Jew and Livornese. I have no notion that Poland and Sweden shall be
+the only countries that produce great princes. What right have they to
+such as Gustavus and Sobieski? Europe ought to look to this before
+discontents become general, and the people do to us what we have the
+privilege of doing to the people. I am wasting my words: there is no
+arguing with positive fools like thee. So thou wouldst have desired me
+to let the Polanders and Swedes lie still and quiet! Two such powerful
+nations!
+
+_Alexis._ For that reason and others I would have gladly seen them
+rest, until our own people had increased in numbers and prosperity.
+
+_Peter._ And thus thou disputest my right, before my face, to the
+exercise of the supreme power.
+
+_Alexis._ Sir! God forbid!
+
+_Peter._ God forbid, indeed! What care such villains as thou art what
+God forbids! He forbids the son to be disobedient to the father; He
+forbids--He forbids--twenty things. I do not wish, and will not have,
+a successor who dreams of dead people.
+
+_Alexis._ My father! I have dreamed of none such.
+
+_Peter._ Thou hast, and hast talked about them--Scythians, I think,
+they call 'em. Now, who told thee, Mr. Professor, that the Scythians
+were a happier people than we are; that they were inoffensive; that
+they were free; that they wandered with their carts from pasture to
+pasture, from river to river; that they traded with good faith; that
+they fought with good courage; that they injured none, invaded none,
+and feared none? At this rate I have effected nothing. The great
+founder of Rome, I heard in Holland, slew his brother for despiting
+the weakness of his walls; and shall the founder of this better place
+spare a degenerate son, who prefers a vagabond life to a civilized
+one, a cart to a city, a Scythian to a Muscovite? Have I not shaved my
+people, and breeched them? Have I not formed them into regular armies,
+with bands of music and haversacks? Are bows better than cannon?
+shepherds than dragoons, mare's milk than brandy, raw steaks than
+broiled? Thine are tenets that strike at the root of politeness and
+sound government. Every prince in Europe is interested in rooting them
+out by fire and sword. There is no other way with false doctrines:
+breath against breath does little.
+
+_Alexis._ Sire, I never have attempted to disseminate my opinions.
+
+_Peter._ How couldst thou? the seed would fall only on granite. Those,
+however, who caught it brought it to me.
+
+_Alexis._ Never have I undervalued civilization: on the contrary, I
+regretted whatever impeded it. In my opinion, the evils that have been
+attributed to it sprang from its imperfections and voids; and no
+nation has yet acquired it more than very scantily.
+
+_Peter._ How so? give me thy reasons--thy fancies, rather; for reason
+thou hast none.
+
+_Alexis._ When I find the first of men, in rank and genius, hating one
+another, and becoming slanderers and liars in order to lower and
+vilify an opponent; when I hear the God of mercy invoked to massacres,
+and thanked for furthering what He reprobates and condemns--I look
+back in vain on any barbarous people for worse barbarism. I have
+expressed my admiration of our forefathers, who, not being Christians,
+were yet more virtuous than those who are; more temperate, more just,
+more sincere, more chaste, more peaceable.
+
+_Peter._ Malignant atheist!
+
+_Alexis._ Indeed, my father, were I malignant I must be an atheist;
+for malignity is contrary to the command, and inconsistent with the
+belief, of God.
+
+_Peter._ Am I Czar of Muscovy, and hear discourses on reason and
+religion? from my own son, too! No, by the Holy Trinity! thou art no
+son of mine. If thou touchest my knee again, I crack thy knuckles with
+this tobacco-stopper: I wish it were a sledge-hammer for thy sake.
+Off, sycophant! Off, runaway slave!
+
+_Alexis._ Father! father! my heart is broken! If I have offended,
+forgive me!
+
+_Peter._ The State requires thy signal punishment.
+
+_Alexis._ If the State requires it, be it so; but let my father's
+anger cease!
+
+_Peter._ The world shall judge between us. I will brand thee with
+infamy.
+
+_Alexis._ Until now, O father! I never had a proper sense of glory.
+Hear me, O Czar! let not a thing so vile as I am stand between you and
+the world! Let none accuse you!
+
+_Peter._ Accuse me, rebel! Accuse me, traitor!
+
+_Alexis._ Let none speak ill of you, O my father! The public voice
+shakes the palace; the public voice penetrates the grave; it precedes
+the chariot of Almighty God, and is heard at the judgment-seat.
+
+_Peter._ Let it go to the devil! I will have none of it here in
+Petersburg. Our church says nothing about it; our laws forbid it. As
+for thee, unnatural brute, I have no more to do with thee neither!
+
+Ho, there! chancellor! What! come at last! Wert napping, or counting
+thy ducats?
+
+_Chancellor._ Your Majesty's will and pleasure!
+
+_Peter._ Is the Senate assembled in that room?
+
+_Chancellor._ Every member, sire.
+
+_Peter._ Conduct this youth with thee, and let them judge him; thou
+understandest me.
+
+_Chancellor._ Your Majesty's commands are the breath of our nostrils.
+
+_Peter._ If these rascals are amiss, I will try my new cargo of
+Livonian hemp upon 'em.
+
+_Chancellor._ [_Returning._] Sire, sire!
+
+_Peter._ Speak, fellow! Surely they have not condemned him to death,
+without giving themselves time to read the accusation, that thou
+comest back so quickly.
+
+_Chancellor._ No, sire! Nor has either been done.
+
+_Peter._ Then thy head quits thy shoulders.
+
+_Chancellor._ O sire!
+
+_Peter._ Curse thy silly _sires_! what art thou about?
+
+_Chancellor._ Alas! he fell.
+
+_Peter._ Tie him up to thy chair, then. Cowardly beast! what made him
+fall?
+
+_Chancellor._ The hand of Death; the name of father.
+
+_Peter._ Thou puzzlest me; prithee speak plainlier.
+
+_Chancellor._ We told him that his crime was proven and manifest; that
+his life was forfeited.
+
+_Peter._ So far, well enough.
+
+_Chancellor._ He smiled.
+
+_Peter._ He did! did he? Impudence shall do him little good. Who could
+have expected it from that smock-face! Go on--what then?
+
+_Chancellor._ He said calmly, but not without sighing twice or thrice,
+'Lead me to the scaffold: I am weary of life; nobody loves me.' I
+condoled with him, and wept upon his hand, holding the paper against
+my bosom. He took the corner of it between his fingers, and said,
+'Read me this paper; read my death-warrant. Your silence and tears
+have signified it; yet the law has its forms. Do not keep me in
+suspense. My father says, too truly, I am not courageous; but the
+death that leads me to my God shall never terrify me.'
+
+_Peter._ I have seen these white-livered knaves die resolutely; I have
+seen them quietly fierce like white ferrets with their watery eyes and
+tiny teeth. You read it?
+
+_Chancellor._ In part, sire! When he heard your Majesty's name
+accusing him of treason and attempts at rebellion and parricide, he
+fell speechless. We raised him up: he was motionless; he was dead!
+
+_Peter._ Inconsiderate and barbarous varlet as thou art, dost thou
+recite this ill accident to a father! and to one who has not dined!
+Bring me a glass of brandy.
+
+_Chancellor._ And it please your Majesty, might I call a--a----
+
+_Peter._ Away and bring it: scamper! All equally and alike shall obey
+and serve me.
+
+Hark ye! bring the bottle with it: I must cool myself--and--hark ye! a
+rasher of bacon on thy life! and some pickled sturgeon, and some krout
+and caviare, and good strong cheese.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY VIII AND ANNE BOLEYN
+
+
+_Henry._ Dost thou know me, Nanny, in this yeoman's dress? 'Sblood!
+does it require so long and vacant a stare to recollect a husband
+after a week or two? No tragedy-tricks with me! a scream, a sob, or
+thy kerchief a trifle the wetter, were enough. Why, verily the little
+fool faints in earnest. These whey faces, like their kinsfolk the
+ghosts, give us no warning. Hast had water enough upon thee? Take
+that, then: art thyself again?
+
+_Anne._ Father of mercies! do I meet again my husband, as was my last
+prayer on earth? Do I behold my beloved lord--in peace--and pardoned,
+my partner in eternal bliss? it was his voice. I cannot see him: why
+cannot I? Oh, why do these pangs interrupt the transports of the
+blessed?
+
+_Henry._ Thou openest thy arms: faith! I came for that. Nanny, thou
+art a sweet slut. Thou groanest, wench: art in labour? Faith! among
+the mistakes of the night, I am ready to think almost that thou hast
+been drinking, and that I have not.
+
+_Anne._ God preserve your Highness: grant me your forgiveness for one
+slight offence. My eyes were heavy; I fell asleep while I was reading.
+I did not know of your presence at first; and, when I did, I could
+not speak. I strove for utterance: I wanted no respect for my liege
+and husband.
+
+_Henry._ My pretty warm nestling, thou wilt then lie! Thou wert
+reading, and aloud too, with thy saintly cup of water by thee,
+and--what! thou art still girlishly fond of those dried cherries!
+
+_Anne._ I had no other fruit to offer your Highness the first time I
+saw you, and you were then pleased to invent for me some reason why
+they should be acceptable. I did not dry these: may I present them,
+such as they are? We shall have fresh next month.
+
+_Henry._ Thou art always driving away from the discourse. One moment
+it suits thee to know me, another not.
+
+_Anne._ Remember, it is hardly three months since I miscarried. I am
+weak, and liable to swoons.
+
+_Henry._ Thou hast, however, thy bridal cheeks, with lustre upon them
+when there is none elsewhere, and obstinate lips resisting all
+impression; but, now thou talkest about miscarrying, who is the father
+of that boy?
+
+_Anne._ Yours and mine--He who hath taken him to his own home, before
+(like me) he could struggle or cry for it.
+
+_Henry._ Pagan, or worse, to talk so! He did not come into the world
+alive: there was no baptism.
+
+_Anne._ I thought only of our loss: my senses are confounded. I did
+not give him my milk, and yet I loved him tenderly; for I often
+fancied, had he lived, how contented and joyful he would have made you
+and England.
+
+_Henry._ No subterfuges and escapes. I warrant, thou canst not say
+whether at my entrance thou wert waking or wandering.
+
+_Anne._ Faintness and drowsiness came upon me suddenly.
+
+_Henry._ Well, since thou really and truly sleepedst, what didst dream
+of?
+
+_Anne._ I begin to doubt whether I did indeed sleep.
+
+_Henry._ Ha! false one--never two sentences of truth together! But
+come, what didst think about, asleep or awake?
+
+_Anne._ I thought that God had pardoned me my offences, and had
+received me unto Him.
+
+_Henry._ And nothing more?
+
+_Anne._ That my prayers had been heard and my wishes were
+accomplishing: the angels alone can enjoy more beatitude than this.
+
+_Henry._ Vexatious little devil! She says nothing now about me, merely
+from perverseness. Hast thou never thought about me, nor about thy
+falsehood and adultery?
+
+_Anne._ If I had committed any kind of falsehood, in regard to you or
+not, I should never have rested until I had thrown myself at your feet
+and obtained your pardon; but, if ever I had been guilty of that other
+crime, I know not whether I should have dared to implore it, even of
+God's mercy.
+
+_Henry._ Thou hast heretofore cast some soft glances upon Smeaton;
+hast thou not?
+
+_Anne._ He taught me to play on the virginals, as you know, when I was
+little, and thereby to please your Highness.
+
+_Henry._ And Brereton and Norris--what have they taught thee?
+
+_Anne._ They are your servants, and trusty ones.
+
+_Henry._ Has not Weston told thee plainly that he loved thee?
+
+_Anne._ Yes; and----
+
+_Henry._ What didst thou?
+
+_Anne._ I defied him.
+
+_Henry._ Is that all?
+
+_Anne._ I could have done no more if he had told me that he hated me.
+Then, indeed, I should have incurred more justly the reproaches of
+your Highness: I should have smiled.
+
+_Henry._ We have proofs abundant: the fellows shall one and all
+confront thee. Aye, clap thy hands and kiss thy sleeve, harlot!
+
+_Anne._ Oh that so great a favour is vouchsafed me! My honour is
+secure; my husband will be happy again; he will see my innocence.
+
+_Henry._ Give me now an account of the moneys thou hast received from
+me within these nine months. I want them not back: they are letters of
+gold in record of thy guilt. Thou hast had no fewer than fifteen
+thousand pounds in that period, without even thy asking; what hast
+done with it, wanton?
+
+_Anne._ I have regularly placed it out to interest.
+
+_Henry._ Where? I demand of thee.
+
+_Anne._ Among the needy and ailing. My Lord Archbishop has the account
+of it, sealed by him weekly. I also had a copy myself; those who took
+away my papers may easily find it; for there are few others, and they
+lie open.
+
+_Henry._ Think on my munificence to thee; recollect who made thee.
+Dost sigh for what thou hast lost?
+
+_Anne._ I do, indeed.
+
+_Henry._ I never thought thee ambitious; but thy vices creep out one
+by one.
+
+_Anne._ I do not regret that I have been a queen and am no longer
+one; nor that my innocence is called in question by those who never
+knew me; but I lament that the good people who loved me so cordially,
+hate and curse me; that those who pointed me out to their daughters
+for imitation check them when they speak about me; and that he whom
+next to God I have served with most devotion is my accuser.
+
+_Henry._ Wast thou conning over something in that dingy book for thy
+defence? Come, tell me, what wast thou reading?
+
+_Anne._ This ancient chronicle. I was looking for someone in my own
+condition, and must have missed the page. Surely in so many hundred
+years there shall have been other young maidens, first too happy for
+exaltation, and after too exalted for happiness--not, perchance,
+doomed to die upon a scaffold, by those they ever honoured and served
+faithfully; that, indeed, I did not look for nor think of; but my
+heart was bounding for any one I could love and pity. She would be
+unto me as a sister dead and gone; but hearing me, seeing me,
+consoling me, and being consoled. O my husband! it is so heavenly a
+thing----
+
+_Henry._ To whine and whimper, no doubt, is vastly heavenly.
+
+_Anne._ I said not so; but those, if there be any such, who never
+weep, have nothing in them of heavenly or of earthly. The plants, the
+trees, the very rocks and unsunned clouds, show us at least the
+semblances of weeping; and there is not an aspect of the globe we live
+on, nor of the waters and skies around it, without a reference and a
+similitude to our joys or sorrows.
+
+_Henry._ I do not remember that notion anywhere. Take care no enemy
+rake out of it something of materialism. Guard well thy empty hot
+brain; it may hatch more evil. As for those odd words, I myself would
+fain see no great harm in them, knowing that grief and frenzy strike
+out many things which would else lie still, and neither spurt nor
+sparkle. I also know that thou hast never read anything but Bible and
+history--the two worst books in the world for young people, and the
+most certain to lead astray both prince and subject. For which reason
+I have interdicted and entirely put down the one, and will (by the
+blessing of the Virgin and of holy Paul) commit the other to a rigid
+censor. If it behoves us kings to enact what our people shall eat and
+drink--of which the most unruly and rebellious spirit can entertain no
+doubt--greatly more doth it behove us to examine what they read and
+think. The body is moved according to the mind and will; we must take
+care that the movement be a right one, on pain of God's anger in this
+life and the next.
+
+_Anne._ O my dear husband! it must be a naughty thing, indeed, that
+makes Him angry beyond remission. Did you ever try how pleasant it is
+to forgive any one? There is nothing else wherein we can resemble God
+perfectly and easily.
+
+_Henry._ Resemble God perfectly and easily! Do vile creatures talk
+thus of the Creator?
+
+_Anne._ No, Henry, when His creatures talk thus of Him, they are no
+longer vile creatures! When they know that He is good, they love Him;
+and, when they love Him, they are good themselves. O Henry! my husband
+and king! the judgments of our Heavenly Father are righteous; on this,
+surely, we must think alike.
+
+_Henry._ And what, then? Speak out; again I command thee, speak
+plainly! thy tongue was not so torpid but this moment. Art ready? Must
+I wait?
+
+_Anne._ If any doubt remains upon your royal mind of your equity in
+this business: should it haply seem possible to you that passion or
+prejudice, in yourself or another, may have warped so strong an
+understanding--do but supplicate the Almighty to strengthen and
+enlighten it, and He will hear you.
+
+_Henry._ What! thou wouldst fain change thy quarters, ay?
+
+_Anne._ My spirit is detached and ready, and I shall change them
+shortly, whatever your Highness may determine.
+
+_Henry._ Yet thou appearest hale and resolute, and (they tell me)
+smirkest and smilest to everybody.
+
+_Anne._ The withered leaf catches the sun sometimes, little as it can
+profit by it; and I have heard stories of the breeze in other climates
+that sets in when daylight is about to close, and how constant it is,
+and how refreshing. My heart, indeed, is now sustained strangely; it
+became the more sensibly so from that time forward, when power and
+grandeur and all things terrestrial were sunk from sight. Every act of
+kindness in those about me gives me satisfaction and pleasure, such as
+I did not feel formerly. I was worse before God chastened me; yet I
+was never an ingrate. What pains have I taken to find out the
+village-girls who placed their posies in my chamber ere I arose in the
+morning! How gladly would I have recompensed the forester who lit up a
+brake on my birthnight, which else had warmed him half the winter! But
+these are times past: I was not Queen of England.
+
+_Henry._ Nor adulterous, nor heretical.
+
+_Anne._ God be praised!
+
+_Henry._ Learned saint! thou knowest nothing of the lighter, but
+perhaps canst inform me about the graver, of them.
+
+_Anne._ Which may it be, my liege?
+
+_Henry._ Which may it be? Pestilence! I marvel that the walls of this
+tower do not crack around thee at such impiety.
+
+_Anne._ I would be instructed by the wisest of theologians: such is
+your Highness.
+
+_Henry._ Are the sins of the body, foul as they are, comparable to
+those of the soul?
+
+_Anne._ When they are united, they must be worse.
+
+_Henry._ Go on, go on: thou pushest thy own breast against the sword.
+God hath deprived thee of thy reason for thy punishment. I must hear
+more: proceed, I charge thee.
+
+_Anne._ An aptitude to believe one thing rather than another, from
+ignorance or weakness, or from the more persuasive manner of the
+teacher, or from his purity of life, or from the strong impression of
+a particular text at a particular time, and various things beside, may
+influence and decide our opinion; and the hand of the Almighty, let us
+hope, will fall gently on human fallibility.
+
+_Henry._ Opinion in matters of faith! rare wisdom! rare religion!
+Troth, Anne! thou hast well sobered me. I came rather warmly and
+lovingly; but these light ringlets, by the holy rood, shall not shade
+this shoulder much longer. Nay, do not start; I tap it for the last
+time, my sweetest. If the Church permitted it, thou shouldst set forth
+on thy long journey with the Eucharist between thy teeth, however
+loath.
+
+_Anne._ Love your Elizabeth, my honoured lord, and God bless you! She
+will soon forget to call me. Do not chide her: think how young she is.
+
+Could I, could I kiss her, but once again! it would comfort my
+heart--or break it.
+
+
+
+
+JOSEPH SCALIGER AND MONTAIGNE
+
+
+_Montaigne._ What could have brought you, M. de l'Escale, to visit the
+old man of the mountain, other than a good heart? Oh, how delighted
+and charmed I am to hear you speak such excellent Gascon. You rise
+early, I see: you must have risen with the sun, to be here at this
+hour; it is a stout half-hour's walk from the brook. I have capital
+white wine, and the best cheese in Auvergne. You saw the goats and
+the two cows before the castle.
+
+Pierre, thou hast done well: set it upon the table, and tell Master
+Matthew to split a couple of chickens and broil them, and to pepper
+but one. Do you like pepper, M. de l'Escale?
+
+_Scaliger._ Not much.
+
+_Montaigne._ Hold hard! let the pepper alone: I hate it. Tell him to
+broil plenty of ham; only two slices at a time, upon his salvation.
+
+_Scaliger._ This, I perceive, is the antechamber to your library: here
+are your everyday books.
+
+_Montaigne._ Faith! I have no other. These are plenty, methinks; is
+not that your opinion?
+
+_Scaliger._ You have great resources within yourself, and therefore
+can do with fewer.
+
+_Montaigne._ Why, how many now do you think here may be?
+
+_Scaliger._ I did not believe at first that there could be above
+fourscore.
+
+_Montaigne._ Well! are fourscore few?--are we talking of peas and
+beans?
+
+_Scaliger._ I and my father (put together) have written well-nigh as
+many.
+
+_Montaigne._ Ah! to write them is quite another thing: but one reads
+books without a spur, or even a pat from our Lady Vanity. How do you
+like my wine?--it comes from the little knoll yonder: you cannot see
+the vines, those chestnut-trees are between.
+
+_Scaliger._ The wine is excellent; light, odoriferous, with a
+smartness like a sharp child's prattle.
+
+_Montaigne._ It never goes to the head, nor pulls the nerves, which
+many do as if they were guitar-strings. I drink a couple of bottles a
+day, winter and summer, and never am the worse for it. You gentlemen
+of the Agennois have better in your province, and indeed the very best
+under the sun. I do not wonder that the Parliament of Bordeaux should
+be jealous of their privileges, and call it Bordeaux. Now, if you
+prefer your own country wine, only say it: I have several bottles in
+my cellar, with corks as long as rapiers, and as polished. I do not
+know, M. de l'Escale, whether you are particular in these matters: not
+quite, I should imagine, so great a judge in them as in others?
+
+_Scaliger._ I know three things: wine, poetry, and the world.
+
+_Montaigne._ You know one too many, then. I hardly know whether I know
+anything about poetry; for I like Clem Marot better than Ronsard.
+Ronsard is so plaguily stiff and stately, where there is no occasion
+for it; I verily do think the man must have slept with his wife in a
+cuirass.
+
+_Scaliger._ It pleases me greatly that you like Marot. His versions of
+the Psalms is lately set to music, and added to the New Testament of
+Geneva.
+
+_Montaigne._ It is putting a slice of honeycomb into a barrel of
+vinegar, which will never grow the sweeter for it.
+
+_Scaliger._ Surely, you do not think in this fashion of the New
+Testament!
+
+_Montaigne._ Who supposes it? Whatever is mild and kindly is there.
+But Jack Calvin has thrown bird-lime and vitriol upon it, and whoever
+but touches the cover dirties his fingers or burns them.
+
+_Scaliger._ Calvin is a very great man, I do assure you, M. de
+Montaigne.
+
+_Montaigne._ I do not like your great men who beckon me to them, call
+me their begotten, their dear child, and their entrails; and, if I
+happen to say on any occasion, 'I beg leave, sir, to dissent a little
+from you,' stamp and cry, 'The devil you do!' and whistle to the
+executioner.
+
+_Scaliger._ You exaggerate, my worthy friend!
+
+_Montaigne._ Exaggerate do I, M. de l'Escale? What was it he did the
+other day to the poor devil there with an odd name?--Melancthon, I
+think it is.
+
+_Scaliger._ I do not know: I have received no intelligence of late
+from Geneva.
+
+_Montaigne._ It was but last night that our curate rode over from
+Lyons (he made two days of it, as you may suppose) and supped with me.
+He told me that Jack had got his old friend hanged and burned. I could
+not join him in the joke, for I find none such in the New Testament,
+on which he would have founded it; and, if it is one, it is not in my
+manner or to my taste.
+
+_Scaliger._ I cannot well believe the report, my dear sir. He was
+rather urgent, indeed, on the combustion of the heretic Michael
+Servetus some years past.
+
+_Montaigne._ A thousand to one, my spiritual guide mistook the name.
+He has heard of both, I warrant him, and thinks in his conscience that
+either is as good a roast as the other.
+
+_Scaliger._ Theologians are proud and intolerant, and truly the
+farthest of all men from theology, if theology means the rational
+sense of religion, or indeed has anything to do with it in any way.
+Melancthon was the very best of the reformers; quiet, sedate,
+charitable, intrepid, firm in friendship, ardent in faith, acute in
+argument, and profound in learning.
+
+_Montaigne._ Who cares about his argumentation or his learning, if he
+was the rest?
+
+_Scaliger._ I hope you will suspend your judgment on this affair until
+you receive some more certain and positive information.
+
+_Montaigne._ I can believe it of the Sieur Calvin.
+
+_Scaliger._ I cannot. John Calvin is a grave man, orderly and
+reasonable.
+
+_Montaigne._ In my opinion he has not the order nor the reason of my
+cook. Mat never took a man for a sucking-pig, cleaning and scraping
+and buttering and roasting him; nor ever twitched God by the sleeve
+and swore He should not have His own way.
+
+_Scaliger._ M. de Montaigne, have you ever studied the doctrine of
+predestination?
+
+_Montaigne._ I should not understand it, if I had; and I would not
+break through an old fence merely to get into a cavern. I would not
+give a fig or a fig-leaf to know the truth of it, as far as any man
+can teach it me. Would it make me honester or happier, or, in other
+things, wiser?
+
+_Scaliger._ I do not know whether it would materially.
+
+_Montaigne._ I should be an egregious fool then to care about it. Our
+disputes on controverted points have filled the country with
+missionaries and cut-throats. Both parties have shown a disposition to
+turn this comfortable old house of mine into a fortress. If I had
+inclined to either, the other would have done it. Come walk about it
+with me; after a ride, you can do nothing better to take off fatigue.
+
+_Scaliger._ A most spacious kitchen!
+
+_Montaigne._ Look up!
+
+_Scaliger._ You have twenty or more flitches of bacon hanging there.
+
+_Montaigne._ And if I had been a doctor or a captain, I should have
+had a cobweb and predestination in the place of them. Your soldiers of
+the _religion_ on the one side, and of the _good old faith_ on the
+other, would not have left unto me safe and sound even that good old
+woman there.
+
+_Scaliger._ Oh, yes! they would, I hope.
+
+_Old Woman._ Why dost giggle, Mat? What should he know about the
+business? He speaks mighty bad French, and is as spiteful as the
+devil. Praised be God, we have a kind master, who thinks about us, and
+feels for us.
+
+_Scaliger._ Upon my word, M. de Montaigne, this gallery is an
+interesting one.
+
+_Montaigne._ I can show you nothing but my house and my dairy. We have
+no chase in the month of May, you know--unless you would like to bait
+the badger in the stable. This is rare sport in rainy days.
+
+_Scaliger._ Are you in earnest, M. de Montaigne?
+
+_Montaigne._ No, no, no, I cannot afford to worry him outright: only a
+little for pastime--a morning's merriment for the dogs and wenches.
+
+_Scaliger._ You really are then of so happy a temperament that, at
+your time of life, you can be amused by baiting a badger!
+
+_Montaigne._ Why not? Your father, a wiser and graver and older man
+than I am, was amused by baiting a professor or critic. I have not a
+dog in the kennel that would treat the badger worse than brave Julius
+treated Cardan and Erasmus, and some dozens more. We are all childish,
+old as well as young; and our very last tooth would fain stick, M. de
+l'Escale, in some tender place of a neighbour. Boys laugh at a person
+who falls in the dirt; men laugh rather when they make him fall, and
+most when the dirt is of their own laying.
+
+Is not the gallery rather cold, after the kitchen? We must go through
+it to get into the court where I keep my tame rabbits; the stable is
+hard by: come along, come along.
+
+_Scaliger._ Permit me to look a little at those banners. Some of them
+are old indeed.
+
+_Montaigne._ Upon my word, I blush to think I never took notice how
+they are tattered. I have no fewer than three women in the house, and
+in a summer's evening, only two hours long, the worst of these rags
+might have been darned across.
+
+_Scaliger._ You would not have done it surely!
+
+_Montaigne._ I am not over-thrifty; the women might have been better
+employed. It is as well as it is then; ay?
+
+_Scaliger._ I think so.
+
+_Montaigne._ So be it.
+
+_Scaliger._ They remind me of my own family, we being descended from
+the great Cane della Scala, Prince of Verona, and from the House of
+Hapsburg, as you must have heard from my father.
+
+_Montaigne._ What signifies it to the world whether the great Cane was
+tied to his grandmother or not? As for the House of Hapsburg, if you
+could put together as many such houses as would make up a city larger
+than Cairo, they would not be worth his study, or a sheet of paper on
+the table of it.
+
+
+
+
+BOCCACCIO AND PETRARCA
+
+
+_Boccaccio._ Remaining among us, I doubt not that you would soon
+receive the same distinctions in your native country as others have
+conferred upon you: indeed, in confidence I may promise it. For
+greatly are the Florentines ashamed that the most elegant of their
+writers and the most independent of their citizens lives in exile, by
+the injustice he had suffered in the detriment done to his property,
+through the intemperate administration of their laws.
+
+_Petrarca._ Let them recall me soon and honourably: then perhaps I may
+assist them to remove their ignominy, which I carry about with me
+wherever I go, and which is pointed out by my exotic laurel.
+
+_Boccaccio._ There is, and ever will be, in all countries and under
+all governments, an ostracism for their greatest men.
+
+_Petrarca._ At present we will talk no more about it. To-morrow I
+pursue my journey towards Padua, where I am expected; where some few
+value and esteem me, honest and learned and ingenious men; although
+neither those Transpadane regions, nor whatever extends beyond them,
+have yet produced an equal to Boccaccio.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Then, in the name of friendship, do not go thither!--form
+such rather from your fellow-citizens. I love my equals heartily; and
+shall love them the better when I see them raised up here, from our
+own mother earth, by you.
+
+_Petrarca._ Let us continue our walk.
+
+_Boccaccio._ If you have been delighted (and you say you have been) at
+seeing again, after so long an absence, the house and garden wherein I
+have placed the relaters of my stories, as reported in the _Decameron_,
+come a little way farther up the ascent, and we will pass through the
+vineyard on the west of the villa. You will see presently another on
+the right, lying in its warm little garden close to the roadside, the
+scene lately of somewhat that would have looked well, as illustration,
+in the midst of your Latin reflections. It shows us that people the
+most serious and determined may act at last contrariwise to the line
+of conduct they have laid down.
+
+_Petrarca._ Relate it to me, Messer Giovanni; for you are able to give
+reality the merits and charms of fiction, just as easily as you give
+fiction the semblance, the stature, and the movement of reality.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I must here forgo such powers, if in good truth I possess
+them.
+
+_Petrarca._ This long green alley, defended by box and cypresses, is
+very pleasant. The smell of box, although not sweet, is more agreeable
+to me than many that are: I cannot say from what resuscitation of
+early and tender feeling. The cypress, too, seems to strengthen the
+nerves of the brain. Indeed, I delight in the odour of most trees and
+plants.
+
+Will not that dog hurt us?--he comes closer.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Dog! thou hast the colours of a magpie and the tongue of
+one; prithee be quiet: art thou not ashamed?
+
+_Petrarca._ Verily he trots off, comforting his angry belly with his
+plenteous tail, flattened and bestrewn under it. He looks back, going
+on, and puffs out his upper lip without a bark.
+
+_Boccaccio._ These creatures are more accessible to temperate and just
+rebuke than the creatures of our species, usually angry with less
+reason, and from no sense, as dogs are, of duty. Look into that white
+arcade! Surely it was white the other day; and now I perceive it is
+still so: the setting sun tinges it with yellow.
+
+_Petrarca._ The house has nothing of either the rustic or the
+magnificent about it; nothing quite regular, nothing much varied. If
+there is anything at all affecting, as I fear there is, in the story
+you are about to tell me, I could wish the edifice itself bore
+externally some little of the interesting that I might hereafter turn
+my mind toward it, looking out of the catastrophe, though not away
+from it. But I do not even find the peculiar and uncostly decoration
+of our Tuscan villas: the central turret, round which the kite
+perpetually circles in search of pigeons or smaller prey, borne
+onward, like the Flemish skater, by effortless will in motionless
+progression. The view of Fiesole must be lovely from that window; but
+I fancy to myself it loses the cascade under the single high arch of
+the Mugnone.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I think so. In this villa--come rather farther off: the
+inhabitants of it may hear us, if they should happen to be in the
+arbour, as most people are at the present hour of day--in this villa,
+Messer Francesco, lives Monna Tita Monalda, who tenderly loved Amadeo
+degli Oricellari. She, however, was reserved and coy; and Father
+Pietro de' Pucci, an enemy to the family of Amadeo, told her nevermore
+to think of him, for that, just before he knew her, he had thrown his
+arm round the neck of Nunciata Righi, his mother's maid, calling her
+most immodestly a sweet creature, and of a whiteness that marble would
+split with envy at.
+
+Monna Tita trembled and turned pale. 'Father, is the girl really so
+very fair?' said she anxiously.
+
+'Madonna,' replied the father, 'after confession she is not much
+amiss: white she is, with a certain tint of pink not belonging to her,
+but coming over her as through the wing of an angel pleased at the
+holy function; and her breath is such, the very ear smells it: poor,
+innocent, sinful soul! Hei! The wretch, Amadeo, would have endangered
+her salvation.'
+
+'She must be a wicked girl to let him,' said Monna Tita. 'A young man
+of good parentage and education would not dare to do such a thing of
+his own accord. I will see him no more, however. But it was before he
+knew me: and it may not be true. I cannot think any young woman would
+let a young man do so, even in the last hour before Lent. Now in what
+month was it supposed to be?'
+
+'Supposed to be!' cried the father indignantly: 'in June; I say in
+June.'
+
+'Oh! that now is quite impossible: for on the second of July,
+forty-one days from this, and at this very hour of it, he swore to me
+eternal love and constancy. I will inquire of him whether it is true:
+I will charge him with it.'
+
+She did. Amadeo confessed his fault, and, thinking it a venial one,
+would have taken and kissed her hand as he asked forgiveness.
+
+_Petrarca._ Children! children! I will go into the house, and if their
+relatives, as I suppose, have approved of the marriage, I will
+endeavour to persuade the young lady that a fault like this, on the
+repentance of her lover, is not unpardonable. But first, is Amadeo a
+young man of loose habits?
+
+_Boccaccio._ Less than our others: in fact, I never heard of any
+deviation, excepting this.
+
+_Petrarca._ Come, then, with me.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Wait a little.
+
+_Petrarca._ I hope the modest Tita, after a trial, will not be too
+severe with him.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Severity is far from her nature; but, such is her purity
+and innocence, she shed many and bitter tears at his confession, and
+declared her unalterable determination of taking the veil among the
+nuns of Fiesole. Amadeo fell at her feet, and wept upon them. She
+pushed him from her gently, and told him she would still love him if
+he would follow her example, leave the world, and become a friar of
+San Marco. Amadeo was speechless; and, if he had not been so, he never
+would have made a promise he intended to violate. She retired from
+him. After a time he arose, less wounded than benumbed by the sharp
+uncovered stones in the garden-walk; and, as a man who fears to fall
+from a precipice goes farther from it than is necessary, so did Amadeo
+shun the quarter where the gate is, and, oppressed by his agony and
+despair, throw his arms across the sundial and rest his brow upon it,
+hot as it must have been on a cloudless day in August. When the
+evening was about to close, he was aroused by the cries of rooks
+overhead; they flew towards Florence, and beyond; he, too, went back
+into the city.
+
+Tita fell sick from her inquietude. Every morning ere sunrise did
+Amadeo return; but could hear only from the labourers in the field
+that Monna Tita was ill, because she had promised to take the veil and
+had not taken it, knowing, as she must do, that the heavenly
+bridegroom is a bridegroom never to be trifled with, let the spouse be
+young and beautiful as she may be. Amadeo had often conversed with the
+peasant of the farm, who much pitied so worthy and loving a gentleman;
+and, finding him one evening fixing some thick and high stakes in the
+ground, offered to help him. After due thanks, 'It is time,' said the
+peasant, 'to rebuild the hovel and watch the grapes.'
+
+'This is my house,' cried he. 'Could I never, in my stupidity, think
+about rebuilding it before? Bring me another mat or two: I will sleep
+here to-night, to-morrow night, every night, all autumn, all winter.'
+
+He slept there, and was consoled at last by hearing that Monna Tita
+was out of danger, and recovering from her illness by spiritual means.
+His heart grew lighter day after day. Every evening did he observe the
+rooks, in the same order, pass along the same track in the heavens,
+just over San Marco; and it now occurred to him, after three weeks,
+indeed, that Monna Tita had perhaps some strange idea, in choosing his
+monastery, not unconnected with the passage of these birds. He grew
+calmer upon it, until he asked himself whether he might hope. In the
+midst of this half-meditation, half-dream, his whole frame was shaken
+by the voices, however low and gentle, of two monks, coming from the
+villa and approaching him. He would have concealed himself under this
+bank whereon we are standing; but they saw him, and called him by
+name. He now perceived that the younger of them was Guiberto Oddi,
+with whom he had been at school about six or seven years ago, and who
+admired him for his courage and frankness when he was almost a child.
+
+'Do not let us mortify poor Amadeo,' said Guiberto to his companion.
+'Return to the road: I will speak a few words to him, and engage him
+(I trust) to comply with reason and yield to necessity.' The elder
+monk, who saw he should have to climb the hill again, assented to the
+proposal, and went into the road. After the first embraces and few
+words, 'Amadeo! Amadeo!' said Guiberto, 'it was love that made me a
+friar; let anything else make you one.'
+
+'Kind heart!' replied Amadeo. 'If death or religion, or hatred of me,
+deprives me of Tita Monalda, I will die, where she commanded me, in
+the cowl. It is you who prepare her, then, to throw away her life and
+mine!'
+
+'Hold! Amadeo!' said Guiberto, 'I officiate together with good Father
+Fontesecco, who invariably falls asleep amid our holy function.'
+
+Now, Messer Francesco, I must inform you that Father Fontesecco has
+the heart of a flower. It feels nothing, it wants nothing; it is pure
+and simple, and full of its own little light. Innocent as a child, as
+an angel, nothing ever troubled him but how to devise what he should
+confess. A confession costs him more trouble to invent than any
+Giornata in my _Decameron_ cost me. He was once overheard to say on
+this occasion, 'God forgive me in His infinite mercy, for making it
+appear that I am a little worse than He has chosen I should be!' He is
+temperate; for he never drinks more than exactly half the wine and
+water set before him. In fact, he drinks the wine and leaves the
+water, saying: 'We have the same water up at San Domenico; we send it
+hither: it would be uncivil to take back our own gift, and still more
+to leave a suspicion that we thought other people's wine poor
+beverage.' Being afflicted by the gravel, the physician of his convent
+advised him, as he never was fond of wine, to leave it off entirely;
+on which he said, 'I know few things; but this I know well--in water
+there is often gravel, in wine never. It hath pleased God to afflict
+me, and even to go a little out of His way in order to do it, for the
+greater warning to other sinners. I will drink wine, brother
+Anselmini, and help His work.'
+
+I have led you away from the younger monk.
+
+'While Father Fontesecco is in the first stage of beatitude, chanting
+through his nose the _Benedicite_, I will attempt,' said Guiberto, 'to
+comfort Monna Tita.'
+
+'Good, blessed Guiberto!' exclaimed Amadeo in a transport of
+gratitude, at which Guiberto smiled with his usual grace and suavity.
+'O Guiberto! Guiberto! my heart is breaking. Why should she want you
+to comfort her?--but--comfort her then!' and he covered his face
+within his hands.
+
+'Remember,' said Guiberto placidly, 'her uncle is bedridden; her aunt
+never leaves him; the servants are old and sullen, and will stir for
+nobody. Finding her resolved, as they believe, to become a nun, they
+are little assiduous in their services. Humour her, if none else does,
+Amadeo; let her fancy that you intend to be a friar; and, for the
+present, walk not on these grounds.'
+
+'Are you true, or are you traitorous?' cried Amadeo, grasping his
+friend's hand most fiercely.
+
+'Follow your own counsel, if you think mine insincere,' said the young
+friar, not withdrawing his hand, but placing the other on Amadeo's.
+'Let me, however, advise you to conceal yourself; and I will direct
+Silvestrina to bring you such accounts of her mistress as may at least
+make you easy in regard to her health. Adieu.'
+
+Amadeo was now rather tranquil; more than he had ever been, not only
+since the displeasure of Monna Tita, but since the first sight of her.
+Profuse at all times in his gratitude to Silvestrina, whenever she
+brought him good news, news better than usual, he pressed her to his
+bosom. Silvestrina Pioppi is about fifteen, slender, fresh,
+intelligent, lively, good-humoured, sensitive; and any one but Amadeo
+might call her very pretty.
+
+_Petrarca._ Ah, Giovanni! here I find your heart obtaining the mastery
+over your vivid and volatile imagination. Well have you said, the
+maiden being really pretty, any one but Amadeo might think her so. On
+the banks of the Sorga there are beautiful maids; the woods and the
+rocks have a thousand times repeated it. I heard but one echo; I heard
+but one name: I would have fled from them for ever at another.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Francesco, do not beat your breast just now: wait a
+little. Monna Tita would take the veil. The fatal certainty was
+announced to Amadeo by his true Guiberto, who had earnestly and
+repeatedly prayed her to consider the thing a few months longer.
+
+'I will see her first! By all the saints of heaven I will see her!'
+cried the desperate Amadeo, and ran into the house, toward the still
+apartment of his beloved. Fortunately Guiberto was neither less active
+nor less strong than he, and overtaking him at the moment, drew him
+into the room opposite. 'If you will be quiet and reasonable, there is
+yet a possibility left you,' said Guiberto in his ear, although
+perhaps he did not think it. 'But if you utter a voice or are seen by
+any one, you ruin the fame of her you love, and obstruct your own
+prospects for ever. It being known that you have not slept in Florence
+these several nights, it will be suspected by the malicious that you
+have slept in the villa with the connivance of Monna Tita. Compose
+yourself; answer nothing; rest where you are: do not add a worse
+imprudence to a very bad one. I promise you my assistance, my speedy
+return, and best counsel: you shall be released at daybreak.' He
+ordered Silvestrina to supply the unfortunate youth with the cordials
+usually administered to the uncle, or with the rich old wine they were
+made of; and she performed the order with such promptitude and
+attention, that he was soon in some sort refreshed.
+
+_Petrarca._ I pity him from my innermost heart, poor young man! Alas,
+we are none of us, by original sin, free from infirmities or from
+vices.
+
+_Boccaccio._ If we could find a man exempt by nature from vices and
+infirmities, we should find one not worth knowing: he would also be
+void of tenderness and compassion. What allowances then could his best
+friends expect from him in their frailties? What help, consolation,
+and assistance in their misfortunes? We are in the midst of a workshop
+well stored with sharp instruments: we may do ill with many, unless we
+take heed; and good with all, if we will but learn how to employ them.
+
+_Petrarca._ There is somewhat of reason in this. You strengthen me to
+proceed with you: I can bear the rest.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Guiberto had taken leave of his friend, and had advanced
+a quarter of a mile, which (as you perceive) is nearly the whole way,
+on his return to the monastery, when he was overtaken by some peasants
+who were hastening homeward from Florence. The information he
+collected from them made him determine to retrace his steps. He
+entered the room again, and, from the intelligence he had just
+acquired, gave Amadeo the assurance that Monna Tita must delay her
+entrance into the convent; for that the abbess had that moment gone
+down the hill on her way toward Siena to venerate some holy relics,
+carrying with her three candles, each five feet long, to burn before
+them; which candles contained many particles of the myrrh presented at
+the Nativity of our Saviour by the Wise Men of the East. Amadeo
+breathed freely, and was persuaded by Guiberto to take another cup of
+old wine, and to eat with him some cold roast kid, which had been
+offered him for _merenda_. After the agitation of his mind a heavy
+sleep fell upon the lover, coming almost before Guiberto departed: so
+heavy indeed that Silvestrina was alarmed. It was her apartment; and
+she performed the honours of it as well as any lady in Florence could
+have done.
+
+_Petrarca._ I easily believe it: the poor are more attentive than the
+rich, and the young are more compassionate than the old.
+
+_Boccaccio._ O Francesco! what inconsistent creatures are we!
+
+_Petrarca._ True, indeed! I now foresee the end. He might have done
+worse.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I think so.
+
+_Petrarca._ He almost deserved it.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I think that too.
+
+_Petrarca._ Wretched mortals! our passions for ever lead us into this,
+or worse.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Ay, truly; much worse generally.
+
+_Petrarca._ The very twig on which the flowers grew lately scourges us
+to the bone in its maturity.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Incredible will it be to you, and, by my faith, to me it
+was hardly credible. Certain, however, is it that Guiberto on his
+return by sunrise found Amadeo in the arms of sleep.
+
+_Petrarca._ Not at all, not at all: the truest lover might suffer and
+act as he did.
+
+_Boccaccio._ But, Francesco, there was another pair of arms about him,
+worth twenty such, divinity as he is. A loud burst of laughter from
+Guiberto did not arouse either of the parties; but Monna Tita heard
+it, and rushed into the room, tearing her hair, and invoking the
+saints of heaven against the perfidy of man. She seized Silvestrina by
+that arm which appeared the most offending: the girl opened her eyes,
+turned on her face, rolled out of bed, and threw herself at the feet
+of her mistress, shedding tears, and wiping them away with the only
+piece of linen about her. Monna Tita too shed tears. Amadeo still
+slept profoundly; a flush, almost of crimson, overspreading his
+cheeks. Monna Tita led away, after some pause, poor Silvestrina, and
+made her confess the whole. She then wept more and more, and made the
+girl confess it again, and explain her confession. 'I cannot believe
+such wickedness,' she cried: 'he could not be so hardened. O sinful
+Silvestrina! how will you ever tell Father Doni one half, one quarter?
+He never can absolve you.'
+
+_Petrarca._ Giovanni, I am glad I did not enter the house; you were
+prudent in restraining me. I have no pity for the youth at all: never
+did one so deserve to lose a mistress.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Say, rather, to gain a wife.
+
+_Petrarca._ Absurdity! impossibility!
+
+_Boccaccio._ He won her fairly; strangely, and on a strange table, as
+he played his game. Listen! that guitar is Monna Tita's. Listen! what
+a fine voice (do not you think it?) is Amadeo's.
+
+_Amadeo._ [_Singing._]
+
+            Oh, I have err'd!
+      I laid my hand upon the nest
+      (Tita, I sigh to sing the rest)
+            Of the wrong bird.
+
+_Petrarca._ She laughs too at it! Ah! Monna Tita was made by nature to
+live on this side of Fiesole.
+
+
+
+
+BOSSUET AND THE DUCHESS DE FONTANGES
+
+
+_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle, it is the king's desire that I compliment you
+on the elevation you have attained.
+
+_Fontanges._ O monseigneur, I know very well what you mean. His
+Majesty is kind and polite to everybody. The last thing he said to me
+was, 'Angélique! do not forget to compliment Monseigneur the bishop on
+the dignity I have conferred upon him, of almoner to the dauphiness. I
+desired the appointment for him only that he might be of rank
+sufficient to confess, now you are duchess. Let him be your confessor,
+my little girl.'
+
+_Bossuet._ I dare not presume to ask you, mademoiselle, what was your
+gracious reply to the condescension of our royal master.
+
+_Fontanges._ Oh, yes! you may. I told him I was almost sure I should
+be ashamed of confessing such naughty things to a person of high rank,
+who writes like an angel.
+
+_Bossuet._ The observation was inspired, mademoiselle, by your
+goodness and modesty.
+
+_Fontanges._ You are so agreeable a man, monseigneur, I will confess
+to you, directly, if you like.
+
+_Bossuet._ Have you brought yourself to a proper frame of mind, young
+lady?
+
+_Fontanges._ What is that?
+
+_Bossuet._ Do you hate sin?
+
+_Fontanges._ Very much.
+
+_Bossuet._ Are you resolved to leave it off?
+
+_Fontanges._ I have left it off entirely since the king began to love
+me. I have never said a spiteful word of anybody since.
+
+_Bossuet._ In your opinion, mademoiselle, are there no other sins than
+malice?
+
+_Fontanges._ I never stole anything; I never committed adultery; I
+never coveted my neighbour's wife; I never killed any person, though
+several have told me they should die for me.
+
+_Bossuet._ Vain, idle talk! Did you listen to it?
+
+_Fontanges._ Indeed I did, with both ears; it seemed so funny.
+
+_Bossuet._ You have something to answer for, then.
+
+_Fontanges._ No, indeed, I have not, monseigneur. I have asked many
+times after them, and found they were all alive, which mortified me.
+
+_Bossuet._ So, then! you would really have them die for you?
+
+_Fontanges._ Oh, no, no! but I wanted to see whether they were in
+earnest, or told me fibs; for, if they told me fibs, I would never
+trust them again.
+
+_Bossuet._ Do you hate the world, mademoiselle?
+
+_Fontanges._ A good deal of it: all Picardy, for example, and all
+Sologne; nothing is uglier--and, oh my life! what frightful men and
+women!
+
+_Bossuet._ I would say, in plain language, do you hate the flesh and
+the devil?
+
+_Fontanges._ Who does not hate the devil? If you will hold my hand the
+while, I will tell him so. I hate you, beast! There now. As for flesh,
+I never could bear a fat man. Such people can neither dance nor hunt,
+nor do anything that I know of.
+
+_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle Marie-Angélique de Scoraille de Rousille,
+Duchess de Fontanges! do you hate titles and dignities and yourself?
+
+_Fontanges._ Myself! does any one hate me? Why should I be the first?
+Hatred is the worst thing in the world: it makes one so very ugly.
+
+_Bossuet._ To love God, we must hate ourselves. We must detest our
+bodies, if we would save our souls.
+
+_Fontanges._ That is hard: how can I do it? I see nothing so
+detestable in mine. Do you? To love is easier. I love God whenever I
+think of Him, He has been so very good to me; but I cannot hate
+myself, if I would. As God hath not hated me, why should I? Beside, it
+was He who made the king to love me; for I heard you say in a sermon
+that the hearts of kings are in His rule and governance. As for titles
+and dignities, I do not care much about them while his Majesty loves
+me, and calls me his Angélique. They make people more civil about us;
+and therefore it must be a simpleton who hates or disregards them, and
+a hypocrite who pretends it. I am glad to be a duchess. Manon and
+Lisette have never tied my garter so as to hurt me since, nor has the
+mischievous old La Grange said anything cross or bold: on the
+contrary, she told me what a fine colour and what a plumpness it gave
+me. Would not you rather be a duchess than a waiting-maid or a nun, if
+the king gave you your choice?
+
+_Bossuet._ Pardon me, mademoiselle, I am confounded at the levity of
+your question.
+
+_Fontanges._ I am in earnest, as you see.
+
+_Bossuet._ Flattery will come before you in other and more dangerous
+forms: you will be commended for excellences which do not belong to
+you; and this you will find as injurious to your repose as to your
+virtue. An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest
+reproof. If you reject it, you are unhappy; if you accept it, you are
+undone. The compliments of a king are of themselves sufficient to
+pervert your intellect.
+
+_Fontanges._ There you are mistaken twice over. It is not my person
+that pleases him so greatly: it is my spirit, my wit, my talents, my
+genius, and that very thing which you have mentioned--what was it? my
+intellect. He never complimented me the least upon my beauty. Others
+have said that I am the most beautiful young creature under heaven; a
+blossom of Paradise, a nymph, an angel; worth (let me whisper it in
+your ear--do I lean too hard?) a thousand Montespans. But his Majesty
+never said more on the occasion than that I was _imparagonable!_ (what
+is that?) and that he adored me; holding my hand and sitting quite
+still, when he might have romped with me and kissed me.
+
+_Bossuet._ I would aspire to the glory of converting you.
+
+_Fontanges._ You may do anything with me but convert me: you must not
+do that; I am a Catholic born. M. de Turenne and Mademoiselle de Duras
+were heretics: you did right there. The king told the chancellor that
+he prepared them, that the business was arranged for you, and that you
+had nothing to do but get ready the arguments and responses, which you
+did gallantly--did not you? And yet Mademoiselle de Duras was very
+awkward for a long while afterwards in crossing herself, and was once
+remarked to beat her breast in the litany with the points of two
+fingers at a time, when every one is taught to use only the second,
+whether it has a ring upon it or not. I am sorry she did so; for
+people might think her insincere in her conversion, and pretend that
+she kept a finger for each religion.
+
+_Bossuet._ It would be as uncharitable to doubt the conviction of
+Mademoiselle de Duras as that of M. le Maréchal.
+
+_Fontanges._ I have heard some fine verses, I can assure you,
+monseigneur, in which you are called the conqueror of Turenne. I
+should like to have been his conqueror myself, he was so great a man.
+I understand that you have lately done a much more difficult thing.
+
+_Bossuet._ To what do you refer, mademoiselle?
+
+_Fontanges._ That you have overcome quietism. Now, in the name of
+wonder, how could you manage that?
+
+_Bossuet._ By the grace of God.
+
+_Fontanges._ Yes, indeed; but never until now did God give any
+preacher so much of His grace as to subdue this pest.
+
+_Bossuet._ It has appeared among us but lately.
+
+_Fontanges._ Oh, dear me! I have always been subject to it dreadfully,
+from a child.
+
+_Bossuet._ Really! I never heard so.
+
+_Fontanges._ I checked myself as well as I could, although they
+constantly told me I looked well in it.
+
+_Bossuet._ In what, mademoiselle?
+
+_Fontanges._ In quietism; that is, when I fell asleep at sermon time.
+I am ashamed that such a learned and pious man as M. de Fénelon should
+incline to it,[1] as they say he does.
+
+_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle, you quite mistake the matter.
+
+_Fontanges._ Is not then M. de Fénelon thought a very pious and
+learned person?
+
+_Bossuet._ And justly.
+
+_Fontanges._ I have read a great way in a romance he has begun, about
+a knight-errant in search of a father. The king says there are many
+such about his court; but I never saw them nor heard of them before.
+The Marchioness de la Motte, his relative, brought it to me, written
+out in a charming hand, as much as the copy-book would hold; and I got
+through, I know not how far. If he had gone on with the nymphs in the
+grotto, I never should have been tired of him; but he quite forgot his
+own story, and left them at once; in a hurry (I suppose) to set out
+upon his mission to Saintonge in the _pays de d'Aunis_, where the king
+has promised him a famous _heretic hunt_. He is, I do assure you, a
+wonderful creature: he understands so much Latin and Greek, and knows
+all the tricks of the sorceresses. Yet you keep him under.
+
+_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle, if you really have anything to confess, and
+if you desire that I should have the honour of absolving you, it would
+be better to proceed in it, than to oppress me with unmerited eulogies
+on my humble labours.
+
+_Fontanges._ You must first direct me, monseigneur: I have nothing
+particular. The king assures me there is no harm whatever in his love
+toward me.
+
+_Bossuet._ That depends on your thoughts at the moment. If you
+abstract the mind from the body, and turn your heart toward Heaven----
+
+_Fontanges._ O monseigneur, I always did so--every time but once--you
+quite make me blush. Let us converse about something else, or I shall
+grow too serious, just as you made me the other day at the funeral
+sermon. And now let me tell you, my lord, you compose such pretty
+funeral sermons, I hope I shall have the pleasure of hearing you
+preach mine.
+
+_Bossuet._ Rather let us hope, mademoiselle, that the hour is yet far
+distant when so melancholy a service will be performed for you. May he
+who is unborn be the sad announcer of your departure hence![2] May he
+indicate to those around him many virtues not perhaps yet full-blown
+in you, and point triumphantly to many faults and foibles checked by
+you in their early growth, and lying dead on the open road, you shall
+have left behind you! To me the painful duty will, I trust, be
+spared: I am advanced in age; you are a child.
+
+_Fontanges._ Oh, no! I am seventeen.
+
+_Bossuet._ I should have supposed you younger by two years at least.
+But do you collect nothing from your own reflection, which raises so
+many in my breast? You think it possible that I, aged as I am, may
+preach a sermon at your funeral. We say that our days are few; and
+saying it, we say too much. Marie-Angélique, we have but one: the past
+are not ours, and who can promise us the future? This in which we live
+is ours only while we live in it; the next moment may strike it off
+from us; the next sentence I would utter may be broken and fall
+between us.[3] The beauty that has made a thousand hearts to beat at
+one instant, at the succeeding has been without pulse and colour,
+without admirer, friend, companion, follower. She by whose eyes the
+march of victory shall have been directed, whose name shall have
+animated armies at the extremities of the earth, drops into one of its
+crevices and mingles with its dust. Duchess de Fontanges! think on
+this! Lady! so live as to think on it undisturbed!
+
+_Fontanges._ O God! I am quite alarmed. Do not talk thus gravely. It
+is in vain that you speak to me in so sweet a voice. I am frightened
+even at the rattle of the beads about my neck: take them off, and let
+us talk on other things. What was it that dropped on the floor as you
+were speaking? It seemed to shake the room, though it sounded like a
+pin or button.
+
+_Bossuet._ Leave it there!
+
+_Fontanges._ Your ring fell from your hand, my lord bishop! How quick
+you are! Could not you have trusted me to pick it up?
+
+_Bossuet._ Madame is too condescending: had this happened, I should
+have been overwhelmed with confusion. My hand is shrivelled: the ring
+has ceased to fit it. A mere accident may draw us into perdition; a
+mere accident may bestow on us the means of grace. A pebble has moved
+you more than my words.
+
+_Fontanges._ It pleases me vastly: I admire rubies. I will ask the
+king for one exactly like it. This is the time he usually comes from
+the chase. I am sorry you cannot be present to hear how prettily I
+shall ask him: but that is impossible, you know; for I shall do it
+just when I am certain he would give me anything. He said so himself:
+he said but yesterday--
+
+      'Such a sweet creature is worth a world':
+
+and no actor on the stage was more like a king than his Majesty was
+when he spoke it, if he had but kept his wig and robe on. And yet you
+know he is rather stiff and wrinkled for so great a monarch; and his
+eyes, I am afraid, are beginning to fail him, he looks so close at
+things.
+
+_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle, such is the duty of a prince who desires to
+conciliate our regard and love.
+
+_Fontanges._ Well, I think so, too, though I did not like it in him at
+first. I am sure he will order the ring for me, and I will confess to
+you with it upon my finger. But first I must be cautious and
+particular to know of him how much it is his royal will that I should
+say.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] The opinions of Molinos on Mysticism and Quietism had begun to
+spread abroad; but Fénelon, who had acquired already a very high
+celebrity for eloquence, had not yet written on the subject. We may
+well suppose that Bossuet was among the earliest assailants of a
+system which he afterward attacked so vehemently.
+
+[2] Bossuet was in his fifty-fourth year; Mademoiselle de Fontanges
+died in child-bed the year following: he survived her twenty-three
+years.
+
+[3] Though Bossuet was capable of uttering and even of feeling such a
+sentiment, his conduct towards Fénelon, the fairest apparition that
+Christianity ever presented, was ungenerous and unjust.
+
+While the diocese of Cambray was ravaged by Louis, it was spared by
+Marlborough; who said to the archbishop that, if he was sorry he had
+not taken Cambray, it was chiefly because he lost for a time the
+pleasure of visiting so great a man. Peterborough, the next of our
+generals in glory, paid his respects to him some years afterward.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN OF GAUNT AND JOANNA OF KENT
+
+
+      Joanna, called the Fair Maid of Kent, was cousin of
+      the Black Prince, whom she married. John of Gaunt was
+      suspected of aiming at the crown in the beginning of
+      Richard's minority, which, increasing the hatred of
+      the people against him for favouring the sect of
+      Wickliffe, excited them to demolish his house and to
+      demand his impeachment.
+
+_Joanna._ How is this, my cousin, that you are besieged in your own
+house by the citizens of London? I thought you were their idol.
+
+_Gaunt._ If their idol, madam, I am one which they may tread on as
+they list when down; but which, by my soul and knighthood! the ten
+best battle-axes among them shall find it hard work to unshrine.
+
+Pardon me: I have no right, perhaps, to take or touch this hand; yet,
+my sister, bricks and stones and arrows are not presents fit for you.
+Let me conduct you some paces hence.
+
+_Joanna._ I will speak to those below in the street. Quit my hand:
+they shall obey me.
+
+_Gaunt._ If you intend to order my death, madam, your guards who have
+entered my court, and whose spurs and halberts I hear upon the
+staircase, may overpower my domestics; and, seeing no such escape as
+becomes my dignity, I submit to you. Behold my sword and gauntlet at
+your feet! Some formalities, I trust, will be used in the proceedings
+against me. Entitle me, in my attainder, not John of Gaunt, not Duke
+of Lancaster, not King of Castile; nor commemorate my father, the most
+glorious of princes, the vanquisher and pardoner of the most powerful;
+nor style me, what those who loved or who flattered me did when I was
+happier, cousin to the Fair Maid of Kent. Joanna, those days are over!
+But no enemy, no law, no eternity can take away from me, or move
+further off, my affinity in blood to the conqueror in the field of
+Crecy, of Poitiers, and Najera. Edward was my brother when he was but
+your cousin; and the edge of my shield has clinked on his in many a
+battle. Yes, we were ever near--if not in worth, in danger. She weeps.
+
+_Joanna._ Attainder! God avert it! Duke of Lancaster, what dark
+thought--alas! that the Regency should have known it! I came hither,
+sir, for no such purpose as to ensnare or incriminate or alarm you.
+
+These weeds might surely have protected me from the fresh tears you
+have drawn forth.
+
+_Gaunt._ Sister, be comforted! this visor, too, has felt them.
+
+_Joanna._ O my Edward! my own so lately! Thy memory--thy beloved
+image--which never hath abandoned me, makes me bold: I dare not say
+'generous'; for in saying it I should cease to be so--and who could be
+called generous by the side of thee? I will rescue from perdition the
+enemy of my son.
+
+Cousin, you loved your brother. Love, then, what was dearer to him
+than his life: protect what he, valiant as you have seen him, cannot!
+The father, who foiled so many, hath left no enemies; the innocent
+child, who can injure no one, finds them!
+
+Why have you unlaced and laid aside your visor? Do not expose your
+body to those missiles. Hold your shield before yourself, and step
+aside. I need it not. I am resolved----
+
+_Gaunt._ On what, my cousin? Speak, and, by the saints! it shall be
+done. This breast is your shield; this arm is mine.
+
+_Joanna._ Heavens! who could have hurled those masses of stone from
+below? they stunned me. Did they descend all of them together; or did
+they split into fragments on hitting the pavement?
+
+_Gaunt._ Truly, I was not looking that way: they came, I must believe,
+while you were speaking.
+
+_Joanna._ Aside, aside! further back! disregard _me_! Look! that last
+arrow sticks half its head deep in the wainscot. It shook so violently
+I did not see the feather at first.
+
+No, no, Lancaster! I will not permit it. Take your shield up again;
+and keep it all before you. Now step aside: I am resolved to prove
+whether the people will hear me.
+
+_Gaunt._ Then, madam, by your leave----
+
+_Joanna._ Hold!
+
+_Gaunt._ Villains! take back to your kitchens those spits and skewers
+that you, forsooth, would fain call swords and arrows; and keep your
+bricks and stones for your graves!
+
+_Joanna._ Imprudent man! who can save you? I shall be frightened: I
+must speak at once.
+
+O good kind people! ye who so greatly loved me, when I am sure I had
+done nothing to deserve it, have I (unhappy me!) no merit with you
+now, when I would assuage your anger, protect your fair fame, and send
+you home contented with yourselves and me? Who is he, worthy citizens,
+whom ye would drag to slaughter?
+
+True, indeed, he did revile someone. Neither I nor you can say
+whom--some feaster and rioter, it seems, who had little right (he
+thought) to carry sword or bow, and who, to show it, hath slunk away.
+And then another raised his anger: he was indignant that, under his
+roof, a woman should be exposed to stoning. Which of you would not be
+as choleric in a like affront? In the house of which among you should
+I not be protected as resolutely?
+
+No, no: I never can believe those angry cries. Let none ever tell me
+again he is the enemy of my son, of his king, your darling child,
+Richard. Are your fears more lively than a poor weak female's? than a
+mother's? yours, whom he hath so often led to victory, and praised to
+his father, naming each--he, John of Gaunt, the defender of the
+helpless, the comforter of the desolate, the rallying signal of the
+desperately brave!
+
+Retire, Duke of Lancaster! This is no time----
+
+_Gaunt._ Madam, I obey; but not through terror of that puddle at the
+house door, which my handful of dust would dry up. Deign to command
+me!
+
+_Joanna._ In the name of my son, then, retire!
+
+_Gaunt._ Angelic goodness! I must fairly win it.
+
+_Joanna._ I think I know his voice that crieth out: 'Who will answer
+for him?' An honest and loyal man's, one who would counsel and save me
+in any difficulty and danger. With what pleasure and satisfaction,
+with what perfect joy and confidence, do I answer our right-trusty and
+well-judging friend!
+
+'Let Lancaster bring his sureties,' say you, 'and we separate.' A
+moment yet before we separate; if I might delay you so long, to
+receive your sanction of those securities: for, in such grave matters,
+it would ill become us to be over-hasty. I could bring fifty, I could
+bring a hundred, not from among soldiers, not from among courtiers;
+but selected from yourselves, were it equitable and fair to show such
+partialities, or decorous in the parent and guardian of a king to
+offer any other than herself.
+
+Raised by the hand of the Almighty from amidst you, but still one of
+you, if the mother of a family is a part of it, here I stand surety
+for John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, for his loyalty and allegiance.
+
+_Gaunt._ [_Running back toward Joanna._] Are the rioters, then,
+bursting into the chamber through the windows?
+
+_Joanna._ The windows and doors of this solid edifice rattled and
+shook at the people's acclamation. My word is given for you: this was
+theirs in return. Lancaster! what a voice have the people when they
+speak out! It shakes me with astonishment, almost with consternation,
+while it establishes the throne: what must it be when it is lifted up
+in vengeance!
+
+_Gaunt._ Wind; vapour----
+
+_Joanna._ Which none can wield nor hold. Need I say this to my cousin
+of Lancaster?
+
+_Gaunt._ Rather say, madam, that there is always one star above which
+can tranquillize and control them.
+
+_Joanna._ Go, cousin! another time more sincerity!
+
+_Gaunt._ You have this day saved my life from the people; for I now
+see my danger better, when it is no longer close before me. My Christ!
+if ever I forget----
+
+_Joanna._ Swear not: every man in England hath sworn what you would
+swear. But if you abandon my Richard, my brave and beautiful child,
+may--Oh! I could never curse, nor wish an evil; but, if you desert him
+in the hour of need, you will think of those who have not deserted
+you, and your own great heart will lie heavy on you, Lancaster!
+
+Am I graver than I ought to be, that you look dejected? Come, then,
+gentle cousin, lead me to my horse, and accompany me home. Richard
+will embrace us tenderly. Every one is dear to every other upon rising
+out fresh from peril; affectionately then will he look, sweet boy,
+upon his mother and his uncle! Never mind how many questions he may
+ask you, nor how strange ones. His only displeasure, if he has any,
+will be that he stood not against the rioters or among them.
+
+_Gaunt._ Older than he have been as fond of mischief, and as fickle in
+the choice of a party.
+
+I shall tell him that, coming to blows, the assailant is often in the
+right; that the assailed is always.
+
+
+
+
+LEOFRIC AND GODIVA
+
+
+_Godiva._ There is a dearth in the land, my sweet Leofric! Remember
+how many weeks of drought we have had, even in the deep pastures of
+Leicestershire; and how many Sundays we have heard the same prayers
+for rain, and supplications that it would please the Lord in His mercy
+to turn aside His anger from the poor, pining cattle. You, my dear
+husband, have imprisoned more than one malefactor for leaving his dead
+ox in the public way; and other hinds have fled before you out of the
+traces, in which they, and their sons and their daughters, and haply
+their old fathers and mothers, were dragging the abandoned wain
+homeward. Although we were accompanied by many brave spearmen and
+skilful archers, it was perilous to pass the creatures which the
+farmyard dogs, driven from the hearth by the poverty of their masters,
+were tearing and devouring; while others, bitten and lamed, filled the
+air either with long and deep howls or sharp and quick barkings, as
+they struggled with hunger and feebleness, or were exasperated by heat
+and pain. Nor could the thyme from the heath, nor the bruised branches
+of the fir-tree, extinguish or abate the foul odour.
+
+_Leofric._ And now, Godiva, my darling, thou art afraid we should be
+eaten up before we enter the gates of Coventry; or perchance that in
+the gardens there are no roses to greet thee, no sweet herbs for thy
+mat and pillow.
+
+_Godiva._ Leofric, I have no such fears. This is the month of roses: I
+find them everywhere since my blessed marriage. They, and all other
+sweet herbs, I know not why, seem to greet me wherever I look at them,
+as though they knew and expected me. Surely they cannot feel that I am
+fond of them.
+
+_Leofric._ O light, laughing simpleton! But what wouldst thou? I came
+not hither to pray; and yet if praying would satisfy thee, or remove
+the drought, I would ride up straightway to Saint Michael's and pray
+until morning.
+
+_Godiva._ I would do the same, O Leofric! but God hath turned away His
+ear from holier lips than mine. Would my own dear husband hear me, if
+I implored him for what is easier to accomplish--what he can do like
+God?
+
+_Leofric._ How! what is it?
+
+_Godiva._ I would not, in the first hurry of your wrath, appeal to
+you, my loving lord, on behalf of these unhappy men who have offended
+you.
+
+_Leofric._ Unhappy! is that all?
+
+_Godiva._ Unhappy they must surely be, to have offended you so
+grievously. What a soft air breathes over us! how quiet and serene and
+still an evening! how calm are the heavens and the earth! Shall none
+enjoy them; not even we, my Leofric? The sun is ready to set: let it
+never set, O Leofric, on your anger. These are not my words: they are
+better than mine. Should they lose their virtue from my unworthiness
+in uttering them?
+
+_Leofric._ Godiva, wouldst thou plead to me for rebels?
+
+_Godiva._ They have, then, drawn the sword against you? Indeed, I knew
+it not.
+
+_Leofric._ They have omitted to send me my dues, established by my
+ancestors, well knowing of our nuptials, and of the charges and
+festivities they require, and that in a season of such scarcity my own
+lands are insufficient.
+
+_Godiva._ If they were starving, as they said they were----
+
+_Leofric._ Must I starve too? Is it not enough to lose my vassals?
+
+_Godiva._ Enough! O God! too much! too much! May you never lose them!
+Give them life, peace, comfort, contentment. There are those among
+them who kissed me in my infancy, and who blessed me at the baptismal
+font. Leofric, Leofric! the first old man I meet I shall think is one
+of those; and I shall think on the blessing he gave, and (ah me!) on
+the blessing I bring back to him. My heart will bleed, will burst; and
+he will weep at it! he will weep, poor soul, for the wife of a cruel
+lord who denounces vengeance on him, who carries death into his
+family!
+
+_Leofric._ We must hold solemn festivals.
+
+_Godiva._ We must, indeed.
+
+_Leofric._ Well, then?
+
+_Godiva._ Is the clamorousness that succeeds the death of God's dumb
+creatures, are crowded halls, are slaughtered cattle festivals?--are
+maddening songs, and giddy dances, and hireling praises from
+parti-coloured coats? Can the voice of a minstrel tell us better
+things of ourselves than our own internal one might tell us; or can
+his breath make our breath softer in sleep? O my beloved! let
+everything be a joyance to us: it will, if we will. Sad is the day,
+and worse must follow, when we hear the blackbird in the garden, and
+do not throb with joy. But, Leofric, the high festival is strown by
+the servant of God upon the heart of man. It is gladness, it is
+thanksgiving; it is the orphan, the starveling, pressed to the bosom,
+and bidden as its first commandment to remember its benefactor. We
+will hold this festival; the guests are ready: we may keep it up for
+weeks, and months, and years together, and always be the happier and
+the richer for it. The beverage of this feast, O Leofric, is sweeter
+than bee or flower or vine can give us: it flows from heaven; and in
+heaven will it abundantly be poured out again to him who pours it out
+here abundantly.
+
+_Leofric._ Thou art wild.
+
+_Godiva._ I have, indeed, lost myself. Some Power, some good kind
+Power, melts me (body and soul and voice) into tenderness and love. O
+my husband, we must obey it. Look upon me! look upon me! lift your
+sweet eyes from the ground! I will not cease to supplicate; I dare
+not.
+
+_Leofric._ We may think upon it.
+
+_Godiva._ Oh, never say that! What! think upon goodness when you can
+be good? Let not the infants cry for sustenance! The Mother of Our
+Blessed Lord will hear them; us never, never afterward.
+
+_Leofric._ Here comes the bishop: we are but one mile from the walls.
+Why dismountest thou? no bishop can expect this. Godiva! my honour and
+rank among men are humbled by this. Earl Godwin will hear of it. Up!
+up! the bishop hath seen it: he urgeth his horse onward. Dost thou not
+hear him now upon the solid turf behind thee?
+
+_Godiva._ Never, no, never will I rise, O Leofric, until you remit
+this most impious task--this tax on hard labour, on hard life.
+
+_Leofric._ Turn round: look how the fat nag canters, as to the tune of
+a sinner's psalm, slow and hard-breathing. What reason or right can
+the people have to complain, while their bishop's steed is so sleek
+and well caparisoned? Inclination to change, desire to abolish old
+usages. Up! up! for shame! They shall smart for it, idlers! Sir
+Bishop, I must blush for my young bride.
+
+_Godiva._ My husband, my husband! will you pardon the city?
+
+_Leofric._ Sir Bishop! I could think you would have seen her in this
+plight. Will I pardon? Yea, Godiva, by the holy rood, will I pardon
+the city, when thou ridest naked at noontide through the streets!
+
+_Godiva._ O my dear, cruel Leofric, where is the heart you gave me? It
+was not so: can mine have hardened it?
+
+_Bishop._ Earl, thou abashest thy spouse; she turneth pale, and
+weepeth. Lady Godiva, peace be with thee.
+
+_Godiva._ Thanks, holy man! peace will be with me when peace is with
+your city. Did you hear my lord's cruel word?
+
+_Bishop._ I did, lady.
+
+_Godiva._ Will you remember it, and pray against it?
+
+_Bishop._ Wilt _thou_ forget it, daughter?
+
+_Godiva._ I am not offended.
+
+_Bishop._ Angel of peace and purity!
+
+_Godiva._ But treasure it up in your heart: deem it an incense, good
+only when it is consumed and spent, ascending with prayer and
+sacrifice. And, now, what was it?
+
+_Bishop._ Christ save us! that He will pardon the city when thou
+ridest naked through the streets at noon.
+
+_Godiva._ Did he swear an oath?
+
+_Bishop._ He sware by the holy rood.
+
+_Godiva._ My Redeemer, Thou hast heard it! save the city!
+
+_Leofric._ We are now upon the beginning of the pavement: these are
+the suburbs. Let us think of feasting: we may pray afterward;
+to-morrow we shall rest.
+
+_Godiva._ No judgments, then, to-morrow, Leofric?
+
+_Leofric._ None: we will carouse.
+
+_Godiva._ The saints of heaven have given me strength and confidence;
+my prayers are heard; the heart of my beloved is now softened.
+
+_Leofric._ Ay, ay.
+
+_Godiva._ Say, dearest Leofric, is there indeed no other hope, no
+other mediation?
+
+_Leofric._ I have sworn. Beside, thou hast made me redden and turn my
+face away from thee, and all the knaves have seen it: this adds to the
+city's crime.
+
+_Godiva._ I have blushed, too, Leofric, and was not rash nor obdurate.
+
+_Leofric._ But thou, my sweetest, art given to blushing: there is no
+conquering it in thee. I wish thou hadst not alighted so hastily and
+roughly: it hath shaken down a sheaf of thy hair. Take heed thou sit
+not upon it, lest it anguish thee. Well done! it mingleth now sweetly
+with the cloth of gold upon the saddle, running here and there, as if
+it had life and faculties and business, and were working thereupon
+some newer and cunninger device. O my beauteous Eve! there is a
+Paradise about thee! the world is refreshed as thou movest and
+breathest on it. I cannot see or think of evil where thou art. I could
+throw my arms even here about thee. No signs for me! no shaking of
+sunbeams! no reproof or frown of wonderment.--I _will_ say it--now,
+then, for worse--I could close with my kisses thy half-open lips, ay,
+and those lovely and loving eyes, before the people.
+
+_Godiva._ To-morrow you shall kiss me, and they shall bless you for
+it. I shall be very pale, for to-night I must fast and pray.
+
+_Leofric._ I do not hear thee; the voices of the folk are so loud
+under this archway.
+
+_Godiva._ [_To herself._] God help them! good kind souls! I hope they
+will not crowd about me so to-morrow. O Leofric! could my name be
+forgotten, and yours alone remembered! But perhaps my innocence may
+save me from reproach; and how many as innocent are in fear and
+famine! No eye will open on me but fresh from tears. What a young
+mother for so large a family! Shall my youth harm me? Under God's hand
+it gives me courage. Ah! when will the morning come? Ah! when will the
+noon be over?
+
+      The story of Godiva, at one of whose festivals or
+      fairs I was present in my boyhood, has always much
+      interested me; and I wrote a poem on it, sitting, I
+      remember, by the _square pool_ at Rugby. When I showed
+      it to the friend in whom I had most confidence, he
+      began to scoff at the subject; and, on his reaching
+      the last line, his laughter was loud and immoderate.
+      This conversation has brought both laughter and stanza
+      back to me, and the earnestness with which I entreated
+      and implored my friend _not to tell the lads_, so
+      heart-strickenly and desperately was I ashamed. The
+      verses are these, if any one else should wish another
+      laugh at me:
+
+      'In every hour, in every mood,
+      O lady, it is sweet and good
+        To bathe the soul in prayer;
+      And, at the close of such a day,
+      When we have ceased to bless and pray,
+        To dream on thy long hair.'
+
+      May the peppermint be still growing on the bank in
+      that place!
+
+
+
+
+ESSEX AND SPENSER
+
+
+_Essex._ Instantly on hearing of thy arrival from Ireland, I sent a
+message to thee, good Edmund, that I might learn, from one so
+judicious and dispassionate as thou art, the real state of things in
+that distracted country; it having pleased the queen's Majesty to
+think of appointing me her deputy, in order to bring the rebellious to
+submission.
+
+_Spenser._ Wisely and well considered; but more worthily of her
+judgment than her affection. May your lordship overcome, as you have
+ever done, the difficulties and dangers you foresee.
+
+_Essex._ We grow weak by striking at random; and knowing that I must
+strike, and strike heavily, I would fain see exactly where the stroke
+shall fall.
+
+Now what tale have you for us?
+
+_Spenser._ Interrogate me, my lord, that I may answer each question
+distinctly, my mind being in sad confusion at what I have seen and
+undergone.
+
+_Essex._ Give me thy account and opinion of these very affairs as thou
+leftest them; for I would rather know one part well than all
+imperfectly; and the violences of which I have heard within the day
+surpass belief.
+
+Why weepest thou, my gentle Spenser? Have the rebels sacked thy house?
+
+_Spenser._ They have plundered and utterly destroyed it.
+
+_Essex._ I grieve for thee, and will see thee righted.
+
+_Spenser._ In this they have little harmed me.
+
+_Essex._ How! I have heard it reported that thy grounds are fertile,
+and thy mansion large and pleasant.
+
+_Spenser._ If river and lake and meadow-ground and mountain could
+render any place the abode of pleasantness, pleasant was mine, indeed!
+
+On the lovely banks of Mulla I found deep contentment. Under the dark
+alders did I muse and meditate. Innocent hopes were my gravest cares,
+and my playfullest fancy was with kindly wishes. Ah! surely of all
+cruelties the worst is to extinguish our kindness. Mine is gone: I
+love the people and the land no longer. My lord, ask me not about
+them: I may speak injuriously.
+
+_Essex._ Think rather, then, of thy happier hours and busier
+occupations; these likewise may instruct me.
+
+_Spenser._ The first seeds I sowed in the garden, ere the old castle
+was made habitable for my lovely bride, were acorns from Penshurst. I
+planted a little oak before my mansion at the birth of each child. My
+sons, I said to myself, shall often play in the shade of them when I
+am gone; and every year shall they take the measure of their growth,
+as fondly as I take theirs.
+
+_Essex._ Well, well; but let not this thought make thee weep so
+bitterly.
+
+_Spenser._ Poison may ooze from beautiful plants; deadly grief from
+dearest reminiscences. I _must_ grieve, I _must_ weep: it seems the
+law of God, and the only one that men are not disposed to contravene.
+In the performance of this alone do they effectually aid one another.
+
+_Essex._ Spenser! I wish I had at hand any arguments or persuasions of
+force sufficient to remove thy sorrow; but, really, I am not in the
+habit of seeing men grieve at anything except the loss of favour at
+court, or of a hawk, or of a buck-hound. And were I to swear out
+condolences to a man of thy discernment, in the same round, roll-call
+phrases we employ with one another upon these occasions, I should be
+guilty, not of insincerity, but of insolence. True grief hath ever
+something sacred in it; and, when it visiteth a wise man and a brave
+one, is most holy.
+
+Nay, kiss not my hand: he whom God smiteth hath God with him. In His
+presence what am I?
+
+_Spenser._ Never so great, my lord, as at this hour, when you see
+aright who is greater. May He guide your counsels, and preserve your
+life and glory!
+
+_Essex._ Where are thy friends? Are they with thee?
+
+_Spenser._ Ah, where, indeed! Generous, true-hearted Philip! where art
+thou, whose presence was unto me peace and safety; whose smile was
+contentment, and whose praise renown? My lord! I cannot but think of
+him among still heavier losses: he was my earliest friend, and would
+have taught me wisdom.
+
+_Essex._ Pastoral poetry, my dear Spenser, doth not require tears and
+lamentations. Dry thine eyes; rebuild thine house: the queen and
+council, I venture to promise thee, will make ample amends for every
+evil thou hast sustained. What! does that enforce thee to wail still
+louder?
+
+_Spenser._ Pardon me, bear with me, most noble heart! I have lost what
+no council, no queen, no Essex, can restore.
+
+_Essex._ We will see that. There are other swords, and other arms to
+yield them, beside a Leicester's and a Raleigh's. Others can crush
+their enemies, and serve their friends.
+
+_Spenser._ O my sweet child! And of many so powerful, many so wise and
+so beneficent, was there none to save thee? None, none!
+
+_Essex._ I now perceive that thou lamentest what almost every father
+is destined to lament. Happiness must be bought, although the payment
+may be delayed. Consider: the same calamity might have befallen thee
+here in London. Neither the houses of ambassadors, nor the palaces of
+kings, nor the altars of God Himself, are asylums against death. How
+do I know but under this very roof there may sleep some latent
+calamity, that in an instant shall cover with gloom every inmate of
+the house, and every far dependent?
+
+_Spenser._ God avert it!
+
+_Essex._ Every day, every hour of the year, do hundreds mourn what
+thou mournest.
+
+_Spenser._ Oh, no, no, no! Calamities there are around us; calamities
+there are all over the earth; calamities there are in all seasons: but
+none in any season, none in any place, like mine.
+
+_Essex._ So say all fathers, so say all husbands. Look at any old
+mansion-house, and let the sun shine as gloriously as it may on the
+golden vanes, or the arms recently quartered over the gateway or the
+embayed window, and on the happy pair that haply is toying at it:
+nevertheless, thou mayest say that of a certainty the same fabric hath
+seen much sorrow within its chambers, and heard many wailings; and
+each time this was the heaviest stroke of all. Funerals have passed
+along through the stout-hearted knights upon the wainscot, and amid
+the laughing nymphs upon the arras. Old servants have shaken their
+heads, as if somebody had deceived them, when they found that beauty
+and nobility could perish.
+
+Edmund! the things that are too true pass by us as if they were not
+true at all; and when they have singled us out, then only do they
+strike us. Thou and I must go too. Perhaps the next year may blow us
+away with its fallen leaves.
+
+_Spenser._ For you, my lord, many years (I trust) are waiting: I never
+shall see those fallen leaves. No leaf, no bud, will spring upon the
+earth before I sink into her breast for ever.
+
+_Essex._ Thou, who art wiser than most men, shouldst bear with
+patience, equanimity, and courage what is common to all.
+
+_Spenser._ Enough, enough, enough! Have all men seen their infant
+burnt to ashes before their eyes?
+
+_Essex._ Gracious God! Merciful Father! what is this?
+
+_Spenser._ Burnt alive! burnt to ashes! burnt to ashes! The flames
+dart their serpent tongues through the nursery window. I cannot quit
+thee, my Elizabeth! I cannot lay down our Edmund! Oh, these flames!
+They persecute, they enthral me; they curl round my temples; they hiss
+upon my brain; they taunt me with their fierce, foul voices; they carp
+at me, they wither me, they consume me, throwing back to me a little
+of life to roll and suffer in, with their fangs upon me. Ask me, my
+lord, the things you wish to know from me: I may answer them; I am now
+composed again. Command me, my gracious lord! I would yet serve you:
+soon I shall be unable. You have stooped to raise me up; you have
+borne with me; you have pitied me, even like one not powerful. You
+have brought comfort, and will leave it with me, for gratitude is
+comfort.
+
+Oh! my memory stands all a-tiptoe on one burning point: when it drops
+from it, then it perishes. Spare me: ask me nothing; let me weep
+before you in peace--the kindest act of greatness.
+
+_Essex._ I should rather have dared to mount into the midst of the
+conflagration than I now dare entreat thee not to weep. The tears that
+overflow thy heart, my Spenser, will staunch and heal it in their
+sacred stream; but not without hope in God.
+
+_Spenser._ My hope in God is that I may soon see again what He has
+taken from me. Amid the myriads of angels, there is not one so
+beautiful; and even he (if there be any) who is appointed my guardian
+could never love me so. Ah! these are idle thoughts, vain wanderings,
+distempered dreams. If there ever were guardian angels, he who so
+wanted one--my helpless boy--would not have left these arms upon my
+knees.
+
+_Essex._ God help and sustain thee, too gentle Spenser! I never will
+desert thee. But what am I? Great they have called me! Alas, how
+powerless, then, and infantile is greatness in the presence of
+calamity!
+
+Come, give me thy hand: let us walk up and down the gallery. Bravely
+done! I will envy no more a Sidney or a Raleigh.
+
+
+
+
+LORD BACON AND RICHARD HOOKER
+
+
+_Bacon._ Hearing much of your worthiness and wisdom, Master Richard
+Hooker, I have besought your comfort and consolation in this my too
+heavy affliction: for we often do stand in need of hearing what we
+know full well, and our own balsams must be poured into our breasts by
+another's hand. As the air at our doors is sometimes more expeditious
+in removing pain and heaviness from the body than the most far-fetched
+remedies would be, so the voice alone of a neighbourly and friendly
+visitant may be more effectual in assuaging our sorrows, than whatever
+is most forcible in rhetoric and most recondite in wisdom. On these
+occasions we cannot put ourselves in a posture to receive the latter,
+and still less are we at leisure to look into the corners of our
+store-room, and to uncurl the leaves of our references. As for Memory,
+who, you may tell me, would save us the trouble, she is footsore
+enough in all conscience with me, without going farther back.
+Withdrawn as you live from court and courtly men, and having ears
+occupied by better reports than such as are flying about me, yet haply
+so hard a case as mine, befalling a man heretofore not averse from the
+studies in which you take delight, may have touched you with some
+concern.
+
+_Hooker._ I do think, my Lord of Verulam, that, unhappy as you appear,
+God in sooth has forgone to chasten you, and that the day which in His
+wisdom He appointed for your trial, was the very day on which the
+king's Majesty gave unto your ward and custody the great seal of his
+English realm. And yet perhaps it may be--let me utter it without
+offence--that your features and stature were from that day forward no
+longer what they were before. Such an effect do power and rank and
+office produce even on prudent and religious men.
+
+A hound's whelp howleth, if you pluck him up above where he stood:
+man, in much greater peril from falling, doth rejoice. You, my lord,
+as befitted you, are smitten and contrite, and do appear in deep
+wretchedness and tribulation to your servants and those about you; but
+I know that there is always a balm which lies uppermost in these
+afflictions, and that no heart rightly softened can be very sore.
+
+_Bacon._ And yet, Master Richard, it is surely no small matter to
+lose the respect of those who looked up to us for countenance; and the
+favour of a right learned king; and, O Master Hooker, such a power of
+money! But money is mere dross. I should always hold it so, if it
+possessed not two qualities: that of making men treat us reverently,
+and that of enabling us to help the needy.
+
+_Hooker._ The respect, I think, of those who respect us for what a
+fool can give and a rogue can take away, may easily be dispensed with;
+but it is indeed a high prerogative to help the needy; and when it
+pleases the Almighty to deprive us of it, let us believe that He
+foreknoweth our inclination to negligence in the charge entrusted to
+us, and that in His mercy He hath removed from us a most fearful
+responsibility.
+
+_Bacon._ I know a number of poor gentlemen to whom I could have
+rendered aid.
+
+_Hooker._ Have you examined and sifted their worthiness?
+
+_Bacon._ Well and deeply.
+
+_Hooker._ Then must you have known them long before your adversity,
+and while the means of succouring them were in your hands.
+
+_Bacon._ You have circumvented and entrapped me, Master Hooker. Faith!
+I am mortified: you the schoolman, I the schoolboy!
+
+_Hooker._ Say not so, my lord. Your years, indeed, are fewer than
+mine, by seven or thereabout; but your knowledge is far higher, your
+experience richer. Our wits are not always in blossom upon us. When
+the roses are overcharged and languid, up springs a spike of rue.
+Mortified on such an occasion? God forfend it! But again to the
+business. I should never be over-penitent for my neglect of needy
+gentlemen who have neglected themselves much worse. They have chosen
+their profession with its chances and contingencies. If they had
+protected their country by their courage or adorned it by their
+studies, they would have merited, and under a king of such learning
+and such equity would have received in some sort, their reward. I look
+upon them as so many old cabinets of ivory and tortoise-shell,
+scratched, flawed, splintered, rotten, defective both within and
+without, hard to unlock, insecure to lock up again, unfit to use.
+
+_Bacon._ Methinks it beginneth to rain, Master Richard. What if we
+comfort our bodies with a small cup of wine, against the ill-temper of
+the air. Wherefore, in God's name, are you affrightened?
+
+_Hooker._ Not so, my lord; not so.
+
+_Bacon._ What then affects you?
+
+_Hooker._ Why, indeed, since your lordship interrogates me--I looked,
+idly and imprudently, into that rich buffet; and I saw, unless the
+haze of the weather has come into the parlour, or my sight is the
+worse for last night's reading, no fewer than six silver pints.
+Surely, six tables for company are laid only at coronations.
+
+_Bacon._ There are many men so squeamish that forsooth they would keep
+a cup to themselves, and never communicate it to their nearest and
+best friend; a fashion which seems to me offensive in an honest house,
+where no disease of ill repute ought to be feared. We have lately,
+Master Richard, adopted strange fashions; we have run into the wildest
+luxuries. The Lord Leicester, I heard it from my father--God forfend
+it should ever be recorded in our history!--when he entertained Queen
+Elizabeth at Kenilworth Castle, laid before her Majesty a fork of pure
+silver. I the more easily credit it, as Master Thomas Coriatt doth
+vouch for having seen the same monstrous sign of voluptuousness at
+Venice. We are surely the especial favourites of Providence, when such
+wantonness hath not melted us quite away. After this portent, it would
+otherwise have appeared incredible that we should have broken the
+Spanish Armada.
+
+Pledge me: hither comes our wine.
+
+[_To the Servant._] Dolt! villain! is not this the beverage I reserve
+for myself?
+
+The blockhead must imagine that Malmsey runs in a stream under the
+ocean, like the Alpheus. Bear with me, good Master Hooker, but verily
+I have little of this wine, and I keep it as a medicine for my many
+and growing infirmities. You are healthy at present: God in His
+infinite mercy long maintain you so! Weaker drink is more wholesome
+for you. The lighter ones of France are best accommodated by Nature to
+our constitutions, and therefore she has placed them so within our
+reach that we have only to stretch out our necks, in a manner, and
+drink them from the vat. But this Malmsey, this Malmsey, flies from
+centre to circumference, and makes youthful blood boil.
+
+_Hooker._ Of a truth, my knowledge in such matters is but spare. My
+Lord of Canterbury once ordered part of a goblet, containing some
+strong Spanish wine, to be taken to me from his table when I dined by
+sufferance with his chaplains, and, although a most discreet, prudent
+man as befitteth his high station, was not so chary of my health as
+your lordship. Wine is little to be trifled with, physic less. The
+Cretans, the brewers of this Malmsey, have many aromatic and powerful
+herbs among them. On their mountains, and notably on Ida, grows that
+dittany which works such marvels, and which perhaps may give activity
+to this hot medicinal drink of theirs. I would not touch it,
+knowingly: an unregarded leaf, dropped into it above the ordinary,
+might add such puissance to the concoction as almost to break the
+buckles in my shoes; since we have good and valid authority that the
+wounded hart, on eating thereof, casts the arrow out of his haunch or
+entrails, although it stuck a palm deep.[4]
+
+_Bacon._ When I read of such things I doubt them. Religion and
+politics belong to God, and to God's vicegerent the king; we must not
+touch upon them unadvisedly: but if I could procure a plant of dittany
+on easy terms, I would persuade my apothecary and my gamekeeper to
+make some experiments.
+
+_Hooker._ I dare not distrust what grave writers have declared in
+matters beyond my knowledge.
+
+_Bacon._ Good Master Hooker, I have read many of your reasonings, and
+they are admirably well sustained: added to which, your genius has
+given such a strong current to your language as can come only from a
+mighty elevation and a most abundant plenteousness. Yet forgive me, in
+God's name, my worthy master, if you descried in me some expression of
+wonder at your simplicity. We are all weak and vulnerable somewhere:
+common men in the higher parts; heroes, as was feigned of Achilles, in
+the lower. You would define to a hair's-breadth the qualities, states,
+and dependencies of principalities, dominations, and powers; you would
+be unerring about the apostles and the churches; and 'tis marvellous
+how you wander about a pot-herb!
+
+_Hooker._ I know my poor weak intellects, most noble lord, and how
+scantily they have profited by my hard painstaking. Comprehending few
+things, and those imperfectly, I say only what others have said
+before, wise men and holy; and if, by passing through my heart into
+the wide world around me, it pleaseth God that this little treasure
+shall have lost nothing of its weight and pureness, my exultation is
+then the exultation of humility. Wisdom consisteth not in knowing many
+things, nor even in knowing them thoroughly; but in choosing and in
+following what conduces the most certainly to our lasting happiness
+and true glory. And this wisdom, my Lord of Verulam, cometh from
+above.
+
+_Bacon._ I have observed among the well-informed and the ill-informed
+nearly the same quantity of infirmities and follies: those who are
+rather the wiser keep them separate, and those who are wisest of all
+keep them better out of sight. Now, examine the sayings and writings
+of the prime philosophers, and you will often find them, Master
+Richard, to be untruths made to resemble truths. The business with
+them is to approximate as nearly as possible, and not to touch it: the
+goal of the charioteer is _evitata fervidis rotis_, as some poet
+saith. But we who care nothing for chants and cadences, and have no
+time to catch at applauses, push forward over stones and sands
+straightway to our object. I have persuaded men, and shall persuade
+them for ages, that I possess a wide range of thought unexplored by
+others, and first thrown open by me, with many fair enclosures of
+choice and abstruse knowledge. I have incited and instructed them to
+examine all subjects of useful and rational inquiry; few that occurred
+to me have I myself left untouched or untried: one, however, hath
+almost escaped me, and surely one worth the trouble.
+
+_Hooker._ Pray, my lord, if I am guilty of no indiscretion, what may
+it be?
+
+_Bacon._ Francis Bacon.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[4] Lest it be thought that authority is wanting for the strong
+expression of Hooker on the effects of dittany, the reader is referred
+to the curious treatise of Plutarch on the reasoning faculty of
+animals, in which (near the end) he asks: 'Who instructed deer wounded
+by the Cretan arrow to seek for dittany? on the tasting of which herb
+the bolts fall immediately from their bodies.'
+
+
+
+
+OLIVER CROMWELL AND WALTER NOBLE
+
+
+_Cromwell._ What brings thee back from Staffordshire, friend Walter?
+
+_Noble._ I hope, General Cromwell, to persuade you that the death of
+Charles will be considered by all Europe as a most atrocious action.
+
+_Cromwell._ Thou hast already persuaded me: what then?
+
+_Noble._ Surely, then, you will prevent it, for your authority is
+great. Even those who upon their consciences found him guilty would
+remit the penalty of blood, some from policy, some from mercy. I have
+conversed with Hutchinson, with Ludlow,[5] your friend and mine, with
+Henry Nevile, and Walter Long: you will oblige these worthy friends,
+and unite in your favour the suffrages of the truest and trustiest men
+living. There are many others, with whom I am in no habits of
+intercourse, who are known to entertain the same sentiments; and these
+also are among the country gentlemen, to whom our parliament owes the
+better part of its reputation.
+
+_Cromwell._ You country gentlemen bring with you into the People's
+House a freshness and sweet savour which our citizens lack mightily. I
+would fain merit your esteem, heedless of those pursy fellows from
+hulks and warehouses, with one ear lappeted by the pen behind it, and
+the other an heirloom, as Charles would have had it, in Laud's
+Star-chamber. Oh, they are proud and bloody men! My heart melts; but,
+alas! my authority is null: I am the servant of the Commonwealth. I
+will not, dare not, betray it. If Charles Stuart had threatened my
+death only, in the letter we ripped out of the saddle, I would have
+reproved him manfully and turned him adrift: but others are concerned;
+lives more precious than mine, worn as it is with fastings, prayers,
+long services, and preyed upon by a pouncing disease. The Lord hath
+led him into the toils laid for the innocent. Foolish man! he never
+could eschew evil counsel.
+
+_Noble._ In comparison with you, he is but as a pinnacle to a
+buttress. I acknowledge his weaknesses, and cannot wink upon his
+crimes: but that which you visit as the heaviest of them perhaps was
+not so, although the most disastrous to both parties--the bearing of
+arms against his people. He fought for what he considered his
+hereditary property; we do the same: should we be hanged for losing a
+lawsuit?
+
+_Cromwell._ No, unless it is the second. Thou talkest finely and
+foolishly, Wat, for a man of thy calm discernment. If a rogue holds a
+pistol to my breast, do I ask him who he is? Do I care whether his
+doublet be of cat-skin or of dog-skin? Fie upon such wicked sophisms!
+Marvellous, how the devil works upon good men's minds!
+
+_Noble._ Charles was always more to be dreaded by his friends than by
+his enemies, and now by neither.
+
+_Cromwell._ God forbid that Englishmen should be feared by Englishmen!
+but to be daunted by the weakest, to bend before the worst--I tell
+thee, Walter Noble, if Moses and the prophets commanded me to this
+villainy, I would draw back and mount my horse.
+
+_Noble._ I wish that our history, already too dark with blood, should
+contain, as far as we are concerned in it, some unpolluted pages.
+
+_Cromwell._ 'Twere better, much better. Never shall I be called, I
+promise thee, an unnecessary shedder of blood. Remember, my good,
+prudent friend, of what materials our sectaries are composed: what
+hostility against all eminence, what rancour against all glory. Not
+only kingly power offends them, but every other; and they talk of
+_putting to the sword_, as if it were the quietest, gentlest, and most
+ordinary thing in the world. The knaves even dictate from their stools
+and benches to men in armour, bruised and bleeding for them; and with
+school-dames' scourges in their fists do they give counsel to those
+who protect them from the cart and halter. In the name of the Lord, I
+must spit outright (or worse) upon these crackling bouncing
+firebrands, before I can make them tractable.
+
+_Noble._ I lament their blindness; but follies wear out the faster by
+being hard run upon. This fermenting sourness will presently turn
+vapid, and people will cast it out. I am not surprised that you are
+discontented and angry at what thwarts your better nature. But come,
+Cromwell, overlook them, despise them, and erect to yourself a
+glorious name by sparing a mortal enemy.
+
+_Cromwell._ A glorious name, by God's blessing, I will erect; and all
+our fellow-labourers shall rejoice at it: but I see better than they
+do the blow descending on them, and my arm better than theirs can ward
+it off. Noble, thy heart overflows with kindness for Charles Stuart:
+if he were at liberty to-morrow by thy intercession, he would sign thy
+death-warrant the day after, for serving the Commonwealth. A
+generation of vipers! there is nothing upright nor grateful in them:
+never was there a drop of even Scotch blood in their veins. Indeed, we
+have a clue to their bedchamber still hanging on the door, and I
+suspect that an Italian fiddler or French valet has more than once
+crossed the current.
+
+_Noble._ That may be: nor indeed is it credible that any royal or
+courtly family has gone on for three generations without a spur from
+interloper. Look at France! some stout Parisian saint performed the
+last miracle there.
+
+_Cromwell._ Now thou talkest gravely and sensibly: I could hear thee
+discourse thus for hours together.
+
+_Noble._ Hear me, Cromwell, with equal patience on matters more
+important. We all have our sufferings: why increase one another's
+wantonly? Be the blood Scotch or English, French or Italian, a
+drummer's or a buffoon's, it carries a soul upon its stream; and every
+soul has many places to touch at, and much business to perform, before
+it reaches its ultimate destination. Abolish the power of Charles;
+extinguish not his virtues. Whatever is worthy to be loved for
+anything is worthy to be preserved. A wise and dispassionate
+legislator, if any such should arise among men, will not condemn to
+death him who has done, or is likely to do, more service than injury
+to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects to ours, and
+their business is never with virtues or with hopes.
+
+_Cromwell._ Walter! Walter! we laugh at speculators.
+
+_Noble._ Many indeed are ready enough to laugh at speculators, because
+many profit, or expect to profit, by established and widening abuses.
+Speculations toward evil lose their name by adoption; speculations
+towards good are for ever speculations, and he who hath proposed them
+is a chimerical and silly creature. Among the matters under this
+denomination I never find a cruel project, I never find an oppressive
+or unjust one: how happens it?
+
+_Cromwell._ Proportions should exist in all things. Sovereigns are
+paid higher than others for their office; they should therefore be
+punished more severely for abusing it, even if the consequences of
+this abuse were in nothing more grievous or extensive. We cannot clap
+them in the stocks conveniently, nor whip them at the market-place.
+Where there is a crown there must be an axe: I would keep it there
+only.
+
+_Noble._ Lop off the rotten, press out the poisonous, preserve the
+rest; let it suffice to have given this memorable example of national
+power and justice.
+
+_Cromwell._ Justice is perfect; an attribute of God: we must not
+trifle with it.
+
+_Noble._ Should we be less merciful to our fellow-creatures than to
+our domestic animals? Before we deliver them to be killed, we weigh
+their services against their inconveniences. On the foundation of
+policy, when we have no better, let us erect the trophies of humanity:
+let us consider that, educated in the same manner and situated in the
+same position, we ourselves might have acted as reprovably. Abolish
+that for ever which must else for ever generate abuses; and attribute
+the faults of the man to the office, not the faults of the office to
+the man.
+
+_Cromwell._ I have no bowels for hypocrisy, and I abominate and detest
+kingship.
+
+_Noble._ I abominate and detest hangmanship; but in certain stages of
+society both are necessary. Let them go together; we want neither now.
+
+_Cromwell._ Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose
+their direction and begin to bend: such nails are then thrown into the
+dust or into the furnace. I must do my duty; I must accomplish what is
+commanded me; I must not be turned aside. I am loath to be cast into
+the furnace or the dust; but God's will be done! Prithee, Wat, since
+thou readest, as I see, the books of philosophers, didst thou ever
+hear of Digby's remedies by sympathy?
+
+_Noble._ Yes, formerly.
+
+_Cromwell._ Well, now, I protest, I do believe there is something in
+them. To cure my headache, I must breathe a vein in the neck of
+Charles.
+
+_Noble._ Oliver, Oliver! others are wittiest over wine, thou over
+blood: cold-hearted, cruel man.
+
+_Cromwell._ Why, dost thou verily think me so, Walter? Perhaps thou
+art right in the main: but He alone who fashioned me in my mother's
+womb, and who sees things deeper than we do, knows that.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[5] Ludlow, a most humane and temperate man, signed the death-warrant
+of Charles, for violating the constitution he had sworn to defend, for
+depriving the subject of property, liberty, limbs, and life
+unlawfully. In equity he could do no otherwise; and to equity was the
+only appeal, since the laws of the land had been erased by the king
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+LORD BROOKE AND SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
+
+
+      Lord Brooke is less known than the personage with whom
+      he converses, and upon whose friendship he had the
+      virtue and good sense to found his chief distinction.
+      On his monument at Warwick, written by himself, we
+      read that he was servant of Queen Elizabeth,
+      counsellor of King James and friend of Sir Philip
+      Sidney. His style is stiff, but his sentiments are
+      sound and manly.
+
+_Brooke._ I come again unto the woods and unto the wilds of Penshurst,
+whither my heart and the friend of my heart have long invited me.
+
+_Sidney._ Welcome, welcome! And now, Greville, seat yourself under
+this oak; since if you had hungered or thirsted from your journey, you
+would have renewed the alacrity of your old servants in the hall.
+
+_Brooke._ In truth I did; for no otherwise the good household would
+have it. The birds met me first, affrightened by the tossing up of
+caps; and by these harbingers I knew who were coming. When my palfrey
+eyed them askance for their clamorousness, and shrank somewhat back,
+they quarrelled with him almost before they saluted me, and asked him
+many pert questions. What a pleasant spot, Sidney, have you chosen
+here for meditation! A solitude is the audience-chamber of God. Few
+days in our year are like this; there is a fresh pleasure in every
+fresh posture of the limbs, in every turn the eye takes.
+
+      Youth! credulous of happiness, throw down
+      Upon this turf thy wallet--stored and swoln
+      With morrow-morns, bird-eggs, and bladders burst--
+      That tires thee with its wagging to and fro:
+      Thou too wouldst breathe more freely for it, Age!
+      Who lackest heart to laugh at life's deceit.
+
+It sometimes requires a stout push, and sometimes a sudden resistance,
+in the wisest men, not to become for a moment the most foolish. What
+have I done? I have fairly challenged you, so much my master.
+
+_Sidney._ You have warmed me: I must cool a little and watch my
+opportunity. So now, Greville, return you to your invitations, and I
+will clear the ground for the company; for Youth, for Age, and
+whatever comes between, with kindred and dependencies. Verily we need
+no taunts like those in your verses: here we have few vices, and
+consequently few repinings. I take especial care that my young
+labourers and farmers shall never be idle, and I supply them with bows
+and arrows, with bowls and ninepins, for their Sunday evening,[6]
+lest they drink and quarrel. In church they are taught to love God;
+after church they are practised to love their neighbour: for business
+on workdays keeps them apart and scattered, and on market-days they
+are prone to a rivalry bordering on malice, as competitors for custom.
+Goodness does not more certainly make men happy than happiness makes
+them good. We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for
+prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment:
+the course is then over; the wheel turns round but once; while the
+reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual.
+
+_Brooke._ You reason justly and you act rightly. Piety--warm, soft,
+and passive as the ether round the throne of Grace--is made callous
+and inactive by kneeling too much: her vitality faints under rigorous
+and wearisome observances. A forced match between a man and his
+religion sours his temper, and leaves a barren bed.
+
+_Sidney._ Desire of lucre, the worst and most general country vice,
+arises here from the necessity of looking to small gains; it is,
+however, but the tartar that encrusts economy.
+
+_Brooke._ Oh that anything so monstrous should exist in this profusion
+and prodigality of blessings! The herbs, elastic with health, seem to
+partake of sensitive and animated life, and to feel under my hand the
+benediction I would bestow on them. What a hum of satisfaction in
+God's creatures! How is it, Sidney, the smallest do seem the happiest?
+
+_Sidney._ Compensation for their weaknesses and their fears;
+compensation for the shortness of their existence. Their spirits mount
+upon the sunbeam above the eagle; and they have more enjoyment in
+their one summer than the elephant in his century.
+
+_Brooke._ Are not also the little and lowly in our species the most
+happy?
+
+_Sidney._ I would not willingly try nor over-curiously examine it. We,
+Greville, are happy in these parks and forests: we were happy in my
+close winter-walk of box and laurustine. In our earlier days did we
+not emboss our bosoms with the daffodils, and shake them almost unto
+shedding with our transport? Ay, my friend, there is a greater
+difference, both in the stages of life and in the seasons of the year,
+than in the conditions of men: yet the healthy pass through the
+seasons, from the clement to the inclement, not only unreluctantly
+but rejoicingly, knowing that the worst will soon finish, and the best
+begin anew; and we are desirous of pushing forward into every stage of
+life, excepting that alone which ought reasonably to allure us most,
+as opening to us the _Via Sacra_, along which we move in triumph to
+our eternal country. We may in some measure frame our minds for the
+reception of happiness, for more or for less; we should, however, well
+consider to what port we are steering in search of it, and that even
+in the richest its quantity is but too exhaustible. There is a
+sickliness in the firmest of us, which induceth us to change our side,
+though reposing ever so softly: yet, wittingly or unwittingly, we turn
+again soon into our old position.
+
+God hath granted unto both of us hearts easily contented, hearts
+fitted for every station, because fitted for every duty. What appears
+the dullest may contribute most to our genius; what is most gloomy may
+soften the seeds and relax the fibres of gaiety. We enjoy the
+solemnity of the spreading oak above us: perhaps we owe to it in part
+the mood of our minds at this instant; perhaps an inanimate thing
+supplies me, while I am speaking, with whatever I possess of
+animation. Do you imagine that any contest of shepherds can afford
+them the same pleasure as I receive from the description of it; or
+that even in their loves, however innocent and faithful, they are so
+free from anxiety as I am while I celebrate them? The exertion of
+intellectual power, of fancy and imagination, keeps from us greatly
+more than their wretchedness, and affords us greatly more than their
+enjoyment. We are motes in the midst of generations: we have our
+sunbeams to circuit and climb. Look at the summits of the trees around
+us, how they move, and the loftiest the most: nothing is at rest
+within the compass of our view, except the grey moss on the
+park-pales. Let it eat away the dead oak, but let it not be compared
+with the living one.
+
+Poets are in general prone to melancholy; yet the most plaintive ditty
+hath imparted a fuller joy, and of longer duration, to its composer,
+than the conquest of Persia to the Macedonian. A bottle of wine
+bringeth as much pleasure as the acquisition of a kingdom, and not
+unlike it in kind: the senses in both cases are confused and
+perverted.
+
+_Brooke._ Merciful Heaven! and for the fruition of an hour's
+drunkenness, from which they must awaken with heaviness, pain, and
+terror, men consume a whole crop of their kind at one harvest home.
+Shame upon those light ones who carol at the feast of blood! and worse
+upon those graver ones who nail upon their escutcheon the name of
+great! Ambition is but Avarice on stilts and masked. God sometimes
+sends a famine, sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the
+chastisement of mankind; none of them surely for our admiration. Only
+some cause like unto that which is now scattering the mental fog of
+the Netherlands, and is preparing them for the fruits of freedom, can
+justify us in drawing the sword abroad.
+
+_Sidney._ And only the accomplishment of our purpose can permit us
+again to sheathe it; for the aggrandizement of our neighbour is nought
+of detriment to us: on the contrary, if we are honest and industrious,
+his wealth is ours. We have nothing to dread while our laws are
+equitable and our impositions light: but children fly from mothers who
+strip and scourge them.
+
+_Brooke._ We are come to an age when we ought to read and speak
+plainly what our discretion tells us is fit: we are not to be set in a
+corner for mockery and derision, with our hands hanging down
+motionless and our pockets turned inside out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But away, away with politics: let not this city-stench infect our
+fresh country air!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[6] Censurable as that practice may appear, it belonged to the age of
+Sidney. Amusements were permitted the English on the seventh day, nor
+were they restricted until the Puritans gained the ascendancy.
+
+
+
+
+SOUTHEY AND PORSON
+
+
+_Porson._ I suspect, Mr. Southey, you are angry with me for the
+freedom with which I have spoken of your poetry and Wordsworth's.
+
+_Southey._ What could have induced you to imagine it, Mr. Professor?
+You have indeed bent your eyes upon me, since we have been together,
+with somewhat of fierceness and defiance: I presume you fancied me to
+be a commentator. You wrong me in your belief that any opinion on my
+poetical works hath molested me; but you afford me more than
+compensation in supposing me acutely sensible of injustice done to
+Wordsworth. If we must converse on these topics, we will converse on
+him. What man ever existed who spent a more inoffensive life, or
+adorned it with nobler studies?
+
+_Porson._ I believe so; and they who attack him with virulence are men
+of as little morality as reflection. I have demonstrated that one of
+them, he who wrote the _Pursuits of Literature_, could not construe a
+Greek sentence or scan a verse; and I have fallen on the very _Index_
+from which he drew out his forlorn hope on the parade. This is
+incomparably the most impudent fellow I have met with in the course of
+my reading, which has lain, you know, in a province where impudence is
+no rarity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had visited a friend in _King's Road_ when he entered.
+
+'Have you seen the _Review_?' cried he. 'Worse than ever! I am
+resolved to insert a paragraph in the papers, declaring that I had no
+concern in the last number.'
+
+'Is it so very bad?' said I, quietly.
+
+'Infamous! detestable!' exclaimed he.
+
+'Sit down, then: nobody will believe you,' was my answer.
+
+Since that morning he has discovered that I drink harder than usual,
+that my faculties are wearing fast away, that once, indeed, I had some
+Greek in my head, but--he then claps the forefinger to the side of his
+nose, turns his eye slowly upward, and looks compassionately and
+calmly.
+
+_Southey._ Come, Mr. Porson, grant him his merits: no critic is better
+contrived to make any work a monthly one, no writer more dexterous in
+giving a finishing touch.
+
+_Porson._ The plagiary has a greater latitude of choice than we; and
+if he brings home a parsnip or turnip-top, when he could as easily
+have pocketed a nectarine or a pineapple, he must be a blockhead. I
+never heard the name of the _Pursuer of Literature_, who has little
+more merit in having stolen than he would have had if he had never
+stolen at all; and I have forgotten that other man's, who evinced his
+fitness to be the censor of our age, by a translation of the most
+naked and impure satires of antiquity--those of Juvenal, which owe
+their preservation to the partiality of the friars. I shall entertain
+an unfavourable opinion of him if he has translated them well: pray,
+has he?
+
+_Southey._ Indeed, I do not know. I read poets for their poetry, and
+to extract that nutriment of the intellect and of the heart which
+poetry should contain. I never listen to the swans of the cesspool,
+and must declare that nothing is heavier to me than rottenness and
+corruption.
+
+_Porson._ You are right, sir, perfectly right. A translator of Juvenal
+would open a public drain to look for a needle, and may miss it. My
+nose is not easily offended; but I must have something to fill my
+belly. Come, we will lay aside the scrip of the transpositor and the
+pouch of the pursuer, in reserve for the days of unleavened bread;
+and again, if you please, to the lakes and mountains. Now we are both
+in better humour, I must bring you to a confession that in your friend
+Wordsworth there is occasionally a little trash.
+
+_Southey._ A haunch of venison would be trash to a Brahmin, a bottle
+of Burgundy to the xerif of Mecca. We are guided by precept, by habit,
+by taste, by constitution. Hitherto our sentiments on poetry have been
+delivered down to us from authority; and if it can be demonstrated, as
+I think it may be, that the authority is inadequate, and that the
+dictates are often inapplicable and often misinterpreted, you will
+allow me to remove the cause out of court. Every man can see what is
+very bad in a poem; almost every one can see what is very good: but
+you, Mr. Porson, who have turned over all the volumes of all the
+commentators, will inform me whether I am right or wrong in asserting
+that no critic hath yet appeared who hath been able to fix or to
+discern the exact degrees of excellence above a certain point.
+
+_Porson._ None.
+
+_Southey._ The reason is, because the eyes of no one have been upon a
+level with it. Supposing, for the sake of argument, the contest of
+Hesiod and Homer to have taken place: the judges who decided in favour
+of the worse, and he, indeed, in poetry has little merit, may have
+been elegant, wise, and conscientious men. Their decision was in
+favour of that to the species of which they had been the most
+accustomed. Corinna was preferred to Pindar no fewer than five times,
+and the best judges in Greece gave her the preference; yet whatever
+were her powers, and beyond a question they were extraordinary, we may
+assure ourselves that she stood many degrees below Pindar. Nothing is
+more absurd than the report that the judges were prepossessed by her
+beauty. Plutarch tells us that she was much older than her competitor,
+who consulted her judgment in his earlier odes. Now, granting their
+first competition to have been when Pindar was twenty years old, and
+that the others were in the years succeeding, her beauty must have
+been somewhat on the decline; for in Greece there are few women who
+retain the graces, none who retain the bloom of youth, beyond the
+twenty-third year. Her countenance, I doubt not, was expressive: but
+expression, although it gives beauty to men, makes women pay dearly
+for its stamp, and pay soon. Nature seems, in protection to their
+loveliness, to have ordered that they who are our superiors in
+quickness and sensibility should be little disposed to laborious
+thought, or to long excursions in the labyrinths of fancy. We may be
+convinced that the verdict of the judges was biased by nothing else
+than the habitudes of thinking; we may be convinced, too, that living
+in an age when poetry was cultivated highly, and selected from the
+most acute and the most dispassionate, they were subject to no greater
+errors of opinion than are the learned messmates of our English
+colleges.
+
+_Porson._ You are more liberal in your largesses to the fair Greeks
+than a friend of mine was, who resided in Athens to acquire the
+language. He assured me that beauty there was in bud at thirteen, in
+full blossom at fifteen, losing a leaf or two every day at seventeen,
+trembling on the thorn at nineteen, and under the tree at twenty.
+
+_Southey._ Mr. Porson, it does not appear to me that anything more is
+necessary, in the first instance, than to interrogate our hearts in
+what manner they have been affected. If the ear is satisfied; if at
+one moment a tumult is aroused in the breast, and tranquillized at
+another, with a perfect consciousness of equal power exerted in both
+cases; if we rise up from the perusal of the work with a strong
+excitement to thought, to imagination, to sensibility; above all, if
+we sat down with some propensities toward evil, and walk away with
+much stronger toward good, in the midst of a world which we never had
+entered and of which we never had dreamed before--shall we perversely
+put on again the _old man_ of criticism, and dissemble that we have
+been conducted by a most beneficent and most potent genius? Nothing
+proves to me so manifestly in what a pestiferous condition are its
+lazarettos, as when I observe how little hath been objected against
+those who have substituted words for things, and how much against
+those who have reinstated things for words.
+
+Let Wordsworth prove to the world that there may be animation without
+blood and broken bones, and tenderness remote from the stews. Some
+will doubt it; for even things the most evident are often but little
+perceived and strangely estimated. Swift ridiculed the music of Handel
+and the generalship of Marlborough; Pope the perspicacity and the
+scholarship of Bentley; Gray the abilities of Shaftesbury and the
+eloquence of Rousseau. Shakespeare hardly found those who would
+collect his tragedies; Milton was read from godliness; Virgil was
+antiquated and rustic; Cicero, Asiatic. What a rabble has persecuted
+my friend! An elephant is born to be consumed by ants in the midst of
+his unapproachable solitudes: Wordsworth is the prey of Jeffrey. Why
+repine? Let us rather amuse ourselves with allegories, and recollect
+that God in the creation left His noblest creature at the mercy of a
+serpent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Porson._ Wordsworth goes out of his way to be attacked; he picks up a
+piece of dirt, throws it on the carpet in the midst of the company,
+and cries, _This is a better man than any of you!_ He does indeed
+mould the base material into what form he chooses; but why not rather
+invite us to contemplate it than challenge us to condemn it? Here
+surely is false taste.
+
+_Southey._ The principal and the most general accusation against him
+is, that the vehicle of his thoughts is unequal to them. Now did ever
+the judges at the Olympic games say: 'We would have awarded to you the
+meed of victory, if your chariot had been equal to your horses: it is
+true they have won; but the people are displeased at a car neither new
+nor richly gilt, and without a gryphon or sphinx engraved on the
+axle'? You admire simplicity in Euripides; you censure it in
+Wordsworth: believe me, sir, it arises in neither from penury of
+thought--which seldom has produced it--but from the strength of
+temperance, and at the suggestion of principle.
+
+Take up a poem of Wordsworth's and read it--I would rather say, read
+them all; and, knowing that a mind like yours must grasp closely what
+comes within it, I will then appeal to you whether any poet of our
+country, since Milton, hath exerted greater powers with less of strain
+and less of ostentation. I would, however, by his permission, lay
+before you for this purpose a poem which is yet unpublished and
+incomplete.
+
+_Porson._ Pity, with such abilities, he does not imitate the ancients
+somewhat more.
+
+_Southey._ Whom did they imitate? If his genius is equal to theirs he
+has no need of a guide. He also will be an ancient; and the very
+counterparts of those who now decry him will extol him a thousand
+years hence in malignity to the moderns.
+
+
+
+
+THE ABBÉ DELILLE AND WALTER LANDOR
+
+
+The Abbé Delille was the happiest of creatures, when he could weep
+over the charms of innocence and the country in some crowded and
+fashionable circle at Paris. We embraced most pathetically on our
+first meeting there, as if the one were condemned to quit the earth,
+the other to live upon it.
+
+_Delille._ You are reported to have said that descriptive poetry has
+all the merits of a handkerchief that smells of roses?
+
+_Landor._ This, if I said it, is among the things which are neither
+false enough nor true enough to be displeasing. But the Abbé Delille
+has merits of his own. To translate Milton well is more laudable than
+originality in trifling matters; just as to transport an obelisk from
+Egypt, and to erect it in one of the squares, must be considered a
+greater labour than to build a new chandler's shop.
+
+_Delille._ Milton is indeed extremely difficult to translate; for,
+however noble and majestic, he is sometimes heavy, and often rough and
+unequal.
+
+_Landor._ Dear Abbé, porphyry is heavy, gold is heavier; Ossa and
+Olympus are rough and unequal; the steppes of Tartary, though high,
+are of uniform elevation: there is not a rock, nor a birch, nor a
+cytisus, nor an arbutus upon them great enough to shelter a
+new-dropped lamb. Level the Alps one with another, and where is their
+sublimity? Raise up the vale of Tempe to the downs above, and where
+are those sylvan creeks and harbours in which the imagination watches
+while the soul reposes; those recesses in which the gods partook the
+weaknesses of mortals, and mortals the enjoyments of the gods?
+
+You have treated our poet with courtesy and distinction; in your
+trimmed and measured dress, he might be taken for a Frenchman. Do not
+think me flattering. You have conducted Eve from Paradise to Paris,
+and she really looks prettier and smarter than before she tripped.
+With what elegance she rises from a most awful dream! You represent
+her (I repeat your expression) as springing up _en sursaut_, as if
+you had caught her asleep and tickled the young creature on that sofa.
+
+Homer and Virgil have been excelled in sublimity by Shakespeare and
+Milton, as the Caucasus and Atlas of the old world by the Andes and
+Teneriffe of the new; but you would embellish them all.
+
+_Delille._ I owe to Voltaire my first sentiment of admiration for
+Milton and Shakespeare.
+
+_Landor._ He stuck to them as a woodpecker to an old forest-tree, only
+for the purpose of picking out what was rotten: he has made the holes
+deeper than he found them, and, after all his cries and chatter, has
+brought home but scanty sustenance to his starveling nest.
+
+_Delille._ You must acknowledge that there are fine verses in his
+tragedies.
+
+_Landor._ Whenever such is the first observation, be assured, M.
+l'Abbé, that the poem, if heroic or dramatic, is bad. Should a work of
+this kind be excellent, we say, 'How admirably the characters are
+sustained! What delicacy of discrimination! There is nothing to be
+taken away or altered without an injury to the part or to the whole.'
+We may afterward descend on the versification. In poetry, there is a
+greater difference between the good and the excellent than there is
+between the bad and the good. Poetry has no golden mean; mediocrity
+here is of another metal, which Voltaire, however, had skill enough to
+encrust and polish. In the least wretched of his tragedies, whatever
+is tolerable is Shakespeare's; but, gracious Heaven! how deteriorated!
+When he pretends to extol a poet he chooses some defective part, and
+renders it more so whenever he translates it. I will repeat a few
+verses from Metastasio in support of my assertion. Metastasio was both
+a better critic and a better poet, although of the second order in
+each quality; his tyrants are less philosophical, and his chambermaids
+less dogmatic. Voltaire was, however, a man of abilities, and author
+of many passable epigrams, beside those which are contained in his
+tragedies and heroics; yet it must be confessed that, like your
+Parisian lackeys, they are usually the smartest when out of place.
+
+_Delille._ What you call epigram gives life and spirit to grave works,
+and seems principally wanted to relieve a long poem. I do not see why
+what pleases us in a star should not please us in a constellation.
+
+
+
+
+DIOGENES AND PLATO
+
+
+_Diogenes._ Stop! stop! come hither! Why lookest thou so scornfully
+and askance upon me?
+
+_Plato._ Let me go! loose me! I am resolved to pass.
+
+_Diogenes._ Nay, then, by Jupiter and this tub! thou leavest three
+good ells of Milesian cloth behind thee. Whither wouldst thou amble?
+
+_Plato._ I am not obliged in courtesy to tell you.
+
+_Diogenes._ Upon whose errand? Answer me directly.
+
+_Plato._ Upon my own.
+
+_Diogenes._ Oh, then, I will hold thee yet awhile. If it were upon
+another's, it might be a hardship to a good citizen, though not to a
+good philosopher.
+
+_Plato._ That can be no impediment to my release: you do not think me
+one.
+
+_Diogenes._ No, by my Father Jove!
+
+_Plato._ Your father!
+
+_Diogenes._ Why not? Thou shouldst be the last man to doubt it. Hast
+not thou declared it irrational to refuse our belief to those who
+assert that they are begotten by the gods, though the assertion (these
+are thy words) be unfounded on reason or probability? In me there is a
+chance of it: whereas in the generation of such people as thou art
+fondest of frequenting, who claim it loudly, there are always too many
+competitors to leave it probable.
+
+_Plato._ Those who speak against the great do not usually speak from
+morality, but from envy.
+
+_Diogenes._ Thou hast a glimpse of the truth in this place, but as
+thou hast already shown thy ignorance in attempting to prove to me
+what a _man_ is, ill can I expect to learn from thee what is a _great
+man_.
+
+_Plato._ No doubt your experience and intercourse will afford me the
+information.
+
+_Diogenes._ Attend, and take it. The great man is he who hath nothing
+to fear and nothing to hope from another. It is he who, while he
+demonstrates the iniquity of the laws, and is able to correct them,
+obeys them peaceably. It is he who looks on the ambitious both as weak
+and fraudulent. It is he who hath no disposition or occasion for any
+kind of deceit, no reason for being or for appearing different from
+what he is. It is he who can call together the most select company
+when it pleases him.
+
+_Plato._ Excuse my interruption. In the beginning of your definition I
+fancied that you were designating your own person, as most people do
+in describing what is admirable; now I find that you have some other
+in contemplation.
+
+_Diogenes._ I thank thee for allowing me what perhaps I _do_ possess,
+but what I was not then thinking of; as is often the case with rich
+possessors: in fact, the latter part of the description suits me as
+well as any portion of the former.
+
+_Plato._ You may call together the best company, by using your hands
+in the call, as you did with me; otherwise I am not sure that you
+would succeed in it.
+
+_Diogenes._ My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together,
+select them, detain them, dismiss them. Imbecile and vicious men
+cannot do any of these things. Their thoughts are scattered, vague,
+uncertain, cumbersome: and the worst stick to them the longest; many
+indeed by choice, the greater part by necessity, and accompanied, some
+by weak wishes, others by vain remorse.
+
+_Plato._ Is there nothing of greatness, O Diogenes! in exhibiting how
+cities and communities may be governed best, how morals may be kept
+the purest, and power become the most stable?
+
+_Diogenes._ _Something_ of greatness does not constitute the great
+man. Let me, however, see him who hath done what thou sayest: he must
+be the most universal and the most indefatigable traveller, he must
+also be the oldest creature, upon earth.
+
+_Plato._ How so?
+
+_Diogenes._ Because he must know perfectly the climate, the soil, the
+situation, the peculiarities, of the races, of their allies, of their
+enemies; he must have sounded their harbours, he must have measured
+the quantity of their arable land and pasture, of their woods and
+mountains; he must have ascertained whether there are fisheries on
+their coasts, and even what winds are prevalent. On these causes, with
+some others, depend the bodily strength, the numbers, the wealth, the
+wants, the capacities of the people.
+
+_Plato._ Such are low thoughts.
+
+_Diogenes._ The bird of wisdom flies low, and seeks her food under
+hedges: the eagle himself would be starved if he always soared aloft
+and against the sun. The sweetest fruit grows near the ground, and the
+plants that bear it require ventilation and lopping. Were this not to
+be done in thy garden, every walk and alley, every plot and border,
+would be covered with runners and roots, with boughs and suckers. We
+want no poets or logicians or metaphysicians to govern us: we want
+practical men, honest men, continent men, unambitious men, fearful to
+solicit a trust, slow to accept, and resolute never to betray one.
+Experimentalists may be the best philosophers: they are always the
+worst politicians. Teach people their duties, and they will know their
+interests. Change as little as possible, and correct as much.
+
+Philosophers are absurd from many causes, but principally from laying
+out unthriftily their distinctions. They set up four virtues:
+fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice. Now a man may be a very
+bad one, and yet possess three out of the four. Every cut-throat must,
+if he has been a cut-throat on many occasions, have more fortitude and
+more prudence than the greater part of those whom we consider as the
+best men. And what cruel wretches, both executioners and judges, have
+been strictly just! how little have they cared what gentleness, what
+generosity, what genius, their sentence hath removed from the earth!
+Temperance and beneficence contain all other virtues. Take them home,
+Plato; split them, expound them; do what thou wilt with them, if thou
+but use them.
+
+Before I gave thee this lesson, which is a better than thou ever
+gavest any one, and easier to remember, thou wert accusing me of
+invidiousness and malice against those whom thou callest the great,
+meaning to say the powerful. Thy imagination, I am well aware, had
+taken its flight toward Sicily, where thou seekest thy great man, as
+earnestly and undoubtingly as Ceres sought her Persephone. Faith!
+honest Plato, I have no reason to envy thy worthy friend Dionysius.
+Look at my nose! A lad seven or eight years old threw an apple at me
+yesterday, while I was gazing at the clouds, and gave me nose enough
+for two moderate men. Instead of such a godsend, what should I have
+thought of my fortune, if, after living all my lifetime among golden
+vases, rougher than my hand with their emeralds and rubies, their
+engravings and embossments; among Parian caryatides and porphyry
+sphinxes; among philosophers with rings upon their fingers and linen
+next their skin; and among singing-boys and dancing-girls, to whom
+alone thou speakest intelligibly--I ask thee again, what should I in
+reason have thought of my fortune, if, after these facilities and
+superfluities, I had at last been pelted out of my house, not by one
+young rogue, but by thousands of all ages, and not with an apple (I
+wish I could say a rotten one), but with pebbles and broken pots; and,
+to crown my deserts, had been compelled to become the teacher of so
+promising a generation? Great men, forsooth! thou knowest at last who
+they are.
+
+_Plato._ There are great men of various kinds.
+
+_Diogenes._ No, by my beard, are there not!
+
+_Plato._ What! are there not great captains, great geometricians,
+great dialectitians?
+
+_Diogenes._ Who denied it? A great man was the postulate. Try thy hand
+now at the powerful one.
+
+_Plato._ On seeing the exercise of power, a child cannot doubt who is
+powerful, more or less; for power is relative. All men are weak, not
+only if compared to the Demiurgos, but if compared to the sea or the
+earth, or certain things upon each of them, such as elephants and
+whales. So placid and tranquil is the scene around us, we can hardly
+bring to mind the images of strength and force, the precipices, the
+abysses----
+
+_Diogenes._ Prithee hold thy loose tongue, twinkling and glittering
+like a serpent's in the midst of luxuriance and rankness! Did never
+this reflection of thine warn thee that, in human life, the precipices
+and abysses would be much farther from our admiration if we were less
+inconsiderate, selfish, and vile? I will not however stop thee long,
+for thou wert going on quite consistently. As thy great men are
+fighters and wranglers, so thy mighty things upon the earth and sea
+are troublesome and intractable encumbrances. Thou perceivedst not
+what was greater in the former case, neither art thou aware what is
+greater in this. Didst thou feel the gentle air that passed us?
+
+_Plato._ I did not, just then.
+
+_Diogenes._ That air, so gentle, so imperceptible to thee, is more
+powerful not only than all the creatures that breathe and live by it;
+not only than all the oaks of the forest, which it rears in an age and
+shatters in a moment; not only than all the monsters of the sea, but
+than the sea itself, which it tosses up into foam, and breaks against
+every rock in its vast circumference; for it carries in its bosom,
+with perfect calm and composure, the incontrollable ocean and the
+peopled earth, like an atom of a feather.
+
+To the world's turmoils and pageantries is attracted, not only the
+admiration of the populace, but the zeal of the orator, the enthusiasm
+of the poet, the investigation of the historian, and the contemplation
+of the philosopher: yet how silent and invisible are they in the
+depths of air! Do I say in those depths and deserts? No; I say in the
+distance of a swallow's flight--at the distance she rises above us,
+ere a sentence brief as this could be uttered.
+
+What are its mines and mountains? Fragments welded up and dislocated
+by the expansion of water from below; the most part reduced to mud,
+the rest to splinters. Afterwards sprang up fire in many places, and
+again tore and mangled the mutilated carcass, and still growls over
+it.
+
+What are its cities and ramparts, and moles and monuments? Segments of
+a fragment, which one man puts together and another throws down. Here
+we stumble upon thy great ones at their work. Show me now, if thou
+canst, in history, three great warriors, or three great statesmen, who
+have acted otherwise than spiteful children.
+
+_Plato._ I will begin to look for them in history when I have
+discovered the same number in the philosophers or the poets. A prudent
+man searches in his own garden after the plant he wants, before he
+casts his eyes over the stalls in Kenkrea or Keramicos.
+
+Returning to your observation on the potency of the air, I am not
+ignorant or unmindful of it. May I venture to express my opinion to
+you, Diogenes, that the earlier discoverers and distributors of wisdom
+(which wisdom lies among us in ruins and remnants, partly distorted
+and partly concealed by theological allegory) meant by Jupiter the air
+in its agitated state; by Juno the air in its quiescent. These are the
+great agents, and therefore called the king and queen of the gods.
+Jupiter is denominated by Homer the _compeller of clouds_: Juno
+receives them, and remits them in showers to plants and animals.
+
+I may trust you, I hope, O Diogenes?
+
+_Diogenes._ Thou mayest lower the gods in my presence, as safely as
+men in the presence of Timon.
+
+_Plato._ I would not lower them: I would exalt them.
+
+_Diogenes._ More foolish and presumptuous still!
+
+_Plato._ Fair words, O Sinopean! I protest to you my aim is truth.
+
+_Diogenes._ I cannot lead thee where of a certainty thou mayest always
+find it; but I will tell thee what it is. Truth is a point; the
+subtilest and finest; harder than adamant; never to be broken, worn
+away, or blunted. Its only bad quality is, that it is sure to hurt
+those who touch it; and likely to draw blood, perhaps the life-blood,
+of those who press earnestly upon it. Let us away from this narrow
+lane skirted with hemlock, and pursue our road again through the wind
+and dust toward the _great_ man and the _powerful_. Him I would call
+the powerful one who controls the storms of his mind, and turns to
+good account the worst accidents of his fortune. The great man, I was
+going on to demonstrate, is somewhat more. He must be able to do this,
+and he must have an intellect which puts into motion the intellect of
+others.
+
+_Plato._ Socrates, then, was your great man.
+
+_Diogenes._ He was indeed; nor can all thou hast attributed to him
+ever make me think the contrary. I wish he could have kept a little
+more at home, and have thought it as well worth his while to converse
+with his own children as with others.
+
+_Plato._ He knew himself born for the benefit of the human race.
+
+_Diogenes._ Those who are born for the benefit of the human race go
+but little into it: those who are born for its curse are crowded.
+
+_Plato._ It was requisite to dispel the mists of ignorance and error.
+
+_Diogenes._ Has he done it? What doubt has he elucidated, or what fact
+has he established? Although I was but twelve years old and resident
+in another city when he died, I have taken some pains in my inquiries
+about him from persons of less vanity and less perverseness than his
+disciples. He did not leave behind him any true philosopher among
+them; any who followed his mode of argumentation, his subjects of
+disquisition, or his course of life; any who would subdue the
+malignant passions or coerce the looser; any who would abstain from
+calumny or from cavil; any who would devote his days to the glory of
+his country, or, what is easier and perhaps wiser, to his own
+well-founded contentment and well-merited repose. Xenophon, the best
+of them, offered up sacrifices, believed in oracles, consulted
+soothsayers, turned pale at a jay, and was dysenteric at a magpie.
+
+_Plato._ He had courage at least.
+
+_Diogenes._ His courage was of so strange a quality, that he was
+ready, if jay or magpie did not cross him, to fight for Spartan or
+Persian. Plato, whom thou esteemest much, and knowest somewhat less,
+careth as little for portent and omen as doth Diogenes. What he would
+have done for a Persian I cannot say; certain I am that he would have
+no more fought for a Spartan than he would for his own father: yet he
+mortally hates the man who hath a kinder muse or a better milliner, or
+a seat nearer the minion of a king. So much for the two disciples of
+Socrates who have acquired the greatest celebrity!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Plato._ Diogenes! if you must argue or discourse with me, I will
+endure your asperity for the sake of your acuteness; but it appears to
+me a more philosophical thing to avoid what is insulting and
+vexatious, than to breast and brave it.
+
+_Diogenes._ Thou hast spoken well.
+
+_Plato._ It belongs to the vulgar, not to us, to fly from a man's
+opinions to his actions, and to stab him in his own house for having
+received no wound in the school. One merit you will allow me: I always
+keep my temper; which you seldom do.
+
+_Diogenes._ Is mine a good or a bad one?
+
+_Plato._ Now, must I speak sincerely?
+
+_Diogenes._ Dost thou, a philosopher, ask such a question of me, a
+philosopher? Ay, sincerely or not at all.
+
+_Plato._ Sincerely as you could wish, I must declare, then, your
+temper is the worst in the world.
+
+_Diogenes._ I am much in the right, therefore, not to keep it. Embrace
+me: I have spoken now in thy own manner. Because thou sayest the most
+malicious things the most placidly, thou thinkest or pretendest thou
+art sincere.
+
+_Plato._ Certainly those who are most the masters of their resentments
+are likely to speak less erroneously than the passionate and morose.
+
+_Diogenes._ If they would, they might; but the moderate are not
+usually the most sincere, for the same circumspection which makes them
+moderate makes them likewise retentive of what could give offence:
+they are also timid in regard to fortune and favour, and hazard
+little. There is no mass of sincerity in any place. What there is must
+be picked up patiently, a grain or two at a time; and the season for
+it is after a storm, after the overflowing of banks, and bursting of
+mounds, and sweeping away of landmarks. Men will always hold something
+back; they must be shaken and loosened a little, to make them let go
+what is deepest in them, and weightiest and purest.
+
+_Plato._ Shaking and loosening as much about you as was requisite for
+the occasion, it became you to demonstrate where and in what manner I
+had made Socrates appear less sagacious and less eloquent than he was;
+it became you likewise to consider the great difficulty of finding new
+thoughts and new expressions for those who had more of them than any
+other men, and to represent them in all the brilliancy of their wit
+and in all the majesty of their genius. I do not assert that I have
+done it; but if I have not, what man has? what man has come so nigh to
+it? He who could bring Socrates, or Solon, or Diogenes through a
+dialogue, without disparagement, is much nearer in his intellectual
+powers to them, than any other is near to him.
+
+_Diogenes._ Let Diogenes alone, and Socrates, and Solon. None of the
+three ever occupied his hours in tingeing and curling the tarnished
+plumes of prostitute Philosophy, or deemed anything worth his
+attention, care, or notice, that did not make men brave and
+independent. As thou callest on me to show thee where and in what
+manner thou hast misrepresented thy teacher, and as thou seemest to
+set an equal value on eloquence and on reasoning, I shall attend to
+thee awhile on each of these matters, first inquiring of thee whether
+the axiom is Socratic, that it is never becoming to get drunk,
+_unless_ in the solemnities of Bacchus?
+
+_Plato._ This god was the discoverer of the vine and of its uses.
+
+_Diogenes._ Is drunkenness one of its uses, or the discovery of a god?
+If Pallas or Jupiter hath given us reason, we should sacrifice our
+reason with more propriety to Jupiter or Pallas. To Bacchus is due a
+libation of wine; the same being his gift, as thou preachest.
+
+Another and a graver question.
+
+Did Socrates teach thee that 'slaves are to be scourged, and by no
+means admonished as though they were the children of the master'?
+
+_Plato._ He did not argue upon government.
+
+_Diogenes._ He argued upon humanity, whereon all government is
+founded: whatever is beside it is usurpation.
+
+_Plato._ Are slaves then never to be scourged, whatever be their
+transgressions and enormities?
+
+_Diogenes._ Whatever they be, they are less than his who reduced them
+to this condition.
+
+_Plato._ What! though they murder his whole family?
+
+_Diogenes._ Ay, and poison the public fountain of the city.
+
+What am I saying? and to whom? Horrible as is this crime, and next in
+atrocity to parricide, thou deemest it a lighter one than stealing a
+fig or grape. The stealer of these is scourged by thee; the sentence
+on the poisoner is to cleanse out the receptacle. There is, however, a
+kind of poisoning which, to do thee justice, comes before thee with
+all its horrors, and which thou wouldst punish capitally, even in such
+a sacred personage as an aruspex or diviner: I mean the poisoning by
+incantation. I, and my whole family, my whole race, my whole city, may
+bite the dust in agony from a truss of henbane in the well; and little
+harm done forsooth! Let an idle fool set an image of me in wax before
+the fire, and whistle and caper to it, and purr and pray, and chant a
+hymn to Hecate while it melts, entreating and imploring her that I may
+melt as easily--and thou wouldst, in thy equity and holiness, strangle
+him at the first stave of his psalmody.
+
+_Plato._ If this is an absurdity, can you find another?
+
+_Diogenes._ Truly, in reading thy book, I doubted at first, and for a
+long continuance, whether thou couldst have been serious; and whether
+it were not rather a satire on those busy-bodies who are incessantly
+intermeddling in other people's affairs. It was only on the
+protestation of thy intimate friends that I believed thee to have
+written it in earnest. As for thy question, it is idle to stoop and
+pick out absurdities from a mass of inconsistency and injustice; but
+another and another I could throw in, and another and another
+afterward, from any page in the volume. Two bare, staring falsehoods
+lift their beaks one upon the other, like spring frogs. Thou sayest
+that no punishment decreed by the laws tendeth to evil. What! not if
+immoderate? not if partial? Why then repeal any penal statute while
+the subject of its animadversion exists? In prisons the less criminal
+are placed among the more criminal, the inexperienced in vice together
+with the hardened in it. This is part of the punishment, though it
+precedes the sentence; nay, it is often inflicted on those whom the
+judges acquit: the law, by allowing it, does it.
+
+The next is, that he who is punished by the laws is the better for it,
+however the less depraved. What! if anteriorly to the sentence he
+lives and converses with worse men, some of whom console him by
+deadening the sense of shame, others by removing the apprehension of
+punishment? Many laws as certainly make men bad, as bad men make many
+laws; yet under thy regimen they take us from the bosom of the nurse,
+turn the meat about upon the platter, pull the bed-clothes off, make
+us sleep when we would wake, and wake when we would sleep, and never
+cease to rummage and twitch us, until they see us safe landed at the
+grave. We can do nothing (but be poisoned) with impunity. What is
+worst of all, we must marry certain relatives and connexions, be they
+distorted, blear-eyed, toothless, carbuncled, with hair (if any)
+eclipsing the reddest torch of Hymen, and with a hide outrivalling in
+colour and plaits his trimmest saffron robe. At the mention of this
+indeed, friend Plato, even thou, although resolved to stand out of
+harm's way, beginnest to make a wry mouth, and findest it difficult to
+pucker and purse it up again, without an astringent store of moral
+sentences. Hymen is truly no acquaintance of thine. We know the
+delicacies of love which thou wouldst reserve for the gluttony of
+heroes and the fastidiousness of philosophers. Heroes, like gods, must
+have their own way; but against thee and thy confraternity of elders I
+would turn the closet-key, and your mouths might water over, but your
+tongues should never enter those little pots of comfiture. Seriously,
+you who wear embroidered slippers ought to be very cautious of
+treading in the mire. Philosophers should not only live the simplest
+lives, but should also use the plainest language. Poets, in employing
+magnificent and sonorous words, teach philosophy the better by thus
+disarming suspicion that the finest poetry contains and conveys the
+finest philosophy. You will never let any man hold his right station:
+you would rank Solon with Homer for poetry. This is absurd. The only
+resemblance is in both being eminently wise. Pindar, too, makes even
+the cadences of his dithyrambics keep time to the flute of Reason. My
+tub, which holds fifty-fold thy wisdom, would crack at the
+reverberation of thy voice.
+
+_Plato._ Farewell.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Diogenes._ I mean that every one of thy whimsies hath been picked up
+somewhere by thee in thy travels; and each of them hath been rendered
+more weak and puny by its place of concealment in thy closet. What
+thou hast written on the immortality of the soul goes rather to prove
+the immortality of the body; and applies as well to the body of a
+weasel or an eel as to the fairer one of Agathon or of Aster. Why not
+at once introduce a new religion, since religions keep and are
+relished in proportion as they are salted with absurdity, inside and
+out? and all of them must have one great crystal of it for the centre;
+but Philosophy pines and dies unless she drinks limpid water. When
+Pherecydes and Pythagoras felt in themselves the majesty of
+contemplation, they spurned the idea that flesh and bones and arteries
+should confer it: and that what comprehends the past and the future
+should sink in a moment and be annihilated for ever. 'No,' cried they,
+'the power of thinking is no more in the brain than in the hair,
+although the brain may be the instrument on which it plays. It is not
+corporeal, it is not of this world; its existence is eternity, its
+residence is infinity.' I forbear to discuss the rationality of their
+belief, and pass on straightway to thine; if, indeed, I am to consider
+as one, belief and doctrine.
+
+_Plato._ As you will.
+
+_Diogenes._ I should rather, then, regard these things as mere
+ornaments; just as many decorate their apartments with lyres and
+harps, which they themselves look at from the couch, supinely
+complacent, and leave for visitors to admire and play on.
+
+_Plato._ I foresee not how you can disprove my argument on the
+immortality of the soul, which, being contained in the best of my
+dialogues, and being often asked for among my friends, I carry with
+me.
+
+_Diogenes._ At this time?
+
+_Plato._ Even so.
+
+_Diogenes._ Give me then a certain part of it for my perusal.
+
+_Plato._ Willingly.
+
+_Diogenes._ Hermes and Pallas! I wanted but a cubit of it, or at most
+a fathom, and thou art pulling it out by the plethron.
+
+_Plato._ This is the place in question.
+
+_Diogenes._ Read it.
+
+_Plato._ [_Reads._] 'Sayest thou not that death is the opposite of
+life, and that they spring the one from the other?' '_Yes._' 'What
+springs then from the living?' '_The dead._' 'And what from the dead?'
+'_The living._' 'Then all things alive spring from the dead.'
+
+_Diogenes._ Why the repetition? but go on.
+
+_Plato._ [_Reads._] 'Souls therefore exist after death in the infernal
+regions.'
+
+_Diogenes._ Where is the _therefore_? where is it even as to
+_existence_? As to the _infernal regions_, there is nothing that
+points toward a proof, or promises an indication. Death neither
+springs from life, nor life from death. Although death is the
+inevitable consequence of life, if the observation and experience of
+ages go for anything, yet nothing shows us, or ever hath signified,
+that life comes from death. Thou mightest as well say that a
+barley-corn dies before the germ of another barley-corn grows up from
+it, than which nothing is more untrue; for it is only the protecting
+part of the germ that perishes, when its protection is no longer
+necessary. The consequence, that souls exist after death, cannot be
+drawn from the corruption of the body, even if it were demonstrable
+that out of this corruption a live one could rise up. Thou hast not
+said that the soul is among those dead things which living things must
+spring from; thou hast not said that a living soul produces a dead
+soul, or that a dead soul produces a living one.
+
+_Plato._ No, indeed.
+
+_Diogenes._ On my faith, thou hast said, however, things no less
+inconsiderate, no less inconsequent, no less unwise; and this very
+thing must be said and proved, to make thy argument of any value. Do
+dead men beget children?
+
+_Plato._ I have not said it.
+
+_Diogenes._ Thy argument implies it.
+
+_Plato._ These are high mysteries, and to be approached with
+reverence.
+
+_Diogenes._ Whatever we cannot account for is in the same predicament.
+We may be gainers by being ignorant if we can be thought mysterious.
+It is better to shake our heads and to let nothing out of them, than
+to be plain and explicit in matters of difficulty. I do not mean in
+confessing our ignorance or our imperfect knowledge of them, but in
+clearing them up perspicuously: for, if we answer with ease, we may
+haply be thought good-natured, quick, communicative; never deep,
+never sagacious; not very defective possibly in our intellectual
+faculties, yet unequal and chinky, and liable to the probation of
+every clown's knuckle.
+
+_Plato._ The brightest of stars appear the most unsteady and tremulous
+in their light; not from any quality inherent in themselves, but from
+the vapours that float below, and from the imperfection of vision in
+the surveyor.
+
+_Diogenes._ Draw thy robe round thee; let the folds fall gracefully,
+and look majestic. That sentence is an admirable one; but not for me.
+I want sense, not stars. What then? Do no vapours float below the
+others? and is there no imperfection in the vision of those who look
+at _them_, if they are the same men, and look the next moment? We must
+move on: I shall follow the dead bodies, and the benighted driver of
+their fantastic bier, close and keen as any hyena.
+
+_Plato._ Certainly, O Diogenes, you excel me in elucidations and
+similes: mine was less obvious.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Diogenes._ I know the respect thou bearest to the dogly character,
+and can attribute to nothing else the complacency with which thou hast
+listened to me since I released thy cloak. If ever the Athenians, in
+their inconstancy, should issue a decree to deprive me of the
+appellation they have conferred on me, rise up, I pray thee, in my
+defence, and protest that I have not merited so severe a mulct.
+Something I do deserve at thy hands; having supplied thee, first with
+a store of patience, when thou wert going without any about thee,
+although it is the readiest viaticum and the heartiest sustenance of
+human life; and then with weapons from this tub, wherewith to drive
+the importunate cock before thee out of doors again.
+
+
+
+
+ALFIERI AND SALOMON THE FLORENTINE JEW
+
+
+_Alfieri._ Let us walk to the window, Signor Salomon. And now, instead
+of the silly, simpering compliments repeated at introductions, let me
+assure you that you are the only man in Florence with whom I would
+willingly exchange a salutation.
+
+_Salomon._ I must think myself highly flattered, Signor Conte, having
+always heard that you are not only the greatest democrat, but also the
+greatest aristocrat, in Europe.
+
+_Alfieri._ These two things, however opposite, which your smile would
+indicate, are not so irreconcilable as you imagine. Let us first
+understand the words, and then talk about them. The democrat is he who
+wishes the people to have a due share in the government, and this
+share if you please shall be the principal one. The aristocrat of our
+days is contented with no actual share in it; but if a man of family
+is conscious of his dignity, and resentful that another has invaded
+it, he may be, and is universally, called an aristocrat. The principal
+difference is, that one carries outward what the other carries inward.
+I am thought an aristocrat by the Florentines for conversing with few
+people, and for changing my shirt and shaving my beard on other days
+than festivals; which the most aristocratical of them never do,
+considering it, no doubt, as an excess. I am, however, from my soul a
+republican, if prudence and modesty will authorize any man to call
+himself so; and this, I trust, I have demonstrated in the most
+valuable of my works, the _Treatise on Tyranny_ and the _Dialogue_
+with my friends at Siena. The aristocratical part of me, if part of me
+it must be called, hangs loose and keeps off insects. I see no
+aristocracy in the children of sharpers from behind the counter, nor,
+placing the matter in the most favourable point of view, in the
+descendants of free citizens who accepted from any vile
+enslaver--French, Spanish, German, or priest, or monk (represented
+with a piece of buffoonery, like a beehive on his head and a picklock
+key at his girdle)--the titles of counts and marquises. In Piedmont
+the matter is different: we must either have been the rabble or the
+lords; we were military, and we retain over the populace the same rank
+and spirit as our ancestors held over the soldiery.
+
+_Salomon._ Signor Conte, I have heard of levellers, but I have never
+seen one: all are disposed to level down, but nobody to level up. As
+for nobility, there is none in Europe beside the Venetian. Nobility
+must be self-constituted and independent: the free alone are noble;
+slavery, like death, levels all. The English come nearest to the
+Venetian: they are independent, but want the main characteristic, the
+_self-constituted_. You have been in England, Signor Conte, and can
+judge of them better than I can.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Alfieri._ It is among those who stand between the peerage and the
+people that there exists a greater mass of virtue and of wisdom than
+in the rest of Europe. Much of their dignified simplicity may be
+attributed to the plainness of their religion, and, what will always
+be imitated, to the decorous life of their king: for whatever may be
+the defects of either, if we compare them with others round us, they
+are excellent.
+
+_Salomon._ A young religion jumps upon the shoulders of an older one,
+and soon becomes like her, by mockery of her tricks, her cant, and her
+decrepitude. Meanwhile the old one shakes with indignation, and swears
+there is neither relationship nor likeness. Was there ever a religion
+in the world that was not the true religion, or was there ever a king
+that was not the best of kings?
+
+_Alfieri._ In the latter case we must have arrived nigh perfection;
+since it is evident from the authority of the gravest men--theologians,
+presidents, judges, corporations, universities, senates--that every
+prince is better than his father, 'of blessed memory, now with God'. If
+they continue to rise thus transcendently, earth in a little time will
+be incapable of holding them, and higher heavens must be raised upon
+the highest heavens for their reception. The lumber of our Italian
+courts, the most crazy part of which is that which rests upon a red
+cushion in a gilt chair, with stars and sheep and crosses dangling from
+it, must be approached as Artaxerxes and Domitian. These automatons, we
+are told nevertheless, are very condescending. Poor fools who tell us
+it! ignorant that where on one side is condescension, on the other side
+must be baseness. The rascals have ruined my physiognomy. I wear an
+habitual sneer upon my face, God confound them for it! even when I
+whisper a word of love in the prone ear of my donna.
+
+_Salomon._ This temper or constitution of mind I am afraid may do
+injury to your works.
+
+_Alfieri._ Surely not to all: my satire at least must be the better
+for it.
+
+_Salomon._ I think differently. No satire can be excellent where
+displeasure is expressed with acrimony and vehemence. When satire
+ceases to smile, it should be momentarily, and for the purpose of
+inculcating a moral. Juvenal is hardly more a satirist than Lucan: he
+is indeed a vigorous and bold declaimer, but he stamps too often, and
+splashes up too much filth. We Italians have no delicacy in wit: we
+have indeed no conception of it; we fancy we must be weak if we are
+not offensive. The scream of Pulcinello is imitated more easily than
+the masterly strokes of Plautus, or the sly insinuations of Catullus
+and of Flaccus.
+
+_Alfieri._ We are the least witty of men because we are the most
+trifling.
+
+_Salomon._ You would persuade me then that to be witty one must be
+grave: this is surely a contradiction.
+
+_Alfieri._ I would persuade you only that banter, pun, and quibble are
+the properties of light men and shallow capacities; that genuine
+humour and true wit require a sound and capacious mind, which is
+always a grave one. Contemptuousness is not incompatible with them:
+worthless is that man who feels no contempt for the worthless, and
+weak who treats their emptiness as a thing of weight. At first it may
+seem a paradox, but it is perfectly true, that the gravest nations
+have been the wittiest; and in those nations some of the gravest men.
+In England, Swift and Addison; in Spain, Cervantes. Rabelais and La
+Fontaine are recorded by their countrymen to have been _rêveurs_. Few
+men have been graver than Pascal; few have been wittier.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That Shakespeare was gay and pleasurable in conversation I can easily
+admit; for there never was a mind at once so plastic and so pliant:
+but without much gravity, could there have been that potency and
+comprehensiveness of thought, that depth of feeling, that creation of
+imperishable ideas, that sojourn in the souls of other men? He was
+amused in his workshop: such was society. But when he left it, he
+meditated intensely upon those limbs and muscles on which he was about
+to bestow new action, grace, and majesty; and so great an intensity of
+meditation must have strongly impressed his whole character.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Salomon._ Certainly no race of men upon earth ever was so unwarlike,
+so indifferent to national dignity and to personal honour, as the
+Florentines are now: yet in former days a certain pride, arising from
+a resemblance in their government to that of Athens, excited a
+vivifying desire of approximation where no danger or loss accompanied
+it; and Genius was no less confident of his security than of his
+power. Look from the window. That cottage on the declivity was
+Dante's: that square and large mansion, with a circular garden before
+it elevated artificially, was the first scene of Boccaccio's
+_Decameron_. A boy might stand at an equal distance between them, and
+break the windows of each with his sling. What idle fabricators of
+crazy systems will tell me that climate is the creator of genius? The
+climate of Austria is more regular and more temperate than ours, which
+I am inclined to believe is the most variable in the whole universe,
+subject, as you have perceived, to heavy fogs for two months in
+winter, and to a stifling heat, concentrated within the hills, for
+five more. Yet a single man of genius hath never appeared in the whole
+extent of Austria, an extent of several thousand times greater than
+our city; and this very street has given birth to fifty.
+
+_Alfieri._ Since the destruction of the republic, Florence has
+produced only one great man, Galileo, and abandoned him to every
+indignity that fanaticism and despotism could invent. Extraordinary
+men, like the stones that are formed in the higher regions of the air,
+fall upon the earth only to be broken and cast into the furnace. The
+precursor of Newton lived in the deserts of the moral world, drank
+water, and ate locusts and wild honey. It was fortunate that his head
+also was not lopped off: had a singer asked it, instead of a dancer,
+it would have been.
+
+_Salomon._ In fact it was; for the fruits of it were shaken down and
+thrown away: he was forbidden to publish the most important of his
+discoveries, and the better part of his manuscripts was burned after
+his death.
+
+_Alfieri._ Yes, Signor Salomon, those things may rather be called our
+heads than this knob above the shoulder, of which (as matters stand)
+we are rather the porters than the proprietors, and which is really
+the joint concern of barber and dentist.
+
+_Salomon._ Our thoughts, if they may not rest at home, may wander
+freely. Delighting in the remoter glories of my native city, I forget
+at times its humiliation and ignominy. A town so little that the voice
+of a cabbage-girl in the midst of it may be heard at the extremities,
+reared within three centuries a greater number of citizens illustrious
+for their genius than all the remainder of the Continent (excepting
+her sister Athens) in six thousand years. My ignorance of the Greek
+forbids me to compare our Dante with Homer. The propriety and force of
+language and the harmony of verse in the glorious Grecian are quite
+lost to me. Dante had not only to compose a poem, but in great part a
+language. Fantastical as the plan of his poem is, and, I will add,
+uninteresting and uninviting; unimportant, mean, contemptible, as are
+nine-tenths of his characters and his details, and wearisome as is the
+scheme of his versification--there are more thoughts highly poetical,
+there is more reflection, and the nobler properties of mind and
+intellect are brought into more intense action, not only than in the
+whole course of French poetry, but also in the whole of continental;
+nor do I think (I must here also speak with hesitation) that any one
+drama of Shakespeare contains so many. Smile as you will, Signor
+Conte, what must I think of a city where Michel Angelo, Frate
+Bartolomeo, Ghiberti (who formed them), Guicciardini, and Machiavelli
+were secondary men? And certainly such were they, if we compare them
+with Galileo and Boccaccio and Dante.
+
+_Alfieri._ I smiled from pure delight, which I rarely do; for I take
+an interest deep and vital in such men, and in those who appreciate
+them rightly and praise them unreservedly. These are my
+fellow-citizens: I acknowledge no other; we are of the same tribe, of
+the same household; I bow to them as being older than myself, and I
+love them as being better.
+
+_Salomon._ Let us hope that our Italy is not yet effete. Filangieri
+died but lately: what think you of him?
+
+_Alfieri._ If it were possible that I could ever see his statue in a
+square at Constantinople, though I should be scourged for an idolater,
+I would kiss the pedestal. As this, however, is less likely than that
+I should suffer for writing satirically, and as criticism is less
+likely to mislead me than speculation, I will revert to our former
+subject.
+
+Indignation and contempt may be expressed in other poems than such as
+are usually called satires. Filicaia, in his celebrated address to
+Italy, steers a middle course.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A perfect piece of criticism must exhibit _where_ a work is good or
+bad; _why_ it is good or bad; in what degree it is good or bad; must
+also demonstrate in what manner, and to what extent, the same ideas or
+reflections have come to others, and, if they be clothed in poetry,
+why by an apparently slight variation, what in one author is
+mediocrity, in another is excellence. I have never seen a critic of
+Florence, or Pisa, or Milan, or Bologna, who did not commend and
+admire the sonnet of Cassiani on the rape of Proserpine, without a
+suspicion of its manifold and grave defects.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Does not this describe the devils of our carnival, rather than the
+majestic brother of Jupiter, at whose side upon asphodel and amaranth
+the sweet Persephone sits pensively contented, in that deep motionless
+quiet which mortals pity and which the gods enjoy; rather than him
+who, under the umbrage of Elysium, gazes at once upon all the beauties
+that on earth were separated--Helena and Eriphyle, Polyxena and
+Hermione, Deidamia and Deianira, Leda and Omphale, Atalanta and
+Cydippe, Laodamia, with her arm round the neck of a fond youth whom
+she still seems afraid of losing, and, apart, the daughters of Niobe
+clinging to their parent?
+
+_Salomon._ These images are better than satires; but continue, in
+preference to other thoughts or pursuits, the noble career you have
+entered. Be contented, Signor Conte, with the glory of our first great
+dramatist, and neglect altogether any inferior one. Why vex and
+torment yourself about the French? They buzz and are troublesome while
+they are swarming; but the master will soon hive them. Is the whole
+nation worth the worst of your tragedies? All the present race of
+them, all the creatures in the world which excite your indignation,
+will lie in the grave, while young and old are clapping their hands or
+beating their bosoms at your _Bruto Primo_. Consider also that kings
+and emperors should in your estimation be but as grasshoppers and
+beetles: let them consume a few blades of your clover without
+molesting them, without bringing them to crawl on you and claw you.
+The difference between them and men of genius is almost as great as
+between men of genius and those higher intelligences who act in
+immediate subordination to the Almighty. Yes, I assert it, without
+flattery and without fear, the angels are not higher above mortals
+than you are above the proudest that trample on them.
+
+_Alfieri._ I believe, sir, you were the first in commending my
+tragedies.
+
+_Salomon._ He who first praises a good book becomingly is next in
+merit to the author.
+
+_Alfieri._ As a writer and as a man I know my station: if I found in
+the world five equal to myself, I would walk out of it, not to be
+jostled.
+
+I must now, Signor Salomon, take my leave of you; for his Eminence my
+coachman and their Excellencies my horses are waiting.
+
+
+
+
+ROUSSEAU AND MALESHERBES
+
+
+_Rousseau._ I am ashamed, sir, of my countrymen: let my humiliation
+expiate their offence. I wish it had not been a minister of the Gospel
+who received you with such inhospitality.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Nothing can be more ardent and more cordial than the
+expressions with which you greet me, M. Rousseau, on my return from
+your lakes and mountains.
+
+_Rousseau._ If the pastor took you for a courtier, I reverence him for
+his contemptuousness.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Why so? Indeed you are in the wrong, my friend. No
+person has a right to treat another with contemptuousness unless he
+knows him to deserve it. When a courtier enters the house of a pastor
+in preference to the next, the pastor should partake in the sentiment
+that induced him, or at least not to be offended to be preferred. A
+courtier is such at court: in the house of a clergyman he is not a
+courtier, but a guest. If to be a courtier is offensive, remember that
+we punish offences where they are committed, where they can be
+examined, where pleadings can be heard for and against the accused,
+and where nothing is admitted extraneous from the indictment,
+excepting what may be adduced in his behalf by witnesses to the
+general tenor of his character.
+
+_Rousseau._ Is it really true that the man told you to mount the
+hayloft if you wished a night's lodging?
+
+_Malesherbes._ He did: a certain proof that he no more took me to be a
+courtier than I took him to be. I accepted his offer, and never slept
+so soundly. Moderate fatigue, the Alpine air, the blaze of a good fire
+(for I was admitted to it some moments), and a profusion of
+odoriferous hay, below which a cow was sleeping, subdued my senses,
+and protracted my slumbers beyond the usual hour.
+
+_Rousseau._ You have no right, sir, to be the patron and remunerator
+of inhospitality. Three or four such men as you would corrupt all
+Switzerland, and prepare it for the fangs of France and Austria.
+Kings, like hyenas, will always fall upon dead carcasses, although
+their bellies are full, and although they are conscious that in the
+end they will tear one another to pieces over them. Why should you
+prepare their prey? Were your fire and effulgence given you for this?
+Why, in short, did you thank this churl? Why did you recommend him to
+his superiors for preferment on the next vacancy?
+
+_Malesherbes._ I must adopt your opinion of his behaviour in order to
+answer you satisfactorily. You suppose him inhospitable: what milder
+or more effectual mode of reproving him, than to make every dish at
+his table admonish him? If he did evil, have I no authority before me
+which commands me to render him good for it? Believe me, M. Rousseau,
+the execution of this command is always accompanied by the heart's
+applause, and opportunities of obedience are more frequent here than
+anywhere. Would not you exchange resentment for the contrary feeling,
+even if religion or duty said nothing about the matter? I am afraid
+the most philosophical of us are sometimes a little perverse, and will
+not be so happy as they might be, because the path is pointed out to
+them, and because he who points it out is wise and powerful. Obstinacy
+and jealousy, the worst parts of childhood and of manhood, have range
+enough for their ill humours without the heavens.
+
+_Rousseau._ Sir, I perceive you are among my enemies. I did not think
+it; for, whatever may be my faults, I am totally free from suspicion.
+
+_Malesherbes._ And do not think it now, I entreat you, my good friend.
+
+_Rousseau._ Courts and society have corrupted the best heart in
+France, and have perverted the best intellect.
+
+_Malesherbes._ They have done much evil then.
+
+_Rousseau._ Answer me, and your own conscience: how could you choose
+to live among the perfidies of Paris and Versailles?
+
+_Malesherbes._ Lawyers, and advocates in particular, must live there;
+philosophers need not. If every honest man thought it requisite to
+leave those cities, would the inhabitants be the better?
+
+_Rousseau._ You have entered into intimacies with the members of
+various administrations, opposite in plans and sentiments, but alike
+hostile to you, and all of whom, if they could have kept your talents
+down, would have done it. Finding the thing impossible, they ceased to
+persecute, and would gladly tempt you under the semblance of
+friendship and esteem to supplicate for some office, that they might
+indicate to the world your unworthiness by refusing you: a proof, as
+you know, quite sufficient and self-evident.
+
+_Malesherbes._ They will never tempt me to supplicate for anything but
+justice, and that in behalf of others. I know nothing of parties. If I
+am acquainted with two persons of opposite sides in politics, I
+consider them as you consider a watchmaker and a cabinet-maker: one
+desires to rise by one way, the other by another. Administrations and
+systems of government would be quite indifferent to those very
+functionaries and their opponents, who appear the most zealous
+partisans, if their fortunes and consequence were not affixed to them.
+Several of these men seem consistent, and indeed are; the reason is,
+versatility would loosen and detach from them the public esteem and
+confidence----
+
+_Rousseau._ By which their girandoles are lighted, their dinners
+served, their lackeys liveried, and their opera-girls vie in
+benefit-nights. There is no State in Europe where the least wise have
+not governed the most wise. We find the light and foolish keeping up
+with the machinery of government easily and leisurely, just as we see
+butterflies keep up with carriages at full speed. This is owing in
+both cases to their levity and their position: the stronger and the
+more active are left behind. I am resolved to prove that
+farmers-general are the main causes of the defects in our music.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Prove it, or anything else, provided that the
+discussion does not irritate and torment you.
+
+_Rousseau._ Truth is the object of philosophy.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Not of philosophers: the display of ingenuity, for the
+most part, is and always has been it. I must here offer you an opinion
+of my own, which, if you think well of me, you will pardon, though you
+should disbelieve its solidity. My opinion then is, that truth is not
+reasonably the main and ultimate object of philosophy; but that
+philosophy should seek truth merely as the means of acquiring and of
+propagating happiness. Truths are simple; wisdom, which is formed by
+their apposition and application, is concrete: out of this, in its
+vast varieties, open to our wants and wishes, comes happiness. But the
+knowledge of all the truths ever yet discovered does not lead
+immediately to it, nor indeed will ever reach it, unless you make the
+more important of them bear upon your heart and intellect, and form,
+as it were, the blood that moves and nurtures them.
+
+_Rousseau._ I never until now entertained a doubt that truth is the
+ultimate aim and object of philosophy: no writer has denied it, I
+think.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Designedly none may: but when it is agreed that
+happiness is the chief good, it must also be agreed that the chief
+wisdom will pursue it; and I have already said, what your own
+experience cannot but have pointed out to you, that no truth, or
+series of truths, hypothetically, can communicate or attain it. Come,
+M. Rousseau, tell me candidly, do you derive no pleasure from a sense
+of superiority in genius and independence?
+
+_Rousseau._ The highest, sir, from a consciousness of independence.
+
+_Malesherbes._ _Ingenuous_ is the epithet we affix to modesty, but
+modesty often makes men act otherwise than ingenuously: you, for
+example, now. You are angry at the servility of people, and disgusted
+at their obtuseness and indifference, on matters of most import to
+their welfare. If they were equal to you, this anger would cease; but
+the fire would break out somewhere else, on ground which appears at
+present sound and level. Voltaire, for instance, is less eloquent than
+you: but Voltaire is wittier than any man living. This quality----
+
+_Rousseau._ Is the quality of a buffoon and a courtier. But the
+buffoon should have most of it, to support his higher dignity.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Voltaire's is Attic.
+
+_Rousseau_. If malignity is Attic. Petulance is not wit, although a
+few grains of wit may be found in petulance: quartz is not gold,
+although a few grains of gold may be found in quartz. Voltaire is a
+monkey in mischief, and a spaniel in obsequiousness. He declaims
+against the cruel and tyrannical; and he kisses the hands of
+adulteresses who murder their husbands, and of robbers who decimate
+their gang.
+
+_Malesherbes._ I will not discuss with you the character of the man,
+and only that part of the author's on which I spoke. There may be
+malignity in wit, there cannot be violence. You may irritate and
+disquiet with it; but it must be by means of a flower or a feather.
+Wit and humour stand on one side, irony and sarcasm on the other.
+
+_Rousseau._ They are in near neighbourhood.
+
+_Malesherbes._ So are the Elysian fields and Tartarus.
+
+_Rousseau._ Pray, go on: teach me to stand quiet in my stall, while my
+masters and managers pass by.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Well then--Pascal argues as closely and methodically;
+Bossuet is as scientific in the structure of his sentences;
+Demosthenes, many think, has equal fire, vigour, dexterity: equal
+selection of topics and equal temperance in treating them,
+immeasurably as he falls short of you in appeals to the sensibility,
+and in everything which by way of excellence we usually call genius.
+
+_Rousseau._ Sir, I see no resemblance between a pleader at the bar, or
+a haranguer of the populace, and me.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Certainly his questions are occasional: but one great
+question hangs in the centre, and high above the rest; and this is,
+whether the Mother of liberty and civilization shall exist, or whether
+she shall be extinguished in the bosom of her family. As we often
+apply to Eloquence and her parts the terms we apply to Architecture
+and hers, let me do it also, and remark that nothing can be more
+simple, solid, and symmetrical, nothing more frugal in decoration or
+more appropriate in distribution, than the apartments of Demosthenes.
+Yours excel them in space and altitude; your ornaments are equally
+chaste and beautiful, with more variety and invention, more airiness
+and light. But why, among the Loves and Graces, does Apollo flay
+Marsyas?--and why may not the tiara still cover the ears of Midas?
+Cannot you, who detest kings and courtiers, keep away from them? If I
+must be with them, let me be in good humour and good spirits. If I
+will tread upon a Persian carpet, let it at least be in clean shoes.
+
+As the raciest wine makes the sharpest vinegar, so the richest fancies
+turn the most readily to acrimony. Keep yours, my dear M. Rousseau,
+from the exposure and heats that generate it. Be contented; enjoy your
+fine imagination; and do not throw your salad out of window, nor shove
+your cat off your knee, on hearing it said that Shakespeare has a
+finer, or that a minister is of opinion that you know more of music
+than of state. My friend! the quarrels of ingenious men are generally
+far less reasonable and just, less placable and moderate, than those
+of the stupid and ignorant. We ought to blush at this: and we should
+blush yet more deeply if we bring them in as parties to our
+differences. Let us conquer by kindness; which we cannot do easily or
+well without communication.
+
+_Rousseau._ The minister would expel me from his antechamber, and
+order his valets to buffet me, if I offered him any proposal for the
+advantage of mankind.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Call to him, then, from this room, where the valets are
+civiler. Nature has given you a speaking-trumpet, which neither storm
+can drown nor enemy can silence. If you esteem him, instruct him; if
+you despise him, do the same. Surely, you who have much benevolence
+would not despise any one willingly or unnecessarily. Contempt is for
+the incorrigible: now, where upon earth is he whom your genius, if
+rightly and temperately exerted, would not influence and correct?
+
+I never was more flattered or honoured than by your patience in
+listening to me. Consider me as an old woman who sits by the bedside
+in your infirmity, who brings you no savoury viand, no exotic fruit,
+but a basin of whey or a basket of strawberries from your native
+hills; assures you that what oppressed you was a dream, occasioned by
+the wrong position in which you lay; opens the window, gives you fresh
+air, and entreats you to recollect the features of Nature, and to
+observe (which no man ever did so accurately) their beauty. In your
+politics you cut down a forest to make a toothpick, and cannot make
+even that out of it! Do not let us in jurisprudence be like critics in
+the classics, and change whatever can be changed, right or wrong. No
+statesman will take your advice. Supposing that any one is liberal in
+his sentiments and clear-sighted in his views, nevertheless love of
+power is jealous, and he would rejoice to see you fleeing from
+persecution or turning to meet it. The very men whom you would benefit
+will treat you worse. As the ministers of kings wish their masters to
+possess absolute power that the exercise of it may be delegated to
+them, which it naturally is from the violence and sloth alternate with
+despots as with wild beasts, and that they may apprehend no check or
+control from those who discover their misdemeanours, in like manner
+the people places more trust in favour than in fortune, and hopes to
+obtain by subserviency what it never might by election or by chance.
+Else in free governments, so some are called (for names once given are
+the last things lost), all minor offices and employments would be
+assigned by ballot. Each province or canton would present a list
+annually of such persons in it as are worthy to occupy the local
+administrations.
+
+To avoid any allusion to the country in which we live, let us take
+England for example. Is it not absurd, iniquitous, and revolting, that
+the minister of a church in Yorkshire should be appointed by a lawyer
+in London, who never knew him, never saw him, never heard from a
+single one of the parishioners a recommendation of any kind? Is it not
+more reasonable that a justice of the peace should be chosen by those
+who have always been witnesses of his integrity?
+
+_Rousseau._ The king should appoint his ministers, and should invest
+them with power and splendour; but those ministers should not appoint
+to any civil or religious place of trust or profit which the community
+could manifestly fill better. The greater part of offices and
+dignities should be conferred for a short and stated time, that all
+might hope to attain and strive to deserve them. Embassies in
+particular should never exceed one year in Europe, nor consulates two.
+To the latter office I assign this duration as the more difficult to
+fulfil properly, from requiring a knowledge of trade, although a
+slight one, and because those who possess any such knowledge are
+inclined for the greater part to turn it to their own account, which a
+consul ought by no means to do. Frequent election of representatives
+and of civil officers in the subordinate employments would remove most
+causes of discontent in the people, and of instability in kingly
+power. Here is a lottery in which every one is sure of a prize, if not
+for himself, at least for somebody in his family or among his friends;
+and the ticket would be fairly paid for out of the taxes.
+
+_Malesherbes._ So it appears to me. What other system can present so
+obviously to the great mass of the people the two principal piers and
+buttresses of government, tangible interest and reasonable hope? No
+danger of any kind can arise from it, no antipathies, no divisions, no
+imposture of demagogues, no caprice of despots. On the contrary, many
+and great advantages in places which at the first survey do not appear
+to border on it. At present, the best of the English juridical
+institutions, that of justices of the peace, is viewed with diffidence
+and distrust. Elected as they would be, and increased in number, the
+whole judicature, civil and criminal, might be confided to them, and
+their labours be not only not aggravated but diminished. Suppose them
+in four divisions to meet at four places in every county once in
+twenty days, and to possess the power of imposing a fine not exceeding
+two hundred francs on every cause implying oppression, and one not
+exceeding fifty on such as they should unanimously declare frivolous.
+
+_Rousseau._ Few would become attorneys, and those from among the
+indigent.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Almost the greatest evil that exists in the world,
+moral or physical, would be removed. A second appeal might be made in
+the following session; a third could only come before Parliament, and
+this alone by means of attorneys, the number of whom altogether would
+not exceed the number of coroners; for in England there are as many
+who cut their own throats as who would cut their own purses.
+
+_Rousseau._ The famous _trial by jury_ would cease: this would disgust
+the English.
+
+_Malesherbes._ The number of justices would be much augmented: nearly
+all those who now are jurymen would enjoy this rank and dignity, and
+would be flattered by sitting on the same bench with the first
+gentlemen of the land.
+
+_Rousseau._ What number would sit?
+
+_Malesherbes._ Three or five in the first instance; five or seven in
+the second--as the number of causes should permit.
+
+_Rousseau._ The laws of England are extremely intricate and perplexed:
+such men would be puzzled.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Such men having no interest in the perplexity, but on
+the contrary an interest in unravelling it, would see such laws
+corrected. Intricate as they are, questions on those which are the
+most so are usually referred by the judges themselves to private
+arbitration; of which my plan, I conceive, has all the advantages,
+united to those of open and free discussion among men of unperverted
+sense, and unbiased by professional hopes and interests. The different
+courts of law in England cost about seventy millions of francs
+annually. On my system, the justices or judges would receive
+five-and-twenty francs daily; as the _special jurymen_ do now, without
+any sense of shame or impropriety, however rich they may be: such
+being the established practice.
+
+_Rousseau._ Seventy millions! seventy millions!
+
+_Malesherbes._ There are attorneys and conveyancers in London who gain
+one hundred thousand francs a year, and advocates more. The
+chancellor----
+
+_Rousseau._ The Celeno of these harpies----
+
+_Malesherbes._ Nets above one million, and is greatly more than an
+archbishop in the Church, scattering preferment in Cumberland and
+Cornwall from his bench at Westminster.
+
+_Rousseau._ Absurdities and enormities are great in proportion to
+custom or insuetude. If we had lived from childhood with a boa
+constrictor, we should think it no more a monster than a canary-bird.
+The sum you mentioned, of seventy millions, is incredible.
+
+_Malesherbes._ In this estimate the expense of letters by the post,
+and of journeys made by the parties, is not and cannot be included.
+
+_Rousseau._ The whole machine of government, civil and religious,
+ought never to bear upon the people with a weight so oppressive. I do
+not add the national defence, which being principally naval is more
+costly, nor institutions for the promotion of the arts, which in a
+country like England ought to be liberal. But such an expenditure
+should nearly suffice for these also, in time of peace. Religion and
+law indeed should cost nothing: at present the one hangs property, the
+other quarters it. I am confounded at the profusion. I doubt whether
+the Romans expended so much in that year's war which dissolved the
+Carthaginian empire, and left them masters of the universe. What is
+certain, and what is better, it did not cost a tenth of it to colonize
+Pennsylvania, in whose forests the cradle of freedom is suspended, and
+where the eye of philanthropy, tired with tears and vigils, may wander
+and may rest. Your system, or rather your arrangement of one already
+established, pleases me. Ministers would only lose thereby that
+portion of their possessions which they give away to needy relatives,
+unworthy dependants, or the requisite supporters of their authority
+and power.
+
+_Malesherbes._ On this plan, no such supporters would be necessary, no
+such dependants could exist, and no such relatives could be
+disappointed. Beside, the conflicts of their opponents must be
+periodical, weak, and irregular.
+
+_Rousseau._ The craving for the rich carrion would be less keen; the
+zeal of opposition, as usual, would be measured by the stomach,
+whereon hope and overlooking have always a strong influence.
+
+_Malesherbes._ My excellent friend, do not be offended with me for an
+ingenuous and frank confession: promise me your pardon.
+
+_Rousseau._ You need none.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Promise it, nevertheless.
+
+_Rousseau._ You have said nothing, done nothing, which could in any
+way displease me.
+
+_Malesherbes._ You grant me, then, a bill of indemnity for what I may
+have undertaken with a good intention since we have been together?
+
+_Rousseau._ Willingly.
+
+_Malesherbes._ I fell into your views, I walked along with you side by
+side, merely to occupy your mind, which I perceived was agitated.
+
+In compliance with your humour, to engage your fancy, to divert it
+awhile from Switzerland, by which you appear and partly on my account
+to be offended, I began with reflections upon England: I raised up
+another cloud in the region of them, light enough to be fantastic and
+diaphanous, and to catch some little irradiation from its western
+sun. Do not run after it farther; it has vanished already. Consider:
+the three great nations----
+
+_Rousseau._ Pray, which are those?
+
+_Malesherbes._ I cannot in conscience give the palm to the Hottentots,
+the Greenlanders, or the Hurons: I meant to designate those who united
+to empire the most social virtue and civil freedom. Athens, Rome, and
+England have received on the subject of government elaborate treatises
+from their greatest men. You have reasoned more dispassionately and
+profoundly on it than Plato has done, or probably than Cicero, led
+away as he often is by the authority of those who are inferior to
+himself: but do you excel Aristoteles in calm and patient
+investigation? Or, think you, are your reading and range of thought
+more extensive than Harrington's and Milton's? Yet what effect have
+the political works of these marvellous men produced upon the
+world?--what effect upon any one state, any one city, any one hamlet?
+A clerk in office, an accountant, a gauger of small beer, a songwriter
+for a tavern dinner, produces more. He thrusts his rags into the hole
+whence the wind comes, and sleeps soundly. While you and I are talking
+about elevations and proportions, pillars and pilasters, architraves
+and friezes, the buildings we should repair are falling to the earth,
+and the materials for their restoration are in the quarry.
+
+_Rousseau._ I could answer you: but my mind has certain moments of
+repose, or rather of oscillation, which I would not for the world
+disturb. Music, eloquence, friendship, bring and prolong them.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Enjoy them, my dear friend, and convert them if
+possible to months and years. It is as much at your arbitration on
+what theme you shall meditate, as in what meadow you shall botanize;
+and you have as much at your option the choice of your thoughts, as of
+the keys in your harpsichord.
+
+_Rousseau._ If this were true, who could be unhappy?
+
+_Malesherbes._ Those of whom it is not true. Those who from want of
+practice cannot manage their thoughts, who have few to select from,
+and who, because of their sloth or of their weakness, do not roll away
+the heaviest from before them.
+
+
+
+
+LUCULLUS AND CAESAR
+
+
+_Caesar._ Lucius Lucullus, I come to you privately and unattended for
+reasons which you will know; confiding, I dare not say in your
+friendship, since no service of mine toward you hath deserved it, but
+in your generous and disinterested love of peace. Hear me on. Cneius
+Pompeius, according to the report of my connexions in the city, had,
+on the instant of my leaving it for the province, begun to solicit his
+dependants to strip me ignominiously of authority. Neither vows nor
+affinity can bind him. He would degrade the father of his wife; he
+would humiliate his own children, the unoffending, the unborn; he
+would poison his own nascent love--at the suggestion of Ambition.
+Matters are now brought so far, that either he or I must submit to a
+reverse of fortune; since no concession can assuage his malice, divert
+his envy, or gratify his cupidity. No sooner could I raise myself up,
+from the consternation and stupefaction into which the certainty of
+these reports had thrown me, than I began to consider in what manner
+my own private afflictions might become the least noxious to the
+republic. Into whose arms, then, could I throw myself more naturally
+and more securely, to whose bosom could I commit and consign more
+sacredly the hopes and destinies of our beloved country, than his who
+laid down power in the midst of its enjoyments, in the vigour of
+youth, in the pride of triumph, when Dignity solicited, when
+Friendship urged, entreated, supplicated, and when Liberty herself
+invited and beckoned to him from the senatorial order and from the
+curule chair? Betrayed and abandoned by those we had confided in, our
+next friendship, if ever our hearts receive any, or if any will
+venture in those places of desolation, flies forward instinctively to
+what is most contrary and dissimilar. Caesar is hence the visitant of
+Lucullus.
+
+_Lucullus._ I had always thought Pompeius more moderate and more
+reserved than you represent him, Caius Julius; and yet I am considered
+in general, and surely you also will consider me, but little liable to
+be prepossessed by him.
+
+_Caesar._ Unless he may have ingratiated himself with you recently,
+by the administration of that worthy whom last winter his partisans
+dragged before the Senate, and forced to assert publicly that you and
+Cato had instigated a party to circumvent and murder him; and whose
+carcass, a few days afterward, when it had been announced that he had
+died by a natural death, was found covered with bruises, stabs, and
+dislocations.
+
+_Lucullus._ You bring much to my memory which had quite slipped out of
+it, and I wonder that it could make such an impression on yours. A
+proof to me that the interest you take in my behalf began earlier than
+your delicacy will permit you to acknowledge. You are fatigued, which
+I ought to have perceived before.
+
+_Caesar._ Not at all; the fresh air has given me life and alertness: I
+feel it upon my cheek even in the room.
+
+_Lucullus._ After our dinner and sleep, we will spend the remainder of
+the day on the subject of your visit.
+
+_Caesar._ Those Ethiopian slaves of yours shiver with cold upon the
+mountain here; and truly I myself was not insensible to the change of
+climate, in the way from Mutina.
+
+What white bread! I never found such even at Naples or Capua. This
+Formian wine (which I prefer to the Chian), how exquisite!
+
+_Lucullus._ Such is the urbanity of Caesar, even while he bites his
+lip with displeasure. How! surely it bleeds! Permit me to examine the
+cup.
+
+_Caesar._ I believe a jewel has fallen out of the rim in the carriage:
+the gold is rough there.
+
+_Lucullus._ Marcipor, let me never see that cup again! No answer, I
+desire. My guest pardons heavier faults. Mind that dinner be prepared
+for us shortly.
+
+_Caesar._ In the meantime, Lucullus, if your health permits it, shall
+we walk a few paces round the villa? for I have not seen anything of
+the kind before.
+
+_Lucullus._ The walls are double; the space between them two feet: the
+materials for the most part earth and straw. Two hundred slaves, and
+about as many mules and oxen, brought the beams and rafters up the
+mountain; my architects fixed them at once in their places: every part
+was ready, even the wooden nails. The roof is thatched, you see.
+
+_Caesar._ Is there no danger that so light a material should be
+carried off by the winds, on such an eminence?
+
+_Lucullus._ None resists them equally well.
+
+_Caesar._ On this immensely high mountain, I should be apprehensive of
+the lightning, which the poets, and I think the philosophers too, have
+told us strikes the highest.
+
+_Lucullus._ The poets are right; for whatever is received as truth is
+truth in poetry; and a fable may illustrate like a fact. But the
+philosophers are wrong, as they generally are, even in the commonest
+things; because they seldom look beyond their own tenets, unless
+through captiousness, and because they argue more than they meditate,
+and display more than they examine. Archimedes and Euclid are, in my
+opinion, after our Epicurus, the worthiest of the name, having kept
+apart to the demonstrable, the practical, and the useful. Many of the
+rest are good writers and good disputants; but unfaithful suitors of
+simple science, boasters of their acquaintance with gods and
+goddesses, plagiarists and impostors. I had forgotten my roof,
+although it is composed of much the same materials as the
+philosophers'. Let the lightning fall: one handful of silver, or less,
+repairs the damage.
+
+_Caesar._ Impossible! nor indeed one thousand, nor twenty, if those
+tapestries and pictures are consumed.
+
+_Lucullus._ True; but only the thatch would burn. For, before the
+baths were tessellated, I filled the area with alum and water, and
+soaked the timbers and laths for many months, and covered them
+afterward with alum in powder, by means of liquid glue. Mithridates
+taught me this. Having in vain attacked with combustibles a wooden
+tower, I took it by stratagem, and found within it a mass of alum,
+which, if a great hurry had not been observed by us among the enemy in
+the attempt to conceal it, would have escaped our notice. I never
+scrupled to extort the truth from my prisoners; but my instruments
+were purple robes and plate, and the only wheel in my armoury destined
+to such purposes was the wheel of Fortune.
+
+_Caesar._ I wish, in my campaigns, I could have equalled your clemency
+and humanity; but the Gauls are more uncertain, fierce, and perfidious
+than the wildest tribes of Caucasus; and our policy cannot be carried
+with us, it must be formed upon the spot. They love you, not for
+abstaining from hurting them, but for ceasing; and they embrace you
+only at two seasons--when stripes are fresh, or when stripes are
+imminent. Elsewhere, I hope to become the rival of Lucullus in this
+admirable part of virtue.
+
+I shall never build villas, because--but what are your proportions?
+Surely the edifice is extremely low.
+
+_Lucullus._ There is only one floor; the height of the apartments is
+twenty feet to the cornice, five above it; the breadth is twenty-five,
+the length forty. The building, as you perceive, is quadrangular:
+three sides contain four rooms each; the other has many partitions and
+two stories, for domestics and offices. Here is my salt-bath.
+
+_Caesar._ A bath, indeed, for all the Nereids named by Hesiod, with
+room enough for the Tritons and their herds and horses.
+
+_Lucullus._ Here stand my two cows. Their milk is brought to me with
+its warmth and froth; for it loses its salubrity both by repose and by
+motion. Pardon me, Caesar: I shall appear to you to have forgotten
+that I am not conducting Marcus Varro.
+
+_Caesar._ You would convert him into Cacus: he would drive them off.
+What beautiful beasts! how sleek and white and cleanly! I never saw
+any like them, excepting when we sacrifice to Jupiter the stately
+leader from the pastures of the Clitumnus.
+
+_Lucullus._ Often do I make a visit to these quiet creatures, and with
+no less pleasure than in former days to my horses. Nor indeed can I
+much wonder that whole nations have been consentaneous in treating
+them as objects of devotion: the only thing wonderful is that
+gratitude seems to have acted as powerfully and extensively as fear;
+indeed, more extensively, for no object of worship whatever has
+attracted so many worshippers. Where Jupiter has one, the cow has ten:
+she was venerated before he was born, and will be when even the
+carvers have forgotten him.
+
+_Caesar._ Unwillingly should I see it; for the character of our gods
+hath formed the character of our nation. Serapis and Isis have stolen
+in among them within our memory, and others will follow, until at last
+Saturn will not be the only one emasculated by his successor. What can
+be more august than our rites? The first dignitaries of the republic
+are emulous to administer them: nothing of low or venal has any place
+in them; nothing pusillanimous, nothing unsocial and austere. I speak
+of them as they were; before Superstition woke up again from her
+slumber, and caught to her bosom with maternal love the alluvial
+monsters of the Nile. Philosophy, never fit for the people, had
+entered the best houses, and the image of Epicurus had taken the place
+of the Lemures. But men cannot bear to be deprived long together of
+anything they are used to, not even of their fears; and, by a reaction
+of the mind appertaining to our nature, new stimulants were looked
+for, not on the side of pleasure, where nothing new could be expected
+or imagined, but on the opposite. Irreligion is followed by
+fanaticism, and fanaticism by irreligion, alternately and perpetually.
+
+_Lucullus._ The religion of our country, as you observe, is well
+adapted to its inhabitants. Our progenitor, Mars, hath Venus recumbent
+on his breast and looking up to him, teaching us that pleasure is to
+be sought in the bosom of valour and by the means of war. No great
+alteration, I think, will ever be made in our rites and
+ceremonies--the best and most imposing that could be collected from
+all nations, and uniting them to us by our complacence in adopting
+them. The gods themselves may change names, to flatter new power: and,
+indeed, as we degenerate, Religion will accommodate herself to our
+propensities and desires. Our heaven is now popular: it will become
+monarchal; not without a crowded court, as befits it, of apparitors
+and satellites and minions of both sexes, paid and caressed for
+carrying to their stern, dark-bearded master prayers and
+supplications. Altars must be strown with broken minds, and incense
+rise amid abject aspirations. Gods will be found unfit for their
+places; and it is not impossible that, in the ruin imminent from our
+contentions for power, and in the necessary extinction both of ancient
+families and of generous sentiments, our consular fasces may become
+the water-sprinklers of some upstart priesthood, and that my son may
+apply for lustration to the son of my groom. The interest of such men
+requires that the spirit of arms and of arts be extinguished. They
+will predicate peace, that the people may be tractable to them; but a
+religion altogether pacific is the fomenter of wars and the nurse of
+crimes, alluring Sloth from within and Violence from afar. If ever it
+should prevail among the Romans, it must prevail alone: for nations
+more vigorous and energetic will invade them, close upon them, trample
+them under foot; and the name of Roman, which is now the most
+glorious, will become the most opprobrious upon earth.
+
+_Caesar._ The time, I hope, may be distant; for next to my own name I
+hold my country's.
+
+_Lucullus._ Mine, not coming from Troy or Ida, is lower in my
+estimation: I place my country's first.
+
+You are surveying the little lake beside us. It contains no fish,
+birds never alight on it, the water is extremely pure and cold; the
+walk round is pleasant, not only because there is always a gentle
+breeze from it, but because the turf is fine and the surface of the
+mountain on this summit is perfectly on a level to a great extent in
+length--not a trifling advantage to me, who walk often and am weak. I
+have no alley, no garden, no enclosure; the park is in the vale below,
+where a brook supplies the ponds, and where my servants are lodged;
+for here I have only twelve in attendance.
+
+_Caesar._ What is that so white, towards the Adriatic?
+
+_Lucullus._ The Adriatic itself. Turn round and you may descry the
+Tuscan Sea. Our situation is reported to be among the highest of the
+Apennines. Marcipor has made the sign to me that dinner is ready. Pass
+this way.
+
+_Caesar._ What a library is here! Ah, Marcus Tullius! I salute thy
+image. Why frownest thou upon me--collecting the consular robe and
+uplifting the right arm, as when Rome stood firm again, and Catiline
+fled before thee?
+
+_Lucullus._ Just so; such was the action the statuary chose, as adding
+a new endearment to the memory of my absent friend.
+
+_Caesar._ Sylla, who honoured you above all men, is not here.
+
+_Lucullus._ I have his _Commentaries_: he inscribed them, as you know,
+to me. Something even of our benefactors may be forgotten, and
+gratitude be unreproved.
+
+_Caesar._ The impression on that couch, and the two fresh honeysuckles
+in the leaves of those two books, would show, even to a stranger, that
+this room is peculiarly the master's. Are they sacred?
+
+_Lucullus._ To me and Caesar.
+
+_Caesar._ I would have asked permission----
+
+_Lucullus._ Caius Julius, you have nothing to ask of Polybius and
+Thucydides; nor of Xenophon, the next to them on the table.
+
+_Caesar._ Thucydides! the most generous, the most unprejudiced, the
+most sagacious, of historians. Now, Lucullus, you whose judgment in
+style is more accurate than any other Roman's, do tell me whether a
+commander, desirous of writing his _Commentaries_, could take to
+himself a more perfect model than Thucydides?
+
+_Lucullus._ Nothing is more perfect, nor ever will be: the scholar of
+Pericles, the master of Demosthenes, the equal of the one in military
+science, and of the other not the inferior in civil and forensic; the
+calm dispassionate judge of the general by whom he was defeated, his
+defender, his encomiast. To talk of such men is conducive not only to
+virtue but to health.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This other is my dining-room. You expect the dishes.
+
+_Caesar._ I misunderstood--I fancied----
+
+_Lucullus._ Repose yourself, and touch with the ebony wand, beside
+you, the sphinx on either of those obelisks, right or left.
+
+_Caesar._ Let me look at them first.
+
+_Lucullus._ The contrivance was intended for one person, or two at
+most, desirous of privacy and quiet. The blocks of jasper in my pair,
+and of porphyry in yours, easily yield in their grooves, each forming
+one partition. There are four, containing four platforms. The lower
+holds four dishes, such as sucking forest-boars, venison, hares,
+tunnies, sturgeons, which you will find within; the upper three, eight
+each, but diminutive. The confectionery is brought separately, for the
+steam would spoil it, if any should escape. The melons are in the
+snow, thirty feet under us: they came early this morning from a place
+in the vicinity of Luni, travelling by night.
+
+_Caesar._ I wonder not at anything of refined elegance in Lucullus;
+but really here Antiochia and Alexandria seem to have cooked for us,
+and magicians to be our attendants.
+
+_Lucullus._ The absence of slaves from our repast is the luxury, for
+Marcipor alone enters, and he only when I press a spring with my foot
+or wand. When you desire his appearance, touch that chalcedony just
+before you.
+
+_Caesar._ I eat quick and rather plentifully; yet the valetudinarian
+(excuse my rusticity, for I rejoice at seeing it) appears to equal the
+traveller in appetite, and to be contented with one dish.
+
+_Lucullus._ It is milk: such, with strawberries, which ripen on the
+Apennines many months in continuance, and some other berries of sharp
+and grateful flavour, has been my only diet since my first residence
+here. The state of my health requires it; and the habitude of nearly
+three months renders this food not only more commodious to my studies
+and more conducive to my sleep, but also more agreeable to my palate
+than any other.
+
+_Caesar._ Returning to Rome or Baiae, you must domesticate and tame
+them. The cherries you introduced from Pontus are now growing in
+Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul; and the largest and best in the
+world, perhaps, are upon the more sterile side of Lake Larius.
+
+_Lucullus._ There are some fruits, and some virtues, which require a
+harsh soil and bleak exposure for their perfection.
+
+_Caesar._ In such a profusion of viands, and so savoury, I perceive no
+odour.
+
+_Lucullus._ A flue conducts heat through the compartments of the
+obelisks; and, if you look up, you may observe that those gilt roses,
+between the astragals in the cornice, are prominent from it half a
+span. Here is an aperture in the wall, between which and the outer is
+a perpetual current of air. We are now in the dog-days; and I have
+never felt in the whole summer more heat than at Rome in many days of
+March.
+
+_Caesar._ Usually you are attended by troops of domestics and of
+dinner-friends, not to mention the learned and scientific, nor your
+own family, your attachment to which, from youth upward, is one of the
+higher graces in your character. Your brother was seldom absent from
+you.
+
+_Lucullus._ Marcus was coming; but the vehement heats along the Arno,
+in which valley he has a property he never saw before, inflamed his
+blood, and he now is resting for a few days at Faesulae, a little town
+destroyed by Sylla within our memory, who left it only air and water,
+the best in Tuscany. The health of Marcus, like mine, has been
+declining for several months: we are running our last race against
+each other, and never was I, in youth along the Tiber, so anxious of
+first reaching the goal. I would not outlive him: I should reflect too
+painfully on earlier days, and look forward too despondently on
+future. As for friends, lampreys and turbots beget them, and they
+spawn not amid the solitude of the Apennines. To dine in company with
+more than two is a Gaulish and German thing. I can hardly bring myself
+to believe that I have eaten in concert with twenty; so barbarous and
+herdlike a practice does not now appeal to me--such an incentive to
+drink much and talk loosely; not to add, such a necessity to speak
+loud, which is clownish and odious in the extreme. On this mountain
+summit I hear no noises, no voices, not even of salutation; we have no
+flies about us, and scarcely an insect or reptile.
+
+_Caesar._ Your amiable son is probably with his uncle: is he well?
+
+_Lucullus._ Perfectly. He was indeed with my brother in his intended
+visit to me; but Marcus, unable to accompany him hither, or
+superintend his studies in the present state of his health, sent him
+directly to his Uncle Cato at Tusculum--a man fitter than either of us
+to direct his education, and preferable to any, excepting yourself and
+Marcus Tullius, in eloquence and urbanity.
+
+_Caesar._ Cato is so great, that whoever is greater must be the
+happiest and first of men.
+
+_Lucullus._ That any such be still existing, O Julius, ought to excite
+no groan from the breast of a Roman citizen. But perhaps I wrong you;
+perhaps your mind was forced reluctantly back again, on your past
+animosities and contests in the Senate.
+
+_Caesar._ I revere him, but cannot love him.
+
+_Lucullus._ Then, Caius Julius, you groaned with reason; and I would
+pity rather than reprove you.
+
+On the ceiling at which you are looking, there is no gilding, and
+little painting--a mere trellis of vines bearing grapes, and the
+heads, shoulders, and arms rising from the cornice only, of boys and
+girls climbing up to steal them, and scrambling for them: nothing
+overhead; no giants tumbling down, no Jupiter thundering, no Mars and
+Venus caught at mid-day, no river-gods pouring out their urns upon us;
+for, as I think nothing so insipid as a flat ceiling, I think nothing
+so absurd as a storied one. Before I was aware, and without my
+participation, the painter had adorned that of my bedchamber with a
+golden shower, bursting from varied and irradiated clouds. On my
+expostulation, his excuse was that he knew the Danaë of Scopas, in a
+recumbent posture, was to occupy the centre of the room. The walls,
+behind the tapestry and pictures, are quite rough. In forty-three days
+the whole fabric was put together and habitable.
+
+The wine has probably lost its freshness: will you try some other?
+
+_Caesar._ Its temperature is exact; its flavour exquisite. Latterly I
+have never sat long after dinner, and am curious to pass through the
+other apartments, if you will trust me.
+
+_Lucullus._ I attend you.
+
+_Caesar._ Lucullus, who is here? What figure is that on the poop of
+the vessel? Can it be----
+
+_Lucullus._ The subject was dictated by myself; you gave it.
+
+_Caesar._ Oh, how beautifully is the water painted! How vividly the
+sun strikes against the snows on Taurus! The grey temples and pierhead
+of Tarsus catch it differently, and the monumental mound on the left
+is half in shade. In the countenance of those pirates I did not
+observe such diversity, nor that any boy pulled his father back: I did
+not indeed mark them or notice them at all.
+
+_Lucullus._ The painter in this fresco, the last work finished, had
+dissatisfied me in one particular. 'That beautiful young face,' said
+I, 'appears not to threaten death.'
+
+'Lucius,' he replied, 'if one muscle were moved it were not Caesar's:
+beside, he said it jokingly, though resolved.'
+
+'I am contented with your apology, Antipho; but what are you doing
+now? for you never lay down or suspend your pencil, let who will talk
+and argue. The lines of that smaller face in the distance are the
+same.'
+
+'Not the same,' replied he, 'nor very different: it smiles, as surely
+the goddess must have done at the first heroic act of her descendant.'
+
+_Caesar._ In her exultation and impatience to press forward she seems
+to forget that she is standing at the extremity of the shell, which
+rises up behind out of the water; and she takes no notice of the
+terror on the countenance of this Cupid who would detain her, nor of
+this who is flying off and looking back. The reflection of the shell
+has given a warmer hue below the knee; a long streak of yellow light
+in the horizon is on the level of her bosom, some of her hair is
+almost lost in it; above her head on every side is the pure azure of
+the heavens.
+
+Oh! and you would not have shown me this? You, among whose primary
+studies is the most perfect satisfaction of your guests!
+
+_Lucullus._ In the next apartment are seven or eight other pictures
+from our history.
+
+There are no more: what do you look for?
+
+_Caesar._ I find not among the rest any descriptive of your own
+exploits. Ah, Lucullus! there is no surer way of making them
+remembered.
+
+This, I presume by the harps in the two corners, is the music-room.
+
+_Lucullus._ No, indeed; nor can I be said to have one here; for I love
+best the music of a single instrument, and listen to it willingly at
+all times, but most willingly while I am reading. At such seasons a
+voice or even a whisper disturbs me; but music refreshes my brain when
+I have read long, and strengthen it from the beginning. I find also
+that if I write anything in poetry (a youthful propensity still
+remaining), it gives rapidity and variety and brightness to my ideas.
+On ceasing, I command a fresh measure and instrument, or another
+voice; which is to the mind like a change of posture, or of air to the
+body. My heal this benefited by the gentle play thus opened to the
+most delicate of the fibres.
+
+_Caesar._ Let me augur that a disorder so tractable may be soon
+removed. What is it thought to be?
+
+_Lucullus._ I am inclined to think, and my physician did not long
+attempt to persuade me of the contrary, that the ancient realms of
+Aeaetes have supplied me with some other plants than the cherry, and
+such as I should be sorry to see domesticated here in Italy.
+
+_Caesar._ The gods forbid! Anticipate better things! The reason of
+Lucullus is stronger than the medicaments of Mithridates; but why not
+use them too? Let nothing be neglected. You may reasonably hope for
+many years of life: your mother still enjoys it.
+
+_Lucullus._ To stand upon one's guard against Death exasperates her
+malice and protracts our sufferings.
+
+_Caesar._ Rightly and gravely said: but your country at this time
+cannot do well without you.
+
+_Lucullus._ The bowl of milk, which to-day is presented to me, will
+shortly be presented to my Manes.
+
+_Caesar._ Do you suspect the hand?
+
+_Lucullus._ I will not suspect a Roman: let us converse no more about
+it.
+
+_Caesar._ It is the only subject on which I am resolved never to
+think, as relates to myself. Life may concern us, death not; for in
+death we neither can act nor reason, we neither can persuade nor
+command; and our statues are worth more than we are, let them be but
+wax.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Lucullus._ From being for ever in action, for ever in contention, and
+from excelling in them all other mortals, what advantage derive we? I
+would not ask what satisfaction, what glory? The insects have more
+activity than ourselves, the beasts more strength, even inert matter
+more firmness and stability; the gods alone more goodness. To the
+exercise of this every country lies open; and neither I eastward nor
+you westward have found any exhausted by contests for it.
+
+Must we give men blows because they will not look at us? or chain them
+to make them hold the balance evener?
+
+Do not expect to be acknowledged for what you are, much less for what
+you would be; since no one can well measure a great man but upon the
+bier. There was a time when the most ardent friend to Alexander of
+Macedon would have embraced the partisan for his enthusiasm, who
+should have compared him with Alexander of Pherae. It must have been
+at a splendid feast, and late at it, when Scipio should have been
+raised to an equality with Romulus, or Cato with Curius. It has been
+whispered in my ear, after a speech of Cicero, 'If he goes on so, he
+will tread down the sandal of Marcus Antonius in the long run, and
+perhaps leave Hortensius behind.' Officers of mine, speaking about
+you, have exclaimed with admiration: 'He fights like Cinna.' Think,
+Caius Julius (for you have been instructed to think both as a poet and
+as a philosopher), that among the hundred hands of Ambition, to whom
+we may attribute them more properly than to Briareus, there is not one
+which holds anything firmly. In the precipitancy of her course, what
+appears great is small, and what appears small is great. Our estimate
+of men is apt to be as inaccurate and inexact as that of things, or
+more. Wishing to have all on our side, we often leave those we should
+keep by us, run after those we should avoid, and call importunately on
+others who sit quiet and will not come. We cannot at once catch the
+applause of the vulgar and expect the approbation of the wise. What
+are parties? Do men really great ever enter into them? Are they not
+ball-courts, where ragged adventurers strip and strive, and where
+dissolute youths abuse one another, and challenge and game and wager?
+If you and I cannot quite divest ourselves of infirmities and
+passions, let us think, however, that there is enough in us to be
+divided into two portions, and let us keep the upper undisturbed and
+pure. A part of Olympus itself lies in dreariness and in clouds,
+variable and stormy; but it is not the highest: there the gods govern.
+Your soul is large enough to embrace your country: all other affection
+is for less objects, and less men are capable of it. Abandon, O
+Caesar! such thoughts and wishes as now agitate and propel you: leave
+them to mere men of the marsh, to fat hearts and miry intellects.
+Fortunate may we call ourselves to have been born in an age so
+productive of eloquence, so rich in erudition. Neither of us would be
+excluded, or hooted at, on canvassing for these honours. He who can
+think dispassionately and deeply as I do, is great as I am; none
+other. But his opinions are at freedom to diverge from mine, as mine
+are from his; and indeed, on recollection, I never loved those most
+who thought with me, but those rather who deemed my sentiments worth
+discussion, and who corrected me with frankness and affability.
+
+_Caesar._ Lucullus, you perhaps have taken the wiser and better part,
+certainly the pleasanter. I cannot argue with you: I would gladly hear
+one who could, but you again more gladly. I should think unworthily of
+you if I thought you capable of yielding or receding. I do not even
+ask you to keep our conversation long a secret, so greatly does it
+preponderate in your favour; so much more of gentleness, of eloquence,
+and of argument. I came hither with one soldier, avoiding the cities,
+and sleeping at the villa of a confidential friend. To-night I sleep
+in yours, and, if your dinner does not disturb me, shall sleep
+soundly. You go early to rest I know.
+
+_Lucullus._ Not, however, by daylight. Be assured, Caius Julius, that
+greatly as your discourse afflicts me, no part of it shall escape my
+lips. If you approach the city with arms, with arms I meet you; then
+your denouncer and enemy, at present your host and confidant.
+
+_Caesar._ I shall conquer you.
+
+_Lucullus._ That smile would cease upon it: you sigh already.
+
+_Caesar._ Yes, Lucullus, if I am oppressed I shall overcome my
+oppressor: I know my army and myself. A sigh escaped me, and many more
+will follow; but one transport will rise amid them, when, vanquisher
+of my enemies and avenger of my dignity, I press again the hand of
+Lucullus, mindful of this day.
+
+
+
+
+EPICURUS, LEONTION, AND TERNISSA
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Ternissa._ The broad and billowy summits of yon monstrous trees, one
+would imagine, were made for the storms to rest upon when they are
+tired of raving. And what bark! It occurs to me, Epicurus, that I have
+rarely seen climbing plants attach themselves to these trees, as they
+do to the oak, the maple, the beech, and others.
+
+_Leontion._ If your remark be true, perhaps the resinous are not
+embraced by them so frequently because they dislike the odour of the
+resin, or some other property of the juices; for they, too, have their
+affections and antipathies no less than countries and their climes.
+
+_Ternissa._ For shame! what would you with me?
+
+_Epicurus._ I would not interrupt you while you were speaking, nor
+while Leontion was replying; this is against my rules and practice.
+Having now ended, kiss me, Ternissa!
+
+_Ternissa._ Impudent man! in the name of Pallas, why should I kiss
+you?
+
+_Epicurus._ Because you expressed hatred.
+
+_Ternissa._ Do we kiss when we hate?
+
+_Epicurus._ There is no better end of hating. The sentiment should not
+exist one moment; and if the hater gives a kiss on being ordered to do
+it, even to a tree or a stone, that tree or stone becomes the monument
+of a fault extinct.
+
+_Ternissa._ I promise you I never will hate a tree again.
+
+_Epicurus._ I told you so.
+
+_Leontion._ Nevertheless, I suspect, my Ternissa, you will often be
+surprised into it. I was very near saying, 'I hate these rude square
+stones!' Why did you leave them here, Epicurus?
+
+_Epicurus._ It is true, they are the greater part square, and seem to
+have been cut out in ancient times for plinths and columns; they are
+also rude. Removing the smaller, that I might plant violets and
+cyclamens and convolvuluses and strawberries, and such other herbs as
+grow willingly in dry places, I left a few of these for seats, a few
+for tables and for couches.
+
+_Leontion._ Delectable couches!
+
+_Epicurus._ Laugh as you may, they will become so when they are
+covered with moss and ivy, and those other two sweet plants whose
+names I do not remember to have found in any ancient treatise, but
+which I fancy I have heard Theophrastus call 'Leontion' and
+'Ternissa'.
+
+_Ternissa._ The bold, insidious, false creature!
+
+_Epicurus._ What is that volume, may I venture to ask, Leontion? Why
+do you blush?
+
+_Leontion._ I do not blush about it.
+
+_Epicurus._ You are offended, then, my dear girl.
+
+_Leontion._ No, nor offended. I will tell you presently what it
+contains. Account to me first for your choice of so strange a place to
+walk in: a broad ridge, the summit and one side barren, the other a
+wood of rose-laurels impossible to penetrate. The worst of all is, we
+can see nothing of the city or the Parthenon, unless from the very
+top.
+
+_Epicurus._ The place commands, in my opinion, a most perfect view.
+
+_Leontion._ Of what, pray?
+
+_Epicurus._ Of itself; seeming to indicate that we, Leontion, who
+philosophize, should do the same.
+
+_Leontion._ Go on, go on! say what you please: I will not hate
+anything yet. Why have you torn up by the root all these little
+mountain ash-trees? This is the season of their beauty: come,
+Ternissa, let us make ourselves necklaces and armlets, such as may
+captivate old Sylvanus and Pan; you shall have your choice. But why
+have you torn them up?
+
+_Epicurus._ On the contrary, they were brought hither this morning.
+Sosimenes is spending large sums of money on an olive-ground, and has
+uprooted some hundreds of them, of all ages and sizes. I shall cover
+the rougher part of the hill with them, setting the clematis and vine
+and honeysuckle against them, to unite them.
+
+_Ternissa._ Oh, what a pleasant thing it is to walk in the green light
+of the vine trees, and to breathe the sweet odour of their invisible
+flowers!
+
+_Epicurus._ The scent of them is so delicate that it requires a sigh
+to inhale it; and this, being accompanied and followed by enjoyment,
+renders the fragrance so exquisite. Ternissa, it is this, my sweet
+friend, that made you remember the green light of the foliage, and
+think of the invisible flowers as you would of some blessing from
+heaven.
+
+_Ternissa._ I see feathers flying at certain distances just above the
+middle of the promontory: what can they mean?
+
+_Epicurus._ Cannot you imagine them to be the feathers from the wings
+of Zethes and Caläis, who came hither out of Thrace to behold the
+favourite haunts of their mother Oreithyia? From the precipice that
+hangs over the sea a few paces from the pinasters she is reported to
+have been carried off by Boreas; and these remains of the primeval
+forest have always been held sacred on that belief.
+
+_Leontion._ The story is an idle one.
+
+_Ternissa._ Oh no, Leontion! the story is very true.
+
+_Leontion._ Indeed!
+
+_Ternissa._ I have heard not only odes, but sacred and most ancient
+hymns upon it; and the voice of Boreas is often audible here, and the
+screams of Oreithyia.
+
+_Leontion._ The feathers, then, really may belong to Caläis and
+Zethes.
+
+_Ternissa._ I don't believe it; the winds would have carried them
+away.
+
+_Leontion._ The gods, to manifest their power, as they often do by
+miracles, could as easily fix a feather eternally on the most
+tempestuous promontory, as the mark of their feet upon the flint.
+
+_Ternissa._ They could indeed; but we know the one to a certainty, and
+have no such authority for the other. I have seen these pinasters from
+the extremity of the Piraeus, and have heard mention of the altar
+raised to Boreas: where is it?
+
+_Epicurus._ As it stands in the centre of the platform, we cannot see
+it from hence; there is the only piece of level ground in the place.
+
+_Leontion._ Ternissa intends the altar to prove the truth of the
+story.
+
+_Epicurus._ Ternissa is slow to admit that even the young can deceive,
+much less the old; the gay, much less the serious.
+
+_Leontion._ It is as wise to moderate our belief as our desires.
+
+_Epicurus._ Some minds require much belief, some thrive on little.
+Rather an exuberance of it is feminine and beautiful. It acts
+differently on different hearts; it troubles some, it consoles others;
+in the generous it is the nurse of tenderness and kindness, of heroism
+and self-devotion; in the ungenerous it fosters pride, impatience of
+contradiction and appeal, and, like some waters, what it finds a dry
+stick or hollow straw, it leaves a stone.
+
+_Ternissa._ We want it chiefly to make the way of death an easy one.
+
+_Epicurus._ There is no easy path leading out of life, and few are the
+easy ones that lie within it. I would adorn and smoothen the
+declivity, and make my residence as commodious as its situation and
+dimensions may allow; but principally I would cast under-foot the
+empty fear of death.
+
+_Ternissa._ Oh, how can you?
+
+_Epicurus._ By many arguments already laid down: then by thinking that
+some perhaps, in almost every age, have been timid and delicate as
+Ternissa; and yet have slept soundly, have felt no parent's or
+friend's tear upon their faces, no throb against their breasts: in
+short, have been in the calmest of all possible conditions, while
+those around were in the most deplorable and desperate.
+
+_Ternissa._ It would pain me to die, if it were only at the idea that
+any one I love would grieve too much for me.
+
+_Epicurus._ Let the loss of our friends be our only grief, and the
+apprehension of displeasing them our only fear.
+
+_Leontion._ No apostrophes! no interjections! Your argument was
+unsound; your means futile.
+
+_Epicurus._ Tell me, then, whether the horse of a rider on the road
+should not be spurred forward if he started at a shadow.
+
+_Leontion._ Yes.
+
+_Epicurus._ I thought so: it would, however, be better to guide him
+quietly up to it, and to show him that it was one. Death is less than
+a shadow: it represents nothing, even imperfectly.
+
+_Leontion._ Then at the best what is it? why care about it, think
+about it, or remind us that it must befall us? Would you take the same
+trouble, when you see my hair entwined with ivy, to make me remember
+that, although the leaves are green and pliable, the stem is fragile
+and rough, and that before I go to bed I shall have many knots and
+entanglements to extricate? Let me have them; but let me not hear of
+them until the time is come.
+
+_Epicurus._ I would never think of death as an embarrassment, but as a
+blessing.
+
+_Ternissa._ How? a blessing?
+
+_Epicurus._ What, if it makes our enemies cease to hate us? what, if
+it makes our friends love us the more?
+
+_Leontion._ Us? According to your doctrine we shall not exist at all.
+
+_Epicurus._ I spoke of that which is consolatory while we are here,
+and of that which in plain reason ought to render us contented to stay
+no longer. You, Leontion, would make others better; and better they
+certainly will be, when their hostilities languish in an empty field,
+and their rancour is tired with treading upon dust. The generous
+affections stir about us at the dreary hour of death, as the blossoms
+of the Median apple swell and diffuse their fragrance in the cold.
+
+_Ternissa._ I cannot bear to think of passing the Styx, lest Charon
+should touch me; he is so old and wilful, so cross and ugly.
+
+_Epicurus._ Ternissa! Ternissa! I would accompany you thither, and
+stand between. Would you not too, Leontion?
+
+_Leontion._ I don't know.
+
+_Ternissa._ Oh, that we could go together!
+
+_Leontion._ Indeed!
+
+_Ternissa._ All three, I mean--I said--or was going to say it. How
+ill-natured you are, Leontion, to misinterpret me; I could almost cry.
+
+_Leontion._ Do not, do not, Ternissa! Should that tear drop from your
+eyelash you would look less beautiful.
+
+_Epicurus._ If it is well to conquer a world, it is better to conquer
+two.
+
+_Ternissa._ That is what Alexander of Macedon wept because he could
+not accomplish.
+
+_Epicurus._ Ternissa! we three can accomplish it; or any one of us.
+
+_Ternissa._ How? pray!
+
+_Epicurus._ We can conquer this world and the next; for you will have
+another, and nothing should be refused you.
+
+_Ternissa._ The next by piety: but this, in what manner?
+
+_Epicurus._ By indifference to all who are indifferent to us; by
+taking joyfully the benefit that comes spontaneously; by wishing no
+more intensely for what is a hair's-breadth beyond our reach than for
+a draught of water from the Ganges; and by fearing nothing in another
+life.
+
+_Ternissa._ This, O Epicurus! is the grand impossibility.
+
+_Epicurus._ Do you believe the gods to be as benevolent and good as
+you are? or do you not?
+
+_Ternissa._ Much kinder, much better in every way.
+
+_Epicurus._ Would you kill or hurt the sparrow that you keep in your
+little dressing-room with a string around the leg, because he hath
+flown where you did not wish him to fly?
+
+_Ternissa._ No! it would be cruel; the string about the leg of so
+little and weak a creature is enough.
+
+_Epicurus._ You think so; I think so; God thinks so. This I may say
+confidently; for whenever there is a sentiment in which strict justice
+and pure benevolence unite, it must be His.
+
+_Ternissa._ O Epicurus! when you speak thus--
+
+_Leontion._ Well, Ternissa, what then?
+
+_Ternissa._ When Epicurus teaches us such sentiments as these, I am
+grieved that he has not so great an authority with the Athenians as
+some others have.
+
+_Leontion._ You will grieve more, I suspect, my Ternissa, when he
+possesses that authority.
+
+_Ternissa._ What will he do?
+
+_Leontion._ Why turn pale? I am not about to answer that he will
+forget or leave you. No; but the voice comes deepest from the
+sepulchre, and a great name hath its root in the dead body. If you
+invited a company to a feast, you might as well place round the table
+live sheep and oxen and vases of fish and cages of quails, as you
+would invite a company of friendly hearers to the philosopher who is
+yet living. One would imagine that the iris of our intellectual eye
+were lessened by the glory of his presence, and that, like eastern
+kings, he could be looked at near only when his limbs are stiff, by
+waxlight, in close curtains.
+
+_Epicurus._ One of whom we know little leaves us a ring or other token
+of remembrance, and we express a sense of pleasure and of gratitude;
+one of whom we know nothing writes a book, the contents of which might
+(if we would let them) have done us more good and might have given us
+more pleasure, and we revile him for it. The book may do what the
+legacy cannot; it may be pleasurable and serviceable to others as well
+as ourselves: we would hinder this too. In fact, all other love is
+extinguished by self-love: beneficence, humanity, justice, philosophy,
+sink under it. While we insist that we are looking for Truth, we
+commit a falsehood. It never was the first object with any one, and
+with few the second.
+
+Feed unto replenishment your quieter fancies, my sweetest little
+Ternissa! and let the gods, both youthful and aged, both gentle and
+boisterous, administer to them hourly on these sunny downs: what can
+they do better?
+
+_Leontion._ But those feathers, Ternissa, what god's may they be?
+since you will not pick them up, nor restore them to Caläis nor to
+Zethes.
+
+_Ternissa._ I do not think they belong to any god whatever; and shall
+never be persuaded of it unless Epicurus says it is so.
+
+_Leontion._ O unbelieving creature! do you reason against the
+immortals?
+
+_Ternissa._ It was yourself who doubted, or appeared to doubt, the
+flight of Oreithyia. By admitting too much we endanger our religion.
+Beside, I think I discern some upright stakes at equal distances, and
+am pretty sure the feathers are tied to them by long strings.
+
+_Epicurus._ You have guessed the truth.
+
+_Ternissa._ Of what use are they there?
+
+_Epicurus._ If you have ever seen the foot of a statue broken off just
+below the ankle, you have then, Leontion and Ternissa, seen the form
+of the ground about us. The lower extremities of it are divided into
+small ridges, as you will perceive if you look around; and these are
+covered with corn, olives, and vines. At the upper part, where
+cultivation ceases, and where those sheep and goats are grazing,
+begins my purchase. The ground rises gradually unto near the summit,
+where it grows somewhat steep, and terminates in a precipice. Across
+the middle I have traced a line, denoted by those feathers, from one
+dingle to the other; the two terminations of my intended garden. The
+distance is nearly a thousand paces, and the path, perfectly on a
+level, will be two paces broad, so that I may walk between you; but
+another could not join us conveniently. From this there will be
+several circuitous and spiral, leading by the easiest ascent to the
+summit; and several more, to the road along the cultivation
+underneath: here will, however, be but one entrance. Among the
+projecting fragments and the massive stones yet standing of the
+boundary-wall, which old pomegranates imperfectly defend, and which my
+neighbour has guarded more effectively against invasion, there are
+hillocks of crumbling mould, covered in some places with a variety of
+moss; in others are elevated tufts, or dim labyrinths of eglantine.
+
+_Ternissa._ Where will you place the statues? for undoubtedly you must
+have some.
+
+_Epicurus._ I will have some models for statues. Pygmalion prayed the
+gods to give life to the image he adored: I will not pray them to give
+marble to mine. Never may I lay my wet cheek upon the foot under which
+is inscribed the name of Leontion or Ternissa!
+
+_Leontion._ Do not make us melancholy; never let us think that the
+time can come when we shall lose our friends. Glory, literature,
+philosophy have this advantage over friendship: remove one object from
+them, and others fill the void; remove one from friendship, one only,
+and not the earth nor the universality of worlds, no, nor the
+intellect that soars above and comprehends them, can replace it!
+
+_Epicurus._ Dear Leontion! always amiable, always graceful! How lovely
+do you now appear to me! what beauteous action accompanied your words!
+
+_Leontion._ I used none whatever.
+
+_Epicurus._ That white arm was then, as it is now, over the shoulder
+of Ternissa; and her breath imparted a fresh bloom to your cheek, a
+new music to your voice. No friendship is so cordial or so delicious
+as that of girl for girl; no hatred so intense and immovable as that
+of woman for woman. In youth you love one above the others of your
+sex; in riper age you hate all, more or less, in proportion to
+similarity of accomplishments and pursuits--which sometimes (I wish it
+were oftener) are bonds of union to man. In us you more easily pardon
+faults than excellences in each other. _Your_ tempers are such, my
+beloved scholars, that even this truth does not ruffle them; and such
+is your affection, that I look with confidence to its unabated ardour
+at twenty.
+
+_Leontion._ Oh, then I am to love Ternissa almost fifteen months!
+
+_Ternissa._ And I am destined to survive the loss of it three months
+above four years!
+
+_Epicurus._ Incomparable creatures! may it be eternal! In loving ye
+shall follow no example; ye shall step securely over the iron rule
+laid down for others by the Destinies, and _you_ for ever be Leontion,
+and _you_ Ternissa.
+
+_Leontion._ Then indeed we should not want statues.
+
+_Ternissa._ But men, who are vainer creatures, would be good for
+nothing without them: they must be flattered even by the stones.
+
+_Epicurus._ Very true. Neither the higher arts nor the civic virtues
+can flourish extensively without the statues of illustrious men. But
+gardens are not the places for them. Sparrows, wooing on the general's
+truncheon (unless he be such a general as one of ours in the last
+war), and snails besliming the emblems of the poet, do not remind us
+worthily of their characters. Porticos are their proper situations,
+and those the most frequented. Even there they may lose all honour and
+distinction, whether from the thoughtlessness of magistrates or from
+the malignity of rivals. Our own city, the least exposed of any to the
+effects of either, presents us a disheartening example. When the
+Thebans in their jealousy condemned Pindar to the payment of a fine
+for having praised the Athenians too highly, our citizens erected a
+statue of bronze to him.
+
+_Leontion._ Jealousy of Athens made the Thebans fine him; and jealousy
+of Thebes made the Athenians thus record it.
+
+_Epicurus._ And jealousy of Pindar, I suspect, made some poet persuade
+the archons to render the distinction a vile and worthless one, by
+placing his effigy near a king's--one Evagoras of Cyprus.
+
+_Ternissa._ Evagoras, I think I remember to have read in the
+inscription, was rewarded in this manner for his reception of Conon,
+defeated by the Lacedemonians.
+
+_Epicurus._ Gratitude was due to him, and some such memorial to record
+it. External reverence should be paid unsparingly to the higher
+magistrates of every country who perform their offices exemplarily;
+yet they are not on this account to be placed in the same degree with
+men of primary genius. They never exalt the human race, and rarely
+benefit it; and their benefits are local and transitory, while those
+of a great writer are universal and eternal.
+
+If the gods did indeed bestow on us a portion of their fire, they seem
+to have lighted it in sport and left it; the harder task and the
+nobler is performed by that genius who raises it clear and glowing
+from its embers, and makes it applicable to the purposes that dignify
+or delight our nature. I have ever said, 'Reverence the rulers.' Let,
+then, his image stand; but stand apart from Pindar's. Pallas and Jove!
+defend me from being carried down the stream of time among a shoal of
+royalets, and the rootless weeds they are hatched on!
+
+_Ternissa._ So much piety would deserve the exemption, even though
+your writings did not hold out the decree.
+
+_Leontion._ Child, the compliment is ill turned: if you are ironical,
+as you must be on the piety of Epicurus, Atticism requires that you
+should continue to be so, at least to the end of the sentence.
+
+_Ternissa._ Irony is my abhorrence. Epicurus may appear less pious
+than some others, but I am certain he is more; otherwise the gods
+would never have given him----
+
+_Leontion._ What? what? let us hear!
+
+_Ternissa._ Leontion!
+
+_Leontion._ Silly girl! Were there any hibiscus or broom growing near
+at hand, I would send him away and whip you.
+
+_Epicurus._ There is fern, which is better.
+
+_Leontion._ I was not speaking to you: but now you shall have
+something to answer for yourself. Although you admit no statues in the
+country, you might at least, methinks, have discovered a retirement
+with a fountain in it: here I see not even a spring.
+
+_Epicurus._ Fountain I can hardly say there is; but on the left there
+is a long crevice or chasm, which we have never yet visited, and which
+we cannot discern until we reach it. This is full of soft mould, very
+moist, and many high reeds and canes are growing there; and the rock
+itself too drips with humidity along it, and is covered with more
+tufted moss and more variegated lichens. This crevice, with its
+windings and sinuosities, is about four hundred paces long, and in
+many parts eleven, twelve, thirteen feet wide, but generally six or
+seven. I shall plant it wholly with lilies of the valley, leaving the
+irises which occupy the sides as well as the clefts, and also those
+other flowers of paler purple, from the autumnal cups of which we
+collect the saffron; and forming a narrow path of such turf as I can
+find there, or rather following it as it creeps among the bays and
+hazels and sweet-brier, which had fallen at different times from the
+summit and are now grown old, with an infinity of primroses at the
+roots. There are nowhere twenty steps without a projection and a turn,
+nor in any ten together is the chasm of the same width or figure.
+Hence the ascent in its windings is easy and imperceptible quite to
+the termination, where the rocks are somewhat high and precipitous; at
+the entrance they lose themselves in privet and elder, and you must
+make your way between them through the canes. Do not you remember
+where I carried you both across the muddy hollow in the footpath?
+
+_Ternissa._ Leontion does.
+
+_Epicurus._ That place is always wet; not only in this month of
+Puanepsion,[7] which we are beginning to-day, but in midsummer. The
+water that causes it comes out a little way above it, but originates
+from the crevice, which I will cover at top with rose-laurel and
+mountain-ash, with clematis and vine; and I will intercept the little
+rill in its wandering, draw it from its concealment, and place it like
+Bacchus under the protection of the nymphs, who will smile upon it in
+its marble cradle, which at present I keep at home.
+
+_Ternissa._ Leontion, why do you turn away your face? have the nymphs
+smiled upon you in it?
+
+_Leontion._ I bathed in it once, if you must know, Ternissa! Why now,
+Ternissa, why do you turn away yours? have the nymphs frowned upon you
+for invading their secrets?
+
+_Ternissa._ Epicurus, you are in the right to bring it away from
+Athens, from under the eye of Pallas: she might be angry.
+
+_Epicurus._ You approve of its removal then, my lovely friend?
+
+_Ternissa._ Mightily. [_Aside._] I wish it may break in pieces on the
+road.
+
+_Epicurus._ What did you say?
+
+_Ternissa._ I wish it were now on the road, that I might try whether
+it would hold me--I mean with my clothes on.
+
+_Epicurus._ It would hold you, and one a span longer. I have another
+in the house; but it is not decorated with fauns and satyrs and
+foliage, like this.
+
+_Leontion._ I remember putting my hand upon the frightful satyr's
+head, to leap in: it seems made for the purpose. But the sculptor
+needed not to place the naiad quite so near--he must have been a very
+impudent man; it is impossible to look for a moment at such a piece of
+workmanship.
+
+_Ternissa._ For shame! Leontion!--why, what was it? I do not desire to
+know.
+
+_Epicurus._ I don't remember it.
+
+_Leontion._ Nor I neither; only the head.
+
+_Epicurus._ I shall place the satyr toward the rock, that you may
+never see him, Ternissa.
+
+_Ternissa._ Very right; he cannot turn round.
+
+_Leontion._ The poor naiad had done it, in vain.
+
+_Ternissa._ All these labourers will soon finish the plantation, if
+you superintend them, and are not appointed to some magistrature.
+
+_Epicurus._ Those who govern us are pleased at seeing a philosopher
+out of the city, and more still at finding in a season of scarcity
+forty poor citizens, who might become seditious, made happy and quiet
+by such employment.
+
+Two evils, of almost equal weight, may befall the man of erudition:
+never to be listened to, and to be listened to always. Aware of
+these, I devote a large portion of my time and labours to the
+cultivation of such minds as flourish best in cities, where my garden
+at the gate, although smaller than this, we find sufficiently
+capacious. There I secure my listeners; here my thoughts and
+imaginations have their free natural current, and tarry or wander as
+the will invites: may it ever be among those dearest to me!--those
+whose hearts possess the rarest and divinest faculty, of retaining or
+forgetting at option what ought to be forgotten or retained.
+
+_Leontion._ The whole ground then will be covered with trees and
+shrubs?
+
+_Epicurus._ There are some protuberances in various parts of the
+eminence, which you do not perceive till you are upon them or above
+them. They are almost level at the top, and overgrown with fine grass;
+for they catch the better soil brought down in small quantities by the
+rains. These are to be left unplanted: so is the platform under the
+pinasters, whence there is a prospect of the city, the harbour, the
+isle of Salamis, and the territory of Megara. 'What then!' cried
+Sosimenes, 'you would hide from your view my young olives, and the
+whole length of the new wall I have been building at my own expense
+between us! and, when you might see at once the whole of Attica, you
+will hardly see more of it than I could buy.'
+
+_Leontion._ I do not perceive the new wall, for which Sosimenes, no
+doubt, thinks himself another Pericles.
+
+_Epicurus._ Those old junipers quite conceal it.
+
+_Ternissa._ They look warm and sheltering; but I like the rose-laurels
+much better: and what a thicket of them here is!
+
+_Epicurus._ Leaving all the larger, I shall remove many thousands of
+them; enough to border the greater part of the walk, intermixed with
+roses.
+
+There is an infinity of other plants and flowers, or weeds as
+Sosimenes calls them, of which he has cleared his oliveyard, and which
+I shall adopt. Twenty of his slaves came in yesterday, laden with
+hyacinths and narcissi, anemones and jonquils. 'The curses of our
+vineyards,' cried he, 'and good neither for man nor beast. I have
+another estate infested with lilies of the valley: I should not wonder
+if you accepted these too.'
+
+'And with thanks,' answered I.
+
+The whole of his remark I could not collect: he turned aside, and (I
+believe) prayed. I only heard 'Pallas'--'Father'--'sound
+mind'--'inoffensive man'--'good neighbour'. As we walked together I
+perceived him looking grave, and I could not resist my inclination to
+smile as I turned my eyes toward him. He observed it, at first with
+unconcern, but by degrees some doubts arose within him, and he said,
+'Epicurus, you have been throwing away no less than half a talent on
+this sorry piece of mountain, and I fear you are about to waste as
+much in labour: for nothing was ever so terrible as the price we are
+obliged to pay the workman, since the conquest of Persia and the
+increase of luxury in our city. Under three obols none will do his
+day's work. But what, in the name of all the deities, could induce you
+to plant those roots, which other people dig up and throw away?'
+
+'I have been doing,' said I, 'the same thing my whole life through,
+Sosimenes!'
+
+'How!' cried he; 'I never knew that.'
+
+'Those very doctrines,' added I, 'which others hate and extirpate, I
+inculcate and cherish. They bring no riches, and therefore are thought
+to bring no advantage; to me, they appear the more advantageous for
+that reason. They give us immediately what we solicit through the
+means of wealth. We toil for the wealth first; and then it remains to
+be proved whether we can purchase with it what we look for. Now, to
+carry our money to the market, and not to find in the market our
+money's worth, is great vexation; yet much greater has already
+preceded, in running up and down for it among so many competitors, and
+through so many thieves.'
+
+After a while he rejoined, 'You really, then, have not overreached
+me?'
+
+'In what, my friend?' said I.
+
+'These roots,' he answered, 'may perhaps be good and saleable for some
+purpose. Shall you send them into Persia? or whither?'
+
+'Sosimenes, I shall make love-potions of the flowers.'
+
+_Leontion._ O Epicurus! should it ever be known in Athens that they
+are good for this, you will not have, with all your fences of prunes
+and pomegranates, and precipices with brier upon them, a single root
+left under ground after the month of Elaphebolion.[8]
+
+_Epicurus._ It is not every one that knows the preparation.
+
+_Leontion._ Everybody will try it.
+
+_Epicurus._ And you, too, Ternissa?
+
+_Ternissa._ Will you teach me?
+
+_Epicurus._ This, and anything else I know. We must walk together when
+they are in flower.
+
+_Ternissa._ And can you teach me, then?
+
+_Epicurus._ I teach by degrees.
+
+_Leontion._ By very slow ones, Epicurus! I have no patience with you;
+tell us directly.
+
+_Epicurus._ It is very material what kind of recipient you bring with
+you. Enchantresses use a brazen one; silver and gold are employed in
+other arts.
+
+_Leontion._ I will bring any.
+
+_Ternissa._ My mother has a fine golden one. She will lend it me; she
+allows me everything.
+
+_Epicurus._ Leontion and Ternissa, those eyes of yours brighten at
+inquiry, as if they carried a light within them for a guidance.
+
+_Leontion._ No flattery!
+
+_Ternissa._ No flattery! Come, teach us!
+
+_Epicurus._ Will you hear me through in silence?
+
+_Leontion._ We promise.
+
+_Epicurus._ Sweet girls! the calm pleasures, such as I hope you will
+ever find in your walks among these gardens, will improve your beauty,
+animate your discourse, and correct the little that may hereafter rise
+up for correction in your dispositions. The smiling ideas left in our
+bosoms from our infancy, that many plants are the favourites of the
+gods, and that others were even the objects of their love--having once
+been invested with the human form, beautiful and lively and happy as
+yourselves--give them an interest beyond the vision; yes, and a
+station--let me say it--on the vestibule of our affections. Resign
+your ingenuous hearts to simple pleasures; and there is none in man,
+where men are Attic, that will not follow and outstrip their
+movements.
+
+_Ternissa._ O Epicurus!
+
+_Epicurus._ What said Ternissa?
+
+_Leontion._ Some of those anemones, I do think, must be still in
+blossom. Ternissa's golden cup is at home; but she has brought with
+her a little vase for the filter--and has filled it to the brim. Do
+not hide your head behind my shoulder, Ternissa; no, nor in my lap.
+
+_Epicurus._ Yes, there let it lie--the lovelier for that tendril of
+sunny brown hair upon it. How it falls and rises! Which is the hair?
+which the shadow?
+
+_Leontion._ Let the hair rest.
+
+_Epicurus._ I must not, perhaps, clasp the shadow!
+
+_Leontion._ You philosophers are fond of such unsubstantial things.
+Oh, you have taken my volume! This is deceit.
+
+You live so little in public, and entertain such a contempt for
+opinion, as to be both indifferent and ignorant what it is that people
+blame you for.
+
+_Epicurus._ I know what it is I should blame myself for, if I attended
+to them. Prove them to be wiser and more disinterested in their wisdom
+than I am, and I will then go down to them and listen to them. When I
+have well considered a thing, I deliver it--regardless of what those
+think who neither take the time nor possess the faculty of considering
+anything well, and who have always lived far remote from the scope of
+our speculations.
+
+_Leontion._ In the volume you snatched away from me so slyly, I have
+defended a position of yours which many philosophers turn into
+ridicule--namely, that politeness is among the virtues. I wish you
+yourself had spoken more at large upon the subject.
+
+_Epicurus._ It is one upon which a lady is likely to display more
+ingenuity and discernment. If philosophers have ridiculed my
+sentiment, the reason is, it is among those virtues which in general
+they find most difficult to assume or counterfeit.
+
+_Leontion._ Surely life runs on the smoother for this equability and
+polish; and the gratification it affords is more extensive than is
+afforded even by the highest virtue. Courage, on nearly all occasions,
+inflicts as much of evil as it imparts of good. It may be exerted in
+defence of our country, in defence of those who love us, in defence of
+the harmless and the helpless; but those against whom it is thus
+exerted may possess an equal share of it. If they succeed, then
+manifestly the ill it produces is greater than the benefit; if they
+succumb, it is nearly as great. For many of their adversaries are
+first killed and maimed, and many of their own kindred are left to
+lament the consequences of the aggression.
+
+_Epicurus._ You have spoken first of courage, as that virtue which
+attracts your sex principally.
+
+_Ternissa._ Not me; I am always afraid of it. I love those best who
+can tell me the most things I never knew before, and who have patience
+with me, and look kindly while they teach me, and almost as if they
+were waiting for fresh questions. Now let me hear directly what you
+were about to say to Leontion.
+
+_Epicurus._ I was proceeding to remark that temperance comes next; and
+temperance has then its highest merit when it is the support of
+civility and politeness. So that I think I am right and equitable in
+attributing to politeness a distinguished rank, not among the
+ornaments of life, but among the virtues. And you, Leontion and
+Ternissa, will have leaned the more propensely toward this opinion, if
+you considered, as I am sure you did, that the peace and concord of
+families, friends, and cities are preserved by it; in other terms, the
+harmony of the world.
+
+_Ternissa._ Leontion spoke of courage, you of temperance; the next
+great virtue, in the division made by the philosophers, is justice.
+
+_Epicurus._ Temperance includes it; for temperance is imperfect if it
+is only an abstinence from too much food, too much wine, too much
+conviviality or other luxury. It indicates every kind of forbearance.
+Justice is forbearance from what belongs to another. Giving to this
+one rightly what that one would hold wrongfully in magistrature not in
+the abstract, and is only a part of its office. The perfectly
+temperate man is also the perfectly just man; but the perfectly just
+man (as philosophers now define him) may not be the perfectly
+temperate one. I include the less in the greater.
+
+_Leontion._ We hear of judges, and upright ones too, being immoderate
+eaters and drinkers.
+
+_Epicurus._ The Lacedemonians are temperate in food and courageous in
+battle; but men like these, if they existed in sufficient numbers,
+would devastate the universe. We alone, we Athenians, with less
+military skill perhaps, and certainly less rigid abstinence from
+voluptuousness and luxury, have set before it the only grand example
+of social government and of polished life. From us the seed is
+scattered; from us flow the streams that irrigate it; and ours are the
+hands, O Leontion, that collect it, cleanse it, deposit it, and convey
+and distribute it sound and weighty through every race and age.
+Exhausted as we are by war, we can do nothing better than lie down and
+doze while the weather is fine overhead, and dream (if we can) that we
+are affluent and free.
+
+O sweet sea air! how bland art thou and refreshing! Breathe upon
+Leontion! breathe upon Ternissa! bring them health and spirits and
+serenity, many springs and many summers, and when the vine-leaves have
+reddened and rustle under their feet!
+
+These, my beloved girls, are the children of Eternity: they played
+around Theseus and the beauteous Amazon; they gave to Pallas the bloom
+of Venus, and to Venus the animation of Pallas. Is it not better to
+enjoy by the hour their soft, salubrious influence, than to catch by
+fits the rancid breath of demagogues; than to swell and move under it
+without or against our will; than to acquire the semblance of
+eloquence by the bitterness of passion, the tone of philosophy by
+disappointment, or the credit of prudence by distrust? Can fortune,
+can industry, can desert itself, bestow on us anything we have not
+here?
+
+_Leontion._ And when shall those three meet? The gods have never
+united them, knowing that men would put them asunder at the first
+appearance.
+
+_Epicurus._ I am glad to leave the city as often as possible, full as
+it is of high and glorious reminiscences, and am inclined much rather
+to indulge in quieter scenes, whither the Graces and Friendship lead
+me. I would not contend even with men able to contend with me. You,
+Leontion, I see, think differently, and have composed at last your
+long-meditated work against the philosophy of Theophrastus.
+
+_Leontion._ Why not? he has been praised above his merits.
+
+_Epicurus._ My Leontion! you have inadvertently given me the reason
+and origin of all controversial writings. They flow not from a love of
+truth or a regard for science, but from envy and ill-will. Setting
+aside the evil of malignity--always hurtful to ourselves, not always
+to others--there is weakness in the argument you have adduced. When a
+writer is praised above his merits in his own times, he is certain of
+being estimated below them in the times succeeding. Paradox is dear to
+most people: it bears the appearance of originality, but is usually
+the talent of the superficial, the perverse, and the obstinate.
+
+Nothing is more gratifying than the attention you are bestowing on me,
+which you always apportion to the seriousness of my observations.
+
+_Leontion._ I dislike Theophrastus for his affected contempt of your
+doctrines.
+
+_Epicurus._ Unreasonably, for the contempt of them; reasonably, if
+affected. Good men may differ widely from me, and wiser ones
+misunderstand me; for, their wisdom having raised up to them schools
+of their own, they have not found leisure to converse with me; and
+from others they have received a partial and inexact report. My
+opinion is, that certain things are indifferent and unworthy of
+pursuit or attention, as lying beyond our research and almost our
+conjecture; which things the generality of philosophers (for the
+generality are speculative) deem of the first importance. Questions
+relating to them I answer evasively, or altogether decline. Again,
+there are modes of living which are suitable to some and unsuitable to
+others. What I myself follow and embrace, what I recommend to the
+studious, to the irritable, to the weak in health, would ill agree
+with the commonality of citizens. Yet my adversaries cry out: 'Such is
+the opinion and practice of Epicurus!' For instance, I have never
+taken a wife, and never will take one; but he from among the mass, who
+should avow his imitation of my example, would act as wisely and more
+religiously in saying that he chose celibacy because Pallas had done
+the same.
+
+_Leontion._ If Pallas had many such votaries she would soon have few
+citizens to supply them.
+
+_Epicurus._ And extremely bad ones, if all followed me in retiring
+from the offices of magistracy and of war. Having seen that the most
+sensible men are the most unhappy, I could not but examine the causes
+of it; and, finding that the same sensibility to which they are
+indebted for the activity of their intellect is also the restless
+mover of their jealousy and ambition, I would lead them aside from
+whatever operates upon these, and throw under their feet the terrors
+their imagination has created. My philosophy is not for the populace
+nor for the proud: the ferocious will never attain it; the gentle will
+embrace it, but will not call it mine. I do not desire that they
+should: let them rest their heads upon that part of the pillow which
+they find the softest, and enjoy their own dreams unbroken.
+
+_Leontion._ The old are all against you, Epicurus, the name of
+pleasure is an affront to them: they know no other kind of it than
+that which has flowered and seeded, and of which the withered stems
+have indeed a rueful look.
+
+_Epicurus._ Unhappily the aged are retentive of long-acquired maxims,
+and insensible to new impressions, whether from fancy or from truth:
+in fact, their eyes blend the two together. Well might the poet tell
+us:
+
+      Fewer the gifts that gnarled Age presents
+      To elegantly-handed Infancy,
+      Than elegantly-handed Infancy
+      Presents to gnarled Age. From both they drop;
+      The middle course of life receives them all,
+      Save the light few that laughing Youth runs off with,
+      Unvalued as a mistress or a flower.
+
+_Leontion._ Since, in obedience to your institutions, O Epicurus, I
+must not say I am angry, I am offended at least with Theophrastus for
+having so misrepresented your opinions, on the necessity of keeping
+the mind composed and tranquil, and remote from every object and every
+sentiment by which a painful sympathy may be excited. In order to
+display his elegance of language, he runs wherever he can lay a
+censure on you, whether he believes in its equity or not.
+
+_Epicurus._ This is the case with all eloquent men, and all
+disputants. Truth neither warms nor elevates them, neither obtains for
+them profit nor applause.
+
+_Ternissa._ I have heard wise remarks very often and very warmly
+praised.
+
+_Epicurus._ Not for the truth in them, but for the grace, or because
+they touched the spring of some preconception or some passion. Man is
+a hater of truth, a lover of fiction.
+
+Theophrastus is a writer of many acquirements and some shrewdness,
+usually judicious, often somewhat witty, always elegant; his thoughts
+are never confused, his sentences are never incomprehensible. If
+Aristoteles thought more highly of him than his due, surely you ought
+not to censure Theophrastus with severity on the supposition of his
+rating me below mine; unless you argue that a slight error in a short
+sum is less pardonable than in a longer. Had Aristoteles been living,
+and had he given the same opinion of me, your friendship and perhaps
+my self-love might have been wounded; for, if on one occasion he spoke
+too favourably, he never spoke unfavourably but with justice. This is
+among the indications of orderly and elevated minds; and here stands
+the barrier that separates them from the common and the waste. Is a
+man to be angry because an infant is fretful? Is a philosopher to
+unpack and throw away his philosophy, because an idiot has tried to
+overturn it on the road, and has pursued it with gibes and ribaldry?
+
+_Leontion._ Theophrastus would persuade us that, according to your
+system, we not only should decline the succour of the wretched, but
+avoid the sympathies that poets and historians would awaken in us.
+Probably for the sake of introducing some idle verses, written by a
+friend of his, he says that, following the guidance of Epicurus, we
+should altogether shun the theatre; and not only when Prometheus and
+Oedipus and Philoctetes are introduced, but even when generous and
+kindly sentiments are predominant, if they partake of that tenderness
+which belongs to pity. I know not what Thracian lord recovers his
+daughter from her ravisher; such are among the words they exchange:
+
+_Father._
+
+      Insects that dwell in rotten reeds, inert
+      Upon the surface of a stream or pool,
+      Then rush into the air on meshy vans,
+      Are not so different in their varying lives
+      As we are.--Oh! what father on this earth,
+      Holding his child's cool cheek within his palms
+      And kissing his fair front, would wish him man?--
+      Inheritor of wants and jealousies,
+      Of labour, of ambition, of distress,
+      And, cruellest of all the passions, lust.
+      Who that behold me, persecuted, scorned,
+      A wanderer, e'er could think what friends were mine,
+      How numerous, how devoted? with what glee
+      Smiled my old house, with what acclaim my courts
+      Rang from without whene'er my war-horse neighed?
+
+_Daughter._
+
+      Thy fortieth birthday is not shouted yet
+      By the young peasantry, with rural gifts
+      And nightly fires along the pointed hills,
+      Yet do thy temples glitter with grey hair
+      Scattered not thinly: ah, what sudden change!
+      Only thy voice and heart remain the same:
+      No! that voice trembles, and that heart (I feel),
+      While it would comfort and console me, breaks.
+
+_Epicurus._ I would never close my bosom against the feelings of
+humanity; but I would calmly and well consider by what conduct of life
+they may enter it with the least importunity and violence. A
+consciousness that we have promoted the happiness of others, to the
+uttermost of our power, is certain not only to meet them at the
+threshold, but to bring them along with us, and to render them
+accurate and faithful prompters, when we bend perplexedly over the
+problem of evil figured by the tragedians. If there were more of pain
+than of pleasure in the exhibitions of the dramatist, no man in his
+senses would attend them twice. All the imitative arts have delight
+for the principal object: the first of these is poetry; the highest of
+poetry is tragic.
+
+_Leontion._ The epic has been called so.
+
+_Epicurus._ Improperly; for the epic has much more in it of what is
+prosaic. Its magnitude is no argument. An Egyptian pyramid contains
+more materials than an Ionic temple, but requires less contrivance,
+and exhibits less beauty of design. My simile is yet a defective one;
+for a tragedy must be carried on with an unbroken interest, and,
+undecorated by loose foliage or fantastic branches, it must rise,
+like the palm-tree, with a lofty unity. On these matters I am unable
+to argue at large, or perhaps correctly; on those, however, which I
+have studied and treated, my terms are so explicit and clear, that
+Theophrastus can never have misunderstood them. Let me recall to your
+attention but two axioms.
+
+Abstinence from low pleasures is the only means of meriting or of
+obtaining the higher.
+
+Kindness in ourselves is the honey that blunts the sting of unkindness
+in another.
+
+_Leontion._ Explain to me, then, O Epicurus, why we suffer so much
+from ingratitude.
+
+_Epicurus._ We fancy we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we
+suffer from self-love. Passion weeps while she says, 'I did not
+deserve this from him'; Reason, while she says it, smoothens her brow
+at the clear fountain of the heart. Permit me also, like Theophrastus,
+to borrow a few words from a poet.
+
+_Ternissa._ Borrow as many such as any one will entrust to you, and
+may Hermes prosper your commerce! Leontion may go to the theatre then;
+for she loves it.
+
+_Epicurus._ Girls! be the bosom friends of Antigone and Ismene; and
+you shall enter the wood of the Eumenides without shuddering, and
+leave it without the trace of a tear. Never did you appear so graceful
+to me, O Ternissa--no, not even after this walk do you--as when I saw
+you blow a fly from the forehead of Philoctetes in the propylëa. The
+wing, with which Sophocles and the statuary represent him, to drive
+away the summer insects in his agony, had wearied his flaccid arm,
+hanging down beside him.
+
+_Ternissa._ Do you imagine, then, I thought him a living man?
+
+_Epicurus._ The sentiment was both more delicate and more august from
+being indistinct. You would have done it, even if he _had_ been a
+living man; even if he could have clasped you in his arms, imploring
+the deities to resemble you in gentleness, you would have done it.
+
+_Ternissa._ He looked so abandoned by all, and so heroic, yet so
+feeble and so helpless! I did not think of turning around to see if
+any one was near me; or else, perhaps----
+
+_Epicurus._ If you could have thought of looking around, you would no
+longer have been Ternissa. The gods would have transformed you for it
+into some tree.
+
+_Leontion._ And Epicurus had been walking under it this day, perhaps.
+
+_Epicurus._ With Leontion, the partner of his sentiments. But the walk
+would have been earlier or later than the present hour; since the
+middle of the day, like the middle of certain fruits, is good for
+nothing.
+
+_Leontion._ For dinner, surely?
+
+_Epicurus._ Dinner is a less gratification to me than to many: I dine
+alone.
+
+_Ternissa._ Why?
+
+_Epicurus._ To avoid the noise, the heat, and the intermixture both of
+odours and of occupations. I cannot bear the indecency of speaking
+with a mouth in which there is food. I careen my body (since it is
+always in want of repair) in as unobstructed a space as I can, and I
+lie down and sleep awhile when the work is over.
+
+_Leontion._ Epicurus! although it would be very interesting, no doubt,
+to hear more of what you do after dinner--[_Aside to him._] now don't
+smile: I shall never forgive you if you say a single word--yet I would
+rather hear a little about the theatre, and whether you think at last
+that women should frequent it; for you have often said the contrary.
+
+_Epicurus._ I think they should visit it rarely; not because it
+excites their affections, but because it deadens them. To me nothing
+is so odious as to be at once among the rabble and among the heroes,
+and, while I am receiving into my heart the most exquisite of human
+sensations, to feel upon my shoulder the hand of some inattentive and
+insensible young officer.
+
+_Leontion._ Oh, very bad indeed! horrible!
+
+_Ternissa._ You quite fire at the idea.
+
+_Leontion._ Not I: I don't care about it.
+
+_Ternissa._ Not about what is very bad indeed? quite horrible?
+
+_Leontion._ I seldom go thither.
+
+_Epicurus._ The theatre is delightful when we erect it in our own
+house or arbour, and when there is but one spectator.
+
+_Leontion._ You must lose the illusion in great part, if you only read
+the tragedy, which I fancy to be your meaning.
+
+_Epicurus._ I lose the less of it. Do not imagine that the illusion
+is, or can be, or ought to be, complete. If it were possible, no
+Phalaris or Perillus could devise a crueller torture. Here are two
+imitations: first, the poet's of the sufferer; secondly, the actor's
+of both: poetry is superinduced. No man in pain ever uttered the
+better part of the language used by Sophocles. We admit it, and
+willingly, and are at least as much illuded by it as by anything else
+we hear or see upon the stage. Poets and statuaries and painters give
+us an adorned imitation of the object, so skilfully treated that we
+receive it for a correct one. This is the only illusion they aim at:
+this is the perfection of their arts.
+
+_Leontion._ Do you derive no pleasure from the representation of a
+consummate actor?
+
+_Epicurus._ High pleasure; but liable to be overturned in an instant:
+pleasure at the mercy of any one who sits beside me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Leontion._ In my treatise I have only defended your tenets against
+Theophrastus.
+
+_Epicurus._ I am certain you have done it with spirit and eloquence,
+dear Leontion; and there are but two words in it I would wish you to
+erase.
+
+_Leontion._ Which are they?
+
+_Epicurus._ Theophrastus and Epicurus. If you love me, you will do
+nothing that may make you uneasy when you grow older; nothing that may
+allow my adversary to say, 'Leontion soon forgot her Epicurus.' My
+maxim is, never to defend my systems or paradoxes; if you undertake
+it, the Athenians will insist that I impelled you secretly, or that my
+philosophy and my friendship were ineffectual on you.
+
+_Leontion._ They shall never say that.
+
+_Epicurus._ I am not unmoved by the kindness of your intentions. Most
+people, and philosophers, too, among the rest, when their own conduct
+or opinions are questioned, are admirably prompt and dexterous in the
+science of defence; but when another's are assailed, they parry with
+as ill a grace and faltering a hand as if they never had taken a
+lesson in it at home. Seldom will they see what they profess to look
+for; and, finding it, they pick up with it a thorn under the nail.
+They canter over the solid turf, and complain that there is no corn
+upon it; they canter over the corn, and curse the ridges and furrows.
+All schools of philosophy, and almost all authors, are rather to be
+frequented for exercise than for freight; but this exercise ought to
+acquire us health and strength, spirits and good-humour. There is none
+of them that does not supply some truth useful to every man, and some
+untruth equally so to the few that are able to wrestle with it. If
+there were no falsehood in the world, there would be no doubt; if
+there were no doubt, there would be no inquiry; if no inquiry, no
+wisdom, no knowledge, no genius: and Fancy herself would lie muffled
+up in her robe, inactive, pale, and bloated. I wish we could
+demonstrate the existence of utility in some other evils as easily as
+in this.
+
+_Leontion._ My remarks on the conduct and on the style of Theophrastus
+are not confined to him solely. I have taken at last a general view of
+our literature, and traced as far as I am able its deviation and
+decline. In ancient works we sometimes see the mark of the chisel; in
+modern we might almost suppose that no chisel was employed at all, and
+that everything was done by grinding and rubbing. There is an
+ordinariness, an indistinctness, a generalization, not even to be
+found in a flock of sheep. As most reduce what is sand into dust, the
+few that avoid it run to a contrary extreme, and would force us to
+believe that what is original must be unpolished and uncouth.
+
+_Epicurus._ There have been in all ages, and in all there will be,
+sharp and slender heads made purposely and peculiarly for creeping
+into the crevices of our nature. While we contemplate the magnificence
+of the universe, and mensurate the fitness and adaptation of one part
+to another, the small philosopher hangs upon a hair or creeps within a
+wrinkle, and cries out shrilly from his elevation that we are blind
+and superficial. He discovers a wart, he pries into a pore; and he
+calls it knowledge of man. Poetry and criticism, and all the fine
+arts, have generated such living things, which not only will be
+co-existent with them but will (I fear) survive them. Hence history
+takes alternately the form of reproval and of panegyric; and science
+in its pulverized state, in its shapeless and colourless atoms,
+assumes the name of metaphysics. We find no longer the rich succulence
+of Herodotus, no longer the strong filament of Thucydides, but
+thoughts fit only for the slave, and language for the rustic and the
+robber. These writings can never reach posterity, nor serve better
+authors near us; for who would receive as documents the perversions of
+venality and party? Alexander we know was intemperate, and Philip both
+intemperate and perfidious: we require not a volume of dissertation on
+the thread of history, to demonstrate that one or other left a
+tailor's bill unpaid, and the immorality of doing so; nor a supplement
+to ascertain on the best authorities which of the two it was. History
+should explain to us how nations rose and fell, what nurtured them in
+their growth, what sustained them in their maturity; not which orator
+ran swiftest through the crowd from the right hand to the left, which
+assassin was too strong for manacles, or which felon too opulent for
+crucifixion.
+
+_Leontion._ It is better, I own it, that such writers should amuse our
+idleness than excite our spleen.
+
+_Ternissa._ What is spleen?
+
+_Epicurus._ Do not ask her; she cannot tell you. The spleen, Ternissa,
+is to the heart what Arimanes is to Oromazes.
+
+_Ternissa._ I am little the wiser yet. Does he ever use such hard
+words with you?
+
+_Leontion._ He means the evil Genius and the good Genius, in the
+theogony of the Persians: and would perhaps tell you, as he hath told
+me, that the heart in itself is free from evil, but very capable of
+receiving and too tenacious of holding it.
+
+_Epicurus._ In our moral system, the spleen hangs about the heart and
+renders it sad and sorrowful, unless we continually keep it in
+exercise by kind offices, or in its proper place by serious
+investigation and solitary questionings. Otherwise, it is apt to
+adhere and to accumulate, until it deadens the principles of sound
+action, and obscures the sight.
+
+_Ternissa._ It must make us very ugly when we grow old.
+
+_Leontion._ In youth it makes us uglier, as not appertaining to it: a
+little more or less ugliness in decrepitude is hardly worth
+considering, there being quite enough of it from other quarters: I
+would stop it here, however.
+
+_Ternissa._ Oh, what a thing is age!
+
+_Leontion._ Death without death's quiet.
+
+_Ternissa._ Leontion said that even bad writers may amuse our idle
+hours: alas! even good ones do not much amuse mine, unless they record
+an action of love or generosity. As for the graver, why cannot they
+come among us and teach us, just as you do?
+
+_Epicurus._ Would you wish it?
+
+_Ternissa._ No, no! I do not want them: only I was imagining how
+pleasant it is to converse as we are doing, and how sorry I should be
+to pore over a book instead of it. Books always make me sigh, and
+think about other things. Why do you laugh, Leontion?
+
+_Epicurus._ She was mistaken in saying bad authors may amuse our
+idleness. Leontion knows not then how sweet and sacred idleness is.
+
+_Leontion._ To render it sweet and sacred, the heart must have a
+little garden of its own, with its umbrage and fountains and
+perennial flowers--a careless company! Sleep is called sacred as well
+as sweet by Homer; and idleness is but a step from it. The idleness of
+the wise and virtuous should be both, it being the repose and
+refreshment necessary for past exertions and for future; it punishes
+the bad man, it rewards the good; the deities enjoy it, and Epicurus
+praises it. I was indeed wrong in my remark; for we should never seek
+amusement in the foibles of another, never in coarse language, never
+in low thoughts. When the mind loses its feeling for elegance, it
+grows corrupt and grovelling, and seeks in the crowd what ought to be
+found at home.
+
+_Epicurus._ Aspasia believed so, and bequeathed to Leontion, with
+every other gift that Nature had bestowed upon her, the power of
+delivering her oracles from diviner lips.
+
+_Leontion._ Fie! Epicurus! It is well you hide my face for me with
+your hand. Now take it away; we cannot walk in this manner.
+
+_Epicurus._ No word could ever fall from you without its weight; no
+breath from you ought to lose itself in the common air.
+
+_Leontion._ For shame! What would you have?
+
+_Ternissa._ He knows not what he would have nor what he would say. I
+must sit down again. I declare I scarcely understand a single
+syllable. Well, he is very good, to tease you no longer. Epicurus has
+an excellent heart; he would give pain to no one; least of all to you.
+
+_Leontion,_ I have pained him by this foolish book, and he would only
+assure me that he does not for a moment bear me malice. Take the
+volume; take it, Epicurus! tear it in pieces.
+
+_Epicurus._ No, Leontion! I shall often look with pleasure on this
+trophy of brave humanity; let me kiss the hand that raises it!
+
+_Ternissa._ I am tired of sitting: I am quite stiff: when shall we
+walk homeward?
+
+_Epicurus._ Take my arm, Ternissa!
+
+_Ternissa._ Oh! I had forgotten that I proposed to myself a trip as
+far up as the pinasters, to look at the precipice of Oreithyia. Come
+along! come along! how alert does the sea air make us! I seem to feel
+growing at my feet and shoulders the wings of Zethes or Caläis.
+
+_Epicurus._ Leontion walks the nimblest to-day.
+
+_Ternissa._ To display her activity and strength, she runs before us.
+Sweet Leontion, how good she is! but she should have stayed for us: it
+would be in vain to try to overtake her.
+
+No, Epicurus! Mind! take care! you are crushing these little
+oleanders--and now the strawberry plants--the whole heap. Not I,
+indeed. What would my mother say, if she knew it? And Leontion! she
+will certainly look back.
+
+_Epicurus._ The fairest of the Eudaimones never look back: such are
+the Hours and Love, Opportunity and Leontion.
+
+_Ternissa._ How could you dare to treat me in this manner? I did not
+say again I hated anything.
+
+_Epicurus._ Forgive me!
+
+_Ternissa._ Violent creature!
+
+_Epicurus._ If tenderness is violence. Forgive me; and say you love
+me.
+
+_Ternissa._ All at once? could you endure such boldness?
+
+_Epicurus._ Pronounce it! whisper it.
+
+_Ternissa._ Go, go. Would it be proper?
+
+_Epicurus._ Is that sweet voice asking its heart or me? let the
+worthier give the answer.
+
+_Ternissa._ O Epicurus! you are very, very dear to me; and are the
+last in the world that would ever tell you were called so.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] The Attic month of Puanepsion had its commencement in the latter
+days of October; its name is derived from +puana+, the legumes
+which were offered in sacrifice to Apollo at that season.
+
+[8] The thirteenth of Elaphebolion was the tenth of April.
+
+
+
+
+DANTE AND BEATRICE
+
+
+_Dante._ When you saw me profoundly pierced with love, and reddening
+and trembling, did it become you, did it become you, you whom I have
+always called _the most gentle Bice_, to join in the heartless
+laughter of those girls around you? Answer me. Reply unhesitatingly.
+Requires it so long a space for dissimulation and duplicity? Pardon!
+pardon! pardon! My senses have left me; my heart being gone, they
+follow.
+
+_Beatrice._ Childish man! pursuing the impossible.
+
+_Dante._ And was it this you laughed at? We cannot touch the hem of
+God's garment; yet we fall at His feet and weep.
+
+_Beatrice._ But weep not, gentle Dante! fall not before the weakest of
+His creatures, willing to comfort, unable to relieve you. Consider a
+little. Is laughter at all times the signal or the precursor of
+derision? I smiled, let me avow it, from the pride I felt in your
+preference of me; and if I laughed, it was to conceal my sentiments.
+Did you never cover sweet fruit with worthless leaves? Come, do not
+drop again so soon so faint a smile. I will not have you grave, nor
+very serious. I pity you; I must not love you: if I might, I would.
+
+_Dante._ Yet how much love is due to me, O Bice, who have loved you,
+as you well remember, even from your tenth year. But it is reported,
+and your words confirm it, that you are going to be married.
+
+_Beatrice._ If so, and if I could have laughed at that, and if my
+laughter could have estranged you from me, would you blame me?
+
+_Dante._ Tell me the truth.
+
+_Beatrice._ The report is general.
+
+_Dante._ The truth! the truth! Tell me, Bice.
+
+_Beatrice._ Marriages, it is said, are made in heaven.
+
+_Dante._ Is heaven then under the paternal roof?
+
+_Beatrice._ It has been to me hitherto.
+
+_Dante._ And now you seek it elsewhere.
+
+_Beatrice._ I seek it not. The wiser choose for the weaker. Nay, do
+not sigh so. What would you have, my grave pensive Dante? What can I
+do?
+
+_Dante._ Love me.
+
+_Beatrice._ I always did.
+
+_Dante._ Love me? O bliss of heaven!
+
+_Beatrice._ No, no, no! Forbear! Men's kisses are always mischievous
+and hurtful; everybody says it. If you truly loved me, you would never
+think of doing so.
+
+_Dante._ Nor even this!
+
+_Beatrice._ You forget that you are no longer a boy; and that it is
+not thought proper at your time of life to continue the arm at all
+about the waist. Beside, I think you would better not put your head
+against my bosom; it beats too much to be pleasant to you. Why do you
+wish it? why fancy it can do you any good? It grows no cooler; it
+seems to grow even hotter. Oh, how it burns! Go, go; it hurts me too:
+it struggles, it aches, it sobs. Thank you, my gentle friend, for
+removing your brow away; your hair is very thick and long; and it
+began to heat me more than you can imagine. While it was there, I
+could not see your face so well, nor talk with you so quietly.
+
+_Dante._ Oh, when shall we talk quietly in future?
+
+_Beatrice._ When I am married. I shall often come to visit my father.
+He has always been solitary since my mother's death, which happened in
+my infancy, long before you knew me.
+
+_Dante._ How can he endure the solitude of his house when you have
+left it?
+
+_Beatrice._ The very question I asked him.
+
+_Dante._ You did not then wish to ... to ... go away?
+
+_Beatrice._ Ah no! It is sad to be an outcast at fifteen.
+
+_Dante._ An outcast?
+
+_Beatrice._ Forced to leave a home.
+
+_Dante._ For another?
+
+_Beatrice._ Childhood can never have a second.
+
+_Dante._ But childhood is now over.
+
+_Beatrice._ I wonder who was so malicious as to tell my father that?
+He wanted me to be married a whole year ago.
+
+_Dante._ And, Bice, you hesitated?
+
+_Beatrice._ No; I only wept. He is a dear good father. I never
+disobeyed him but in those wicked tears; and they ran the faster the
+more he reprehended them.
+
+_Dante._ Say, who is the happy youth?
+
+_Beatrice._ I know not who ought to be happy if you are not.
+
+_Dante._ I?
+
+_Beatrice._ Surely you deserve all happiness.
+
+_Dante._ Happiness! any happiness is denied me. Ah, hours of
+childhood! bright hours! what fragrant blossoms ye unfold! what bitter
+fruits to ripen!
+
+_Beatrice._ Now cannot you continue to sit under that old fig-tree at
+the corner of the garden? It is always delightful to me to think of
+it.
+
+_Dante._ Again you smile: I wish I could smile too.
+
+_Beatrice._ You were usually more grave than I, although very often,
+two years ago, you told me I was the graver. Perhaps I _was_ then
+indeed; and perhaps I ought to be now: but really I must smile at the
+recollection, and make you smile with me.
+
+_Dante._ Recollection of what in particular?
+
+_Beatrice._ Of your ignorance that a fig-tree is the brittlest of
+trees, especially when it is in leaf; and moreover of your tumble,
+when your head was just above the wall, and your hand (with the verses
+in it) on the very coping-stone. Nobody suspected that I went every
+day to the bottom of our garden, to hear you repeat your poetry on the
+other side; nobody but yourself; you soon found me out. But on that
+occasion I thought you might have been hurt; and I clambered up our
+high peach-tree in the grass plot nearest the place; and thence I saw
+Messer Dante, with his white sleeve reddened by the fig-juice, and the
+seeds sticking to it pertinaciously, and Messer blushing, and trying
+to conceal his calamity, and still holding the verses. They were all
+about me.
+
+_Dante._ Never shall any verse of mine be uttered from my lips, or
+from the lips of others, without the memorial of Bice.
+
+_Beatrice._ Sweet Dante! in the purity of your soul shall Bice live;
+as (we are told by the goatherds and foresters) poor creatures have
+been found preserved in the serene and lofty regions of the Alps, many
+years after the breath of life had left them. Already you rival Guido
+Cavalcante and Cino da Pistoja: you must attempt, nor perhaps shall it
+be vainly, to surpass them in celebrity.
+
+_Dante._ If ever I am above them ... and I must be ... I know already
+what angel's hand will have helped me up the ladder. Beatrice, I vow
+to heaven, shall stand higher than Selvaggia, high and glorious and
+immortal as that name will be. You have given me joy and sorrow; for
+the worst of these (I will not say the least) I will confer on you all
+the generations of our Italy, all the ages of our world. But first
+(alas, from me you must not have it!) may happiness, long happiness,
+attend you!
+
+_Beatrice._ Ah, those words rend your bosom! why should they?
+
+_Dante._ I could go away contented, or almost contented, were I sure
+of it. Hope is nearly as strong as despair, and greatly more
+pertinacious and enduring. You have made me see clearly that you never
+can be mine in this world: but at the same time, O Beatrice, you have
+made me see quite as clearly that you may and must be mine in another!
+I am older than you: precedency is given to age, and not to
+worthiness; I will pray for you when I am nearer to God, and purified
+from the stains of earth and mortality. He will permit me to behold
+you, lovely as when I left you. Angels in vain should call me onward.
+
+_Beatrice._ Hush, sweetest Dante! hush!
+
+_Dante._ It is there where I shall have caught the first glimpse of
+you again, that I wish all my portion of Paradise to be assigned me;
+and there, if far below you, yet within the sight of you, to establish
+my perdurable abode.
+
+_Beatrice._ Is this piety? Is this wisdom? O Dante! And may not I be
+called away first?
+
+_Dante._ Alas, alas, how many small feet have swept off the early dew
+of life, leaving the path black behind them! But to think that you
+should go before me! It almost sends me forward on my way, to receive
+and welcome you. If indeed, O Beatrice, such should be God's immutable
+will, sometimes look down on me when the song to Him is suspended.
+Oh! look often on me with prayer and pity; for there all prayers are
+accepted, and all pity is devoid of pain! Why are you silent?
+
+_Beatrice._ It is very sinful not to love all creatures in the world.
+But it is true, O Dante! that we always love those the most who make
+us the most unhappy?
+
+_Dante._ The remark, I fear, is just.
+
+_Beatrice._ Then, unless the Virgin be pleased to change my
+inclinations, I shall begin at last to love my betrothed; for already
+the very idea of him renders me sad, wearisome, and comfortless.
+Yesterday he sent me a bunch of violets. When I took them up,
+delighted as I felt at that sweetest of odours, which you and I once
+inhaled together....
+
+_Dante._ And only once.
+
+_Beatrice._ You know why. Be quiet now, and hear me. I dropped the
+posy; for around it, hidden by various kinds of foliage, was twined
+the bridal necklace of pearls. O Dante, how worthless are the finest
+of them (and there are many fine ones) in comparison with those little
+pebbles, some of which (for perhaps I may not have gathered up all)
+may be still lying under the peach-tree, and some (do I blush to say
+it?) under the fig! Tell me not who threw these, nor for what. But you
+know you were always thoughtful, and sometimes reading, sometimes
+writing, and sometimes forgetting me, while I waited to see the
+crimson cap, and the two bay-leaves I fastened in it, rise above the
+garden-wall. How silently you are listening, if you do listen!
+
+_Dante._ Oh, could my thoughts incessantly and eternally dwell among
+these recollections, undisturbed by any other voice ... undistracted
+by any other presence! Soon must they abide with me alone, and be
+repeated by none but me ... repeated in the accents of anguish and
+despair! Why could you not have held in the sad home of your heart
+that necklace and those violets?
+
+_Beatrice._ My Dante! we must all obey ... I my father, you your God.
+He will never abandon you.
+
+_Dante._ I have ever sung, and will for ever sing, the most glorious
+of His works: and yet, O Bice! He abandons me, He casts me off; and He
+uses your hand for this infliction.
+
+_Beatrice._ Men travel far and wide, and see many on whom to fix or
+transfer their affections; but we maidens have neither the power nor
+the will. Casting our eyes on the ground, we walk along the straight
+and narrow road prescribed for us; and, doing this, we avoid in great
+measure the thorns and entanglements of life. We know we are
+performing our duty; and the fruit of this knowledge is contentment.
+Season after season, day after day, you have made me serious, pensive,
+meditative, and almost wise. Being so little a girl, I was proud that
+you, so much taller, should lean on my shoulder to overlook my work.
+And greatly more proud was I when in time you taught me several Latin
+words, and then whole sentences, both in prose and verse, pasting a
+strip of paper over, or obscuring with impenetrable ink, those
+passages in the poets which were beyond my comprehension, and might
+perplex me. But proudest of all was I when you began to reason with
+me. What will now be my pride if you are convinced by the first
+arguments I ever have opposed to you; or if you only take them up and
+try if they are applicable. Certainly do I know (indeed, indeed I do)
+that even the patience to consider them will make you happier. Will it
+not then make me so? I entertain no other wish. Is not this true love?
+
+_Dante._ Ah, yes! the truest, the purest, the least perishable, but
+not the sweetest. Here are the rue and hyssop; but where the rose?
+
+_Beatrice._ Wicked must be whatever torments you: and will you let
+love do it? Love is the gentlest and kindest breath of God. Are you
+willing that the tempter should intercept it, and respire it polluted
+into your ear? Do not make me hesitate to pray to the Virgin for you,
+nor tremble lest she look down on you with a reproachful pity. To her
+alone, O Dante, dare I confide all my thoughts! Lessen not my
+confidence in my only refuge.
+
+_Dante._ God annihilate a power so criminal! Oh, could my love flow
+into your breast with hers! It should flow with equal purity.
+
+_Beatrice._ You have stored my little mind with many thoughts; dear
+because they are yours, and because they are virtuous. May I not, O my
+Dante! bring some of them back again to your bosom; as the _contadina_
+lets down the string from the cottage-beam in winter, and culls a few
+bunches of the soundest for the master of the vineyard? You have not
+given me glory that the world should shudder at its eclipse. To prove
+that I am worthy of the smallest part of it, I must obey God; and,
+under God, my father. Surely the voice of Heaven comes to us audibly
+from a parent's lips. You will be great, and, what is above, all
+greatness, good.
+
+_Dante._ Rightly and wisely, my sweet Beatrice, have you spoken in
+this estimate. Greatness is to goodness what gravel is to porphyry:
+the one is a movable accumulation, swept along the surface of the
+earth; the other stands fixed and solid and alone, above the violence
+of war and of the tempest; above all that is residuous of a wasted
+world. Little men build up great ones; but the snow colossus soon
+melts: the good stand under the eye of God; and therefore stand.
+
+_Beatrice._ Now you are calm and reasonable, listen to me, Bice. You
+must marry.
+
+_Dante._ Marry?
+
+_Beatrice._ Unless you do, how can we meet again unreservedly? Worse,
+worse than ever! I cannot bear to see those large heavy tears
+following one another, heavy and slow as nuns at the funeral of a
+sister. Come, I will kiss off one, if you will promise me faithfully
+to shed no more. Be tranquil, be tranquil; only hear reason. There are
+many who know you; and all who know you must love you. Don't you hear
+me? Why turn aside? and why go farther off? I will have that hand. It
+twists about as if it hated its confinement. Perverse and peevish
+creature! you have no more reason to be sorry than I have; and you
+have many to the contrary which I have not. Being a man, you are at
+liberty to admire a variety, and to make a choice. Is that no comfort
+to you?
+
+_Dante._
+
+      Bid this bosom cease to grieve?
+        Bid these eyes fresh objects see?
+      Where's the comfort to believe
+        None might once have rivall'd me?
+      What! my freedom to receive?
+        Broken hearts, are they the free?
+      For another can I live
+        When I may not live for thee?
+
+_Beatrice._ I will never be fond of you again if you are so violent.
+We have been together too long, and we may be noticed.
+
+_Dante._ Is this our last meeting? If it is ... and that it is, my
+heart has told me ... you will not, surely you will not refuse....
+
+_Beatrice._ Dante! Dante! they make the heart sad after: do not wish
+it. But prayers ... oh, how much better are they, how much quieter and
+lighter they render it! They carry it up to heaven with them; and
+those we love are left behind no longer.
+
+
+
+
+FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND POPE EUGENIUS THE FOURTH
+
+
+_Eugenius._ Filippo! I am informed by my son Cosimo de' Medici of many
+things relating to thy life and actions, and among the rest, of thy
+throwing off the habit of a friar. Speak to me as to a friend. Was
+that well done?
+
+_Filippo._ Holy Father! it was done most unadvisedly.
+
+_Eugenius._ Continue to treat me with the same confidence and
+ingenuousness; and, beside the remuneration I intend to bestow on thee
+for the paintings wherewith thou hast adorned my palace, I will remove
+with my own hand the heavy accumulation of thy sins, and ward off the
+peril of fresh ones, placing within thy reach every worldly solace and
+contentment.
+
+_Filippo._ Infinite thanks, Holy Father! from the innermost heart of
+your unworthy servant, whose duty and wishes bind him alike and
+equally to a strict compliance with your paternal commands.
+
+_Eugenius._ Was it a love of the world and its vanities that induced
+thee to throw aside the frock?
+
+_Filippo._ It was indeed, Holy Father! I never had the courage to
+mention it in confession among my manifold offences.
+
+_Eugenius._ Bad! bad! Repentance is of little use to the sinner,
+unless he pour it from a full and overflowing heart into the capacious
+ear of the confessor. Ye must not go straightforward and bluntly up to
+your Maker, startling Him with the horrors of your guilty conscience.
+Order, decency, time, place, opportunity, must be observed.
+
+_Filippo._ I have observed the greater part of them: time, place, and
+opportunity.
+
+_Eugenius._ That is much. In consideration of it, I hereby absolve
+thee.
+
+_Filippo._ I feel quite easy, quite new-born.
+
+_Eugenius._ I am desirous of hearing what sort of feelings thou
+experiencest, when thou givest loose to thy intractable and unruly
+wishes. Now, this love of the world, what can it mean? A love of
+music, of dancing, of riding? What in short is it in thee?
+
+_Filippo._ Holy Father! I was ever of a hot and amorous constitution.
+
+_Eugenius._ Well, well! I can guess, within a trifle, what that leads
+unto. I very much disapprove of it, whatever it may be. And then? and
+then? Prithee go on: I am inflamed with a miraculous zeal to cleanse
+thee.
+
+_Filippo._ I have committed many follies, and some sins.
+
+_Eugenius._ Let me hear the sins; I do not trouble my head about the
+follies; the Church has no business with them. The State is founded on
+follies, the Church on sins. Come then, unsack them.
+
+_Filippo._ Concupiscence is both a folly and a sin. I felt more and
+more of it when I ceased to be a monk, not having (for a time) so
+ready means of allaying it.
+
+_Eugenius._ No doubt. Thou shouldst have thought again and again
+before thou strippedst off the cowl.
+
+_Filippo._ Ah! Holy Father! I am sore at heart. I thought indeed how
+often it had held two heads together under it, and that stripping it
+off was double decapitation. But compensation and contentment came,
+and we were warm enough without it.
+
+_Eugenius._ I am minded to reprove thee gravely. No wonder it pleased
+the Virgin, and the saints about her, to permit that the enemy of our
+faith should lead thee captive into Barbary.
+
+_Filippo._ The pleasure was all on their side.
+
+_Eugenius._ I have heard a great many stories both of males and
+females who were taken by Tunisians and Algerines: and although there
+is a sameness in certain parts of them, my especial benevolence toward
+thee, worthy Filippo, would induce me to lend a vacant ear to thy
+report. And now, good Filippo, I could sip a small glass of Muscatel
+or Orvieto, and turn over a few bleached almonds, or essay a smart
+dried apricot at intervals, and listen while thou relatest to me the
+manners and customs of that country, and particularly as touching thy
+own adversities. First, how wast thou taken?
+
+_Filippo._ I was visiting at Pesaro my worshipful friend the canonico
+Andrea Paccone, who delighted in the guitar, played it skilfully, and
+was always fond of hearing it well accompanied by the voice. My own
+instrument I had brought with me, together with many gay Florentine
+songs, some of which were of such a turn and tendency, that the
+canonico thought they would sound better on water, and rather far from
+shore, than within the walls of the canonicate. He proposed then, one
+evening when there was little wind stirring, to exercise three young
+abbates[9] on their several parts, a little way out of hearing from
+the water's edge.
+
+_Eugenius._ I disapprove of exercising young abbates in that manner.
+
+_Filippo._ Inadvertently, O Holy Father! I have made the affair seem
+worse than it really was. In fact, there were only two genuine
+abbates; the third was Donna Lisetta, the good canonico's pretty
+niece, who looks so archly at your Holiness when you bend your knees
+before her at bedtime.
+
+_Eugenius._ How? Where?
+
+_Filippo._ She is the angel on the right-hand side of the Holy Family,
+with a tip of amethyst-coloured wing over a basket of figs and
+pomegranates. I painted her from memory: she was then only fifteen,
+and worthy to be the niece of an archbishop. Alas! she never will be:
+she plays and sings among the infidels, and perhaps would eat a
+landrail on a Friday as unreluctantly as she would a roach.
+
+_Eugenius._ Poor soul! So this is the angel with the amethyst-coloured
+wing? I thought she looked wanton: we must pray for her release ...
+from the bondage of sin. What followed in your excursion?
+
+_Filippo._ Singing, playing, fresh air, and plashing water, stimulated
+our appetites. We had brought no eatable with us but fruit and thin
+_marzopane_, of which the sugar and rose-water were inadequate to ward
+off hunger; and the sight of a fishing-vessel between us and Ancona,
+raised our host immoderately. 'Yonder smack,' said he, 'is sailing at
+this moment just over the best sole-bank in the Adriatic. If she
+continues her course and we run toward her, we may be supplied, I
+trust in God, with the finest fish in Christendom. Methinks I see
+already the bellies of those magnificent sole bestar the deck, and
+emulate the glories of the orient sky.' He gave his orders with such a
+majestic air, that he looked rather like an admiral than a priest.
+
+_Eugenius._ How now, rogue! Why should not the churchman look
+majestically and courageously? I myself have found occasion for it,
+and exerted it.
+
+_Filippo._ The world knows the prowess of your Holiness.
+
+_Eugenius._ Not mine, not mine, Filippo! but His who gave me the sword
+and the keys, and the will and the discretion to use them. I trust the
+canonico did not misapply his station and power, by taking the fish at
+any unreasonably low price; and that he gave his blessing to the
+remainder, and to the poor fishermen and to their nets.
+
+_Filippo._ He was angry at observing that the vessel, while he thought
+it was within hail, stood out again to sea.
+
+_Eugenius._ He ought to have borne more manfully so slight a vexation.
+
+_Filippo._ On the contrary, he swore bitterly he would have the
+master's ear between his thumb and forefinger in another half-hour,
+and regretted that he had cut his nails in the morning lest they
+should grate on his guitar. 'They may fish well,' cried he, 'but they
+can neither sail nor row; and, when I am in the middle of that tub of
+theirs, I will teach them more than they look for.' Sure enough he was
+in the middle of it at the time he fixed: but it was by aid of a rope
+about his arms and the end of another laid lustily on his back and
+shoulders. 'Mount, lazy long-chined turnspit, as thou valuest thy
+life,' cried Abdul the corsair, 'and away for Tunis.' If silence is
+consent, he had it. The captain, in the Sicilian dialect, told us we
+might talk freely, for he had taken his siesta. 'Whose guitars are
+those?' said he. As the canonico raised his eyes to heaven and
+answered nothing, I replied, 'Sir, one is mine: the other is my worthy
+friend's there.' Next he asked the canonico to what market he was
+taking those young slaves, pointing to the abbates. The canonico
+sobbed and could not utter one word. I related the whole story; at
+which he laughed. He then took up the music, and commanded my reverend
+guest to sing an air peculiarly tender, invoking the compassion of a
+nymph, and calling her cold as ice. Never did so many or such profound
+sighs accompany it. When it ended, he sang one himself in his own
+language, on a lady whose eyes were exactly like the scimitars of
+Damascus, and whose eyebrows met in the middle like the cudgels of
+prize-fighters. On the whole she resembled both sun and moon, with the
+simple difference that she never allowed herself to be seen, lest all
+the nations of the earth should go to war for her, and not a man to be
+left to breathe out his soul before her. This poem had obtained the
+prize at the University of Fez, had been translated into the Arabic,
+the Persian, and the Turkish languages, and was the favourite lay of
+the corsair. He invited me lastly to try my talent. I played the same
+air on the guitar, and apologized for omitting the words, from my
+utter ignorance of the Moorish. Abdul was much pleased, and took the
+trouble to convince me that the poetry they conveyed, which he
+translated literally, was incomparably better than ours. 'Cold as
+ice!' he repeated, scoffing: 'anybody might say that who had seen
+Atlas: but a genuine poet would rather say, "Cold as a lizard or a
+lobster."' There is no controverting a critic who has twenty stout
+rowers, and twenty well-knotted rope-ends. Added to which, he seemed
+to know as much of the matter as the generality of those who talked
+about it. He was gratified by my attention and edification, and thus
+continued: 'I have remarked in the songs I have heard, that these wild
+woodland creatures of the west, these nymphs, are a strange
+fantastical race. But are your poets not ashamed to complain of their
+inconstancy? whose fault is that? If ever it should be my fortune to
+take one, I would try whether I could not bring her down to the level
+of her sex; and if her inconstancy caused any complaints, by Allah!
+they should be louder and shriller than ever rose from the throat of
+Abdul.' I still thought it better to be a disciple than a commentator.
+
+_Eugenius._ If we could convert this barbarian and detain him awhile
+at Rome, he would learn that women and nymphs (and inconstancy also)
+are one and the same. These cruel men have no lenity, no suavity. They
+who do not as they would be done by, are done by very much as they do.
+Women will glide away from them like water; they can better bear two
+masters than half one; and a new metal must be discovered before any
+bars are strong enough to confine them. But proceed with your
+narrative.
+
+_Filippo._ Night had now closed upon us. Abdul placed the younger of
+the company apart, and after giving them some boiled rice, sent them
+down into his own cabin. The sailors, observing the consideration and
+distinction with which their master had treated me, were civil and
+obliging. Permission was granted me, at my request, to sleep on deck.
+
+_Eugenius._ What became of your canonico?
+
+_Filippo._ The crew called him a conger, a priest, and a porpoise.
+
+_Eugenius._ Foul-mouthed knaves! could not one of these terms content
+them? On thy leaving Barbary was he left behind?
+
+_Filippo._ Your Holiness consecrated him, the other day, Bishop of
+Macerata.
+
+_Eugenius._ True, true; I remember the name, Saccone. How did he
+contrive to get off?
+
+_Filippo._ He was worth little at any work; and such men are the
+quickest both to get off and to get on. Abdul told me he had received
+three thousand crowns for his ransom.
+
+_Eugenius._ He was worth more to him than to me. I received but two
+first-fruits, and such other things as of right belong to me by
+inheritance. The bishopric is passably rich: he may serve thee.
+
+_Filippo._ While he was a canonico he was a jolly fellow; not very
+generous; for jolly fellows are seldom that; but he would give a
+friend a dinner, a flask of wine or two in preference, and a piece of
+advice as readily as either. I waited on monsignor at Macerata, soon
+after his elevation.
+
+_Eugenius._ He must have been heartily glad to embrace his companion
+in captivity, and the more especially as he himself was the cause of
+so grievous a misfortune.
+
+_Filippo._ He sent me word he was so unwell he could not see me.
+'What!' said I to his valet, 'is monsignor's complaint in his eyes?'
+The fellow shrugged up his shoulders and walked away. Not believing
+that the message was a refusal to admit me, I went straight upstairs,
+and finding the door of an antechamber half open, and a chaplain
+milling an egg-posset over the fire, I accosted him. The air of
+familiarity and satisfaction he observed in me left no doubt in his
+mind that I had been invited by his patron. 'Will the man never come?'
+cried his lordship. 'Yes, monsignor!' exclaimed I, running in and
+embracing him; 'behold him here!' He started back, and then I first
+discovered the wide difference between an old friend and an
+egg-posset.
+
+_Eugenius._ Son Filippo! thou hast seen but little of the world, and
+art but just come from Barbary. Go on.
+
+_Filippo._ 'Fra Filippo!' said he gravely, 'I am glad to see you. I
+did not expect you just at present: I am not very well: I had ordered
+a medicine and was impatient to take it. If you will favour me with
+the name of your inn, I will send for you when I am in a condition to
+receive you; perhaps within a day or two.' 'Monsignor!' said I, 'a
+change of residence often gives a man a cold, and oftener a change of
+fortune. Whether you caught yours upon deck (where we last saw each
+other), from being more exposed than usual, or whether the mitre holds
+wind, is no question for me, and no concern of mine.'
+
+_Eugenius._ A just reproof, if an archbishop had made it. On uttering
+it, I hope thou kneeledst and kissedst his hand.
+
+_Filippo._ I did not indeed.
+
+_Eugenius._ Oh, there wert thou greatly in the wrong! Having, it is
+reported, a good thousand crowns yearly of patrimony, and a canonicate
+worth six hundred more, he might have attempted to relieve thee from
+slavery, by assisting thy relatives in thy redemption.
+
+_Filippo._ The three thousand crowns were the uttermost he could
+raise, he declared to Abdul, and he asserted that a part of the money
+was contributed by the inhabitants of Pesaro. 'Do they act out of pure
+mercy?' said he. 'Ay, they must, for what else could move them in
+behalf of such a lazy, unserviceable street-fed cur?' In the morning,
+at sunrise, he was sent aboard. And now, the vessel being under weigh,
+'I have a letter from my lord Abdul,' said the master, 'which, being
+in thy language, two fellow slaves shall read unto thee publicly.'
+They came forward and began the reading. 'Yesterday I purchased these
+two slaves from a cruel, unrelenting master, under whose lash they
+have laboured for nearly thirty years. I hereby give orders that five
+ounces of my own gold be weighed out to them.' Here one of the slaves
+fell on his face; the other lifted up his hands, praised God, and
+blessed his benefactor.
+
+_Eugenius._ The pirate? the unconverted pirate?
+
+_Filippo._ Even so. 'Here is another slip of paper for thyself to read
+immediately in my presence,' said the master. The words it contained
+were, 'Do thou the same, or there enters thy lips neither food nor
+water until thou landest in Italy. I permit thee to carry away more
+than double the sum: I am no sutler: I do not contract for thy
+sustenance.' The canonico asked of the master whether he knew the
+contents of the letter; he replied no. 'Tell your master, lord Abdul,
+that I shall take them into consideration.' 'My lord expected a much
+plainer answer, and commanded me, in case of any such as thou hast
+delivered, to break this seal.' He pressed it to his forehead and then
+broke it. Having perused the characters reverentially, 'Christian!
+dost thou consent?' The canonico fell on his knees, and overthrew the
+two poor wretches who, saying their prayers, had remained in the same
+posture before him quite unnoticed. 'Open thy trunk and take out thy
+money-bag, or I will make room for it in thy bladder.' The canonico
+was prompt in the execution of the command. The master drew out his
+scales, and desired the canonico to weigh with his own hand five
+ounces. He groaned and trembled: the balance was unsteady. 'Throw in
+another piece: it will not vitiate the agreement,' cried the master.
+It was done. Fear and grief are among the thirsty passions, but add
+little to the appetite. It seemed, however, as if every sigh had left
+a vacancy in the stomach of the canonico. At dinner the cook brought
+him a salted bonito, half an ell in length; and in five minutes his
+reverence was drawing his middle finger along the white backbone, out
+of sheer idleness, until were placed before him some as fine dried
+locusts as ever provisioned the tents of Africa, together with olives
+the size of eggs and colour of bruises, shining in oil and brine. He
+found them savoury and pulpy, and, as the last love supersedes the
+foregoing, he gave them the preference, even over the delicate
+locusts. When he had finished them, he modestly requested a can of
+water. A sailor brought a large flask, and poured forth a plentiful
+supply. The canonico engulfed the whole, and instantly threw himself
+back in convulsive agony. 'How is this?' cried the sailor. The master
+ran up and, smelling the water, began to buffet him, exclaiming, as he
+turned round to all the crew, 'How came this flask here?' All were
+innocent. It appeared, however, that it was a flask of mineral water,
+strongly sulphureous, taken out of a Neapolitan vessel, laden with a
+great abundance of it for some hospital in the Levant. It had taken
+the captor by surprise in the same manner as the canonico. He himself
+brought out instantly a capacious stone jar covered with dew, and
+invited the sufferer into the cabin. Here he drew forth two richly-cut
+wineglasses, and, on filling one of them, the outside of it turned
+suddenly pale, with a myriad of indivisible drops, and the senses were
+refreshed with the most delicious fragrance. He held up the glass
+between himself and his guest, and looking at it attentively, said,
+'Here is no appearance of wine; all I can see is water. Nothing is
+wickeder than too much curiosity: we must take what Allah sends us,
+and render thanks for it, although it fall far short of our
+expectations. Besides, our Prophet would rather we should even drink
+wine than poison.' The canonico had not tasted wine for two months: a
+longer abstinence than ever canonico endured before. He drooped: but
+the master looked still more disconsolate. 'I would give whatever I
+possess on earth rather than die of thirst,' cried the canonico. 'Who
+would not?' rejoined the captain, sighing and clasping his fingers.
+'If it were not contrary to my commands, I could touch at some cove or
+inlet.' 'Do, for the love of Christ!' exclaimed the canonico. 'Or even
+sail back,' continued the captain. 'O Santa Vergine!' cried in anguish
+the canonico. 'Despondency,' said the captain, with calm solemnity,
+'has left many a man to be thrown overboard: it even renders the
+plague, and many other disorders, more fatal. Thirst too has a
+powerful effect in exasperating them. Overcome such weaknesses, or I
+must do my duty. The health of the ship's company is placed under my
+care; and our lord Abdul, if he suspected the pest, would throw a Jew,
+or a Christian, or even a bale of silk, into the sea: such is the
+disinterestedness and magnanimity of my lord Abdul.' 'He believes in
+fate; does he not?' said the canonico. 'Doubtless: but he says it is
+as much fated that he should throw into the sea a fellow who is
+infected, as that the fellow should have ever been so.' 'Save me, oh,
+save me!' cried the canonico, moist as if the spray had pelted him.
+'Willingly, if possible,' answered calmly the master. 'At present I
+can discover no certain symptoms; for sweat, unless followed by
+general prostration, both of muscular strength and animal spirits, may
+be cured without a hook at the heel.' 'Giesu-Maria!' ejaculated the
+canonico.
+
+_Eugenius._ And the monster could withstand that appeal?
+
+_Filippo._ It seems so. The renegade who related to me, on my return,
+these events as they happened, was very circumstantial. He is a
+Corsican, and had killed many men in battle, and more out; but is (he
+gave me his word for it) on the whole an honest man.
+
+_Eugenius._ How so? honest? and a renegade?
+
+_Filippo._ He declared to me that, although the Mahomedan is the best
+religion to live in, the Christian is the best to die in; and that,
+when he has made his fortune, he will make his confession, and lie
+snugly in the bosom of the Church.
+
+_Eugenius._ See here the triumphs of our holy faith! The lost sheep
+will be found again.
+
+_Filippo._ Having played the butcher first.
+
+_Eugenius._ Return we to that bad man, the master or captain, who
+evinced no such dispositions.
+
+_Filippo._ He added, 'The other captives, though older men, have
+stouter hearts than mine.' 'Alas! they are longer used to hardships,'
+answered he. 'Dost thou believe, in thy conscience,' said the captain,
+'that the water we have aboard would be harmless to them? for we have
+no other; and wine is costly; and our quantity might be insufficient
+for those who can afford to pay for it.' 'I will answer for their
+lives,' replied the canonico. 'With thy own?' interrogated sharply the
+Tunisian. 'I must not tempt God,' said, in tears, the religious man.
+'Let us be plain,' said the master. 'Thou knowest thy money is safe; I
+myself counted it before thee when I brought it from the scrivener's;
+thou hast sixty broad gold pieces; wilt thou be answerable, to the
+whole amount of them, for the lives of thy two countrymen if they
+drink this water?' 'O sir!' said the canonico, 'I will give it, if,
+only for these few days of voyage, you vouchsafe me one bottle daily
+of that restorative wine of Bordeaux. The other two are less liable to
+the plague: they do not sorrow and sweat as I do. They are spare men.
+There is enough of me to infect a fleet with it; and I cannot bear to
+think of being in any wise the cause of evil to my fellow-creatures.'
+'The wine is my patron's,' cried the Tunisian; 'he leaves everything
+at my discretion: should I deceive him?' 'If he leaves everything at
+your discretion,' observed the logician of Pesaro, 'there is no deceit
+in disposing of it.' The master appeared to be satisfied with the
+argument. 'Thou shalt not find me exacting,' said he; 'give me the
+sixty pieces, and the wine shall be thine.' At a signal, when the
+contract was agreed to, the two slaves entered, bringing a hamper of
+jars. 'Read the contract before thou signest,' cried the master. He
+read. 'How is this? how is this? _Sixty golden ducats to the brothers
+Antonio and Bernabo Panini, for wine received from them?_' The aged
+men tottered under the stroke of joy; and Bernabo, who would have
+embraced his brother, fainted.
+
+On the morrow there was a calm, and the weather was extremely sultry.
+The canonico sat in his shirt on deck, and was surprised to see, I
+forget which of the brothers, drink from a goblet a prodigious draught
+of water. 'Hold!' cried he angrily; 'you may eat instead; but putrid
+or sulphureous water, you have heard, may produce the plague, and
+honest men be the sufferers by your folly and intemperance.' They
+assured him the water was tasteless, and very excellent, and had been
+kept cool in the same kind of earthern jars as the wine. He tasted it,
+and lost his patience. It was better, he protested, than any wine in
+the world. They begged his acceptance of the jar containing it. But
+the master, who had witnessed at a distance the whole proceeding, now
+advanced, and, placing his hand against it, said sternly, 'Let him
+have his own.' Usually, when he had emptied the second bottle, a
+desire of converting the Mohammedans came over him: and they showed
+themselves much less obstinate and refractory than they are generally
+thought. He selected those for edification who swore the oftenest and
+the loudest by the Prophet; and he boasted in his heart of having
+overcome, by precept and example, the stiffest tenet of their
+abominable creed. Certainly they drank wine, and somewhat freely. The
+canonico clapped his hands, and declared that even some of the
+apostles had been more pertinacious recusants of the faith.
+
+_Eugenius._ Did he so? Cappari! I would not have made him a bishop for
+twice the money if I had known it earlier. Could not he have left them
+alone? Suppose one or other of them did doubt and persecute, was he
+the man to blab it out among the heathen?
+
+_Filippo._ A judgment, it appears, fell on him for so doing. A very
+quiet sailor, who had always declined his invitations, and had always
+heard his arguments at a distance and in silence, being pressed and
+urged by him, and reproved somewhat arrogantly and loudly, as less
+docile than his messmates, at last lifted up his leg behind him,
+pulled off his right slipper, and counted deliberately and distinctly
+thirty-nine sound strokes of the same, on the canonico's broadest
+tablet, which (please your Holiness) might be called, not inaptly,
+from that day the tablet of memory. In vain he cried out. Some of the
+mariners made their moves at chess and waved their left hands as if
+desirous of no interruption; others went backward and forward about
+their business, and took no more notice than if their messmate was
+occupied in caulking a seam or notching a flint. The master himself,
+who saw the operation, heard the complaint in the evening, and lifted
+up his shoulders and eyebrows, as if the whole were quite unknown to
+him. Then, acting as judge-advocate, he called the young man before
+him and repeated the accusation. To this the defence was purely
+interrogative. 'Why would he convert me? I never converted him.'
+Turning to his spiritual guide, he said, 'I quite forgive thee: nay, I
+am ready to appear in thy favour, and to declare that, in general,
+thou hast been more decorous than people of thy faith and profession
+usually are, and hast not scattered on deck that inflammatory language
+which I, habited in the dress of a Greek, heard last Easter. I went
+into three churches; and the preachers in all three denounced the
+curse of Allah on every soul that differed from them a tittle. They
+were children of perdition, children of darkness, children of the
+devil, one and all. It seemed a matter of wonder to me, that, in such
+numerous families and of such indifferent parentage, so many slippers
+were kept under the heel. Mine, in an evil hour, escaped me: but I
+quite forgive thee. After this free pardon I will indulge thee with a
+short specimen of my preaching. I will call none of you a generation
+of vipers, as ye call one another; for vipers neither bite nor eat
+during many months of the year: I will call none of you wolves in
+sheep's clothing; for if ye are, it must be acknowledged that the
+clothing is very clumsily put on. You priests, however, take people's
+souls aboard whether they will or not, just as we do your bodies: and
+you make them pay much more for keeping these in slavery than we make
+you pay for setting you free body and soul together. You declare that
+the precious souls, to the especial care of which Allah has called and
+appointed you, frequently grow corrupt, and stink in His nostrils.
+Now, I invoke thy own testimony to the fact that thy soul, gross as I
+imagine it to be from the greasy wallet that holds it, had no carnal
+thoughts whatsoever, and that thy carcass did not even receive a
+fly-blow, while it was under my custody. Thy guardian angel (I speak
+it in humility) could not ventilate thee better. Nevertheless, I
+should scorn to demand a single maravedi for my labour and skill, or
+for the wear and tear of my pantoufle. My reward will be in Paradise,
+where a houri is standing in the shade, above a vase of gold and
+silver fish, with a kiss on her lip, and an unbroken pair of green
+slippers in her hand for me.' Saying which, he took off his foot
+again, the one he had been using, and showed the sole of it, first to
+the master, then to all the crew, and declared it had become (as they
+might see) so smooth and oily by the application, that it was
+dangerous to walk on deck in it.
+
+_Eugenius._ See! what notions these creatures have, both of their
+fool's paradise and of our holy faith! The seven Sacraments, I warrant
+you, go for nothing! Purgatory, purgatory itself, goes for nothing!
+
+_Filippo._ Holy Father! we must stop thee. _That_ does not go for
+nothing, however.
+
+_Eugenius._ Filippo! God forbid I should suspect thee of any heretical
+taint; but this smells very like it. If thou hast it now, tell me
+honestly. I mean, hold thy tongue. Florentines are rather lax. Even
+Son Cosimo might be stricter: so they say: perhaps his enemies. The
+great always have them abundantly, beside those by whom they are
+served, and those also whom they serve. Now would I give a silver
+rose with my benediction on it, to know of a certainty what became of
+those poor creatures the abbates. The initiatory rite of Mohammedanism
+is most diabolically malicious. According to the canons of our
+Catholic Church, it disqualifies the neophyte for holy orders, without
+going so far as adapting him to the choir of the pontifical chapel.
+They limp; they halt.
+
+_Filippo._ Beatitude! which of them?
+
+_Eugenius._ The unbelievers: they surely are found wanting.
+
+_Filippo._ The unbelievers too?
+
+_Eugenius._ Ay, ay, thou half renegade! Couldst not thou go over with
+a purse of silver, and try whether the souls of these captives be
+recoverable? Even if they should have submitted to such unholy rites,
+I venture to say they have repented.
+
+_Filippo._ The devil is in them if they have not.
+
+_Eugenius._ They may become again as good Christians as before.
+
+_Filippo._ Easily, methinks.
+
+_Eugenius._ Not so easily; but by aid of Holy Church in the
+administration of indulgences.
+
+_Filippo._ They never wanted those, whatever they want.
+
+_Eugenius._ The corsair then is not one of those ferocious creatures
+which appear to connect our species with the lion and panther.
+
+_Filippo._ By no means, Holy Father! He is an honest man; so are many
+of his countrymen, bating the Sacrament.
+
+_Eugenius._ Bating! poor beguiled Filippo! Being unbaptized, they are
+only as the beasts that perish: nay worse: for the soul being
+imperishable, it must stick to their bodies at the last day, whether
+they will or no, and must sink with it into the fire and brimstone.
+
+_Filippo._ Unbaptized! why, they baptize every morning.
+
+_Eugenius._ Worse and worse! I thought they only missed the stirrup;
+I find they overleap the saddle. Obstinate blind reprobates! of whom
+it is written ... of whom it is written ... of whom, I say, it is
+written ... as shall be manifest before men and angels in the day of
+wrath.
+
+_Filippo._ More is the pity! for they are hospitable, frank, and
+courteous. It is delightful to see their gardens, when one has not the
+weeding and irrigation of them. What fruit! what foliage! what
+trellises! what alcoves! what a contest of rose and jessamine for
+supremacy in odour! of lute and nightingale for victory in song! And
+how the little bright ripples of the docile brooks, the fresher for
+their races, leap up against one another, to look on! and how they
+chirrup and applaud, as if they too had a voice of some importance in
+these parties of pleasure that are loath to separate.
+
+_Eugenius._ Parties of pleasure! birds, fruits, shallow-running
+waters, lute-players, and wantons! Parties of pleasure! and composed
+of these! Tell me now, Filippo, tell me truly, what complexion in
+general have the discreeter females of that hapless country.
+
+_Filippo._ The colour of an orange-flower, on which an overladen bee
+has left a slight suffusion of her purest honey.
+
+_Eugenius._ We must open their eyes.
+
+_Filippo._ Knowing what excellent hides the slippers of this people
+are made of, I never once ventured on their less perfect theology,
+fearing to find it written that I should be abed on my face the next
+fortnight. My master had expressed his astonishment that a religion so
+admirable as ours was represented should be the only one in the world
+the precepts of which are disregarded by all conditions of men. 'Our
+Prophet,' said he, 'our Prophet ordered us to go forth and conquer; we
+did it: yours ordered you to sit quiet and forbear; and, after
+spitting in His face, you threw the order back into it, and fought
+like devils.'
+
+_Eugenius._ The barbarians talk of our Holy Scriptures as if they
+understood them perfectly. The impostor they follow has nothing but
+fustian and rodomontade in his impudent lying book from beginning to
+end. I know it, Filippo, from those who have contrasted it, page by
+page, paragraph by paragraph, and have given the knave his due.
+
+_Filippo._ Abdul is by no means deficient in a good opinion of his own
+capacity and his Prophet's all-sufficiency, but he never took me to
+task about my faith or his own.
+
+_Eugenius._ How wert thou mainly occupied?
+
+_Filippo._ I will give your Holiness a sample both of my employments
+and of his character. He was going one evening to a country-house,
+about fifteen miles from Tunis; and he ordered me to accompany him. I
+found there a spacious garden, overrun with wild flowers and most
+luxuriant grass, in irregular tufts, according to the dryness or the
+humidity of the spot. The clematis overtopped the lemon and
+orange-trees; and the perennial pea sent forth here a pink blossom,
+here a purple, here a white one, and after holding (as it were) a
+short conversation with the humbler plants, sprang up about an old
+cypress, played among its branches, and mitigated its gloom. White
+pigeons, and others in colour like the dawn of day, looked down on us
+and ceased to coo, until some of their companions, in whom they had
+more confidence, encouraged them loudly from remoter boughs, or
+alighted on the shoulders of Abdul, at whose side I was standing. A
+few of them examined me in every position their inquisitive eyes could
+take; displaying all the advantages of their versatile necks, and
+pretending querulous fear in the midst of petulant approaches.
+
+_Eugenius._ Is it of pigeons thou art talking, O Filippo? I hope it
+may be.
+
+_Filippo._ Of Abdul's pigeons. He was fond of taming all creatures;
+men, horses, pigeons, equally: but he tamed them all by kindness. In
+this wilderness is an edifice not unlike our Italian chapter-houses
+built by the Lombards, with long narrow windows, high above the
+ground. The centre is now a bath, the waters of which, in another part
+of the enclosure, had supplied a fountain, at present in ruins, and
+covered by tufted canes, and by every variety of aquatic plants. The
+structure has no remains of roof: and, of six windows, one alone is
+unconcealed by ivy. This had been walled up long ago, and the cement
+in the inside of it was hard and polished. 'Lippi!' said Abdul to me,
+after I had long admired the place in silence, 'I leave to thy
+superintendence this bath and garden. Be sparing of the leaves and
+branches: make paths only wide enough for me. Let me see no mark of
+hatchet or pruning-hook, and tell the labourers that whoever takes a
+nest or an egg shall be impaled.'
+
+_Eugenius._ Monster! so then he would really have impaled a poor
+wretch for eating a bird's egg? How disproportionate is the punishment
+to the offence!
+
+_Filippo._ He efficiently checked in his slaves the desire of
+transgressing his command. To spare them as much as possible, I
+ordered them merely to open a few spaces, and to remove the weaker
+trees from the stronger. Meanwhile I drew on the smooth blank window
+the figure of Abdul and of a beautiful girl.
+
+_Eugenius._ Rather say handmaiden: choicer expression; more decorous.
+
+_Filippo._ Holy Father! I have been lately so much out of practice, I
+take the first that comes in my way. Handmaiden I will use in
+preference for the future.
+
+_Eugenius._ On then! and God speed thee!
+
+_Filippo._ I drew Abdul with a blooming handmaiden. One of his feet
+is resting on her lap, and she is drying the ankle with a saffron
+robe, of which the greater part is fallen in doing it. That she is a
+bondmaid is discernible, not only by her occupation, but by her
+humility and patience, by her loose and flowing brown hair, and by her
+eyes expressing the timidity at once of servitude and of fondness. The
+countenance was taken from fancy, and was the loveliest I could
+imagine: of the figure I had some idea, having seen it to advantage in
+Tunis. After seven days Abdul returned. He was delighted with the
+improvement made in the garden. I requested him to visit the bath. 'We
+can do nothing to that,' answered he impatiently. 'There is no
+sudatory, no dormitory, no dressing-room, no couch. Sometimes I sit an
+hour there in the summer, because I never found a fly in it--the
+principal curse of hot countries, and against which plague there is
+neither prayer nor amulet, nor indeed any human defence.' He went away
+into the house. At dinner he sent me from his table some quails and
+ortolans, and tomatoes and honey and rice, beside a basket of fruit
+covered with moss and bay-leaves, under which I found a verdino fig,
+deliciously ripe, and bearing the impression of several small teeth,
+but certainly no reptile's.
+
+_Eugenius._ There might have been poison in them, for all that.
+
+_Filippo._ About two hours had passed, when I heard a whir and a crash
+in the windows of the bath (where I had dined and was about to sleep),
+occasioned by the settling and again the flight of some pheasants.
+Abdul entered. 'Beard of the Prophet! what hast thou been doing? That
+is myself! No, no, Lippi! thou never canst have seen her: the face
+proves it: but those limbs! thou hast divined them aright: thou hast
+had sweet dreams then! Dreams are large possessions: in them the
+possessor may cease to possess his own. To the slave, O Allah! to the
+slave is permitted what is not his!... I burn with anguish to think
+how much ... yea, at that very hour. I would not another should, even
+in a dream.... But, Lippi! thou never canst have seen above the
+sandal?' To which I answered, 'I never have allowed my eyes to look
+even on that. But if any one of my lord Abdul's fair slaves resembles,
+as they surely must all do, in duty and docility, the figure I have
+represented, let it express to him my congratulation on his
+happiness.' 'I believe,' said he, 'such representations are forbidden
+by the Koran; but as I do not remember it, I do not sin. There it
+shall stay, unless the angel Gabriel comes to forbid it.' He smiled in
+saying so.
+
+_Eugenius._ There is hope of this Abdul. His faith hangs about him
+more like oil than pitch.
+
+_Filippo._ He inquired of me whether I often thought of those I loved
+in Italy, and whether I could bring them before my eyes at will. To
+remove all suspicion from him, I declared I always could, and that one
+beautiful object occupied all the cells of my brain by night and day.
+He paused and pondered, and then said, 'Thou dost not love deeply.' I
+thought I had given the true signs. 'No, Lippi! we who love ardently,
+we, with all our wishes, all the efforts of our souls, cannot bring
+before us the features which, while they were present, we thought it
+impossible we ever could forget. Alas! when we most love the absent,
+when we most desire to see her, we try in vain to bring her image back
+to us. The troubled heart shakes and confounds it, even as ruffled
+waters do with shadows. Hateful things are more hateful when they
+haunt our sleep: the lovely flee away, or are changed into less
+lovely.'
+
+_Eugenius._ What figures now have these unbelievers?
+
+_Filippo._ Various in their combinations as the letters or the
+numerals; but they all, like these, signify something. Almeida (did I
+not inform your Holiness?) has large hazel eyes....
+
+_Eugenius._ Has she? thou never toldest me that. Well, well! and what
+else has she? Mind! be cautious! use decent terms.
+
+_Filippo._ Somewhat pouting lips.
+
+_Eugenius._ Ha! ha! What did they pout at?
+
+_Filippo._ And she is rather plump than otherwise.
+
+_Eugenius._ No harm in that.
+
+_Filippo._ And moreover is cool, smooth, and firm as a nectarine
+gathered before sunrise.
+
+_Eugenius._ Ha! ha! do not remind me of nectarines. I am very fond of
+them; and this is not the season! Such females as thou describest are
+said to be among the likeliest to give reasonable cause for suspicion.
+I would not judge harshly, I would not think uncharitably; but,
+unhappily, being at so great a distance from spiritual aid,
+peradventure a desire, a suggestion, an inkling ... ay? If she, the
+lost Almeida, came before thee when her master was absent ... which I
+trust she never did.... But those flowers and shrubs and odours and
+alleys and long grass and alcoves, might strangely hold, perplex, and
+entangle, two incautious young persons ... ay?
+
+_Filippo._ I confessed all I had to confess in this matter the evening
+I landed.
+
+_Eugenius._ Ho! I am no candidate for a seat at the rehearsal of
+confessions: but perhaps my absolution might be somewhat more pleasing
+and unconditional. Well! well! since I am unworthy of such confidence,
+go about thy business ... paint! paint!
+
+_Filippo._ Am I so unfortunate as to have offended your Beatitude?
+
+_Eugenius._ Offend _me_, man! who offends _me_? I took an interest in
+thy adventures, and was concerned lest thou mightest have sinned; for
+by my soul! Filippo! those are the women that the devil hath set his
+mark on.
+
+_Filippo._ It would do your Holiness's heart good to rub it out again,
+wherever he may have had the cunning to make it.
+
+_Eugenius._ Deep! deep!
+
+_Filippo._ Yet it may be got at; she being a Biscayan by birth, as she
+told me, and not only baptized, but going by sea along the coast for
+confirmation, when she was captured.
+
+_Eugenius._ Alas! to what an imposition of hands was this tender young
+thing devoted! Poor soul!
+
+_Filippo._ I sigh for her myself when I think of her.
+
+_Eugenius._ Beware lest the sigh be mundane, and lest the thought
+recur too often. I wish it were presently in my power to examine her
+myself on her condition. What thinkest thou? Speak.
+
+_Filippo._ Holy Father! she would laugh in your face.
+
+_Eugenius._ So lost!
+
+_Filippo._ She declared to me she thought she should have died, from
+the instant she was captured until she was comforted by Abdul: but
+that she was quite sure she should if she were ransomed.
+
+_Eugenius._ Has the wretch then shaken her faith?
+
+_Filippo._ The very last thing he would think of doing. Never did I
+see the virtue of resignation in higher perfection than in the
+laughing, light-hearted Almeida.
+
+_Eugenius._ Lamentable! Poor lost creature! lost in this world and in
+the next.
+
+_Filippo._ What could she do? how could she help herself?
+
+_Eugenius._ She might have torn his eyes out, and have died a martyr.
+
+_Filippo._ Or have been bastinadoed, whipped, and given up to the
+cooks and scullions for it.
+
+_Eugenius._ Martyrdom is the more glorious the greater the indignities
+it endures.
+
+_Filippo._ Almeida seems unambitious. There are many in our Tuscany
+who would jump at the crown over those sloughs and briers, rather than
+perish without them: she never sighs after the like.
+
+_Eugenius._ Nevertheless, what must she witness! what abominations!
+what superstitions!
+
+_Filippo._ Abdul neither practises nor exacts any other superstition
+than ablutions.
+
+_Eugenius._ Detestable rites! without our authority. I venture to
+affirm that, in the whole of Italy and Spain, no convent of monks or
+nuns contains a bath; and that the worst inmate of either would
+shudder at the idea of observing such a practice in common with the
+unbeliever. For the washing of the feet indeed we have the authority
+of the earlier Christians; and it may be done; but solemnly and
+sparingly. Thy residence among the Mahomedans, I am afraid, hath
+rendered thee more favourable to them than beseems a Catholic, and thy
+mind, I do suspect, sometimes goes back into Barbary unreluctantly.
+
+_Filippo._ While I continued in that country, although I was well
+treated, I often wished myself away, thinking of my friends in
+Florence, of music, of painting, of our villeggiatura at the
+vintage-time; whether in the green and narrow glades of Pratolino,
+with lofty trees above us, and little rills unseen, and little bells
+about the necks of sheep and goats, tinkling together ambiguously; or
+amid the grey quarries, or under the majestic walls of modern Fiesole;
+or down in the woods of the Doccia, where the cypresses are of such a
+girth that, when a youth stands against one of them, and a maiden
+stands opposite, and they clasp it, their hands at the time do little
+more than meet. Beautiful scenes, on which heaven smiles eternally,
+how often has my heart ached for you! He who hath lived in this
+country can enjoy no distant one. He breathes here another air; he
+lives more life; a brighter sun invigorates his studies, and serener
+stars influence his repose. Barbary hath also the blessing of climate;
+and although I do not desire to be there again, I feel sometimes a
+kind of regret at leaving it. A bell warbles the more mellifluously in
+the air when the sound of the stroke is over, and when another swims
+out from underneath it, and pants upon the element that gave it birth.
+In like manner the recollection of a thing is frequently more pleasing
+than the actuality; what is harsh is dropped in the space between.
+There is in Abdul a nobility of soul on which I often have reflected
+with admiration. I have seen many of the highest rank and
+distinction, in whom I could find nothing of the great man, excepting
+a fondness for low company, and an aptitude to shy and start at every
+spark of genius or virtue that sprang up above or before them. Abdul
+was solitary, but affable: he was proud, but patient and complacent. I
+ventured once to ask him how the master of so rich a house in the
+city, of so many slaves, of so many horses and mules, of such
+cornfields, of such pastures, of such gardens, woods, and fountains,
+should experience any delight or satisfaction in infesting the open
+sea, the high-road of nations. Instead of answering my question, he
+asked me in return whether I would not respect any relative of mine
+who avenged his country, enriched himself by his bravery, and endeared
+to him his friends and relatives by his bounty. On my reply in the
+affirmative, he said that his family had been deprived of possessions
+in Spain much more valuable than all the ships and cargoes he could
+ever hope to capture, and that the remains of his nation were
+threatened with ruin and expulsion. 'I do not fight,' said he,
+'whenever it suits the convenience, or gratifies the malignity, or the
+caprice of two silly, quarrelsome princes, drawing my sword in
+perfectly good humour, and sheathing it again at word of command, just
+when I begin to get into a passion. No; I fight on my own account; not
+as a hired assassin, or still baser journeyman.'
+
+_Eugenius._ It appears then really that the Infidels have some
+semblances of magnanimity and generosity?
+
+_Filippo._ I thought so when I turned over the many changes of fine
+linen; and I was little short of conviction when I found at the bottom
+of my chest two hundred Venetian zecchins.
+
+_Eugenius._ Corpo di Bacco! Better things, far better things, I would
+fain do for thee, not exactly of this description; it would excite
+many heart-burnings. Information has been laid before me, Filippo,
+that thou art attached to a certain young person, by name Lucrezia,
+daughter of Francesco Buti, a citizen of Prato.
+
+_Filippo._ I acknowledge my attachment: it continues.
+
+_Eugenius._ Furthermore, that thou hast offspring by her.
+
+_Filippo._ Alas! 'tis undeniable.
+
+_Eugenius._ I will not only legitimatize the said offspring by _motu
+proprio_ and rescript to consistory and chancery....
+
+_Filippo._ Holy Father! Holy Father! For the love of the Virgin, not a
+word to consistory or chancery of the two hundred zecchins. As I hope
+for salvation, I have but forty left, and thirty-nine would not serve
+them.
+
+_Eugenius._ Fear nothing. Not only will I perform what I have
+promised, not only will I give the strictest order that no money be
+demanded by any officer of my courts, but, under the seal of Saint
+Peter, I will declare thee and Lucrezia Buti man and wife.
+
+_Filippo._ Man and wife!
+
+_Eugenius._ Moderate thy transport.
+
+_Filippo._ O Holy Father! may I speak?
+
+_Eugenius._ Surely she is not the wife of another?
+
+_Filippo._ No, indeed.
+
+_Eugenius._ Nor within the degrees of consanguinity and affinity?
+
+_Filippo._ No, no, no. But ... man and wife! Consistory and chancery
+are nothing to this fulmination.
+
+_Eugenius._ How so?
+
+_Filippo._ It is man and wife the first fortnight, but wife and man
+ever after. The two figures change places: the unit is the decimal and
+the decimal is the unit.
+
+_Eugenius._ What, then, can I do for thee?
+
+_Filippo._ I love Lucrezia; let me love her; let her love me. I can
+make her at any time what she is not; I could never make her again
+what she is.
+
+_Eugenius._ The only thing I can do then is to promise I will forget
+that I have heard anything about the matter. But, to forget it, I must
+hear it first.
+
+_Filippo._ In the beautiful little town of Prato, reposing in its
+idleness against the hill that protects it from the north, and looking
+over fertile meadows, southward to Poggio Cajano, westward to Pistoja,
+there is the convent of Santa Margarita. I was invited by the sisters
+to paint an altar-piece for the chapel. A novice of fifteen, my own
+sweet Lucrezia, came one day alone to see me work at my Madonna. Her
+blessed countenance had already looked down on every beholder lower by
+the knees. I myself who made her could almost have worshipped her.
+
+_Eugenius._ Not while incomplete; no half-virgin will do.
+
+_Filippo._ But there knelt Lucrezia! there she knelt! first looking
+with devotion at the Madonna, then with admiring wonder and grateful
+delight at the artist. Could so little a heart be divided? 'Twere a
+pity! There was enough for me; there is never enough for the Madonna.
+Resolving on a sudden that the object of my love should be the object
+of adoration to thousands, born and unborn, I swept my brush across
+the maternal face, and left a blank in heaven. The little girl
+screamed; I pressed her to my bosom.
+
+_Eugenius._ In the chapel?
+
+_Filippo._ I knew not where I was; I thought I was in Paradise.
+
+_Eugenius._ If it was not in the chapel, the sin is venial. But a
+brush against a Madonna's mouth is worse than a beard against her
+votary's.
+
+_Filippo._ I thought so too, Holy Father!
+
+_Eugenius._ Thou sayest thou hast forty zecchins; I will try in due
+season to add forty more. The fisherman must not venture to measure
+forces with the pirate. Farewell! I pray God my son Filippo, to have
+thee alway in His holy keeping.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[9] Little boys, wearing clerical habits, are often called _abbati_.
+
+
+
+
+TASSO AND CORNELIA
+
+
+_Tasso._ She is dead, Cornelia! she is dead!
+
+_Cornelia._ Torquato! my Torquato! after so many years of separation
+do I bend once more your beloved head to my embrace?
+
+_Tasso._ She is dead!
+
+_Cornelia._ Tenderest of brothers! bravest and best and most
+unfortunate of men! What, in the name of heaven, so bewilders you?
+
+_Tasso._ Sister! sister! sister! I could not save her.
+
+_Cornelia._ Certainly it was a sad event; and they who are out of
+spirits may be ready to take it for an evil omen. At this season of
+the year the vintagers are joyous and negligent.
+
+_Tasso._ How! What is this?
+
+_Cornelia._ The little girl was crushed, they say, by a wheel of the
+car laden with grapes, as she held out a handful of vine-leaves to one
+of the oxen. And did you happen to be there at the moment?
+
+_Tasso._ So then the little too can suffer! the ignorant, the
+indigent, the unaspiring! Poor child! She was kind-hearted, else never
+would calamity have befallen her.
+
+_Cornelia._ I wish you had not seen the accident.
+
+_Tasso._ I see it? I? I saw it not. No other is crushed where I am.
+The little girl died for her kindness! Natural death!
+
+_Cornelia._ Be calm, be composed, my brother!
+
+_Tasso._ You would not require me to be composed or calm if you
+comprehended a thousandth part of my sufferings.
+
+_Cornelia._ Peace! peace! we know them all.
+
+_Tasso._ Who has dared to name them? Imprisonment, derision, madness.
+
+_Cornelia._ Hush! sweet Torquato! If ever these existed, they are
+past.
+
+_Tasso._ You do think they are sufferings? ay?
+
+_Cornelia._ Too surely.
+
+_Tasso._ No, not too surely: I will not have that answer. They would
+have been; but Leonora was then living. Unmanly as I am! did I
+complain of them? and while she was left me?
+
+_Cornelia._ My own Torquato! is there no comfort in a sister's love?
+Is there no happiness but under the passions? Think, O my brother, how
+many courts there are in Italy: are the princes more fortunate than
+you? Which among them all loves truly, deeply, and virtuously? Among
+them all is there any one, for his genius, for his generosity, for his
+gentleness, ay, for his mere humanity, worthy to be beloved?
+
+_Tasso._ Princes! talk to me of princes! How much cross-grained wood a
+little gypsum covers! a little carmine quite beautifies! Wet your
+forefinger with your spittle; stick a broken gold-leaf on the
+sinciput; clip off a beggar's beard to make it tresses; kiss it; fall
+down before it; worship it. Are you not irradiated by the light of its
+countenance? Princes! princes! Italian princes! Estes! What matters
+that costly carrion? Who thinks about it? [_After a pause._] She is
+dead! She is dead!
+
+_Cornelia._ We have not heard it here.
+
+_Tasso._ At Sorrento you hear nothing but the light surges of the sea,
+and the sweet sprinkles of the guitar.
+
+_Cornelia._ Suppose the worst to be true.
+
+_Tasso._ Always, always.
+
+_Cornelia._ If she ceases, as then perhaps she must, to love and to
+lament you, think gratefully, contentedly, devoutly, that her arms had
+clasped your neck before they were crossed upon her bosom, in that
+long sleep which you have rendered placid, and from which your
+harmonious voice shall once more awaken her. Yes, Torquato! her bosom
+had throbbed to yours, often and often, before the organ peal shook
+the fringes round the catafalque. Is not this much, from one so high,
+so beautiful?
+
+_Tasso._ Much? yes; for abject me. But I did so love her! so love her!
+
+_Cornelia._ Ah! let the tears flow: she sends you that balm from
+heaven.
+
+_Tasso._ So love her did poor Tasso! Else, O Cornelia, it had indeed
+been much. I thought, in the simplicity of my heart, that God was as
+great as an emperor, and could bestow and had bestowed on me as much
+as the German had conferred or could confer on his vassal. No part of
+my insanity was ever held in such ridicule as this. And yet the idea
+cleaves to me strangely, and is liable to stick to my shroud.
+
+_Cornelia._ Woe betide the woman who bids you to forget that woman who
+has loved you: she sins against her sex. Leonora was unblameable.
+Never think ill of her for what you have suffered.
+
+_Tasso._ Think ill of her? I? I? I? No; those we love, we love for
+everything; even for the pain they have given us. But she gave me
+none; it was where she was not that pain was.
+
+_Cornelia._ Surely, if love and sorrow are destined for companionship,
+there is no reason why the last comer of the two should supersede the
+first.
+
+_Tasso._ Argue with me, and you drive me into darkness. I am easily
+persuaded and led on while no reasons are thrown before me. With these
+you have made my temples throb again. Just heaven! dost thou grant us
+fairer fields, and wider, for the whirlwind to lay waste? Dost thou
+build us up habitations above the street, above the palace, above the
+citadel, for the plague to enter and carouse in? Has not my youth paid
+its dues, paid its penalties? Cannot our griefs come first, while we
+have strength to bear them? The fool! the fool! who thinks it a
+misfortune that his love is unrequited. Happier young man! look at the
+violets until thou drop asleep on them. Ah! but thou must awake!
+
+_Cornelia._ O heavens! what must you have suffered! for a man's heart
+is sensitive in proportion to its greatness.
+
+_Tasso._ And a woman's?
+
+_Cornelia._ Alas! I know not; but I think it can be no other. Comfort
+thee, comfort thee, dear Torquato!
+
+_Tasso._ Then do not rest thy face upon my arm; it so reminds me of
+her. And thy tears too! they melt me into her grave.
+
+_Cornelia._ Hear you not her voice as it appeals to you, saying to
+you, as the priests around have been saying to _her_, Blessed soul!
+rest in peace?
+
+_Tasso._ I heard it not; and yet I am sure she said it. A thousand
+times has she repeated it, laying her head on my heart to quiet it,
+simple girl! She told it to rest in peace ... and she went from me!
+Insatiable love! ever self-torturer, never self-destroyer! the world,
+with all its weight of miseries, cannot crush thee, cannot keep thee
+down. Generally men's tears, like the droppings of certain springs,
+only harden and petrify what they fall on; but mine sank deep into a
+tender heart, and were its very blood. Never will I believe she has
+left me utterly. Oftentimes, and long before her departure, I fancied
+we were in heaven together. I fancied it in the fields, in the
+gardens, in the palace, in the prison. I fancied it in the broad
+daylight, when my eyes were open, when blessed spirits drew around me
+that golden circle which one only of earth's inhabitants could enter.
+Oftentimes in my sleep also I fancied it; and sometimes in the
+intermediate state, in that serenity which breathes about the
+transported soul, enjoying its pure and perfect rest, a span below the
+feet of the Immortal.
+
+_Cornelia._ She has not left you; do not disturb her peace by these
+repinings.
+
+_Tasso._ She will bear with them. Thou knowest not what she was,
+Cornelia; for I wrote to thee about her while she seemed but human. In
+my hours of sadness, not only her beautiful form, but her very voice
+bent over me. How girlish in the gracefulness of her lofty form! how
+pliable in her majesty! what composure at my petulance and reproaches!
+what pity in her reproofs! Like the air that angels breathe in the
+metropolitan temple of the Christian world, her soul at every season
+preserved one temperature. But it was when she could and did love me!
+Unchanged must ever be the blessed one who has leaned in fond security
+on the unchangeable. The purifying flame shoots upward, and is the
+glory that encircles their brows when they meet above.
+
+_Cornelia._ Indulge in these delightful thoughts, my Torquato! and
+believe that your love is and ought to be imperishable as your glory.
+Generations of men move forward in endless procession to consecrate
+and commemorate both. Colour-grinders and gilders, year after year,
+are bargained with to refresh the crumbling monuments and tarnished
+decorations of rude, unregarded royalty, and to fasten the nails that
+cramp the crown upon its head. Meanwhile, in the laurels of my
+Torquato there will always be one leaf above man's reach, above time's
+wrath and injury, inscribed with the name of Leonora.
+
+_Tasso._ O Jerusalem! I have not then sung in vain the Holy Sepulchre.
+
+_Cornelia._ After such devotion of your genius, you have undergone too
+many misfortunes.
+
+_Tasso._ Congratulate the man who has had many, and may have more. I
+have had, I have, I can have, one only.
+
+_Cornelia._ Life runs not smoothly at all seasons, even with the
+happiest; but after a long course, the rocks subside, the views widen,
+and it flows on more equably at the end.
+
+_Tasso._ Have the stars smooth surfaces? No, no; but how they shine!
+
+_Cornelia._ Capable of thoughts so exalted, so far above the earth we
+dwell on, why suffer any to depress and anguish you?
+
+_Tasso._ Cornelia, Cornelia! the mind has within its temples and
+porticoes and palaces and towers: the mind has under it, ready for the
+course, steeds brighter than the sun and stronger than the storm; and
+beside them stand winged chariots, more in number than the Psalmist
+hath attributed to the Almighty. The mind, I tell thee again, hath its
+hundred gates, compared whereto the Theban are but willow wickets; and
+all those hundred gates can genius throw open. But there are some that
+groan heavily on their hinges, and the hand of God alone can close
+them.
+
+_Cornelia._ Torquato has thrown open those of His holy temple;
+Torquato hath stood, another angel, at His tomb; and am I the sister
+of Torquato? Kiss me, my brother, and let my tears run only from my
+pride and joy! Princes have bestowed knighthood on the worthy and
+unworthy; thou hast called forth those princes from their ranks,
+pushing back the arrogant and presumptuous of them like intrusive
+varlets, and conferring on the bettermost crowns and robes,
+imperishable and unfading.
+
+_Tasso._ I seem to live back into those days. I feel the helmet on my
+head; I wave the standard over it: brave men smile upon me; beautiful
+maidens pull them gently back by the scarf, and will not let them
+break my slumber, nor undraw the curtain. Corneliolina!...
+
+_Cornelia._ Well, my dear brother! why do you stop so suddenly in the
+midst of them? They are the pleasantest and best company, and they
+make you look quite happy and joyous.
+
+_Tasso._ Corneliolina, dost thou remember Bergamo? What city was ever
+so celebrated for honest and valiant men, in all classes, or for
+beautiful girls! There is but one class of those: Beauty is above all
+ranks; the true Madonna, the patroness and bestower of felicity, the
+queen of heaven.
+
+_Cornelia._ Hush, Torquato, hush! talk not so.
+
+_Tasso._ What rivers, how sunshiny and revelling, are the Brembo and
+the Serio! What a country the Valtellina! I went back to our father's
+house, thinking to find thee again, my little sister; thinking to kick
+away thy ball of yellow silk as thou wast stooping for it, to make
+thee run after me and beat me. I woke early in the morning; thou wert
+grown up and gone. Away to Sorrento: I knew the road: a few strides
+brought me back: here I am. To-morrow, my Cornelia, we will walk
+together, as we used to do, into the cool and quiet caves on the
+shore; and we will catch the little breezes as they come in and go out
+again on the backs of the jocund waves.
+
+_Cornelia._ We will indeed to-morrow; but before we set out we must
+take a few hours' rest, that we may enjoy our ramble the better.
+
+_Tasso._ Our Sorrentines, I see, are grown rich and avaricious. They
+have uprooted the old pomegranate hedges, and have built high walls to
+prohibit the wayfarer from their vineyards.
+
+_Cornelia._ I have a basket of grapes for you in the book-room that
+overlooks our garden.
+
+_Tasso._ Does the old twisted sage-tree grow still against the window?
+
+_Cornelia._ It harboured too many insects at last, and there was
+always a nest of scorpions in the crevice.
+
+_Tasso._ Oh! what a prince of a sage-tree! And the well, too, with its
+bucket of shining metal, large enough for the largest cocomero to cool
+in it for dinner.
+
+_Cornelia._ The well, I assure you, is as cool as ever.
+
+_Tasso._ Delicious! delicious! And the stone-work round it, bearing no
+other marks of waste than my pruning-hook and dagger left behind?
+
+_Cornelia._ None whatever.
+
+_Tasso._ White in that place no longer; there has been time enough for
+it to become all of one colour: grey, mossy, half-decayed.
+
+_Cornelia._ No, no; not even the rope has wanted repair.
+
+_Tasso._ Who sings yonder?
+
+_Cornelia._ Enchanter! No sooner did you say the word cocomero than
+here comes a boy carrying one upon his head.
+
+_Tasso._ Listen! listen! I have read in some book or other those
+verses long ago. They are not unlike my _Aminta_. The very words!
+
+_Cornelia._ Purifier of love, and humanizer of ferocity, how many, my
+Torquato, will your gentle thoughts make happy!
+
+_Tasso._ At this moment I almost think I am one among them.[10]
+
+_Cornelia._ Be quite persuaded of it. Come, brother, come with me. You
+shall bathe your heated brow and weary limbs in the chamber of your
+childhood. It is there we are always the most certain of repose. The
+boy shall sing to you those sweet verses; and we will reward him with
+a slice of his own fruit.
+
+_Tasso._ He deserves it; cut it thick.
+
+_Cornelia._ Come then, my truant! Come along, my sweet smiling
+Torquato!
+
+_Tasso._ The passage is darker than ever. Is this the way to the
+little court? Surely those are not the steps that lead down toward the
+bath? Oh yes! we are right; I smell the lemon-blossoms. Beware of the
+old wilding that bears them; it may catch your veil; it may scratch
+your fingers! Pray, take care: it has many thorns about it. And now,
+Leonora! you shall hear my last verses! Lean your ear a little toward
+me; for I must repeat them softly under this low archway, else others
+may hear them too. Ah! you press my hand once more. Drop it, drop it!
+or the verses will sink into my breast again, and lie there silent!
+Good girl!
+
+      Many, well I know, there are
+      Ready in your joys to share,
+      And (I never blame it) you
+      Are almost as ready too.
+      But when comes the darker day,
+      And those friends have dropt away,
+      Which is there among them all
+      You should, if you could, recall?
+      One who wisely loves and well
+      Hears and shares the griefs you tell;
+      Him you ever call apart
+      When the springs o'erflow the heart;
+      For you know that he alone
+      Wishes they were _but_ his own.
+      Give, while these he may divide,
+      Smiles to all the world beside.
+
+_Cornelia._ We are now in the full light of the chamber; cannot you
+remember it, having looked so intently all around?
+
+_Tasso._ O sister! I could have slept another hour. You thought I
+wanted rest: why did you waken me so early? I could have slept another
+hour or longer. What a dream! But I am calm and happy.
+
+_Cornelia._ May you never more be otherwise! Indeed, he cannot be
+whose last verses are such as those.
+
+_Tasso._ Have you written any since that morning?
+
+_Cornelia._ What morning?
+
+_Tasso._ When you caught the swallow in my curtains, and trod upon my
+knees in catching it, luckily with naked feet. The little girl of
+thirteen laughed at the outcry of her brother Torquatino, and sang
+without a blush her earliest lay.
+
+_Cornelia._ I do not recollect it.
+
+_Tasso._ I do.
+
+      Rondinello! rondinello!
+      Tu sei nero, ma sei bello.
+      Cosa fà se tu sei nero?
+      Rondinello! sei il primiero
+      De' volanti, palpitanti,
+      (E vi sono quanti quanti!)
+      Mai tenuto a questo petto,
+      E perciò sei il mio diletto.[11]
+
+_Cornelia._ Here is the cocomero; it cannot be more insipid. Try it.
+
+_Tasso._ Where is the boy who brought it? where is the boy who sang my
+_Aminta_? Serve him first; give him largely. Cut deeper; the knife is
+too short: deeper; mia brava Corneliolina! quite through all the red,
+and into the middle of the seeds. Well done!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[10] The miseries of Tasso arose not only from the imagination and the
+heart. In the metropolis of the Christian world, with many admirers
+and many patrons, bishops, cardinals, princes, he was left destitute,
+and almost famished. These are his own words: '_Appena_ in questo
+stato ho comprato _due meloni_: e benchè io sia stato _quasi sempre
+infermo_, molte volte mi sono contentato del manzo: e la ministra di
+latte o di zucca, _quando ho potuto averne_, mi è stata in vece di
+delizie.' In another part he says that he was unable to pay the
+carriage of a parcel. No wonder; if he had not wherewithal to buy
+enough of zucca for a meal. Even had he been in health and appetite,
+he might have satisfied his hunger with it for about five farthings,
+and have left half for supper. And now a word on his insanity. Having
+been so imprudent not only as to make it too evident in his poetry
+that he was the lover of Leonora, but also to signify (not very
+obscurely) that his love was returned, he much perplexed the Duke of
+Ferrara, who, with great discretion, suggested to him the necessity of
+feigning madness. The lady's honour required it from a brother; and a
+true lover, to convince the world, would embrace the project with
+alacrity. But there was no reason why the seclusion should be in a
+dungeon, or why exercise and air should be interdicted. This cruelty,
+and perhaps his uncertainty of Leonora's compassion, may well be
+imagined to have produced at last the malady he had feigned. But did
+Leonora love Tasso as a man would be loved? If we wish to do her
+honour, let us hope it: for what greater glory can there be, than to
+have estimated at the full value so exalted a genius, so affectionate
+and so generous a heart!
+
+[11] The author wrote the verses first in English, but he found it
+easy to write them better in Italian: they stood in the text as below:
+they only do for a girl of thirteen:
+
+      'Swallow! swallow! though so jetty
+      Are your pinions, you are pretty:
+      And what matter were it though
+      You were blacker than a crow?
+      Of the many birds that fly
+      (And how many pass me by!)
+      You 're the first I ever prest,
+      Of the many, to my breast:
+      Therefore it is very right
+      You should be my own delight.'
+
+
+
+
+LA FONTAINE AND DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT
+
+
+_La Fontaine._ I am truly sensible of the honour I receive, M. de la
+Rochefoucault, in a visit from a personage so distinguished by his
+birth and by his genius. Pardon my ambition, if I confess to you that
+I have long and ardently wished for the good fortune, which I never
+could promise myself, of knowing you personally.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ My dear M. de la Fontaine!
+
+_La Fontaine._ Not '_de_ la', not '_de_ la'. I am _La_ Fontaine,
+purely and simply.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ The whole; not derivative. You appear, in the midst
+of your purity, to have been educated at court, in the lap of the
+ladies. What was the last day (pardon!) I had the misfortune to miss
+you there?
+
+_La Fontaine._ I never go to court. They say one cannot go without
+silk stockings; and I have only thread: plenty of them indeed, thank
+God! Yet, would you believe it? Nanon, in putting a _solette_ to the
+bottom of one, last week, sewed it so carelessly, she made a kind of
+cord across: and I verily believe it will lame me for life; for I
+walked the whole morning upon it.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ She ought to be whipped.
+
+_La Fontaine._ I thought so too, and grew the warmer at being unable
+to find a wisp of osier or a roll of packthread in the house. Barely
+had I begun with my garter, when in came the Bishop of Grasse, my old
+friend Godeau, and another lord, whose name he mentioned, and they
+both interceded for her so long and so touchingly, that at last I was
+fain to let her rise up and go. I never saw men look down on the
+erring and afflicted more compassionately. The bishop was quite
+concerned for me also. But the other, although he professed to feel
+even more, and said that it must surely be the pain of purgatory to
+me, took a pinch of snuff, opened his waistcoat, drew down his
+ruffles, and seemed rather more indifferent.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Providentially, in such moving scenes, the worst is
+soon over. But Godeau's friend was not too sensitive.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Sensitive! no more than if he had been educated at the
+butcher's or the Sorbonne.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I am afraid there are as many hard hearts under satin
+waistcoats as there are ugly visages under the same material in
+miniature cases.
+
+_La Fontaine._ My lord, I could show you a miniature case which
+contains your humble servant, in which the painter has done what no
+tailor in his senses would do; he has given me credit for a coat of
+violet silk, with silver frogs as large as tortoises. But I am loath
+to get up for it while the generous heart of this dog (if I mentioned
+his name he would jump up) places such confidence on my knee.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Pray do not move on any account; above all, lest you
+should disturb that amiable grey cat, fast asleep in his innocence on
+your shoulder.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Ah, rogue! art thou there? Why! thou hast not licked my
+face this half-hour.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ And more, too, I should imagine. I do not judge from
+his somnolency, which, if he were President of the Parliament, could
+not be graver, but from his natural sagacity. Cats weigh
+practicabilities. What sort of tongue has he?
+
+_La Fontaine._ He has the roughest tongue and the tenderest heart of
+any cat in Paris. If you observe the colour of his coat, it is rather
+blue than grey; a certain indication of goodness in these
+contemplative creatures.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ We were talking of his tongue alone; by which cats,
+like men, are flatterers.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Ah! you gentlemen of the court are much mistaken in
+thinking that vices have so extensive a range. There are some of our
+vices, like some of our diseases, from which the quadrupeds are
+exempt; and those, both diseases and vices, are the most
+discreditable.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I do not bear patiently any evil spoken of the court:
+for it must be acknowledged, by the most malicious, that the court is
+the purifier of the whole nation.
+
+_La Fontaine._ I know little of the court, and less of the whole
+nation; but how can this be?
+
+_Rochefoucault._ It collects all ramblers and gamblers; all the
+market-men and market-women who deal in articles which God has thrown
+into their baskets, without any trouble on their part; all the
+seducers and all who wish to be seduced; all the duellists who erase
+their crimes with their swords, and sweat out their cowardice with
+daily practice; all the nobles whose patents of nobility lie in gold
+snuff-boxes, or have worn Mechlin ruffles, or are deposited within the
+archives of knee-deep waistcoats; all stock-jobbers and
+church-jobbers, the black-legged and the red-legged game, the flower
+of the _justaucorps_, the _robe_, and the _soutane_. If these were
+spread over the surface of France, instead of close compressure in the
+court or cabinet, they would corrupt the whole country in two years.
+As matters now stand, it will require a quarter of a century to effect
+it.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Am I not right then in preferring my beasts to yours?
+But if yours were loose, mine (as you prove to me) would be the last
+to suffer by it, poor dear creatures! Speaking of cats, I would have
+avoided all personality that might be offensive to them: I would not
+exactly have said, in so many words, that, by their tongues, they are
+flatterers, like men. Language may take a turn advantageously in
+favour of our friends. True, we resemble all animals in something. I
+am quite ashamed and mortified that your lordship, or anybody, should
+have had the start of me in this reflection. When a cat flatters with
+his tongue he is not insincere: you may safely take it for a real
+kindness. He is loyal, M. de la Rochefoucault! my word for him, he is
+loyal. Observe too, if you please, no cat ever licks you when he wants
+anything from you; so that there is nothing of baseness in such an act
+of adulation, if we must call it so. For my part, I am slow to
+designate by so foul a name, that (be it what it may) which is
+subsequent to a kindness. Cats ask plainly for what they want.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ And, if they cannot get it by protocols they get it
+by invasion and assault.
+
+_La Fontaine._ No! no! usually they go elsewhere, and fondle those
+from whom they obtain it. In this I see no resemblance to invaders and
+conquerors. I draw no parallels: I would excite no heart-burnings
+between us and them. Let all have their due.
+
+I do not like to lift this creature off, for it would waken him, else
+I could find out, by some subsequent action, the reason why he has not
+been on the alert to lick my cheek for so long a time.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Cats are wary and provident. He would not enter into
+any contest with you, however friendly. He only licks your face, I
+presume, while your beard is but a match for his tongue.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Ha! you remind me. Indeed I did begin to think my beard
+was rather of the roughest; for yesterday Madame de Rambouillet sent
+me a plate of strawberries, the first of the season, and raised (would
+you believe it?) under glass. One of these strawberries was dropping
+from my lips, and I attempted to stop it. When I thought it had fallen
+to the ground, 'Look for it, Nanon; pick it up and eat it,' said I.
+
+'Master!' cried the wench, 'your beard has skewered and spitted it.'
+'Honest girl,' I answered, 'come, cull it from the bed of its
+adoption.'
+
+I had resolved to shave myself this morning: but our wisest and best
+resolutions too often come to nothing, poor mortals!
+
+_Rochefoucault._ We often do very well everything but the only thing
+we hope to do best of all; and our projects often drop from us by
+their weight. A little while ago your friend Molière exhibited a
+remarkable proof of it.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Ah, poor Molière! the best man in the world; but
+flighty, negligent, thoughtless. He throws himself into other men, and
+does not remember where. The sight of an eagle, M. de la
+Rochefoucault, but the memory of a fly.
+
+_Rochefoucault_. I will give you an example: but perhaps it is already
+known to you.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Likely enough. We have each so many friends, neither of
+us can trip but the other is invited to the laugh. Well; I am sure he
+has no malice, and I hope I have none: but who can see his own faults?
+
+_Rochefoucault._ He had brought out a new edition of his comedies.
+
+_La Fontaine._ There will be fifty; there will be a hundred: nothing
+in our language, or in any, is so delightful, so graceful; I will add,
+so clear at once and so profound.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ You are among the few who, seeing well his other
+qualities, see that Molière is also profound. In order to present the
+new edition to the dauphin, he had put on a sky-blue velvet coat,
+powdered with fleurs-de-lis. He laid the volume on his library table;
+and, resolving that none of the courtiers should have an opportunity
+of ridiculing him for anything like absence of mind, he returned to
+his bedroom, which, as may often be the case in the economy of poets,
+is also his dressing-room. Here he surveyed himself in his mirror, as
+well as the creeks and lagoons in it would permit.
+
+_La Fontaine._ I do assure you, from my own observation, M. de la
+Rochefoucault, that his mirror is a splendid one. I should take it to
+be nearly three feet high, reckoning the frame, with the Cupid above
+and the elephant under. I suspected it was the present of some great
+lady; and indeed I have since heard as much.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Perhaps then the whole story may be quite as fabulous
+as the part of it which I have been relating.
+
+_La Fontaine._ In that case, I may be able to set you right again.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ He found his peruke a model of perfection; tight, yet
+easy; not an inch more on one side than on the other. The black patch
+on the forehead....
+
+_La Fontaine._ Black patch too! I would have given a fifteen-sous
+piece to have caught him with that black patch.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ He found it lovely, marvellous, irresistible. Those
+on each cheek....
+
+_La Fontaine._ Do you tell me he had one on each cheek?
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Symmetrically. The cravat was of its proper descent,
+and with its appropriate charge of the best Strasburg snuff upon it.
+The waistcoat, for a moment, puzzled and perplexed him. He was not
+quite sure whether the right number of buttons were in their holes;
+nor how many above, nor how many below, it was the fashion of the week
+to leave without occupation. Such a piece of ignorance is enough to
+disgrace any courtier on earth. He was in the act of striking his
+forehead with desperation; but he thought of the patch, fell on his
+knees, and thanked Heaven for the intervention.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Just like him! just like him! good soul!
+
+_Rochefoucault._ The breeches ... ah! those require attention: all
+proper: everything in its place. Magnificent. The stockings rolled up,
+neither too loosely nor too negligently. A picture! The buckles in the
+shoes ... all but one ... soon set to rights ... well thought of! And
+now the sword ... ah, that cursed sword! it will bring at least one
+man to the ground if it has its own way much longer ... up with it! up
+with it higher.... _Allons!_ we are out of danger.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Delightful! I have him before my eyes. What simplicity!
+aye, what simplicity!
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Now for hat. Feather in? Five at least. Bravo!
+
+He took up hat and plumage, extended his arm to the full length,
+raised it a foot above his head, lowered it thereon, opened his
+fingers, and let them fall again at his side.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Something of the comedian in that; aye, M. de la
+Rochefoucault? But, on the stage or off, all is natural in Molière.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Away he went: he reached the palace, stood before the
+dauphin.... O consternation! O despair! 'Morbleu! bête que je suis,'
+exclaimed the hapless man, 'le livre, où donc est-il?' You are
+forcibly struck, I perceive, by this adventure of your friend.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Strange coincidence! quite unaccountable! There are
+agents at work in our dreams, M. de la Rochefoucault, which we shall
+never see out of them, on this side the grave. [_To himself._]
+Sky-blue? no. Fleurs-de-lis? bah! bah! Patches? I never wore one in my
+life.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ It well becomes your character for generosity, M. La
+Fontaine, to look grave, and ponder, and ejaculate, on a friend's
+untoward accident, instead of laughing, as those who little know you,
+might expect. I beg your pardon for relating the occurrence.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Right or wrong, I cannot help laughing any longer.
+Comical, by my faith! above the tiptop of comedy. Excuse my flashes
+and dashes and rushes of merriment. Incontrollable! incontrollable!
+Indeed the laughter is immoderate. And you all the while are sitting
+as grave as a judge; I mean a criminal one; who has nothing to do but
+to keep up his popularity by sending his rogues to the gallows. The
+civil indeed have much weighty matter on their minds: they must
+displease one party: and sometimes a doubt arises whether the fairer
+hand or the fuller shall turn the balance.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I congratulate you on the return of your gravity and
+composure.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Seriously now: all my lifetime I have been the
+plaything of dreams. Sometimes they have taken such possession of me,
+that nobody could persuade me afterward they were other than real
+events. Some are very oppressive, very painful, M. de la
+Rochefoucault! I have never been able, altogether, to disembarrass my
+head of the most wonderful vision that ever took possession of any
+man's. There are some truly important differences, but in many
+respects this laughable adventure of my innocent, honest friend
+Molière seemed to have befallen myself. I can only account for it by
+having heard the tale when I was half asleep.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Nothing more probable.
+
+_La Fontaine._ You absolutely have relieved me from an incubus.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I do not yet see how.
+
+_La Fontaine._ No longer ago than when you entered this chamber, I
+would have sworn that I myself had gone to the Louvre, that I myself
+had been commanded to attend the dauphin, that I myself had come into
+his presence, had fallen on my knee, and cried, 'Peste! où est donc le
+livre?' Ah, M. de la Rochefoucault, permit me to embrace you: this is
+really to find a friend at court.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ My visit is even more auspicious than I could have
+ventured to expect: it was chiefly for the purpose of asking your
+permission to make another at my return to Paris.... I am forced to go
+into the country on some family affairs: but hearing that you have
+spoken favourably of my _Maxims_, I presume to express my satisfaction
+and delight at your good opinion.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Pray, M. de la Rochefoucault, do me the favour to
+continue here a few minutes. I would gladly reason with you on some of
+your doctrines.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ For the pleasure of hearing your sentiments on the
+topics I have treated, I will, although it is late, steal a few
+minutes from the court, of which I must take my leave on parting for
+the province.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Are you quite certain that all your _Maxims_ are true,
+or, what is of greater consequence, that they are all original? I have
+lately read a treatise written by an Englishman, Mr. Hobbes; so loyal
+a man that, while others tell you kings are appointed by God, he tells
+you God is appointed by kings.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Ah! such are precisely the men we want. If he
+establishes this verity, the rest will follow.
+
+_La Fontaine._ He does not seem to care so much about the rest. In his
+treatise I find the ground-plan of your chief positions.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I have indeed looked over his publication; and we
+agree on the natural depravity of man.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Reconsider your expression. It appears to me that what
+is natural is not depraved: that depravity is deflection from nature.
+Let it pass: I cannot, however, concede to you that the generality of
+men are bad. Badness is accidental, like disease. We find more
+tempers good than bad, where proper care is taken in proper time.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Care is not nature.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Nature is soon inoperative without it; so soon indeed
+as to allow no opportunity for experiment or hypothesis. Life itself
+requires care, and more continually than tempers and morals do. The
+strongest body ceases to be a body in a few days without a supply of
+food. When we speak of men being naturally bad or good, we mean
+susceptible and retentive and communicative of them. In this case (and
+there can be no other true or ostensible one) I believe that the more
+are good; and nearly in the same proportion as there are animals and
+plants produced healthy and vigorous than wayward and weakly. Strange
+is the opinion of Mr. Hobbes, that, when God hath poured so abundantly
+His benefits on other creatures, the only one capable of great good
+should be uniformly disposed to greater evil.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Yet Holy Writ, to which Hobbes would reluctantly
+appeal, countenances the supposition.
+
+_La Fontaine._ The Jews, above all nations, were morose and splenetic.
+Nothing is holy to me that lessens in my view the beneficence of my
+Creator. If you could show Him ungentle and unkind in a single
+instance, you would render myriads of men so, throughout the whole
+course of their lives, and those too among the most religious. The
+less that people talk about God the better. He has left us a design to
+fill up: He has placed the canvas, the colours, and the pencils,
+within reach; His directing hand is over ours incessantly; it is our
+business to follow it, and neither to turn round and argue with our
+Master, nor to kiss and fondle Him. We must mind our lesson, and not
+neglect our time: for the room is closed early, and the lights are
+suspended in another, where no one works. If every man would do all
+the good he might within an hour's walk from his house, he would live
+the happier and the longer: for nothing is so conducive to longevity
+as the union of activity and content. But, like children, we deviate
+from the road, however well we know it, and run into mire and puddles
+in despite of frown and ferule.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Go on, M. La Fontaine! pray go on. We are walking in
+the same labyrinth, always within call, always within sight of each
+other. We set out at its two extremities, and shall meet at last.
+
+_La Fontaine._ I doubt it. From deficiency of care proceed many
+vices, both in men and children, and more still from care taken
+improperly. Mr. Hobbes attributes not only the order and peace of
+society, but equity and moderation and every other virtue, to the
+coercion and restriction of the laws. The laws, as now constituted, do
+a great deal of good; they also do a great deal of mischief. They
+transfer more property from the right owner in six months than all the
+thieves of the kingdom do in twelve. What the thieves take they soon
+disseminate abroad again; what the laws take they hoard. The thief
+takes a part of your property: he who prosecutes the thief for you
+takes another part: he who condemns the thief goes to the tax-gatherer
+and takes the third. Power has been hitherto occupied in no employment
+but in keeping down Wisdom. Perhaps the time may come when Wisdom
+shall exert her energy in repressing the sallies of Power.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I think it more probable that they will agree; that
+they will call together their servants of all liveries, to collect
+what they can lay their hands upon; and that meanwhile they will sit
+together like good housewives, making nets from our purses to cover
+the coop for us. If you would be plump and in feather, pick up your
+millet and be quiet in your darkness. Speculate on nothing here below,
+and I promise you a nosegay in Paradise.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Believe me, I shall be most happy to receive it there
+at your hands, my lord duke.
+
+The greater number of men, I am inclined to think, with all the
+defects of education, all the frauds committed on their credulity, all
+the advantages taken of their ignorance and supineness, are disposed,
+on most occasions, rather to virtue than to vice, rather to the kindly
+affections than the unkindly, rather to the social than the selfish.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Here we differ: and were my opinion the same as
+yours, my book would be little read and less commended.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Why think so?
+
+_Rochefoucault._ For this reason. Every man likes to hear evil of all
+men: every man is delighted to take the air of the common, though not
+a soul will consent to stand within his own allotment. No enclosure
+act! no finger-posts! You may call every creature under heaven fool
+and rogue, and your auditor will join with you heartily: hint to him
+the slightest of his own defects or foibles, and he draws the rapier.
+You and he are the judges of the world, but not its denizens.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Mr. Hobbes has taken advantage of these weaknesses. In
+his dissertation he betrays the timidity and malice of his character.
+It must be granted he reasons well, according to the view he has taken
+of things; but he has given no proof whatever that his view is a
+correct one. I will believe that it is, when I am persuaded that
+sickness is the natural state of the body, and health the unnatural.
+If you call him a sound philosopher, you may call a mummy a sound man.
+Its darkness, its hardness, its forced uprightness, and the place in
+which you find it, may commend it to you; give me rather some weakness
+and peccability, with vital warmth and human sympathies. A shrewd
+reasoner in one thing, a sound philosopher is another. I admire your
+power and precision. Monks will admonish us how little the author of
+the _Maxims_ knows of the world; and heads of colleges will cry out 'a
+libel on human nature!' but when they hear your titles, and, above
+all, your credit at court, they will cast back cowl, and peruke, and
+lick your boots. You start with great advantages. Throwing off from a
+dukedom, you are sure of enjoying, if not the tongue of these
+puzzlers, the full cry of the more animating, and will certainly be as
+long-lived as the imperfection of our language will allow. I consider
+your _Maxims_ as a broken ridge of hills, on the shady side of which
+you are fondest of taking your exercise: but the same ridge hath also
+a sunny one. You attribute (let me say it again) all actions to
+self-interest. Now, a sentiment of interest must be preceded by
+calculation, long or brief, right or erroneous. Tell me then in what
+region lies the origin of that pleasure which a family in the country
+feels on the arrival of an unexpected friend. I say a family in the
+country; because the sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon
+canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of
+delight. If I may judge from the few examples I have been in a
+position to see, no earthly one can be greater. There are pleasures
+which lie near the surface, and which are blocked up by artificial
+ones, or are diverted by some mechanical scheme, or are confined by
+some stiff evergreen vista of low advantage. But these pleasures do
+occasionally burst forth in all their brightness; and, if ever you
+shall by chance find one of them, you will sit by it, I hope,
+complacently and cheerfully, and turn toward it the kindliest aspect
+of your meditations.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Many, indeed most people, will differ from me.
+Nothing is quite the same to the intellect of any two men, much less
+of all. When one says to another, 'I am entirely of your opinion,' he
+uses in general an easy and indifferent phrase, believing in its
+accuracy, without examination, without thought. The nearest
+resemblance in opinions, if we could trace every line of it, would be
+found greatly more divergent than the nearest in the human form or
+countenance, and in the same proportion as the varieties of mental
+qualities are more numerous and fine than of the bodily. Hence I do
+not expect nor wish that my opinions should in all cases be similar to
+those of others: but in many I shall be gratified if, by just degrees
+and after a long survey, those of others approximate to mine. Nor does
+this my sentiment spring from a love of power, as in many good men
+quite unconsciously, when they would make proselytes, since I shall
+see few and converse with fewer of them, and profit in no way by their
+adherence and favour; but it springs from a natural and a cultivated
+love of all truths whatever, and from a certainty that these delivered
+by me are conducive to the happiness and dignity of man. You shake
+your head.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Make it out.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I have pointed out to him at what passes he hath
+deviated from his true interest, and where he hath mistaken
+selfishness for generosity, coldness for judgment, contraction of
+heart for policy, rank for merit, pomp for dignity; of all mistakes,
+the commonest and the greatest. I am accused of paradox and
+distortion. On paradox I shall only say, that every new moral truth
+has been called so. Inexperienced and negligent observers see no
+difference in the operations of ravelling and unravelling: they never
+come close enough: they despise plain work.
+
+_La Fontaine._ The more we simplify things, the better we descry their
+substances and qualities. A good writer will not coil them up and
+press them into the narrowest possible space, nor macerate them into
+such particles that nothing shall be remaining of their natural
+contexture. You are accused of this too, by such as have forgotten
+your title-page, and who look for treatises where maxims only have
+been promised. Some of them perhaps are spinning out sermons and
+dissertations from the poorest paragraph in the volume.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Let them copy and write as they please; against or
+for, modestly or impudently. I have hitherto had no assailant who is
+not of too slender a make to be detained an hour in the stocks he had
+unwarily put his foot into. If you hear of any, do not tell of them.
+On the subjects of my remarks, had others thought as I do, my labour
+would have been spared me. I am ready to point out the road where I
+know it, to whosoever wants it; but I walk side by side with few or
+none.
+
+_La Fontaine._ We usually like those roads which show us the fronts of
+our friends' houses and the pleasure-grounds about them, and the
+smooth garden-walks, and the trim espaliers, and look at them with
+more satisfaction than at the docks and nettles that are thrown in
+heaps behind. The _Offices_ of Cicero are imperfect; yet who would not
+rather guide his children by them than by the line and compass of
+harder-handed guides; such as Hobbes for instance?
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Imperfect as some gentlemen in hoods may call the
+_Offices_, no founder of a philosophical or of a religious sect has
+been able to add to them anything important.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Pity! that Cicero carried with him no better
+authorities than reason and humanity. He neither could work miracles,
+nor damn you for disbelieving them. Had he lived fourscore years
+later, who knows but he might have been another Simon Peter, and have
+talked Hebrew as fluently as Latin, all at once! Who knows but we
+might have heard of his patrimony! who knows but our venerable popes
+might have claimed dominion from him, as descendant from the kings of
+Rome!
+
+_Rochefoucault._ The hint, some centuries ago, would have made your
+fortune, and that saintly cat there would have kittened in a mitre.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Alas! the hint could have done nothing: Cicero could
+not have lived later.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I warrant him. Nothing is easier to correct than
+chronology. There is not a lady in Paris, nor a jockey in Normandy,
+that is not eligible to a professor's chair in it. I have seen a man's
+ancestor, whom nobody ever saw before, spring back over twenty
+generations. Our Vatican Jupiters have as little respect for old
+Chronos as the Cretan had: they mutilate him when and where they think
+necessary, limp as he may by the operation.
+
+_La Fontaine._ When I think, as you make me do, how ambitious men are,
+even those whose teeth are too loose (one would fancy) for a bite at
+so hard an apple as the devil of ambition offers them, I am inclined
+to believe that we are actuated not so much by selfishness as you
+represent it, but under another form, the love of power. Not to speak
+of territorial dominion or political office, and such other things as
+we usually class under its appurtenances, do we not desire an
+exclusive control over what is beautiful and lovely? the possession
+of pleasant fields, of well-situated houses, of cabinets, of images,
+of pictures, and indeed of many things pleasant to see but useless to
+possess; even of rocks, of streams, and of fountains? These things,
+you will tell me, have their utility. True, but not to the wisher, nor
+does the idea of it enter his mind. Do not we wish that the object of
+our love should be devoted to us only; and that our children should
+love us better than their brothers and sisters, or even than the
+mother who bore them? Love would be arrayed in the purple robe of
+sovereignty, mildly as he may resolve to exercise his power.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Many things which appear to be incontrovertible are
+such for their age only, and must yield to others which, in their age,
+are equally so. There are only a few points that are always above the
+waves. Plain truths, like plain dishes, are commended by everybody,
+and everybody leaves them whole. If it were not even more impertinent
+and presumptuous to praise a great writer in his presence than to
+censure him in his absence, I would venture to say that your prose,
+from the few specimens you have given of it, is equal to your verse.
+Yet, even were I the possessor of such a style as yours, I would never
+employ it to support my _Maxims_. You would think a writer very
+impudent and self-sufficient who should quote his own works: to defend
+them is doing more. We are the worst auxiliaries in the world to the
+opinions we have brought into the field. Our business is, to measure
+the ground, and to calculate the forces; then let them try their
+strength. If the weak assails me, he thinks me weak; if the strong, he
+thinks me strong. He is more likely to compute ill his own vigour than
+mine. At all events, I love inquiry, even when I myself sit down. And
+I am not offended in my walks if my visitor asks me whither does that
+alley lead. It proves that he is ready to go on with me; that he sees
+some space before him; and that he believes there may be something
+worth looking after.
+
+_La Fontaine._ You have been standing a long time, my lord duke: I
+must entreat you to be seated.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Excuse me, my dear M. la Fontaine; I would much
+rather stand.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Mercy on us! have you been upon your legs ever since
+you rose to leave me?
+
+_Rochefoucault._ A change of position is agreeable: a friend always
+permits it.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Sad doings! sad oversight! The other two chairs were
+sent yesterday evening to be scoured and mended. But that dog is the
+best tempered dog! an angel of a dog, I do assure you; he would have
+gone down in a moment, at a word. I am quite ashamed of myself for
+such inattention. With your sentiments of friendship for me, why could
+you not have taken the liberty to shove him gently off, rather than
+give me this uneasiness?
+
+_Rochefoucault._ My true and kind friend! we authors are too
+sedentary; we are heartily glad of standing to converse, whenever we
+can do it without any restraint on our acquaintance.
+
+_La Fontaine._ I must reprove that animal when he uncurls his body. He
+seems to be dreaming of Paradise and houris. Ay, twitch thy ear, my
+child! I wish at my heart there were as troublesome a fly about the
+other: God forgive me! The rogue covers all my clean linen! shirt and
+cravat! what cares he!
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Dogs are not very modest.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Never say that, M. de la Rochefoucault! The most modest
+people upon earth! Look at a dog's eyes, and he half closes them, or
+gently turns them away, with a motion of the lips, which he licks
+languidly, and of the tail, which he stirs tremulously, begging your
+forbearance. I am neither blind nor indifferent to the defects of
+these good and generous creatures. They are subject to many such as
+men are subject to: among the rest, they disturb the neighbourhood in
+the discussion of their private causes; they quarrel and fight on
+small motives, such as a little bad food, or a little vainglory, or
+the sex. But it must be something present or near that excites them;
+and they calculate not the extent of evil they may do or suffer.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Certainly not: how should dogs calculate?
+
+_La Fontaine._ I know nothing of the process. I am unable to inform
+you how they leap over hedges and brooks, with exertion just
+sufficient, and no more. In regard to honour and a sense of dignity,
+let me tell you, a dog accepts the subsidies of his friends, but never
+claims them: a dog would not take the field to obtain power for a son,
+but would leave the son to obtain it by his own activity and prowess.
+He conducts his visitor or inmate out a-hunting, and makes a present
+of the game to him as freely as an emperor to an elector. Fond as he
+is of slumber, which is indeed one of the pleasantest and best things
+in the universe, particularly after dinner, he shakes it off as
+willingly as he would a gadfly, in order to defend his master from
+theft or violence. Let the robber or assailant speak as courteously
+as he may, he waives your diplomatical terms, gives his reasons in
+plain language, and makes war. I could say many other things to his
+advantage; but I never was malicious, and would rather let both
+parties plead for themselves; give me the dog, however.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Faith! I will give you both, and never boast of my
+largess in so doing.
+
+_La Fontaine._ I trust I have removed from you the suspicion of
+selfishness in my client, and I feel it quite as easy to make a
+properer disposal of another ill attribute, namely cruelty, which we
+vainly try to shuffle off our own shoulders upon others, by employing
+the offensive and most unjust term, brutality. But to convince you of
+my impartiality, now I have defended the dog from the first obloquy, I
+will defend the man from the last, hoping to make you think better of
+each. What you attribute to cruelty, both while we are children and
+afterward, may be assigned, for the greater part, to curiosity.
+Cruelty tends to the extinction of life, the dissolution of matter,
+the imprisonment and sepulture of truth; and if it were our ruling and
+chief propensity, the human race would have been extinguished in a few
+centuries after its appearance. Curiosity, in its primary sense,
+implies care and consideration.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Words often deflect from their primary sense. We find
+the most curious men the most idle and silly, the least observant and
+conservative.
+
+_La Fontaine._ So we think; because we see every hour the idly
+curious, and not the strenuously; we see only the persons of the one
+set, and only the works of the other.
+
+More is heard of cruelty than of curiosity, because while curiosity is
+silent both in itself and about its object, cruelty on most occasions
+is like the wind, boisterous in itself, and exciting a murmur and
+bustle in all the things it moves among. Added to which, many of the
+higher topics whereto our curiosity would turn, are intercepted from
+it by the policy of our guides and rulers; while the principal ones on
+which cruelty is most active, are pointed to by the sceptre and the
+truncheon, and wealth and dignity are the rewards of their attainment.
+What perversion! He who brings a bullock into a city for its
+sustenance is called a butcher, and nobody has the civility to take
+off the hat to him, although knowing him as perfectly as I know
+Matthieu le Mince, who served me with those fine kidneys you must have
+remarked in passing through the kitchen: on the contrary, he who
+reduces the same city to famine is styled M. le Général or M. le
+Maréchal, and gentlemen like you, unprejudiced (as one would think)
+and upright, make room for him in the antechamber.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ He obeys orders without the degrading influence of
+any passion.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Then he commits a baseness the more, a cruelty the
+greater. He goes off at another man's setting, as ingloriously as a
+rat-trap: he produces the worst effects of fury, and feels none: a
+Cain unirritated by a brother's incense.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I would hide from you this little rapier, which, like
+the barber's pole, I have often thought too obtrusive in the streets.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Never shall I think my countrymen half civilized while
+on the dress of a courtier is hung the instrument of a cut-throat. How
+deplorably feeble must be that honour which requires defending at
+every hour of the day!
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Ingenious as you are, M. La Fontaine, I do not
+believe that, on this subject, you could add anything to what you have
+spoken already; but really, I do think one of the most instructive
+things in the world would be a dissertation on dress by you.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Nothing can be devised more commodious than the dress
+in fashion. Perukes have fallen among us by the peculiar dispensation
+of Providence. As in all the regions of the globe the indigenous have
+given way to stronger creatures, so have they (partly at least) on the
+human head. At present the wren and the squirrel are dominant there.
+Whenever I have a mind for a filbert, I have only to shake my foretop.
+Improvement does not end in that quarter. I might forget to take my
+pinch of snuff when it would do me good, unless I saw a store of it on
+another's cravat. Furthermore, the slit in the coat behind tells in a
+moment what it was made for: a thing of which, in regard to ourselves,
+the best preachers have to remind us all our lives: then the central
+part of our habiliment has either its loop-hole or its portcullis in
+the opposite direction, still more demonstrative. All these are for
+very mundane purposes: but Religion and Humanity have whispered some
+later utilities. We pray the more commodiously, and of course the more
+frequently, for rolling up a royal ell of stocking round about our
+knees: and our high-heeled shoes must surely have been worn by some
+angel, to save those insects which the flat-footed would have crushed
+to death.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Ah! the good dog has awakened: he saw me and my
+rapier, and ran away. Of what breed is he? for I know nothing of dogs.
+
+_La Fontaine._ And write so well!
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Is he a truffler?
+
+_La Fontaine._ No, not he; but quite as innocent.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Something of the shepherd-dog, I suspect.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Nor that neither; although he fain would make you
+believe it. Indeed he is very like one: pointed nose, pointed ears,
+apparently stiff, but readily yielding; long hair, particularly about
+the neck; noble tail over his back, three curls deep, exceedingly
+pleasant to stroke down again; straw-colour all above, white all
+below. He might take it ill if you looked for it; but so it is, upon
+my word: an ermeline might envy it.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ What are his pursuits?
+
+_La Fontaine._ As to pursuit and occupation, he is good for nothing.
+In fact, I like those dogs best ... and those men too.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Send Nanon then for a pair of silk stockings, and
+mount my carriage with me: it stops at the Louvre.
+
+
+
+
+LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS
+
+
+_Timotheus._ I am delighted, my Cousin Lucian, to observe how popular
+are become your _Dialogues of the Dead_. Nothing can be so gratifying
+and satisfactory to a rightly disposed mind, as the subversion of
+imposture by the force of ridicule. It hath scattered the crowd of
+heathen gods as if a thunderbolt had fallen in the midst of them. Now,
+I am confident you never would have assailed the false religion,
+unless you were prepared for the reception of the true. For it hath
+always been an indication of rashness and precipitancy, to throw down
+an edifice before you have collected materials for reconstruction.
+
+_Lucian._ Of all metaphors and remarks, I believe this of yours, my
+good cousin Timotheus, is the most trite, and pardon me if I add, the
+most untrue. Surely we ought to remove an error the instant we detect
+it, although it may be out of our competence to state and establish
+what is right. A lie should be exposed as soon as born: we are not to
+wait until a healthier child is begotten. Whatever is evil in any way
+should be abolished. The husbandman never hesitates to eradicate
+weeds, or to burn them up, because he may not happen at the time to
+carry a sack on his shoulder with wheat or barley in it. Even if no
+wheat or barley is to be sown in future, the weeding and burning are
+in themselves beneficial, and something better will spring up.
+
+_Timotheus._ That is not so certain.
+
+_Lucian._ Doubt it as you may, at least you will allow that the
+temporary absence of evil is an advantage.
+
+_Timotheus._ I think, O Lucian, you would reason much better if you
+would come over to our belief.
+
+_Lucian._ I was unaware that belief is an encourager and guide to
+reason.
+
+_Timotheus._ Depend upon it, there can be no stability of truth, no
+elevation of genius, without an unwavering faith in our holy
+mysteries. Babes and sucklings who are blest with it, stand higher,
+intellectually as well as morally, than stiff unbelievers and proud
+sceptics.
+
+_Lucian._ I do not wonder that so many are firm holders of this novel
+doctrine. It is pleasant to grow wise and virtuous at so small an
+expenditure of thought or time. This saying of yours is exactly what I
+heard spoken with angry gravity not long ago.
+
+_Timotheus._ Angry! no wonder! for it is impossible to keep our
+patience when truths so incontrovertible are assailed. What was your
+answer?
+
+_Lucian._ My answer was: If you talk in this manner, my honest friend,
+you will excite a spirit of ridicule in the gravest and most saturnine
+of men, who never had let a laugh out of their breasts before. Lie to
+_me_, and welcome; but beware lest your own heart take you to task for
+it, reminding you that both anger and falsehood are reprehended by all
+religions, yours included.
+
+_Timotheus._ Lucian! Lucian! you have always been called profane.
+
+_Lucian._ For what? for having turned into ridicule the gods whom you
+have turned out of house and home, and are reducing to dust?
+
+_Timotheus._ Well; but you are equally ready to turn into ridicule the
+true and holy.
+
+_Lucian._ In other words, to turn myself into a fool. He who brings
+ridicule to bear against Truth, finds in his hand a blade without a
+hilt. The most sparkling and pointed flame of wit flickers and
+expires against the incombustible walls of her sanctuary.
+
+_Timotheus._ Fine talking! Do you know, you have really been called an
+atheist?
+
+_Lucian._ Yes, yes; I know it well. But, in fact, I believe there are
+almost as few atheists in the world as there are Christians.
+
+_Timotheus._ How! as few? Most of Europe, most of Asia, most of
+Africa, is Christian.
+
+_Lucian._ Show me five men in each who obey the commands of Christ,
+and I will show you five hundred in this very city who observe the
+dictates of Pythagoras. Every Pythagorean obeys his defunct
+philosopher; and almost every Christian disobeys his living God. Where
+is there one who practises the most important and the easiest of His
+commands, to abstain from strife? Men easily and perpetually find
+something new to quarrel about; but the objects of affection are
+limited in number, and grow up scantily and slowly. Even a small house
+is often too spacious for them, and there is a vacant seat at the
+table. Religious men themselves, when the Deity has bestowed on them
+everything they prayed for, discover, as a peculiar gift of
+Providence, some fault in the actions or opinions of a neighbour, and
+run it down, crying and shouting after it, with more alacrity and more
+clamour than boys would a leveret or a squirrel in the playground. Are
+our years and our intellects, and the word of God itself, given us for
+this, O Timotheus?
+
+_Timotheus._ A certain latitude, a liberal construction....
+
+_Lucian._ Ay, ay! These 'liberal constructions' let loose all the
+worst passions into those 'certain latitudes'. The priests themselves,
+who ought to be the poorest, are the richest; who ought to be the most
+obedient, are the most refractory and rebellious. All trouble and all
+piety are vicarious. They send missionaries, at the cost of others,
+into foreign lands, to teach observances which they supersede at home.
+I have ridiculed the puppets of all features, all colours, all sizes,
+by which an impudent and audacious set of impostors have been gaining
+an easy livelihood these two thousand years.
+
+_Timotheus._ Gently! gently! Ours have not been at it yet two hundred.
+We abolish all idolatry. We know that Jupiter was not the father of
+gods and men: we know that Mars was not the Lord of Hosts: we know who
+is: we are quite at ease upon that question.
+
+_Lucian._ Are you so fanatical, my good Timotheus, as to imagine that
+the Creator of the world cares a fig by what appellation you adore
+Him? whether you call Him on one occasion Jupiter, on another Apollo?
+I will not add Mars or Lord of Hosts; for, wanting as I may be in
+piety, I am not, and never was, so impious as to call the Maker the
+Destroyer; to call Him Lord of Hosts who, according to your holiest of
+books, declared so lately and so plainly that He permits no hosts at
+all; much less will He take the command of one against another. Would
+any man in his senses go down into the cellar, and seize first an
+amphora from the right, and then an amphora from the left, for the
+pleasure of breaking them in pieces, and of letting out the wine he
+had taken the trouble to put in? We are not contented with attributing
+to the gods our own infirmities; we make them even more wayward, even
+more passionate, even more exigent and more malignant: and then some
+of us try to coax and cajole them, and others run away from them
+outright.
+
+_Timotheus._ No wonder: but only in regard to yours: and even those
+are types.
+
+_Lucian._ There are honest men who occupy their lives in discovering
+types for all things.
+
+_Timotheus._ Truly and rationally thou speakest now. Honest men and
+wise men above their fellows are they, and the greatest of all
+discoverers. There are many types above thy reach, O Lucian!
+
+_Lucian._ And one which my mind, and perhaps yours also, can
+comprehend. There is in Italy, I hear, on the border of a quiet and
+beautiful lake, a temple dedicated to Diana; the priests of which
+temple have murdered each his predecessor for unrecorded ages.
+
+_Timotheus._ What of that? They were idolaters.
+
+_Lucian._ They made the type, however: take it home with you, and hang
+it up in your temple.
+
+_Timotheus._ Why! you seem to have forgotten on a sudden that I am a
+Christian: you are talking of the heathens.
+
+_Lucian._ True! true! I am near upon eighty years of age, and to my
+poor eyesight one thing looks very like another.
+
+_Timotheus._ You are too indifferent.
+
+_Lucian._ No indeed. I love those best who quarrel least, and who
+bring into public use the most civility and good humour.
+
+_Timotheus._ Our holy religion inculcates this duty especially.
+
+_Lucian._ Such being the case, a pleasant story will not be thrown
+away upon you. Xenophanes, my townsman of Samosata, was resolved to
+buy a new horse: he had tried him, and liked him well enough. I asked
+him why he wished to dispose of his old one, knowing how sure-footed
+he was, how easy in his paces, and how quiet in his pasture. 'Very
+true, O Lucian,' said he; 'the horse is a clever horse; noble eye,
+beautiful figure, stately step; rather too fond of neighing and of
+shuffling a little in the vicinity of a mare; but tractable and good
+tempered.' 'I would not have parted with him then,' said I. 'The fact
+is,' replied he, 'my grandfather, whom I am about to visit, likes no
+horses but what are _Saturnized_. To-morrow I begin my journey: come
+and see me set out.' I went at the hour appointed. The new purchase
+looked quiet and demure; but _he_ also pricked up his ears, and gave
+sundry other tokens of equinity, when the more interesting part of his
+fellow-creatures came near him. As the morning oats began to operate,
+he grew more and more unruly, and snapped at one friend of Xenophanes,
+and sidled against another, and gave a kick at a third. 'All in play!
+all in play!' said Xenophanes; 'his nature is more of a lamb's than a
+horse's.' However, these mute salutations being over, away went
+Xenophanes. In the evening, when my lamp had just been replenished for
+the commencement of my studies, my friend came in striding as if he
+were still across the saddle. 'I am apprehensive, O Xenophanes,' said
+I, 'your new acquaintance has disappointed you.' 'Not in the least,'
+answered he. 'I do assure you, O Lucian! he is the very horse I was
+looking out for.' On my requesting him to be seated, he no more
+thought of doing so than if it had been in the presence of the Persian
+king. I then handed my lamp to him, telling him (as was true) it
+contained all the oil I had in the house, and protesting I should be
+happier to finish my Dialogue in the morning. He took the lamp into my
+bedroom, and appeared to be much refreshed on his return.
+Nevertheless, he treated his chair with great delicacy and
+circumspection, and evidently was afraid of breaking it by too sudden
+a descent. I did not revert to the horse: but he went on of his own
+accord. 'I declare to you, O Lucian! it is impossible for me to be
+mistaken in a palfrey. My new one is the only one in Samosata that
+could carry me at one stretch to my grandfather's.' 'But _has_ he?'
+said I, timidly. 'No; he has not yet,' answered my friend. 'To-morrow,
+then, I am afraid, we really must lose you.' 'No,' said he; 'the horse
+does trot hard: but he is the better for that: I shall soon get used
+to him.' In fine, my worthy friend deferred his visit to his
+grandfather: his rides were neither long nor frequent: he was ashamed
+to part with his purchase, boasted of him everywhere, and, humane as
+he is by nature, could almost have broken on the cross the quiet
+contented owner of old Bucephalus.
+
+_Timotheus._ Am I to understand by this, O Cousin Lucian, that I ought
+to be contented with the impurities of paganism?
+
+_Lucian._ Unless you are very unreasonable. A moderate man finds
+plenty in it.
+
+_Timotheus._ We abominate the Deities who patronize them, and we hurl
+down the images of the monsters.
+
+_Lucian._ Sweet cousin! be tenderer to my feelings. In such a tempest
+as this, my spark of piety may be blown out. Hold your hand cautiously
+before it, until I can find my way. Believe me, no Deities (out of
+their own houses) patronize immorality; none patronize unruly
+passions, least of all the fierce and ferocious. In my opinion, you
+are wrong in throwing down the images of those among them who look on
+you benignly: the others I give up to your discretion. But I think it
+impossible to stand habitually in the presence of a sweet and open
+countenance, graven or depicted, without in some degree partaking of
+the character it expresses. Never tell any man that he can derive no
+good, in his devotions, from this or from that: abolish neither hope
+nor gratitude.
+
+_Timotheus._ God is offended at vain efforts to represent Him.
+
+_Lucian._ No such thing, my dear Timotheus. If you knew Him at all,
+you would not talk of Him so irreverently. He is pleased, I am
+convinced, at every effort to resemble Him, at every wish to remind
+both ourselves and others of His benefits. You cannot think so often
+of Him without an effigy.
+
+_Timotheus._ What likeness is there in the perishable to the
+Unperishable?
+
+_Lucian._ I see no reason why there may not be a similitude. All that
+the senses can comprehend may be represented by any material; clay or
+fig-tree, bronze or ivory, porphyry or gold. Indeed I have a faint
+remembrance that, according to your sacred volumes, man was made by
+God after His own image. If so, man's intellectual powers are worthily
+exercised in attempting to collect all that is beautiful, serene, and
+dignified, and to bring Him back to earth again by showing Him the
+noblest of His gifts, the work most like His own. Surely He cannot
+hate or abandon those who thus cherish His memory, and thus implore
+His regard. Perishable and imperfect is everything human: but in these
+very qualities I find the best reason for striving to attain what is
+least so. Would not any father be gratified by seeing his child
+attempt to delineate his features? And would not the gratification be
+rather increased than diminished by his incapacity? How long shall the
+narrow mind of man stand between goodness and omnipotence? Perhaps the
+effigy of your ancestor Isknos is unlike him; whether it is or no, you
+cannot tell; but you keep it in your hall, and would be angry if
+anybody broke it to pieces or defaced it. Be quite sure there are many
+who think as much of their gods as you think of your ancestor Isknos,
+and who see in their images as good a likeness. Let men have their own
+way, especially their way to the temples. It is easier to drive them
+out of one road than into another. Our judicious and good-humoured
+Trajan has found it necessary on many occasions to chastise the
+law-breakers of your sect, indifferent as he is what gods are
+worshipped, so long as their followers are orderly and decorous. The
+fiercest of the Dacians never knocked off Jupiter's beard, or broke an
+arm off Venus; and the emperor will hardly tolerate in those who have
+received a liberal education what he would punish in barbarians. Do
+not wear out his patience: try rather to imitate his equity, his
+equanimity, and forbearance.
+
+_Timotheus._ I have been listening to you with much attention, O
+Lucian! for I seldom have heard you speak with such gravity. And yet,
+O Cousin Lucian! I really do find in you a sad deficiency of that
+wisdom which alone is of any value. You talk of Trajan! what is
+Trajan?
+
+_Lucian._ A beneficent citizen, an impartial judge, a sagacious ruler;
+the comrade of every brave soldier, the friend and associate of every
+man eminent in genius, throughout his empire, the empire of the world.
+All arts, all sciences, all philosophies, all religions, are protected
+by him. Wherefore his name will flourish, when the proudest of these
+have perished in the land of Egypt. Philosophies and religions will
+strive, struggle, and suffocate one another. Priesthoods, I know not
+how many, are quarrelling and scuffling in the street at this instant,
+all calling on Trajan to come and knock an antagonist on the head; and
+the most peaceful of them, as it wishes to be thought, proclaiming him
+an infidel for turning a deaf ear to its imprecations. Mankind was
+never so happy as under his guidance; and he has nothing now to do but
+to put down the battles of the gods. If they must fight it out, he
+will insist on our neutrality.
+
+_Timotheus._ He has no authority and no influence over us in matters
+of faith. A wise and upright man, whose serious thoughts lead him
+forward to religion, will never be turned aside from it by any worldly
+consideration or any human force.
+
+_Lucian._ True: but mankind is composed not entirely of the upright
+and the wise. I suspect that we may find some, here and there, who are
+rather too fond of novelties in the furniture of temples; and I have
+observed that new sects are apt to warp, crack, and split, under the
+heat they generate. Our homely old religion has run into fewer
+quarrels, ever since the Centaurs and Lapiths (whose controversy was
+on a subject quite comprehensible), than yours has engendered in
+twenty years.
+
+_Timotheus._ We shall obviate that inconvenience by electing a supreme
+Pontiff to decide all differences. It has been seriously thought about
+long ago: and latterly we have been making out an ideal series down to
+the present day, in order that our successors in the ministry may have
+stepping-stones up to the fountain-head. At first the disseminators of
+our doctrines were equal in their commission; we do not approve of
+this any longer, for reasons of our own.
+
+_Lucian._ You may shut, one after another, all our other temples, but,
+I plainly see, you will never shut the temple of Janus. The Roman
+Empire will never lose its pugnacious character while your sect
+exists. The only danger is, lest the fever rage internally and consume
+the vitals. If you sincerely wish your religion to be long-lived,
+maintain in it the spirit of its constitution, and keep it patient,
+humble, abstemious, domestic, and zealous only in the services of
+humanity. Whenever the higher of your priesthood shall attain the
+riches they are aiming at, the people will envy their possessions and
+revolt from their impostures. Do not let them seize upon the palace,
+and shove their God again into the manger.
+
+_Timotheus._ Lucian! Lucian! I call this impiety.
+
+_Lucian._ So do I, and shudder at its consequences. Caverns which at
+first look inviting, the roof at the aperture green with overhanging
+ferns and clinging mosses, then glittering with native gems and with
+water as sparkling and pellucid, freshening the air all around; these
+caverns grow darker and closer, until you find yourself among animals
+that shun the daylight, adhering to the walls, hissing along the
+bottom, flapping, screeching, gaping, glaring, making you shrink at
+the sounds, and sicken at the smells, and afraid to advance or
+retreat.
+
+_Timotheus._ To what can this refer? Our caverns open on verdure, and
+terminate in veins of gold.
+
+_Lucian._ Veins of gold, my good Timotheus, such as your excavations
+have opened and are opening, in the spirit of avarice and ambition,
+will be washed (or as you would say, _purified_) in streams of blood.
+Arrogance, intolerance, resistance to authority and contempt of law,
+distinguish your aspiring sectarians from the other subjects of the
+empire.
+
+_Timotheus._ Blindness hath often a calm and composed countenance;
+but, my Cousin Lucian! it usually hath also the advantage of a
+cautious and a measured step. It hath pleased God to blind you, like
+all the other adversaries of our faith; but He has given you no staff
+to lean upon. You object against us the very vices from which we are
+peculiarly exempt.
+
+_Lucian._ Then it is all a story, a fable, a fabrication, about one of
+your earlier leaders cutting off with his sword a servant's ear? If
+the accusation is true, the offence is heavy. For not only was the
+wounded man innocent of any provocation, but he is represented as
+being in the service of the high priest at Jerusalem. Moreover, from
+the direction and violence of the blow, it is evident that his life
+was aimed at. According to law, you know, my dear cousin, all the
+party might have been condemned to death, as accessories to an attempt
+at murder. I am unwilling to think so unfavourably of your sect; nor
+indeed do I see the possibility that, in such an outrage, the
+principal could be pardoned. For any man but a soldier to go about
+armed is against the Roman law, which, on that head, as on many
+others, is borrowed from the Athenian; and it is incredible that in
+any civilized country so barbarous a practice can be tolerated.
+Travellers do indeed relate that, in certain parts of India, there are
+princes at whose courts even civilians are armed. But _traveller_ has
+occasionally the same signification as _liar_, and _India_ as _fable_.
+However, if the practice really does exist in that remote and rarely
+visited country, it must be in some region of it very far beyond the
+Indus or the Ganges: for the nations situated between those rivers
+are, and were in the reign of Alexander, and some thousand years
+before his birth, as civilized as the Europeans; nay, incomparably
+more courteous, more industrious, and more pacific; the three grand
+criterions.
+
+But answer my question: is there any foundation for so mischievous a
+report?
+
+_Timotheus._ There was indeed, so to say, an ear, or something of the
+kind, abscinded; probably by mistake. But high priests' servants are
+propense to follow the swaggering gait of their masters, and to carry
+things with a high hand, in such wise as to excite the choler of the
+most quiet. If you knew the character of the eminently holy man who
+punished the atrocious insolence of that bloody-minded wretch, you
+would be sparing of your animadversions. We take him for our model.
+
+_Lucian._ I see you do.
+
+_Timotheus._ We proclaim him Prince of the Apostles.
+
+_Lucian._ I am the last in the world to question his princely
+qualifications; but, if I might advise you, it should be to follow in
+preference Him whom you acknowledge to be an unerring guide; who
+delivered to you His ordinances with His own hand, equitable, plain,
+explicit, compendious, and complete; who committed no violence, who
+countenanced no injustice, whose compassion was without weakness,
+whose love was without frailty, whose life was led in humility, in
+purity, in beneficence, and, at the end, laid down in obedience to His
+Father's will.
+
+_Timotheus._ Ah, Lucian! what strangely imperfect notions! all that is
+little.
+
+_Lucian._ Enough to follow.
+
+_Timotheus._ Not enough to compel others. I did indeed hope, O Lucian!
+that you would again come forward with the irresistible arrows of your
+wit, and unite with us against our adversaries. By what you have just
+spoken, I doubt no longer that you approve of the doctrines inculcated
+by the blessed Founder of our religion.
+
+_Lucian._ To the best of my understanding.
+
+_Timotheus._ So ardent is my desire for the salvation of your precious
+soul, O my cousin! that I would devote many hours of every day to
+disputation with you on the principal points of our Christian
+controversy.
+
+_Lucian._ Many thanks, my kind Timotheus! But I think the blessed
+Founder of your religion very strictly forbade that there should be
+_any_ points of controversy. Not only has He prohibited them on the
+doctrines He delivered, but on everything else. Some of the most
+obstinate might never have doubted of His Divinity, if the conduct of
+His followers had not repelled them from the belief of it. How can
+they imagine you sincere when they see you disobedient? It is in vain
+for you to protest that you worship the God of Peace, when you are
+found daily in the courts and market-places with clenched fists and
+bloody noses. I acknowledge the full value of your offer; but really I
+am as anxious for the salvation of your precious time as you appear to
+be for the salvation of my precious soul, particularly since I am
+come to the conclusion that souls cannot be lost, and that time can.
+
+_Timotheus._ We mean by _salvation_ exemption from eternal torments.
+
+_Lucian._ Among all my old gods and their children, morose as some of
+the senior are, and mischievous as are some of the junior, I have
+never represented the worst of them as capable of inflicting such
+atrocity. Passionate and capricious and unjust are several of them;
+but a skin stripped off the shoulder, and a liver tossed to a vulture,
+are among the worst of their inflictions.
+
+_Timotheus._ This is scoffing.
+
+_Lucian._ Nobody but an honest man has a right to scoff at anything.
+
+_Timotheus._ And yet people of a very different cast are usually those
+who scoff the most.
+
+_Lucian._ We are apt to push forward at that which we are without: the
+low-born at titles and distinctions, the silly at wit, the knave at
+the semblance of probity. But I was about to remark, that an honest
+man may fairly scoff at all philosophies and religions which are
+proud, ambitious, intemperate, and contradictory. The thing most
+adverse to the spirit and essence of them all is falsehood. It is the
+business of the philosophical to seek truth: it is the office of the
+religious to worship her; under what name is unimportant. The
+falsehood that the tongue commits is slight in comparison with what is
+conceived by the heart, and executed by the whole man, throughout
+life. If, professing love and charity to the human race at large, I
+quarrel day after day with my next neighbour; if, professing that the
+rich can never see God, I spend in the luxuries of my household a
+talent monthly; if, professing to place so much confidence in His
+word, that, in regard to wordly weal, I need take no care for
+to-morrow, I accumulate stores even beyond what would be necessary,
+though I quite distrusted both His providence and His veracity; if,
+professing that 'he who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord', I
+question the Lord's security, and haggle with Him about the amount of
+the loan; if, professing that I am their steward, I keep ninety-nine
+parts in the hundred as the emolument of my stewardship; how, when God
+hates liars and punishes defrauders, shall I, and other such thieves
+and hypocrites, fare hereafter?
+
+_Timotheus._ Let us hope there are few of them.
+
+_Lucian._ We cannot hope against what is: we may, however, hope that
+in future these will be fewer; but never while the overseers of a
+priesthood look for offices out of it, taking the lead in politics, in
+debate, and strife. Such men bring to ruin all religion, but their own
+first, and raise unbelievers not only in Divine Providence, but in
+human faith.
+
+_Timotheus._ If they leave the altar for the market-place, the
+sanctuary for the senate-house, and agitate party questions instead of
+Christian verities, everlasting punishments await them.
+
+_Lucian._ Everlasting?
+
+_Timotheus._ Certainly: at the very least. I rank it next to heresy in
+the catalogue of sins; and the Church supports my opinion.
+
+_Lucian._ I have no measure for ascertaining the distance between the
+opinions and practices of men; I only know that they stand widely
+apart in all countries on the most important occasions; but this
+newly-hatched word _heresy_, alighting on my ear, makes me rub it. A
+beneficent God descends on earth in the human form, to redeem us from
+the slavery of sin, from the penalty of our passions: can you imagine
+He will punish an error in opinion, or even an obstinacy in unbelief,
+with everlasting torments? Supposing it highly criminal to refuse to
+weigh a string of arguments, or to cross-question a herd of witnesses,
+on a subject which no experience has warranted and no sagacity can
+comprehend; supposing it highly criminal to be contented with the
+religion which our parents taught us, which they bequeathed to us as
+the most precious of possessions, and which it would have broken their
+hearts if they had foreseen we should cast aside; yet are eternal
+pains the just retribution of what at worst is but indifference and
+supineness?
+
+_Timotheus._ Our religion has clearly this advantage over yours: it
+teaches us to regulate our passions.
+
+_Lucian._ Rather say it _tells_ us. I believe all religions do the
+same; some indeed more emphatically and primarily than others; but
+_that_ indeed would be incontestably of Divine origin, and
+acknowledged at once by the most sceptical, which should thoroughly
+teach it. Now, my friend Timotheus, I think you are about seventy-five
+years of age.
+
+_Timotheus._ Nigh upon it.
+
+_Lucian._ Seventy-five years, according to my calculation, are
+equivalent to seventy-five gods and goddesses in regulating our
+passions for us, if we speak of the amatory, which are always thought
+in every stage of life the least to be pardoned.
+
+_Timotheus._ Execrable!
+
+_Lucian._ I am afraid the sourest hang longest on the tree. Mimnermus
+says:
+
+      In early youth we often sigh
+      Because our pulses beat so high;
+      All this we conquer, and at last
+      We sigh that we are grown so chaste.
+
+_Timotheus._ Swine!
+
+_Lucian._ No animal sighs oftener or louder. But, my dear cousin, the
+quiet swine is less troublesome and less odious than the grumbling and
+growling and fierce hyena, which will not let the dead rest in their
+graves. We may be merry with the follies and even the vices of men,
+without doing or wishing them harm; punishment should come from the
+magistrate, not from us. If we are to give pain to any one because he
+thinks differently from us, we ought to begin by inflicting a few
+smart stripes on ourselves; for both upon light and upon grave
+occasions, if we have thought much and often, our opinions must have
+varied. We are always fond of seizing and managing what appertains to
+others. In the savage state all belongs to all. Our neighbours the
+Arabs, who stand between barbarism and civilization, waylay
+travellers, and plunder their equipage and their gold. The wilier
+marauders in Alexandria start up from under the shadow of temples,
+force us to change our habiliments for theirs, and strangle us with
+fingers dipped in holy water if we say they sit uneasily.
+
+_Timotheus._ This is not the right view of things.
+
+_Lucian._ That is never the right view which lets in too much light.
+About two centuries have elapsed since your religion was founded. Show
+me the pride it has humbled; show me the cruelty it has mitigated;
+show me the lust it has extinguished or repressed. I have now been
+living ten years in Alexandria; and you never will accuse me, I think,
+of any undue partiality for the system in which I was educated; yet,
+from all my observation, I find no priest or elder, in your community,
+wise, tranquil, firm, and sedate as Epicurus, and Carneades, and Zeno,
+and Epictetus; or indeed in the same degree as some who were often
+called forth into political and military life; Epaminondas, for
+instance, and Phocion.
+
+_Timotheus._ I pity them from my soul: they were ignorant of the
+truth: they are lost, my cousin! take my word for it, they are lost
+men.
+
+_Lucian._ Unhappily, they are. I wish we had them back again; or
+that, since we have lost them, we could at least find among us the
+virtues they left for our example.
+
+_Timotheus._ Alas, my poor cousin! you too are blind; you do not
+understand the plainest words, nor comprehend those verities which are
+the most evident and palpable. Virtues! if the poor wretches had any,
+they were false ones.
+
+_Lucian._ Scarcely ever has there been a politician, in any free
+state, without much falsehood and duplicity. I have named the most
+illustrious exceptions. Slender and irregular lines of a darker colour
+run along the bright blade that decides the fate of nations, and may
+indeed be necessary to the perfection of its temper. The great warrior
+has usually his darker lines of character, necessary (it may be) to
+constitute his greatness. No two men possess the same quantity of the
+same virtues, if they have many or much. We want some which do not far
+outstep us, and which we may follow with the hope of reaching; we want
+others to elevate, and others to defend us. The order of things would
+be less beautiful without this variety. Without the ebb and flow of
+our passions, but guided and moderated by a beneficent light above,
+the ocean of life would stagnate; and zeal, devotion, eloquence, would
+become dead carcasses, collapsing and wasting on unprofitable sands.
+The vices of some men cause the virtues of others, as corruption is
+the parent of fertility.
+
+_Timotheus._ O my cousin! this doctrine is diabolical.
+
+_Lucian._ What is it?
+
+_Timotheus._ Diabolical; a strong expression in daily use among us. We
+turn it a little from its origin.
+
+_Lucian._ Timotheus, I love to sit by the side of a clear water,
+although there is nothing in it but naked stones. Do not take the
+trouble to muddy the stream of language for my benefit; I am not about
+to fish in it.
+
+_Timotheus._ Well, we will speak about things which come nearer to
+your apprehension. I only wish you were somewhat less indifferent in
+your choice between the true and the false.
+
+_Lucian._ We take it for granted that what is not true must be false.
+
+_Timotheus._ Surely we do.
+
+_Lucian._ This is erroneous.
+
+_Timotheus._ Are you grown captious? Pray explain.
+
+_Lucian._ What is not true, I need not say, must be untrue; but that
+alone is false which is intended to deceive. A witness may be
+mistaken, yet would not you call him a false witness unless he
+asserted what he knew to be false.
+
+_Timotheus._ Quibbles upon words!
+
+_Lucian._ On words, on quibbles, if you please to call distinctions
+so, rests the axis of the intellectual world. A winged word hath stuck
+ineradicably in a million hearts, and envenomed every hour throughout
+their hard pulsation. On a winged word hath hung the destiny of
+nations. On a winged word hath human wisdom been willing to cast the
+immortal soul, and to leave it dependent for all its future happiness.
+It is because a word is unsusceptible of explanation, or because they
+who employed it were impatient of any, that enormous evils have
+prevailed, not only against our common sense, but against our common
+humanity. Hence the most pernicious of absurdities, far exceeding in
+folly and mischief the worship of threescore gods; namely, that an
+implicit faith in what outrages our reason, which we know is God's
+gift, and bestowed on us for our guidance, that this weak, blind,
+stupid faith is surer of His favour than the constant practice of
+every human virtue. They at whose hands one prodigious lie, such as
+this, hath been accepted, may reckon on their influence in the
+dissemination of many smaller, and may turn them easily to their own
+account. Be sure they will do it sooner or later. The fly floats on
+the surface for a while, but up springs the fish at last and swallows
+it.
+
+_Timotheus._ Was ever man so unjust as you are? The abominable old
+priesthoods are avaricious and luxurious: ours is willing to stand or
+fall by maintaining its ordinances of fellowship and frugality. Point
+out to me a priest of our religion whom you could, by any temptation
+or entreaty, so far mislead, that he shall reserve for his own
+consumption one loaf, one plate of lentils, while another poor
+Christian hungers. In the meanwhile the priests of Isis are proud and
+wealthy, and admit none of the indigent to their tables. And now, to
+tell you the whole truth, my Cousin Lucian, I come to you this morning
+to propose that we should lay our heads together and compose a merry
+dialogue on these said priests of Isis. What say you?
+
+_Lucian._ These said priests of Isis have already been with me,
+several times, on a similar business in regard to yours.
+
+_Timotheus._ Malicious wretches!
+
+_Lucian._ Beside, they have attempted to persuade me that your
+religion is borrowed from theirs, altering a name a little and laying
+the scene of action in a corner, in the midst of obscurity and ruins.
+
+_Timotheus._ The wicked dogs! the hellish liars! We have nothing in
+common with such vile impostors. Are they not ashamed of taking such
+unfair means of lowering us in the estimation of our fellow-citizens?
+And so, they artfully came to you, craving any spare jibe to throw
+against us! They lie open to these weapons; we do not: we stand above
+the malignity, above the strength, of man. You would do justly in
+turning their own devices against them: it would be amusing to see how
+they would look. If you refuse me, I am resolved to write a Dialogue
+of the Dead, myself, and to introduce these hypocrites in it.
+
+_Lucian._ Consider well first, my good Timotheus, whether you can do
+any such thing with propriety; I mean to say judiciously in regard to
+composition.
+
+_Timotheus._ I always thought you generous and open-hearted, and quite
+inaccessible to jealousy.
+
+_Lucian._ Let nobody ever profess himself so much as that: for,
+although he may be insensible of the disease, it lurks within him, and
+only waits its season to break out. But really, my cousin, at present
+I feel no symptoms: and, to prove that I am ingenuous and sincere with
+you, these are my reasons for dissuasion. We believers in the Homeric
+family of gods and goddesses, believe also in the locality of Tartarus
+and Elysium. We entertain no doubt whatever that the passions of men
+and demigods and gods are nearly the same above ground and below; and
+that Achilles would dispatch his spear through the body of any shade
+who would lead Briseis too far among the myrtles, or attempt to throw
+the halter over the ears of any chariot horse belonging to him in the
+meads of asphodel. We admit no doubt of these verities, delivered down
+to us from the ages when Theseus and Hercules had descended into Hades
+itself. Instead of a few stadions in a cavern, with a bank and a bower
+at the end of it, under a very small portion of our diminutive Hellas,
+you Christians possess the whole cavity of the earth for punishment,
+and the whole convex of the sky for felicity.
+
+_Timotheus._ Our passions are burnt out amid the fires of
+purification, and our intellects are elevated to the enjoyment of
+perfect intelligence.
+
+_Lucian._ How silly then and incongruous would it be, not to say how
+impious, to represent your people as no better and no wiser than they
+were before, and discoursing on subjects which no longer can or ought
+to concern them. Christians must think your Dialogue of the Dead no
+less irreligious than their opponents think mine, and infinitely more
+absurd. If indeed you are resolved on this form of composition, there
+is no topic which may not, with equal facility, be discussed on
+earth; and you may intersperse as much ridicule as you please, without
+any fear of censure for inconsistency or irreverence. Hitherto such
+writers have confined their view mostly to speculative points,
+sophistic reasonings, and sarcastic interpellations.
+
+_Timotheus._ Ha! you are always fond of throwing a little pebble at
+the lofty Plato, whom we, on the contrary, are ready to receive (in a
+manner) as one of ourselves.
+
+_Lucian._ To throw pebbles is a very uncertain way of showing where
+lie defects. Whenever I have mentioned him seriously, I have brought
+forward, not accusations, but passages from his writings, such as no
+philosopher or scholar or moralist can defend.
+
+_Timotheus._ His doctrines are too abstruse and too sublime for you.
+
+_Lucian._ Solon, Anaxagoras, and Epicurus, are more sublime, if truth
+is sublimity.
+
+_Timotheus._ Truth is, indeed; for God is truth.
+
+_Lucian._ We are upon earth to learn what can be learnt upon earth,
+and not to speculate on what never can be. This you, O Timotheus, may
+call philosophy: to me it appears the idlest of curiosity; for every
+other kind may teach us something, and may lead to more beyond. Let
+men learn what benefits men; above all things, to contract their
+wishes, to calm their passions, and, more especially, to dispel their
+fears. Now these are to be dispelled, not by collecting clouds, but by
+piercing and scattering them. In the dark we may imagine depths and
+heights immeasurable, which, if a torch be carried right before us, we
+find it easy to leap across. Much of what we call sublime is only the
+residue of infancy, and the worst of it.
+
+The philosophers I quoted are too capacious for schools and systems.
+Without noise, without ostentation, without mystery, not quarrelsome,
+not captious, not frivolous, their lives were commentaries on their
+doctrine. Never evaporating into mist, never stagnating into mire,
+their limpid and broad morality runs parallel with the lofty summits
+of their genius.
+
+_Timotheus._ Genius! was ever genius like Plato's?
+
+_Lucian._ The most admired of his Dialogues, his _Banquet_, is beset
+with such puerilities, deformed with such pedantry, and disgraced with
+such impurity, that none but the thickest beards, and chiefly of the
+philosophers and the satyrs, should bend over it. On a former occasion
+he has given us a specimen of history, than which nothing in our
+language is worse: here he gives us one of poetry, in honour of Love,
+for which the god has taken ample vengeance on him, by perverting his
+taste and feelings. The grossest of all the absurdities in this
+dialogue is, attributing to Aristophanes, so much of a scoffer and so
+little of a visionary, the silly notion of male and female having been
+originally complete in one person, and walking circuitously. He may be
+joking: who knows?
+
+_Timotheus._ Forbear! forbear! do not call this notion a silly one:
+he took it from our Holy Scriptures, but perverted it somewhat. Woman
+was made from man's rib, and did not require to be cut asunder all
+the way down: this is no proof of bad reasoning, but merely of
+misinterpretation.
+
+_Lucian._ If you would rather have bad reasoning, I will adduce a
+little of it. Farther on, he wishes to extol the wisdom of Agathon by
+attributing to him such a sentence as this:
+
+'It is evident that Love is the most beautiful of the gods, _because_
+he is the youngest of them.'
+
+Now, even on earth, the youngest is not always the most beautiful; how
+infinitely less cogent, then, is the argument when we come to speak of
+the Immortals, with whom age can have no concern! There was a time
+when Vulcan was the youngest of the gods: was he, also, at that time,
+and for that reason, the most beautiful? Your philosopher tells us,
+moreover, that 'Love is of all deities the most _liquid_; else he
+never could fold himself about everything, and flow into and out of
+men's souls.'
+
+The three last sentences of Agathon's rhapsody are very harmonious,
+and exhibit the finest specimen of Plato's style; but we, accustomed
+as we are to hear him lauded for his poetical diction, should hold
+that poem a very indifferent one which left on the mind so superficial
+an impression. The garden of Academus is flowery without fragrance,
+and dazzling without warmth: I am ready to dream away an hour in it
+after dinner, but I think it insalutary for a night's repose. So
+satisfied was Plato with his _Banquet_, that he says of himself, in
+the person of Socrates, 'How can I or any one but find it difficult to
+speak after a discourse so eloquent? It would have been wonderful if
+the brilliancy of the sentences at the end of it, and the choice of
+expression throughout, had not astonished all the auditors. I, who can
+never say anything nearly so beautiful, would if possible have made my
+escape, and have fairly run off for shame.' He had indeed much better
+run off before he made so wretched a pun on the name of Gorgias. 'I
+dreaded,' says he, 'lest Agathon, _measuring my discourse by the head
+of the eloquent Gorgias, should turn me to stone_ for inability of
+utterance.'
+
+Was there ever joke more frigid? What painful twisting of unelastic
+stuff! If Socrates was the wisest man in the world, it would require
+another oracle to persuade us, after this, that he was the wittiest.
+But surely a small share of common sense would have made him abstain
+from hazarding such failures. He falls on his face in very flat and
+very dry ground; and, when he gets up again, his quibbles are
+well-nigh as tedious as his witticisms. However, he has the presence
+of mind to throw them on the shoulders of Diotima, whom he calls a
+prophetess, and who, ten years before the plague broke out in Athens,
+obtained from the gods (he tells us) that delay. Ah! the gods were
+doubly mischievous: they sent her first. Read her words, my cousin, as
+delivered by Socrates; and if they have another plague in store for
+us, you may avert it by such an act of expiation.
+
+_Timotheus._ The world will have ended before ten years are over.
+
+_Lucian._ Indeed!
+
+_Timotheus._ It has been pronounced.
+
+_Lucian._ How the threads of belief and unbelief run woven close
+together in the whole web of human life! Come, come; take courage; you
+will have time for your Dialogue. Enlarge the circle; enrich it with a
+variety of matter, enliven it with a multitude of characters, occupy
+the intellect of the thoughtful, the imagination of the lively; spread
+the board with solid viands, delicate rarities, and sparkling wines;
+and throw, along the whole extent of it, geniality and festal crowns.
+
+_Timotheus._ What writer of dialogues hath ever done this, or
+undertaken, or conceived, or hoped it?
+
+_Lucian._ None whatever; yet surely you yourself may, when even your
+babes and sucklings are endowed with abilities incomparably greater
+than our niggardly old gods have bestowed on the very best of us.
+
+_Timotheus._ I wish, my dear Lucian, you would let our babes and
+sucklings lie quiet, and say no more about them: as for your gods, I
+leave them at your mercy. Do not impose on me the performance of a
+task in which Plato himself, if he had attempted it, would have
+failed.
+
+_Lucian._ No man ever detected false reasoning with more quickness;
+but unluckily he called in Wit at the exposure; and Wit, I am sorry to
+say, held the lowest place in his household. He sadly mistook the
+qualities of his mind in attempting the facetious; or, rather, he
+fancied he possessed one quality more than belonged to him. But, if he
+himself had not been a worse quibbler than any whose writings are come
+down to us, we might have been gratified by the exposure of wonderful
+acuteness wretchedly applied. It is no small service to the community
+to turn into ridicule the grave impostors, who are contending which of
+them shall guide and govern us, whether in politics or religion. There
+are always a few who will take the trouble to walk down among the
+seaweeds and slippery stones, for the sake of showing their credulous
+fellow-citizens that skins filled with sand, and set upright at the
+forecastle, are neither men nor merchandise.
+
+_Timotheus._ I can bring to mind, O Lucian, no writer possessing so
+great a variety of wit as you.
+
+_Lucian._ No man ever possessed any variety of this gift; and the
+holder is not allowed to exchange the quality for another. Banter (and
+such is Plato's) never grows large, never sheds its bristles, and
+never do they soften into the humorous or the facetious.
+
+_Timotheus._ I agree with you that banter is the worst species of wit.
+We have indeed no correct idea what persons those really were whom
+Plato drags by the ears, to undergo slow torture under Socrates. One
+sophist, I must allow, is precisely like another: no discrimination of
+character, none of manner, none of language.
+
+_Lucian._ He wanted the fancy and fertility of Aristophanes.
+
+_Timotheus._ Otherwise, his mind was more elevated and more poetical.
+
+_Lucian._ Pardon me if I venture to express my dissent in both
+particulars. Knowledge of the human heart, and discrimination of
+character, are requisites of the poet. Few ever have possessed them in
+an equal degree with Aristophanes: Plato has given no indication of
+either.
+
+_Timotheus._ But consider his imagination.
+
+_Lucian._ On what does it rest? He is nowhere so imaginative as in his
+_Polity_. Nor is there any state in the world that is, or would be,
+governed by it. One day you may find him at his counter in the midst
+of old-fashioned toys, which crack and crumble under his fingers while
+he exhibits and recommends them; another day, while he is sitting on a
+goat's bladder, I may discover his bald head surmounting an enormous
+mass of loose chaff and uncleanly feathers, which he would persuade
+you is the pleasantest and healthiest of beds, and that dreams descend
+on it from the gods.
+
+      'Open your mouth, and shut your eyes, and see what Zeus shall
+          send you,'
+
+says Aristophanes in his favourite metre. In this helpless condition
+of closed optics and hanging jaw, we find the followers of Plato. It
+is by shutting their eyes that they see, and by opening their mouths
+that they apprehend. Like certain broad-muzzled dogs, all stand
+equally stiff and staunch, although few scent the game, and their lips
+wag, and water, at whatever distance from the net. We must leave them
+with their hands hanging down before them, confident that they are
+wiser than we are, were it only for this attitude of humility. It is
+amusing to see them in it before the tall, well-robed Athenian, while
+he mis-spells the charms, and plays clumsily the tricks, he acquired
+from the conjurors here in Egypt. I wish you better success with the
+same materials. But in my opinion all philosophers should speak
+clearly. The highest things are the purest and brightest; and the best
+writers are those who render them the most intelligible to the world
+below. In the arts and sciences, and particularly in music and
+metaphysics, this is difficult: but the subjects not being such as lie
+within the range of the community, I lay little stress upon them, and
+wish authors to deal with them as they best may, only beseeching that
+they recompense us, by bringing within our comprehension the other
+things with which they are entrusted for us. The followers of Plato
+fly off indignantly from any such proposal. If I ask them the meaning
+of some obscure passage, they answer that I am unprepared and unfitted
+for it, and that his mind is so far above mine, I cannot grasp it. I
+look up into the faces of these worthy men, who mingle so much
+commiseration with so much calmness, and wonder at seeing them look no
+less vacant than my own.
+
+_Timotheus._ You have acknowledged his eloquence, while you derided
+his philosophy and repudiated his morals.
+
+_Lucian._ Certainly there was never so much eloquence with so little
+animation. When he has heated his oven, he forgets to put the bread
+into it; instead of which, he throws in another bundle of faggots. His
+words and sentences are often too large for the place they occupy. If
+a water-melon is not to be placed in an oyster-shell, neither is a
+grain of millet in a golden salver. At high festivals a full band may
+enter: ordinary conversation goes on better without it.
+
+_Timotheus._ There is something so spiritual about him, that many of
+us Christians are firmly of opinion he must have been partially
+enlightened from above.
+
+_Lucian._ I hope and believe we all are. His entire works are in our
+library. Do me the favour to point out to me a few of those passages
+where in poetry he approaches the spirit of Aristophanes, or where in
+morals he comes up to Epictetus.
+
+_Timotheus._ It is useless to attempt it if you carry your prejudices
+with you. Beside, my dear cousin, I would not offend you, but really
+your mind has no point about it which could be brought to contact or
+affinity with Plato's.
+
+_Lucian._ In the universality of his genius there must surely be some
+atom coincident with another in mine. You acknowledge, as everybody
+must do, that his wit is the heaviest and lowest: pray, is the
+specimen he has given us of history at all better?
+
+_Timotheus._ I would rather look to the loftiness of his mind, and the
+genius that sustains him.
+
+_Lucian._ So would I. Magnificent words, and the pomp and procession
+of stately sentences, may accompany genius, but are not always nor
+frequently called out by it. The voice ought not to be perpetually nor
+much elevated in the ethic and didactic, nor to roll sonorously, as if
+it issued from a mask in the theatre. The horses in the plain under
+Troy are not always kicking and neighing; nor is the dust always
+raised in whirlwinds on the banks of Simois and Scamander; nor are the
+rampires always in a blaze. Hector has lowered his helmet to the
+infant of Andromache, and Achilles to the embraces of Briseis. I do
+not blame the prose-writer who opens his bosom occasionally to a
+breath of poetry; neither, on the contrary, can I praise the gait of
+that pedestrian who lifts up his legs as high on a bare heath as in a
+cornfield. Be authority as old and obstinate as it may, never let it
+persuade you that a man is the stronger for being unable to keep
+himself on the ground, or the weaker for breathing quietly and softly
+on ordinary occasions. Tell me, over and over, that you find every
+great quality in Plato: let me only once ask you in return, whether he
+ever is ardent and energetic, whether he wins the affections, whether
+he agitates the heart. Finding him deficient in every one of these
+faculties, I think his disciples have extolled him too highly. Where
+power is absent, we may find the robes of genius, but we miss the
+throne. He would acquit a slave who killed another in self-defence,
+but if he killed any free man, even in self-defence; he was not only
+to be punished with death, but to undergo the cruel death of a
+parricide. This effeminate philosopher was more severe than the manly
+Demosthenes, who quotes a law against the striking of a slave: and
+Diogenes, when one ran away from him, remarked that it would be
+horrible if Diogenes could not do without a slave, when a slave could
+do without Diogenes.
+
+_Timotheus._ Surely the allegories of Plato are evidences of his
+genius.
+
+_Lucian._ A great poet in the hours of his idleness may indulge in
+allegory: but the highest poetical character will never rest on so
+unsubstantial a foundation. The poet must take man from God's hands,
+must look into every fibre of his heart and brain, must be able to
+take the magnificent work to pieces, and to reconstruct it. When this
+labour is completed, let him throw himself composedly on the earth,
+and care little how many of its ephemeral insects creep over him. In
+regard to these allegories of Plato, about which I have heard so much,
+pray what and where are they? You hesitate, my fair cousin Timotheus!
+Employ one morning in transcribing them, and another in noting all the
+passages which are of practical utility in the commerce of social
+life, or purify our affections at home, or excite and elevate our
+enthusiasm in the prosperity and glory of our country. Useful books,
+moral books, instructive books are easily composed: and surely so
+great a writer should present them to us without blot or blemish: I
+find among his many volumes no copy of a similar composition. My
+enthusiasm is not easily raised indeed; yet such a whirlwind of a poet
+must carry it away with him; nevertheless, here I stand, calm and
+collected, not a hair of my beard in commotion. Declamation will find
+its echo in vacant places: it beats ineffectually on the
+well-furnished mind. Give me proof; bring the work; show the passages;
+convince, confound, overwhelm me.
+
+_Timotheus._ I may do that another time with Plato. And yet, what
+effect can I hope to produce on an unhappy man who doubts even that
+the world is on the point of extinction?
+
+_Lucian._ Are there many of your association who believe that this
+catastrophe is so near at hand?
+
+_Timotheus._ We all believe it; or rather, we all are certain of it.
+
+_Lucian._ How so? Have you observed any fracture in the disk of the
+sun? Are any of the stars loosened in their orbits? Has the beautiful
+light of Venus ceased to pant in the heavens, or has the belt of Orion
+lost its gems?
+
+_Timotheus._ Oh, for shame!
+
+_Lucian._ Rather should I be ashamed of indifference on so important
+an occasion.
+
+_Timotheus._ We know the fact by surer signs.
+
+_Lucian._ These, if you could vouch for them, would be sure enough for
+me. The least of them would make me sweat as profusely as if I stood
+up to the neck in the hot preparation of a mummy. Surely no wise or
+benevolent philosopher could ever have uttered what he knew or
+believed might be distorted into any such interpretation. For if men
+are persuaded that they and their works are so soon about to perish,
+what provident care are they likely to take in the education and
+welfare of their families? What sciences will they improve, what
+learning will they cultivate, what monuments of past ages will they be
+studious to preserve, who are certain that there can be no future
+ones? Poetry will be censured as rank profaneness, eloquence will be
+converted into howls and execrations, statuary will exhibit only
+Midases and Ixions, and all the colours of painting will be mixed
+together to produce one grand conflagration: _flammantia moenia
+mundi_.
+
+_Timotheus._ Do not quote an atheist; especially in Latin. I hate the
+language; the Romans are beginning to differ from us already.
+
+_Lucian._ Ah! you will soon split into smaller fractions. But pardon
+me my unusual fault of quoting. Before I let fall a quotation I must
+be taken by surprise. I seldom do it in conversation, seldomer in
+composition; for it mars the beauty and unity of style, especially
+when it invades it from a foreign tongue. A quoter is either
+ostentatious of his acquirements or doubtful of his cause. And
+moreover, he never walks gracefully who leans upon the shoulder of
+another, however gracefully that other may walk. Herodotus, Plato,
+Aristoteles, Demosthenes, are no quoters. Thucydides, twice or thrice,
+inserts a few sentences of Pericles: but Thucydides is an emanation of
+Pericles, somewhat less clear indeed, being lower, although at no
+great distance from that purest and most pellucid source. The best of
+the Romans, I agree with you, are remote from such originals, if not
+in power of mind, or in acuteness of remark, or in sobriety of
+judgment, yet in the graces of composition. While I admired, with a
+species of awe such as not Homer himself ever impressed me with, the
+majesty and sanctimony of Livy, I have been informed by learned Romans
+that in the structure of his sentences he is often inharmonious, and
+sometimes uncouth. I can imagine such uncouthness in the goddess of
+battles, confident of power and victory, when part of her hair is
+waving round the helmet, loosened by the rapidity of her descent or
+the vibration of her spear. Composition may be too adorned even for
+beauty. In painting it is often requisite to cover a bright colour
+with one less bright; and, in language, to relieve the ear from the
+tension of high notes, even at the cost of a discord. There are urns
+of which the borders are too prominent and too decorated for use, and
+which appear to be brought out chiefly for state, at grand carousals.
+The author who imitates the artificers of these, shall never have my
+custom.
+
+_Timotheus._ I think you judge rightly: but I do not understand
+languages: I only understand religion.
+
+_Lucian._ He must be a most accomplished, a most extraordinary man,
+who comprehends them both together. We do not even talk clearly when
+we are walking in the dark.
+
+_Timotheus._ Thou art not merely walking in the dark, but fast asleep.
+
+_Lucian._ And thou, my cousin, wouldst kindly awaken me with a red-hot
+poker. I have but a few paces to go along the corridor of life:
+prithee let me turn into my bed again and lie quiet. Never was any man
+less an enemy to religion than I am, whatever may be said to the
+contrary: and you shall judge of me by the soundness of my advice. If
+your leaders are in earnest, as many think, do persuade them to
+abstain from quarrelsomeness and contention, and not to declare it
+necessary that there should perpetually be a religious as well as a
+political war between east and west. No honest and considerate man
+will believe in their doctrines, who, inculcating peace and good-will,
+continue all the time to assail their fellow-citizens with the utmost
+rancour at every divergency of opinion, and, forbidding the indulgence
+of the kindlier affections, exercise at full stretch the fiercer. This
+is certain: if they obey any commander, they will never sound a charge
+when his order is to sound a retreat: if they acknowledge any
+magistrate, they will never tear down the tablet of his edicts.
+
+_Timotheus._ We have what is all-sufficient.
+
+_Lucian._ I see you have.
+
+_Timotheus._ You have ridiculed all religion and all philosophy.
+
+_Lucian._ I have found but little of either. I have cracked many a
+nut, and have come only to dust or maggots.
+
+_Timotheus._ To say nothing of the saints, are all philosophers fools
+or impostors? And, because you cannot rise to the ethereal heights of
+Plato, nor comprehend the real magnitude of a man so much above you,
+must he be a dwarf?
+
+_Lucian._ The best sight is not that which sees best in the dark or
+the twilight; for no objects are then visible in their true colours,
+and just proportions; but it is that which presents to us things as
+they are, and indicates what is within our reach and what is beyond
+it. Never were any three writers, of high celebrity, so little
+understood in the main character, as Plato, Diogenes, and Epicurus.
+Plato is a perfect master of logic and rhetoric; and whenever he errs
+in either, as I have proved to you he does occasionally, he errs
+through perverseness, not through unwariness. His language often
+settles into clear and most beautiful prose, often takes an imperfect
+and incoherent shape of poetry, and often, cloud against cloud, bursts
+with a vehement detonation in the air. Diogenes was hated both by the
+vulgar and the philosophers. By the philosophers, because he exposed
+their ignorance, ridiculed their jealousies, and rebuked their pride:
+by the vulgar, because they never can endure a man apparently of their
+own class who avoids their society and partakes in none of their
+humours, prejudices, and animosities. What right has he to be greater
+or better than they are? he who wears older clothes, who eats staler
+fish, and possesses no vote to imprison or banish anybody. I am now
+ashamed that I mingled in the rabble, and that I could not resist the
+childish mischief of smoking him in his tub. He was the wisest man of
+his time, not excepting Aristoteles; for he knew that he was greater
+than Philip or Alexander. Aristoteles did not know that he himself
+was, or knowing it, did not act up to his knowledge; and here is a
+deficiency of wisdom.
+
+_Timotheus._ Whether you did or did not strike the cask, Diogenes
+would have closed his eyes equally. He would never have come forth and
+seen the truth, had it shone upon the world in that day. But,
+intractable as was this recluse, Epicurus, I fear, is quite as
+lamentable. What horrible doctrines!
+
+_Lucian._ Enjoy, said he, the pleasant walks where you are: repose and
+eat gratefully the fruit that falls into your bosom: do not weary your
+feet with an excursion, at the end whereof you will find no
+resting-place: reject not the odour of roses for the fumes of pitch
+and sulphur. What horrible doctrines!
+
+_Timotheus._ Speak seriously. He was much too bad for ridicule.
+
+_Lucian._ I will then speak as you desire me, seriously. His smile
+was so unaffected and so graceful, that I should have thought it very
+injudicious to set my laugh against it. No philosopher ever lived with
+such uniform purity, such abstinence from censoriousness, from
+controversy, from jealousy, and from arrogance.
+
+_Timotheus._ Ah, poor mortal! I pity him, as far as may be; he is in
+hell: it would be wicked to wish him out: we are not to murmur against
+the all-wise dispensations.
+
+_Lucian._ I am sure he would not; and it is therefore I hope he is
+more comfortable than you believe.
+
+_Timotheus._ Never have I defiled my fingers, and never will I defile
+them, by turning over his writings. But in regard to Plato, I can have
+no objection to take your advice.
+
+_Lucian._ He will reward your assiduity: but he will assist you very
+little if you consult him principally (and eloquence for this should
+principally be consulted) to strengthen your humanity. Grandiloquent
+and sonorous, his lungs seem to play the better for the absence of the
+heart. His imagination is the most conspicuous, buoyed up by swelling
+billows over unsounded depths. There are his mild thunders, there are
+his glowing clouds, his traversing coruscations, and his shooting
+stars. More of true wisdom, more of trustworthy manliness, more of
+promptitude and power to keep you steady and straightforward on the
+perilous road of life, may be found in the little manual of Epictetus,
+which I could write in the palm of my left hand, than there is in all
+the rolling and redundant volumes of this mighty rhetorician, which
+you may begin to transcribe on the summit of the Great Pyramid, carry
+down over the Sphinx at the bottom, and continue on the sands half-way
+to Memphis. And indeed the materials are appropriate; one part being
+far above our sight, and the other on what, by the most befitting
+epithet, Homer calls the _no-corn-bearing_.
+
+_Timotheus._ There are many who will stand against you on this ground.
+
+_Lucian._ With what perfect ease and fluency do some of the dullest
+men in existence toss over and discuss the most elaborate of all
+works! How many myriads of such creatures would be insufficient to
+furnish intellect enough for any single paragraph in them! Yet '_we
+think this_', '_we advise that_', are expressions now become so
+customary, that it would be difficult to turn them into ridicule. We
+must pull the creatures out while they are in the very act, and show
+who and what they are. One of these fellows said to Caius Fuscus in my
+hearing, that there was a time when it was permitted him to doubt
+occasionally on particular points of criticism, but that the time was
+now over.
+
+_Timotheus._ And what did you think of such arrogance? What did you
+reply to such impertinence?
+
+_Lucian._ Let me answer one question at a time. First: I thought him a
+legitimate fool, of the purest breed. Secondly: I promised him I would
+always be contented with the judgment he had rejected, leaving him and
+his friends in the enjoyment of the rest.
+
+_Timotheus._ And what said he?
+
+_Lucian._ I forget. He seemed pleased at my acknowledgment of his
+discrimination, at my deference and delicacy. He wished, however, I
+had studied Plato, Xenophon, and Cicero, more attentively; without
+which preparatory discipline, no two persons could be introduced
+advantageously into a dialogue. I agreed with him on this position,
+remarking that we ourselves were at that very time giving our sentence
+on the fact. He suggested a slight mistake on my side, and expressed a
+wish that he were conversing with a writer able to sustain the
+opposite part. With his experience and skill in rhetoric, his long
+habitude of composition, his knowledge of life, of morals, and of
+character, he should be less verbose than Cicero, less gorgeous than
+Plato, and less trimly attired than Xenophon.
+
+_Timotheus._ If he spoke in that manner, he might indeed be ridiculed
+for conceitedness and presumption, but his language is not altogether
+a fool's.
+
+_Lucian._ I deliver his sentiments, not his words: for who would read,
+or who would listen to me, if such fell from me as from him? Poetry
+has its probabilities, so has prose: when people cry out against the
+representation of a dullard, _Could he have spoken all that?_
+'Certainly no,' is the reply: neither did Priam implore, in harmonious
+verse, the pity of Achilles. We say only what might be said, when
+great postulates are conceded.
+
+_Timotheus._ We will pretermit these absurd and silly men: but, Cousin
+Lucian! Cousin Lucian! the name of Plato will be durable as that of
+Sesostris.
+
+_Lucian._ So will the pebbles and bricks which gangs of slaves erected
+into a pyramid. I do not hold Sesostris in much higher estimation than
+those quieter lumps of matter. They, O Timotheus, who survive the
+wreck of ages, are by no means, as a body, the worthiest of our
+admiration. It is in these wrecks, as in those at sea, the best things
+are not always saved. Hen-coops and empty barrels bob upon the
+surface, under a serene and smiling sky, when the graven or depicted
+images of the gods are scattered on invisible rocks, and when those
+who most resemble them in knowledge and beneficence are devoured by
+cold monsters below.
+
+_Timotheus._ You now talk reasonably, seriously, almost religiously.
+Do you ever pray?
+
+_Lucian._ I do. It was no longer than five years ago that I was
+deprived by death of my dog Melanops. He had uniformly led an innocent
+life; for I never would let him walk out with me, lest he should bring
+home in his mouth the remnant of some god or other, and at last get
+bitten or stung by one. I reminded Anubis of this: and moreover I told
+him, what he ought to be aware of, that Melanops did honour to his
+relationship.
+
+_Timotheus._ I cannot ever call it piety to pray for dumb and dead
+beasts.
+
+_Lucian._ Timotheus! Timotheus! have you no heart? have you no dog? do
+you always pray only for yourself?
+
+_Timotheus._ We do not believe that dogs can live again.
+
+_Lucian._ More shame for you! If they enjoy and suffer, if they hope
+and fear, if calamities and wrongs befall them, such as agitate their
+hearts and excite their apprehensions; if they possess the option of
+being grateful or malicious, and choose the worthier; if they exercise
+the same sound judgment on many other occasions, some for their own
+benefit and some for the benefit of their masters, they have as good a
+chance of a future life, and a better chance of a happy one, than half
+the priests of all the religions in the world. Wherever there is the
+choice of doing well or ill, and that choice (often against a first
+impulse) decides for well, there must not only be a soul of the same
+nature as man's, although of less compass and comprehension, but,
+being of the same nature, the same immortality must appertain to it;
+for spirit, like body, may change, but cannot be annihilated.
+
+It was among the prejudices of former times that pigs are uncleanly
+animals, and fond of wallowing in the mire for mire's sake. Philosophy
+has now discovered that when they roll in mud and ordure, it is only
+from an excessive love of cleanliness, and a vehement desire to rid
+themselves of scabs and vermin. Unfortunately, doubts keep pace with
+discoveries. They are like warts, of which the blood that springs from
+a great one extirpated, makes twenty little ones.
+
+_Timotheus._ The Hydra would be a more noble simile.
+
+_Lucian._ I was indeed about to illustrate my position by the old
+Hydra, so ready at hand and so tractable; but I will never take hold
+of a hydra, when a wart will serve my turn.
+
+_Timotheus._ Continue then.
+
+_Lucian._ Even children are now taught, in despite of Aesop, that
+animals never spoke. The uttermost that can be advanced with any show
+of confidence is, that if they spoke at all, they spoke in unknown
+tongues. Supposing the fact, is this a reason why they should not be
+respected? Quite the contrary. If the tongues were unknown, it tends
+to demonstrate _our_ ignorance, not _theirs_. If we could not
+understand them, while they possessed the gift, here is no proof that
+they did not speak to the purpose, but only that it was not to _our_
+purpose; which may likewise be said with equal certainty of the wisest
+men that ever existed. How little have we learned from them, for the
+conduct of life or the avoidance of calamity! Unknown tongues, indeed!
+yes, so are all tongues to the vulgar and the negligent.
+
+_Timotheus._ It comforts me to hear you talk in this manner, without a
+glance at our gifts and privileges.
+
+_Lucian._ I am less incredulous than you suppose, my cousin! Indeed I
+have been giving you what ought to be a sufficient proof of it.
+
+_Timotheus._ You have spoken with becoming gravity, I must confess.
+
+_Lucian._ Let me then submit to your judgment some fragments of
+history which have lately fallen into my hands. There is among them a
+_hymn_, of which the metre is so incondite, and the phraseology so
+ancient, that the grammarians have attributed it to Linus. But the
+hymn will interest you less, and is less to our purpose, than the
+tradition; by which it appears that certain priests of high antiquity
+were of the brute creation.
+
+_Timotheus._ No better, any of them.
+
+_Lucian._ Now you have polished the palms of your hands, I will
+commence my narrative from the manuscript.
+
+_Timotheus._ Pray do.
+
+_Lucian._ There existed in the city of Nephosis a fraternity of
+priests, reverenced by the appellation of _Gasteres_. It is reported
+that they were not always of their present form, but were birds
+aquatic and migratory, a species of cormorant. The poet Linus, who
+lived nearer the transformation (if there indeed was any), sings thus,
+in his Hymn to Zeus:
+
+'Thy power is manifest, O Zeus! in the Gasteres. Wild birds were they,
+strong of talon, clanging of wing, and clamorous of gullet. Wild
+birds, O Zeus! wild birds; now cropping the tender grass by the river
+of Adonis, and breaking the nascent reed at the root, and depasturing
+the sweet nymphaea; now again picking up serpents and other creeping
+things on each hand of old Aegyptos, whose head is hidden in the
+clouds.
+
+'Oh that Mnemosyne would command the staidest of her three daughters
+to stand and sing before me! to sing clearly and strongly. How before
+thy throne, Saturnian! sharp voices arose, even the voices of Heré and
+of thy children. How they cried out that innumerable mortal men,
+various-tongued, kid-roasters in tent and tabernacle, devising in
+their many-turning hearts and thoughtful minds how to fabricate
+well-rounded spits of beech-tree, how such men having been changed
+into brute animals, it behoved thee to trim the balance, and in thy
+wisdom to change sundry brute animals into men; in order that they
+might pour out flame-coloured wine unto thee, and sprinkle the white
+flower of the sea upon the thighs of many bulls, to pleasure thee.
+Then didst thou, O storm-driver! overshadow far lands with thy dark
+eyebrows, looking down on them, to accomplish thy will. And then didst
+thou behold the Gasteres, fat, tall, prominent-crested, purple-legged,
+daedal-plumed, white and black, changeable in colour as Iris. And lo!
+thou didst will it, and they were men.'
+
+_Timotheus._ No doubt whatever can be entertained of this hymn's
+antiquity. But what farther says the historian?
+
+_Lucian._ I will read on, to gratify you.
+
+'It is recorded that this ancient order of a most lordly priesthood
+went through many changes of customs and ceremonies, which indeed they
+were always ready to accommodate to the maintenance of their authority
+and the enjoyment of their riches. It is recorded that, in the
+beginning, they kept various tame animals, and some wild ones, within
+the precincts of the temple: nevertheless, after a time, they applied
+to their own uses everything they could lay their hands on, whatever
+might have been the vow of those who came forward with the offering.
+And when it was expected of them to make sacrifices, they not only
+would make none, but declared it an act of impiety to expect it. Some
+of the people, who feared the Immortals, were dismayed and indignant
+at this backwardness; and the discontent at last grew universal.
+Whereupon, the two chief priests held a long conference together, and
+agreed that something must be done to pacify the multitude. But it was
+not until the greater of them, acknowledging his despondency, called
+on the gods to answer for him that his grief was only because he never
+could abide bad precedents: and the other, on his side, protested that
+he was overruled by his superior, and moreover had a serious
+objection (founded on principle) to be knocked on the head. Meanwhile
+the elder was looking down on the folds of his robe, in deep
+melancholy. After long consideration, he sprang upon his feet, pushing
+his chair behind him, and said, "Well, it is grown old, and was always
+too long for me: I am resolved to cut off a finger's breadth."
+
+'"Having, in your wisdom and piety, well contemplated the bad
+precedent," said the other, with much consternation in his countenance
+at seeing so elastic a spring in a heel by no means bearing any
+resemblance to a stag's.... "I have, I have," replied the other,
+interrupting him; "say no more; I am sick at heart; you must do the
+same."
+
+'"A cursed dog has torn a hole in mine," answered the other, "and, if
+I cut anywhere about it, I only make bad worse. In regard to its
+length, I wish it were as long again." "Brother! brother! never be
+worldly-minded," said the senior. "Follow my example: snip off it not
+a finger's breadth, half a finger's breadth."
+
+'"But," expostulated the other, "will that satisfy the gods?" "Who
+talked about them?" placidly said the senior. "It is very unbecoming
+to have them always in our mouths: surely there are appointed times
+for them. Let us be contented with laying the snippings on the altar,
+and thus showing the people our piety and condescension. They, and the
+gods also, will be just as well satisfied, as if we offered up a
+buttock of beef, with a bushel of salt and the same quantity of
+wheaten flour on it."
+
+'"Well, if that will do ... and you know best," replied the other, "so
+be it." Saying which words, he carefully and considerately snipped off
+as much in proportion (for he was shorter by an inch) as the elder had
+done, yet leaving on his shoulders quite enough of materials to make
+handsome cloaks for seven or eight stout-built generals. Away they
+both went, arm-in-arm, and then holding up their skirts a great deal
+higher than was necessary, told the gods what they two had been doing
+for them and their glory. About the court of the temple the sacred
+swine were lying in indolent composure: seeing which, the brotherly
+twain began to commune with themselves afresh: and the senior said
+repentantly, "What fools we have been! The populace will laugh
+outright at the curtailment of our vestures, but would gladly have
+seen these animals eat daily a quarter less of the lentils." The words
+were spoken so earnestly and emphatically that they were overheard by
+the quadrupeds. Suddenly there was a rising of all the principal ones
+in the sacred enclosure: and many that were in the streets took up,
+each according to his temperament and condition, the gravest or
+shrillest tone of reprobation. The thinner and therefore the more
+desperate of the creatures, pushing their snouts under the curtailed
+habiliments of the high priests, assailed them with ridicule and
+reproach. For it had pleased the gods to work a miracle in their
+behoof, and they became as loquacious as those who governed them, and
+who were appointed to speak in the high places. "Let the worst come to
+the worst, we at least have our tails to our hams," said they. "For
+how long?" whined others, piteously: others incessantly ejaculated
+tremendous imprecations: others, more serious and sedate, groaned
+inwardly; and, although under their hearts there lay a huge mass of
+indigestible sourness ready to rise up against the chief priests, they
+ventured no farther than expostulation. "We shall lose our voices,"
+said they, "if we lose our complement of lentils; and then, most
+reverend lords, what will ye do for choristers?" Finally, one of grand
+dimensions, who seemed almost half-human, imposed silence on every
+debater. He lay stretched out apart from his brethren, covering with
+his side the greater portion of a noble dunghill, and all its verdure
+native and imported. He crushed a few measures of peascods to cool his
+tusks; then turned his pleasurable longitudinal eyes far toward the
+outer extremities of their sockets, and leered fixedly and
+sarcastically at the high priests, showing every tooth in each jaw.
+Other men might have feared them; the high priests envied them, seeing
+what order they were in, and what exploits they were capable of. A
+great painter, who flourished many olympiads ago, has, in his volume
+entitled the _Canon_, defined the line of beauty. It was here in its
+perfection: it followed with winning obsequiousness every member, but
+delighted more especially to swim along that placid and pliant
+curvature on which Nature had ranged the implements of mastication.
+Pawing with his cloven hoof, he suddenly changed his countenance from
+the contemplative to the wrathful. At one effort he rose up to his
+whole length, breadth, and height: and they who had never seen him in
+earnest, nor separate from the common swine of the enclosure, with
+which he was in the habit of husking what was thrown to him, could
+form no idea what a prodigious beast he was. Terrible were the
+expressions of choler and comminations which burst forth from his
+fulminating tusks. Erimanthus would have hidden his puny offspring
+before them; and Hercules would have paused at the encounter. Thrice
+he called aloud to the high priests: thrice he swore in their own
+sacred language that they were a couple of thieves and impostors:
+thrice he imprecated the worst maledictions on his own head if they
+had not violated the holiest of their vows, and were not ready even to
+sell their gods. A tremor ran throughout the whole body of the united
+swine; so awful was the adjuration! Even the Gasteres themselves in
+some sort shuddered, not perhaps altogether at the solemn tone of its
+impiety; for they had much experience in these matters. But among them
+was a Gaster who was calmer than the swearer, and more prudent and
+conciliating than those he swore against. Hearing this objurgation, he
+went blandly up to the sacred porker, and, lifting the flap of his
+right ear between forefinger and thumb with all delicacy and
+gentleness, thus whispered into it: "You do not in your heart believe
+that any of us are such fools as to sell our gods, at least while we
+have such a reserve to fall back upon."
+
+'"Are we to be devoured?" cried the noble porker, twitching his ear
+indignantly from under the hand of the monitor. "Hush!" said he,
+laying it again, most soothingly, rather farther from the tusks:
+"hush! sweet friend! Devoured? Oh, certainly not: that is to say, not
+_all_: or, if all, not all at once. Indeed the holy men my brethren
+may perhaps be contented with taking a little blood from each of you,
+entirely for the advantage of your health and activity, and merely to
+compose a few slender black-puddings for the inferior monsters of the
+temple, who latterly are grown very exacting, and either are, or
+pretend to be, hungry after they have eaten a whole handful of acorns,
+swallowing I am ashamed to say what a quantity of water to wash them
+down. We do not grudge them it, as they well know: but they appear to
+have forgotten how recently no inconsiderable portion of this bounty
+has been conferred. If we, as they object to us, eat more, they ought
+to be aware that it is by no means for our gratification, since we
+have abjured it before the gods, but to maintain the dignity of the
+priesthood, and to exhibit the beauty and utility of subordination."
+
+'The noble porker had beaten time with his muscular tail at many of
+these periods; but again his heart panted visibly, and he could bear
+no more.
+
+'"All this for our good! for our activity! for our health! Let us
+alone: we have health enough; we want no activity. Let us alone, I say
+again, or by the Immortals!..." "Peace, my son! Your breath is
+valuable: evidently you have but little to spare: and what mortal
+knows how soon the gods may demand the last of it?"
+
+'At the beginning of this exhortation, the worthy high priest had
+somewhat repressed the ebullient choler of his refractory and
+pertinacious disciple, by applying his flat soft palm to the
+signet-formed extremity of the snout.
+
+'"We are ready to hear complaints at all times," added he, "and to
+redress any grievance at our own. But beyond a doubt, if you continue
+to raise your abominable outcries, some of the people are likely to
+hit upon two discoveries: first that your lentils would be sufficient
+to make daily for every poor family a good wholesome porridge; and
+secondly, that your flesh, properly cured, might hang up nicely
+against the forthcoming bean-season." Pondering these mighty words,
+the noble porker kept his eyes fixed upon him for some instants, then
+leaned forward dejectedly, then tucked one foot under him, then
+another, cautious to descend with dignity. At last he grunted (it must
+for ever be ambiguous whether with despondency or with resignation),
+pushed his wedgy snout far within the straw subjacent, and sank into
+that repose which is granted to the just.'
+
+_Timotheus._ Cousin! there are glimmerings of truth and wisdom in
+sundry parts of this discourse, not unlike little broken shells
+entangled in dark masses of seaweed. But I would rather you had
+continued to adduce fresh arguments to demonstrate the beneficence of
+the Deity, proving (if you could) that our horses and dogs, faithful
+servants and companions to us, and often treated cruelly, may
+recognize us hereafter, and we them. We have no authority for any such
+belief.
+
+_Lucian._ We have authority for thinking and doing whatever is humane.
+Speaking of humanity, it now occurs to me, I have heard a report that
+some well-intentioned men of your religion so interpret the words or
+wishes of its Founder, they would abolish slavery throughout the
+empire.
+
+_Timotheus._ Such deductions have been drawn indeed from our Master's
+doctrine: but the saner part of us receive it metaphorically, and
+would only set men free from the bonds of sin. For if domestic slaves
+were manumitted, we should neither have a dinner dressed nor a bed
+made, unless by our own children: and as to labour in the fields, who
+would cultivate them in this hot climate? We must import slaves from
+Ethiopia and elsewhere, wheresoever they can be procured: but the
+hardship lies not on them; it lies on us, and bears heavily; for we
+must first buy them with our money, and then feed them; and not only
+must we maintain them while they are hale and hearty and can serve us,
+but likewise in sickness and (unless we can sell them for a trifle) in
+decrepitude. Do not imagine, my cousin, that we are no better than
+enthusiasts, visionaries, subverters of order, and ready to roll
+society down into one flat surface.
+
+_Lucian._ I thought you were maligned: I said so.
+
+_Timotheus._ When the subject was discussed in our congregation, the
+meaner part of the people were much in favour of the abolition: but
+the chief priests and ministers absented themselves, and gave no vote
+at all, deeming it secular, and saying that in such matters the laws
+and customs of the country ought to be observed.
+
+_Lucian._ Several of these chief priests and ministers are robed in
+purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day.
+
+_Timotheus._ I have hopes of you now.
+
+_Lucian._ Why so suddenly?
+
+_Timotheus._ Because you have repeated those blessed words, which are
+only to be found in our Scriptures.
+
+_Lucian._ There indeed I found them. But I also found in the same
+volume words of the same speaker, declaring that the rich shall never
+see His face in heaven.
+
+_Timotheus._ He does not always mean what you think He does.
+
+_Lucian._ How is this? Did He then direct His discourses to none but
+men more intelligent than I am?
+
+_Timotheus._ Unless He gave you understanding for the occasion, they
+might mislead you.
+
+_Lucian._ Indeed!
+
+_Timotheus._ Unquestionably. For instance, He tells us to take no heed
+of to-morrow: He tells us to share equally all our worldly goods: but
+we know that we cannot be respected unless we bestow due care on our
+possessions, and that not only the vulgar but the well-educated esteem
+us in proportion to the gifts of fortune.
+
+_Lucian._ The eclectic philosophy is most flourishing among you
+Christians. You take whatever suits your appetites, and reject the
+rest.
+
+_Timotheus._ We are not half so rich as the priests of Isis. Give us
+their possessions; and we will not sit idle as they do, but be able
+and ready to do incalculable good to our fellow-creatures.
+
+_Lucian._ I have never seen great possessions excite to great
+alacrity. Usually they enfeeble the sympathies, and often overlie and
+smother them.
+
+_Timotheus._ Our religion is founded less on sympathies than on
+miracles. Cousin! you smile most when you ought to be most serious.
+
+_Lucian._ I was smiling at the thought of one whom I would recommend
+to your especial notice, as soon as you disinherit the priests of
+Isis. He may perhaps be refractory; for he pretends (the knave!) to
+work miracles.
+
+_Timotheus._ Impostor! who is he?
+
+_Lucian._ Aulus of Pelusium. Idle and dissolute, he never gained
+anything honestly but a scourging, if indeed he ever made, what he
+long merited, this acquisition. Unable to run into debt where he was
+known, he came over to Alexandria.
+
+_Timotheus._ I know him: I know him well. Here, of his own accord, he
+has betaken himself to a new and regular life.
+
+_Lucian._ He will presently wear it out, or make it sit easier on his
+shoulders. My metaphor brings me to my story. Having nothing to carry
+with him beside an empty valise, he resolved on filling it with
+something, however worthless, lest, seeing his utter destitution, and
+hopeless of payment, a receiver of lodgers should refuse to admit him
+into the hostelry. Accordingly, he went to a tailor's, and began to
+joke about his poverty. Nothing is more apt to bring people into good
+humour; for, if they are poor themselves, they enjoy the pleasure of
+discovering that others are no better off; and, if not poor, there is
+the consciousness of superiority.
+
+'The favour I am about to ask of a man so wealthy and so liberal as
+you are,' said Aulus, 'is extremely small: you can materially serve
+me, without the slightest loss, hazard, or inconvenience. In few
+words, my valise is empty: and to some ears an empty valise is louder
+and more discordant than a bagpipe: I cannot say I like the sound of
+it myself. Give me all the shreds and snippings you can spare me. They
+will feel like clothes; not exactly so to me and my person, but to
+those who are inquisitive, and who may be importunate.'
+
+The tailor laughed, and distended both arms of Aulus with his
+munificence. Soon was the valise well filled and rammed down. Plenty
+of boys were in readiness to carry it to the boat. Aulus waved them
+off, looking at some angrily, at others suspiciously. Boarding the
+skiff, he lowered his treasure with care and caution, staggering a
+little at the weight, and shaking it gently on deck, with his ear
+against it: and then, finding all safe and compact, he sat on it; but
+as tenderly as a pullet on her first eggs. When he was landed, his
+care was even greater, and whoever came near him was warned off with
+loud vociferations. Anxiously as the other passengers were invited by
+the innkeepers to give their houses the preference, Aulus was
+importuned most: the others were only beset; he was borne off in
+triumphant captivity. He ordered a bedroom, and carried his valise
+with him; he ordered a bath, and carried with him his valise. He
+started up from the company at dinner, struck his forehead, and cried
+out, 'Where is my valise?' 'We are honest men here,' replied the host.
+'You have left it, sir, in your chamber: where else indeed should you
+leave it?'
+
+'Honesty is seated on your brow,' exclaimed Aulus; 'but there are few
+to be trusted in the world we live in. I now believe I can eat.' And
+he gave a sure token of the belief that was in him, not without a
+start now and then and a finger at his ear, as if he heard somebody
+walking in the direction of his bedchamber. Now began his first
+miracle: for now he contrived to pick up, from time to time, a little
+money. In the presence of his host and fellow-lodgers, he threw a few
+obols, negligently and indifferently, among the beggars. 'These poor
+creatures,' said he, 'know a new-comer as well as the gnats do: in one
+half-hour I am half ruined by them; and this daily.'
+
+Nearly a month had elapsed since his arrival, and no account of board
+and lodging had been delivered or called for. Suspicion at length
+arose in the host whether he really was rich. When another man's
+honesty is doubted, the doubter's is sometimes in jeopardy. The host
+was tempted to unsew the valise. To his amazement and horror he found
+only shreds within it. However, he was determined to be cautious, and
+to consult his wife, who, although a Christian like Aulus, and much
+edified by his discourses, might dissent from him in regard to a
+community of goods, at least in her own household, and might defy him
+to prove by any authority that the doctrine was meant for innkeepers.
+Aulus, on his return in the evening, found out that his valise had
+been opened. He hurried back, threw its contents into the canal, and,
+borrowing an old cloak, he tucked it up under his dress, and returned.
+Nobody had seen him enter or come back again, nor was it immediately
+that his host or hostess were willing to appear. But, after he had
+called them loudly for some time, they entered his apartment: and he
+thus addressed the woman:
+
+'O Eucharis! no words are requisite to convince you (firm as you are
+in the faith) of eternal verities, however mysterious. But your
+unhappy husband has betrayed his incredulity in regard to the most
+awful. If my prayers, offered up in our holy temples all day long,
+have been heard, and that they have been heard I feel within me the
+blessed certainty, something miraculous has been vouchsafed for the
+conversion of this miserable sinner. Until the present hour, the
+valise before you was filled with precious relics from the apparel of
+saints and martyrs, fresh as when on them.' 'True, by Jove!' said the
+husband to himself. 'Within the present hour,' continued Aulus, 'they
+are united into one raiment, signifying our own union, our own
+restoration.'
+
+He drew forth the cloak, and fell on his face. Eucharis fell also, and
+kissed the saintly head prostrate before her. The host's eyes were
+opened, and he bewailed his hardness of heart. Aulus is now occupied
+in strengthening his faith, not without an occasional support to the
+wife's: all three live together in unity.
+
+_Timotheus._ And do you make a joke even of this? Will you never cease
+from the habitude?
+
+_Lucian._ Too soon. The farther we descend into the vale of years, the
+fewer illusions accompany us: we have little inclination, little time,
+for jocularity and laughter. Light things are easily detached from us,
+and we shake off heavier as we can. Instead of levity, we are liable
+to moroseness: for always near the grave there are more briers than
+flowers, unless we plant them ourselves, or our friends supply them.
+
+_Timotheus._ Thinking thus, do you continue to dissemble or to distort
+the truth? The shreds are become a cable for the faithful. That they
+were miraculously turned into one entire garment who shall gainsay?
+How many hath it already clothed with righteousness? Happy men,
+casting their doubts away before it! Who knows, O Cousin Lucian, but
+on some future day you yourself will invoke the merciful interposition
+of Aulus!
+
+_Lucian._ Possibly: for if ever I fall among thieves, nobody is
+likelier to be at the head of them.
+
+_Timotheus._ Uncharitable man! how suspicious! how ungenerous! how
+hardened in unbelief! Reason is a bladder on which you may paddle like
+a child as you swim in summer waters: but, when the winds rise and the
+waves roughen, it slips from under you, and you sink; yes, O Lucian,
+you sink into a gulf whence you never can emerge.
+
+_Lucian._ I deem those the wisest who exert the soonest their own
+manly strength, now with the stream and now against it, enjoying the
+exercise in fine weather, venturing out in foul, if need be, yet
+avoiding not only rocks and whirlpools, but also shallows. In such a
+light, my cousin, I look on your dispensations. I shut them out as we
+shut out winds blowing from the desert; hot, debilitating, oppressive,
+laden with impalpable sands and pungent salts, and inflicting an
+incurable blindness.
+
+_Timotheus._ Well, Cousin Lucian! I can bear all you say while you are
+not witty. Let me bid you farewell in this happy interval.
+
+_Lucian._ Is it not serious and sad, O my cousin, that what the Deity
+hath willed to lie incomprehensible in His mysteries, we should fall
+upon with tooth and nail, and ferociously growl over, or ignorantly
+dissect?
+
+_Timotheus._ Ho! now you come to be serious and sad, there are hopes
+of you. Truth always begins or ends so.
+
+_Lucian._ Undoubtedly. But I think it more reverential to abstain from
+that which, with whatever effort, I should never understand.
+
+_Timotheus._ You are lukewarm, my cousin, you are lukewarm. A most
+dangerous state.
+
+_Lucian._ For milk to continue in, not for men. I would not fain be
+frozen or scalded.
+
+_Timotheus._ Alas! you are blind, my sweet cousin!
+
+_Lucian._ Well; do not open my eyes with pincers, nor compose for them
+a collyrium of spurge.
+
+May not men eat and drink and talk together, and perform in relation
+one to another all the duties of social life, whose opinions are
+different on things immediately under their eyes? If they can and do,
+surely they may as easily on things equally above the comprehension of
+each party. The wisest and most virtuous man in the whole extent of
+the Roman Empire is Plutarch of Cheronaea: yet Plutarch holds a firm
+belief in the existence of I know not how many gods, every one of whom
+has committed notorious misdemeanours. The nearest to the Cheronaean
+in virtue and wisdom is Trajan, who holds all the gods dog-cheap.
+These two men are friends. If either of them were influenced by your
+religion, as inculcated and practised by the priesthood, he would be
+the enemy of the other, and wisdom and virtue would plead for the
+delinquent in vain. When your religion had existed, as you tell us,
+about a century, Caius Caecilius, of Novum Comum, was proconsul in
+Bithynia. Trajan, the mildest and most equitable of mankind, desirous
+to remove from them, as far as might be, the hatred and invectives of
+those whose old religion was assailed by them, applied to Caecilius
+for information on their behaviour as good citizens. The reply of
+Caecilius was favourable. Had Trajan applied to the most eminent and
+authoritative of the sect, they would certainly have brought into
+jeopardy all who differed in one tittle from any point of their
+doctrine or discipline. For the thorny and bitter aloe of dissension
+required less than a century to flower on the steps of your temple.
+
+_Timotheus._ You are already half a Christian, in exposing to the
+world the vanities both of philosophy and of power.
+
+_Lucian._ I have done no such thing: I have exposed the vanities of
+the philosophizing and the powerful. Philosophy is admirable; and
+Power may be glorious: the one conduces to truth, the other has nearly
+all the means of conferring peace and happiness, but it usually, and
+indeed almost always, takes a contrary direction. I have ridiculed the
+futility of speculative minds, only when they would pave the clouds
+instead of the streets. To see distant things better than near is a
+certain proof of a defective sight. The people I have held in derision
+never turn their eyes to what they can see, but direct them
+continually where nothing is to be seen. And this, by their disciples,
+is called the sublimity of speculation! There is little merit
+acquired, or force exhibited, in blowing off a feather that would
+settle on my nose: and this is all I have done in regard to the
+philosophers: but I claim for myself the approbation of humanity, in
+having shown the true dimensions of the great. The highest of them are
+no higher than my tunic; but they are high enough to trample on the
+necks of those wretches who throw themselves on the ground before
+them.
+
+_Timotheus._ Was Alexander of Macedon no higher?
+
+_Lucian._ What region of the earth, what city, what theatre, what
+library, what private study, hath he enlightened? If you are silent, I
+may well be. It is neither my philosophy nor your religion which casts
+the blood and bones of men in their faces, and insists on the most
+reverence for those who have made the most unhappy. If the Romans
+scourged by the hands of children the schoolmaster who would have
+betrayed them, how greatly more deserving of flagellation, from the
+same quarter, are those hundreds of pedagogues who deliver up the
+intellects of youth to such immoral revellers and mad murderers! They
+would punish a thirsty child for purloining a bunch of grapes from a
+vineyard, and the same men on the same day would insist on his
+reverence for the subverter of Tyre, the plunderer of Babylon, and the
+incendiary of Persepolis. And are these men teachers? are these men
+philosophers? are these men priests? Of all the curses that ever
+afflicted the earth, I think Alexander was the worst. Never was he in
+so little mischief as when he was murdering his friends.
+
+_Timotheus._ Yet he built this very city; a noble and opulent one when
+Rome was of hurdles and rushes.
+
+_Lucian._ He built it! I wish, O Timotheus! he had been as well
+employed as the stone-cutters or the plasterers. No, no: the wisest of
+architects planned the most beautiful and commodious of cities, by
+which, under a rational government and equitable laws, Africa might
+have been civilized to the centre, and the palm have extended her
+conquests through the remotest desert. Instead of which, a dozen of
+Macedonian thieves rifled a dying drunkard and murdered his children.
+In process of time, another drunkard reeled hitherward from Rome, made
+an easy mistake in mistaking a palace for a brothel, permitted a
+stripling boy to beat him soundly, and a serpent to receive the last
+caresses of his paramour.
+
+Shame upon historians and pedagogues for exciting the worst passions
+of youth by the display of such false glories! If your religion hath
+any truth or influence, her professors will extinguish the promontory
+lights, which only allure to breakers. They will be assiduous in
+teaching the young and ardent that great abilities do not constitute
+great men, without the right and unremitting application of them; and
+that, in the sight of Humanity and Wisdom, it is better to erect one
+cottage than to demolish a hundred cities. Down to the present day we
+have been taught little else than falsehood. We have been told to do
+this thing and that: we have been told we shall be punished unless we
+do: but at the same time we are shown by the finger that prosperity
+and glory, and the esteem of all about us, rest upon other and very
+different foundations. Now, do the ears or the eyes seduce the most
+easily and lead the most directly to the heart? But both eyes and ears
+are won over, and alike are persuaded to corrupt us.
+
+_Timotheus._ Cousin Lucian, I was leaving you with the strangest of
+all notions in my head. I began to think for a moment that you doubted
+my sincerity in the religion I profess; and that a man of your
+admirable good sense, and at your advanced age, could reject that only
+sustenance which supports us through the grave into eternal life.
+
+_Lucian._ I am the most docile and practicable of men, and never
+reject what people set before me: for if it is bread, it is good for
+my own use; if bone or bran, it will do for my dog or mule. But,
+although you know my weakness and facility, it is unfair to expect I
+should have admitted at once what the followers and personal friends
+of your Master for a long time hesitated to receive. I remember to
+have read in one of the early commentators, that His disciples
+themselves could not swallow the miracle of the loaves; and one who
+wrote more recently says, that even His brethren did not believe in
+Him.
+
+_Timotheus._ Yet, finally, when they have looked over each other's
+accounts, they cast them up, and make them all tally in the main sum;
+and if one omits an article, the next supplies its place with a
+commodity of the same value. What would you have? But it is of little
+use to argue on religion with a man who, professing his readiness to
+believe, and even his credulity, yet disbelieves in miracles.
+
+_Lucian._ I should be obstinate and perverse if I disbelieved in the
+existence of a thing for no better reason than because I never saw it,
+and cannot understand its operations. Do you believe, O Timotheus,
+that Perictione, the mother of Plato, became his mother by the sole
+agency of Apollo's divine spirit, under the phantasm of that god?
+
+_Timotheus._ I indeed believe such absurdities?
+
+_Lucian._ You touch me on a vital part if you call an absurdity the
+religion or philosophy in which I was educated. Anaxalides, and
+Clearagus, and Speusippus, his own nephew, assert it. Who should know
+better than they?
+
+_Timotheus._ Where are their proofs?
+
+_Lucian._ I would not be so indelicate as to require them on such an
+occasion. A short time ago I conversed with an old centurion, who was
+in service by the side of Vespasian, when Titus, and many officers and
+soldiers of the army, and many captives, were present, and who saw one
+Eleazar put a ring to the nostril of a demoniac (as the patient was
+called) and draw the demon out of it.
+
+_Timotheus._ And do you pretend to believe this nonsense?
+
+_Lucian._ I only believe that Vespasian and Titus had nothing to gain
+or accomplish by the miracle; and that Eleazar, if he had been
+detected in a trick by two acute men and several thousand enemies, had
+nothing to look forward to but a cross--the only piece of upholstery
+for which Judea seems to have either wood or workmen, and which are
+as common in that country as direction-posts are in any other.
+
+_Timotheus._ The Jews are a stiff-necked people.
+
+_Lucian._ On such occasions, no doubt.
+
+_Timotheus._ Would you, O Lucian, be classed among the atheists, like
+Epicurus?
+
+_Lucian._ It lies not at my discretion what name shall be given me at
+present or hereafter, any more than it did at my birth. But I wonder
+at the ignorance and precipitancy of those who call Epicurus an
+atheist. He saw on the same earth with himself a great variety of
+inferior creatures, some possessing more sensibility and more
+thoughtfulness than others. Analogy would lead so contemplative a
+reasoner to the conclusion that if many were inferior and in sight,
+others might be superior and out of sight. He never disbelieved in the
+existence of the gods; he only disbelieved that they troubled their
+heads with our concerns. Have they none of their own? If they are
+happy, does their happiness depend on us, comparatively so imbecile
+and vile? He believed, as nearly all nations do, in different ranks
+and orders of superhuman beings; and perhaps he thought (but I never
+was in his confidence or counsels) that the higher were rather in
+communication with the next to them in intellectual faculties, than
+with the most remote. To me the suggestion appears by no means
+irrational, that if we are managed or cared for at all by beings wiser
+than ourselves (which in truth would be no sign of any great wisdom in
+them), it can only be by such as are very far from perfection, and who
+indulge us in the commission of innumerable faults and follies, for
+their own speculation or amusement.
+
+_Timotheus._ There is only one such; and he is the devil.
+
+_Lucian._ If he delights in our wickedness, which you believe, he must
+be incomparably the happiest of beings, which you do not believe. No
+god of Epicurus rests his elbow on his armchair with less energetic
+exertion or discomposure.
+
+_Timotheus._ We lead holier and purer lives than such ignorant mortals
+as are not living under Grace.
+
+_Lucian._ I also live under Grace, O Timotheus! and I venerate her for
+the pleasures I have received at her hands. I do not believe she has
+quite deserted me. If my grey hairs are unattractive to her, and if
+the trace of her fingers is lost in the wrinkles of my forehead, still
+I sometimes am told it is discernible even on the latest and coldest
+of my writings.
+
+_Timotheus._ You are wilful in misapprehension. The Grace of which I
+speak is adverse to pleasure and impurity.
+
+_Lucian._ Rightly do you separate impurity and pleasure, which indeed
+soon fly asunder when the improvident would unite them. But never
+believe that tenderness of heart signifies corruption of morals, if
+you happen to find it (which indeed is unlikely) in the direction you
+have taken; on the contrary, no two qualities are oftener found
+together, on mind as on matter, than hardness and lubricity.
+
+Believe me, Cousin Timotheus, when we come to eighty years of age we
+are all Essenes. In our kingdom of heaven there is no marrying or
+giving in marriage; and austerity in ourselves, when Nature holds over
+us the sharp instrument with which Jupiter operated on Saturn, makes
+us austere to others. But how happens it that you, both old and young,
+break every bond which connected you anciently with the Essenes? Not
+only do you marry (a height of wisdom to which I never have attained,
+although in others I commend it), but you never share your substance
+with the poorest of your community, as they did, nor live simply and
+frugally, nor purchase nor employ slaves, nor refuse rank and offices
+in the State, nor abstain from litigation, nor abominate and execrate
+the wounds and cruelties of war. The Essenes did all this, and greatly
+more, if Josephus and Philo, whose political and religious tenets are
+opposite to theirs, are credible and trustworthy.
+
+_Timotheus._ Doubtless you would also wish us to retire into the
+desert, and eschew the conversation of mankind.
+
+_Lucian._ No, indeed; but I would wish the greater part of your people
+to eschew mine, for they bring all the worst of the desert with them
+whenever they enter; its smothering heats, its blinding sands, its
+sweeping suffocation. Return to the pure spirit of the Essenes,
+without their asceticism; cease from controversy, and drop party
+designations. If you will not do this, do less, and be merely what you
+profess to be, which is quite enough for an honest, a virtuous, and a
+religious man.
+
+_Timotheus._ Cousin Lucian, I did not come hither to receive a lecture
+from you.
+
+_Lucian._ I have often given a dinner to a friend who did not come to
+dine with me.
+
+_Timotheus._ Then, I trust, you gave him something better for dinner
+than bay-salt and dandelions. If you will not assist us in nettling
+our enemies a little for their absurdities and impositions, let me
+entreat you, however, to let us alone, and to make no remarks on us.
+I myself run into no extravagances, like the Essenes, washing and
+fasting, and retiring into solitude. I am not called to them; when I
+am, I go.
+
+_Lucian._ I am apprehensive the Lord may afflict you with deafness in
+that ear.
+
+_Timotheus._ Nevertheless, I am indifferent to the world, and all
+things in it. This, I trust, you will acknowledge to be true religion
+and true philosophy.
+
+_Lucian._ That is not philosophy which betrays an indifference to
+those for whose benefit philosophy was designed; and those are the
+whole human race. But I hold it to be the most unphilosophical thing
+in the world to call away men from useful occupations and mutual help,
+to profitless speculations and acrid controversies. Censurable enough,
+and contemptible, too, is that supercilious philosopher, sneeringly
+sedate, who narrates in full and flowing periods the persecutions and
+tortures of a fellow-man, led astray by his credulity, and ready to
+die in the assertion of what in his soul he believes to be the truth.
+But hardly less censurable, hardly less contemptible, is the
+tranquilly arrogant sectarian, who denies that wisdom or honesty can
+exist beyond the limits of his own ill-lighted chamber.
+
+_Timotheus._ What! is he sanguinary?
+
+_Lucian._ Whenever he can be, he is; and he always has it in his power
+to be even worse than that, for he refuses his custom to the
+industrious and honest shopkeeper who has been taught to think
+differently from himself in matters which he has had no leisure to
+study, and by which, if he had enjoyed that leisure, he would have
+been a less industrious and a less expert artificer.
+
+_Timotheus._ We cannot countenance those hard-hearted men who refuse
+to hear the word of the Lord.
+
+_Lucian._ The hard-hearted knowing this of the tender-hearted, and
+receiving the declaration from their own lips, will refuse to hear the
+word of the Lord all their lives.
+
+_Timotheus._ Well, well; it cannot be helped. I see, cousin, my hopes
+of obtaining a little of your assistance in your own pleasant way are
+disappointed; but it is something to have conceived a better hope of
+saving your soul, from your readiness to acknowledge your belief in
+miracles.
+
+_Lucian._ Miracles have existed in all ages and in all religions.
+Witnesses to some of them have been numerous; to others of them fewer.
+Occasionally, the witnesses have been disinterested in the result.
+
+_Timotheus._ Now indeed you speak truly and wisely.
+
+_Lucian._ But sometimes the most honest and the most quiescent have
+either been unable or unwilling to push themselves so forward as to
+see clearly and distinctly the whole of the operation; and have
+listened to some knave who felt a pleasure in deluding their
+credulity, or some other who himself was either an enthusiast or a
+dupe. It also may have happened in the ancient religions, of Egypt for
+instance, or of India, or even of Greece, that narratives have been
+attributed to authors who never heard of them; and have been
+circulated by honest men who firmly believed them; by half-honest, who
+indulged their vanity in becoming members of a novel and bustling
+society; and by utterly dishonest, who, having no other means of
+rising above the shoulders of the vulgar, threw dust into their eyes
+and made them stoop.
+
+_Timotheus._ Ha! the rogues! It is nearly all over with them.
+
+_Lucian._ Let us hope so. Parthenius and the Roman poet Ovidius Naso,
+have related the transformations of sundry men, women, and gods.
+
+_Timotheus._ Idleness! Idleness! I never read such lying authors.
+
+_Lucian._ I myself have seen enough to incline me toward a belief in
+them.
+
+_Timotheus._ You? Why! you have always been thought an utter infidel;
+and now you are running, hot and heedless as any mad dog, to the
+opposite extreme!
+
+_Lucian._ I have lived to see, not indeed one man, but certainly one
+animal turned into another; nay, great numbers. I have seen sheep with
+the most placid faces in the morning, one nibbling the tender herb
+with all its dew upon it; another, negligent of its own sustenance,
+and giving it copiously to the tottering lamb aside it.
+
+_Timotheus._ How pretty! half poetical!
+
+_Lucian._ In the heat of the day I saw the very same sheep tearing off
+each other's fleeces with long teeth and longer claws, and imitating
+so admirably the howl of wolves, that at last the wolves came down on
+them in a body, and lent their best assistance at the general
+devouring. What is more remarkable, the people of the villages seemed
+to enjoy the sport; and, instead of attacking the wolves, waited until
+they had filled their stomachs, ate the little that was left, said
+piously and from the bottom of their hearts what you call _grace_, and
+went home singing and piping.
+
+
+
+
+BISHOP SHIPLEY AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
+
+
+_Shipley._ There are very few men, even in the bushes and the
+wilderness, who delight in the commission of cruelty; but nearly all,
+throughout the earth, are censurable for the admission. When we see a
+blow struck, we go on and think no more about it: yet every blow aimed
+at the most distant of our fellow-creatures, is sure to come back,
+some time or other, to our families and descendants. He who lights a
+fire in one quarter is ignorant to what other the winds may carry it,
+and whether what is kindled in the wood may not break out again in the
+cornfield.
+
+_Franklin._ If we could restrain but one generation from deeds of
+violence, the foundation for a new and a more graceful edifice of
+society would not only have been laid, but would have been
+consolidated.
+
+_Shipley._ We already are horrified at the bare mention of religious
+wars; we should then be horrified at the mention of political. Why
+should they who, when they are affronted or offended, abstain from
+inflicting blows, some from a sense of decorousness and others from a
+sense of religion, be forward to instigate the infliction of ten
+thousand, all irremediable, all murderous? Every chief magistrate
+should be arbitrator and umpire in all differences between any two,
+forbidding war. Much would be added to the dignity of the most
+powerful king by rendering him an efficient member of such a grand
+Amphictyonic council. Unhappily they are persuaded in childhood that a
+reign is made glorious by a successful war. What schoolmaster ever
+taught a boy to question it? or indeed any point of political
+morality, or any incredible thing in history? Caesar and Alexander are
+uniformly clement: Themistocles died by a draught of bull's blood:
+Portia by swallowing red-hot pieces of charcoal.
+
+_Franklin._ Certainly no woman or man could perform either of these
+feats. In my opinion it lies beyond a doubt that Portia suffocated
+herself by the fumes of charcoal; and that the Athenian, whose stomach
+must have been formed on the model of other stomachs, and must
+therefore have rejected a much less quantity of blood than would have
+poisoned him, died by some chemical preparation, of which a bull's
+blood might, or might not, have been part. Schoolmasters who thus
+betray their trust, ought to be scourged by their scholars, like him
+of their profession who underwent the just indignation of the Roman
+Consul. You shut up those who are infected with the plague; why do you
+lay no coercion on those who are incurably possessed by the legion
+devil of carnage? When a creature is of intellect so perverted that he
+can discern no difference between a review and a battle, between the
+animating bugle and the dying groan, it were expedient to remove him,
+as quietly as may be, from his devastation of God's earth and his
+usurpation of God's authority. Compassion points out the cell for him
+at the bottom of the hospital, and listens to hear the key turned in
+the ward: until then the house is insecure.
+
+_Shipley._ God grant our rulers wisdom, and our brethren peace!
+
+_Franklin._ Here are but indifferent specimens and tokens. Those
+fellows throw stones pretty well: if they practise much longer, they
+will hit us: let me entreat you, my lord, to leave me here. So long as
+the good people were contented with hooting and shouting at us, no
+great harm was either done or apprehended: but now they are beginning
+to throw stones, perhaps they may prove themselves more dexterous in
+action than their rulers have done latterly in council.
+
+_Shipley._ Take care, Doctor Franklin! _That_ was very near being the
+philosopher's stone.
+
+_Franklin._ Let me pick it up, then, and send it to London by the
+diligence. But I am afraid your ministers, and the nation at large,
+are as little in the way of wealth as of wisdom, in the experiment
+they are making.
+
+_Shipley._ While I was attending to you, William had started. Look! he
+has reached them: they are listening to him. Believe me, he has all
+the courage of an Englishman and of a Christian; and, if the stoutest
+of them force him to throw off his new black coat, the blusterer would
+soon think it better to have listened to less polemical doctrine.
+
+_Franklin._ Meantime a few of the town boys are come nearer, and begin
+to grow troublesome. I am sorry to requite your hospitality with such
+hard fare.
+
+_Shipley._ True, these young bakers make their bread very gritty, but
+we must partake of it together so long as you are with us.
+
+_Franklin._ Be pleased, my lord, to give us grace; our repast is over;
+this is my boat.
+
+_Shipley._ We will accompany you as far as to the ship. Thank God! we
+are now upon the water, and all safe. Give me your hand, my good
+Doctor Franklin! and although you have failed in the object of your
+mission, yet the intention will authorize me to say, in the holy words
+of our Divine Redeemer, Blessed are the peacemakers!
+
+_Franklin._ My dear lord! if God ever blessed a man at the
+intercession of another, I may reasonably and confidently hope in such
+a benediction. Never did one arise from a warmer, a tenderer, or a
+purer heart.
+
+_Shipley._ Infatuation! that England should sacrifice to her king so
+many thousands of her bravest men, and ruin so many thousands of her
+most industrious, in a vain attempt to destroy the very principles on
+which her strength and her glory are founded! The weakest prince that
+ever sat upon a throne, and the most needy and sordid Parliament that
+ever pandered to distempered power, are thrusting our blindfold nation
+from the pinnacle of prosperity.
+
+_Franklin._ I believe _your_ king (from this moment it is permitted me
+to call him _ours_ no longer) to be as honest and as wise a man as any
+of those about him: but unhappily he can see no difference between a
+review and a battle. Such are the optics of most kings and rulers. His
+Parliament, in both Houses, acts upon calculation. There is hardly a
+family, in either, that does not anticipate the clear profit of
+several thousands a year, to itself and its connexions. Appointments
+to regiments and frigates raise the price of papers; and forfeited
+estates fly confusedly about, and darken the air from the Thames to
+the Atlantic.
+
+_Shipley._ It is lamentable to think that war, bringing with it every
+species of human misery, should become a commercial speculation. Bad
+enough when it arises from revenge; another word for honour.
+
+_Franklin._ A strange one indeed! but not more strange than fifty
+others that come under the same title. Wherever there is nothing of
+religion, nothing of reason, nothing of truth, we come at once to
+honour; and here we draw the sword, dispense with what little of
+civilization we ever pretended to, and murder or get murdered, as may
+happen. But these ceremonials both begin and end with an appeal to
+God, who, before we appealed to Him, plainly told us we should do no
+such thing, and that He would punish us most severely if we did. And
+yet, my lord, even the gentlemen upon your bench turn a deaf ear to
+Him on these occasions: nay, they go further; they pray to Him for
+success in that which He has forbidden so strictly, and when they have
+broken His commandment, thank Him. Upon seeing these mockeries and
+impieties age after age repeated, I have asked myself whether the
+depositaries and expounders of religion have really any whatever of
+their own; or rather, like the lawyers, whether they do not defend
+professionally a cause that otherwise does not interest them in the
+least. Surely, if these holy men really believed in a just retributive
+God, they would never dare to utter the word _war_, without horror and
+deprecation.
+
+_Shipley._ Let us attribute to infirmity what we must else attribute
+to wickedness.
+
+_Franklin._ Willingly would I: but children are whipped severely for
+inobservance of things less evident, for disobedience of commands less
+audible and less awful. I am loath to attribute cruelty to your order:
+men so entirely at their ease have seldom any. Certain I am that
+several of the bishops would not have patted Cain upon the back while
+he was about to kill Abel; and my wonder is that the very same holy
+men encourage their brothers in England to kill their brothers in
+America; not one, not two nor three, but thousands, many thousands.
+
+_Shipley._ I am grieved at the blindness with which God has afflicted
+us for our sins. These unhappy men are little aware what combustibles
+they are storing under the Church, and how soon they may explode. Even
+the wisest do not reflect on the most important and the most certain
+of things; which is, that every act of inhumanity and injustice goes
+far beyond what is apparent at the time of its commission; that these,
+and all other things, have their consequences; and that the
+consequences are infinite and eternal. If this one truth alone could
+be deeply impressed upon the hearts of men, it would regenerate the
+whole human race.
+
+_Franklin._ In regard to politics, I am not quite certain whether a
+politician may not be too far-sighted: but I am quite certain that, if
+it be a fault, it is one into which few have fallen. The policy of the
+Romans in the time of the republic, seems to have been prospective.
+Some of the Dutch also, and of the Venetians, used the telescope. But
+in monarchies the prince, not the people, is consulted by the minister
+of the day; and what pleases the weakest supersedes what is approved
+by the wisest.
+
+_Shipley._ We have had great statesmen: Burleigh, Cromwell,
+Marlborough, Somers: and whatever may have been in the eyes of a
+moralist the vices of Walpole, none ever understood more perfectly, or
+pursued more steadily, the direct and palpable interests of the
+country. Since his administration, our affairs have never been managed
+by men of business; and it was more than could have been expected
+that, in our war against the French in Canada, the appointment fell on
+an able commander.
+
+_Franklin._ Such an anomaly is unlikely to recur. You have in the
+English Parliament (I speak of both Houses) only two great men; only
+two considerate and clear-sighted politicians; Chatham and Burke.
+Three or four can say clever things; several have sonorous voices;
+many vibrate sharp comminations from the embrasures of portentously
+slit sleeves; and there are those to be found who deliver their
+oracles out of wigs as worshipful as the curls of Jupiter, however
+they may be grumbled at by the flour-mills they have laid under such
+heavy contribution; yet nearly all of all parties want alike the
+sagacity to discover that in striking America you shake Europe; that
+kings will come out of the war either to be victims or to be despots;
+and that within a quarter of a century they will be hunted down like
+vermin by the most servile nations, or slain in their palaces by their
+own courtiers. In a peace of twenty years you might have paid off the
+greater part of your National Debt, indeed as much of it as it would
+be expedient to discharge, and you would have left your old enemy
+France labouring and writhing under the intolerable and increasing
+weight of hers. This is the only way in which you can ever quite
+subdue her; and in this you subdue her without a blow, without a
+menace, and without a wrong. As matters now stand, you are calling her
+from attending to the corruptions of her court, and inviting her from
+bankruptcy to glory.
+
+_Shipley._ I see not how bankruptcy can be averted by the expenditure
+of war.
+
+_Franklin._ It cannot. But war and glory are the same thing to France,
+and she sings as shrilly and as gaily after a beating as before. With
+a subsidy to a less amount than she has lately been accustomed to
+squander in six weeks, and with no more troops than would garrison a
+single fortress, she will enable us to set you at defiance, and to do
+you a heavier injury in two campaigns than she has been able to do in
+two centuries, although your king was in her pay against you. She will
+instantly be our ally, and soon our scholar. Afterward she will sell
+her crown jewels and her church jewels, which cover the whole kingdom,
+and will derive unnatural strength from her vices and her profligacy.
+You ought to have conciliated us as your ally, and to have had no
+other, excepting Holland and Denmark. England could never have, unless
+by her own folly, more than one enemy. Only one is near enough to
+strike her; and that one is down. All her wars for six hundred years
+have not done this; and the first trumpet will untrance her. You leave
+your house open to incendiaries while you are running after a
+refractory child. Had you laid down the rod, the child would have come
+back. And because he runs away from the rod, you take up the poker.
+Seriously, what means do you possess of enforcing your unjust claims
+and insolent authority? Never since the Norman Conquest had you an
+army so utterly inefficient, or generals so notoriously unskilful: no,
+not even in the reign of that venal traitor, that French stipendiary,
+the second Charles. Those were yet living who had fought bravely for
+his father, and those also who had vanquished him: and Victory still
+hovered over the mast that had borne the banners of our Commonwealth:
+_ours_, _ours_, my lord! the word is the right word here.
+
+_Shipley._ I am depressed in spirit, and can sympathize but little in
+your exultation. All the crimes of Nero and Caligula are less
+afflicting to humanity, and consequently we may suppose will bring
+down on the offenders a less severe retribution, than an unnecessary
+and unjust war. And yet the authors and abettors of this most grievous
+among our earthly calamities, the enactors and applauders (on how vast
+a theatre!) of the first and greatest crime committed upon earth, are
+quiet complacent creatures, jovial at dinner, hearty at breakfast, and
+refreshed with sleep! Nay, the prime movers in it are called most
+religious and most gracious; and the hand that signs in cold blood the
+death-warrant of nations, is kissed by the kind-hearted, and confers
+distinction upon the brave! The prolongation of a life that shortens
+so many others, is prayed for by the conscientious and the pious!
+Learning is inquisitive in the research of phrases to celebrate him
+who has conferred such blessings, and the eagle of genius holds the
+thunderbolt by his throne! Philosophy, O my friend, has hitherto done
+little for the social state; and Religion has nearly all her work to
+do! She too hath but recently washed her hands from blood, and stands
+neutrally by, yes, worse than neutrally, while others shed it. I am
+convinced that no day of my life will be so censured by my own
+clergy, as this, the day on which the last hopes of peace have
+abandoned us, and the only true minister of it is pelted from our
+shores. Farewell, until better times! may the next generation be
+wiser! and wiser it surely will be, for the lessons of Calamity are
+far more impressive than those which repudiated Wisdom would have
+taught.
+
+_Franklin._ Folly hath often the same results as Wisdom: but Wisdom
+would not engage in her schoolroom so expensive an assistant as
+Calamity. There are, however, some noisy and unruly children whom she
+alone has the method of rendering tame and tractable: perhaps it may
+be by setting them to their tasks both sore and supperless. The ship
+is getting under weigh. Adieu once more, my most reverend and noble
+friend! Before me in imagination do I see America, beautiful as Leda
+in her infant smiles, when her father Jove first raised her from the
+earth; and behind me I leave England, hollow, unsubstantial, and
+broken, as the shell she burst from.
+
+_Shipley._ O worst of miseries, when it is impiety to pray that our
+country may be successful. Farewell! may every good attend you! with
+as little of evil to endure or to inflict, as national sins can expect
+from the Almighty.
+
+
+
+
+SOUTHEY AND LANDOR
+
+
+_Southey._ Of all the beautiful scenery round King's Weston the view
+from this terrace, and especially from this sundial, is the
+pleasantest.
+
+_Landor._ The last time I ever walked hither in company (which, unless
+with ladies, I rarely have done anywhere) was with a just, a valiant,
+and a memorable man, Admiral Nichols, who usually spent his summer
+months at the village of Shirehampton, just below us. There, whether
+in the morning or evening, it was seldom I found him otherwise engaged
+than in cultivating his flowers.
+
+_Southey._ I never had the same dislike to company in my walks and
+rambles as you profess to have, but of which I perceived no sign
+whatever when I visited you, first at Llanthony Abbey and afterward
+on the Lake of Como. Well do I remember our long conversations in the
+silent and solitary church of Sant' Abondio (surely the coolest spot
+in Italy), and how often I turned back my head toward the open door,
+fearing lest some pious passer-by, or some more distant one in the
+wood above, pursuing the pathway that leads to the tower of Luitprand,
+should hear the roof echo with your laughter, at the stories you had
+collected about the brotherhood and sisterhood of the place.
+
+_Landor._ I have forgotten most of them, and nearly all: but I have
+not forgotten how we speculated on the possibility that Milton might
+once have been sitting on the very bench we then occupied, although we
+do not hear of his having visited that part of the country. Presently
+we discoursed on his poetry; as we propose to do again this morning.
+
+_Southey._ In that case, it seems we must continue to be seated on the
+turf.
+
+_Landor._ Why so?
+
+_Southey._ Because you do not like to walk in company: it might
+disturb and discompose you: and we never lose our temper without
+losing at the same time many of our thoughts, which are loath to come
+forward without it.
+
+_Landor._ From my earliest days I have avoided society as much as I
+could decorously, for I received more pleasure in the cultivation and
+improvement of my own thoughts than in walking up and down among the
+thoughts of others. Yet, as you know, I never have avoided the
+intercourse of men distinguished by virtue and genius; of genius,
+because it warmed and invigorated me by my trying to keep pace with
+it; of virtue, that if I had any of my own it might be called forth by
+such vicinity. Among all men elevated in station who have made a noise
+in the world (admirable old expression!) I never saw any in whose
+presence I felt inferiority, excepting Kosciusco. But how many in the
+lower paths of life have exerted both virtues and abilities which I
+never exerted, and never possessed! what strength and courage and
+perseverance in some, in others what endurance and forbearance! At the
+very moment when most, beside yourself, catching up half my words,
+would call and employ against me in its ordinary signification what
+ought to convey the most honorific, the term _self-sufficiency_, I bow
+my head before the humble, with greatly more than their humiliation.
+You are better tempered than I am, and are readier to converse. There
+are half-hours when, although in good humour and good spirits, I
+would, not be disturbed by the necessity of talking, to be the
+possessor of all the rich marshes we see yonder. In this interval
+there is neither storm nor sunshine of the mind, but calm and (as the
+farmer would call it) _growing_ weather, in which the blades of
+thought spring up and dilate insensibly. Whatever I do, I must do in
+the open air, or in the silence of night: either is sufficient: but I
+prefer the hours of exercise, or, what is next to exercise, of
+field-repose. Did you happen to know the admiral?
+
+_Southey._ Not personally: but I believe the terms you have applied to
+him are well merited. After some experience, he contended that public
+men, public women, and the public press, may be all designated by one
+and the same trisyllable. He is reported to have been a strict
+disciplinarian. In the mutiny at the Nore he was seized by his crew,
+and summarily condemned by them to be hanged. Many taunting questions
+were asked him, to which he made no reply. When the rope was fastened
+round his neck, the ringleader cried, 'Answer this one thing, however,
+before you go, sir! What would you do with any of us, if we were in
+your power as you are now in ours?' The admiral, then captain, looked
+sternly and contemptuously, and replied, 'Hang you, by God!' Enraged
+at this answer, the mutineer tugged at the rope: but another on the
+instant rushed forward, exclaiming, 'No, captain!' (for thus he called
+the fellow) 'he has been cruel to us, flogging here and flogging
+there, but before so brave a man is hanged like a dog, you heave me
+overboard.' Others among the most violent now interceded: and an old
+seaman, not saying a single word, came forward with his knife in his
+hand, and cut the noose asunder. Nichols did not thank him, nor notice
+him, nor speak: but, looking round at the other ships, in which there
+was the like insubordination, he went toward his cabin slow and
+silent. Finding it locked, he called to a midshipman: 'Tell that man
+with a knife to come down and open the door.' After a pause of a few
+minutes, it was done: but he was confined below until the quelling of
+the mutiny.
+
+_Landor._ His conduct as Controller of the Navy was no less
+magnanimous and decisive. In this office he presided at the trial of
+Lord Melville. His lordship was guilty, we know, of all the charges
+brought against him; but, having more patronage than ever minister had
+before, he refused to answer the questions which (to repeat his own
+expression) might incriminate him. And his refusal was given with a
+smile of indifference, a consciousness of security. In those days, as
+indeed in most others, the main use of power was promotion and
+protection: and _honest man_ was never in any age among the titles of
+nobility, and has always been the appellation used toward the feeble
+and inferior by the prosperous. Nichols said on the present occasion,
+'If this man is permitted to skulk away under such pretences, trial is
+here a mockery.' Finding no support, he threw up his office as
+Controller of the Navy, and never afterward entered the House of
+Commons. Such a person, it appears to me, leads us aptly and
+becomingly to that steadfast patriot on whose writings you promised me
+your opinion; not incidentally, as before, but turning page after
+page. It would ill beseem us to treat Milton with generalities.
+Radishes and salt are the picnic quota of slim spruce reviewers: let
+us hope to find somewhat more solid and of better taste. Desirous to
+be a listener and a learner when you discourse on his poetry, I have
+been more occupied of late in examining the prose.
+
+_Southey._ Do you retain your high opinion of it?
+
+_Landor._ Experience makes us more sensible of faults than of
+beauties. Milton is more correct than Addison, but less correct than
+Hooker, whom I wish he had been contented to receive as a model in
+style, rather than authors who wrote in another and a poorer language;
+such, I think, you are ready to acknowledge is the Latin.
+
+_Southey._ This was always my opinion.
+
+_Landor._ However, I do not complain that in oratory and history his
+diction is sometimes poetical.
+
+_Southey._ Little do I approve of it in prose on any subject.
+Demosthenes and Aeschines, Lisias and Isaeus, and finally Cicero,
+avoided it.
+
+_Landor._ They did: but Chatham and Burke and Grattan did not; nor
+indeed the graver and greater Pericles; of whom the most memorable
+sentence on record is pure poetry. On the fall of the young Athenians
+in the field of battle, he said, 'The year hath lost its spring.' But
+how little are these men, even Pericles himself, if you compare them
+as men of genius with Livy! In Livy, as in Milton, there are bursts of
+passion which cannot by the nature of things be other than poetical,
+nor (being so) come forth in other language. If Milton had executed
+his design of writing a history of England, it would probably have
+abounded in such diction, especially in the more turbulent scenes and
+in the darker ages.
+
+_Southey._ There are quiet hours and places in which a taper may be
+carried steadily, and show the way along the ground; but you must
+stand a-tiptoe and raise a blazing torch above your head, if you would
+bring to our vision the obscure and time-worn figures depicted on the
+lofty vaults of antiquity. The philosopher shows everything in one
+clear light; the historian loves strong reflections and deep shadows,
+but, above all, prominent and moving characters. We are little pleased
+with the man who disenchants us: but whoever can make us wonder, must
+himself (we think) be wonderful, and deserve our admiration.
+
+_Landor._ Believing no longer in magic and its charms, we still
+shudder at the story told by Tacitus, of those which were discovered
+in the mournful house of Germanicus.
+
+_Southey._ Tacitus was also a great poet, and would have been a
+greater, had he been more contented with the external and ordinary
+appearances of things. Instead of which, he looked at a part of his
+pictures through a prism, and at another part through a _camera
+obscura_. If the historian were as profuse of moral as of political
+axioms, we should tolerate him less: for in the political we fancy a
+writer is but meditating; in the moral we regard him as declaiming. In
+history we desire to be conversant with only the great, according to
+our notions of greatness: we take it as an affront, on such an
+invitation, to be conducted into the lecture-room, or to be desired to
+amuse ourselves in the study.
+
+_Landor._ Pray go on. I am desirous of hearing more.
+
+_Southey._ Being now alone, with the whole day before us, and having
+carried, as we agreed at breakfast, each his Milton in his pocket, let
+us collect all the graver faults we can lay our hands upon, without a
+too minute and troublesome research; not in the spirit of Johnson, but
+in our own.
+
+_Landor._ That is, abasing our eyes in reverence to so great a man,
+but without closing them. The beauties of his poetry we may omit to
+notice, if we can: but where the crowd claps the hands, it will be
+difficult for us always to refrain. Johnson, I think, has been charged
+unjustly with expressing too freely and inconsiderately the blemishes
+of Milton. There are many more of them than he has noticed.
+
+_Southey._ If we add any to the number, and the literary world hears
+of it, we shall raise an outcry from hundreds who never could see
+either his excellences or his defects, and from several who never have
+perused the noblest of his writings.
+
+_Landor._ It may be boyish and mischievous, but I acknowledge I have
+sometimes felt a pleasure in irritating, by the cast of a pebble,
+those who stretch forward to the full extent of the chain their open
+and frothy mouths against me. I shall seize upon this conjecture of
+yours, and say everything that comes into my head on the subject.
+Beside which, if any collateral thoughts should spring up, I may throw
+them in also; as you perceive I have frequently done in my _Imaginary
+Conversations_, and as we always do in real ones.
+
+_Southey._ When we adhere to one point, whatever the form, it should
+rather be called a disquisition than a conversation. Most writers of
+dialogue take but a single stride into questions the most abstruse,
+and collect a heap of arguments to be blown away by the bloated whiffs
+of some rhetorical charlatan, tricked out in a multiplicity of ribbons
+for the occasion.
+
+Before we open the volume of poetry, let me confess to you I admire
+his prose less than you do.
+
+_Landor._ Probably because you dissent more widely from the opinions
+it conveys: for those who are displeased with anything are unable to
+confine the displeasure to one spot. We dislike everything a little
+when we dislike anything much. It must indeed be admitted that his
+prose is often too latinized and stiff. But I prefer his heavy cut
+velvet, with its ill-placed Roman fibula, to the spangled gauze and
+gummed-on flowers and puffy flounces of our present street-walking
+literature. So do you, I am certain.
+
+_Southey._ Incomparably. But let those who have gone astray, keep
+astray, rather than bring Milton into disrepute by pushing themselves
+into his company and imitating his manner. Milton is none of these:
+and his language is never a patchwork. We find daily, in almost every
+book we open, expressions which are not English, never were, and never
+will be: for the writers are by no means of sufficiently high rank to
+be masters of the mint. To arrive at this distinction, it is not
+enough to scatter in all directions bold, hazardous, undisciplined
+thoughts: there must be lordly and commanding ones, with a full
+establishment of well-appointed expressions adequate to their
+maintenance.
+
+Occasionally I have been dissatisfied with Milton, because in my
+opinion that is ill said in prose which can be said more plainly. Not
+so in poetry: if it were, much of Pindar and Aeschylus, and no little
+of Dante, would be censurable.
+
+_Landor._ Acknowledge that he whose poetry I am holding in my hand is
+free from every false ornament in his prose, unless a few bosses of
+latinity may be called so; and I am ready to admit the full claims of
+your favourite South. Acknowledge that, heading all the forces of our
+language, he was the great antagonist of every great monster which
+infested our country; and he disdained to trim his lion-skin with
+lace. No other English writer has equalled Raleigh, Hooker, and
+Milton, in the loftier parts of their works.
+
+_Southey._ But Hooker and Milton, you allow, are sometimes pedantic.
+In Hooker there is nothing so elevated as there is in Raleigh.
+
+_Landor._ Neither he, however, nor any modern, nor any ancient, has
+attained to that summit on which the sacred ark of Milton strikes and
+rests. Reflections, such as we indulged in on the borders of the
+Larius, come over me here again. Perhaps from the very sod where you
+are sitting, the poet in his youth sate looking at the Sabrina he was
+soon to celebrate. There is pleasure in the sight of a glebe which
+never has been broken; but it delights me particularly in those places
+where great men have been before. I do not mean warriors: for
+extremely few among the most remarkable of them will a considerate man
+call great: but poets and philosophers and philanthropists, the
+ornaments of society, the charmers of solitude, the warders of
+civilization, the watchmen at the gate which Tyranny would batter
+down, and the healers of those wounds which she left festering in the
+field. And now, to reduce this demon into its proper toad-shape again,
+and to lose sight of it, open your _Paradise Lost_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE EMPEROR OF CHINA AND TSING-TI
+
+
+On the morrow I was received at the folding-doors by Pru-Tsi, and
+ushered by him into the presence of his majesty the Emperor, who was
+graciously pleased to inform me that he had rendered thanks to
+Almighty God for enlightening his mind, and for placing his empire far
+beyond the influence of the persecutor and fanatic. 'But,' continued
+his majesty, 'this story of the sorcerer's man quite confounds me.
+Little as the progress is which the Europeans seem to have made in the
+path of humanity, yet the English, we know, are less cruel than their
+neighbours, and more given to reflection and meditation. How then is
+it possible they should allow any portion of their fellow-citizens to
+be hoodwinked, gagged, and carried away into darkness, by such
+conspirators and assassins? Why didst thou not question the man
+thyself?'
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ I did, O Emperor! and his reply was, 'We can bury such
+only as were in the household of the faith. It would be a mockery to
+bid those spirits go in peace which we know are condemned to
+everlasting fire.'
+
+_Emperor._ Amazing! have they that? Who invented it? Everlasting fire!
+It surely might be applied to better purposes. And have those rogues
+authority to throw people into it? In what part of the kingdom is it?
+If natural, it ought to have been marked more plainly in the maps. The
+English, no doubt, are ashamed of letting it be known abroad that they
+have any such places in their country. If artificial, it is no wonder
+they keep such a secret to themselves. Tsing-Ti, I commend thy
+prudence in asking no questions about it; for I see we are equally at
+a loss on this curiosity.
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ The sorcerer has a secret for diluting it. Oysters and the
+white of eggs, applied on lucky days, enter into the composition; but
+certain charms in a strange language must also be employed, and must
+be repeated a certain number of times. There are stones likewise, and
+wood cut into particular forms, good against this eternal fire, as
+they believe. The sorcerer has the power, they pretend, of giving the
+faculty of hearing and seeing to these stones and pieces of wood; and
+when he has given them the faculties, they become so sensible and
+grateful, they do whatever he orders. Some roll their eyes, some
+sweat, some bleed; and the people beat their breasts before them,
+calling themselves miserable sinners.
+
+_Emperor._ _Sinners_ is not the name I should have given them,
+although no doubt they are in the right.
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ Sometimes, if they will not bleed freely, nor sweat, nor
+roll their eyes, the devouter break their heads with clubs, and look
+out for others who will.
+
+_Emperor._ Take heed, Tsing-Ti! Take heed! I do believe thou art
+talking all the while of idols. Thou must be respectful; remember I am
+head of all the religions in the empire. We have something in our own
+country not very unlike them, only the people do not worship them;
+they merely fall down before them as representatives of a higher
+power. So they say.
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ I do not imagine they go much farther in Europe, excepting
+the introduction of this club-law into their adoration.
+
+_Emperor._ And difference enough, in all conscience. Our people is
+less ferocious and less childish. If any man break an idol here for
+not sweating, he himself would justly be condemned to sweat, showing
+him how inconvenient a thing it is when the sweater is not disposed.
+As for rolling the eyes, surely they know best whom they should ogle;
+as for bleeding, that must be regulated by the season of the year. Let
+every man choose his idol as freely as he chooses his wife; let him be
+constant if he can; if he cannot, let him at least be civil. Whoever
+dares to scratch the face of any one in my empire, shall be condemned
+to varnish it afresh, and moreover to keep it in repair all his
+lifetime.
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ In Europe such an offence would be punished with the
+extremities of torture.
+
+_Emperor._ Perhaps their idols cost more, and are newer. Is there no
+chance, in all their changes, that we may be called upon to supply
+them with a few?
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ They have plenty for the present, and they dig up fresh
+occasionally.
+
+_Emperor._ In regard to the worship of idols, they have not a great
+deal to learn from us; and what is deficient will come by degrees as
+they grow humaner. But how little care can any ruler have for the
+happiness and improvement of his people, who permits such ferocity in
+the priesthood. If its members are employed by the government to
+preside at burials, as according to thy discourse I suppose, a
+virtuous prince would order a twelvemonth's imprisonment, and spare
+diet, to whichever of them should refuse to perform the last office of
+humanity toward a fellow-creature. What separation of citizen from
+citizen, and necessarily what diminution of national strength, must be
+the consequence of such a system! A single act of it ought to be
+punished more severely than any single act of sedition, not only as
+being a greater distractor of civic union, but, in its cruel
+sequestration of the best affections, a fouler violator of domestic
+peace. I always had fancied, from the books in my library, that the
+Christian religion was founded on brotherly love and pure equality. I
+may calculate ill; but, in my hasty estimate, damnation and dog-burial
+stand many removes from these.
+
+'Wait a little,' the Emperor continued: 'I wish to read in my library
+the two names that my father said are considered the two greatest in
+the West, and may vie nearly with the highest of our own country.'
+
+Whereupon did his majesty walk forth into his library; and my eyes
+followed his glorious figure as he passed through the doorway,
+traversing the _gallery of the peacocks_, so called because fifteen of
+those beautiful birds unite their tails in the centre of the ceiling,
+painted so naturally as to deceive the beholder, each carrying in his
+beak a different flower, the most beautiful in China, and bending his
+neck in such a manner as to present it to the passer below. Traversing
+this gallery, his majesty with his own hand drew aside the curtain of
+the library door. His majesty then entered; and, after some delay, he
+appeared with two long scrolls, and shook them gently over the
+fish-pond, in this dormitory of the sages. Suddenly there were so many
+splashes and plunges that I was aware of the gratification the fishes
+had received from the grubs in them, and the disappointment in the
+atoms of dust. His majesty, with his own right hand, drew the two
+scrolls trailing on the marble pavement, and pointing to them with his
+left, said:
+
+'Here they are; Nhu-Tong: Pa-Kong. Suppose they had died where the
+sorcerer's men held firm footing, would the priests have refused them
+burial?'
+
+I bowed my head at the question; for a single tinge of red, whether
+arising from such ultra-bestial cruelty in those who have the
+impudence to accuse the cannibals of theirs, or whether from abhorrent
+shame at the corroding disease of intractable superstition, hereditary
+in the European nations for fifteen centuries, a tinge of red came
+over the countenance of the emperor. When I raised up again my
+forehead, after such time as I thought would have removed all traces
+of it, still fixing my eyes on the ground, I answered:
+
+'O Emperor! the most zealous would have done worse. They would have
+prepared these great men for burial, and then have left them
+unburied.'
+
+_Emperor._ So! so! they would have embalmed them, in their reverence
+for meditation and genius, although their religion prohibits the
+ceremony of interring them.
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ Alas, sire, my meaning is far different. They would have
+dislocated their limbs with pulleys, broken them with hammers, and
+then have burnt the flesh off the bones. This is called an _act of
+faith_.
+
+_Emperor._ _Faith_, didst thou say? Tsing-Ti, thou speakest bad
+Chinese: thy native tongue is strangely occidentalized.
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ So they call it.
+
+_Emperor._ God hath not given unto all men the use of speech. Thou
+meanest to designate the ancient inhabitants of the country, not those
+who have lived there within the last three centuries.
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ The Spaniards and Italians (such are the names of the
+nations who are most under the influence of the spells) were never so
+barbarous and cruel as during the first of the last three centuries.
+The milder of them would have refused two cubits of earth to the two
+philosophers; and not only would have rejected them from the cemetery
+of the common citizens, but from the side of the common hangman; the
+most ignorant priest thinking himself much wiser, and the most
+enlightened prince not daring to act openly as one who could think
+otherwise. The Italians had formerly two illustrious men among them;
+the earlier was a poet, the later a philosopher; one was exiled, the
+other was imprisoned, and both were within a span of being burnt
+alive.
+
+_Emperor._ We have in Asia some odd religions and some barbarous
+princes, but neither are like the Europeans. In the name of God! do
+the fools think of their Christianity as our neighbours in Tartary
+(with better reason) think of their milk; that it will keep the longer
+for turning sour? or that it must be wholesome because it is heady?
+Swill it out, swill it out, say I, and char the tub.
+
+
+
+
+LOUIS XVIII AND TALLEYRAND
+
+
+_Louis._ M. Talleyrand! in common with all my family, all France, all
+Europe, I entertain the highest opinion of your abilities and
+integrity. You have convinced me that your heart, throughout the
+storms of the revolution, leaned constantly toward royalty; and that
+you permitted and even encouraged the caresses of the usurper, merely
+that you might strangle the more certainly and the more easily his
+new-born empire. After this, it is impossible to withhold my
+confidence from you.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Conscious of the ridicule his arrogance and presumption
+would incur, the usurper attempted to silence and stifle it with
+other and far different emotions. Half his cruelties were perpetrated
+that his vanity might not be wounded: for scorn is superseded by
+horror. Whenever he committed an action or uttered a sentiment which
+would render him an object of derision, he instantly gave vent to
+another which paralysed by its enormous wickedness. He would extirpate
+a nation to extinguish a smile. No man alive could deceive your
+majesty: the extremely few who would wish to do it, lie under that
+vigilant and piercing eye, which discerned in perspective from the
+gardens of Hartwell those of the Tuileries and Versailles. As joy
+arises from calamity, so spring arises from the bosom of winter,
+purely to receive your majesty, inviting the august descendant of
+their glorious founder to adorn and animate them again with his
+beneficent and gracious presence. The waters murmur, in voices
+half-suppressed, the reverential hymn of peace restored: the woods bow
+their heads....
+
+_Louis._ Talking of woods, I am apprehensive all the game has been
+woefully killed up in my forests.
+
+_Talleyrand._ A single year will replenish them.
+
+_Louis._ Meanwhile! M. Talleyrand! meanwhile!
+
+_Talleyrand._ Honest and active and watchful gamekeepers, in
+sufficient number, must be sought; and immediately.
+
+_Louis._ Alas! if the children of my nobility had been educated like
+the children of the English, I might have promoted some hundreds of
+them in this department. But their talents lie totally within the
+binding of their breviaries. Those of them who shoot, can shoot only
+with pistols; which accomplishment they acquired in England, that they
+might challenge any of the islanders who should happen to look with
+surprise or displeasure in their faces, expecting to be noticed by
+them in Paris, for the little hospitalities the proud young gentlemen,
+and their prouder fathers, were permitted to offer them in London and
+at their country-seats. What we call _reconnaissance_, they call
+_gratitude_, treating a recollector like a debtor. This is a want of
+courtesy, a defect in civilization, which it behoves us to supply. Our
+memories are as tenacious as theirs, and rather more eclectic.
+
+Since my return to my kingdom I have undergone great indignities from
+this unreflecting people. One Canova, a sculptor at Rome, visited
+Paris in the name of the Pope, and in quality of his envoy, and
+insisted on the cession of those statues and pictures which were
+brought into France by the French armies. He began to remove them out
+of the gallery: I told him I would never give my consent: he replied,
+he thought it sufficient that he had Wellington's. Therefore, the next
+time Wellington presented himself at the Tuileries, I turned my back
+upon him before the whole court. Let the English and their allies be
+aware, that I owe my restoration not to them, but partly to God and
+partly to Saint Louis. They and their armies are only brute
+instruments in the hands of my progenitor and intercessor.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Fortunate, that the conqueror of France bears no
+resemblance to the conqueror of Spain. Peterborough (I shudder at the
+idea) would have ordered a file of soldiers to seat your Majesty in
+your travelling carriage, and would have reinstalled you at Hartwell.
+The English people are so barbarous, that he would have done it not
+only with impunity, but with applause.
+
+_Louis._ But the sovereign of his country ... would the sovereign
+suffer it?
+
+_Talleyrand._ Alas! sire! Confronted with such men, what are
+sovereigns, when the people are the judges? Wellington can drill
+armies: Peterborough could marshal nations.
+
+_Louis._ Thank God! we have no longer any such pests on earth. The
+most consummate general of our days (such is Wellington) sees nothing
+one single inch beyond the field of battle; and he is so observant of
+discipline, that if I ordered him to be flogged in the presence of the
+allied armies, he would not utter a complaint nor shrug a shoulder; he
+would only write a dispatch.
+
+_Talleyrand._ But his soldiers would execute the Duke of Brunswick's
+manifesto, and Paris would sink into her catacombs. No man so little
+beloved was ever so well obeyed: and there is not a man in England, of
+either party, citizen or soldier, who would not rather die than see
+him disgraced. His firmness, his moderation, his probity, place him
+more opposite to Napoleon than he stood in the field of Waterloo.
+These are his lofty lines of Torres Vedras, which no enemy dares
+assail throughout their whole extent.
+
+_Louis._ M. Talleyrand! is it quite right to extol an enemy and an
+Englishman in this manner?
+
+_Talleyrand._ Pardon! Sire! I stand corrected. Forgive me a momentary
+fit of enthusiasm, in favour of those qualities by which, although an
+Englishman's, I am placed again in your majesty's service.
+
+_Louis._ We will now then go seriously to business. Wellington and the
+allied armies have interrupted and occupied us. I will instantly
+write, with my own hand, to the Marquis of Buckingham, desiring him to
+send me five hundred pheasants' eggs. I am restored to my throne, M.
+Talleyrand! but in what a condition! Not a pheasant on the table! I
+must throw myself on the mercy of foreigners, even for a pheasant!
+When I have written my letter, I shall be ready to converse with you
+on the business on which I desired your presence. [_Writes._] Here;
+read it. Give me your opinion: is not the note a model?
+
+_Talleyrand._ If the charms of language could be copied, it would be.
+But what is intended for delight may terminate in despair: and there
+are words which, unapproachable by distance and sublimity, may wither
+the laurels on the most exalted of literary brows.
+
+_Louis._ There is grace in that expression of yours, M. Talleyrand!
+there is really no inconsiderable grace in it. Seal my letter: direct
+it to the Marquis of Buckingham at Stowe. Wait: open it again: no, no:
+write another in your own name: instruct him how sure you are it will
+be agreeable to me, if he sends at the same time fifty or a hundred
+brace of the birds as well as the eggs. At present I am desolate. My
+heart is torn, M. Talleyrand! it is almost plucked out of my bosom. I
+have no other care, no other thought, day or night, but the happiness
+of my people. The allies, who have most shamefully overlooked the
+destitution of my kitchen, seem resolved to turn a deaf ear to its
+cries evermore; nay, even to render them shriller and shriller. The
+allies, I suspect, are resolved to execute the design of the
+mischievous Pitt.
+
+_Talleyrand._ May it please your majesty to inform me _which_ of them;
+for he formed a thousand, all mischievous, but greatly more
+mischievous to England than to France. Resolved to seize the sword, in
+his drunkenness, he seized it by the edge, and struck at us with the
+hilt, until he broke it off and until he himself was exhausted by loss
+of breath and of blood. We owe alike to him the energy of our armies,
+the bloody scaffolds of public safety, the Reign of Terror, the empire
+of usurpation, and finally, as the calm is successor to the tempest,
+and sweet fruit to bitter kernel, the blessing of your majesty's
+restoration. Excepting in this one event, he was mischievous to our
+country; but in all events, and in all undertakings, he was pernicious
+to his own. No man ever brought into the world such enduring evil; few
+men such extensive.
+
+_Louis._ His king ordered it. George III loved battles and blood.
+
+_Talleyrand._ But he was prudent in his appetite for them.
+
+_Louis._ He talked of peppering his people as I would talk of
+peppering a capon.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Having split it. His subjects cut up by his subjects
+were only capers to his leg of mutton. From none of his palaces and
+parks was there any view so rural, so composing to his spirits, as the
+shambles. When these were not fresh, the gibbet would do.
+
+I wish better luck to the pheasants' eggs than befell Mr. Pitt's
+designs. Not one brought forth anything.
+
+_Louis._ No: but he declared in the face of his Parliament, and of
+Europe, that he would insist on indemnity for the past and security
+for the future. These were his words. Now, all the money and other
+wealth the French armies levied in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and
+everywhere else, would scarcely be sufficient for this indemnity.
+
+_Talleyrand._ England shall never receive from us a tithe of that
+amount.
+
+_Louis._ A tithe of it! She may demand a quarter or a third, and leave
+us wondering at her moderation and forbearance.
+
+_Talleyrand._ The matter must be arranged immediately, before she has
+time for calculation or reflection. A new peace maddens England to the
+same paroxysm as a new war maddens France. She hath sent over hither
+her minister ... or rather her prime minister himself is come to
+transact all the business ... the most ignorant and most shortsighted
+man to be found in any station of any public office throughout the
+whole of Europe. He must be treated as her arbiter: we must talk to
+him of restoring her, of regenerating her, of preserving her, of
+guiding her, which (we must protest with our hands within our frills)
+he alone is capable of doing. We must enlarge on his generosity (and
+generous he indeed is), and there is nothing he will not concede.
+
+_Louis._ But if they do not come over in a week, we shall lose the
+season. I ought to be eating a pheasant-poult by the middle of July.
+Oh, but you were talking to me about the other matter, and perhaps the
+weightier of the two; ay, certainly. If this indemnity is paid to
+England, what becomes of our civil list, the dignity of my family and
+household?
+
+_Talleyrand._ I do assure your majesty, England shall never receive ...
+did I say a tithe?... I say she shall never receive a fiftieth of what
+she expended in the war against us. It would be out of all reason, and
+out of all custom in her to expect it. Indeed it would place her in
+almost as good a condition as ourselves. Even if she were beaten she
+could hardly hope _that_: she never in the last three centuries has
+demanded it when she was victorious. Of all the sufferers by the war,
+we shall be the best off.
+
+_Louis._ The English are calculators and traders.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Wild speculators, gamblers in trade, who hazard more
+ventures than their books can register. It will take England some
+years to cast up the amount of her losses.
+
+_Louis._ But she, in common with her allies, will insist on our ceding
+those provinces which my predecessor Louis XIV annexed to his kingdom.
+Be quite certain that nothing short of Alsace, Lorraine, and Franc
+Comté, will satisfy the German princes. They must restore the German
+language in those provinces: for languages are the only true
+boundaries of nations, and there will always be dissension where there
+is difference of tongue. We must likewise be prepared to surrender the
+remainder of the Netherlands; not indeed to England, who refused them
+in the reign of Elizabeth: she wants only Dunkirk, and Dunkirk she
+will have.
+
+_Talleyrand._ This seems reasonable: for which reason it must never
+be. Diplomacy, when she yields to such simple arguments as plain
+reason urges against her, loses her office, her efficacy, and her
+name.
+
+_Louis._ I would not surrender our conquests in Germany, if I could
+help it.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Nothing more easy. The Emperor Alexander may be
+persuaded that Germany united and entire, as she would then become,
+must be a dangerous rival to Russia.
+
+_Louis._ It appears to me that Poland will be more so, with her free
+institutions.
+
+_Talleyrand._ There is only one statesman in the whole number of those
+assembled at Paris, who believes that her institutions will continue
+free; and he would rather they did not; but he stipulates for it, to
+gratify and mystify the people of England.
+
+_Louis._ I see this clearly. I have a great mind to send Blacas over
+to Stowe. I can trust to him to look to the crates and coops, and to
+see that the pheasants have enough of air and water, and that the
+Governor of Calais finds a commodious place for them to roost in,
+forbidding the drums to beat and disturb them, evening or morning. The
+next night, according to my calculation, they repose at Montreuil. I
+must look at them before they are let loose. I cannot well imagine why
+the public men employed by England are usually, indeed constantly so
+inferior in abilities to those of France, Prussia, Austria, and
+Russia. What say you, M. Talleyrand? I do not mean about the
+pheasants; I mean about the envoys.
+
+_Talleyrand._ It can only be that I have considered the subject more
+frequently and attentively than suited the avocations of your majesty,
+that the reason comes out before me clearly and distinctly. The prime
+ministers, in all these countries, are independent, and uncontrolled
+in the choice of agents. A prime minister in France may perhaps be
+willing to promote the interests of his own family; and hence he may
+appoint from it one unworthy of the place. In regard to other
+families, he cares little or nothing about them, knowing that his
+power lies in the palace, and not in the club-room. Whereas in England
+he must conciliate the great families, the hereditary dependants of
+his faction, Whig or Tory. Hence even the highest commands have been
+conferred on such ignorant and worthless men as the Duke of York and
+the Earl of Chatham, although the minister was fully aware that the
+honour of his nation was tarnished, and that its safety was in
+jeopardy, by such appointments. Meanwhile he kept his seat however,
+and fed from it his tame creatures in the cub.
+
+_Louis._ Do you apprehend any danger (talking of cubs) that my
+pheasants will be bruised against the wooden bars, or suffer by
+sea-sickness? I would not command my bishops to offer up public
+prayers against such contingencies: for people must never have
+positive evidence that the prayers of the Church can possibly be
+ineffectual: and we cannot pray for pheasants as we pray for fine
+weather, by the barometer. We must drop it. Now go on with the others,
+if you have done with England.
+
+_Talleyrand._ A succession of intelligent men rules Prussia, Russia,
+and Austria; because these three are economical, and must get their
+bread by creeping, day after day, through the hedges next to them, and
+by filching a sheaf or two, early and late, from cottager or small
+farmer; that is to say, from free states and petty princes. Prussia,
+like a mongrel, would fly at the legs of Austria and Russia, catching
+them with the sack upon their shoulders, unless they untied it and
+tossed a morsel to her. These great powers take especial care to
+impose a protective duty on intellect; to let none enter the country,
+and none leave it, without a passport. Their diplomatists are as
+clever and conciliatory as those of England are ignorant and
+repulsive, who, while they offer an uncounted sum of secret-service
+money with the left hand, give a sounding slap on the face with the
+right.
+
+_Louis._ We, by adopting a contrary policy, gain more information,
+raise more respect, inspire more awe, and exercise more authority. The
+weightiest of our disbursements are smiles and flatteries, with a
+ribbon and a cross at the end of them.
+
+But, between the Duke of York and the Earl of Chatham, I must confess,
+I find very little difference.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Some, however. The one was only drunk all the evening
+and all the night; the other was only asleep all the day. The
+accumulated fogs of Walcheren seemed to concentrate in his brain,
+puffing out at intervals just sufficient to affect with typhus and
+blindness four thousand soldiers. A cake of powder rusted their
+musket-pans, which they were too weak to open and wipe. Turning round
+upon their scanty and mouldy straw, they beheld their bayonets piled
+together against the green dripping wall of the chamber, which neither
+bayonet nor soldier was ever to leave again.
+
+_Louis._ We suffer by the presence of the allied armies in our
+capital: but we shall soon be avenged: for the English minister in
+another fortnight will return and remain at home.
+
+_Talleyrand._ England was once so infatuated as to give up Malta to
+us, although fifty Gibraltars would be of inferior value to her.
+Napoleon laughed at her: she was angry: she began to suspect she had
+been duped and befooled: and she broke her faith.
+
+_Louis._ For the first time, M. Talleyrand, and with a man who never
+had any.
+
+_Talleyrand._ We shall now induce her to evacuate Sicily, in violation
+of her promises to the people of that island. Faith, having lost her
+virginity, braves public opinion, and never blushes more.
+
+_Louis._ Sicily is the key to India, Egypt is the lock.
+
+_Talleyrand._ What, if I induce the minister to restore to us
+Pondicherry?
+
+_Louis._ M. Talleyrand! you have done great things, and without
+boasting. Whenever you do boast, let it be that you will perform only
+the thing which is possible. The English know well enough what it is
+to allow us a near standing-place anywhere. If they permit a Frenchman
+to plant one foot in India, it will upset all Asia before the other
+touches the ground. It behoves them to prohibit a single one of us
+from ever landing on those shores. Improbable as it is that a man
+uniting to the same degree as Hyder-Ali did political and military
+genius, will appear in the world again for centuries; most of the
+princes are politic, some are brave, and perhaps no few are credulous.
+While England is confiding in our loyalty, we might expatiate on her
+perfidy, and our tears fall copiously on the broken sceptre in the
+dust of Delhi. Ignorant and stupid as the king's ministers may be, the
+East India Company is well-informed on its interests, and alert in
+maintaining them. I wonder that a republic so wealthy and so wise
+should be supported on the bosom of royalty. Believe me, her merchants
+will take alarm, and arouse the nation.
+
+_Talleyrand._ We must do all we have to do, while the nation is
+feasting and unsober. It will awaken with sore eyes and stiff limbs.
+
+_Louis._ Profuse as the English are, they will never cut the bottom of
+their purses.
+
+_Talleyrand._ They have already done it. Whenever I look toward the
+shores of England, I fancy I descry the Danaïds there, toiling at the
+replenishment of their perforated vases, and all the Nereids leering
+and laughing at them in the mischievous fullness of their hearts.
+
+_Louis._ Certainly she can do me little harm at present, and for
+several years to come: but we must always have an eye upon her, and be
+ready to assert our superiority.
+
+_Talleyrand._ We feel it. In fifty years, by abstaining from war, we
+may discharge our debt and replenish our arsenals. England will never
+shake off the heavy old man from her shoulders. Overladen and morose,
+she will be palsied in the hand she unremittingly holds up against
+Ireland. Proud and perverse, she runs into domestic warfare as blindly
+as France runs into foreign: and she refuses to her subject what she
+surrenders to her enemy.
+
+_Louis._ Her whole policy tends to my security.
+
+_Talleyrand._ We must now consider how your majesty may enjoy it at
+home, all the remainder of your reign.
+
+_Louis._ Indeed you must, M. Talleyrand! Between you and me be it
+spoken, I trust but little my loyal people; their loyalty being so
+ebullient, that it often overflows the vessel which should contain it,
+and is a perquisite of scouts and scullions. I do not wish to offend
+you.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Really I can see no other sure method of containing and
+controlling them, than by bastions and redoubts, the whole circuit of
+the city.
+
+_Louis._ M. Talleyrand! I will not doubt your sincerity: I am
+confident you have reserved the whole of it for my service; and there
+are large arrears. But M. Talleyrand! such an attempt would be
+resisted by any people which had ever heard of liberty, and much more
+by a people which had ever dreamt of enjoying it.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Forts are built in all directions above Genoa.
+
+_Louis._ Yes; by her conqueror, not by her king.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Your majesty comes with both titles, and rules, like
+your great progenitor,
+
+      Et par droit de conquête et par droit de naissance.
+
+_Louis._ True; my arms have subdued the rebellious; but not without
+great firmness and great valour on my part, and some assistance
+(however tardy) on the part of my allies. Conquerors must conciliate:
+fatherly kings must offer digestible spoon-meat to their
+ill-conditioned children. There would be sad screaming and kicking
+were I to swaddle mine in stone-work. No, M. Talleyrand; if ever Paris
+is surrounded by fortifications to coerce the populace, it must be the
+work of some democrat, some aspirant to supreme power, who resolves to
+maintain it, exercising a domination too hazardous for legitimacy. I
+will only scrape from the chambers the effervescence of superficial
+letters and corrosive law.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Sire! under all their governments the good people of
+Paris have submitted to the _octroi_. Now, all complaints, physical or
+political, arise from the stomach. Were it decorous in a subject to
+ask a question (however humbly) of his king, I would beg permission to
+inquire of your majesty, in your wisdom, whether a bar across the
+shoulders is less endurable than a bar across the palate. Sire! the
+French can bear anything now they have the honour of bowing before
+your majesty.
+
+_Louis._ The compliment is in a slight degree (a _very_ slight degree)
+ambiguous, and (accept in good part my criticism, M. Talleyrand) not
+turned with your usual grace.
+
+Announce it as my will and pleasure that the Duc de Blacas do
+superintend the debarkation of the pheasants; and I pray God, M. de
+Talleyrand, to have you in His holy keeping.
+
+
+
+
+OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL
+
+
+_Sir Oliver._ How many saints and Sions dost carry under thy cloak,
+lad? Ay, what dost groan at? What art about to be delivered of? Troth,
+it must be a vast and oddly-shapen piece of roguery which findeth no
+issue at such capacious quarters. I never thought to see thy face
+again. Prithee what, in God's name, hath brought thee to Ramsey, fair
+Master Oliver?
+
+_Oliver._ In His name verily I come, and upon His errand; and the love
+and duty I bear unto my godfather and uncle have added wings, in a
+sort, unto my zeal.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Take 'em off thy zeal and dust thy conscience with 'em.
+I have heard an account of a saint, one Phil Neri, who in the midst of
+his devotions was lifted up several yards from the ground. Now I do
+suspect, Nol, thou wilt finish by being a saint of his order; and
+nobody will promise or wish thee the luck to come down on thy feet
+again, as he did. So! because a rabble of fanatics at Huntingdon have
+equipped thee as their representative in Parliament, thou art free of
+all men's houses, forsooth! I would have thee to understand, sirrah,
+that thou art fitter for the House they have chaired thee unto than
+for mine. Yet I do not question but thou wilt be as troublesome and
+unruly there as here. Did I not turn thee out of Hinchinbrook when
+thou wert scarcely half the rogue thou art latterly grown up to? And
+yet wert thou immeasurably too big a one for it to hold.
+
+_Oliver._ It repenteth me, O mine uncle! that in my boyhood and youth
+the Lord had not touched me.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Touch thee! thou wast too dirty a dog by half.
+
+_Oliver._ Yes, sorely doth it vex and harrow me that I was then of ill
+conditions, and that my name ... even your godson's ... stank in your
+nostrils.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Ha! polecat! it was not thy name, although bad enough,
+that stank first; in my house, at least. But perhaps there are worse
+maggots in stauncher mummeries.
+
+_Oliver._ Whereas in the bowels of your charity you then vouchsafed me
+forgiveness, so the more confidently may I crave it now in this my
+urgency.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ More confidently! What! hast got more confidence? Where
+didst find it? I never thought the wide circle of the world had within
+it another jot for thee. Well, Nol, I see no reason why shouldst stand
+before me with thy hat off, in the courtyard and in the sun, counting
+the stones in the pavement. Thou hast some knavery in thy head, I
+warrant thee. Come, put on thy beaver.
+
+_Oliver._ Uncle Sir Oliver! I know my duty too well to stand covered
+in the presence of so worshipful a kinsman, who, moreover, hath
+answered at baptism for my good behaviour.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ God forgive me for playing the fool before Him so
+presumptuously and unprofitably! Nobody shall ever take me in again to
+do such an absurd and wicked thing. But thou hast some left-handed
+business in the neighbourhood, no doubt, or thou wouldst never more
+have come under my archway.
+
+_Oliver._ These are hard times for them that seek peace. We are clay
+in the hands of the potter.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ I wish your potters sought nothing costlier, and dug in
+their own grounds for it. Most of us, as thou sayest, have been upon
+the wheel of these artificers; and little was left but rags when we
+got off. Sanctified folks are the cleverest skinners in all
+Christendom, and their Jordan tans and constringes us to the
+avoirdupois of mummies.
+
+_Oliver._ The Lord hath chosen His own vessels.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ I wish heartily He would pack them off, and send them
+anywhere on ass-back or cart (cart preferably), to rid our country of
+'em. But now again to the point: for if we fall among the potsherds we
+shall hobble on but lamely. Since thou art raised unto a high command
+in the army, and hast a dragoon to hold thy solid and stately piece of
+horse-flesh, I cannot but take it into my fancy that thou hast some
+commission of array or disarray to execute hereabout.
+
+_Oliver._ With a sad sinking of spirit, to the pitch well-nigh of
+swounding, and with a sight of bitter tears, which will not be put
+back nor stayed in any wise, as you bear testimony unto me, Uncle
+Oliver!
+
+_Sir Oliver._ No tears, Master Nol, I beseech thee! Wet days, among
+those of thy kidney, portend the letting of blood. What dost whimper
+at?
+
+_Oliver._ That I, that I, of all men living, should be put upon this
+work!
+
+_Sir Oliver._ What work, prithee?
+
+_Oliver._ I am sent hither by them who (the Lord in His loving
+kindness having pity, and mercy upon these poor realms) do, under His
+right hand, administer unto our necessities, and righteously command
+us, _by the aforesaid as aforesaid_ (thus runs the commission), hither
+am I deputed (woe is me!) to levy certain fines in this county, or
+shire, on such as the Parliament in its wisdom doth style malignants.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ If there is anything left about the house, never be
+over-nice: dismiss thy modesty and lay hands upon it. In this county
+or shire, we let go the civet-bag to save the weazon.
+
+_Oliver._ O mine uncle and godfather! be witness for me.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Witness for thee! not I indeed. But I would rather be
+witness than surety, lad, where thou art docketed.
+
+_Oliver._ From the most despised doth the Lord ever choose His
+servants.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Then, faith! thou art His first butler.
+
+_Oliver._ Serving Him with humility, I may peradventure be found
+worthy of advancement.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Ha! now if any devil speaks from within thee, it is thy
+own: he does not snuffle: to my ears he speaks plain English. Worthy
+or unworthy of advancement, thou wilt attain it. Come in; at least for
+an hour's rest. Formerly thou knewest the means of setting the
+heaviest heart afloat, let it be sticking in what mud-bank it might:
+and my wet dock at Ramsey is pretty near as commodious as that over
+yonder at Hinchinbrook was erewhile. Times are changed, and places
+too! yet the cellar holds good.
+
+_Oliver._ Many and great thanks! But there are certain men on the
+other side of the gate, who might take it ill if I turn away and
+neglect them.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Let them enter also, or eat their victuals where they
+are.
+
+_Oliver._ They have proud stomachs: they are recusants.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Recusants of what? of beef and ale? We have claret, I
+trust, for the squeamish, if they are above the condition of
+tradespeople. But of course you leave no person of higher quality in
+the outer court.
+
+_Oliver._ Vain are they and worldly, although such wickedness is the
+most abominable in their cases. Idle folks are fond of sitting in the
+sun: I would not forbid them this indulgence.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ But who are they?
+
+_Oliver._ The Lord knows. Maybe priests, deacons, and such-like.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Then, sir, they are gentlemen. And the commission you
+bear from the parliamentary thieves, to sack and pillage my
+mansion-house, is far less vexatious and insulting to me, than your
+behaviour in keeping them so long at my stable-door. With your
+permission, or without it, I shall take the liberty to invite them to
+partake of my poor hospitality.
+
+_Oliver._ But, Uncle Sir Oliver! there are rules and ordinances
+whereby it must be manifested that they lie under displeasure ... not
+mine ... not mine ... but my milk must not flow for them.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ You may enter the house or remain where you are, at your
+option; I make my visit to these gentlemen immediately, for I am tired
+of standing. If thou ever reachest my age,[12] Oliver! (but God will
+not surely let this be) thou wilt know that the legs become at last of
+doubtful fidelity in the service of the body.
+
+_Oliver._ Uncle Sir Oliver! now that, as it seemeth, you have been
+taking a survey of the courtyard and its contents, am I indiscreet in
+asking your worship whether I acted not prudently in keeping the
+_men-at-belly_ under the custody of the _men-at-arms_? This
+pestilence, like unto one I remember to have read about in some poetry
+of Master Chapman's,[13] began with the dogs and mules, and afterwards
+crope up into the breasts of men.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ I call such treatment barbarous; their troopers will not
+let the gentlemen come with me into the house, but insist on sitting
+down to dinner with them. And yet, having brought them out of their
+colleges, these brutal half-soldiers must know that they are fellows.
+
+_Oliver._ Yea, of a truth are they, and fellows well met. Out of their
+superfluities they give nothing to the Lord or His saints; no, not
+even stirrup or girth, wherewith we may mount our horses and go forth
+against those who thirst for our blood. Their eyes are fat, and they
+raise not up their voices to cry for our deliverance.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Art mad? What stirrups and girths are hung up in
+college halls and libraries? For what are these gentlemen brought
+hither?
+
+_Oliver._ They have elected me, with somewhat short of unanimity, not
+indeed to be one of themselves, for of that distinction I acknowledge
+and deplore my unworthiness, nor indeed to be a poor scholar, to
+which, unless it be a very poor one, I have almost as small
+pretension, but simply to undertake a while the heavier office of
+bursar for them; to cast up their accounts; to overlook the scouring
+of their plate; and to lay a list thereof, with a few specimens,
+before those who fight the fight of the Lord, that His saints, seeing
+the abasement of the proud and the chastisement of worldly-mindedness,
+may rejoice.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ I am grown accustomed to such saints and such
+rejoicings. But, little could I have thought, threescore years ago,
+that the hearty and jovial people of England would ever join in so
+filching and stabbing a jocularity. Even the petticoated torchbearers
+from rotten Rome, who lighted the faggots in Smithfield some years
+before, if more blustering and cocksy, were less bitter and vulturine.
+They were all intolerant, but they were not all hypocritical; they had
+not always '_the Lord_' in their mouth.
+
+_Oliver._ According to their own notions, they might have had, at an
+outlay of a farthing.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Art facetious, Nol? for it is as hard to find that out
+as anything else in thee, only it makes thee look, at times, a little
+the grimmer and sourer.
+
+But, regarding these gentlemen from Cambridge. Not being such as, by
+their habits and professions, could have opposed you in the field, I
+hold it unmilitary and unmanly to put them under any restraint, and to
+lead them away from their peaceful and useful occupations.
+
+_Oliver._ I always bow submissively before the judgment of mine
+elders; and the more reverentially when I know them to be endowed with
+greater wisdom, and guided by surer experience than myself. Alas!
+these collegians not only are strong men, as you may readily see if
+you measure them round the waistband, but boisterous and pertinacious
+challengers. When we, who live in the fear of God, exhorted them
+earnestly unto peace and brotherly love, they held us in derision.
+Thus far indeed it might be an advantage to us, teaching us
+forbearance and self-seeking, but we cannot countenance the evil
+spirit moving them thereunto. Their occupations, as you remark most
+wisely, might have been useful and peaceful, and had formerly been
+so. Why then did they gird the sword of strife about their loins
+against the children of Israel? By their own declaration, not only are
+they our enemies, but enemies the most spiteful and untractable. When
+I came quietly, lawfully, and in the name of the Lord, for their
+plate, what did they? Instead of surrendering it like honest and
+conscientious men, they attacked me and my people on horseback, with
+syllogisms and enthymemes, and the Lord knows with what other such
+gimcracks; such venomous and rankling old weapons as those who have
+the fear of God before their eyes are fain to lay aside. Learning
+should not make folks mockers ... should not make folks malignants ...
+should not harden their hearts. We came with bowels for them.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ That ye did! and bowels which would have stowed within
+them all the plate on board of a galleon. If tankards and
+wassail-bowls had stuck between your teeth, you would not have felt
+them.
+
+_Oliver._ We did feel them; some at least: perhaps we missed too many.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ How can these learned societies raise the money you
+exact from them, beside plate? dost think they can create and coin it?
+
+_Oliver._ In Cambridge, Uncle Sir Oliver, and more especially in that
+college named in honour (as they profanely call it) of the Blessed
+Trinity, there are great conjurors or chemists. Now the said conjurors
+or chemists not only do possess the faculty of making the precious
+metals out of old books and parchments, but out of the skulls of young
+lordlings and gentlefolks, which verily promise less. And this they
+bring about by certain gold wires fastened at the top of certain caps.
+Of said metals, thus devilishly converted, do they make a vain and
+sumptuous use; so that, finally, they are afraid of cutting their lips
+with glass. But indeed it is high time to call them.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Well ... at last thou hast some mercy.
+
+_Oliver._ [_Aloud._] Cuffsatan Ramsbottom! Sadsoul Kiteclaw! advance!
+Let every gown, together with the belly that is therein, mount up
+behind you and your comrades in good fellowship. And forasmuch as you
+at the country places look to bit and bridle, it seemeth fair and
+equitable that ye should leave unto them, in full propriety, the
+mancipular office of discharging the account. If there be any spare
+beds at the inns, allow the doctors and dons to occupy the same ...
+they being used to lie softly; and be not urgent that more than three
+lie in each ... they being mostly corpulent. Let pass quietly and
+unreproved any light bubble of pride or impetuosity, seeing that they
+have not always been accustomed to the service of guards and ushers.
+The Lord be with ye!... Slow trot! And now, Uncle Sir Oliver, I can
+resist no longer your loving kindness. I kiss you, my godfather, in
+heart's and soul's duty; and most humbly and gratefully do I accept of
+your invitation to dine and lodge with you, albeit the least worthy of
+your family and kinsfolk. After the refreshment of needful food, more
+needful prayer, and that sleep which descendeth on the innocent like
+the dew of Hermon, to-morrow at daybreak I proceed on my journey
+Londonward.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ [_Aloud._] Ho, there! [_To a servant._] Let dinner be
+prepared in the great dining-room; let every servant be in waiting,
+each in full livery; let every delicacy the house affords be placed
+upon the table in due courses; arrange all the plate upon the
+sideboard: a gentleman by descent ... a stranger ... has claimed my
+hospitality. [_Servant goes._]
+
+Sir! you are now master. Grant me dispensation, I entreat you, from a
+further attendance on you.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[12] Sir Oliver, who died in 1655, aged ninety-three, might, by
+possibility, have seen all the men of great genius, excepting Chaucer
+and Roger Bacon, whom England had produced from its first discovery
+down to our own times, Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, and
+the prodigious shoal that attended these leviathans through the
+intellectual deep. Newton was but in his thirteenth year at Sir
+Oliver's death. Raleigh, Spenser, Hooker, Eliot, Selden, Taylor,
+Hobbes, Sidney, Shaftesbury, and Locke, were existing in his lifetime;
+and several more, who may be compared with the smaller of these.
+
+[13] Chapman's _Homer_, first book.
+
+
+
+
+THE COUNT GLEICHEM: THE COUNTESS: THEIR CHILDREN, AND ZAIDA.
+
+
+_Countess._ Ludolph! my beloved Ludolph! do we meet again? Ah! I am
+jealous of these little ones, and of the embraces you are giving them.
+
+Why sigh, my sweet husband?
+
+Come back again, Wilhelm! Come back again, Annabella! How could you
+run away? Do you think you can see better out of the corner?
+
+_Annabella._ Is this indeed our papa? What, in the name of mercy, can
+have given him so dark a colour? I hope I shall never be like that;
+and yet everybody tells me I am very like papa.
+
+_Wilhelm._ Do not let her plague you, papa; but take me between your
+knees (I am too old to sit upon them), and tell me all about the
+Turks, and how you ran away from them.
+
+_Countess._ Wilhelm! if your father had run away from the enemy, we
+should not have been deprived of him two whole years.
+
+_Wilhelm._ I am hardly such a child as to suppose that a Christian
+knight would run away from a rebel Turk in battle. But even Christians
+are taken, somehow, by their tricks and contrivances, and their dog
+Mahomet. Beside, you know you yourself told me, with tear after tear,
+and scolding me for mine, that papa was taken by them.
+
+_Annabella._ Neither am I, who am only one year younger, so foolish as
+to believe there is any dog Mahomet. And, if there were, we have dogs
+that are better and faithfuller and stronger.
+
+_Wilhelm._ [_To his father._] I can hardly help laughing to think what
+curious fancies girls have about Mahomet. We know that Mahomet is a
+dog-spirit with three horsetails.
+
+_Annabella._ Papa! I am glad to see you smile at Wilhelm. I do assure
+you he is not half so bad a boy as he was, although he did point at
+me, and did tell you some mischief.
+
+_Count._ I ought to be indeed most happy at seeing you all again.
+
+_Annabella._ And so you are. Don't pretend to look grave now. I very
+easily find you out. I often look grave when I am the happiest. But
+forth it bursts at last: there is no room for it in tongue, or eyes,
+or anywhere.
+
+_Count._ And so, my little angel, you begin to recollect me.
+
+_Annabella._ At first I used to dream of papa, but at last I forgot
+how to dream of him: and then I cried, but at last I left off crying.
+And then, papa, who could come to me in my sleep, seldom came again.
+
+_Count._ Why do you now draw back from me, Annabella?
+
+_Annabella._ Because you really are so very very brown: just like
+those ugly Turks who sawed the pines in the saw-pit under the wood,
+and who refused to drink wine in the heat of summer, when Wilhelm and
+I brought it to them. Do not be angry; we did it only once.
+
+_Wilhelm._ Because one of them stamped and frightened her when the
+other seemed to bless us.
+
+_Count._ Are they still living?
+
+_Countess._ One of them is.
+
+_Wilhelm._ The fierce one.
+
+_Count._ We will set him free, and wish it were the other.
+
+_Annabella._ Papa! I am glad you are come back without your spurs.
+
+_Countess._ Hush, child, hush.
+
+_Annabella._ Why, mamma? Do not you remember how they tore my frock
+when I clung to him at parting? Now I begin to think of him again: I
+lose everything between that day and this.
+
+_Countess._ The girl's idle prattle about the spurs has pained you:
+always too sensitive; always soon hurt, though never soon offended.
+
+_Count._ O God! O my children! O my wife! it is not the loss of spurs
+I now must blush for.
+
+_Annabella._ Indeed, papa, you never can blush at all, until you cut
+that horrid beard off.
+
+_Countess._ Well may you say, my own Ludolph, as you do; for most
+gallant was your bearing in the battle.
+
+_Count._ Ah! why was it ever fought?
+
+_Countess._ Why were most battles? But they may lead to glory even
+through slavery.
+
+_Count._ And to shame and sorrow.
+
+_Countess._ Have I lost the little beauty I possessed, that you hold
+my hand so languidly, and turn away your eyes when they meet mine? It
+was not so formerly ... unless when first we loved.
+
+That one kiss restores to me all my lost happiness.
+
+Come; the table is ready: there are your old wines upon it: you must
+want that refreshment.
+
+_Count._ Go, my sweet children! you must eat your supper before I do.
+
+_Countess._ Run into your own room for it.
+
+_Annabella._ I will not go until papa has patted me again on the
+shoulder, now I begin to remember it. I do not much mind the beard: I
+grow used to it already: but indeed I liked better to stroke and pat
+the smooth laughing cheek, with my arm across the neck behind. It is
+very pleasant even so. Am I not grown? I can put the whole length of
+my finger between your lips.
+
+_Count._ And now, will not _you_ come, Wilhelm?
+
+_Wilhelm._ I am too tall and too heavy: she is but a child.
+[_Whispers._] Yet I think, papa, I am hardly so much of a man but you
+may kiss me over again ... if you will not let her see it.
+
+_Countess._ My dears! why do not you go to your supper?
+
+_Annabella._ Because he has come to show us what Turks are like.
+
+_Wilhelm._ Do not be angry with her. Do not look down, papa!
+
+_Count._ Blessings on you both, sweet children!
+
+_Wilhelm._ We may go now.
+
+_Countess._ And now, Ludolph, come to the table, and tell me all your
+sufferings.
+
+_Count._ The worst begin here.
+
+_Countess._ Ungrateful Ludolph!
+
+_Count._ I am he: that is my name in full.
+
+_Countess._ You have then ceased to love me?
+
+_Count._ Worse; if worse can be: I have ceased to deserve your love.
+
+_Countess._ No: Ludolph hath spoken falsely for once; but Ludolph is
+not false.
+
+_Count._ I have forfeited all I ever could boast of, your affection
+and my own esteem. Away with caresses! Repulse me, abjure me; hate,
+and never pardon me. Let the abject heart lie untorn by one remorse.
+Forgiveness would split and shiver what slavery but abased.
+
+_Countess._ Again you embrace me; and yet tell me never to pardon you!
+O inconsiderate man! O idle deviser of impossible things!
+
+But you have not introduced to me those who purchased your freedom, or
+who achieved it by their valour.
+
+_Count._ Mercy! O God!
+
+_Countess._ Are they dead? Was the plague abroad.
+
+_Count._ I will not dissemble ... such was never my intention ... that
+my deliverance was brought about by means of----
+
+_Countess._ Say it at once ... a lady.
+
+_Count._ It was.
+
+_Countess._ She fled with you.
+
+_Count._ She did.
+
+_Countess._ And have you left her, sir?
+
+_Count._ Alas! alas! I have not; and never can.
+
+_Countess._ Now come to my arms, brave, honourable Ludolph! Did I not
+say thou couldst not be ungrateful? Where, where is she who has given
+me back my husband?
+
+_Count._ Dare I utter it! in this house.
+
+_Countess._ Call the children.
+
+_Count._ No; they must not affront her: they must not even stare at
+her: other eyes, not theirs, must stab me to the heart.
+
+_Countess._ They shall bless her; we will all. Bring her in.
+
+[_Zaida is led in by the Count._]
+
+_Countess._ We three have stood silent long enough: and much there
+may be on which we will for ever keep silence. But, sweet young
+creature! can I refuse my protection, or my love, to the preserver of
+my husband? Can I think it a crime, or even a folly, to have pitied
+the brave and the unfortunate? to have pressed (but alas! that it ever
+should have been so here!) a generous heart to a tender one?
+
+Why do you begin to weep?
+
+_Zaida._ Under your kindness, O lady, lie the sources of these tears.
+
+But why has he left us? He might help me to say many things which I
+want to say.
+
+_Countess._ Did he never tell you he was married?
+
+_Zaida._ He did indeed.
+
+_Countess._ That he had children?
+
+_Zaida._ It comforted me a little to hear it.
+
+_Countess._ Why? prithee why?
+
+_Zaida._ When I was in grief at the certainty of holding but the
+second place in his bosom, I thought I could at least go and play with
+them, and win perhaps their love.
+
+_Countess._ According to our religion, a man must have only one wife.
+
+_Zaida._ That troubled me again. But the dispenser of your religion,
+who binds and unbinds, does for sequins or services what our Prophet
+does purely through kindness.
+
+_Countess._ We can love but one.
+
+_Zaida._ We indeed can love only one: but men have large hearts.
+
+_Countess._ Unhappy girl!
+
+_Zaida._ The very happiest in the world.
+
+_Countess._ Ah! inexperienced creature!
+
+_Zaida._ The happier for that perhaps.
+
+_Countess._ But the sin!
+
+_Zaida._ Where sin is, there must be sorrow: and I, my sweet sister,
+feel none whatever. Even when tears fall from my eyes, they fall only
+to cool my breast: I would not have one the fewer: they all are for
+him: whatever he does, whatever he causes, is dear to me.
+
+_Countess._ [_Aside._] This is too much. I could hardly endure to have
+him so beloved by another, even at the extremity of the earth. [_To
+Zaida._] You would not lead him into perdition?
+
+_Zaida._ I have led him (Allah be praised!) to his wife and children.
+It was for those I left my father. He whom we love might have stayed
+with me at home: but there he would have been only half happy, even
+had he been free. I could not often let him see me through the
+lattice; I was too afraid; and I dared only once let fall the
+water-melon; it made such a noise in dropping and rolling on the
+terrace: but, another day, when I had pared it nicely, and had swathed
+it up well among vine-leaves, dipped in sugar and sherbet, I was quite
+happy. I leaped and danced to have been so ingenious. I wonder what
+creature could have found and eaten it. I wish he were here, that I
+might ask him if he knew.
+
+_Countess._ He quite forgot home then!
+
+_Zaida._ When we could speak together at all, he spoke perpetually of
+those whom the calamity of war had separated from him.
+
+_Countess._ It appears that you could comfort him in his distress, and
+did it willingly.
+
+_Zaida._ It is delightful to kiss the eye-lashes of the beloved: is it
+not? but never so delightful as when fresh tears are on them.
+
+_Countess._ And even this too? you did this?
+
+_Zaida._ Fifty times.
+
+_Countess._ Insupportable!
+
+He often then spoke about me?
+
+_Zaida._ As sure as ever we met: for he knew I loved him the better
+when I heard him speak so fondly.
+
+_Countess._ [_To herself._] Is this possible? It may be ... of the
+absent, the unknown, the unfeared, the unsuspected.
+
+_Zaida._ We shall now be so happy, all three.
+
+_Countess._ How can we all live together?
+
+_Zaida._ Now he is here, is there no bond of union?
+
+_Countess._ Of union? of union? [_Aside_.] Slavery is a frightful
+thing! slavery for life, too! And she released him from it. What then?
+Impossible! impossible! [_To Zaida._] We are rich....
+
+_Zaida._ I am glad to hear it. Nothing anywhere goes on well without
+riches.
+
+_Countess._ We can provide for you amply....
+
+_Zaida._ Our husband....
+
+_Countess._ _Our!... husband!..._
+
+_Zaida._ Yes, yes; I know he is yours too; and you, being the elder
+and having children, are lady above all. He can tell you how little I
+want: a bath, a slave, a dish of pilau, one jonquil every morning, as
+usual; nothing more. But he must swear that he has kissed it first.
+No, he need not swear it; I may always see him do it, now.
+
+_Countess._ [_Aside._] She agonizes me. [_To Zaida._] Will you never
+be induced to return to your own country? Could not Ludolph persuade
+you?
+
+_Zaida._ He who could once persuade me anything, may now command me
+everything: when he says I must go, I go. But he knows what awaits me.
+
+_Countess._ No, child! he never shall say it.
+
+_Zaida._ Thanks, lady! eternal thanks! The breaking of his word would
+break my heart; and better _that_ break first. Let the command come
+from you, and not from him.
+
+_Countess._ [_Calling aloud._] Ludolph! Ludolph! hither! Kiss the hand
+I present to you, and never forget it is the hand of a preserver.
+
+
+
+
+THE PENTAMERON;
+
+OR,
+
+INTERVIEWS OF MESSER GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
+AND MESSER FRANCESCO PETRARCA
+
+WHEN
+
+SAID MESSER GIOVANNI LAY INFIRM AT HIS VILLETTA
+HARD BY CERTALDO;
+
+AFTER WHICH THEY SAW NOT EACH OTHER ON OUR SIDE
+OF PARADISE.
+
+
+
+
+FIRST DAY'S INTERVIEW
+
+
+_Boccaccio._ Who is he that entered, and now steps so silently and
+softly, yet with a foot so heavy it shakes my curtains?
+
+Frate Biagio! can it possibly be you?
+
+No more physic for me, nor masses neither, at present.
+
+Assunta! Assuntina! who is it?
+
+_Assunta._ I cannot say, Signor Padrone! he puts his finger in the
+dimple of his chin, and smiles to make me hold my tongue.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Fra Biagio! are you come from Samminiato for this? You
+need not put your finger there. We want no secrets. The girl knows her
+duty and does her business. I have slept well, and wake better.
+[_Raising himself up a little._]
+
+Why? who are you? It makes my eyes ache to look aslant over the
+sheets; and I cannot get to sit quite upright so conveniently; and I
+must not have the window-shutters opened, they tell me.
+
+_Petrarca._ Dear Giovanni! have you then been very unwell?
+
+_Boccaccio._ O that sweet voice! and this fat friendly hand of thine,
+Francesco!
+
+Thou hast distilled all the pleasantest flowers, and all the
+wholesomest herbs of spring, into my breast already.
+
+What showers we have had this April, ay! How could you come along such
+roads? If the devil were my labourer, I would make him work upon these
+of Certaldo. He would have little time and little itch for mischief
+ere he had finished them, but would gladly fan himself with an
+Agnus-castus, and go to sleep all through the carnival.
+
+_Petrarca._ Let us cease to talk both of the labour and the labourer.
+You have then been dangerously ill?
+
+_Boccaccio._ I do not know: they told me I was: and truly a man might
+be unwell enough, who has twenty masses said for him, and fain sigh
+when he thinks what he has paid for them. As I hope to be saved, they
+cost me a lira each. Assunta is a good market-girl in eggs, and
+mutton, and cow-heel; but I would not allow her to argue and haggle
+about the masses. Indeed she knows best whether they were not fairly
+worth all that was asked for them, although I could have bought a
+winter cloak for less money. However, we do not want both at the same
+time. I did not want the cloak: I wanted _them_, it seems. And yet I
+begin to think God would have had mercy on me, if I had begged it of
+him myself in my own house. What think you?
+
+_Petrarca._ I think he might.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Particularly if I offered him the sacrifice on which I
+wrote to you.
+
+_Petrarca._ That letter has brought me hither.
+
+_Boccaccio._ You do then insist on my fulfilling my promise, the
+moment I can leave my bed. I am ready and willing.
+
+_Petrarca._ Promise! none was made. You only told me that, if it
+pleased God to restore you to your health again, you are ready to
+acknowledge His mercy by the holocaust of your _Decameron_. What proof
+have you that God would exact it? If you could destroy the _Inferno_
+of Dante, would you?
+
+_Boccaccio._ Not I, upon my life! I would not promise to burn a copy
+of it on the condition of a recovery for twenty years.
+
+_Petrarca._ You are the only author who would not rather demolish
+another's work than his own; especially if he thought it better: a
+thought which seldom goes beyond suspicion.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I am not jealous of any one: I think admiration
+pleasanter. Moreover, Dante and I did not come forward at the same
+time, nor take the same walks. His flames are too fierce for you and
+me: we had trouble enough with milder. I never felt any high
+gratification in hearing of people being damned; and much less would I
+toss them into the fire myself. I might indeed have put a nettle under
+the nose of the learned judge in Florence, when he banished you and
+your family; but I hardly think I could have voted for more than a
+scourging to the foulest and fiercest of the party.
+
+_Petrarca._ Be as compassionate, be as amiably irresolute, toward your
+own _Novelle_, which have injured no friend of yours, and deserve more
+affection.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Francesco! no character I ever knew, ever heard of, or
+ever feigned, deserves the same affection as you do; the tenderest
+lover, the truest friend, the firmest patriot, and, rarest of glories!
+the poet who cherishes another's fame as dearly as his own.
+
+_Petrarca._ If aught of this is true, let it be recorded of me that my
+exhortations and entreaties have been successful, in preserving the
+works of the most imaginative and creative genius that our Italy, or
+indeed our world, hath in any age beheld.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I would not destroy his poems, as I told you, or think I
+told you. Even the worst of the Florentines, who in general keep only
+one of God's commandments, keep it rigidly in regard to Dante--
+
+      Love them who curse you.
+
+He called them all scoundrels, with somewhat less courtesy than
+cordiality, and less afraid of censure for veracity than adulation: he
+sent their fathers to hell, with no inclination to separate the child
+and parent: and now they are hugging him for it in his shroud! Would
+you ever have suspected them of being such lovers of justice?
+
+You must have mistaken my meaning; the thought never entered my head:
+the idea of destroying a single copy of Dante! And what effect would
+that produce? There must be fifty, or near it, in various parts of
+Italy.
+
+_Petrarca._ I spoke of you.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Of me! My poetry is vile; I have already thrown into the
+fire all of it within my reach.
+
+_Petrarca._ Poetry was not the question. We neither of us are such
+poets as we thought ourselves when we were younger, and as younger men
+think us still. I meant your _Decameron_; in which there is more
+character, more nature, more invention, than either modern or ancient
+Italy, or than Greece, from whom she derived her whole inheritance,
+ever claimed or ever knew. Would you consume a beautiful meadow
+because there are reptiles in it; or because a few grubs hereafter may
+be generated by the succulence of the grass?
+
+_Boccaccio._ You amaze me: you utterly confound me.
+
+_Petrarca._ If you would eradicate twelve or thirteen of the
+_Novelle_, and insert the same number of better, which you could
+easily do within as many weeks, I should be heartily glad to see it
+done. Little more than a tenth of the _Decameron_ is bad: less than a
+twentieth of the _Divina Commedia_ is good.
+
+_Boccaccio._ So little?
+
+_Petrarca._ Let me never seem irreverent to our master.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Speak plainly and fearlessly, Francesco! Malice and
+detraction are strangers to you.
+
+_Petrarca._ Well then: at least sixteen parts in twenty of the
+_Inferno_ and _Purgatorio_ are detestable, both in poetry and
+principle: the higher parts are excellent indeed.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I have been reading the _Paradiso_ more recently. Here it
+is, under the pillow. It brings me happier dreams than the others, and
+takes no more time in bringing them. Preparation for my lectures made
+me remember a great deal of the poem. I did not request my auditors to
+admire the beauty of the metrical version:
+
+      Osanna sanctus deus Sabbaoth,
+      Super-illustrans charitate tuâ
+      Felices ignes horum Malahoth,
+
+nor these, with a slip of Italian between two pales of Latin:
+
+      Modicum,[14] et non videbitis me,
+      Et iterum, sorelle mie dilette,
+      Modicum, et vos videbitis me.
+
+I dare not repeat all I recollect of
+
+      Pepe Setan, Pepe Setan, aleppe,
+
+as there is no holy-water-sprinkler in the room: and you are aware
+that other dangers awaited me, had I been so imprudent as to show the
+Florentines the allusion of our poet. His _gergo_ is perpetually in
+play, and sometimes plays very roughly.
+
+_Petrarca._ We will talk again of him presently. I must now rejoice
+with you over the recovery and safety of your prodigal son, the
+_Decameron_.
+
+_Boccaccio._ So then, you would preserve at any rate my favourite
+volume from the threatened conflagration.
+
+_Petrarca._ Had I lived at the time of Dante, I would have given him
+the same advice in the same circumstances. Yet how different is the
+tendency of the two productions! Yours is somewhat too licentious; and
+young men, in whose nature, or rather in whose education and habits,
+there is usually this failing, will read you with more pleasure than
+is commendable or innocent. Yet the very time they occupy with you,
+would perhaps be spent in the midst of those excesses or
+irregularities, to which the moralist, in his utmost severity, will
+argue that your pen directs them. Now there are many who are fond of
+standing on the brink of precipices, and who nevertheless are as
+cautious as any of falling in. And there are minds desirous of being
+warmed by description, which without this warmth might seek excitement
+among the things described.
+
+I would not tell you in health what I tell you in convalescence, nor
+urge you to compose what I dissuade you from cancelling. After this
+avowal, I do declare to you, Giovanni, that in my opinion, the very
+idlest of your tales will do the world as much good as evil; not
+reckoning the pleasure of reading, nor the exercise and recreation of
+the mind, which in themselves are good. What I reprove you for, is the
+indecorous and uncleanly; and these, I trust, you will abolish. Even
+these, however, may repel from vice the ingenuous and graceful spirit,
+and can never lead any such toward them. Never have you taken an
+inhuman pleasure in blunting and fusing the affections at the furnace
+of the passions; never, in hardening by sour sagacity and ungenial
+strictures, that delicacy which is more productive of innocence and
+happiness, more estranged from every track and tendency of their
+opposites, than what in cold, crude systems hath holden the place and
+dignity of the highest virtue. May you live, O my friend, in the
+enjoyment of health, to substitute the facetious for the licentious,
+the simple for the extravagant, the true and characteristic for the
+indefinite and diffuse.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Boccaccio._ And after all this, can you bear to think what I am?
+
+_Petrarca._ Complacently and joyfully; venturing, nevertheless, to
+offer you a friend's advice.
+
+Enter into the mind and heart of your own creatures: think of them
+long, entirely, solely: never of style, never of self, never of
+critics, cracked or sound. Like the miles of an open country, and of
+an ignorant population, when they are correctly measured they become
+smaller. In the loftiest rooms and richest entablatures are suspended
+the most spider-webs; and the quarry out of which palaces are erected
+is the nursery of nettle and bramble.
+
+_Boccaccio._ It is better to keep always in view such writers as
+Cicero, than to run after those idlers who throw stones that can never
+reach us.
+
+_Petrarca._ If you copied him to perfection, and on no occasion lost
+sight of him, you would be an indifferent, not to say a bad writer.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I begin to think you are in the right. Well then,
+retrenching some of my licentious tales, I must endeavour to fill up
+the vacancy with some serious and some pathetic.
+
+_Petrarca._ I am heartily glad to hear of this decision; for,
+admirable as you are in the jocose, you descend from your natural
+position when you come to the convivial and the festive. You were
+placed among the Affections, to move and master them, and gifted with
+the rod that sweetens the fount of tears. My nature leads me also to
+the pathetic; in which, however, an imbecile writer may obtain
+celebrity. Even the hard-hearted are fond of such reading, when they
+are fond of any; and nothing is easier in the world than to find and
+accumulate its sufferings. Yet this very profusion and luxuriance of
+misery is the reason why few have excelled in describing it. The eye
+wanders over the mass without noticing the peculiarities. To mark them
+distinctly is the work of genius; a work so rarely performed, that, if
+time and space may be compared, specimens of it stand at wider
+distances than the trophies of Sesostris. Here we return again to the
+_Inferno_ of Dante, who overcame the difficulty. In this vast desert
+are its greater and its less oasis; Ugolino and Francesca di Rimini.
+The peopled region is peopled chiefly with monsters and moschitoes:
+the rest for the most part is sand and suffocation.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Ah! had Dante remained through life the pure solitary
+lover of Bice, his soul had been gentler, tranquiller, and more
+generous. He scarcely hath described half the curses he went through,
+nor the roads he took on the journey: theology, politics, and that
+barbican of the _Inferno_, marriage, surrounded with its
+
+      Selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte.
+
+Admirable is indeed the description of Ugolino, to whoever can endure
+the sight of an old soldier gnawing at the scalp of an old archbishop.
+
+_Petrarca._ The thirty lines from
+
+      Ed io sentii,
+
+are unequalled by any other continuous thirty in the whole dominions
+of poetry.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Give me rather the six on Francesca: for if in the former
+I find the simple, vigorous, clear narration, I find also what I would
+not wish, the features of Ugolino reflected full in Dante. The two
+characters are similar in themselves; hard, cruel, inflexible,
+malignant, but, whenever moved, moved powerfully. In Francesca, with
+the faculty of divine spirits, he leaves his own nature (not indeed
+the exact representative of theirs) and converts all his strength into
+tenderness. The great poet, like the original man of the Platonists,
+is double, possessing the further advantage of being able to drop one
+half at his option, and to resume it. Some of the tenderest on paper
+have no sympathies beyond; and some of the austerest in their
+intercourse with their fellow-creatures have deluged the world with
+tears. It is not from the rose that the bee gathers her honey, but
+often from the most acrid and the most bitter leaves and petals:
+
+      Quando leggemmo il disiato viso
+        Esser baciato di cotanto amante,
+      Questi, chi mai da me non sia diviso!
+        La bocca mi baciò tutto tremante ...
+      _Galeotto_ fù il libro, e chi lo scrisse ...
+        Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante.
+
+In the midst of her punishment, Francesca, when she comes to the
+tenderest part of her story, tells it with complacency and delight;
+and, instead of naming Paolo, which indeed she never has done from the
+beginning, she now designates him as
+
+      Questi chi mai da me non sia diviso!
+
+Are we not impelled to join in her prayer, wishing them happier in
+their union?
+
+_Petrarca._ If there be no sin in it.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Ay, and even if there be ... God help us!
+
+What a sweet aspiration in each cesura of the verse! three love-sighs
+fixed and incorporate! Then, when she hath said
+
+      La bocca mi baciò, tutto tremante,
+
+she stops: she would avert the eyes of Dante from her: he looks for
+the sequel: she thinks he looks severely: she says: '_Galeotto_ is the
+name of the book,' fancying by this timorous little flight she has
+drawn him far enough from the nest of her young loves. No, the eagle
+beak of Dante and his piercing eyes are yet over her.
+
+'_Galeotto_ is the name of the book.'
+
+'What matters that?'
+
+'And of the writer.'
+
+'Or that either?'
+
+At last she disarms him: but how?
+
+'_That_ day we read no more.'
+
+Such a depth of intuitive judgment, such a delicacy of perception,
+exists not in any other work of human genius; and from an author who,
+on almost all occasions, in this part of the work, betrays a
+deplorable want of it.
+
+_Petrarca._ Perfection of poetry! The greater is my wonder at
+discovering nothing else of the same order or cast in this whole
+section of the poem. He who fainted at the recital of Francesca,
+
+      And he who fell as a dead body falls,
+
+would exterminate all the inhabitants of every town in Italy! What
+execrations against Florence, Pistoia, Siena, Pisa, Genoa! what hatred
+against the whole human race! what exultation and merriment at eternal
+and immitigable sufferings! Seeing this, I cannot but consider the
+_Inferno_ as the most immoral and impious book that ever was written.
+Yet, hopeless that our country shall ever see again such poetry, and
+certain that without it our future poets would be more feebly urged
+forward to excellence, I would have dissuaded Dante from cancelling
+it, if this had been his intention. Much however as I admire his
+vigour and severity of style in the description of Ugolino, I
+acknowledge with you that I do not discover so much imagination, so
+much creative power, as in the Francesca. I find indeed a minute
+detail of probable events: but this is not all I want in a poet: it is
+not even all I want most in a scene of horror. Tribunals of justice,
+dens of murderers, wards of hospitals, schools of anatomy, will afford
+us nearly the same sensations, if we hear them from an accurate
+observer, a clear reporter, a skilful surgeon, or an attentive nurse.
+There is nothing of sublimity in the horrific of Dante, which there
+always is in Aeschylus and Homer. If you, Giovanni, had described so
+nakedly the reception of Guiscardo's heart by Gismonda, or Lorenzo's
+head by Lisabetta, we could hardly have endured it.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Prithee, dear Francesco, do not place me over Dante: I
+stagger at the idea of approaching him.
+
+_Petrarca._ Never think I am placing you blindly or indiscriminately.
+I have faults to find with you, and even here. Lisabetta should by no
+means have been represented cutting off the head of her lover, '_as
+well as she could_,' with a clasp-knife. This is shocking and
+improbable. She might have found it already cut off by her brothers,
+in order to bury the corpse more commodiously and expeditiously. Nor
+indeed is it likely that she should have entrusted it to her
+waiting-maid, who carried home in her bosom a treasure so dear to her,
+and found so unexpectedly and so lately.
+
+_Boccaccio._ That is true: I will correct the oversight. Why do we
+never hear of our faults until everybody knows them, and until they
+stand in record against us?
+
+_Petrarca._ Because our ears are closed to truth and friendship for
+some time after the triumphal course of composition. We are too
+sensitive for the gentlest touch; and when we really have the most
+infirmity, we are angry to be told that we have any.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Ah, Francesco! thou art poet from scalp to heel: but what
+other would open his breast as thou hast done! They show
+ostentatiously far worse weaknesses; but the most honest of the tribe
+would forswear himself on this. Again, I acknowledge it, you have
+reason to complain of Lisabetta and Gismonda.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Petrarca._ In my delight to listen to you after so long an absence, I
+have been too unwary; and you have been speaking too much for one
+infirm. Greatly am I to blame, not to have moderated my pleasure and
+your vivacity. You must rest now: to-morrow we will renew our
+conversation.
+
+_Boccaccio._ God bless thee, Francesco! I shall be talking with thee
+all night in my slumbers. Never have I seen thee with such pleasure as
+to-day, excepting when I was deemed worthy by our fellow-citizens of
+bearing to thee, and of placing within this dear hand of thine, the
+sentence of recall from banishment, and when my tears streamed over
+the ordinance as I read it, whereby thy paternal lands were redeemed
+from the public treasury.
+
+Again God bless thee! Those tears were not quite exhausted: take the
+last of them.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[14] It may puzzle an Englishman to read the lines beginning with
+'Modicum', so as to give the metre. The secret is, to draw out _et_
+into a disyllable, et-te, as the Italians do, who pronounce Latin
+verse, if possible, worse than we, adding a syllable to such as end
+with a consonant.
+
+
+THIRD DAY'S INTERVIEW
+
+It being now the Lord's day, Messer Francesco thought it meet that he
+should rise early in the morning and bestir himself, to hear mass in
+the parish church at Certaldo. Whereupon he went on tiptoe, if so
+weighty a man could indeed go in such a fashion, and lifted softly the
+latch of Ser Giovanni's chamber door, that he might salute him ere he
+departed, and occasion no wonder at the step he was about to take. He
+found Ser Giovanni fast asleep, with the missal wide open across his
+nose, and a pleasant smile on his genial, joyous mouth. Ser Francesco
+leaned over the couch, closed his hands together, and looking with
+even more than his usual benignity, said in a low voice:
+
+'God bless thee, gentle soul! the mother of purity and innocence
+protect thee!'
+
+He then went into the kitchen, where he found the girl Assunta, and
+mentioned his resolution. She informed him that the horse had eaten
+his two beans,[15] and was as strong as a lion and as ready as a
+lover. Ser Francesco patted her on the cheek, and called her
+_semplicetta_! She was overjoyed at this honour from so great a man,
+the bosom friend of her good master, whom she had always thought the
+greatest man in the world, not excepting Monsignore, until he told her
+he was only a dog confronted with Ser Francesco. She tripped alertly
+across the paved court into the stable, and took down the saddle and
+bridle from the farther end of the rack. But Ser Francesco, with his
+natural politeness, would not allow her to equip his palfrey.
+
+'This is not the work for maidens,' said he; 'return to the house,
+good girl!'
+
+She lingered a moment, then went away; but, mistrusting the dexterity
+of Ser Francesco, she stopped and turned back again, and peeped
+through the half-closed door, and heard sundry sobs and wheezes round
+about the girth. Ser Francesco's wind ill seconded his intention; and,
+although he had thrown the saddle valiantly and stoutly in its
+station, yet the girths brought him into extremity. She entered again,
+and dissembling the reason, asked him whether he would not take a
+small beaker of the sweet white wine before he set out, and offered to
+girdle the horse while his Reverence bitted and bridled him. Before
+any answer could be returned, she had begun. And having now
+satisfactorily executed her undertaking, she felt irrepressible
+delight and glee at being able to do what Ser Francesco had failed in.
+He was scarcely more successful with his allotment of the labour;
+found unlooked-for intricacies and complications in the machinery,
+wondered that human wit could not simplify it, and declared that the
+animal had never exhibited such restiveness before. In fact, he never
+had experienced the same grooming. At this conjuncture, a green cap
+made its appearance, bound with straw-coloured ribbon, and surmounted
+with two bushy sprigs of hawthorn, of which the globular buds were
+swelling, and some bursting, but fewer yet open. It was young
+Simplizio Nardi, who sometimes came on the Sunday morning to sweep the
+courtyard for Assunta.
+
+'Oh! this time you are come just when you were wanted,' said the girl.
+
+'Bridle, directly, Ser Francesco's horse, and then go away about your
+business.'
+
+The youth blushed, and kissed Ser Francesco's hand, begging his
+permission. It was soon done. He then held the stirrup; and Ser
+Francesco, with scarcely three efforts, was seated and erect on the
+saddle. The horse, however, had somewhat more inclination for the
+stable than for the expedition; and, as Assunta was handing to the
+rider his long ebony staff, bearing an ivory caduceus, the quadruped
+turned suddenly round. Simplizio called him _bestiaccia_! and then,
+softening it, _poco garbato_! and proposed to Ser Francesco that he
+should leave the bastone behind, and take the crab-switch he presented
+to him, giving at the same time a sample of its efficacy, which
+covered the long grizzle hair of the worthy quadruped with a profusion
+of pink blossoms, like embroidery. The offer was declined; but Assunta
+told Simplizio to carry it himself, and to walk by the side of Ser
+Canonico quite up to the church porch, having seen what a sad,
+dangerous beast his reverence had under him.
+
+With perfect good will, partly in the pride of obedience to Assunta,
+and partly to enjoy the renown of accompanying a canon of Holy Church,
+Simplizio did as she enjoined.
+
+And now the sound of village bells, in many hamlets and convents and
+churches out of sight, was indistinctly heard, and lost again; and at
+last the five of Certaldo seemed to crow over the faintness of them
+all. The freshness of the morning was enough of itself to excite the
+spirits of youth; a portion of which never fails to descend on years
+that are far removed from it, if the mind has partaken in innocent
+mirth while it was its season and its duty to enjoy it. Parties of
+young and old passed the canonico and his attendant with mute respect,
+bowing and bare-headed; for that ebony staff threw its spell over the
+tongue, which the frank and hearty salutation of the bearer was
+inadequate to break. Simplizio, once or twice, attempted to call back
+an intimate of the same age with himself; but the utmost he could
+obtain was a _riveritissimo_! and a genuflexion to the rider. It is
+reported that a heart-burning rose up from it in the breast of a
+cousin, some days after, too distinctly apparent in the long-drawn
+appellation of _Gnor_[16] Simplizio.
+
+Ser Francesco moved gradually forward, his steed picking his way along
+the lane, and looking fixedly on the stones with all the sobriety of a
+mineralogist. He himself was well satisfied with the pace, and told
+Simplizio to be sparing of the switch, unless in case of a hornet or a
+gadfly. Simplizio smiled, toward the hedge, and wondered at the
+condescension of so great a theologian and astrologer, in joking with
+him about the gadflies and hornets in the beginning of April. 'Ah!
+there are men in the world who can make wit out of anything!' said he
+to himself.
+
+As they approached the walls of the town, the whole country was
+pervaded by a stirring and diversified air of gladness. Laughter and
+songs and flutes and viols, inviting voices and complying responses,
+mingled with merry bells and with processional hymns, along the
+woodland paths and along the yellow meadows. It was really the _Lord's
+Day_, for He made His creatures happy in it, and their hearts were
+thankful. Even the cruel had ceased from cruelty; and the rich man
+alone exacted from the animal his daily labour. Ser Francesco made
+this remark, and told his youthful guide that he had never been before
+where he could not walk to church on a Sunday; and that nothing should
+persuade him to urge the speed of his beast, on the seventh day,
+beyond his natural and willing foot's-pace. He reached the gates of
+Certaldo more than half an hour before the time of service, and he
+found laurels suspended over them, and being suspended; and many
+pleasant and beautiful faces were protruded between the ranks of
+gentry and clergy who awaited him. Little did he expect such an
+attendance; but Fra Biagio of San Vivaldo, who himself had offered no
+obsequiousness or respect, had scattered the secret of his visit
+throughout the whole country. A young poet, the most celebrated in the
+town, approached the canonico with a long scroll of verses, which fell
+below the knee, beginning:
+
+      How shall we welcome our illustrious guest?
+
+To which Ser Francesco immediately replied: 'Take your favourite
+maiden, lead the dance with her, and bid all your friends follow; you
+have a good half-hour for it.'
+
+Universal applauses succeeded, the music struck up, couples were
+instantly formed. The gentry on this occasion led out the
+cittadinanza, as they usually do in the villeggiatura, rarely in the
+carnival, and never at other times. The elder of the priests stood
+round in their sacred vestments, and looked with cordiality and
+approbation on the youths, whose hands and arms could indeed do much,
+and did it, but whose active eyes could rarely move upward the
+modester of their partners.
+
+While the elder of the clergy were thus gathering the fruits of their
+liberal cares and paternal exhortations, some of the younger looked on
+with a tenderer sentiment, not unmingled with regret. Suddenly the
+bells ceased; the figure of the dance was broken; all hastened into
+the church; and many hands that joined on the green, met together at
+the font, and touched the brow reciprocally with its lustral waters,
+in soul-devotion.
+
+After the service, and after a sermon a good church-hour in length to
+gratify him, enriched with compliments from all authors, Christian and
+Pagan, informing him at the conclusion that, although he had been
+crowned in the Capitol, he must die, being born mortal, Ser Francesco
+rode homeward. The sermon seemed to have sunk deeply into him, and
+even into the horse under him, for both of them nodded, both snorted,
+and one stumbled. Simplizio was twice fain to cry:
+
+'Ser Canonico! Riverenza! in this country if we sleep before dinner it
+does us harm. There are stones in the road, Ser Canonico, loose as
+eggs in a nest, and pretty nigh as thick together, huge as mountains.'
+
+'Good lad!' said Ser Francesco, rubbing his eyes, 'toss the biggest of
+them out of the way, and never mind the rest.'
+
+The horse, although he walked, shuffled almost into an amble as he
+approached the stable, and his master looked up at it with nearly the
+same contentment. Assunta had been ordered to wait for his return, and
+cried:
+
+'O Ser Francesco! you are looking at our long apricot, that runs the
+whole length of the stable and barn, covered with blossoms as the old
+white hen is with feathers. You must come in the summer, and eat this
+fine fruit with Signor Padrone. You cannot think how ruddy and golden
+and sweet and mellow it is. There are peaches in all the fields, and
+plums, and pears, and apples, but there is not another apricot for
+miles and miles. Ser Giovanni brought the stone from Naples before I
+was born: a lady gave it to him when she had eaten only half the fruit
+off it: but perhaps you may have seen her, for you have ridden as far
+as Rome, or beyond. Padrone looks often at the fruit, and eats it
+willingly; and I have seen him turn over the stones in his plate, and
+choose one out from the rest, and put it into his pocket, but never
+plant it.'
+
+'Where is the youth?' inquired Ser Francesco.
+
+'Gone away,' answered the maiden.
+
+'I wanted to thank him,' said the Canonico.
+
+'May I tell him so?' asked she.
+
+'And give him ...' continued he, holding a piece of silver.
+
+'I will give him something of my own, if he goes on and behaves well,'
+said she; 'but Signor Padrone would drive him away for ever, I am
+sure, if he were tempted in an evil hour to accept a quattrino for any
+service he could render the friends of the house.'
+
+Ser Francesco was delighted with the graceful animation of this
+ingenuous girl, and asked her, with a little curiosity, how she could
+afford to make him a present.
+
+'I do not intend to make him a present,' she replied: 'but it is
+better he should be rewarded by me,' she blushed and hesitated, 'or by
+Signor Padrone,' she added, 'than by your reverence. He has not done
+half his duty yet; not half. I will teach him: he is quite a child;
+four months younger than me.'
+
+Ser Francesco went into the house, saying to himself at the doorway:
+
+'Truth, innocence, and gentle manners have not yet left the earth.
+There are sermons that never make the ears weary. I have heard but few
+of them, and come from church for this.'
+
+Whether Simplizio had obeyed some private signal from Assunta, or
+whether his own delicacy had prompted him to disappear, he was now
+again in the stable, and the manger was replenished with hay. A bucket
+was soon after heard ascending from the well; and then two words:
+'Thanks, Simplizio.'
+
+When Petrarca entered the chamber, he found Boccaccio with his
+breviary in his hand, not looking into it indeed, but repeating a
+thanksgiving in an audible and impassioned tone of voice. Seeing Ser
+Francesco, he laid the book down beside him, and welcomed him.
+
+'I hope you have an appetite after your ride,' said he, 'for you have
+sent home a good dinner before you.'
+
+Ser Francesco did not comprehend him, and expressed it not in words
+but in looks.
+
+'I am afraid you will dine sadly late to-day: noon has struck this
+half-hour, and you must wait another, I doubt. However, by good luck,
+I had a couple of citrons in the house, intended to assuage my thirst
+if the fever had continued. This being over, by God's mercy, I will
+try (please God!) whether we two greyhounds cannot be a match for a
+leveret.'
+
+'How is this?' said Ser Francesco.
+
+'Young Marc-Antonio Grilli, the cleverest lad in the parish at noosing
+any wild animal, is our patron of the feast. He has wanted for many a
+day to say something in the ear of Matilda Vercelli. Bringing up the
+leveret to my bedside, and opening the lips, and cracking the
+knuckles, and turning the foot round to show the quality and quantity
+of the hair upon it, and to prove that it really and truly was a
+leveret, and might be eaten without offence to my teeth, he informed
+me that he had left his mother in the yard, ready to dress it for me;
+she having been cook to the prior. He protested he owed the _crowned
+martyr_ a forest of leverets, boars, deers, and everything else within
+them, for having commanded the most backward girls to dance directly.
+Whereupon he darted forth at Matilda, saying, "The _crowned martyr_
+orders it," seizing both her hands, and swinging her round before she
+knew what she was about. He soon had an opportunity of applying a
+word, no doubt as dexterously as hand or foot; and she said
+submissively, but seriously, and almost sadly, "Marc-Antonio, now all
+the people have seen it, they will think it."
+
+'And after a pause:
+
+'"I am quite ashamed: and so should you be: are not you now?"
+
+'The others had run into the church. Matilda, who scarcely had noticed
+it, cried suddenly:
+
+'"O Santissima! we are quite alone."
+
+'"Will you be mine?" cried he, enthusiastically.
+
+'"Oh! they will hear you in the church," replied she.
+
+'"They shall, they shall," cried he again, as loudly.
+
+'"If you will only go away."
+
+'"And then?"
+
+'"Yes, yes, indeed."
+
+'"The Virgin hears you: fifty saints are witnesses."
+
+'"Ah! they know you made me: they will look kindly on us."
+
+'He released her hand: she ran into the church, doubling her veil (I
+will answer for her) at the door, and kneeling as near it as she could
+find a place.
+
+'"By St. Peter," said Marc-Antonio, "if there is a leveret in the
+wood, the _crowned martyr_ shall dine upon it this blessed day." And
+he bounded off, and set about his occupation. I inquired what induced
+him to designate you by such a title. He answered, that everybody knew
+you had received the crown of martyrdom at Rome, between the pope and
+antipope, and had performed many miracles, for which they had
+canonized you, and that you wanted only to die to become a saint.'
+
+The leveret was now served up, cut into small pieces, and covered with
+a rich tenacious sauce, composed of sugar, citron, and various spices.
+The appetite of Ser Francesco was contagious. Never was dinner more
+enjoyed by two companions, and never so much by a greater number. One
+glass of a fragrant wine, the colour of honey, and unmixed with water,
+crowned the repast. Ser Francesco then went into his own chamber, and
+found, on his ample mattress, a cool, refreshing sleep, quite
+sufficient to remove all the fatigues of the morning; and Ser Giovanni
+lowered the pillow against which he had seated himself, and fell into
+his usual repose. Their separation was not of long continuance: and,
+the religious duties of the Sabbath having been performed, a few
+reflections on literature were no longer interdicted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Petrarca._ The land, O Giovanni, of your early youth, the land of my
+only love, fascinates us no longer. Italy is our country; and not ours
+only, but every man's, wherever may have been his wanderings, wherever
+may have been his birth, who watches with anxiety the recovery of the
+Arts, and acknowledges the supremacy of Genius. Besides, it is in
+Italy at last that all our few friends are resident. Yours were left
+behind you at Paris in your adolescence, if indeed any friendship can
+exist between a Florentine and a Frenchman: mine at Avignon were
+Italians, and older for the most part than myself. Here we know that
+we are beloved by some, and esteemed by many. It indeed gave me
+pleasure the first morning as I lay in bed, to overhear the fondness
+and earnestness which a worthy priest was expressing in your behalf.
+
+_Boccaccio._ In mine?
+
+_Petrarca._ Yes indeed: what wonder?
+
+_Boccaccio._ A worthy priest?
+
+_Petrarca._ None else, certainly.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Heard in bed! dreaming, dreaming; ay?
+
+_Petrarca._ No indeed: my eyes and ears were wide open.
+
+_Boccaccio._ The little parlour opens into your room. But what priest
+could that be? Canonico Casini? He only comes when we have a roast of
+thrushes, or some such small matter, at table: and this is not the
+season; they are pairing. Plover eggs might tempt him hitherward. If
+he heard a plover he would not be easy, and would fain make her drop
+her oblation before she had settled her nest.
+
+_Petrarca._ It is right and proper that you should be informed who the
+clergyman was, to whom you are under an obligation.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Tell me something about it, for truly I am at a loss to
+conjecture.
+
+_Petrarca._ He must unquestionably have been expressing a kind and
+ardent solicitude for your eternal welfare. The first words I heard on
+awakening were these:
+
+'Ser Giovanni, although the best of masters ...'
+
+_Boccaccio._ Those were Assuntina's.
+
+_Petrarca._ '... may hardly be quite so holy (not being priest or
+friar) as your Reverence.'
+
+She was interrupted by the question: 'What conversation holdeth he?'
+
+She answered:
+
+'He never talks of loving our neighbour with all our heart, all our
+soul, and all our strength, although he often gives away the last loaf
+in the pantry.'
+
+_Boccaccio._ It was she! Why did she say that? the slut!
+
+_Petrarca._ 'He doth well,' replied the confessor. 'Of the Church, of
+the brotherhood, that is, of me, what discourses holdeth he?'
+
+I thought the question an indiscreet one; but confessors vary in their
+advances to the seat of truth.
+
+She proceeded to answer:
+
+'He never said anything about the power of the Church to absolve us,
+if we should happen to go astray a little in good company, like your
+Reverence.'
+
+Here, it is easy to perceive, is some slight ambiguity. Evidently she
+meant to say, by the seduction of 'bad' company, and to express that
+his Reverence had asserted his power of absolution; which is
+undeniable.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I have my version.
+
+_Petrarca._ What may yours be?
+
+_Boccaccio._ Frate Biagio; broad as daylight; the whole frock round!
+
+I would wager a flask of oil against a turnip, that he laid another
+trap for a penance. Let us see how he went on. I warrant, as he
+warmed, he left off limping in his paces, and bore hard upon the
+bridle.
+
+_Petrarca._ 'Much do I fear,' continued the expositor, 'he never spoke
+to thee, child, about another world.'
+
+There was a silence of some continuance.
+
+'Speak!' said the confessor.
+
+'No indeed he never did, poor Padrone!' was the slow and evidently
+reluctant avowal of the maiden; for, in the midst of the
+acknowledgment her sighs came through the crevices of the door: then,
+without any farther interrogation, and with little delay, she added:
+
+'But he often makes this look like it.'
+
+_Boccaccio._ And now, if he had carried a holy scourge, it would not
+have been on his shoulders that he would have laid it.
+
+_Petrarca._ Zeal carries men often too far afloat; and confessors in
+general wish to have the sole steerage of the conscience. When she
+told him that your benignity made this world another heaven, he warmly
+and sharply answered:
+
+'It is only we who ought to do that.'
+
+'Hush,' said the maiden; and I verily believe she at that moment set
+her back against the door, to prevent the sounds from coming through
+the crevices, for the rest of them seemed to be just over my
+night-cap. 'Hush,' said she, in the whole length of that softest of
+all articulations. 'There is Ser Francesco in the next room: he sleeps
+long into the morning, but he is so clever a clerk, he may understand
+you just the same. I doubt whether he thinks Ser Giovanni in the wrong
+for making so many people quite happy; and if he should, it would
+grieve me very much to think he blamed Ser Giovanni.'
+
+'Who is Ser Francesco?' he asked, in a low voice.
+
+'Ser Canonico,' she answered.
+
+'Of what Duomo?' continued he.
+
+'Who knows?' was the reply; 'but he is Padrone's heart's friend, for
+certain.'
+
+'Cospetto di Bacco! It can then be no other than Petrarca. He makes
+rhymes and love like the devil. Don't listen to him, or you are
+undone. Does he love you too, as well as Padrone?' he asked, still
+lowering his voice.
+
+'I cannot tell that matter,' she answered, somewhat impatiently; 'but
+I love him.'
+
+'To my face!' cried he, smartly.
+
+'To the Santissima!' replied she, instantaneously; 'for have not I
+told your Reverence he is Padrone's true heart's friend! And are not
+you my confessor, when you come on purpose?'
+
+'True, true!' answered he; 'but there are occasions when we are
+shocked by the confession, and wish it made less daringly.'
+
+'I was bold; but who can help loving him who loves my good Padrone?'
+said she, much more submissively.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Brave girl, for that!
+
+Dog of a Frate! They are all of a kidney; all of a kennel. I would
+dilute their meal well and keep them low. They should not waddle and
+wallop in every hollow lane, nor loll out their watery tongues at
+every wash-pool in the parish. We shall hear, I trust, no more about
+Fra Biagio in the house while you are with us. Ah! were it then for
+life.
+
+_Petrarca._ The man's prudence may be reasonably doubted, but it were
+uncharitable to question his sincerity. Could a neighbour, a religious
+one in particular, be indifferent to the welfare of Boccaccio, or any
+belonging to him?
+
+_Boccaccio._ I do not complain of his indifference. Indifferent! no,
+not he. He might as well be, though. My villetta here is my castle: it
+was my father's; it was his father's. Cowls did not hang to dry upon
+the same cord with caps in their podere; they shall not in mine. The
+girl is an honest girl, Francesco, though I say it. Neither she nor
+any other shall be befooled and bamboozled under my roof. Methinks
+Holy Church might contrive some improvement upon confession.
+
+_Petrarca._ Hush! Giovanni! But, it being a matter of discipline, who
+knows but she might.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Discipline! ay, ay, ay! faith and troth there are some
+who want it.
+
+_Petrarca._ You really terrify me. These are sad surmises.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Sad enough: but I am keeper of my handmaiden's probity.
+
+_Petrarca._ It could not be kept safer.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I wonder what the Frate would be putting into her head?
+
+_Petrarca._ Nothing, nothing: be assured.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Why did he ask her all those questions?
+
+_Petrarca._ Confessors do occasionally take circuitous ways to arrive
+at the secrets of the human heart.
+
+_Boccaccio._ And sometimes they drive at it, me thinks, a whit too
+directly. He had no business to make remarks about me.
+
+_Petrarca._ Anxiety.
+
+_Boccaccio._ 'Fore God, Francesco, he shall have more of that; for I
+will shut him out the moment I am again up and stirring, though he
+stand but a nose's length off. I have no fear about the girl; no
+suspicion of her. He might whistle to the moon on a frosty night, and
+expect as reasonably her descending. Never was a man so entirely at
+his ease as I am about that; never, never. She is adamant; a bright
+sword now first unscabbarded; no breath can hang about it. A seal of
+beryl, of chrysolite, of ruby; to make impressions (all in good time
+and proper place though) and receive none: incapable, just as they
+are, of splitting, or cracking, or flawing, or harbouring dirt. Let
+him mind that. Such, I assure you, is that poor little wench,
+Assuntina.
+
+_Petrarca._ I am convinced that so well-behaved a young creature as
+Assunta----
+
+_Boccaccio._ Right! Assunta is her name by baptism; we usually call
+her Assuntina, because she is slender, and scarcely yet full-grown,
+perhaps: but who can tell?
+
+As for those friars, I never was a friend to impudence: I hate loose
+suggestions. In girls' minds you will find little dust but what is
+carried there by gusts from without. They seldom want sweeping; when
+they do, the broom should be taken from behind the house door, and the
+master should be the sacristan.
+
+... Scarcely were these words uttered when Assunta was heard running
+up the stairs; and the next moment she rapped. Being ordered to come
+in, she entered with a willow twig in her hand, from the middle of
+which willow twig (for she held the two ends together) hung a fish,
+shining with green and gold.
+
+'What hast there, young maiden?' said Ser Francesco.
+
+'A fish, Riverenza!' answered she. 'In Tuscany we call it _tinca_.'
+
+_Petrarca._ I too am a little of a Tuscan.
+
+_Assunta._ Indeed! well, you really speak very like one, but only more
+sweetly and slowly. I wonder how you can keep up with Signor
+Padrone--he talks fast when he is in health; and you have made him so.
+Why did not you come before? Your Reverence has surely been at
+Certaldo in time past.
+
+_Petrarca._ Yes, before thou wert born.
+
+_Assunta._ Ah, sir! it must have been long ago then.
+
+_Petrarca._ Thou hast just entered upon life.
+
+_Assunta._ I am no child.
+
+_Petrarca._ What then art thou?
+
+_Assunta._ I know not: I have lost both father and mother; there is a
+name for such as I am.
+
+_Petrarca._ And a place in heaven.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Who brought us that fish, Assunta? hast paid for it?
+there must be seven pounds: I never saw the like.
+
+_Assunta._ I could hardly lift up my apron to my eyes with it in my
+hand. Luca, who brought it all the way from the Padule, could scarcely
+be entreated to eat a morsel of bread or sit down.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Give him a flask or two of our wine; he will like it
+better than the sour puddle of the plain.
+
+_Assunta._ He is gone back.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Gone! who is he, pray?
+
+_Assunta._ Luca, to be sure.
+
+_Boccaccio._ What Luca?
+
+_Assunta._ Dominedio! O Riverenza! how sadly must Ser Giovanni, my
+poor Padrone, have lost his memory in this cruel long illness! he
+cannot recollect young Luca of the Bientola, who married Maria.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I never heard of either, to the best of my knowledge.
+
+_Assunta._ Be pleased to mention this in your prayers to-night, Ser
+Canonico! May Our Lady soon give him back his memory! and everything
+else she has been pleased (only in play, I hope) to take away from
+him! Ser Francesco, you must have heard all over the world how Maria
+Gargarelli, who lived in the service of our paroco, somehow was
+outwitted by Satanasso. Monsignore thought the paroco had not done all
+he might have done against his wiles and craftiness, and sent his
+Reverence over to the monastery in the mountains, Laverna yonder, to
+make him look sharp; and there he is yet.
+
+And now does Signor Padrone recollect?
+
+_Boccaccio._ Rather more distinctly.
+
+_Assunta._ Ah me! Rather more distinctly! have patience, Signor
+Padrone! I am too venturous, God help me! But, Riverenza, when Maria
+was the scorn or the abhorrence of everybody else, excepting poor Luca
+Sabbatini, who had always cherished her, and excepting Signor Padrone,
+who had never seen her in his lifetime ... for paroco Snello said he
+desired no visits from any who took liberties with Holy Church ... as
+if Padrone did! Luca one day came to me out of breath, with money in
+his hand for our duck. Now it so happened that the duck, stuffed with
+noble chestnuts, was going to table at that instant. I told Signor
+Padrone....
+
+_Boccaccio._ Assunta, I never heard thee repeat so long and tiresome a
+story before, nor put thyself out of breath so. Come, we have had
+enough of it.
+
+_Petrarca._ She is mortified: pray let her proceed.
+
+_Boccaccio._ As you will.
+
+_Assunta._ I told Signor Padrone how Luca was lamenting that Maria was
+seized with an _imagination_.
+
+_Petrarca._ No wonder then she fell into misfortune, and her
+neighbours and friends avoided her.
+
+_Assunta._ Riverenza! how can you smile? Signor Padrone! and you too?
+You shook your head and sighed at it when it happened. The Demonio,
+who had caused all the first mischief, was not contented until he had
+given her the _imagination_.
+
+_Petrarca._ He could not have finished his work more effectually.
+
+_Assunta._ He was balked, however. Luca said:
+
+'She shall not die under her wrongs, please God!'
+
+I repeated the words to Signor Padrone.... He seems to listen,
+Riverenza! and will remember presently ... and Signor Padrone cut away
+one leg for himself, clean forgetting all the chestnuts inside, and
+said sharply, 'Give the bird to Luca; and, hark ye, bring back the
+minestra.'
+
+Maria loved Luca with all her heart, and Luca loved Maria with all
+his: but they both hated paroco Snello for such neglect about the evil
+one. And even Monsignore, who sent for Luca on purpose, had some
+difficulty in persuading him to forbear from choler and discourse. For
+Luca, who never swears, swore bitterly that the devil should play no
+such tricks again, nor alight on girls napping in the parsonage.
+Monsignore thought he intended to take violent possession, and to keep
+watch there himself without consent of the incumbent. 'I will have no
+scandal,' said Monsignore; so there was none. Maria, though she did
+indeed, as I told your Reverence, love her Luca dearly, yet she long
+refused to marry him, and cried very much at last on the wedding day,
+and said, as she entered the porch:
+
+'Luca! it is not yet too late to leave me.'
+
+He would have kissed her, but her face was upon his shoulder.
+
+Pievano Locatelli married them, and gave them his blessing: and going
+down from the altar, he said before the people, as he stood on the
+last step: 'Be comforted, child! be comforted! God above knows that
+thy husband is honest, and that thou art innocent.' Pievano's voice
+trembled, for he was an aged and holy man, and had walked two miles on
+the occasion. Pulcheria, his governante, eighty years old, carried an
+apronful of lilies to bestrew the altar; and partly from the lilies,
+and partly from the blessed angels who (although invisible) were
+present, the church was filled with fragrance. Many who heretofore had
+been frightened at hearing the mention of Maria's name, ventured now
+to walk up toward her; and some gave her needles, and some offered
+skeins of thread, and some ran home again for pots of honey.
+
+_Boccaccio._ And why didst not thou take her some trifle?
+
+_Assunta._ I had none.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Surely there are always such about the premises.
+
+_Assunta._ Not mine to give away.
+
+_Boccaccio._ So then at thy hands, Assunta, she went off not
+overladen. Ne'er a bone-bodkin out of thy bravery, ay?
+
+_Assunta._ I ran out knitting, with the woodbine and syringa in the
+basket for the parlour. I made the basket ... I and ... but myself
+chiefly, for boys are loiterers.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Well, well: why not bestow the basket, together with its
+rich contents?
+
+_Assunta._ I am ashamed to say it ... I covered my half-stocking with
+them as quickly as I could, and ran after her, and presented it. Not
+knowing what was under the flowers, and never minding the liberty I
+had taken, being a stranger to her, she accepted it as graciously as
+possible, and bade me be happy.
+
+_Petrarca._ I hope you have always kept her command.
+
+_Assunta._ Nobody is ever unhappy here, except Fra Biagio, who frets
+sometimes: but that may be the walk; or he may fancy Ser Giovanni to
+be worse than he really is.
+
+... Having now performed her mission and concluded her narrative, she
+bowed, and said:
+
+'Excuse me, Riverenza! excuse me, Signor Padrone! my arm aches with
+this great fish.'
+
+Then, bowing again, and moving her eyes modestly toward each, she
+added, 'with permission!' and left the chamber.
+
+'About the sposina,' after a pause began Ser Francesco: 'about the
+sposina, I do not see the matter clearly.'
+
+'You have studied too much for seeing all things clearly,' answered
+Ser Giovanni; 'you see only the greatest. In fine, the devil, on this
+count, is acquitted by acclamation; and the paroco Snello eats lettuce
+and chicory up yonder at Laverna. He has mendicant friars for his
+society every day; and snails, as pure as water can wash and boil
+them, for his repast on festivals. Under this discipline, if they keep
+it up, surely one devil out of legion will depart from him.'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[15] Literally, _due fave_, the expression on such occasions to
+signify a small quantity.
+
+[16] Contraction of _signor_, customary in Tuscany.
+
+
+FOURTH DAY'S INTERVIEW
+
+_Petrarca._ Giovanni, you are unsuspicious, and would scarcely see a
+monster in a minotaur. It is well, however, to draw good out of evil,
+and it is the peculiar gift of an elevated mind. Nevertheless, you
+must have observed, although with greater curiosity than concern, the
+slipperiness and tortuousness of your detractors.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Whatever they detract from me, they leave more than they
+can carry away. Beside, they always are detected.
+
+_Petrarca._ When they are detected, they raise themselves up fiercely,
+as if their nature were erect and they could reach your height.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Envy would conceal herself under the shadow and shelter
+of contemptuousness, but she swells too huge for the den she creeps
+into. Let her lie there and crack, and think no more about her. The
+people you have been talking of can find no greater and no other
+faults in my writings than I myself am willing to show them, and still
+more willing to correct. There are many things, as you have just now
+told me, very unworthy of their company.
+
+_Petrarca._ He who has much gold is none the poorer for having much
+silver too. When a king of old displayed his wealth and magnificence
+before a philosopher, the philosopher's exclamation was:
+
+'How many things are here which I do not want!'
+
+Does not the same reflection come upon us, when we have laid aside our
+compositions for a time, and look into them again more leisurely? Do
+we not wonder at our own profusion, and say like the philosopher:
+
+'How many things are here which I do not want!'
+
+It may happen that we pull up flowers with weeds; but better this than
+rankness. We must bear to see our first-born dispatched before our
+eyes, and give them up quietly.
+
+_Boccaccio._ The younger will be the most reluctant. There are poets
+among us who mistake in themselves the freckles of the hay-fever for
+beauty-spots. In another half-century their volumes will be inquired
+after; but only for the sake of cutting out an illuminated letter from
+the title-page, or of transplanting the willow at the end, that hangs
+so prettily over the tomb of Amaryllis. If they wish to be healthy and
+vigorous, let them open their bosoms to the breezes of Sunium; for the
+air of Latium is heavy and overcharged. Above all, they must remember
+two admonitions; first, that sweet things hurt digestion; secondly,
+that great sails are ill adapted to small vessels. What is there
+lovely in poetry unless there be moderation and composure? Are they
+not better than the hot, uncontrollable harlotry of a flaunting,
+dishevelled enthusiasm? Whoever has the power of creating, has
+likewise the inferior power of keeping his creation in order. The best
+poets are the most impressive, because their steps are regular; for
+without regularity there is neither strength nor state. Look at
+Sophocles, look at Aeschylus, look at Homer.
+
+_Petrarca._ I agree with you entirely to the whole extent of your
+observations; and, if you will continue, I am ready to lay aside my
+Dante for the present.
+
+_Boccaccio._ No, no; we must have him again between us: there is no
+danger that he will sour our tempers.
+
+_Petrarca._ In comparing his and yours, since you forbid me to declare
+all I think of your genius, you will at least allow me to congratulate
+you as being the happier of the two.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Frequently, where there is great power in poetry, the
+imagination makes encroachments on the heart, and uses it as her own.
+I have shed tears on writings which never cost the writer a sigh, but
+which occasioned him to rub the palms of his hands together, until
+they were ready to strike fire, with satisfaction at having overcome
+the difficulty of being tender.
+
+_Petrarca._ Giovanni! are you not grown satirical?
+
+_Boccaccio._ Not in this. It is a truth as broad and glaring as the
+eye of the Cyclops. To make you amends for your shuddering, I will
+express my doubt, on the other hand, whether Dante felt all the
+indignation he threw into his poetry. We are immoderately fond of
+warming ourselves; and we do not think, or care, what the fire is
+composed of. Be sure it is not always of cedar, like Circe's. Our
+Alighieri had slipped into the habit of vituperation; and he thought
+it fitted him; so he never left it off.
+
+_Petrarca._ Serener colours are pleasanter to our eyes and more
+becoming to our character. The chief desire in every man of genius is
+to be thought one; and no fear or apprehension lessens it. Alighieri,
+who had certainly studied the gospel, must have been conscious that he
+not only was inhumane, but that he betrayed a more vindictive spirit
+than any pope or prelate who is enshrined within the fretwork of his
+golden grating.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Unhappily, his strong talon had grown into him, and it
+would have pained him to suffer amputation. This eagle, unlike
+Jupiter's, never loosened the thunderbolt from it under the influence
+of harmony.
+
+_Petrarca._ The only good thing we can expect in such minds and
+tempers is good poetry: let us at least get that; and, having it, let
+us keep and value it. If you had never written some wanton stories,
+you would never have been able to show the world how much wiser and
+better you grew afterward.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Alas! if I live, I hope to show it. You have raised my
+spirits: and now, dear Francesco! do say a couple of prayers for me,
+while I lay together the materials of a tale; a right merry one, I
+promise you. Faith! it shall amuse you, and pay decently for the
+prayers; a good honest litany-worth. I hardly know whether I ought to
+have a nun in it: do you think I may?
+
+_Petrarca._ Cannot you do without one?
+
+_Boccaccio._ No; a nun I must have: say nothing against her; I can
+more easily let the abbess alone. Yet Frate Biagio ... that Frate
+Biagio, who never came to visit me but when he thought I was at
+extremities or asleep.... Assuntina! are you there?
+
+_Petrarca._ No; do you want her?
+
+_Boccaccio._ Not a bit. That Frate Biagio has heightened my pulse when
+I could not lower it again. The very devil is that Frate for
+heightening pulses. And with him I shall now make merry ... God
+willing ... in God's good time ... should it be His divine will to
+restore me! which I think He has begun to do miraculously. I seem to
+be within a frog's leap of well again; and we will presently have some
+rare fun in my _Tale of the Frate_.
+
+_Petrarca._ Do not openly name him.
+
+_Boccaccio._ He shall recognize himself by one single expression. He
+said to me, when I was at the worst:
+
+'Ser Giovanni! it would not be much amiss (with permission!) if you
+begin to think (at any spare time), just a morsel, of eternity.'
+
+'Ah! Fra Biagio!' answered I, contritely, 'I never heard a sermon of
+yours but I thought of it seriously and uneasily, long before the
+discourse was over.'
+
+'So must all,' replied he, 'and yet few have the grace to own it.'
+
+Now mind, Francesco! if it should please the Lord to call me unto Him,
+I say, _The Nun and Fra Biagio_ will be found, after my decease, in
+the closet cut out of the wall, behind yon Saint Zacharias in blue and
+yellow.
+
+Well done! well done! Francesco. I never heard any man repeat his
+prayers so fast and fluently. Why! how many (at a guess) have you
+repeated? Such is the power of friendship, and such the habit of
+religion! They have done me good: I feel myself stronger already.
+To-morrow I think I shall be able, by leaning on that stout maple
+stick in the corner, to walk half over my podere.
+
+Have you done? have you done?
+
+_Petrarca._ Be quiet: you may talk too much.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I cannot be quiet for another hour; so, if you have any
+more prayers to get over, stick the spur into the other side of them:
+they must verily speed, if they beat the last.
+
+_Petrarca._ Be more serious, dear Giovanni.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Never bid a convalescent be more serious: no, nor a sick
+man neither. To health it may give that composure which it takes away
+from sickness. Every man will have his hours of seriousness; but, like
+the hours of rest, they often are ill-chosen and unwholesome. Be
+assured, our heavenly Father is as well pleased to see His children in
+the playground as in the schoolroom. He has provided both for us, and
+has given us intimations when each should occupy us.
+
+_Petrarca._ You are right, Giovanni! but we know which bell is heard
+the most distinctly. We fold our arms at the one, try the cooler part
+of the pillow, and turn again to slumber; at the first stroke of the
+other, we are beyond our monitors. As for you, hardly Dante himself
+could make you grave.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I do not remember how it happened that we slipped away
+from his side. One of us must have found him tedious.
+
+_Petrarca._ If you were really and substantially at his side, he would
+have no mercy on you.
+
+_Boccaccio._ In sooth, our good Alighieri seems to have had the
+appetite of a dogfish or shark, and to have bitten the harder the
+warmer he was. I would not voluntarily be under his manifold rows of
+dentals. He has an incisor to every saint in the calendar. I should
+fare, methinks, like Brutus and the archbishop. He is forced to
+stretch himself, out of sheer listlessness, in so idle a place as
+Purgatory: he loses half his strength in Paradise: Hell alone makes
+him alert and lively: there he moves about and threatens as
+tremendously as the serpent that opposed the legions on their march
+in Africa. He would not have been contented in Tuscany itself, even
+had his enemies left him unmolested. Were I to write on his model a
+tripartite poem, I think it should be entitled, _Earth, Italy, and
+Heaven_.
+
+_Petrarca._ You will never give yourself the trouble.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I should not succeed.
+
+_Petrarca._ Perhaps not: but you have done very much, and may be able
+to do very much more.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Wonderful is it to me, when I consider that an infirm and
+helpless creature, as I am, should be capable of laying thoughts up in
+their cabinets of words, which Time, as he rushes by, with the
+revolutions of stormy and destructive years, can never move from their
+places. On this coarse mattress, one among the homeliest in the fair
+at Impruneta, is stretched an old burgess of Certaldo, of whom perhaps
+more will be known hereafter than we know of the Ptolemies and the
+Pharaohs; while popes and princes are lying as unregarded as the fleas
+that are shaken out of the window. Upon my life, Francesco! to think
+of this is enough to make a man presumptuous.
+
+_Petrarca._ No, Giovanni! not when the man thinks justly of it, as
+such a man ought to do, and must. For so mighty a power over Time, who
+casts all other mortals under his, comes down to us from a greater;
+and it is only if we abuse the victory that it were better we had
+encountered a defeat. Unremitting care must be taken that nothing soil
+the monuments we are raising: sure enough we are that nothing can
+subvert, and nothing but our negligence, or worse than negligence,
+efface them. Under the glorious lamp entrusted to your vigilance, one
+among the lights of the world, which the ministering angels of our God
+have suspended for His service, let there stand, with unclosing eyes,
+Integrity, Compassion, Self-denial.
+
+_Boccaccio._ These are holier and cheerfuller images than Dante has
+been setting up before us. I hope every thesis in dispute among his
+theologians will be settled ere I set foot among them. I like Tuscany
+well enough: it answers all my purposes for the present: and I am
+without the benefit of those preliminary studies which might render me
+a worthy auditor of incomprehensible wisdom.
+
+_Petrarca._ I do not wonder you are attached to Tuscany. Many as have
+been your visits and adventures in other parts, you have rendered it
+pleasanter and more interesting than any: and indeed we can scarcely
+walk in any quarter from the gates of Florence without the
+recollection of some witty or affecting story related by you. Every
+street, every farm, is peopled by your genius: and this population
+cannot change with seasons or with ages, with factions or with
+incursions. Ghibellines and Guelphs will have been contested for only
+by the worms, long before the _Decameron_ has ceased to be recited on
+our banks of blue lilies and under our arching vines. Another plague
+may come amidst us; and something of a solace in so terrible a
+visitation would be found in your pages, by those to whom letters are
+a refuge and relief.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I do indeed think my little bevy from Santa Maria Novella
+would be better company on such an occasion, than a devil with three
+heads, who diverts the pain his claws inflicted, by sticking his fangs
+in another place.
+
+_Petrarca._ This is atrocious, not terrific nor grand. Alighieri is
+grand by his lights, not by his shadows; by his human affections, not
+by his infernal. As the minutest sands are the labours of some
+profound sea, or the spoils of some vast mountain, in like manner his
+horrid wastes and wearying minutenesses are the chafings of a
+turbulent spirit, grasping the loftiest things and penetrating the
+deepest, and moving and moaning on the earth in loneliness and
+sadness.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Among men he is what among waters is
+
+      The strange, mysterious, solitary Nile.
+
+_Petrarca._ Is that his verse? I do not remember it.
+
+_Boccaccio._ No, it is mine for the present: how long it may continue
+mine I cannot tell. I never run after those who steal my apples: it
+would only tire me: and they are hardly worth recovering when they are
+bruised and bitten, as they are usually. I would not stand upon my
+verses: it is a perilous boy's trick, which we ought to leave off when
+we put on square shoes. Let our prose show what we are, and our poetry
+what we have been.
+
+_Petrarca._ You would never have given this advice to Alighieri.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I would never plough porphyry; there is ground fitter for
+grain. Alighieri is the parent of his system, like the sun, about whom
+all the worlds are but particles thrown forth from him. We may write
+little things well, and accumulate one upon another; but never will
+any be justly called a great poet unless he has treated a great
+subject worthily. He may be the poet of the lover and of the idler, he
+may be the poet of green fields or gay society; but whoever is this
+can be no more. A throne is not built of birds'-nests, nor do a
+thousand reeds make a trumpet.
+
+_Petrarca._ I wish Alighieri had blown his on nobler occasions.
+
+_Boccaccio._ We may rightly wish it: but, in regretting what he
+wanted, let us acknowledge what he had: and never forget (which we
+omitted to mention) that he borrowed less from his predecessors than
+any of the Roman poets from theirs. Reasonably may it be expected that
+almost all who follow will be greatly more indebted to antiquity, to
+whose stores we, every year, are making some addition.
+
+_Petrarca._ It can be held no flaw in the title-deeds of genius, if
+the same thoughts reappear as have been exhibited long ago. The
+indisputable sign of defect should be looked for in the proportion
+they bear to the unquestionably original. There are ideas which
+necessarily must occur to minds of the like magnitude and materials,
+aspect and temperature. When two ages are in the same phasis, they
+will excite the same humours, and produce the same coincidences and
+combinations. In addition to which, a great poet may really borrow: he
+may even condescend to an obligation at the hand of an equal or
+inferior: but he forfeits his title if he borrows more than the amount
+of his own possessions. The nightingale himself takes somewhat of his
+song from birds less glorified: and the lark, having beaten with her
+wing the very gates of heaven, cools her breast among the grass. The
+lowlier of intellect may lay out a table in their field, at which
+table the highest one shall sometimes be disposed to partake: want
+does not compel him. Imitation, as we call it, is often weakness, but
+it likewise is often sympathy.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Our poet was seldom accessible in this quarter. Invective
+picks up the first stone on the wayside, and wants leisure to consult
+a forerunner.
+
+_Petrarca._ Dante (original enough everywhere) is coarse and clumsy in
+this career. Vengeance has nothing to do with comedy, nor properly
+with satire. The satirist who told us that Indignation made his verses
+for him, might have been told in return that she excluded him thereby
+from the first class, and thrust him among the rhetoricians and
+declaimers. Lucretius, in his vituperation, is graver and more
+dignified than Alighieri. Painful; to see how tolerant is the atheist,
+how intolerant the Catholic: how anxiously the one removes from among
+the sufferings of Mortality, her last and heaviest, the fear of a
+vindictive Fury pursuing her shadow across rivers of fire and tears;
+how laboriously the other brings down Anguish and Despair, even when
+Death has done his work. How grateful the one is to that beneficent
+philosopher who made him at peace with himself, and tolerant and
+kindly toward his fellow-creatures! how importunate the other that God
+should forgo His divine mercy, and hurl everlasting torments both upon
+the dead and the living!
+
+_Boccaccio._ I have always heard that Ser Dante was a very good man
+and sound Catholic: but Christ forgive me if my heart is oftener on
+the side of Lucretius![17] Observe, I say, my heart; nothing more. I
+devoutly hold to the sacraments and the mysteries: yet somehow I would
+rather see men tranquillized than frightened out of their senses, and
+rather fast asleep than burning. Sometimes I have been ready to
+believe, as far as our holy faith will allow me, that it were better
+our Lord were nowhere, than torturing in His inscrutable wisdom, to
+all eternity, so many myriads of us poor devils, the creatures of His
+hands. Do not cross thyself so thickly, Francesco! nor hang down thy
+nether lip so loosely, languidly, and helplessly; for I would be a
+good Catholic, alive or dead. But, upon my conscience, it goes hard
+with me to think it of Him, when I hear that woodlark yonder, gushing
+with joyousness, or when I see the beautiful clouds, resting so softly
+one upon another, dissolving ... and not damned for it. Above all, I
+am slow to apprehend it, when I remember His great goodness vouchsafed
+to me, and reflect on my sinful life heretofore, chiefly in summer
+time, and in cities, or their vicinity. But I was tempted beyond my
+strength; and I fell as any man might do. However, this last illness,
+by God's grace, has well-nigh brought me to my right mind again in all
+such matters: and if I get stout in the present month, and can hold
+out the next without sliding, I do verily think I am safe, or nearly
+so, until the season of beccaficoes.
+
+_Petrarca._ Be not too confident!
+
+_Boccaccio._ Well, I will not be.
+
+_Petrarca._ But be firm.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Assuntina! what! are you come in again?
+
+_Assunta._ Did you or my master call me, Riverenza?
+
+_Petrarca._ No, child!
+
+_Boccaccio._ Oh! get you gone! Get you gone! you little rogue you!
+
+Francesco, I feel quite well. Your kindness to my playful creatures in
+the _Decameron_ has revived me, and has put me into good humour with
+the greater part of them. Are you quite certain the Madonna will not
+expect me to keep my promise? You said you were: I need not ask you
+again. I will accept the whole of your assurances, and half your
+praises.
+
+_Petrarca._ To represent so vast a variety of personages so
+characteristically as you have done, to give the wise all their
+wisdom, the witty all their wit, and (what is harder to do
+advantageously) the simple all their simplicity, requires a genius
+such as you alone possess. Those who doubt it are the least dangerous
+of your rivals.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[17] Qy. How much of Lucretius (or Petronius or Catullus, before
+cited) was then known?
+
+
+FIFTH DAY'S INTERVIEW
+
+It being now the last morning that Petrarca could remain with his
+friend, he resolved to pass early into his bedchamber. Boccaccio had
+risen and was standing at the open window, with his arms against it.
+Renovated health sparkled in the eyes of the one; surprise and delight
+and thankfulness to Heaven filled the other's with sudden tears. He
+clasped Giovanni, kissed his flaccid and sallow cheek, and falling on
+his knees, adored the Giver of life, the source of health to body and
+soul. Giovanni was not unmoved: he bent one knee as he leaned on the
+shoulder of Francesco, looking down into his face, repeating his
+words, and adding:
+
+'Blessed be Thou, O Lord! who sendest me health again! and blessings
+on Thy messenger who brought it.'
+
+He had slept soundly; for ere he closed his eyes he had unburdened his
+mind of its freight, not only by employing the prayers appointed by
+Holy Church, but likewise by ejaculating; as sundry of the fathers did
+of old. He acknowledged his contrition for many transgressions, and
+chiefly for uncharitable thoughts of Fra Biagio: on which occasion he
+turned fairly round on his couch, and leaning his brow against the
+wall, and his body being in a becomingly curved position, and proper
+for the purpose, he thus ejaculated:
+
+'Thou knowest, O most Holy Virgin! that never have I spoken to
+handmaiden at this villetta, or within my mansion at Certaldo,
+wantonly or indiscreetly, but have always been, inasmuch as may be,
+the guardian of innocence; deeming it better, when irregular thoughts
+assailed me, to ventilate them abroad than to poison the house with
+them. And if, sinner as I am, I have thought uncharitably of others,
+and more especially of Fra Biagio, pardon me, out of thy exceeding
+great mercies! And let it not be imputed to me, if I have kept, and
+may keep hereafter, an eye over him, in wariness and watchfulness; not
+otherwise. For thou knowest, O Madonna! that many who have a perfect
+and unwavering faith in thee, yet do cover up their cheese from the
+nibblings of vermin.'
+
+Whereupon, he turned round again, threw himself on his back at full
+length, and feeling the sheets cool, smooth, and refreshing, folded
+his arms, and slept instantaneously. The consequence of his wholesome
+slumber was a calm alacrity: and the idea that his visitor would be
+happy at seeing him on his feet again, made him attempt to get up: at
+which he succeeded, to his own wonder. And it was increased by the
+manifestation of his strength in opening the casement, stiff from
+being closed, and swelled by the continuance of the rains. The morning
+was warm and sunny: and it is known that on this occasion he composed
+the verses below:
+
+      My old familiar cottage-green!
+      I see once more thy pleasant sheen;
+      The gossamer suspended over
+      Smart celandine by lusty clover;
+      And the last blossom of the plum
+      Inviting her first leaves to come;
+      Which hang a little back, but show
+      'Tis not their nature to say no.
+      I scarcely am in voice to sing
+      How graceful are the steps of Spring;
+      And ah! it makes me sigh to look
+      How leaps along my merry brook,
+      The very same to-day as when
+      He chirrupt first to maids and men.
+
+_Petrarca._ I can rejoice at the freshness of your feelings: but the
+sight of the green turf reminds me rather of its ultimate use and
+destination.
+
+      For many serves the parish pall,
+      The turf in common serves for all.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Very true; and, such being the case, let us carefully
+fold it up, and lay it by until we call for it.
+
+Francesco, you made me quite light-headed yesterday. I am rather too
+old to dance either with Spring, as I have been saying, or with
+Vanity: and yet I accepted her at your hand as a partner. In future,
+no more of comparisons for me! You not only can do me no good, but you
+can leave me no pleasure: for here I shall remain the few days I have
+to live, and shall see nobody who will be disposed to remind me of
+your praises. Beside, you yourself will get hated for them. We neither
+can deserve praise nor receive it with impunity.
+
+_Petrarca._ Have you never remarked that it is into quiet water that
+children throw pebbles to disturb it? and that it is into deep caverns
+that the idle drop sticks and dirt? We must expect such treatment.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Your admonition shall have its wholesome influence over
+me, when the fever your praises have excited has grown moderate.
+
+... After the conversation on this topic and various others had
+continued some time, it was interrupted by a visitor. The clergy and
+monkery at Certaldo had never been cordial with Messer Giovanni, it
+being suspected that certain of his _Novelle_ were modelled on
+originals in their orders. Hence, although they indeed both professed
+and felt esteem for Canonico Petrarca, they abstained from expressing
+it at the villetta. But Frate Biagio of San Vivaldo was (by his own
+appointment) the friend of the house; and, being considered as very
+expert in pharmacy, had, day after day, brought over no indifferent
+store of simples, in ptisans, and other refections, during the
+continuance of Ser Giovanni's ailment. Something now moved him to cast
+about in his mind whether it might not appear dutiful to make another
+visit. Perhaps he thought it possible that, among those who
+peradventure had seen him lately on the road, one or other might
+expect from him a solution of the questions, What sort of person was
+the _crowned martyr_? whether he carried a palm in his hand? whether a
+seam was visible across the throat? whether he wore a ring over his
+glove, with a chrysolite in it, like the bishops, but representing the
+city of Jerusalem and the judgment-seat of Pontius Pilate? Such were
+the reports; but the inhabitants of San Vivaldo could not believe the
+Certaldese, who, inhabiting the next township to them, were naturally
+their enemies. Yet they might believe Frate Biagio, and certainly
+would interrogate him accordingly. He formed his determination, put
+his frock and hood on, and gave a curvature to his shoe, to evince his
+knowledge of the world, by pushing the extremity of it with his
+breast-bone against the corner of his cell. Studious of his figure and
+of his attire, he walked as much as possible on his heels, to keep up
+the reformation he had wrought in the workmanship of the cordwainer.
+On former occasions he had borrowed a horse, as being wanted to hear
+confession or to carry medicines, which might otherwise be too late.
+But, having put on an entirely new habiliment, and it being the season
+when horses are beginning to do the same, he deemed it prudent to
+travel on foot. Approaching the villetta, his first intention was to
+walk directly into his patient's room: but he found it impossible to
+resist the impulses of pride, in showing Assunta his rigid and stately
+frock, and shoes rather of the equestrian order than the monastic. So
+he went into the kitchen where the girl was at work, having just taken
+away the remains of the breakfast.
+
+'Frate Biagio!' cried she, 'is this you? Have you been sleeping at
+Conte Jeronimo's?'
+
+'Not I,' replied he.
+
+'Why!' said she, 'those are surely his shoes! Santa Maria! you must
+have put them on in the dusk of the morning, to say your prayers in!
+Here! here! take these old ones of Signor Padrone, for the love of
+God! I hope your Reverence met nobody.'
+
+_Frate._ What dost smile at?
+
+_Assunta._ Smile at! I could find in my heart to laugh outright, if I
+only were certain that nobody had seen your Reverence in such a funny
+trim. Riverenza! put on these.
+
+_Frate._ Not I indeed.
+
+_Assunta._ Allow me then?
+
+_Frate._ No, nor you.
+
+_Assunta._ Then let me stand upon yours, to push down the points.
+
+... Frate Biagio now began to relent a little, when Assunta, who had
+made one step toward the project, bethought herself suddenly, and
+said:
+
+'No; I might miss my footing. But, mercy upon us! what made you cramp
+your Reverence with those ox-yoke shoes? and strangle your Reverence
+with that hangdog collar?'
+
+'If you must know,' answered the Frate, reddening, 'it was because I
+am making a visit to the Canonico of Parma. I should like to know
+something about him: perhaps you could tell me?'
+
+_Assunta._ Ever so much.
+
+_Frate._ I thought no less: indeed I knew it. Which goes to bed first?
+
+_Assunta._ Both together.
+
+_Frate._ Demonio! what dost mean?
+
+_Assunta._ He tells me never to sit up waiting, but to say my prayers
+and dream of the Virgin.
+
+_Frate._ As if it was any business of his! Does he put out his lamp
+himself?
+
+_Assunta._ To be sure he does: why should not he? what should he be
+afraid of? It is not winter: and beside, there is a mat upon the
+floor, all round the bed, excepting the top and bottom.
+
+_Frate._ I am quite convinced he never said anything to make you
+blush. Why are you silent?
+
+_Assunta._ I have a right.
+
+_Frate._ He did then? ay? Do not nod your head: that will never do.
+Discreet girls speak plainly.
+
+_Assunta._ What would you have?
+
+_Frate._ The truth; the truth; again, I say, the truth.
+
+_Assunta._ He _did_ then.
+
+_Frate._ I knew it! The most dangerous man living!
+
+_Assunta._ Ah! indeed he is! Signor Padrone said so.
+
+_Frate._ He knows him of old: he warned you, it seems.
+
+_Assunta._ Me! He never said it was I who was in danger.
+
+_Frate._ He might: it was his duty.
+
+_Assunta._ Am I so fat? Lord! you may feel every rib. Girls who run
+about as I do, slip away from apoplexy.
+
+_Frate._ Ho! ho! that is all, is it?
+
+_Assunta._ And bad enough too! that such good-natured men should ever
+grow so bulky; and stand in danger, as Padrone said they both do, of
+such a seizure?
+
+_Frate._ What? and art ready to cry about it? Old folks cannot die
+easier: and there are always plenty of younger to run quick enough for
+a confessor. But I must not trifle in this manner. It is my duty to
+set your feet in the right way: it is my bounden duty to report to Ser
+Giovanni all irregularities I know of, committed in his domicile. I
+could indeed, and would, remit a trifle, on hearing the worst. Tell me
+now, Assunta! tell me, you little angel! did you ... we all may, the
+very best of us may, and do ... sin, my sweet?
+
+_Assunta._ You may be sure I did not: for whenever I sin I run into
+church directly, although it snows or thunders: else I never could see
+again Padrone's face, or any one's.
+
+_Frate._ You do not come to me.
+
+_Assunta._ You live at San Vivaldo.
+
+_Frate._ But when there is sin so pressing I am always ready to be
+found. You perplex, you puzzle me. Tell me at once how he made you
+blush.
+
+_Assunta._ Well then!
+
+_Frate._ Well then! you did not hang back so before him. I lose all
+patience.
+
+_Assunta._ So famous a man!...
+
+_Frate._ No excuse in that.
+
+_Assunta._ So dear to Padrone....
+
+_Frate._ The more shame for him!
+
+_Assunta._ Called me....
+
+_Frate._ And _called_ you, did he! the traitorous swine!
+
+_Assunta._ Called me ... _good girl_.
+
+_Frate._ Psha! the wenches, I think, are all mad: but few of them in
+this manner.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+... Without saying another word, Fra Biagio went forward and opened
+the bedchamber door, saying briskly:
+
+'Servant! Ser Giovanni! Ser Canonico! most devoted! most obsequious! I
+venture to incommode you. Thanks to God, Ser Canonico, you are looking
+well for your years. They tell me you were formerly (who would believe
+it?) the handsomest man in Christendom, and worked your way glibly,
+yonder at Avignon.
+
+'Capperi! Ser Giovanni! I never observed that you were sitting
+bolt-upright in that long-backed armchair, instead of lying abed.
+Quite in the right. I am rejoiced at such a change for the better. Who
+advised it?'
+
+_Boccaccio._ So many thanks to Fra Biagio! I not only am sitting up,
+but have taken a draught of fresh air at the window, and every leaf
+had a little present of sunshine for me.
+
+There is one pleasure, Fra Biagio, which I fancy you never have
+experienced, and I hardly know whether I ought to wish it you; the
+first sensation of health after a long confinement.
+
+_Frate._ Thanks! infinite! I would take any man's word for that,
+without a wish to try it. Everybody tells me I am exactly what I was a
+dozen years ago; while, for my part, I see everybody changed: those
+who ought to be much about my age, even those.... Per Bacco! I told
+them my thoughts when they had told me theirs; and they were not so
+agreeable as they used to be in former days.
+
+_Boccaccio._ How people hate sincerity!
+
+Cospetto! why, Frate! what hast got upon thy toes? Hast killed some
+Tartar and tucked his bow into one, and torn the crescent from the
+vizier's tent to make the other match it? Hadst thou fallen in thy
+mettlesome expedition (and it is a mercy and a miracle thou didst
+not) those sacrilegious shoes would have impaled thee.
+
+_Frate._ It was a mistake in the shoemaker. But no pain or incommodity
+whatsoever could detain me from paying my duty to Ser Canonico, the
+first moment I heard of his auspicious arrival, or from offering my
+congratulations to Ser Giovanni, on the annunciation that he was
+recovered and looking out of the window. All Tuscany was standing on
+the watch for it, and the news flew like lightning. By this time it is
+upon the Danube.
+
+And pray, Ser Canonico, how does Madonna Laura do?
+
+_Petrarca._ Peace to her gentle spirit! she is departed.
+
+_Frate._ Ay, true. I had quite forgotten: that is to say, I recollect
+it. You told us as much, I think, in a poem on her death. Well, and do
+you know! our friend Giovanni here is a bit of an author in his way.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Frate! you confuse my modesty.
+
+_Frate._ Murder will out. It is a fact, on my conscience. Have you
+never heard anything about it, Canonico! Ha! we poets are sly fellows:
+we can keep a secret.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Are you quite sure you can?
+
+_Frate._ Try, and trust me with any. I am a confessional on legs:
+there is no more a whisper in me than in a woolsack.
+
+I am in feather again, as you see; and in tune, as you shall hear.
+
+April is not the month for moping. Sing it lustily.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Let it be your business to sing it, being a Frate; I can
+only recite it.
+
+_Frate._ Pray do, then.
+
+_Boccaccio._
+
+      Frate Biagio! sempre quando
+      Quà tu vieni cavalcando,
+      Pensi che le buone strade
+      Per il mondo sien ben rade;
+      E, di quante sono brutte,
+      La più brutta è tua di tutte.
+      Badi, non cascare sulle
+      Graziosissime fanciulle,
+      Che con capo dritto, alzato,
+      Uova portano al mercato.
+      Pessima mi pare l'opra
+      Rovesciarle sottosopra.
+      Deh! scansando le erte e sassi,
+      Sempre con premura passi.
+      Caro amico! Frate Biagio!
+      Passi pur, ma passi adagio.
+
+_Frate._ Well now really, Canonico, for one not exactly one of us,
+that canzone of Ser Giovanni has merit; has not it? I did not ride,
+however, to-day; as you may see by the lining of my frock. But _plus
+non vitiat_; ay, Canonico! About the roads he is right enough; they
+are the devil's own roads; that must be said for them.
+
+Ser Giovanni! with permission; your mention of eggs in the canzone has
+induced me to fancy I could eat a pair of them. The hens lay well now:
+that white one of yours is worth more than the goose that laid the
+golden: and you have a store of others, her equals or betters: we have
+none like them at poor St. Vivaldo. _A riverderci, Ser Giovanni!
+Schiavo! Ser Canonico! mi commandino._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+... Fra Biagio went back into the kitchen, helped himself to a quarter
+of a loaf, ordered a flask of wine, and, trying several eggs against
+his lips, selected seven, which he himself fried in oil, although the
+maid offered her services. He never had been so little disposed to
+enter into conversation with her; and on her asking him how he found
+her master, he replied, that in bodily health Ser Giovanni, by his
+prayers and ptisans, had much improved, but that his faculties were
+wearing out apace. 'He may now run in the same couples with the
+Canonico: they cannot catch the mange one of the other: the one could
+say nothing to the purpose, and the other nothing at all. The whole
+conversation was entirely at my charge,' added he. 'And now, Assunta,
+since you press it, I will accept the service of your master's shoes.
+How I shall ever get home I don't know.' He took the shoes off the
+handles of the bellows, where Assunta had placed them out of her way,
+and tucking one of his own under each arm, limped toward St. Vivaldo.
+
+The unwonted attention to smartness of apparel, in the only article
+wherein it could be displayed, was suggested to Frate Biagio by
+hearing that Ser Francesco, accustomed to courtly habits and elegant
+society, and having not only small hands, but small feet, usually wore
+red slippers in the morning. Fra Biagio had scarcely left the outer
+door, than he cordially cursed Ser Francesco for making such a fool of
+him, and wearing slippers of black list. 'These canonicoes,' said he,
+'not only lie themselves, but teach everybody else to do the same. He
+has lamed me for life: I burn as if I had been shod at the
+blacksmith's forge.'
+
+The two friends said nothing about him, but continued the discourse
+which his visit had interrupted.
+
+_Petrarca._ Turn again, I entreat you, to the serious; and do not
+imagine that because by nature you are inclined to playfulness, you
+must therefore write ludicrous things better. Many of your stories
+would make the gravest men laugh, and yet there is little wit in them.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I think so myself; though authors, little disposed as
+they are to doubt their possession of any quality they would bring
+into play, are least of all suspicious on the side of wit. You have
+convinced me. I am glad to have been tender, and to have written
+tenderly: for I am certain it is this alone that has made you love me
+with such affection.
+
+_Petrarca._ Not this alone, Giovanni! but this principally. I have
+always found you kind and compassionate, liberal and sincere, and when
+Fortune does not stand very close to such a man, she leaves only the
+more room for Friendship.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Let her stand off then, now and for ever! To my heart, to
+my heart, Francesco! preserver of my health, my peace of mind, and
+(since you tell me I may claim it) my glory.
+
+_Petrarca._ Recovering your strength you must pursue your studies to
+complete it. What can you have been doing with your books? I have
+searched in vain this morning for the treasury. Where are they kept?
+Formerly they were always open. I found only a short manuscript, which
+I suspect is poetry, but I ventured not on looking into it, until I
+had brought it with me and laid it before you.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Well guessed! They are verses written by a gentleman who
+resided long in this country, and who much regretted the necessity of
+leaving it. He took great delight in composing both Latin and Italian,
+but never kept a copy of them latterly, so that these are the only
+ones I could obtain from him. Read: for your voice will improve them:
+
+
+TO MY CHILD CARLINO
+
+      Carlino! what art thou about, my boy?
+      Often I ask that question, though in vain,
+      For we are far apart: ah! therefore 'tis
+      I often ask it; not in such a tone
+      As wiser fathers do, who know too well.
+      Were we not children, you and I together?
+      Stole we not glances from each other's eyes?
+      Swore we not secrecy in such misdeeds?
+      Well could we trust each other. Tell me then
+      What thou art doing. Carving out thy name,
+      Or haply mine, upon my favourite seat,
+      With the new knife I sent thee over sea?
+      Or hast thou broken it, and hid the hilt
+      Among the myrtles, starr'd with flowers, behind?
+      Or under that high throne whence fifty lilies
+      (With sworded tuberoses dense around)
+      Lift up their heads at once, not without fear
+      That they were looking at thee all the while.
+
+        Does Cincirillo follow thee about?
+      Inverting one swart foot suspensively,
+      And wagging his dread jaw at every chirp
+      Of bird above him on the olive-branch?
+      Frighten him then away! 'twas he who slew
+      Our pigeons, our white pigeons peacock-tailed,
+      That fear'd not you and me ... alas, nor him!
+      I flattened his striped sides along my knee,
+      And reasoned with him on his bloody mind,
+      Till he looked blandly, and half-closed his eyes
+      To ponder on my lecture in the shade.
+      I doubt his memory much, his heart a little,
+      And in some minor matters (may I say it?)
+      Could wish him rather sager. But from thee
+      God hold back wisdom yet for many years!
+      Whether in early season or in late
+      It always comes high-priced. For thy pure breast
+      I have no lesson; it for me has many.
+      Come throw it open then! What sports, what cares
+      (Since there are none too young for these) engage
+      Thy busy thoughts? Are you again at work,
+      Walter and you, with those sly labourers,
+      Geppo, Giovanni, Cecco, and Poeta,
+      To build more solidly your broken dam
+      Among the poplars, whence the nightingale
+      Inquisitively watch'd you all day long?
+      I was not of your council in the scheme,
+      Or might have saved you silver without end,
+      And sighs too without number. Art thou gone
+      Below the mulberry, where that cold pool
+      Urged to devise a warmer, and more fit
+      For mighty swimmers, swimming three abreast?
+      Or art thou panting in this summer noon
+      Upon the lowest step before the hall,
+      Drawing a slice of water-melon, long
+      As Cupid's bow, athwart thy wetted lips
+      (Like one who plays Pan's pipe) and letting drop
+      The sable seeds from all their separate cells,
+      And leaving bays profound and rocks abrupt,
+      Redder than coral round Calypso's cave?
+
+_Petrarca._ There have been those anciently who would have been
+pleased with such poetry, and perhaps there may be again. I am not
+sorry to see the Muses by the side of childhood, and forming a part of
+the family. But now tell me about the books.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Resolving to lay aside the more valuable of those I had
+collected or transcribed, and to place them under the guardianship of
+richer men, I locked them up together in the higher story of my tower
+at Certaldo. You remember the old tower?
+
+_Petrarca._ Well do I remember the hearty laugh we had together (which
+stopped us upon the staircase) at the calculation we made, how much
+longer you and I, if we continued to thrive as we had thriven
+latterly, should be able to pass within its narrow circle. Although I
+like this little villa much better, I would gladly see the place
+again, and enjoy with you, as we did before, the vast expanse of
+woodlands and mountains and maremma; frowning fortresses inexpugnable;
+and others more prodigious for their ruins; then below them, lordly
+abbeys, overcanopied with stately trees and girded with rich
+luxuriance; and towns that seem approaching them to do them honour,
+and villages nestling close at their sides for sustenance and
+protection.
+
+_Boccaccio._ My disorder, if it should keep its promise of leaving me
+at last, will have been preparing me for the accomplishment of such a
+project. Should I get thinner and thinner at this rate, I shall soon
+be able to mount not only a turret or a belfry, but a tube of
+macarone, while a Neapolitan is suspending it for deglutition.
+
+What I am about to mention will show you how little you can rely on
+me! I have preserved the books, as you desired, but quite contrary to
+my resolution: and, no less contrary to it, by your desire I shall now
+preserve the _Decameron_. In vain had I determined not only to mend in
+future, but to correct the past; in vain had I prayed most fervently
+for grace to accomplish it, with a final aspiration to Fiametta that
+she would unite with your beloved Laura, and that, gentle and
+beatified spirits as they are, they would breathe together their purer
+prayers on mine. See what follows.
+
+_Petrarca._ Sigh not at it. Before we can see all that follows from
+their intercession, we must join them again. But let me hear anything
+in which they are concerned.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I prayed; and my breast, after some few tears, grew
+calmer. Yet sleep did not ensue until the break of morning, when the
+dropping of soft rain on the leaves of the fig-tree at the window, and
+the chirping of a little bird, to tell another there was shelter under
+them, brought me repose and slumber. Scarcely had I closed my eyes, if
+indeed time can be reckoned any more in sleep than in heaven, when my
+Fiametta seemed to have led me into the meadow. You will see it below
+you: turn away that branch: gently! gently! do not break it; for the
+little bird sat there.
+
+_Petrarca._ I think, Giovanni, I can divine the place. Although this
+fig-tree, growing out of the wall between the cellar and us, is
+fantastic enough in its branches, yet that other which I see yonder,
+bent down and forced to crawl along the grass by the prepotency of the
+young shapely walnut-tree, is much more so. It forms a seat, about a
+cubit above the ground, level and long enough for several.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Ha! you fancy it must be a favourite spot with me,
+because of the two strong forked stakes wherewith it is propped and
+supported!
+
+_Petrarca._ Poets know the haunts of poets at first sight; and he who
+loved Laura.... O Laura! did I say he who _loved_ thee? ... hath
+whisperings where those feet would wander which have been restless
+after Fiametta.
+
+_Boccaccio._ It is true, my imagination has often conducted her
+thither; but there in this chamber she appeared to me more visibly in
+a dream.
+
+'Thy prayers have been heard, O Giovanni,' said she.
+
+I sprang to embrace her.
+
+'Do not spill the water! Ah! you have spilt a part of it.'
+
+I then observed in her hand a crystal vase. A few drops were sparkling
+on the sides and running down the rim: a few were trickling from the
+base and from the hand that held it.
+
+'I must go down to the brook,' said she, 'and fill it again as it was
+filled before.'
+
+What a moment of agony was this to me! Could I be certain how long
+might be her absence? She went: I was following: she made a sign for
+me to turn back: I disobeyed her only an instant: yet my sense of
+disobedience, increasing my feebleness and confusion, made me lose
+sight of her. In the next moment she was again at my side, with the
+cup quite full. I stood motionless: I feared my breath might shake the
+water over. I looked her in the face for her commands ... and to see
+it ... to see it so calm, so beneficent, so beautiful. I was
+forgetting what I had prayed for, when she lowered her head, tasted of
+the cup, and gave it me. I drank; and suddenly sprang forth before me
+many groves and palaces and gardens, and their statues and their
+avenues, and their labyrinths of alaternus and bay, and alcoves of
+citron, and watchful loopholes in the retirements of impenetrable
+pomegranate. Farther off, just below where the fountain slipped away
+from its marble hall and guardian gods, arose, from their beds of moss
+and drosera and darkest grass, the sisterhood of oleanders, fond of
+tantalizing with their bosomed flowers and their moist and pouting
+blossoms the little shy rivulet, and of covering its face with all the
+colours of the dawn. My dream expanded and moved forward. I trod again
+the dust of Posilipo, soft as the feathers in the wings of Sleep. I
+emerged on Baia; I crossed her innumerable arches; I loitered in the
+breezy sunshine of her mole; I trusted the faithful seclusion of her
+caverns, the keepers of so many secrets; and I reposed on the buoyancy
+of her tepid sea. Then Naples, and her theatres and her churches, and
+grottoes and dells and forts and promontories, rushed forward in
+confusion, now among soft whispers, now among sweetest sounds, and
+subsided, and sank, and disappeared. Yet a memory seemed to come fresh
+from every one: each had time enough for its tale, for its pleasure,
+for its reflection, for its pang. As I mounted with silent steps the
+narrow staircase of the old palace, how distinctly did I feel against
+the palm of my hand the coldness of that smooth stone-work, and the
+greater of the cramps of iron in it!
+
+'Ah me! is this forgetting?' cried I anxiously to Fiametta.
+
+'We must recall these scenes before us,' she replied: 'such is the
+punishment of them. Let us hope and believe that the apparition, and
+the compunction which must follow it, will be accepted as the full
+penalty, and that both will pass away almost together.'
+
+I feared to lose anything attendant on her presence: I feared to
+approach her forehead with my lips: I feared to touch the lily on its
+long wavy leaf in her hair, which filled my whole heart with
+fragrance. Venerating, adoring, I bowed my head at last to kiss her
+snow-white robe, and trembled at my presumption. And yet the
+effulgence of her countenance vivified while it chastened me. I loved
+her ... I must not say _more_ than ever ... _better_ than ever; it was
+Fiametta who had inhabited the skies. As my hand opened toward her:
+
+'Beware!' said she, faintly smiling; 'beware, Giovanni! Take only the
+crystal; take it, and drink again.'
+
+'Must all be then forgotten?' said I sorrowfully.
+
+'Remember your prayer and mine, Giovanni. Shall both have been
+granted ... oh, how much worse than in vain?'
+
+I drank instantly; I drank largely. How cool my bosom grew; how could
+it grow so cool before her! But it was not to remain in its
+quiescency; its trials were not yet over. I will not, Francesco! no, I
+may not commemorate the incidents she related to me, nor which of us
+said, 'I blush for having loved _first_;' nor which of us replied,
+'Say _least_, say _least_, and blush again.'
+
+The charm of the words (for I felt not the encumbrance of the body nor
+the acuteness of the spirit) seemed to possess me wholly. Although the
+water gave me strength and comfort, and somewhat of celestial
+pleasure, many tears fell around the border of the vase as she held it
+up before me, exhorting me to take courage, and inviting me with more
+than exhortation to accomplish my deliverance. She came nearer, more
+tenderly, more earnestly; she held the dewy globe with both hands,
+leaning forward, and sighed and shook her head, drooping at my
+pusillanimity. It was only when a ringlet had touched the rim, and
+perhaps the water (for a sunbeam on the surface could never have given
+it such a golden hue), that I took courage, clasped it, and exhausted
+it. Sweet as was the water, sweet as was the serenity it gave me ...
+alas! that also which it moved away from me was sweet!
+
+'This time you can trust me alone,' said she, and parted my hair, and
+kissed my brow. Again she went toward the brook: again my agitation,
+my weakness, my doubt, came over me: nor could I see her while she
+raised the water, nor knew I whence she drew it. When she returned,
+she was close to me at once: she smiled: her smile pierced me to the
+bones: it seemed an angel's. She sprinkled the pure water on me; she
+looked most fondly; she took my hand; she suffered me to press hers to
+my bosom; but, whether by design I cannot tell, she let fall a few
+drops of the chilly element between.
+
+'And now, O my beloved!' said she, 'we have consigned to the bosom of
+God our earthly joys and sorrows. The joys cannot return, let not the
+sorrows. These alone would trouble my repose among the blessed.'
+
+'Trouble thy repose! Fiametta! Give me the chalice!' cried I ... 'not
+a drop will I leave in it, not a drop.'
+
+'Take it!' said that soft voice. 'O now most dear Giovanni! I know
+thou hast strength enough; and there is but little ... at the bottom
+lies our first kiss.'
+
+'Mine! didst thou say, beloved one? and is that left thee still?'
+
+'_Mine_,' said she, pensively; and as she abased her head, the broad
+leaf of the lily hid her brow and her eyes; the light of heaven shone
+through the flower.
+
+'O Fiametta! Fiametta!' cried I in agony, 'God is the God of mercy,
+God is the God of love ... can I, can I ever?' I struck the chalice
+against my head, unmindful that I held it; the water covered my face
+and my feet. I started up, not yet awake, and I heard the name of
+Fiametta in the curtains.
+
+_Petrarca._ Love, O Giovanni, and life itself, are but dreams at best.
+I do think
+
+      Never so gloriously was Sleep attended
+      As with the pageant of that heavenly maid.
+
+But to dwell on such subjects is sinful. The recollection of them,
+with all their vanities, brings tears into my eyes.
+
+_Boccaccio._ And into mine too ... they were so very charming.
+
+_Petrarca._ Alas, alas! the time always comes when we must regret the
+enjoyments of our youth.
+
+_Boccaccio._ If we have let them pass us.
+
+_Petrarca._ I mean our indulgence in them.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Francesco! I think you must remember Raffaellino degli
+Alfani.
+
+_Petrarca._ Was it Raffaellino who lived near San Michele in Orto?
+
+_Boccaccio._ The same. He was an innocent soul, and fond of fish. But
+whenever his friend Sabbatelli sent him a trout from Pratolino, he
+always kept it until next day or the day after, just long enough to
+render it unpalatable. He then turned it over in the platter, smelt at
+it closer, although the news of its condition came undeniably from a
+distance, touched it with his forefinger, solicited a testimony from
+the gills which the eyes had contradicted, sighed over it, and sent it
+for a present to somebody else. Were I a lover of trout as Raffaellino
+was, I think I should have taken an opportunity of enjoying it while
+the pink and crimson were glittering on it.
+
+_Petrarca._ Trout, yes.
+
+_Boccaccio._ And all other fish I could encompass.
+
+_Petrarca._ O thou grave mocker! I did not suspect such slyness in
+thee: proof enough I had almost forgotten thee.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Listen! listen! I fancied I caught a footstep in the
+passage. Come nearer; bend your head lower, that I may whisper a word
+in your ear. Never let Assunta hear you sigh. She is mischievous: she
+may have been standing at the door: not that I believe she would be
+guilty of any such impropriety: but who knows what girls are capable
+of! She has no malice, only in laughing; and a sigh sets her windmill
+at work, van over van, incessantly.
+
+_Petrarca._ I should soon check her. I have no notion....
+
+_Boccaccio._ After all, she is a good girl ... a trifle of the wilful.
+She must have it that many things are hurtful to me ... reading in
+particular ... it makes people so odd. Tina is a small matter of the
+madcap ... in her own particular way ... but exceedingly discreet, I
+do assure you, if they will only leave her alone.
+
+I find I was mistaken, there was nobody.
+
+_Petrarca._ A cat, perhaps.
+
+_Boccaccio._ No such thing. I order him over to Certaldo while the
+birds are laying and sitting: and he knows by experience, favourite as
+he is, that it is of no use to come back before he is sent for. Since
+the first impetuosities of youth, he has rarely been refractory or
+disobliging. We have lived together now these five years, unless I
+miscalculate; and he seems to have learnt something of my manners,
+wherein violence and enterprise by no means predominate. I have
+watched him looking at a large green lizard; and, their eyes being
+opposite and near, he has doubted whether it might be pleasing to me
+if he began the attack; and their tails on a sudden have touched one
+another at the decision.
+
+_Petrarca._ Seldom have adverse parties felt the same desire of peace
+at the same moment, and none ever carried it more simultaneously and
+promptly into execution.
+
+_Boccaccio._ He enjoys his _otium cum dignitate_ at Certaldo: there he
+is my castellan, and his chase is unlimited in those domains. After
+the doom of relegation is expired, he comes hither at midsummer. And
+then if you could see his joy! His eyes are as deep as a well, and as
+clear as a fountain: he jerks his tail into the air like a royal
+sceptre, and waves it like the wand of a magician. You would fancy
+that, as Horace with his head, he was about to smite the stars with
+it. There is ne'er such another cat in the parish; and he knows it, a
+rogue! We have rare repasts together in the bean-and-bacon time,
+although in regard to the bean he sides with the philosopher of Samos;
+but after due examination. In cleanliness he is a very nun; albeit in
+that quality which lies between cleanliness and godliness, there is a
+smack of Fra Biagio about him. What is that book in your hand?
+
+_Petrarca._ My breviary.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Well, give me mine too ... there, on the little table in
+the corner, under the glass of primroses. We can do nothing better.
+
+_Petrarca._ What prayer were you looking for? let me find it.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I don't know how it is: I am scarcely at present in a
+frame of mind for it. We are of one faith: the prayers of the one will
+do for the other: and I am sure, if you omitted my name, you would say
+them all over afresh. I wish you could recollect in any book as dreamy
+a thing to entertain me as I have been just repeating. We have had
+enough of Dante: I believe few of his beauties have escaped us: and
+small faults, which we readily pass by, are fitter for small folks, as
+grubs are the proper bait for gudgeons.
+
+_Petrarca._ I have had as many dreams as most men. We are all made up
+of them, as the webs of the spider are particles of her own vitality.
+But how infinitely less do we profit by them! I will relate to you,
+before we separate, one among the multitude of mine, as coming the
+nearest to the poetry of yours, and as having been not totally useless
+to me. Often have I reflected on it; sometimes with pensiveness, with
+sadness never.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Then, Francesco, if you had with you as copious a choice
+of dreams as clustered on the elm-trees where the Sibyl led Aeneas,
+this, in preference to the whole swarm of them, is the queen dream for
+me.
+
+_Petrarca._ When I was younger I was fond of wandering in solitary
+places, and never was afraid of slumbering in woods and grottoes.
+Among the chief pleasures of my life, and among the commonest of my
+occupations, was the bringing before me such heroes and heroines of
+antiquity, such poets and sages, such of the prosperous and the
+unfortunate, as most interested me by their courage, their wisdom,
+their eloquence, or their adventures. Engaging them in the
+conversation best suited to their characters, I knew perfectly their
+manners, their steps, their voices: and often did I moisten with my
+tears the models I had been forming of the less happy.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Great is the privilege of entering into the studies of
+the intellectual; great is that of conversing with the guides of
+nations, the movers of the mass, the regulators of the unruly will,
+stiff, in its impurity and rust, against the finger of the Almighty
+Power that formed it: but give me, Francesco, give me rather the
+creature to sympathize with; apportion me the sufferings to assuage.
+Ah, gentle soul! thou wilt never send them over to another; they have
+better hopes from thee.
+
+_Petrarca._ We both alike feel the sorrows of those around us. He who
+suppresses or allays them in another, breaks many thorns off his own;
+and future years will never harden fresh ones.
+
+My occupation was not always in making the politician talk politics,
+the orator toss his torch among the populace, the philosopher run down
+from philosophy to cover the retreat or the advances of his sect; but
+sometimes in devising how such characters must act and discourse, on
+subjects far remote from the beaten track of their career. In like
+manner the philologist, and again the dialectician, were not indulged
+in the review and parade of their trained bands, but, at times,
+brought forward to show in what manner and in what degree external
+habits had influenced the conformation of the internal man. It was far
+from unprofitable to set passing events before past actors, and to
+record the decisions of those whose interests and passions are
+unconcerned in them.
+
+_Boccaccio._ This is surely no easy matter. The thoughts are in fact
+your own, however you distribute them.
+
+_Petrarca._ All cannot be my own; if you mean by _thoughts_ the
+opinions and principles I should be the most desirous to inculcate.
+Some favourite ones perhaps may obtrude too prominently, but otherwise
+no misbehaviour is permitted them: reprehension and rebuke are always
+ready, and the offence is punished on the spot.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Certainly you thus throw open, to its full extent, the
+range of poetry and invention; which cannot but be very limited and
+sterile, unless where we find displayed much diversity of character as
+disseminated by nature, much peculiarity of sentiment as arising from
+position, marked with unerring skill through every shade and
+gradation; and finally and chiefly, much intertexture and intensity of
+passion. You thus convey to us more largely and expeditiously the
+stores of your understanding and imagination, than you ever could by
+sonnets or canzonets, or sinewless and sapless allegories.
+
+But weightier works are less captivating. If you had published any
+such as you mention, you must have waited for their acceptance. Not
+only the fame of Marcellus, but every other,
+
+      Crescit occulto velut arbor aevo;
+
+and that which makes the greatest vernal shoot is apt to make the
+least autumnal. Authors in general who have met celebrity at starting,
+have already had their reward; always their utmost due, and often much
+beyond it. We cannot hope for both celebrity and fame: supremely
+fortunate are the few who are allowed the liberty of choice between
+them. We two prefer the strength that springs from exercise and toil,
+acquiring it gradually and slowly: we leave to others the earlier
+blessing of that sleep which follows enjoyment. How many at first
+sight are enthusiastic in their favour! Of these how large a portion
+come away empty-handed and discontented! like idlers who visit the
+seacoast, fill their pockets with pebbles bright from the passing
+wave, and carry them off with rapture. After a short examination at
+home, every streak seems faint and dull, and the whole contexture
+coarse, uneven, and gritty: first one is thrown away, then another;
+and before the week's end the store is gone, of things so shining and
+wonderful.
+
+_Petrarca._ Allegory, which you named with sonnets and canzonets, had
+few attractions for me, believing it to be the delight in general of
+idle, frivolous, inexcursive minds, in whose mansions there is neither
+hall nor portal to receive the loftier of the Passions. A stranger to
+the Affections, she holds a low station among the handmaidens of
+Poetry, being fit for little but an apparition in a mask. I had
+reflected for some time on this subject, when, wearied with the length
+of my walk over the mountains, and finding a soft old molehill,
+covered with grey grass, by the wayside, I laid my head upon it and
+slept. I cannot tell how long it was before a species of dream or
+vision came over me.
+
+Two beautiful youths appeared beside me; each was winged; but the
+wings were hanging down, and seemed ill adapted to flight. One of
+them, whose voice was the softest I ever heard, looking at me
+frequently, said to the other:
+
+'He is under my guardianship for the present: do not awaken him with
+that feather.'
+
+Methought, hearing the whisper, I saw something like the feather on an
+arrow; and then the arrow itself; the whole of it, even to the point;
+although he carried it in such a manner that it was difficult at first
+to discover more than a palm's length of it: the rest of the shaft,
+and the whole of the barb, was behind his ankles.
+
+'This feather never awakens any one,' replied he, rather petulantly;
+'but it brings more of confident security, and more of cherished
+dreams, than you without me are capable of imparting.'
+
+'Be it so!' answered the gentler ... 'none is less inclined to quarrel
+or dispute than I am. Many whom you have wounded grievously, call upon
+me for succour. But so little am I disposed to thwart you, it is
+seldom I venture to do more for them than to whisper a few words of
+comfort in passing. How many reproaches on these occasions have been
+cast upon me for indifference and infidelity! Nearly as many, and
+nearly in the same terms, as upon you!'
+
+'Odd enough that we, O Sleep! should be thought so alike,' said Love,
+contemptuously. 'Yonder is he who bears a nearer resemblance to you:
+the dullest have observed it.' I fancied I turned my eyes to where he
+was pointing, and saw at a distance the figure he designated.
+Meanwhile the contention went on uninterruptedly. Sleep was slow in
+asserting his power or his benefits. Love recapitulated them; but only
+that he might assert his own above them. Suddenly he called on me to
+decide, and to choose my patron. Under the influence, first of the
+one, then of the other, I sprang from repose to rapture, I alighted
+from rapture on repose ... and knew not which was sweetest. Love was
+very angry with me, and declared he would cross me throughout the
+whole of my existence. Whatever I might on other occasions have
+thought of his veracity, I now felt too surely the conviction that he
+would keep his word. At last, before the close of the altercation, the
+third Genius had advanced, and stood near us. I cannot tell how I knew
+him, but I knew him to be the Genius of Death. Breathless as I was at
+beholding him, I soon became familiar with his features. First they
+seemed only calm; presently they grew contemplative; and lastly
+beautiful: those of the Graces themselves are less regular, less
+harmonious, less composed. Love glanced at him unsteadily, with a
+countenance in which there was somewhat of anxiety, somewhat of
+disdain; and cried: 'Go away! go away! nothing that thou touchest,
+lives.'
+
+'Say rather, child!' replied the advancing form, and advancing grew
+loftier and statelier, 'say rather that nothing of beautiful or of
+glorious lives its own true life until my wing hath passed over it.'
+
+Love pouted, and rumpled and bent down with his forefinger the stiff
+short feathers on his arrow-head; but replied not. Although he frowned
+worse than ever, and at me, I dreaded him less and less, and scarcely
+looked toward him. The milder and calmer Genius, the third, in
+proportion as I took courage to contemplate him, regarded me with more
+and more complacency. He held neither flower nor arrow, as the others
+did; but, throwing back the clusters of dark curls that overshadowed
+his countenance, he presented to me his hand, openly and benignly. I
+shrank on looking at him so near, and yet I sighed to love him. He
+smiled, not without an expression of pity, at perceiving my
+diffidence, my timidity: for I remembered how soft was the hand of
+Sleep, how warm and entrancing was Love's. By degrees, I became
+ashamed of my ingratitude; and turning my face away, I held out my
+arms, and felt my neck within his. Composure strewed and allayed all
+the throbbings of my bosom; the coolness of freshest morning breathed
+around: the heavens seemed to open above me; while the beautiful cheek
+of my deliverer rested on my head. I would now have looked for those
+others; but knowing my intention by my gesture, he said,
+consolatorily:
+
+'Sleep is on his way to the Earth, where many are calling him; but it
+is not to these he hastens; for every call only makes him fly farther
+off. Sedately and gravely as he looks, he is nearly as capricious and
+volatile as the more arrogant and ferocious one.'
+
+'And Love!' said I, 'whither is he departed? If not too late, I would
+propitiate and appease him.'
+
+'He who cannot follow me, he who cannot overtake and pass me,' said
+the Genius, 'is unworthy of the name, the most glorious in earth or
+heaven. Look up! Love is yonder, and ready to receive thee.'
+
+I looked: the earth was under me: I saw only the clear blue sky, and
+something brighter above it.
+
+
+
+
+POEMS
+
+
+I
+
+      She I love (alas in vain!)
+        Floats before my slumbering eyes:
+      When she comes she lulls my pain,
+        When she goes what pangs arise!
+      Thou whom love, whom memory flies,
+        Gentle Sleep! prolong thy reign!
+      If even thus she soothe my sighs,
+        Never let me wake again!
+
+
+II
+
+      Pleasure! why thus desert the heart
+          In its spring-tide?
+      I could have seen her, I could part,
+          And but have sigh'd!
+
+      O'er every youthful charm to stray,
+          To gaze, to touch....
+      Pleasure! why take so much away,
+          Or give so much?
+
+
+III
+
+      Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives,
+        Alcestis rises from the shades;
+      Verse calls them forth; 'tis verse that gives
+        Immortal youth to mortal maids.
+
+      Soon shall Oblivion's deepening veil
+        Hide all the peopled hills you see,
+      The gay, the proud, while lovers hail
+        These many summers you and me.
+
+
+IV
+
+      Ianthe! you are call'd to cross the sea!
+            A path forbidden _me_!
+      Remember, while the Sun his blessing sheds
+            Upon the mountain-heads,
+      How often we have watcht him laying down
+            His brow, and dropt our own
+      Against each other's, and how faint and short
+            And sliding the support!
+      What will succeed it now? Mine is unblest,
+            Ianthe! nor will rest
+      But on the very thought that swells with pain.
+            O bid me hope again!
+      O give me back what Earth, what (without you)
+            Not Heaven itself can do,
+      One of the golden days that we have past;
+            And let it be my last!
+      Or else the gift would be, however sweet,
+            Fragile and incomplete.
+
+
+V
+
+      The gates of fame and of the grave
+      Stand under the same architrave.
+
+
+VI
+
+      Twenty years hence my eyes may grow
+      If not quite dim, yet rather so,
+      Still yours from others they shall know
+                             Twenty years hence.
+      Twenty years hence tho' it may hap
+      That I be call'd to take a nap
+      In a cool cell where thunder-clap
+                             Was never heard,
+      There breathe but o'er my arch of grass
+      A not too sadly sigh'd _Alas_,
+      And I shall catch, ere you can pass,
+                             That winged word.
+
+
+VII
+
+      Here, ever since you went abroad,
+        If there be change, no change I see,
+      I only walk our wonted road,
+        The road is only walkt by me.
+
+      Yes; I forgot; a change there is;
+        Was it of _that_ you bade me tell?
+      I catch at times, at times I miss
+        The sight, the tone, I know so well.
+
+      Only two months since you stood here!
+        Two shortest months! then tell me why
+      Voices are harsher than they were,
+        And tears are longer ere they dry.
+
+
+VIII
+
+      Tell me not things past all belief;
+        One truth in you I prove;
+      The flame of anger, bright and brief,
+        Sharpens the barb of Love.
+
+
+IX
+
+      Proud word you never spoke, but you will speak
+        Four not exempt from pride some future day.
+      Resting on one white hand a warm wet cheek
+        Over my open volume you will say,
+      'This man loved _me_!' then rise and trip away.
+
+
+X
+
+FIESOLE IDYL
+
+      Here, where precipitate Spring, with one light bound
+      Into hot Summer's lusty arms, expires,
+      And where go forth at morn, at eve, at night,
+      Soft airs that want the lute to play with 'em,
+      And softer sighs that know not what they want,
+      Aside a wall, beneath an orange-tree,
+      Whose tallest flowers could tell the lowlier ones
+      Of sights in Fiesole right up above,
+      While I was gazing a few paces off
+      At what they seem'd to show me with their nods,
+      Their frequent whispers and their pointing shoots,
+      A gentle maid came down the garden-steps
+      And gathered the pure treasure in her lap.
+      I heard the branches rustle, and stept forth
+      To drive the ox away, or mule, or goat,
+      Such I believed it must be. How could I
+      Let beast o'erpower them? When hath wind or rain
+      Borne hard upon weak plant that wanted me,
+      And I (however they might bluster round)
+      Walkt off? 'Twere most ungrateful: for sweet scents
+      Are the swift vehicles of still sweeter thoughts,
+      And nurse and pillow the dull memory
+      That would let drop without them her best stores.
+      They bring me tales of youth and tones of love,
+      And 'tis and ever was my wish and way
+      To let all flowers live freely, and all die
+      (Whene'er their Genius bids their souls depart)
+      Among their kindred in their native place.
+      I never pluck the rose; the violet's head
+      Hath shaken with my breath upon its bank
+      And not reproacht me; the ever-sacred cup
+      Of the pure lily hath between my hands
+      Felt safe, unsoil'd, nor lost one grain of gold.
+      I saw the light that made the glossy leaves
+      More glossy; the fair arm, the fairer cheek
+      Warmed by the eye intent on its pursuit;
+      I saw the foot that, although half-erect
+      From its grey slipper, could not lift her up
+      To what she wanted: I held down a branch
+      And gather'd her some blossoms; since their hour
+      Was come, and bees had wounded them, and flies
+      Of harder wing were working their way thro'
+      And scattering them in fragments under-foot.
+      So crisp were some, they rattled unevolved,
+      Others, ere broken off, fell into shells,
+      For such appear the petals when detacht,
+      Unbending, brittle, lucid, white like snow,
+      And like snow not seen thro', by eye or sun:
+      Yet every one her gown received from me
+      Was fairer than the first. I thought not so,
+      But so she praised them to reward my care.
+      I said, 'You find the largest.'
+                                    'This indeed,'
+      Cried she, 'is large and sweet.' She held one forth,
+      Whether for me to look at or to stake
+      She knew not, nor did I; but taking it
+      Would best have solved (and this she felt) her doubt.
+      I dared not touch it; for it seemed a part
+      Of her own self; fresh, full, the most mature
+      Of blossoms, yet a blossom; with a touch
+      To fall, and yet unfallen. She drew back
+      The boon she tender'd, and then, finding not
+      The ribbon at her waist to fix it in,
+      Dropt it, as loath to drop it, on the rest.
+
+
+XI
+
+      Ah what avails the sceptred race,
+        Ah what the form divine!
+      What every virtue, every grace!
+        Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
+      Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
+        May weep, but never see,
+      A night of memories and of sighs
+        I consecrate to thee.
+
+
+XII
+
+      With rosy hand a little girl prest down
+      A boss of fresh-cull'd cowslips in a rill:
+      Often as they sprang up again, a frown
+      Show'd she disliked resistance to her will:
+      But when they droopt their heads and shone much less,
+      She shook them to and fro, and threw them by,
+      And tript away. 'Ye loathe the heaviness
+      Ye love to cause, my little girls!' thought I,
+      'And what had shone for you, by you must die.'
+
+
+XIII
+
+            Ternissa! you are fled!
+            I say not to the dead,
+      But to the happy ones who rest below:
+            For, surely, surely, where
+            Your voice and graces are,
+      Nothing of death can any feel or know.
+            Girls who delight to dwell
+            Where grows most asphodel,
+      Gather to their calm breasts each word you speak:
+            The mild Persephone
+            Places you on her knee,
+      And your cool palm smooths down stern Pluto's cheek.
+
+
+XIV
+
+      Various the roads of life; in one
+        All terminate, one lonely way
+      We go; and 'Is he gone?'
+        Is all our best friends say.
+
+
+XV
+
+      Yes; I write verses now and then,
+      But blunt and flaccid is my pen,
+      No longer talkt of by young men
+                            As rather clever:
+
+      In the last quarter are my eyes,
+      You see it by their form and size;
+      Is it not time then to be wise?
+                            Or now or never.
+
+      Fairest that ever sprang from Eve!
+      While Time allows the short reprieve,
+      Just look at me! would you believe
+                            'Twas once a lover?
+
+      I cannot clear the five-bar gate,
+      But, trying first its timber's state,
+      Climb stiffly up, take breath, and wait
+                            To trundle over.
+
+      Thro' gallopade I cannot swing
+      The entangling blooms of Beauty's spring:
+      I cannot say the tender thing,
+                            Be 't true or false,
+
+      And am beginning to opine
+      Those girls are only half-divine
+      Whose waists yon wicked boys entwine
+                            In giddy waltz.
+
+      I fear that arm above that shoulder,
+      I wish them wiser, graver, older,
+      Sedater, and no harm if colder
+                            And panting less.
+
+      Ah! people were not half so wild
+      In former days, when, starchly mild,
+      Upon her high-heel'd Essex smiled
+                            The brave Queen Bess.
+
+
+XVI
+
+ON SEEING A HAIR OF LUCRETIA BORGIA
+
+      Borgia, thou once wert almost too august
+      And high for adoration; now thou'rt dust.
+      All that remains of thee these plaits unfold,
+      Calm hair, meandering in pellucid gold.
+
+
+XVII
+
+      Once, and once only, have I seen thy face,
+      Elia! once only has thy tripping tongue
+      Run o'er my breast, yet never has been left
+      Impression on it stronger or more sweet.
+      Cordial old man! what youth was in thy years,
+      What wisdom in thy levity, what truth
+      In every utterance of that purest soul!
+      Few are the spirits of the glorified
+      I'd spring to earlier at the gate of Heaven.
+
+
+XVIII
+
+TO WORDSWORTH
+
+      Those who have laid the harp aside
+        And turn'd to idler things,
+      From very restlessness have tried
+        The loose and dusty strings.
+      And, catching back some favourite strain,
+      Run with it o'er the chords again.
+
+      But Memory is not a Muse,
+        O Wordsworth! though 'tis said
+      They all descend from her, and use
+        To haunt her fountain-head:
+      That other men should work for me
+      In the rich mines of Poesie,
+      Pleases me better than the toil
+        Of smoothing under hardened hand,
+      With Attic emery and oil,
+        The shining point for Wisdom's wand,
+      Like those thou temperest 'mid the rills
+      Descending from thy native hills.
+
+      Without his governance, in vain
+        Manhood is strong, and Youth is bold
+      If oftentimes the o'er-piled strain
+        Clogs in the furnace, and grows cold
+      Beneath his pinions deep and frore,
+      And swells and melts and flows no more,
+      That is because the heat beneath
+        Pants in its cavern poorly fed.
+      Life springs not from the couch of Death,
+        Nor Muse nor Grace can raise the dead;
+      Unturn'd then let the mass remain,
+      Intractable to sun or rain.
+
+      A marsh, where only flat leaves lie,
+      And showing but the broken sky,
+      Too surely is the sweetest lay
+      That wins the ear and wastes the day,
+      Where youthful Fancy pouts alone
+      And lets not Wisdom touch her zone.
+
+      He who would build his fame up high,
+      The rule and plummet must apply,
+      Nor say, 'I'll do what I have plann'd,'
+      Before he try if loam or sand
+      Be still remaining in the place
+      Delved for each polisht pillar's base.
+      With skilful eye and fit device
+      Thou raisest every edifice,
+      Whether in sheltered vale it stand
+      Or overlook the Dardan strand,
+      Amid the cypresses that mourn
+      Laodameia's love forlorn.
+
+      We both have run o'er half the space
+      Listed for mortal's earthly race;
+      We both have crost life's fervid line,
+      And other stars before us shine:
+      May they be bright and prosperous
+      As those that have been stars for us!
+      Our course by Milton's light was sped,
+      And Shakespeare shining overhead:
+      Chatting on deck was Dryden too,
+      The Bacon of the rhyming crew;
+      None ever crost our mystic sea
+      More richly stored with thought than he;
+      Tho' never tender nor sublime,
+      He wrestles with and conquers Time.
+      To learn my lore on Chaucer's knee,
+      I left much prouder company;
+      Thee gentle Spenser fondly led,
+      But me he mostly sent to bed.
+
+      I wish them every joy above
+      That highly blessed spirits prove,
+      Save one: and that too shall be theirs,
+      But after many rolling years,
+      When 'mid their light thy light appears.
+
+
+XIX
+
+TO CHARLES DICKENS
+
+      Go then to Italy; but mind
+      To leave the pale low France behind;
+      Pass through that country, nor ascend
+      The Rhine, nor over Tyrol wend:
+      Thus all at once shall rise more grand
+      The glories of the ancient land.
+        Dickens! how often, when the air
+      Breath'd genially, I've thought me there,
+      And rais'd to heaven my thankful eyes
+      To see three spans of deep blue skies.
+        In Genoa now I hear a stir,
+      A shout ... _Here comes the Minister!_
+      Yes, thou art he, although not sent
+      By cabinet or parliament:
+      Yes, thou art he. Since Milton's youth
+      Bloom'd in the Eden of the South,
+      Spirit so pure and lofty none
+      Hath heavenly Genius from his throne
+      Deputed on the banks of Thames
+      To speak his voice and urge his claims.
+      Let every nation know from thee
+      How less than lovely Italy
+      Is the whole world beside; let all
+      Into their grateful breasts recall
+      How Prospero and Miranda dwelt
+      In Italy: the griefs that melt
+      The stoniest heart, each sacred tear
+      One lacrymatory gathered here;
+      All Desdemona's, all that fell
+      In playful Juliet's bridal cell.
+        Ah! could my steps in life's decline
+      Accompany or follow thine!
+      But my own vines are not for me
+      To prune, or from afar to see.
+      I miss the tales I used to tell
+      With cordial Hare and joyous Gell,
+      And that good old Archbishop whose
+      Cool library, at evening's close
+      (Soon as from Ischia swept the gale
+      And heav'd and left the dark'ning sail),
+      Its lofty portal open'd wide
+      To me, and very few beside:
+      Yet large his kindness. Still the poor
+      Flock round Taranto's palace door,
+      And find no other to replace
+      The noblest of a noble race.
+      Amid our converse you would see
+      Each with white cat upon his knee,
+      And flattering that grand company:
+      For Persian kings might proudly own
+      Such glorious cats to share the throne.
+        Write me few letters: I'm content
+      With what for all the world is meant;
+      Write then for all: but, since my breast
+      Is far more faithful than the rest,
+      Never shall any other share
+      With little Nelly nestling there.
+
+
+XX
+
+TO BARRY CORNWALL
+
+      Barry! your spirit long ago
+      Has haunted me; at last I know
+      The heart it sprung from: one more sound
+      Ne'er rested on poetic ground.
+      But, Barry Cornwall! by what right
+      Wring you my breast and dim my sight,
+      And make me wish at every touch
+      My poor old hand could do as much?
+      No other in these later times
+      Has bound me in so potent rhymes.
+      I have observed the curious dress
+      And jewelry of brave Queen Bess,
+      But always found some o'ercharged thing,
+      Some flaw in even the brightest ring,
+      Admiring in her men of war,
+      A rich but too argute guitar.
+      Our foremost now are more prolix,
+      And scrape with three-fell fiddlesticks,
+      And, whether bound for griefs or smiles,
+      Are slow to turn as crocodiles.
+      Once, every court and country bevy
+      Chose the gallant of loins less heavy,
+      And would have laid upon the shelf
+      Him who could talk but of himself.
+      Reason is stout, but even Reason
+      May walk too long in Rhyme's hot season.
+      I have heard many folks aver
+      They have caught horrid colds with her.
+      Imagination's paper kite,
+      Unless the string is held in tight,
+      Whatever fits and starts it takes,
+      Soon bounces on the ground, and breaks.
+      You, placed afar from each extreme,
+      Nor dully drowse nor wildly dream,
+      But, ever flowing with good-humour,
+      Are bright as spring and warm as summer.
+      Mid your Penates not a word
+      Of scorn or ill-report is heard;
+      Nor is there any need to pull
+      A sheaf or truss from cart too full,
+      Lest it o'erload the horse, no doubt,
+      Or clog the road by falling out.
+      We, who surround a common table,
+      And imitate the fashionable,
+      Wear each two eyeglasses: _this_ lens
+      Shows us our faults, _that_ other men's.
+      We do not care how dim may be
+      _This_ by whose aid our own we see,
+      But, ever anxiously alert
+      That all may have their whole desert,
+      We would melt down the stars and sun
+      In our heart's furnace, to make one
+      Thro' which the enlighten'd world might spy
+      A mote upon a brother's eye.
+
+
+XXI
+
+TO ROBERT BROWNING
+
+      There is delight in singing, tho' none hear
+      Beside the singer: and there is delight
+      In praising, tho' the praiser sit alone
+      And see the prais'd far off him, far above.
+      Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's,
+      Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee,
+      Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
+      No man hath walkt along our roads with step
+      So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
+      So varied in discourse. But warmer climes
+      Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze
+      Of Alpine highths thou playest with, borne on
+      Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where
+      The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.
+
+
+XXII
+
+AGE
+
+      Death, tho' I see him not, is near
+      And grudges me my eightieth year.
+      Now, I would give him all these last
+      For one that fifty have run past.
+      Ah! he strikes all things, all alike,
+      But bargains: those he will not strike.
+
+
+XXIII
+
+      Leaf after leaf drops off, flower after flower,
+      Some in the chill, some in the warmer hour:
+      Alike they flourish and alike they fall,
+      And Earth who nourisht them receives them all.
+      Should we, her wiser sons, be less content
+      To sink into her lap when life is spent?
+
+
+XXIV
+
+      Well I remember how you smiled
+        To see me write your name upon
+      The soft sea-sand--'_O! what a child!_
+        _You think you're writing upon stone!_'
+      I have since written what no tide
+        Shall ever wash away, what men
+      Unborn shall read o'er ocean wide
+        And find Ianthe's name again.
+
+
+XXV
+
+      I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
+      Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art;
+      I warmed both hands before the fire of Life;
+      It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
+
+
+XXVI
+
+      Death stands above me, whispering low
+        I know not what into my ear:
+      Of his strange language all I know
+        Is, there is not a word of fear.
+
+
+XXVII
+
+A PASTORAL
+
+      Damon was sitting in the grove
+      With Phyllis, and protesting love;
+      And she was listening; but no word
+      Of all he loudly swore she heard.
+      How! was she deaf then? no, not she,
+      Phyllis was quite the contrary.
+      Tapping his elbow, she said, 'Hush!
+      O what a darling of a thrush!
+      I think he never sang so well
+      As now, below us, in the dell.'
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+THE LOVER
+
+      Now thou art gone, tho' not gone far,
+        It seems that there are worlds between us;
+      Shine here again, thou wandering star!
+        Earth's planet! and return with Venus.
+
+      At times thou broughtest me thy light
+        When restless sleep had gone away;
+      At other times more blessed night
+        Stole over, and prolonged thy stay.
+
+
+XXIX
+
+THE POET WHO SLEEPS
+
+      One day, when I was young, I read
+      About a poet, long since dead,
+      Who fell asleep, as poets do
+      In writing--and make others too.
+      But herein lies the story's gist,
+      How a gay queen came up and kist
+      The sleeper.
+                    'Capital!' thought I.
+      'A like good fortune let me try.'
+      Many the things we poets feign.
+      I feign'd to sleep, but tried in vain.
+      I tost and turn'd from side to side,
+      With open mouth and nostrils wide.
+      At last there came a pretty maid,
+      And gazed; then to myself I said,
+      'Now for it!' She, instead of kiss,
+      Cried, 'What a lazy lout is this!'
+
+
+XXX
+
+DANIEL DEFOE
+
+      Few will acknowledge what they owe
+      To persecuted, brave Defoe.
+      Achilles, in Homeric song,
+      May, or he may not, live so long
+      As Crusoe; few their strength had tried
+      Without so staunch and safe a guide.
+      What boy is there who never laid
+      Under his pillow, half afraid,
+      That precious volume, lest the morrow
+      For unlearnt lessons might bring sorrow?
+      But nobler lessons he has taught
+      Wide-awake scholars who fear'd naught:
+      A Rodney and a Nelson may
+      Without him not have won the day.
+
+
+XXXI
+
+IDLE WORDS
+
+      They say that every idle word
+      Is numbered by the Omniscient Lord.
+      O Parliament! 'tis well that He
+      Endureth for Eternity,
+      And that a thousand Angels wait
+      To write them at thy inner gate.
+
+
+XXXII
+
+TO THE RIVER AVON
+
+      Avon! why runnest thou away so fast?
+      Rest thee before that Chancel where repose
+      The bones of him whose spirit moves the world.
+      I have beheld thy birthplace, I have seen
+      Thy tiny ripples where they play amid
+      The golden cups and ever-waving blades.
+      I have seen mighty rivers, I have seen
+      Padus, recovered from his fiery wound,
+      And Tiber, prouder than them all to bear
+      Upon his tawny bosom men who crusht
+      The world they trod on, heeding not the cries
+      Of culprit kings and nations many-tongued.
+      What are to me these rivers, once adorn'd
+      With crowns they would not wear but swept away?
+      Worthier art thou of worship, and I bend
+      My knees upon thy bank, and call thy name,
+      And hear, or think I hear, thy voice reply.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+Minor errors (missing or transposed letters, omitted punctuation, etc.)
+have been corrected without note. The author used a lot of archaic
+spelling, which remains unchanged.
+
+The single Greek word in this work has been transliterated, and is
+surrounded by plus signs +like this+.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Imaginary Conversations and Poems, by 
+Walter Savage Landor
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS AND POEMS ***
+
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A selection, by Walter Savage Landor.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Imaginary Conversations and Poems, by 
+Walter Savage Landor
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Imaginary Conversations and Poems
+       A Selection
+
+Author: Walter Savage Landor
+
+Release Date: May 28, 2007 [EBook #21628]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS AND POEMS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sam W. and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS<br />
+AND POEMS: A SELECTION</h1>
+
+<p class="center"><b>By</b></p>
+<h2>WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<h3>IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS</h3>
+
+<ul class="toc" style="list-style-type:none">
+  <li><a href="#MARCELLUS_AND_HANNIBAL">Marcellus and Hannibal</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#QUEEN_ELIZABETH_AND_CECIL">Queen Elizabeth and Cecil</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#EPICTETUS_AND_SENECA">Epictetus and Seneca</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#PETER_THE_GREAT_AND_ALEXIS">Peter the Great and Alexis</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#HENRY_VIII_AND_ANNE_BOLEYN">Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#JOSEPH_SCALIGER_AND_MONTAIGNE">Joseph Scaliger and Montaigne</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#BOCCACCIO_AND_PETRARCA">Boccaccio and Petrarca</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#BOSSUET_AND_THE_DUCHESS_DE_FONTANGES">Bossuet and the Duchess de Fontanges</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#JOHN_OF_GAUNT_AND_JOANNA_OF_KENT">John of Gaunt and Joanna of Kent</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#LEOFRIC_AND_GODIVA">Leofric and Godiva</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#ESSEX_AND_SPENSER">Essex and Spenser</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#LORD_BACON_AND_RICHARD_HOOKER">Lord Bacon and Richard Hooker</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#OLIVER_CROMWELL_AND_WALTER_NOBLE">Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#LORD_BROOKE_AND_SIR_PHILIP_SIDNEY">Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#SOUTHEY_AND_PORSON">Southey and Porson</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#THE_ABBE_DELILLE_AND_WALTER_LANDOR">The Abb&eacute; Delille and Walter Landor</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#DIOGENES_AND_PLATO">Diogenes and Plato</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#ALFIERI_AND_SALOMON_THE_FLORENTINE_JEW">Alfieri and Salomon the Florentine Jew</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#ROUSSEAU_AND_MALESHERBES">Rousseau and Malesherbes</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#LUCULLUS_AND_CAESAR">Lucullus and Caesar</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#EPICURUS_LEONTION_AND_TERNISSA">Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#DANTE_AND_BEATRICE">Dante and Beatrice</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#FRA_FILIPPO_LIPPI_AND_POPE_EUGENIUS_THE_FOURTH">Fra Filippo Lippi and Pope Eugenius the Fourth</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#TASSO_AND_CORNELIA">Tasso and Cornelia</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#LA_FONTAINE_AND_DE_LA_ROCHEFOUCAULT">La Fontaine and de La Rochefoucault</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#LUCIAN_AND_TIMOTHEUS">Lucian and Timotheus</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#BISHOP_SHIPLEY_AND_BENJAMIN_FRANKLIN">Bishop Shipley and Benjamin Franklin</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#SOUTHEY_AND_LANDOR">Southey and Landor</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#THE_EMPEROR_OF_CHINA_AND_TSING-TI">The Emperor of China and Tsing-Ti</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#LOUIS_XVIII_AND_TALLEYRAND">Louis XVIII and Talleyrand</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#OLIVER_CROMWELL_AND_SIR_OLIVER_CROMWELL">Oliver Cromwell and Sir Oliver Cromwell</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#THE_COUNT_GLEICHEM_THE_COUNTESS_THEIR_CHILDREN_AND_ZAIDA">The Count Gleichem: the Countess: their Children, and Zaida</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h3>THE PENTAMERON</h3>
+
+<ul class="toc" style="list-style-type:none">
+  <li><a href="#FIRST_DAYS_INTERVIEW">First Day&#8217;s Interview</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#THIRD_DAYS_INTERVIEW">Third Day&#8217;s Interview</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#FOURTH_DAYS_INTERVIEW">Fourth Day&#8217;s Interview</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#FIFTH_DAYS_INTERVIEW">Fifth Day&#8217;s Interview</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h3>POEMS</h3>
+
+<ul class="toc" style="list-style-type:upper-roman">
+  <li><a href="#I">She I love (alas in vain!)</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#II">Pleasure! why thus desert the heart</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#III">Past ruin&#8217;d Ilion Helen lives</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#IV">Ianthe! you are call&#8217;d to cross the sea!</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#V">The gates of fame and of the grave</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#VI">Twenty years hence my eyes may grow</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#VII">Here, ever since you went abroad</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#VIII">Tell me not things past all belief</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#IX">Proud word you never spoke, but you will speak</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#X">Fiesole Idyl</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XI">Ah what avails the sceptred race</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XII">With rosy hand a little girl prest down</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XIII">Ternissa! you are fled!</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XIV">Various the roads of life; in one</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XV">Yes; I write verses now and then</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XVI">On seeing a hair of Lucretia Borgia</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XVII">Once, and once only, have I seen thy face</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XVIII">To Wordsworth</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XIX">To Charles Dickens</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XX">To Barry Cornwall</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XXI">To Robert Browning</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XXII">Age</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XXIII">Leaf after leaf drops off, flower after flower</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XXIV">Well I remember how you smiled</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XXV">I strove with none, for none was worth my strife</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XXVI">Death stands above me, whispering low</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XXVII">A Pastoral</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XXVIII">The Lover</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XXIX">The Poet who Sleeps</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XXX">Daniel Defoe</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XXXI">Idle Words</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#XXXII">To the River Avon</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IMAGINARY_CONVERSATIONS" id="IMAGINARY_CONVERSATIONS"></a>IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="MARCELLUS_AND_HANNIBAL" id="MARCELLUS_AND_HANNIBAL"></a>MARCELLUS AND HANNIBAL</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> Could a Numidian horseman ride no faster?
+Marcellus! oh! Marcellus! He moves not&mdash;he is dead. Did he
+not stir his fingers? Stand wide, soldiers&mdash;wide, forty paces;
+give him air; bring water; halt! Gather those broad leaves,
+and all the rest, growing under the brushwood; unbrace his
+armour. Loose the helmet first&mdash;his breast rises. I fancied
+his eyes were fixed on me&mdash;they have rolled back again. Who
+presumed to touch my shoulder? This horse? It was surely
+the horse of Marcellus! Let no man mount him. Ha! ha!
+the Romans, too, sink into luxury: here is gold about the
+charger.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaulish Chieftain.</i> Execrable thief! The golden chain of our
+king under a beast&#8217;s grinders! The vengeance of the gods hath
+overtaken the impure&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> We will talk about vengeance when we have entered
+Rome, and about purity among the priests, if they will hear us.
+Sound for the surgeon. That arrow may be extracted from the
+side, deep as it is. The conqueror of Syracuse lies before me.
+Send a vessel off to Carthage. Say Hannibal is at the gates of
+Rome. Marcellus, who stood alone between us, fallen. Brave
+man! I would rejoice and cannot. How awfully serene a
+countenance! Such as we hear are in the islands of the Blessed.
+And how glorious a form and stature! Such too was theirs!
+They also once lay thus upon the earth wet with their blood&mdash;few
+other enter there. And what plain armour!</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaulish Chieftain.</i> My party slew him; indeed, I think I slew
+him myself. I claim the chain: it belongs to my king; the glory
+of Gaul requires it. Never will she endure to see another take it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> My friend, the glory of Marcellus did not require
+him to wear it. When he suspended the arms of your brave
+king in the temple, he thought such a trinket unworthy of himself
+and of Jupiter. The shield he battered down, the breast-plate
+he pierced with his sword&mdash;these he showed to the people
+and to the gods; hardly his wife and little children saw this,
+ere his horse wore it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaulish Chieftain.</i> Hear me; O Hannibal!</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> What! when Marcellus lies before me? when his
+life may perhaps be recalled? when I may lead him in triumph
+to Carthage? when Italy, Sicily, Greece, Asia, wait to obey me?
+Content thee! I will give thee mine own bridle, worth ten such.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaulish Chieftain.</i> For myself?</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> For thyself.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaulish Chieftain.</i> And these rubies and emeralds, and that
+scarlet&mdash;&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> Yes, yes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaulish Chieftain.</i> O glorious Hannibal! unconquerable
+hero! O my happy country! to have such an ally and defender.
+I swear eternal gratitude&mdash;yes, gratitude, love, devotion,
+beyond eternity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> In all treaties we fix the time: I could hardly ask
+a longer. Go back to thy station. I would see what the
+surgeon is about, and hear what he thinks. The life of Marcellus!
+the triumph of Hannibal! what else has the world in it?
+Only Rome and Carthage: these follow.</p>
+
+<p><i>Marcellus.</i> I must die then? The gods be praised! The
+commander of a Roman army is no captive.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal. [To the Surgeon.]</i> Could not he bear a sea voyage?
+Extract the arrow.</p>
+
+<p><i>Surgeon.</i> He expires that moment.</p>
+
+<p><i>Marcellus.</i> It pains me: extract it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> Marcellus, I see no expression of pain on your
+countenance, and never will I consent to hasten the death of an
+enemy in my power. Since your recovery is hopeless, you say
+truly you are no captive.</p>
+
+<p>[<i>To the Surgeon.</i>] Is there nothing, man, that can assuage the
+mortal pain? for, suppress the signs of it as he may, he must
+feel it. Is there nothing to alleviate and allay it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Marcellus.</i> Hannibal, give me thy hand&mdash;thou hast found it
+and brought it me, compassion.</p>
+
+<p>[<i>To the Surgeon.</i>] Go, friend; others want thy aid; several
+fell around me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> Recommend to your country, O Marcellus, while
+time permits it, reconciliation and peace with me, informing
+the Senate of my superiority in force, and the impossibility of
+resistance. The tablet is ready: let me take off this ring&mdash;try
+to write, to sign it, at least. Oh, what satisfaction I feel at
+seeing you able to rest upon the elbow, and even to smile!</p>
+
+<p><i>Marcellus.</i> Within an hour or less, with how severe a brow
+would Minos say to me, &#8216;Marcellus, is this thy writing?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Rome loses one man: she hath lost many such, and she still
+hath many left.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> Afraid as you are of falsehood, say you this? I
+confess in shame the ferocity of my countrymen. Unfortunately,
+too, the nearer posts are occupied by Gauls, infinitely
+more cruel. The Numidians are so in revenge: the Gauls both
+in revenge and in sport. My presence is required at a distance,
+and I apprehend the barbarity of one or other, learning, as they
+must do, your refusal to execute my wishes for the common
+good, and feeling that by this refusal you deprive them of their
+country, after so long an absence.</p>
+
+<p><i>Marcellus.</i> Hannibal, thou art not dying.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> What then? What mean you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Marcellus.</i> That thou mayest, and very justly, have many
+things yet to apprehend: I can have none. The barbarity of
+thy soldiers is nothing to me: mine would not dare be cruel.
+Hannibal is forced to be absent; and his authority goes away
+with his horse. On this turf lies defaced the semblance of a
+general; but Marcellus is yet the regulator of his army. Dost
+thou abdicate a power conferred on thee by thy nation? Or
+wouldst thou acknowledge it to have become, by thy own sole
+fault, less plenary than thy adversary&#8217;s?</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken too much: let me rest; this mantle oppresses me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> I placed my mantle on your head when the helmet
+was first removed, and while you were lying in the sun. Let
+me fold it under, and then replace the ring.</p>
+
+<p><i>Marcellus.</i> Take it, Hannibal. It was given me by a poor
+woman who flew to me at Syracuse, and who covered it with her
+hair, torn off in desperation that she had no other gift to offer.
+Little thought I that her gift and her words should be mine.
+How suddenly may the most powerful be in the situation of the
+most helpless! Let that ring and the mantle under my head
+be the exchange of guests at parting. The time may come,
+Hannibal, when thou (and the gods alone know whether as
+conqueror or conquered) mayest sit under the roof of my
+children, and in either case it shall serve thee. In thy adverse
+fortune, they will remember on whose pillow their father breathed
+his last; in thy prosperity (Heaven grant it may shine upon
+thee in some other country!) it will rejoice thee to protect them.
+We feel ourselves the most exempt from affliction when we relieve
+it, although we are then the most conscious that it may befall us.</p>
+
+<p>There is one thing here which is not at the disposal of either.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> What?</p>
+
+<p><i>Marcellus.</i> This body.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> Whither would you be lifted? Men are ready.</p>
+
+<p><i>Marcellus.</i> I meant not so. My strength is failing. I seem
+to hear rather what is within than what is without. My sight
+and my other senses are in confusion. I would have said&mdash;this
+body, when a few bubbles of air shall have left it, is no
+more worthy of thy notice than of mine; but thy glory will not
+let thee refuse it to the piety of my family.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> You would ask something else. I perceive an
+inquietude not visible till now.</p>
+
+<p><i>Marcellus.</i> Duty and Death make us think of home sometimes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> Thitherward the thoughts of the conqueror and
+of the conquered fly together.</p>
+
+<p><i>Marcellus.</i> Hast thou any prisoners from my escort?</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> A few dying lie about&mdash;and let them lie&mdash;they are
+Tuscans. The remainder I saw at a distance, flying, and but
+one brave man among them&mdash;he appeared a Roman&mdash;a youth
+who turned back, though wounded. They surrounded and
+dragged him away, spurring his horse with their swords. These
+Etrurians measure their courage carefully, and tack it well
+together before they put it on, but throw it off again with
+lordly ease.</p>
+
+<p>Marcellus, why think about them? or does aught else disquiet
+your thoughts?</p>
+
+<p><i>Marcellus.</i> I have suppressed it long enough. My son&mdash;my
+beloved son!</p>
+
+<p><i>Hannibal.</i> Where is he? Can it be? Was he with you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Marcellus.</i> He would have shared my fate&mdash;and has not.
+Gods of my country! beneficent throughout life to me, in death
+surpassingly beneficent: I render you, for the last time, thanks.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="QUEEN_ELIZABETH_AND_CECIL" id="QUEEN_ELIZABETH_AND_CECIL"></a>QUEEN ELIZABETH AND CECIL</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Elizabeth.</i> I advise thee again, churlish Cecil, how that our
+Edmund Spenser, whom thou callest most uncourteously a
+whining whelp, hath good and solid reason for his complaint.
+God&#8217;s blood! shall the lady that tieth my garter and shuffles
+the smock over my head, or the lord that steadieth my chair&#8217;s
+back while I eat, or the other that looketh to my buck-hounds
+lest they be mangy, be holden by me in higher esteem and estate
+than he who hath placed me among the bravest of past times,
+and will as safely and surely set me down among the loveliest
+in the future?</p>
+
+<p><i>Cecil.</i> Your Highness must remember he carouseth fully for
+such deserts: fifty pounds a year of unclipped moneys, and a
+butt of canary wine; not to mention three thousand acres in
+Ireland, worth fairly another fifty and another butt, in seasonable
+and quiet years.</p>
+
+<p><i>Elizabeth.</i> The moneys are not enough to sustain a pair of
+grooms and a pair of palfreys, and more wine hath been drunken
+in my presence at a feast. The moneys are given to such men,
+that they may not incline nor be obligated to any vile or lowly
+occupation; and the canary, that they may entertain such
+promising wits as court their company and converse; and that
+in such manner there may be alway in our land a succession
+of these heirs unto fame. He hath written, not indeed with his
+wonted fancifulness, nor in learned and majestical language,
+but in homely and rustic wise, some verses which have moved
+me, and haply the more inasmuch as they demonstrate to me
+that his genius hath been dampened by his adversities. Read them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cecil.</i></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How much is lost when neither heart nor eye</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Rosewinged Desire or fabling Hope deceives;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">When boyhood with quick throb hath ceased to spy</span><br />
+<span class="i1">The dubious apple in the yellow leaves;</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When, rising from the turf where youth reposed,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">We find but deserts in the far-sought shore;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">When the huge book of Faery-land lies closed,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">And those strong brazen clasps will yield no more.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Elizabeth.</i> The said Edmund hath also furnished unto the
+weaver at Arras, John Blanquieres, on my account, a description
+for some of his cunningest wenches to work at, supplied by mine
+own self, indeed, as far as the subject-matter goes, but set forth
+by him with figures and fancies, and daintily enough bedecked.
+I could have wished he had thereunto joined a fair comparison
+between Dian&mdash;no matter&mdash;he might perhaps have fared the
+better for it; but poets&#8217; wits&mdash;God help them!&mdash;when did they
+ever sit close about them? Read the poesy, not over-rich, and
+concluding very awkwardly and meanly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cecil.</i></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where forms the lotus, with its level leaves</span><br />
+<span class="i1">And solid blossoms, many floating isles,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">What heavenly radiance swift descending cleaves</span><br />
+<span class="i1">The darksome wave! Unwonted beauty smiles</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On its pure bosom, on each bright-eyed flower,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">On every nymph, and twenty sate around,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Lo! &#8217;twas Diana&mdash;from the sultry hour</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Hither she fled, nor fear&#8217;d she sight or sound.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Unhappy youth, whom thirst and quiver-reeds</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Drew to these haunts, whom awe forbade to fly!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Three faithful dogs before him rais&#8217;d their heads,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">And watched and wonder&#8217;d at that fix&egrave;d eye.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Forth sprang his favourite&mdash;with her arrow-hand</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Too late the goddess hid what hand may hide,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of every nymph and every reed complain&#8217;d,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">And dashed upon the bank the waters wide.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On the prone head and sandal&#8217;d feet they flew&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Lo! slender hoofs and branching horns appear!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The last marr&#8217;d voice not e&#8217;en the favourite knew,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">But bay&#8217;d and fasten&#8217;d on the upbraiding deer.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Far be, chaste goddess, far from me and mine</span><br />
+<span class="i1">The stream that tempts thee in the summer noon!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Alas, that vengeance dwells with charms divine&mdash;&mdash;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Elizabeth.</i> Pshaw! give me the paper: I forewarned thee how
+it ended&mdash;pitifully, pitifully.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cecil.</i> I cannot think otherwise than that the undertaker
+of the aforecited poesy hath chosen your Highness; for I have
+seen painted&mdash;I know not where, but I think no farther off than
+Putney&mdash;the identically same Dian, with full as many nymphs,
+as he calls them, and more dogs. So small a matter as a page
+of poesy shall never stir my choler nor twitch my purse-string.</p>
+
+<p><i>Elizabeth.</i> I have read in Plinius and Mela of a runlet near
+Dodona, which kindled by approximation an unlighted torch,
+and extinguished a lighted one. Now, Cecil, I desire no such a
+jetty to be celebrated as the decoration of my court: in simpler
+words, which your gravity may more easily understand, I would
+not from the fountain of honour give lustre to the dull and
+ignorant, deadening and leaving in its tomb the lamp of literature
+and genius. I ardently wish my reign to be remembered:
+if my actions were different from what they are, I should as
+ardently wish it to be forgotten. Those are the worst of suicides,
+who voluntarily and propensely stab or suffocate their fame,
+when God hath commanded them to stand on high for an
+example. We call him parricide who destroys the author of
+his existence: tell me, what shall we call him who casts forth
+to the dogs and birds of prey its most faithful propagator and
+most firm support? Mark me, I do not speak of that existence
+which the proudest must close in a ditch&mdash;the narrowest, too,
+of ditches and the soonest filled and fouled, and whereunto a
+pinch of ratsbane or a poppy-head may bend him; but of that
+which reposes on our own good deeds, carefully picked up,
+skilfully put together, and decorously laid out for us by another&#8217;s
+kind understanding: I speak of an existence such as no father
+is author of, or provides for. The parent gives us few days and
+sorrowful; the poet, many and glorious: the one (supposing him
+discreet and kindly) best reproves our faults; the other best
+remunerates our virtues.</p>
+
+<p>A page of poesy is a little matter: be it so; but of a truth
+I do tell thee, Cecil, it shall master full many a bold heart that
+the Spaniard cannot trouble; it shall win to it full many a proud
+and flighty one that even chivalry and manly comeliness cannot
+touch. I may shake titles and dignities by the dozen from my
+breakfast-board; but I may not save those upon whose heads
+I shake them from rottenness and oblivion. This year they
+and their sovereign dwell together; next year, they and their
+beagle. Both have names, but names perishable. The keeper
+of my privy seal is an earl: what then? the keeper of my poultry-yard
+is a Caesar. In honest truth, a name given to a man is no
+better than a skin given to him: what is not natively his own falls
+off and comes to nothing.</p>
+
+<p>I desire in future to hear no contempt of penmen, unless a
+depraved use of the pen shall have so cramped them as to
+incapacitate them for the sword and for the council chamber.
+If Alexander was the Great, what was Aristoteles who made
+him so, and taught him every art and science he knew, except
+three&mdash;those of drinking, of blaspheming, and of murdering his
+bosom friends? Come along: I will bring thee back again
+nearer home. Thou mightest toss and tumble in thy bed many
+nights, and never eke out the substance of a stanza; but Edmund,
+if perchance I should call upon him for his counsel, would give
+me as wholesome and prudent as any of you. We should
+indemnify such men for the injustice we do unto them in not
+calling them about us, and for the mortification they must suffer
+at seeing their inferiors set before them. Edmund is grave and
+gentle: he complains of fortune, not of Elizabeth; of courts,
+not of Cecil. I am resolved&mdash;so help me, God!&mdash;he shall have
+no further cause for his repining. Go, convey unto him those
+twelve silver spoons, with the apostles on them, gloriously
+gilded; and deliver into his hand these twelve large golden
+pieces, sufficing for the yearly maintenance of another horse
+and groom. Beside which, set open before him with due
+reverence this Bible, wherein he may read the mercies of God
+toward those who waited in patience for His blessing; and this
+pair of crimson silk hose, which thou knowest I have worn only
+thirteen months, taking heed that the heel-piece be put into
+good and sufficient restoration, at my sole charges, by the Italian
+woman nigh the pollard elm at Charing Cross.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="EPICTETUS_AND_SENECA" id="EPICTETUS_AND_SENECA"></a>EPICTETUS AND SENECA</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> Epictetus, I desired your master, Epaphroditus, to
+send you hither, having been much pleased with his report of
+your conduct, and much surprised at the ingenuity of your
+writings.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> Then I am afraid, my friend&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> <i>My friend!</i> are these the expressions&mdash;Well, let it
+pass. Philosophers must bear bravely. The people expect it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> Are philosophers, then, only philosophers for the
+people; and, instead of instructing them, must they play tricks
+before them? Give me rather the gravity of dancing dogs.
+Their motions are for the rabble; their reverential eyes and
+pendant paws are under the pressure of awe at a master; but
+they are dogs, and not below their destinies.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> Epictetus! I will give you three talents to let me
+take that sentiment for my own.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> I would give thee twenty, if I had them, to make
+it thine.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> You mean, by lending it the graces of my language?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> I mean, by lending it to thy conduct. And now
+let me console and comfort thee, under the calamity I brought
+on thee by calling thee <i>my friend</i>. If thou art not my friend,
+why send for me? Enemy I can have none: being a slave,
+Fortune has now done with me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> Continue, then, your former observations. What
+were you saying?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> That which thou interruptedst.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> What was it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> I should have remarked that, if thou foundest
+ingenuity in my writings, thou must have discovered in them
+some deviation from the plain, homely truths of Zeno and
+Cleanthes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> We all swerve a little from them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> In practice too?</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> Yes, even in practice, I am afraid.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> Often?</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> Too often.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> Strange! I have been attentive, and yet have
+remarked but one difference among you great personages at
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> What difference fell under your observation?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> Crates and Zeno and Cleanthes taught us that our
+desires were to be subdued by philosophy alone. In this city,
+their acute and inventive scholars take us aside, and show us
+that there is not only one way, but two.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> Two ways?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> They whisper in our ear, &#8216;These two ways are
+philosophy and enjoyment: the wiser man will take the readier,
+or, not finding it, the alternative.&#8217; Thou reddenest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> Monstrous degeneracy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> What magnificent rings! I did not notice them
+until thou liftedst up thy hands to heaven, in detestation of
+such effeminacy and impudence.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> The rings are not amiss; my rank rivets them upon
+my fingers: I am forced to wear them. Our emperor gave me
+one, Epaphroditus another, Tigellinus the third. I cannot lay
+them aside a single day, for fear of offending the gods, and those
+whom they love the most worthily.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> Although they make thee stretch out thy fingers,
+like the arms and legs of one of us slaves upon a cross.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> Oh, horrible! Find some other resemblance.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> The extremities of a fig-leaf.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> Ignoble!</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> The claws of a toad, trodden on or stoned.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> You have great need, Epictetus, of an instructor in
+eloquence and rhetoric: you want topics, and tropes, and figures.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> I have no room for them. They make such a
+buzz in the house, a man&#8217;s own wife cannot understand what he
+says to her.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> Let us reason a little upon style. I would set you
+right, and remove from before you the prejudices of a somewhat
+rustic education. We may adorn the simplicity of the wisest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> Thou canst not adorn simplicity. What is naked
+or defective is susceptible of decoration: what is decorated is
+simplicity no longer. Thou mayest give another thing in
+exchange for it; but if thou wert master of it, thou wouldst
+preserve it inviolate. It is no wonder that we mortals, little
+able as we are to see truth, should be less able to express it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> You have formed at present no idea of style.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> I never think about it. First, I consider whether
+what I am about to say is true; then, whether I can say it with
+brevity, in such a manner as that others shall see it as clearly
+as I do in the light of truth; for, if they survey it as an ingenuity,
+my desire is ungratified, my duty unfulfilled. I go not with
+those who dance round the image of Truth, less out of honour
+to her than to display their agility and address.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> We must attract the attention of readers by novelty,
+and force, and grandeur of expression.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> We must. Nothing is so grand as truth, nothing
+so forcible, nothing so novel.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> Sonorous sentences are wanted to awaken the lethargy
+of indolence.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> Awaken it to what? Here lies the question;
+and a weighty one it is. If thou awakenest men where they can
+see nothing and do no work, it is better to let them rest: but
+will not they, thinkest thou, look up at a rainbow, unless they
+are called to it by a clap of thunder?</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> Your early youth, Epictetus, has been, I will not
+say neglected, but cultivated with rude instruments and
+unskilful hands.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> I thank God for it. Those rude instruments
+have left the turf lying yet toward the sun; and those unskilful
+hands have plucked out the docks.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> We hope and believe that we have attained a vein
+of eloquence, brighter and more varied than has been hitherto
+laid open to the world.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> Than any in the Greek?</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> We trust so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> Than your Cicero&#8217;s?</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> If the declaration may be made without an offence
+to modesty. Surely, you cannot estimate or value the eloquence
+of that noble pleader?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> Imperfectly, not being born in Italy; and the noble
+pleader is a much less man with me than the noble philosopher.
+I regret that, having farms and villas, he would not keep his
+distance from the pumping up of foul words against thieves,
+cut-throats, and other rogues; and that he lied, sweated, and
+thumped his head and thighs, in behalf of those who were no
+better.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> Senators must have clients, and must protect them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> Innocent or guilty?</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> Doubtless.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> If I regret what is and might not be, I may regret
+more what both is and must be. However, it is an amiable
+thing, and no small merit in the wealthy, even to trifle and play
+at their leisure hours with philosophy. It cannot be expected
+that such a personage should espouse her, or should recommend
+her as an inseparable mate to his heir.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> I would.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> Yes, Seneca, but thou hast no son to make the
+match for; and thy recommendation, I suspect, would be given
+him before he could consummate the marriage. Every man
+wishes his sons to be philosophers while they are young; but
+takes especial care, as they grow older, to teach them its insufficiency
+and unfitness for their intercourse with mankind.
+The paternal voice says: &#8216;You must not be particular; you are
+about to have a profession to live by; follow those who have
+thriven the best in it.&#8217; Now, among these, whatever be the
+profession, canst thou point out to me one single philosopher?</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> Not just now; nor, upon reflection, do I think it
+feasible.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> Thou, indeed, mayest live much to thy ease and
+satisfaction with philosophy, having (they say) two thousand
+talents.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> And a trifle to spare&mdash;pressed upon me by that
+godlike youth, my pupil Nero.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> Seneca! where God hath placed a mine, He hath
+placed the materials of an earthquake.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seneca.</i> A true philosopher is beyond the reach of Fortune.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epictetus.</i> The false one thinks himself so. Fortune cares
+little about philosophers; but she remembers where she hath
+set a rich man, and she laughs to see the Destinies at his door.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="PETER_THE_GREAT_AND_ALEXIS" id="PETER_THE_GREAT_AND_ALEXIS"></a>PETER THE GREAT AND ALEXIS</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> And so, after flying from thy father&#8217;s house, thou hast
+returned again from Vienna. After this affront in the face of
+Europe, thou darest to appear before me?</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> My emperor and father! I am brought before your
+Majesty, not at my own desire.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> I believe it well.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> I would not anger you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> What hope hadst thou, rebel, in thy flight to Vienna?</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> The hope of peace and privacy; the hope of security;
+and, above all things, of never more offending you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> That hope thou hast accomplished.
+Thou imaginedst, then, that my brother of Austria would
+maintain thee at his court&mdash;speak!</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> No, sir! I imagined that he would have afforded me
+a place of refuge.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Didst thou, then, take money with thee?</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> A few gold pieces.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> How many?</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> About sixty.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> He would have given thee promises for half the money;
+but the double of it does not purchase a house, ignorant wretch!</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> I knew as much as that: although my birth did not
+appear to destine me to purchase a house anywhere; and
+hitherto your liberality, my father, hath supplied my wants of
+every kind.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Not of wisdom, not of duty, not of spirit, not of courage,
+not of ambition. I have educated thee among my guards and
+horses, among my drums and trumpets, among my flags and
+masts. When thou wert a child, and couldst hardly walk,
+I have taken thee into the arsenal, though children should not
+enter according to regulations: I have there rolled cannon-balls
+before thee over iron plates; and I have shown thee bright new
+arms, bayonets and sabres; and I have pricked the back of my
+hands until the blood came out in many places; and I have
+made thee lick it; and I have then done the same to thine.
+Afterward, from thy tenth year, I have mixed gunpowder in
+thy grog; I have peppered thy peaches; I have poured bilge-water
+(with a little good wholesome tar in it) upon thy melons;
+I have brought out girls to mock thee and cocker thee, and talk
+like mariners, to make thee braver. Nothing would do. Nay,
+recollect thee! I have myself led thee forth to the window
+when fellows were hanged and shot; and I have shown thee
+every day the halves and quarters of bodies; and I have sent
+an orderly or chamberlain for the heads; and I have pulled the
+cap up from over the eyes; and I have made thee, in spite of
+thee, look steadfastly upon them, incorrigible coward!</p>
+
+<p>And now another word with thee about thy scandalous flight
+from the palace, in time of quiet, too! To the point! Did my
+brother of Austria invite thee? Did he, or did he not?</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> May I answer without doing an injury or disservice
+to his Imperial Majesty?</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Thou mayest. What injury canst thou or any one
+do, by the tongue, to such as he is?</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> At the moment, no; he did not. Nor indeed can
+I assert that he at any time invited me; but he said he
+pitied me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> About what? hold thy tongue; let that pass. Princes
+never pity but when they would make traitors: then their
+hearts grow tenderer than tripe. He pitied thee, kind soul,
+when he would throw thee at thy father&#8217;s head; but finding thy
+father too strong for him, he now commiserates the parent,
+laments the son&#8217;s rashness and disobedience, and would not
+make God angry for the world. At first, however, there must
+have been some overture on his part; otherwise thou are too
+shamefaced for intrusion. Come&mdash;thou hast never had wit
+enough to lie&mdash;tell me the truth, the whole truth.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> He said that if ever I wanted an asylum, his court
+was open to me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Open! so is the tavern; but folks pay for what they
+get there. Open, truly! and didst thou find it so?</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> He received me kindly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> I see he did.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> Derision, O my father! is not the fate I merit.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> True, true! it was not intended.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> Kind father! punish me then as you will.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Villain! wouldst thou kiss my hand, too? Art thou
+ignorant that the Austrian threw thee away from him, with the
+same indifference as he would the outermost leaf of a sandy
+sunburnt lettuce?</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> Alas! I am not ignorant of this.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> He dismissed thee at my order. If I had demanded
+from him his daughter, to be the bedfellow of a Kalmuc, he
+would have given her, and praised God.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> O father! is his baseness my crime?</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> No; thine is greater. Thy intention, I know, is to
+subvert the institutions it has been the labour of my lifetime to
+establish. Thou hast never rejoiced at my victories.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> I have rejoiced at your happiness and your safety.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Liar! coward! traitor! when the Polanders and Swedes
+fell before me, didst thou from thy soul congratulate me?
+Didst thou get drunk at home or abroad, or praise the Lord of
+Hosts and Saint Nicholas? Wert thou not silent and civil and
+low-spirited?</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> I lamented the irretrievable loss of human life; I
+lamented that the bravest and noblest were swept away the
+first; that the gentlest and most domestic were the earliest
+mourners; that frugality was supplanted by intemperance;
+that order was succeeded by confusion; and that your Majesty
+was destroying the glorious plans you alone were capable of
+devising.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> I destroy them! how? Of what plans art thou
+speaking?</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> Of civilizing the Muscovites. The Polanders in part
+were civilized: the Swedes, more than any other nation on the
+Continent; and so excellently versed were they in military
+science, and so courageous, that every man you killed cost you
+seven or eight.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Thou liest; nor six. And civilized, forsooth? Why,
+the robes of the metropolitan, him at Upsal, are not worth three
+ducats, between Jew and Livornese. I have no notion that
+Poland and Sweden shall be the only countries that produce
+great princes. What right have they to such as Gustavus and
+Sobieski? Europe ought to look to this before discontents
+become general, and the people do to us what we have the
+privilege of doing to the people. I am wasting my words: there
+is no arguing with positive fools like thee. So thou wouldst
+have desired me to let the Polanders and Swedes lie still and
+quiet! Two such powerful nations!</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> For that reason and others I would have gladly seen
+them rest, until our own people had increased in numbers and
+prosperity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> And thus thou disputest my right, before my face,
+to the exercise of the supreme power.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> Sir! God forbid!</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> God forbid, indeed! What care such villains as thou
+art what God forbids! He forbids the son to be disobedient
+to the father; He forbids&mdash;He forbids&mdash;twenty things. I do not
+wish, and will not have, a successor who dreams of dead people.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> My father! I have dreamed of none such.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Thou hast, and hast talked about them&mdash;Scythians,
+I think, they call &#8217;em. Now, who told thee, Mr. Professor,
+that the Scythians were a happier people than we are; that
+they were inoffensive; that they were free; that they wandered
+with their carts from pasture to pasture, from river to river;
+that they traded with good faith; that they fought with good
+courage; that they injured none, invaded none, and feared none?
+At this rate I have effected nothing. The great founder of
+Rome, I heard in Holland, slew his brother for despiting the
+weakness of his walls; and shall the founder of this better place
+spare a degenerate son, who prefers a vagabond life to a civilized
+one, a cart to a city, a Scythian to a Muscovite? Have I not
+shaved my people, and breeched them? Have I not formed
+them into regular armies, with bands of music and haversacks?
+Are bows better than cannon? shepherds than dragoons, mare&#8217;s
+milk than brandy, raw steaks than broiled? Thine are tenets
+that strike at the root of politeness and sound government.
+Every prince in Europe is interested in rooting them out by fire
+and sword. There is no other way with false doctrines: breath
+against breath does little.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> Sire, I never have attempted to disseminate my opinions.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> How couldst thou? the seed would fall only on granite.
+Those, however, who caught it brought it to me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> Never have I undervalued civilization: on the
+contrary, I regretted whatever impeded it. In my opinion,
+the evils that have been attributed to it sprang from its imperfections
+and voids; and no nation has yet acquired it more than
+very scantily.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> How so? give me thy reasons&mdash;thy fancies, rather;
+for reason thou hast none.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> When I find the first of men, in rank and genius,
+hating one another, and becoming slanderers and liars in order
+to lower and vilify an opponent; when I hear the God of mercy
+invoked to massacres, and thanked for furthering what He
+reprobates and condemns&mdash;I look back in vain on any barbarous
+people for worse barbarism. I have expressed my admiration
+of our forefathers, who, not being Christians, were yet more
+virtuous than those who are; more temperate, more just, more
+sincere, more chaste, more peaceable.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Malignant atheist!</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> Indeed, my father, were I malignant I must be an
+atheist; for malignity is contrary to the command, and inconsistent
+with the belief, of God.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Am I Czar of Muscovy, and hear discourses on reason
+and religion? from my own son, too! No, by the Holy Trinity!
+thou art no son of mine. If thou touchest my knee again, I
+crack thy knuckles with this tobacco-stopper: I wish it were a
+sledge-hammer for thy sake. Off, sycophant! Off, runaway slave!</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> Father! father! my heart is broken! If I have
+offended, forgive me!</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> The State requires thy signal punishment.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> If the State requires it, be it so; but let my father&#8217;s
+anger cease!</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> The world shall judge between us. I will brand thee
+with infamy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> Until now, O father! I never had a proper sense of
+glory. Hear me, O Czar! let not a thing so vile as I am stand
+between you and the world! Let none accuse you!</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Accuse me, rebel! Accuse me, traitor!</p>
+
+<p><i>Alexis.</i> Let none speak ill of you, O my father! The public
+voice shakes the palace; the public voice penetrates the grave;
+it precedes the chariot of Almighty God, and is heard at the
+judgment-seat.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Let it go to the devil! I will have none of it here in
+Petersburg. Our church says nothing about it; our laws
+forbid it. As for thee, unnatural brute, I have no more to do
+with thee neither!</p>
+
+<p>Ho, there! chancellor! What! come at last! Wert napping,
+or counting thy ducats?</p>
+
+<p><i>Chancellor.</i> Your Majesty&#8217;s will and pleasure!</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Is the Senate assembled in that room?</p>
+
+<p><i>Chancellor.</i> Every member, sire.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Conduct this youth with thee, and let them judge him;
+thou understandest me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Chancellor.</i> Your Majesty&#8217;s commands are the breath of our
+nostrils.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> If these rascals are amiss, I will try my new cargo of
+Livonian hemp upon &#8217;em.</p>
+
+<p><i>Chancellor.</i> [<i>Returning.</i>] Sire, sire!</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Speak, fellow! Surely they have not condemned him
+to death, without giving themselves time to read the accusation,
+that thou comest back so quickly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Chancellor.</i> No, sire! Nor has either been done.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Then thy head quits thy shoulders.</p>
+
+<p><i>Chancellor.</i> O sire!</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Curse thy silly <i>sires</i>! what art thou about?</p>
+
+<p><i>Chancellor.</i> Alas! he fell.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Tie him up to thy chair, then. Cowardly beast!
+what made him fall?</p>
+
+<p><i>Chancellor.</i> The hand of Death; the name of father.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Thou puzzlest me; prithee speak plainlier.</p>
+
+<p><i>Chancellor.</i> We told him that his crime was proven and manifest;
+that his life was forfeited.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> So far, well enough.</p>
+
+<p><i>Chancellor.</i> He smiled.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> He did! did he? Impudence shall do him little good.
+Who could have expected it from that smock-face! Go on&mdash;what
+then?</p>
+
+<p><i>Chancellor.</i> He said calmly, but not without sighing twice
+or thrice, &#8216;Lead me to the scaffold: I am weary of life; nobody
+loves me.&#8217; I condoled with him, and wept upon his hand,
+holding the paper against my bosom. He took the corner of it
+between his fingers, and said, &#8216;Read me this paper; read my
+death-warrant. Your silence and tears have signified it; yet
+the law has its forms. Do not keep me in suspense. My father
+says, too truly, I am not courageous; but the death that leads
+me to my God shall never terrify me.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> I have seen these white-livered knaves die resolutely;
+I have seen them quietly fierce like white ferrets with their
+watery eyes and tiny teeth. You read it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Chancellor.</i> In part, sire! When he heard your Majesty&#8217;s
+name accusing him of treason and attempts at rebellion and
+parricide, he fell speechless. We raised him up: he was motionless;
+he was dead!</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Inconsiderate and barbarous varlet as thou art, dost
+thou recite this ill accident to a father! and to one who has not
+dined! Bring me a glass of brandy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Chancellor.</i> And it please your Majesty, might I call a&mdash;a&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter.</i> Away and bring it: scamper! All equally and alike
+shall obey and serve me.</p>
+
+<p>Hark ye! bring the bottle with it: I must cool myself&mdash;and&mdash;hark
+ye! a rasher of bacon on thy life! and some pickled
+sturgeon, and some krout and caviare, and good strong cheese.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="HENRY_VIII_AND_ANNE_BOLEYN" id="HENRY_VIII_AND_ANNE_BOLEYN"></a>HENRY VIII AND ANNE BOLEYN</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Dost thou know me, Nanny, in this yeoman&#8217;s dress?
+&#8217;Sblood! does it require so long and vacant a stare to recollect
+a husband after a week or two? No tragedy-tricks with me!
+a scream, a sob, or thy kerchief a trifle the wetter, were enough.
+Why, verily the little fool faints in earnest. These whey faces,
+like their kinsfolk the ghosts, give us no warning. Hast had
+water enough upon thee? Take that, then: art thyself again?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> Father of mercies! do I meet again my husband, as
+was my last prayer on earth? Do I behold my beloved lord&mdash;in
+peace&mdash;and pardoned, my partner in eternal bliss? it was his
+voice. I cannot see him: why cannot I? Oh, why do these
+pangs interrupt the transports of the blessed?</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Thou openest thy arms: faith! I came for that.
+Nanny, thou art a sweet slut. Thou groanest, wench: art in
+labour? Faith! among the mistakes of the night, I am ready
+to think almost that thou hast been drinking, and that I have not.</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> God preserve your Highness: grant me your forgiveness
+for one slight offence. My eyes were heavy; I fell asleep
+while I was reading. I did not know of your presence at first;
+and, when I did, I could not speak. I strove for utterance: I
+wanted no respect for my liege and husband.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> My pretty warm nestling, thou wilt then lie! Thou
+wert reading, and aloud too, with thy saintly cup of water by thee,
+and&mdash;what! thou art still girlishly fond of those dried cherries!</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> I had no other fruit to offer your Highness the first
+time I saw you, and you were then pleased to invent for me some
+reason why they should be acceptable. I did not dry these:
+may I present them, such as they are? We shall have fresh
+next month.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Thou art always driving away from the discourse.
+One moment it suits thee to know me, another not.</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> Remember, it is hardly three months since I miscarried.
+I am weak, and liable to swoons.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Thou hast, however, thy bridal cheeks, with lustre
+upon them when there is none elsewhere, and obstinate lips
+resisting all impression; but, now thou talkest about miscarrying,
+who is the father of that boy?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> Yours and mine&mdash;He who hath taken him to his own
+home, before (like me) he could struggle or cry for it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Pagan, or worse, to talk so! He did not come into
+the world alive: there was no baptism.</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> I thought only of our loss: my senses are confounded.
+I did not give him my milk, and yet I loved him tenderly; for
+I often fancied, had he lived, how contented and joyful he would
+have made you and England.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> No subterfuges and escapes. I warrant, thou canst
+not say whether at my entrance thou wert waking or wandering.</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> Faintness and drowsiness came upon me suddenly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Well, since thou really and truly sleepedst, what
+didst dream of?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> I begin to doubt whether I did indeed sleep.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Ha! false one&mdash;never two sentences of truth together!
+But come, what didst think about, asleep or awake?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> I thought that God had pardoned me my offences,
+and had received me unto Him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> And nothing more?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> That my prayers had been heard and my wishes were
+accomplishing: the angels alone can enjoy more beatitude than
+this.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Vexatious little devil! She says nothing now about
+me, merely from perverseness. Hast thou never thought about
+me, nor about thy falsehood and adultery?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> If I had committed any kind of falsehood, in regard
+to you or not, I should never have rested until I had thrown
+myself at your feet and obtained your pardon; but, if ever I
+had been guilty of that other crime, I know not whether I should
+have dared to implore it, even of God&#8217;s mercy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Thou hast heretofore cast some soft glances upon
+Smeaton; hast thou not?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> He taught me to play on the virginals, as you know,
+when I was little, and thereby to please your Highness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> And Brereton and Norris&mdash;what have they taught
+thee?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> They are your servants, and trusty ones.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Has not Weston told thee plainly that he loved thee?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> Yes; and&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> What didst thou?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> I defied him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Is that all?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> I could have done no more if he had told me that he
+hated me. Then, indeed, I should have incurred more justly
+the reproaches of your Highness: I should have smiled.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> We have proofs abundant: the fellows shall one and
+all confront thee. Aye, clap thy hands and kiss thy sleeve,
+harlot!</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> Oh that so great a favour is vouchsafed me! My
+honour is secure; my husband will be happy again; he will see
+my innocence.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Give me now an account of the moneys thou hast
+received from me within these nine months. I want them not
+back: they are letters of gold in record of thy guilt. Thou hast
+had no fewer than fifteen thousand pounds in that period,
+without even thy asking; what hast done with it, wanton?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> I have regularly placed it out to interest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Where? I demand of thee.</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> Among the needy and ailing. My Lord Archbishop
+has the account of it, sealed by him weekly. I also had a copy
+myself; those who took away my papers may easily find it;
+for there are few others, and they lie open.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Think on my munificence to thee; recollect who
+made thee. Dost sigh for what thou hast lost?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> I do, indeed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> I never thought thee ambitious; but thy vices creep
+out one by one.</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> I do not regret that I have been a queen and am no
+longer one; nor that my innocence is called in question by
+those who never knew me; but I lament that the good people
+who loved me so cordially, hate and curse me; that those who
+pointed me out to their daughters for imitation check them
+when they speak about me; and that he whom next to God I
+have served with most devotion is my accuser.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Wast thou conning over something in that dingy
+book for thy defence? Come, tell me, what wast thou reading?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> This ancient chronicle. I was looking for someone
+in my own condition, and must have missed the page. Surely
+in so many hundred years there shall have been other young
+maidens, first too happy for exaltation, and after too exalted
+for happiness&mdash;not, perchance, doomed to die upon a scaffold,
+by those they ever honoured and served faithfully; that, indeed,
+I did not look for nor think of; but my heart was bounding for
+any one I could love and pity. She would be unto me as a
+sister dead and gone; but hearing me, seeing me, consoling me,
+and being consoled. O my husband! it is so heavenly a thing&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> To whine and whimper, no doubt, is vastly heavenly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> I said not so; but those, if there be any such, who never
+weep, have nothing in them of heavenly or of earthly. The
+plants, the trees, the very rocks and unsunned clouds, show us
+at least the semblances of weeping; and there is not an aspect
+of the globe we live on, nor of the waters and skies around it,
+without a reference and a similitude to our joys or sorrows.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> I do not remember that notion anywhere. Take
+care no enemy rake out of it something of materialism. Guard
+well thy empty hot brain; it may hatch more evil. As for
+those odd words, I myself would fain see no great harm in them,
+knowing that grief and frenzy strike out many things which
+would else lie still, and neither spurt nor sparkle. I also know
+that thou hast never read anything but Bible and history&mdash;the
+two worst books in the world for young people, and the most
+certain to lead astray both prince and subject. For which
+reason I have interdicted and entirely put down the one, and
+will (by the blessing of the Virgin and of holy Paul) commit the
+other to a rigid censor. If it behoves us kings to enact what
+our people shall eat and drink&mdash;of which the most unruly and
+rebellious spirit can entertain no doubt&mdash;greatly more doth it
+behove us to examine what they read and think. The body
+is moved according to the mind and will; we must take care
+that the movement be a right one, on pain of God&#8217;s anger in
+this life and the next.</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> O my dear husband! it must be a naughty thing,
+indeed, that makes Him angry beyond remission. Did you
+ever try how pleasant it is to forgive any one? There is nothing
+else wherein we can resemble God perfectly and easily.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Resemble God perfectly and easily! Do vile creatures
+talk thus of the Creator?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> No, Henry, when His creatures talk thus of Him,
+they are no longer vile creatures! When they know that He
+is good, they love Him; and, when they love Him, they are good
+themselves. O Henry! my husband and king! the judgments
+of our Heavenly Father are righteous; on this, surely, we must
+think alike.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> And what, then? Speak out; again I command thee,
+speak plainly! thy tongue was not so torpid but this moment.
+Art ready? Must I wait?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> If any doubt remains upon your royal mind of your
+equity in this business: should it haply seem possible to you
+that passion or prejudice, in yourself or another, may have
+warped so strong an understanding&mdash;do but supplicate the
+Almighty to strengthen and enlighten it, and He will hear
+you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> What! thou wouldst fain change thy quarters, ay?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> My spirit is detached and ready, and I shall change
+them shortly, whatever your Highness may determine.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Yet thou appearest hale and resolute, and (they tell
+me) smirkest and smilest to everybody.</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> The withered leaf catches the sun sometimes, little as
+it can profit by it; and I have heard stories of the breeze in
+other climates that sets in when daylight is about to close, and
+how constant it is, and how refreshing. My heart, indeed, is
+now sustained strangely; it became the more sensibly so from
+that time forward, when power and grandeur and all things
+terrestrial were sunk from sight. Every act of kindness in those
+about me gives me satisfaction and pleasure, such as I did not
+feel formerly. I was worse before God chastened me; yet I
+was never an ingrate. What pains have I taken to find out the
+village-girls who placed their posies in my chamber ere I arose
+in the morning! How gladly would I have recompensed the
+forester who lit up a brake on my birthnight, which else had
+warmed him half the winter! But these are times past: I was
+not Queen of England.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Nor adulterous, nor heretical.</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> God be praised!</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Learned saint! thou knowest nothing of the lighter,
+but perhaps canst inform me about the graver, of them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> Which may it be, my liege?</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Which may it be? Pestilence! I marvel that the
+walls of this tower do not crack around thee at such impiety.</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> I would be instructed by the wisest of theologians:
+such is your Highness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Are the sins of the body, foul as they are, comparable
+to those of the soul?</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> When they are united, they must be worse.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Go on, go on: thou pushest thy own breast against
+the sword. God hath deprived thee of thy reason for thy
+punishment. I must hear more: proceed, I charge thee.</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> An aptitude to believe one thing rather than another,
+from ignorance or weakness, or from the more persuasive
+manner of the teacher, or from his purity of life, or from the
+strong impression of a particular text at a particular time, and
+various things beside, may influence and decide our opinion;
+and the hand of the Almighty, let us hope, will fall gently on
+human fallibility.</p>
+
+<p><i>Henry.</i> Opinion in matters of faith! rare wisdom! rare religion!
+Troth, Anne! thou hast well sobered me. I came rather warmly
+and lovingly; but these light ringlets, by the holy rood, shall
+not shade this shoulder much longer. Nay, do not start; I
+tap it for the last time, my sweetest. If the Church permitted
+it, thou shouldst set forth on thy long journey with the Eucharist
+between thy teeth, however loath.</p>
+
+<p><i>Anne.</i> Love your Elizabeth, my honoured lord, and God bless
+you! She will soon forget to call me. Do not chide her: think
+how young she is.</p>
+
+<p>Could I, could I kiss her, but once again! it would comfort
+my heart&mdash;or break it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="JOSEPH_SCALIGER_AND_MONTAIGNE" id="JOSEPH_SCALIGER_AND_MONTAIGNE"></a>JOSEPH SCALIGER AND MONTAIGNE</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> What could have brought you, M. de l&#8217;Escale,
+to visit the old man of the mountain, other than a good heart?
+Oh, how delighted and charmed I am to hear you speak such
+excellent Gascon. You rise early, I see: you must have risen
+with the sun, to be here at this hour; it is a stout half-hour&#8217;s
+walk from the brook. I have capital white wine, and the best
+cheese in Auvergne. You saw the goats and the two cows
+before the castle.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre, thou hast done well: set it upon the table, and tell
+Master Matthew to split a couple of chickens and broil them,
+and to pepper but one. Do you like pepper, M. de l&#8217;Escale?</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> Not much.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> Hold hard! let the pepper alone: I hate it. Tell
+him to broil plenty of ham; only two slices at a time, upon his
+salvation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> This, I perceive, is the antechamber to your library:
+here are your everyday books.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> Faith! I have no other. These are plenty,
+methinks; is not that your opinion?</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> You have great resources within yourself, and therefore
+can do with fewer.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> Why, how many now do you think here may be?</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> I did not believe at first that there could be above
+fourscore.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> Well! are fourscore few?&mdash;are we talking of peas
+and beans?</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> I and my father (put together) have written well-nigh
+as many.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> Ah! to write them is quite another thing: but one
+reads books without a spur, or even a pat from our Lady Vanity.
+How do you like my wine?&mdash;it comes from the little knoll
+yonder: you cannot see the vines, those chestnut-trees are
+between.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> The wine is excellent; light, odoriferous, with a
+smartness like a sharp child&#8217;s prattle.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> It never goes to the head, nor pulls the nerves,
+which many do as if they were guitar-strings. I drink a couple
+of bottles a day, winter and summer, and never am the worse
+for it. You gentlemen of the Agennois have better in your
+province, and indeed the very best under the sun. I do not
+wonder that the Parliament of Bordeaux should be jealous of
+their privileges, and call it Bordeaux. Now, if you prefer your
+own country wine, only say it: I have several bottles in my cellar,
+with corks as long as rapiers, and as polished. I do not know,
+M. de l&#8217;Escale, whether you are particular in these matters: not
+quite, I should imagine, so great a judge in them as in others?</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> I know three things: wine, poetry, and the world.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> You know one too many, then. I hardly know
+whether I know anything about poetry; for I like Clem Marot
+better than Ronsard. Ronsard is so plaguily stiff and stately,
+where there is no occasion for it; I verily do think the man
+must have slept with his wife in a cuirass.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> It pleases me greatly that you like Marot. His
+versions of the Psalms is lately set to music, and added to the
+New Testament of Geneva.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> It is putting a slice of honeycomb into a barrel
+of vinegar, which will never grow the sweeter for it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> Surely, you do not think in this fashion of the New
+Testament!</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> Who supposes it? Whatever is mild and kindly
+is there. But Jack Calvin has thrown bird-lime and vitriol
+upon it, and whoever but touches the cover dirties his fingers
+or burns them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> Calvin is a very great man, I do assure you, M. de
+Montaigne.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> I do not like your great men who beckon me to
+them, call me their begotten, their dear child, and their entrails;
+and, if I happen to say on any occasion, &#8216;I beg leave, sir, to
+dissent a little from you,&#8217; stamp and cry, &#8216;The devil you do!&#8217;
+and whistle to the executioner.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> You exaggerate, my worthy friend!</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> Exaggerate do I, M. de l&#8217;Escale? What was it
+he did the other day to the poor devil there with an odd name?&mdash;Melancthon,
+I think it is.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> I do not know: I have received no intelligence of
+late from Geneva.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> It was but last night that our curate rode over
+from Lyons (he made two days of it, as you may suppose) and
+supped with me. He told me that Jack had got his old friend
+hanged and burned. I could not join him in the joke, for I find
+none such in the New Testament, on which he would have
+founded it; and, if it is one, it is not in my manner or to my taste.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> I cannot well believe the report, my dear sir. He
+was rather urgent, indeed, on the combustion of the heretic
+Michael Servetus some years past.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> A thousand to one, my spiritual guide mistook
+the name. He has heard of both, I warrant him, and thinks
+in his conscience that either is as good a roast as the other.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> Theologians are proud and intolerant, and truly
+the farthest of all men from theology, if theology means the
+rational sense of religion, or indeed has anything to do with
+it in any way. Melancthon was the very best of the reformers;
+quiet, sedate, charitable, intrepid, firm in friendship, ardent in
+faith, acute in argument, and profound in learning.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> Who cares about his argumentation or his learning,
+if he was the rest?</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> I hope you will suspend your judgment on this
+affair until you receive some more certain and positive
+information.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> I can believe it of the Sieur Calvin.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> I cannot. John Calvin is a grave man, orderly and
+reasonable.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> In my opinion he has not the order nor the reason
+of my cook. Mat never took a man for a sucking-pig, cleaning
+and scraping and buttering and roasting him; nor ever twitched
+God by the sleeve and swore He should not have His own way.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> M. de Montaigne, have you ever studied the doctrine
+of predestination?</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> I should not understand it, if I had; and I would
+not break through an old fence merely to get into a cavern.
+I would not give a fig or a fig-leaf to know the truth of it, as
+far as any man can teach it me. Would it make me honester
+or happier, or, in other things, wiser?</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> I do not know whether it would materially.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> I should be an egregious fool then to care about it.
+Our disputes on controverted points have filled the country
+with missionaries and cut-throats. Both parties have shown
+a disposition to turn this comfortable old house of mine into a
+fortress. If I had inclined to either, the other would have
+done it. Come walk about it with me; after a ride, you can
+do nothing better to take off fatigue.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> A most spacious kitchen!</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> Look up!</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> You have twenty or more flitches of bacon hanging
+there.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> And if I had been a doctor or a captain, I should
+have had a cobweb and predestination in the place of them.
+Your soldiers of the <i>religion</i> on the one side, and of the <i>good old
+faith</i> on the other, would not have left unto me safe and sound
+even that good old woman there.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> Oh, yes! they would, I hope.</p>
+
+<p><i>Old Woman.</i> Why dost giggle, Mat? What should he know
+about the business? He speaks mighty bad French, and is as
+spiteful as the devil. Praised be God, we have a kind master,
+who thinks about us, and feels for us.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> Upon my word, M. de Montaigne, this gallery is an
+interesting one.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> I can show you nothing but my house and my
+dairy. We have no chase in the month of May, you know&mdash;unless
+you would like to bait the badger in the stable. This is
+rare sport in rainy days.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> Are you in earnest, M. de Montaigne?</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> No, no, no, I cannot afford to worry him outright:
+only a little for pastime&mdash;a morning&#8217;s merriment for the dogs
+and wenches.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> You really are then of so happy a temperament
+that, at your time of life, you can be amused by baiting a
+badger!</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> Why not? Your father, a wiser and graver and
+older man than I am, was amused by baiting a professor or
+critic. I have not a dog in the kennel that would treat the
+badger worse than brave Julius treated Cardan and Erasmus,
+and some dozens more. We are all childish, old as well as
+young; and our very last tooth would fain stick, M. de l&#8217;Escale,
+in some tender place of a neighbour. Boys laugh at a person
+who falls in the dirt; men laugh rather when they make him
+fall, and most when the dirt is of their own laying.</p>
+
+<p>Is not the gallery rather cold, after the kitchen? We must
+go through it to get into the court where I keep my tame rabbits;
+the stable is hard by: come along, come along.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> Permit me to look a little at those banners. Some
+of them are old indeed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> Upon my word, I blush to think I never took
+notice how they are tattered. I have no fewer than three
+women in the house, and in a summer&#8217;s evening, only two
+hours long, the worst of these rags might have been darned
+across.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> You would not have done it surely!</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> I am not over-thrifty; the women might have
+been better employed. It is as well as it is then; ay?</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> I think so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> So be it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Scaliger.</i> They remind me of my own family, we being descended
+from the great Cane della Scala, Prince of Verona, and
+from the House of Hapsburg, as you must have heard from
+my father.</p>
+
+<p><i>Montaigne.</i> What signifies it to the world whether the great
+Cane was tied to his grandmother or not? As for the House
+of Hapsburg, if you could put together as many such houses
+as would make up a city larger than Cairo, they would not be
+worth his study, or a sheet of paper on the table of it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOCCACCIO_AND_PETRARCA" id="BOCCACCIO_AND_PETRARCA"></a>BOCCACCIO AND PETRARCA</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Remaining among us, I doubt not that you would
+soon receive the same distinctions in your native country as
+others have conferred upon you: indeed, in confidence I may
+promise it. For greatly are the Florentines ashamed that the
+most elegant of their writers and the most independent of their
+citizens lives in exile, by the injustice he had suffered in the
+detriment done to his property, through the intemperate
+administration of their laws.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Let them recall me soon and honourably: then
+perhaps I may assist them to remove their ignominy, which I
+carry about with me wherever I go, and which is pointed out
+by my exotic laurel.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> There is, and ever will be, in all countries and under
+all governments, an ostracism for their greatest men.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> At present we will talk no more about it. To-morrow
+I pursue my journey towards Padua, where I am
+expected; where some few value and esteem me, honest and
+learned and ingenious men; although neither those Transpadane
+regions, nor whatever extends beyond them, have yet produced
+an equal to Boccaccio.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Then, in the name of friendship, do not go thither!&mdash;form
+such rather from your fellow-citizens. I love my equals
+heartily; and shall love them the better when I see them raised
+up here, from our own mother earth, by you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Let us continue our walk.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> If you have been delighted (and you say you have
+been) at seeing again, after so long an absence, the house and
+garden wherein I have placed the relaters of my stories, as
+reported in the <i>Decameron</i>, come a little way farther up the
+ascent, and we will pass through the vineyard on the west of the
+villa. You will see presently another on the right, lying in its
+warm little garden close to the roadside, the scene lately of
+somewhat that would have looked well, as illustration, in the
+midst of your Latin reflections. It shows us that people the
+most serious and determined may act at last contrariwise to
+the line of conduct they have laid down.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Relate it to me, Messer Giovanni; for you are able
+to give reality the merits and charms of fiction, just as easily
+as you give fiction the semblance, the stature, and the movement
+of reality.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I must here forgo such powers, if in good truth I
+possess them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> This long green alley, defended by box and cypresses,
+is very pleasant. The smell of box, although not sweet, is more
+agreeable to me than many that are: I cannot say from what
+resuscitation of early and tender feeling. The cypress, too,
+seems to strengthen the nerves of the brain. Indeed, I delight
+in the odour of most trees and plants.</p>
+
+<p>Will not that dog hurt us?&mdash;he comes closer.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Dog! thou hast the colours of a magpie and the
+tongue of one; prithee be quiet: art thou not ashamed?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Verily he trots off, comforting his angry belly with
+his plenteous tail, flattened and bestrewn under it. He looks
+back, going on, and puffs out his upper lip without a bark.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> These creatures are more accessible to temperate
+and just rebuke than the creatures of our species, usually angry
+with less reason, and from no sense, as dogs are, of duty. Look
+into that white arcade! Surely it was white the other day; and
+now I perceive it is still so: the setting sun tinges it with yellow.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> The house has nothing of either the rustic or the
+magnificent about it; nothing quite regular, nothing much
+varied. If there is anything at all affecting, as I fear there is,
+in the story you are about to tell me, I could wish the edifice
+itself bore externally some little of the interesting that I might
+hereafter turn my mind toward it, looking out of the catastrophe,
+though not away from it. But I do not even find the peculiar
+and uncostly decoration of our Tuscan villas: the central turret,
+round which the kite perpetually circles in search of pigeons or
+smaller prey, borne onward, like the Flemish skater, by effortless
+will in motionless progression. The view of Fiesole must be
+lovely from that window; but I fancy to myself it loses the
+cascade under the single high arch of the Mugnone.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I think so. In this villa&mdash;come rather farther
+off: the inhabitants of it may hear us, if they should happen
+to be in the arbour, as most people are at the present hour of
+day&mdash;in this villa, Messer Francesco, lives Monna Tita Monalda,
+who tenderly loved Amadeo degli Oricellari. She, however, was
+reserved and coy; and Father Pietro de&#8217; Pucci, an enemy to
+the family of Amadeo, told her nevermore to think of him,
+for that, just before he knew her, he had thrown his arm round
+the neck of Nunciata Righi, his mother&#8217;s maid, calling her most
+immodestly a sweet creature, and of a whiteness that marble
+would split with envy at.</p>
+
+<p>Monna Tita trembled and turned pale. &#8216;Father, is the girl
+really so very fair?&#8217; said she anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Madonna,&#8217; replied the father, &#8216;after confession she is not
+much amiss: white she is, with a certain tint of pink not belonging
+to her, but coming over her as through the wing of an angel
+pleased at the holy function; and her breath is such, the very
+ear smells it: poor, innocent, sinful soul! Hei! The wretch,
+Amadeo, would have endangered her salvation.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;She must be a wicked girl to let him,&#8217; said Monna Tita.
+&#8216;A young man of good parentage and education would not dare
+to do such a thing of his own accord. I will see him no more,
+however. But it was before he knew me: and it may not be
+true. I cannot think any young woman would let a young man
+do so, even in the last hour before Lent. Now in what month
+was it supposed to be?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Supposed to be!&#8217; cried the father indignantly: &#8216;in June;
+I say in June.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Oh! that now is quite impossible: for on the second of July,
+forty-one days from this, and at this very hour of it, he swore
+to me eternal love and constancy. I will inquire of him whether
+it is true: I will charge him with it.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>She did. Amadeo confessed his fault, and, thinking it a
+venial one, would have taken and kissed her hand as he asked
+forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Children! children! I will go into the house, and if
+their relatives, as I suppose, have approved of the marriage,
+I will endeavour to persuade the young lady that a fault like
+this, on the repentance of her lover, is not unpardonable. But
+first, is Amadeo a young man of loose habits?</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Less than our others: in fact, I never heard of any
+deviation, excepting this.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Come, then, with me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Wait a little.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I hope the modest Tita, after a trial, will not be too
+severe with him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Severity is far from her nature; but, such is her
+purity and innocence, she shed many and bitter tears at his
+confession, and declared her unalterable determination of taking
+the veil among the nuns of Fiesole. Amadeo fell at her feet,
+and wept upon them. She pushed him from her gently, and
+told him she would still love him if he would follow her example,
+leave the world, and become a friar of San Marco. Amadeo
+was speechless; and, if he had not been so, he never would have
+made a promise he intended to violate. She retired from him.
+After a time he arose, less wounded than benumbed by the sharp
+uncovered stones in the garden-walk; and, as a man who fears
+to fall from a precipice goes farther from it than is necessary,
+so did Amadeo shun the quarter where the gate is, and, oppressed
+by his agony and despair, throw his arms across the sundial
+and rest his brow upon it, hot as it must have been on a cloudless
+day in August. When the evening was about to close, he was
+aroused by the cries of rooks overhead; they flew towards
+Florence, and beyond; he, too, went back into the city.</p>
+
+<p>Tita fell sick from her inquietude. Every morning ere sunrise
+did Amadeo return; but could hear only from the labourers
+in the field that Monna Tita was ill, because she had promised
+to take the veil and had not taken it, knowing, as she must do,
+that the heavenly bridegroom is a bridegroom never to be
+trifled with, let the spouse be young and beautiful as she may be.
+Amadeo had often conversed with the peasant of the farm,
+who much pitied so worthy and loving a gentleman; and, finding
+him one evening fixing some thick and high stakes in the ground,
+offered to help him. After due thanks, &#8216;It is time,&#8217; said the
+peasant, &#8216;to rebuild the hovel and watch the grapes.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;This is my house,&#8217; cried he. &#8216;Could I never, in my stupidity,
+think about rebuilding it before? Bring me another mat or
+two: I will sleep here to-night, to-morrow night, every night,
+all autumn, all winter.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>He slept there, and was consoled at last by hearing that
+Monna Tita was out of danger, and recovering from her illness
+by spiritual means. His heart grew lighter day after day.
+Every evening did he observe the rooks, in the same order,
+pass along the same track in the heavens, just over San Marco;
+and it now occurred to him, after three weeks, indeed, that
+Monna Tita had perhaps some strange idea, in choosing his
+monastery, not unconnected with the passage of these birds.
+He grew calmer upon it, until he asked himself whether he might
+hope. In the midst of this half-meditation, half-dream, his
+whole frame was shaken by the voices, however low and gentle,
+of two monks, coming from the villa and approaching him. He
+would have concealed himself under this bank whereon we are
+standing; but they saw him, and called him by name. He now
+perceived that the younger of them was Guiberto Oddi, with
+whom he had been at school about six or seven years ago, and
+who admired him for his courage and frankness when he was
+almost a child.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Do not let us mortify poor Amadeo,&#8217; said Guiberto to his
+companion. &#8216;Return to the road: I will speak a few words to
+him, and engage him (I trust) to comply with reason and yield
+to necessity.&#8217; The elder monk, who saw he should have to
+climb the hill again, assented to the proposal, and went into the
+road. After the first embraces and few words, &#8216;Amadeo!
+Amadeo!&#8217; said Guiberto, &#8216;it was love that made me a friar;
+let anything else make you one.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Kind heart!&#8217; replied Amadeo. &#8216;If death or religion, or hatred
+of me, deprives me of Tita Monalda, I will die, where she commanded
+me, in the cowl. It is you who prepare her, then, to
+throw away her life and mine!&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Hold! Amadeo!&#8217; said Guiberto, &#8216;I officiate together with good
+Father Fontesecco, who invariably falls asleep amid our holy
+function.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Now, Messer Francesco, I must inform you that Father
+Fontesecco has the heart of a flower. It feels nothing, it wants
+nothing; it is pure and simple, and full of its own little light.
+Innocent as a child, as an angel, nothing ever troubled him but
+how to devise what he should confess. A confession costs him
+more trouble to invent than any Giornata in my <i>Decameron</i>
+cost me. He was once overheard to say on this occasion,
+&#8216;God forgive me in His infinite mercy, for making it appear
+that I am a little worse than He has chosen I should be!&#8217; He is
+temperate; for he never drinks more than exactly half the wine
+and water set before him. In fact, he drinks the wine and
+leaves the water, saying: &#8216;We have the same water up at San
+Domenico; we send it hither: it would be uncivil to take back
+our own gift, and still more to leave a suspicion that we thought
+other people&#8217;s wine poor beverage.&#8217; Being afflicted by the gravel,
+the physician of his convent advised him, as he never was fond
+of wine, to leave it off entirely; on which he said, &#8216;I know few
+things; but this I know well&mdash;in water there is often gravel,
+in wine never. It hath pleased God to afflict me, and even to
+go a little out of His way in order to do it, for the greater warning
+to other sinners. I will drink wine, brother Anselmini, and help
+His work.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>I have led you away from the younger monk.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;While Father Fontesecco is in the first stage of beatitude,
+chanting through his nose the <i>Benedicite</i>, I will attempt,&#8217; said
+Guiberto, &#8216;to comfort Monna Tita.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Good, blessed Guiberto!&#8217; exclaimed Amadeo in a transport
+of gratitude, at which Guiberto smiled with his usual grace
+and suavity. &#8216;O Guiberto! Guiberto! my heart is breaking.
+Why should she want you to comfort her?&mdash;but&mdash;comfort her
+then!&#8217; and he covered his face within his hands.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Remember,&#8217; said Guiberto placidly, &#8216;her uncle is bedridden;
+her aunt never leaves him; the servants are old and sullen, and
+will stir for nobody. Finding her resolved, as they believe, to
+become a nun, they are little assiduous in their services.
+Humour her, if none else does, Amadeo; let her fancy that you
+intend to be a friar; and, for the present, walk not on these
+grounds.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Are you true, or are you traitorous?&#8217; cried Amadeo, grasping
+his friend&#8217;s hand most fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Follow your own counsel, if you think mine insincere,&#8217; said
+the young friar, not withdrawing his hand, but placing the other
+on Amadeo&#8217;s. &#8216;Let me, however, advise you to conceal yourself;
+and I will direct Silvestrina to bring you such accounts of her
+mistress as may at least make you easy in regard to her health.
+Adieu.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Amadeo was now rather tranquil; more than he had ever
+been, not only since the displeasure of Monna Tita, but since the
+first sight of her. Profuse at all times in his gratitude to
+Silvestrina, whenever she brought him good news, news better
+than usual, he pressed her to his bosom. Silvestrina Pioppi
+is about fifteen, slender, fresh, intelligent, lively, good-humoured,
+sensitive; and any one but Amadeo might call her very pretty.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Ah, Giovanni! here I find your heart obtaining the
+mastery over your vivid and volatile imagination. Well have
+you said, the maiden being really pretty, any one but Amadeo
+might think her so. On the banks of the Sorga there are
+beautiful maids; the woods and the rocks have a thousand times
+repeated it. I heard but one echo; I heard but one name: I
+would have fled from them for ever at another.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Francesco, do not beat your breast just now:
+wait a little. Monna Tita would take the veil. The fatal
+certainty was announced to Amadeo by his true Guiberto,
+who had earnestly and repeatedly prayed her to consider the
+thing a few months longer.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;I will see her first! By all the saints of heaven I will see
+her!&#8217; cried the desperate Amadeo, and ran into the house,
+toward the still apartment of his beloved. Fortunately Guiberto
+was neither less active nor less strong than he, and overtaking
+him at the moment, drew him into the room opposite.
+&#8216;If you will be quiet and reasonable, there is yet a possibility
+left you,&#8217; said Guiberto in his ear, although perhaps he did not
+think it. &#8216;But if you utter a voice or are seen by any one, you
+ruin the fame of her you love, and obstruct your own prospects
+for ever. It being known that you have not slept in Florence
+these several nights, it will be suspected by the malicious that
+you have slept in the villa with the connivance of Monna Tita.
+Compose yourself; answer nothing; rest where you are: do not
+add a worse imprudence to a very bad one. I promise you my
+assistance, my speedy return, and best counsel: you shall be
+released at daybreak.&#8217; He ordered Silvestrina to supply the
+unfortunate youth with the cordials usually administered to
+the uncle, or with the rich old wine they were made of; and she
+performed the order with such promptitude and attention,
+that he was soon in some sort refreshed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I pity him from my innermost heart, poor young
+man! Alas, we are none of us, by original sin, free from
+infirmities or from vices.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> If we could find a man exempt by nature from
+vices and infirmities, we should find one not worth knowing:
+he would also be void of tenderness and compassion. What
+allowances then could his best friends expect from him in their
+frailties? What help, consolation, and assistance in their
+misfortunes? We are in the midst of a workshop well stored
+with sharp instruments: we may do ill with many, unless we
+take heed; and good with all, if we will but learn how to employ
+them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> There is somewhat of reason in this. You
+strengthen me to proceed with you: I can bear the rest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Guiberto had taken leave of his friend, and had
+advanced a quarter of a mile, which (as you perceive) is nearly
+the whole way, on his return to the monastery, when he was
+overtaken by some peasants who were hastening homeward
+from Florence. The information he collected from them made
+him determine to retrace his steps. He entered the room again,
+and, from the intelligence he had just acquired, gave Amadeo
+the assurance that Monna Tita must delay her entrance into
+the convent; for that the abbess had that moment gone down
+the hill on her way toward Siena to venerate some holy relics,
+carrying with her three candles, each five feet long, to burn
+before them; which candles contained many particles of the
+myrrh presented at the Nativity of our Saviour by the Wise
+Men of the East. Amadeo breathed freely, and was persuaded
+by Guiberto to take another cup of old wine, and to eat with
+him some cold roast kid, which had been offered him for
+<i>merenda</i>. After the agitation of his mind a heavy sleep fell
+upon the lover, coming almost before Guiberto departed: so
+heavy indeed that Silvestrina was alarmed. It was her apartment;
+and she performed the honours of it as well as any lady in
+Florence could have done.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I easily believe it: the poor are more attentive than
+the rich, and the young are more compassionate than the old.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> O Francesco! what inconsistent creatures are we!</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> True, indeed! I now foresee the end. He might
+have done worse.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I think so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> He almost deserved it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I think that too.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Wretched mortals! our passions for ever lead us
+into this, or worse.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Ay, truly; much worse generally.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> The very twig on which the flowers grew lately
+scourges us to the bone in its maturity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Incredible will it be to you, and, by my faith, to
+me it was hardly credible. Certain, however, is it that Guiberto
+on his return by sunrise found Amadeo in the arms of sleep.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Not at all, not at all: the truest lover might suffer
+and act as he did.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> But, Francesco, there was another pair of arms
+about him, worth twenty such, divinity as he is. A loud burst
+of laughter from Guiberto did not arouse either of the parties;
+but Monna Tita heard it, and rushed into the room, tearing her
+hair, and invoking the saints of heaven against the perfidy of
+man. She seized Silvestrina by that arm which appeared the
+most offending: the girl opened her eyes, turned on her face,
+rolled out of bed, and threw herself at the feet of her mistress,
+shedding tears, and wiping them away with the only piece of
+linen about her. Monna Tita too shed tears. Amadeo still
+slept profoundly; a flush, almost of crimson, overspreading his
+cheeks. Monna Tita led away, after some pause, poor Silvestrina,
+and made her confess the whole. She then wept more
+and more, and made the girl confess it again, and explain her
+confession. &#8216;I cannot believe such wickedness,&#8217; she cried:
+&#8216;he could not be so hardened. O sinful Silvestrina! how will
+you ever tell Father Doni one half, one quarter? He never can
+absolve you.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Giovanni, I am glad I did not enter the house; you
+were prudent in restraining me. I have no pity for the youth
+at all: never did one so deserve to lose a mistress.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Say, rather, to gain a wife.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Absurdity! impossibility!</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> He won her fairly; strangely, and on a strange
+table, as he played his game. Listen! that guitar is Monna
+Tita&#8217;s. Listen! what a fine voice (do not you think it?) is
+Amadeo&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p><i>Amadeo.</i> [<i>Singing.</i>]</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Oh, I have err&#8217;d!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I laid my hand upon the nest</span><br />
+<span class="i0">(Tita, I sigh to sing the rest)</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Of the wrong bird.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> She laughs too at it! Ah! Monna Tita was made by
+nature to live on this side of Fiesole.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="BOSSUET_AND_THE_DUCHESS_DE_FONTANGES" id="BOSSUET_AND_THE_DUCHESS_DE_FONTANGES"></a>BOSSUET AND THE DUCHESS DE FONTANGES</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> Mademoiselle, it is the king&#8217;s desire that I compliment
+you on the elevation you have attained.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> O monseigneur, I know very well what you mean.
+His Majesty is kind and polite to everybody. The last thing
+he said to me was, &#8216;Ang&eacute;lique! do not forget to compliment
+Monseigneur the bishop on the dignity I have conferred upon
+him, of almoner to the dauphiness. I desired the appointment
+for him only that he might be of rank sufficient to confess, now
+you are duchess. Let him be your confessor, my little girl.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> I dare not presume to ask you, mademoiselle, what
+was your gracious reply to the condescension of our royal master.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> Oh, yes! you may. I told him I was almost sure
+I should be ashamed of confessing such naughty things to a
+person of high rank, who writes like an angel.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> The observation was inspired, mademoiselle, by your
+goodness and modesty.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> You are so agreeable a man, monseigneur, I
+will confess to you, directly, if you like.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> Have you brought yourself to a proper frame of
+mind, young lady?</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> What is that?</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> Do you hate sin?</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> Very much.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> Are you resolved to leave it off?</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> I have left it off entirely since the king began to
+love me. I have never said a spiteful word of anybody since.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> In your opinion, mademoiselle, are there no other
+sins than malice?</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> I never stole anything; I never committed
+adultery; I never coveted my neighbour&#8217;s wife; I never killed
+any person, though several have told me they should die for me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> Vain, idle talk! Did you listen to it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> Indeed I did, with both ears; it seemed so funny.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> You have something to answer for, then.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> No, indeed, I have not, monseigneur. I have
+asked many times after them, and found they were all alive,
+which mortified me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> So, then! you would really have them die for you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> Oh, no, no! but I wanted to see whether they were
+in earnest, or told me fibs; for, if they told me fibs, I would
+never trust them again.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> Do you hate the world, mademoiselle?</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> A good deal of it: all Picardy, for example, and
+all Sologne; nothing is uglier&mdash;and, oh my life! what frightful
+men and women!</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> I would say, in plain language, do you hate the flesh
+and the devil?</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> Who does not hate the devil? If you will hold
+my hand the while, I will tell him so. I hate you, beast! There
+now. As for flesh, I never could bear a fat man. Such people
+can neither dance nor hunt, nor do anything that I know of.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> Mademoiselle Marie-Ang&eacute;lique de Scoraille de
+Rousille, Duchess de Fontanges! do you hate titles and
+dignities and yourself?</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> Myself! does any one hate me? Why should I
+be the first? Hatred is the worst thing in the world: it makes
+one so very ugly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> To love God, we must hate ourselves. We must
+detest our bodies, if we would save our souls.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> That is hard: how can I do it? I see nothing so
+detestable in mine. Do you? To love is easier. I love God
+whenever I think of Him, He has been so very good to me; but
+I cannot hate myself, if I would. As God hath not hated me,
+why should I? Beside, it was He who made the king to love me;
+for I heard you say in a sermon that the hearts of kings are in
+His rule and governance. As for titles and dignities, I do not
+care much about them while his Majesty loves me, and calls
+me his Ang&eacute;lique. They make people more civil about us; and
+therefore it must be a simpleton who hates or disregards them,
+and a hypocrite who pretends it. I am glad to be a duchess.
+Manon and Lisette have never tied my garter so as to hurt me
+since, nor has the mischievous old La Grange said anything cross
+or bold: on the contrary, she told me what a fine colour and
+what a plumpness it gave me. Would not you rather be a
+duchess than a waiting-maid or a nun, if the king gave you
+your choice?</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> Pardon me, mademoiselle, I am confounded at the
+levity of your question.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> I am in earnest, as you see.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> Flattery will come before you in other and more
+dangerous forms: you will be commended for excellences
+which do not belong to you; and this you will find as injurious
+to your repose as to your virtue. An ingenuous mind feels in
+unmerited praise the bitterest reproof. If you reject it, you
+are unhappy; if you accept it, you are undone. The compliments
+of a king are of themselves sufficient to pervert your
+intellect.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> There you are mistaken twice over. It is not
+my person that pleases him so greatly: it is my spirit, my wit,
+my talents, my genius, and that very thing which you have
+mentioned&mdash;what was it? my intellect. He never complimented
+me the least upon my beauty. Others have said that
+I am the most beautiful young creature under heaven; a blossom
+of Paradise, a nymph, an angel; worth (let me whisper it in
+your ear&mdash;do I lean too hard?) a thousand Montespans. But
+his Majesty never said more on the occasion than that I was
+<i>imparagonable!</i> (what is that?) and that he adored me; holding
+my hand and sitting quite still, when he might have romped
+with me and kissed me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> I would aspire to the glory of converting you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> You may do anything with me but convert me:
+you must not do that; I am a Catholic born. M. de Turenne
+and Mademoiselle de Duras were heretics: you did right there.
+The king told the chancellor that he prepared them, that the
+business was arranged for you, and that you had nothing to
+do but get ready the arguments and responses, which you did
+gallantly&mdash;did not you? And yet Mademoiselle de Duras was
+very awkward for a long while afterwards in crossing herself,
+and was once remarked to beat her breast in the litany with the
+points of two fingers at a time, when every one is taught to use
+only the second, whether it has a ring upon it or not. I am
+sorry she did so; for people might think her insincere in her
+conversion, and pretend that she kept a finger for each religion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> It would be as uncharitable to doubt the conviction
+of Mademoiselle de Duras as that of M. le Mar&eacute;chal.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> I have heard some fine verses, I can assure you,
+monseigneur, in which you are called the conqueror of Turenne.
+I should like to have been his conqueror myself, he was so great
+a man. I understand that you have lately done a much more
+difficult thing.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> To what do you refer, mademoiselle?</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> That you have overcome quietism. Now, in the
+name of wonder, how could you manage that?</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> By the grace of God.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> Yes, indeed; but never until now did God give
+any preacher so much of His grace as to subdue this pest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> It has appeared among us but lately.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> Oh, dear me! I have always been subject to it
+dreadfully, from a child.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> Really! I never heard so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> I checked myself as well as I could, although they
+constantly told me I looked well in it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> In what, mademoiselle?</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> In quietism; that is, when I fell asleep at sermon
+time. I am ashamed that such a learned and pious man as
+M. de F&eacute;nelon should incline to it,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> as they say he does.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> Mademoiselle, you quite mistake the matter.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> Is not then M. de F&eacute;nelon thought a very pious
+and learned person?</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> And justly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> I have read a great way in a romance he has
+begun, about a knight-errant in search of a father. The king
+says there are many such about his court; but I never saw them
+nor heard of them before. The Marchioness de la Motte, his
+relative, brought it to me, written out in a charming hand, as
+much as the copy-book would hold; and I got through, I know
+not how far. If he had gone on with the nymphs in the grotto,
+I never should have been tired of him; but he quite forgot his
+own story, and left them at once; in a hurry (I suppose) to set
+out upon his mission to Saintonge in the <i>pays de d&#8217;Aunis</i>, where
+the king has promised him a famous <i>heretic hunt</i>. He is, I do
+assure you, a wonderful creature: he understands so much Latin
+and Greek, and knows all the tricks of the sorceresses. Yet
+you keep him under.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> Mademoiselle, if you really have anything to confess,
+and if you desire that I should have the honour of absolving you,
+it would be better to proceed in it, than to oppress me with
+unmerited eulogies on my humble labours.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> You must first direct me, monseigneur: I have
+nothing particular. The king assures me there is no harm whatever
+in his love toward me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> That depends on your thoughts at the moment.
+If you abstract the mind from the body, and turn your heart
+toward Heaven&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> O monseigneur, I always did so&mdash;every time but
+once&mdash;you quite make me blush. Let us converse about something
+else, or I shall grow too serious, just as you made me the
+other day at the funeral sermon. And now let me tell you,
+my lord, you compose such pretty funeral sermons, I hope I
+shall have the pleasure of hearing you preach mine.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> Rather let us hope, mademoiselle, that the hour
+is yet far distant when so melancholy a service will be performed
+for you. May he who is unborn be the sad announcer of your
+departure hence!<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> May he indicate to those around him many
+virtues not perhaps yet full-blown in you, and point triumphantly
+to many faults and foibles checked by you in their
+early growth, and lying dead on the open road, you shall have
+left behind you! To me the painful duty will, I trust, be spared:
+I am advanced in age; you are a child.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> Oh, no! I am seventeen.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> I should have supposed you younger by two years
+at least. But do you collect nothing from your own reflection,
+which raises so many in my breast? You think it possible
+that I, aged as I am, may preach a sermon at your funeral.
+We say that our days are few; and saying it, we say too much.
+Marie-Ang&eacute;lique, we have but one: the past are not ours, and
+who can promise us the future? This in which we live is ours
+only while we live in it; the next moment may strike it off from
+us; the next sentence I would utter may be broken and fall
+between us.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> The beauty that has made a thousand hearts
+to beat at one instant, at the succeeding has been without pulse
+and colour, without admirer, friend, companion, follower. She
+by whose eyes the march of victory shall have been directed,
+whose name shall have animated armies at the extremities
+of the earth, drops into one of its crevices and mingles with its
+dust. Duchess de Fontanges! think on this! Lady! so live
+as to think on it undisturbed!</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> O God! I am quite alarmed. Do not talk thus
+gravely. It is in vain that you speak to me in so sweet a voice.
+I am frightened even at the rattle of the beads about my neck:
+take them off, and let us talk on other things. What was it
+that dropped on the floor as you were speaking? It seemed to
+shake the room, though it sounded like a pin or button.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> Leave it there!</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> Your ring fell from your hand, my lord bishop!
+How quick you are! Could not you have trusted me to pick
+it up?</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> Madame is too condescending: had this happened,
+I should have been overwhelmed with confusion. My hand is
+shrivelled: the ring has ceased to fit it. A mere accident may
+draw us into perdition; a mere accident may bestow on us the
+means of grace. A pebble has moved you more than my words.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> It pleases me vastly: I admire rubies. I will
+ask the king for one exactly like it. This is the time he usually
+comes from the chase. I am sorry you cannot be present to
+hear how prettily I shall ask him: but that is impossible, you
+know; for I shall do it just when I am certain he would give me
+anything. He said so himself: he said but yesterday&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&#8216;Such a sweet creature is worth a world&#8217;:</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>and no actor on the stage was more like a king than his Majesty
+was when he spoke it, if he had but kept his wig and robe on.
+And yet you know he is rather stiff and wrinkled for so great a
+monarch; and his eyes, I am afraid, are beginning to fail him,
+he looks so close at things.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bossuet.</i> Mademoiselle, such is the duty of a prince who desires
+to conciliate our regard and love.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fontanges.</i> Well, I think so, too, though I did not like it in
+him at first. I am sure he will order the ring for me, and I will
+confess to you with it upon my finger. But first I must be
+cautious and particular to know of him how much it is his royal
+will that I should say.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The opinions of Molinos on Mysticism and Quietism had begun to
+spread abroad; but F&eacute;nelon, who had acquired already a very high celebrity
+for eloquence, had not yet written on the subject. We may well suppose
+that Bossuet was among the earliest assailants of a system which he
+afterward attacked so vehemently.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Bossuet was in his fifty-fourth year; Mademoiselle de Fontanges died in
+child-bed the year following: he survived her twenty-three years.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Though Bossuet was capable of uttering and even of feeling such a
+sentiment, his conduct towards F&eacute;nelon, the fairest apparition that
+Christianity ever presented, was ungenerous and unjust.</p>
+
+<p>While the diocese of Cambray was ravaged by Louis, it was spared by
+Marlborough; who said to the archbishop that, if he was sorry he had
+not taken Cambray, it was chiefly because he lost for a time the pleasure
+of visiting so great a man. Peterborough, the next of our generals in glory,
+paid his respects to him some years afterward.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="JOHN_OF_GAUNT_AND_JOANNA_OF_KENT" id="JOHN_OF_GAUNT_AND_JOANNA_OF_KENT"></a>JOHN OF GAUNT AND JOANNA OF KENT</h2>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Joanna, called the Fair Maid of Kent, was cousin of the Black Prince,
+whom she married. John of Gaunt was suspected of aiming at the crown
+in the beginning of Richard&#8217;s minority, which, increasing the hatred of
+the people against him for favouring the sect of Wickliffe, excited them
+to demolish his house and to demand his impeachment.</i></p></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p><i>Joanna.</i> How is this, my cousin, that you are besieged in
+your own house by the citizens of London? I thought you were
+their idol.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaunt.</i> If their idol, madam, I am one which they may tread
+on as they list when down; but which, by my soul and knighthood!
+the ten best battle-axes among them shall find it hard
+work to unshrine.</p>
+
+<p>Pardon me: I have no right, perhaps, to take or touch this
+hand; yet, my sister, bricks and stones and arrows are not
+presents fit for you. Let me conduct you some paces hence.</p>
+
+<p><i>Joanna.</i> I will speak to those below in the street. Quit my
+hand: they shall obey me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaunt.</i> If you intend to order my death, madam, your guards
+who have entered my court, and whose spurs and halberts I
+hear upon the staircase, may overpower my domestics; and,
+seeing no such escape as becomes my dignity, I submit to you.
+Behold my sword and gauntlet at your feet! Some formalities,
+I trust, will be used in the proceedings against me. Entitle me,
+in my attainder, not John of Gaunt, not Duke of Lancaster,
+not King of Castile; nor commemorate my father, the most
+glorious of princes, the vanquisher and pardoner of the most
+powerful; nor style me, what those who loved or who flattered
+me did when I was happier, cousin to the Fair Maid of Kent.
+Joanna, those days are over! But no enemy, no law, no
+eternity can take away from me, or move further off, my
+affinity in blood to the conqueror in the field of Crecy, of Poitiers,
+and Najera. Edward was my brother when he was but your
+cousin; and the edge of my shield has clinked on his in many a
+battle. Yes, we were ever near&mdash;if not in worth, in danger.
+She weeps.</p>
+
+<p><i>Joanna.</i> Attainder! God avert it! Duke of Lancaster, what
+dark thought&mdash;alas! that the Regency should have known it!
+I came hither, sir, for no such purpose as to ensnare or incriminate
+or alarm you.</p>
+
+<p>These weeds might surely have protected me from the fresh
+tears you have drawn forth.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaunt.</i> Sister, be comforted! this visor, too, has felt them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Joanna.</i> O my Edward! my own so lately! Thy memory&mdash;thy
+beloved image&mdash;which never hath abandoned me, makes
+me bold: I dare not say &#8216;generous&#8217;; for in saying it I should
+cease to be so&mdash;and who could be called generous by the side
+of thee? I will rescue from perdition the enemy of my son.</p>
+
+<p>Cousin, you loved your brother. Love, then, what was
+dearer to him than his life: protect what he, valiant as you
+have seen him, cannot! The father, who foiled so many, hath
+left no enemies; the innocent child, who can injure no one,
+finds them!</p>
+
+<p>Why have you unlaced and laid aside your visor? Do not
+expose your body to those missiles. Hold your shield before
+yourself, and step aside. I need it not. I am resolved&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaunt.</i> On what, my cousin? Speak, and, by the saints!
+it shall be done. This breast is your shield; this arm is mine.</p>
+
+<p><i>Joanna.</i> Heavens! who could have hurled those masses of
+stone from below? they stunned me. Did they descend all
+of them together; or did they split into fragments on hitting
+the pavement?</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaunt.</i> Truly, I was not looking that way: they came, I
+must believe, while you were speaking.</p>
+
+<p><i>Joanna.</i> Aside, aside! further back! disregard <i>me</i>! Look!
+that last arrow sticks half its head deep in the wainscot. It
+shook so violently I did not see the feather at first.</p>
+
+<p>No, no, Lancaster! I will not permit it. Take your shield
+up again; and keep it all before you. Now step aside: I am
+resolved to prove whether the people will hear me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaunt.</i> Then, madam, by your leave&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Joanna.</i> Hold!</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaunt.</i> Villains! take back to your kitchens those spits and
+skewers that you, forsooth, would fain call swords and arrows;
+and keep your bricks and stones for your graves!</p>
+
+<p><i>Joanna.</i> Imprudent man! who can save you? I shall be
+frightened: I must speak at once.</p>
+
+<p>O good kind people! ye who so greatly loved me, when I
+am sure I had done nothing to deserve it, have I (unhappy
+me!) no merit with you now, when I would assuage your anger,
+protect your fair fame, and send you home contented with
+yourselves and me? Who is he, worthy citizens, whom ye would
+drag to slaughter?</p>
+
+<p>True, indeed, he did revile someone. Neither I nor you can
+say whom&mdash;some feaster and rioter, it seems, who had little
+right (he thought) to carry sword or bow, and who, to show it,
+hath slunk away. And then another raised his anger: he was
+indignant that, under his roof, a woman should be exposed to
+stoning. Which of you would not be as choleric in a like affront?
+In the house of which among you should I not be protected
+as resolutely?</p>
+
+<p>No, no: I never can believe those angry cries. Let none ever
+tell me again he is the enemy of my son, of his king, your darling
+child, Richard. Are your fears more lively than a poor weak
+female&#8217;s? than a mother&#8217;s? yours, whom he hath so often led
+to victory, and praised to his father, naming each&mdash;he, John of
+Gaunt, the defender of the helpless, the comforter of the desolate,
+the rallying signal of the desperately brave!</p>
+
+<p>Retire, Duke of Lancaster! This is no time&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaunt.</i> Madam, I obey; but not through terror of that puddle
+at the house door, which my handful of dust would dry up.
+Deign to command me!</p>
+
+<p><i>Joanna.</i> In the name of my son, then, retire!</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaunt.</i> Angelic goodness! I must fairly win it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Joanna.</i> I think I know his voice that crieth out: &#8216;Who will
+answer for him?&#8217; An honest and loyal man&#8217;s, one who would
+counsel and save me in any difficulty and danger. With what
+pleasure and satisfaction, with what perfect joy and confidence,
+do I answer our right-trusty and well-judging friend!</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Let Lancaster bring his sureties,&#8217; say you, &#8216;and we separate.&#8217;
+A moment yet before we separate; if I might delay you so long,
+to receive your sanction of those securities: for, in such grave
+matters, it would ill become us to be over-hasty. I could bring
+fifty, I could bring a hundred, not from among soldiers, not from
+among courtiers; but selected from yourselves, were it equitable
+and fair to show such partialities, or decorous in the parent and
+guardian of a king to offer any other than herself.</p>
+
+<p>Raised by the hand of the Almighty from amidst you, but still
+one of you, if the mother of a family is a part of it, here I stand
+surety for John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, for his loyalty
+and allegiance.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaunt.</i> [<i>Running back toward Joanna.</i>] Are the rioters, then,
+bursting into the chamber through the windows?</p>
+
+<p><i>Joanna.</i> The windows and doors of this solid edifice rattled
+and shook at the people&#8217;s acclamation. My word is given for
+you: this was theirs in return. Lancaster! what a voice have
+the people when they speak out! It shakes me with astonishment,
+almost with consternation, while it establishes the throne:
+what must it be when it is lifted up in vengeance!</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaunt.</i> Wind; vapour&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Joanna.</i> Which none can wield nor hold. Need I say this
+to my cousin of Lancaster?</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaunt.</i> Rather say, madam, that there is always one star
+above which can tranquillize and control them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Joanna.</i> Go, cousin! another time more sincerity!</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaunt.</i> You have this day saved my life from the people;
+for I now see my danger better, when it is no longer close before
+me. My Christ! if ever I forget&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Joanna.</i> Swear not: every man in England hath sworn what
+you would swear. But if you abandon my Richard, my brave
+and beautiful child, may&mdash;Oh! I could never curse, nor wish
+an evil; but, if you desert him in the hour of need, you will
+think of those who have not deserted you, and your own great
+heart will lie heavy on you, Lancaster!</p>
+
+<p>Am I graver than I ought to be, that you look dejected?
+Come, then, gentle cousin, lead me to my horse, and accompany
+me home. Richard will embrace us tenderly. Every one is
+dear to every other upon rising out fresh from peril; affectionately
+then will he look, sweet boy, upon his mother and his
+uncle! Never mind how many questions he may ask you, nor
+how strange ones. His only displeasure, if he has any, will
+be that he stood not against the rioters or among them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gaunt.</i> Older than he have been as fond of mischief, and as
+fickle in the choice of a party.</p>
+
+<p>I shall tell him that, coming to blows, the assailant is often
+in the right; that the assailed is always.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="LEOFRIC_AND_GODIVA" id="LEOFRIC_AND_GODIVA"></a>LEOFRIC AND GODIVA</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> There is a dearth in the land, my sweet Leofric!
+Remember how many weeks of drought we have had, even in
+the deep pastures of Leicestershire; and how many Sundays we
+have heard the same prayers for rain, and supplications that
+it would please the Lord in His mercy to turn aside His anger
+from the poor, pining cattle. You, my dear husband, have
+imprisoned more than one malefactor for leaving his dead ox
+in the public way; and other hinds have fled before you out of
+the traces, in which they, and their sons and their daughters,
+and haply their old fathers and mothers, were dragging the
+abandoned wain homeward. Although we were accompanied
+by many brave spearmen and skilful archers, it was perilous to
+pass the creatures which the farmyard dogs, driven from the
+hearth by the poverty of their masters, were tearing and devouring;
+while others, bitten and lamed, filled the air either with
+long and deep howls or sharp and quick barkings, as they
+struggled with hunger and feebleness, or were exasperated by
+heat and pain. Nor could the thyme from the heath, nor the
+bruised branches of the fir-tree, extinguish or abate the foul odour.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> And now, Godiva, my darling, thou art afraid we
+should be eaten up before we enter the gates of Coventry; or
+perchance that in the gardens there are no roses to greet thee,
+no sweet herbs for thy mat and pillow.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> Leofric, I have no such fears. This is the month
+of roses: I find them everywhere since my blessed marriage.
+They, and all other sweet herbs, I know not why, seem to greet
+me wherever I look at them, as though they knew and expected
+me. Surely they cannot feel that I am fond of them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> O light, laughing simpleton! But what wouldst
+thou? I came not hither to pray; and yet if praying would
+satisfy thee, or remove the drought, I would ride up straightway
+to Saint Michael&#8217;s and pray until morning.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> I would do the same, O Leofric! but God hath turned
+away His ear from holier lips than mine. Would my own dear
+husband hear me, if I implored him for what is easier to accomplish&mdash;what
+he can do like God?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> How! what is it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> I would not, in the first hurry of your wrath, appeal
+to you, my loving lord, on behalf of these unhappy men who
+have offended you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> Unhappy! is that all?</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> Unhappy they must surely be, to have offended you
+so grievously. What a soft air breathes over us! how quiet
+and serene and still an evening! how calm are the heavens and
+the earth! Shall none enjoy them; not even we, my Leofric?
+The sun is ready to set: let it never set, O Leofric, on your anger.
+These are not my words: they are better than mine. Should
+they lose their virtue from my unworthiness in uttering them?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> Godiva, wouldst thou plead to me for rebels?</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> They have, then, drawn the sword against you?
+Indeed, I knew it not.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> They have omitted to send me my dues, established
+by my ancestors, well knowing of our nuptials, and of the
+charges and festivities they require, and that in a season of such
+scarcity my own lands are insufficient.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> If they were starving, as they said they were&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> Must I starve too? Is it not enough to lose my
+vassals?</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> Enough! O God! too much! too much! May you
+never lose them! Give them life, peace, comfort, contentment.
+There are those among them who kissed me in my infancy,
+and who blessed me at the baptismal font. Leofric, Leofric!
+the first old man I meet I shall think is one of those; and I shall
+think on the blessing he gave, and (ah me!) on the blessing I
+bring back to him. My heart will bleed, will burst; and he will
+weep at it! he will weep, poor soul, for the wife of a cruel lord
+who denounces vengeance on him, who carries death into his
+family!</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> We must hold solemn festivals.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> We must, indeed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> Well, then?</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> Is the clamorousness that succeeds the death of
+God&#8217;s dumb creatures, are crowded halls, are slaughtered cattle
+festivals?&mdash;are maddening songs, and giddy dances, and hireling
+praises from parti-coloured coats? Can the voice of a
+minstrel tell us better things of ourselves than our own internal
+one might tell us; or can his breath make our breath softer in
+sleep? O my beloved! let everything be a joyance to us: it
+will, if we will. Sad is the day, and worse must follow, when
+we hear the blackbird in the garden, and do not throb with joy.
+But, Leofric, the high festival is strown by the servant of God
+upon the heart of man. It is gladness, it is thanksgiving; it
+is the orphan, the starveling, pressed to the bosom, and bidden
+as its first commandment to remember its benefactor. We will
+hold this festival; the guests are ready: we may keep it up for
+weeks, and months, and years together, and always be the
+happier and the richer for it. The beverage of this feast, O
+Leofric, is sweeter than bee or flower or vine can give us: it
+flows from heaven; and in heaven will it abundantly be poured
+out again to him who pours it out here abundantly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> Thou art wild.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> I have, indeed, lost myself. Some Power, some good
+kind Power, melts me (body and soul and voice) into tenderness
+and love. O my husband, we must obey it. Look upon me!
+look upon me! lift your sweet eyes from the ground! I will not
+cease to supplicate; I dare not.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> We may think upon it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> Oh, never say that! What! think upon goodness
+when you can be good? Let not the infants cry for sustenance!
+The Mother of Our Blessed Lord will hear them; us never,
+never afterward.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> Here comes the bishop: we are but one mile from the
+walls. Why dismountest thou? no bishop can expect this.
+Godiva! my honour and rank among men are humbled by this.
+Earl Godwin will hear of it. Up! up! the bishop hath seen it:
+he urgeth his horse onward. Dost thou not hear him now upon
+the solid turf behind thee?</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> Never, no, never will I rise, O Leofric, until you remit
+this most impious task&mdash;this tax on hard labour, on hard life.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> Turn round: look how the fat nag canters, as to the
+tune of a sinner&#8217;s psalm, slow and hard-breathing. What reason
+or right can the people have to complain, while their bishop&#8217;s
+steed is so sleek and well caparisoned? Inclination to change,
+desire to abolish old usages. Up! up! for shame! They shall
+smart for it, idlers! Sir Bishop, I must blush for my young
+bride.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> My husband, my husband! will you pardon the city?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> Sir Bishop! I could think you would have seen her
+in this plight. Will I pardon? Yea, Godiva, by the holy rood,
+will I pardon the city, when thou ridest naked at noontide
+through the streets!</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> O my dear, cruel Leofric, where is the heart you gave
+me? It was not so: can mine have hardened it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Bishop.</i> Earl, thou abashest thy spouse; she turneth pale,
+and weepeth. Lady Godiva, peace be with thee.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> Thanks, holy man! peace will be with me when peace
+is with your city. Did you hear my lord&#8217;s cruel word?</p>
+
+<p><i>Bishop.</i> I did, lady.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> Will you remember it, and pray against it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Bishop.</i> Wilt <i>thou</i> forget it, daughter?</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> I am not offended.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bishop.</i> Angel of peace and purity!</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> But treasure it up in your heart: deem it an incense,
+good only when it is consumed and spent, ascending with prayer
+and sacrifice. And, now, what was it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Bishop.</i> Christ save us! that He will pardon the city when
+thou ridest naked through the streets at noon.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> Did he swear an oath?</p>
+
+<p><i>Bishop.</i> He sware by the holy rood.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> My Redeemer, Thou hast heard it! save the city!</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> We are now upon the beginning of the pavement:
+these are the suburbs. Let us think of feasting: we may pray
+afterward; to-morrow we shall rest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> No judgments, then, to-morrow, Leofric?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> None: we will carouse.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> The saints of heaven have given me strength and
+confidence; my prayers are heard; the heart of my beloved is
+now softened.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> Ay, ay.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> Say, dearest Leofric, is there indeed no other hope,
+no other mediation?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> I have sworn. Beside, thou hast made me redden
+and turn my face away from thee, and all the knaves have seen
+it: this adds to the city&#8217;s crime.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> I have blushed, too, Leofric, and was not rash nor
+obdurate.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> But thou, my sweetest, art given to blushing: there
+is no conquering it in thee. I wish thou hadst not alighted so
+hastily and roughly: it hath shaken down a sheaf of thy hair.
+Take heed thou sit not upon it, lest it anguish thee. Well done!
+it mingleth now sweetly with the cloth of gold upon the saddle,
+running here and there, as if it had life and faculties and business,
+and were working thereupon some newer and cunninger
+device. O my beauteous Eve! there is a Paradise about thee!
+the world is refreshed as thou movest and breathest on it. I
+cannot see or think of evil where thou art. I could throw my
+arms even here about thee. No signs for me! no shaking of
+sunbeams! no reproof or frown of wonderment.&mdash;I <i>will</i> say it&mdash;now,
+then, for worse&mdash;I could close with my kisses thy half-open
+lips, ay, and those lovely and loving eyes, before the people.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> To-morrow you shall kiss me, and they shall bless
+you for it. I shall be very pale, for to-night I must fast and pray.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leofric.</i> I do not hear thee; the voices of the folk are so loud
+under this archway.</p>
+
+<p><i>Godiva.</i> [<i>To herself.</i>] God help them! good kind souls! I hope
+they will not crowd about me so to-morrow. O Leofric! could
+my name be forgotten, and yours alone remembered! But
+perhaps my innocence may save me from reproach; and how
+many as innocent are in fear and famine! No eye will open
+on me but fresh from tears. What a young mother for so large
+a family! Shall my youth harm me? Under God&#8217;s hand it
+gives me courage. Ah! when will the morning come? Ah!
+when will the noon be over?</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>The story of Godiva, at one of whose festivals or fairs I was present in
+my boyhood, has always much interested me; and I wrote a poem on it,
+sitting, I remember, by the</i> square pool <i>at Rugby. When I showed it to
+the friend in whom I had most confidence, he began to scoff at the subject;
+and, on his reaching the last line, his laughter was loud and immoderate.
+This conversation has brought both laughter and stanza back to me, and
+the earnestness with which I entreated and implored my friend</i> not to tell
+the lads<i>, so heart-strickenly and desperately was I ashamed. The verses
+are these, if any one else should wish another laugh at me:</i></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>&#8216;In every hour, in every mood,</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>O lady, it is sweet and good</i></span><br />
+<span class="i1"><i>To bathe the soul in prayer;</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>And, at the close of such a day,</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>When we have ceased to bless and pray,</i></span><br />
+<span class="i1"><i>To dream on thy long hair.&#8217;</i></span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>May the peppermint be still growing on the bank in that place!</i></p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="ESSEX_AND_SPENSER" id="ESSEX_AND_SPENSER"></a>ESSEX AND SPENSER</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> Instantly on hearing of thy arrival from Ireland, I
+sent a message to thee, good Edmund, that I might learn, from
+one so judicious and dispassionate as thou art, the real state
+of things in that distracted country; it having pleased the
+queen&#8217;s Majesty to think of appointing me her deputy, in order
+to bring the rebellious to submission.</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> Wisely and well considered; but more worthily
+of her judgment than her affection. May your lordship overcome,
+as you have ever done, the difficulties and dangers you
+foresee.</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> We grow weak by striking at random; and knowing
+that I must strike, and strike heavily, I would fain see exactly
+where the stroke shall fall.</p>
+
+<p>Now what tale have you for us?</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> Interrogate me, my lord, that I may answer each
+question distinctly, my mind being in sad confusion at what I
+have seen and undergone.</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> Give me thy account and opinion of these very affairs
+as thou leftest them; for I would rather know one part well
+than all imperfectly; and the violences of which I have heard
+within the day surpass belief.</p>
+
+<p>Why weepest thou, my gentle Spenser? Have the rebels
+sacked thy house?</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> They have plundered and utterly destroyed it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> I grieve for thee, and will see thee righted.</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> In this they have little harmed me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> How! I have heard it reported that thy grounds are
+fertile, and thy mansion large and pleasant.</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> If river and lake and meadow-ground and mountain
+could render any place the abode of pleasantness, pleasant was
+mine, indeed!</p>
+
+<p>On the lovely banks of Mulla I found deep contentment.
+Under the dark alders did I muse and meditate. Innocent
+hopes were my gravest cares, and my playfullest fancy was
+with kindly wishes. Ah! surely of all cruelties the worst is to
+extinguish our kindness. Mine is gone: I love the people and
+the land no longer. My lord, ask me not about them: I may
+speak injuriously.</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> Think rather, then, of thy happier hours and busier
+occupations; these likewise may instruct me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> The first seeds I sowed in the garden, ere the old
+castle was made habitable for my lovely bride, were acorns
+from Penshurst. I planted a little oak before my mansion at
+the birth of each child. My sons, I said to myself, shall often
+play in the shade of them when I am gone; and every year shall
+they take the measure of their growth, as fondly as I take theirs.</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> Well, well; but let not this thought make thee weep so
+bitterly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> Poison may ooze from beautiful plants; deadly grief
+from dearest reminiscences. I <i>must</i> grieve, I <i>must</i> weep: it
+seems the law of God, and the only one that men are not disposed
+to contravene. In the performance of this alone do they
+effectually aid one another.</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> Spenser! I wish I had at hand any arguments or
+persuasions of force sufficient to remove thy sorrow; but, really,
+I am not in the habit of seeing men grieve at anything except
+the loss of favour at court, or of a hawk, or of a buck-hound.
+And were I to swear out condolences to a man of thy discernment,
+in the same round, roll-call phrases we employ with one
+another upon these occasions, I should be guilty, not of insincerity,
+but of insolence. True grief hath ever something
+sacred in it; and, when it visiteth a wise man and a brave one,
+is most holy.</p>
+
+<p>Nay, kiss not my hand: he whom God smiteth hath God
+with him. In His presence what am I?</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> Never so great, my lord, as at this hour, when you
+see aright who is greater. May He guide your counsels, and
+preserve your life and glory!</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> Where are thy friends? Are they with thee?</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> Ah, where, indeed! Generous, true-hearted Philip!
+where art thou, whose presence was unto me peace and safety;
+whose smile was contentment, and whose praise renown?
+My lord! I cannot but think of him among still heavier losses:
+he was my earliest friend, and would have taught me wisdom.</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> Pastoral poetry, my dear Spenser, doth not require
+tears and lamentations. Dry thine eyes; rebuild thine house:
+the queen and council, I venture to promise thee, will make
+ample amends for every evil thou hast sustained. What!
+does that enforce thee to wail still louder?</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> Pardon me, bear with me, most noble heart! I
+have lost what no council, no queen, no Essex, can restore.</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> We will see that. There are other swords, and other
+arms to yield them, beside a Leicester&#8217;s and a Raleigh&#8217;s. Others
+can crush their enemies, and serve their friends.</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> O my sweet child! And of many so powerful,
+many so wise and so beneficent, was there none to save thee?
+None, none!</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> I now perceive that thou lamentest what almost every
+father is destined to lament. Happiness must be bought,
+although the payment may be delayed. Consider: the same
+calamity might have befallen thee here in London. Neither
+the houses of ambassadors, nor the palaces of kings, nor the
+altars of God Himself, are asylums against death. How do I
+know but under this very roof there may sleep some latent
+calamity, that in an instant shall cover with gloom every inmate
+of the house, and every far dependent?</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> God avert it!</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> Every day, every hour of the year, do hundreds mourn
+what thou mournest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> Oh, no, no, no! Calamities there are around us;
+calamities there are all over the earth; calamities there are
+in all seasons: but none in any season, none in any place, like
+mine.</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> So say all fathers, so say all husbands. Look at any
+old mansion-house, and let the sun shine as gloriously as it may
+on the golden vanes, or the arms recently quartered over the
+gateway or the embayed window, and on the happy pair that
+haply is toying at it: nevertheless, thou mayest say that of a
+certainty the same fabric hath seen much sorrow within its
+chambers, and heard many wailings; and each time this was
+the heaviest stroke of all. Funerals have passed along through
+the stout-hearted knights upon the wainscot, and amid the
+laughing nymphs upon the arras. Old servants have shaken
+their heads, as if somebody had deceived them, when they
+found that beauty and nobility could perish.</p>
+
+<p>Edmund! the things that are too true pass by us as if they
+were not true at all; and when they have singled us out, then
+only do they strike us. Thou and I must go too. Perhaps the
+next year may blow us away with its fallen leaves.</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> For you, my lord, many years (I trust) are waiting:
+I never shall see those fallen leaves. No leaf, no bud, will spring
+upon the earth before I sink into her breast for ever.</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> Thou, who art wiser than most men, shouldst bear
+with patience, equanimity, and courage what is common to all.</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> Enough, enough, enough! Have all men seen their
+infant burnt to ashes before their eyes?</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> Gracious God! Merciful Father! what is this?</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> Burnt alive! burnt to ashes! burnt to ashes! The
+flames dart their serpent tongues through the nursery window.
+I cannot quit thee, my Elizabeth! I cannot lay down our
+Edmund! Oh, these flames! They persecute, they enthral me;
+they curl round my temples; they hiss upon my brain; they
+taunt me with their fierce, foul voices; they carp at me, they
+wither me, they consume me, throwing back to me a little of
+life to roll and suffer in, with their fangs upon me. Ask me,
+my lord, the things you wish to know from me: I may answer
+them; I am now composed again. Command me, my gracious
+lord! I would yet serve you: soon I shall be unable. You
+have stooped to raise me up; you have borne with me; you have
+pitied me, even like one not powerful. You have brought
+comfort, and will leave it with me, for gratitude is comfort.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! my memory stands all a-tiptoe on one burning point:
+when it drops from it, then it perishes. Spare me: ask me
+nothing; let me weep before you in peace&mdash;the kindest act of
+greatness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> I should rather have dared to mount into the midst
+of the conflagration than I now dare entreat thee not to weep.
+The tears that overflow thy heart, my Spenser, will staunch
+and heal it in their sacred stream; but not without hope in God.</p>
+
+<p><i>Spenser.</i> My hope in God is that I may soon see again what
+He has taken from me. Amid the myriads of angels, there is
+not one so beautiful; and even he (if there be any) who is
+appointed my guardian could never love me so. Ah! these are
+idle thoughts, vain wanderings, distempered dreams. If there
+ever were guardian angels, he who so wanted one&mdash;my helpless
+boy&mdash;would not have left these arms upon my knees.</p>
+
+<p><i>Essex.</i> God help and sustain thee, too gentle Spenser! I
+never will desert thee. But what am I? Great they have called
+me! Alas, how powerless, then, and infantile is greatness in
+the presence of calamity!</p>
+
+<p>Come, give me thy hand: let us walk up and down the gallery.
+Bravely done! I will envy no more a Sidney or a Raleigh.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="LORD_BACON_AND_RICHARD_HOOKER" id="LORD_BACON_AND_RICHARD_HOOKER"></a>LORD BACON AND RICHARD HOOKER</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Bacon.</i> Hearing much of your worthiness and wisdom, Master
+Richard Hooker, I have besought your comfort and consolation
+in this my too heavy affliction: for we often do stand in need
+of hearing what we know full well, and our own balsams must
+be poured into our breasts by another&#8217;s hand. As the air at
+our doors is sometimes more expeditious in removing pain and
+heaviness from the body than the most far-fetched remedies
+would be, so the voice alone of a neighbourly and friendly
+visitant may be more effectual in assuaging our sorrows, than
+whatever is most forcible in rhetoric and most recondite in
+wisdom. On these occasions we cannot put ourselves in a
+posture to receive the latter, and still less are we at leisure to
+look into the corners of our store-room, and to uncurl the leaves
+of our references. As for Memory, who, you may tell me,
+would save us the trouble, she is footsore enough in all conscience
+with me, without going farther back. Withdrawn as you live
+from court and courtly men, and having ears occupied by better
+reports than such as are flying about me, yet haply so hard a
+case as mine, befalling a man heretofore not averse from the
+studies in which you take delight, may have touched you with
+some concern.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hooker.</i> I do think, my Lord of Verulam, that, unhappy as
+you appear, God in sooth has forgone to chasten you, and that
+the day which in His wisdom He appointed for your trial, was
+the very day on which the king&#8217;s Majesty gave unto your ward
+and custody the great seal of his English realm. And yet
+perhaps it may be&mdash;let me utter it without offence&mdash;that your
+features and stature were from that day forward no longer
+what they were before. Such an effect do power and rank and
+office produce even on prudent and religious men.</p>
+
+<p>A hound&#8217;s whelp howleth, if you pluck him up above where
+he stood: man, in much greater peril from falling, doth rejoice.
+You, my lord, as befitted you, are smitten and contrite, and do
+appear in deep wretchedness and tribulation to your servants
+and those about you; but I know that there is always a balm
+which lies uppermost in these afflictions, and that no heart
+rightly softened can be very sore.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bacon.</i> And yet, Master Richard, it is surely no small matter
+to lose the respect of those who looked up to us for countenance;
+and the favour of a right learned king; and, O Master Hooker,
+such a power of money! But money is mere dross. I should
+always hold it so, if it possessed not two qualities: that of making
+men treat us reverently, and that of enabling us to help the
+needy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hooker.</i> The respect, I think, of those who respect us for what
+a fool can give and a rogue can take away, may easily be
+dispensed with; but it is indeed a high prerogative to help the
+needy; and when it pleases the Almighty to deprive us of it,
+let us believe that He foreknoweth our inclination to negligence
+in the charge entrusted to us, and that in His mercy He hath
+removed from us a most fearful responsibility.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bacon.</i> I know a number of poor gentlemen to whom I could
+have rendered aid.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hooker.</i> Have you examined and sifted their worthiness?</p>
+
+<p><i>Bacon.</i> Well and deeply.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hooker.</i> Then must you have known them long before your
+adversity, and while the means of succouring them were in
+your hands.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bacon.</i> You have circumvented and entrapped me, Master
+Hooker. Faith! I am mortified: you the schoolman, I the
+schoolboy!</p>
+
+<p><i>Hooker.</i> Say not so, my lord. Your years, indeed, are fewer
+than mine, by seven or thereabout; but your knowledge is
+far higher, your experience richer. Our wits are not always in
+blossom upon us. When the roses are overcharged and languid,
+up springs a spike of rue. Mortified on such an occasion?
+God forfend it! But again to the business. I should never
+be over-penitent for my neglect of needy gentlemen who have
+neglected themselves much worse. They have chosen their
+profession with its chances and contingencies. If they had
+protected their country by their courage or adorned it by their
+studies, they would have merited, and under a king of such
+learning and such equity would have received in some sort,
+their reward. I look upon them as so many old cabinets of
+ivory and tortoise-shell, scratched, flawed, splintered, rotten,
+defective both within and without, hard to unlock, insecure to
+lock up again, unfit to use.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bacon.</i> Methinks it beginneth to rain, Master Richard. What
+if we comfort our bodies with a small cup of wine, against the
+ill-temper of the air. Wherefore, in God&#8217;s name, are you
+affrightened?</p>
+
+<p><i>Hooker.</i> Not so, my lord; not so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bacon.</i> What then affects you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Hooker.</i> Why, indeed, since your lordship interrogates me&mdash;I
+looked, idly and imprudently, into that rich buffet; and I
+saw, unless the haze of the weather has come into the parlour,
+or my sight is the worse for last night&#8217;s reading, no fewer than
+six silver pints. Surely, six tables for company are laid only
+at coronations.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bacon.</i> There are many men so squeamish that forsooth
+they would keep a cup to themselves, and never communicate
+it to their nearest and best friend; a fashion which seems to
+me offensive in an honest house, where no disease of ill repute
+ought to be feared. We have lately, Master Richard, adopted
+strange fashions; we have run into the wildest luxuries. The
+Lord Leicester, I heard it from my father&mdash;God forfend it
+should ever be recorded in our history!&mdash;when he entertained
+Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth Castle, laid before her Majesty
+a fork of pure silver. I the more easily credit it, as Master
+Thomas Coriatt doth vouch for having seen the same monstrous
+sign of voluptuousness at Venice. We are surely the especial
+favourites of Providence, when such wantonness hath not
+melted us quite away. After this portent, it would otherwise
+have appeared incredible that we should have broken the
+Spanish Armada.</p>
+
+<p>Pledge me: hither comes our wine.</p>
+
+<p>[<i>To the Servant.</i>] Dolt! villain! is not this the beverage I
+reserve for myself?</p>
+
+<p>The blockhead must imagine that Malmsey runs in a
+stream under the ocean, like the Alpheus. Bear with me,
+good Master Hooker, but verily I have little of this wine, and
+I keep it as a medicine for my many and growing infirmities.
+You are healthy at present: God in His infinite mercy long
+maintain you so! Weaker drink is more wholesome for you.
+The lighter ones of France are best accommodated by Nature
+to our constitutions, and therefore she has placed them so
+within our reach that we have only to stretch out our necks,
+in a manner, and drink them from the vat. But this Malmsey,
+this Malmsey, flies from centre to circumference, and makes
+youthful blood boil.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hooker.</i> Of a truth, my knowledge in such matters is but
+spare. My Lord of Canterbury once ordered part of a goblet,
+containing some strong Spanish wine, to be taken to me from
+his table when I dined by sufferance with his chaplains, and,
+although a most discreet, prudent man as befitteth his high
+station, was not so chary of my health as your lordship. Wine
+is little to be trifled with, physic less. The Cretans, the brewers
+of this Malmsey, have many aromatic and powerful herbs
+among them. On their mountains, and notably on Ida, grows
+that dittany which works such marvels, and which perhaps
+may give activity to this hot medicinal drink of theirs. I
+would not touch it, knowingly: an unregarded leaf, dropped
+into it above the ordinary, might add such puissance to the
+concoction as almost to break the buckles in my shoes; since
+we have good and valid authority that the wounded hart, on
+eating thereof, casts the arrow out of his haunch or entrails,
+although it stuck a palm deep.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Bacon.</i> When I read of such things I doubt them. Religion
+and politics belong to God, and to God&#8217;s vicegerent the king;
+we must not touch upon them unadvisedly: but if I could
+procure a plant of dittany on easy terms, I would persuade my
+apothecary and my gamekeeper to make some experiments.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hooker.</i> I dare not distrust what grave writers have declared
+in matters beyond my knowledge.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bacon.</i> Good Master Hooker, I have read many of your
+reasonings, and they are admirably well sustained: added to
+which, your genius has given such a strong current to your
+language as can come only from a mighty elevation and a most
+abundant plenteousness. Yet forgive me, in God&#8217;s name, my
+worthy master, if you descried in me some expression of wonder
+at your simplicity. We are all weak and vulnerable somewhere:
+common men in the higher parts; heroes, as was feigned
+of Achilles, in the lower. You would define to a hair&#8217;s-breadth
+the qualities, states, and dependencies of principalities, dominations,
+and powers; you would be unerring about the apostles
+and the churches; and &#8217;tis marvellous how you wander about a
+pot-herb!</p>
+
+<p><i>Hooker.</i> I know my poor weak intellects, most noble lord,
+and how scantily they have profited by my hard painstaking.
+Comprehending few things, and those imperfectly, I say only
+what others have said before, wise men and holy; and if, by
+passing through my heart into the wide world around me, it
+pleaseth God that this little treasure shall have lost nothing of
+its weight and pureness, my exultation is then the exultation
+of humility. Wisdom consisteth not in knowing many things,
+nor even in knowing them thoroughly; but in choosing and in
+following what conduces the most certainly to our lasting
+happiness and true glory. And this wisdom, my Lord of
+Verulam, cometh from above.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bacon.</i> I have observed among the well-informed and the
+ill-informed nearly the same quantity of infirmities and follies:
+those who are rather the wiser keep them separate, and those
+who are wisest of all keep them better out of sight. Now,
+examine the sayings and writings of the prime philosophers,
+and you will often find them, Master Richard, to be untruths
+made to resemble truths. The business with them is to approximate
+as nearly as possible, and not to touch it: the goal of the
+charioteer is <i>evitata fervidis rotis</i>, as some poet saith. But we
+who care nothing for chants and cadences, and have no time
+to catch at applauses, push forward over stones and sands
+straightway to our object. I have persuaded men, and shall
+persuade them for ages, that I possess a wide range of thought
+unexplored by others, and first thrown open by me, with many
+fair enclosures of choice and abstruse knowledge. I have
+incited and instructed them to examine all subjects of useful
+and rational inquiry; few that occurred to me have I myself
+left untouched or untried: one, however, hath almost escaped
+me, and surely one worth the trouble.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hooker.</i> Pray, my lord, if I am guilty of no indiscretion, what
+may it be?</p>
+
+<p><i>Bacon.</i> Francis Bacon.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Lest it be thought that authority is wanting for the strong expression
+of Hooker on the effects of dittany, the reader is referred to the curious
+treatise of Plutarch on the reasoning faculty of animals, in which (near
+the end) he asks: &#8216;Who instructed deer wounded by the Cretan arrow to
+seek for dittany? on the tasting of which herb the bolts fall immediately
+from their bodies.&#8217;</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="OLIVER_CROMWELL_AND_WALTER_NOBLE" id="OLIVER_CROMWELL_AND_WALTER_NOBLE"></a>OLIVER CROMWELL AND WALTER NOBLE</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Cromwell.</i> What brings thee back from Staffordshire, friend
+Walter?</p>
+
+<p><i>Noble.</i> I hope, General Cromwell, to persuade you that the
+death of Charles will be considered by all Europe as a most
+atrocious action.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cromwell.</i> Thou hast already persuaded me: what then?</p>
+
+<p><i>Noble.</i> Surely, then, you will prevent it, for your authority is
+great. Even those who upon their consciences found him
+guilty would remit the penalty of blood, some from policy, some
+from mercy. I have conversed with Hutchinson, with Ludlow,<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>
+your friend and mine, with Henry Nevile, and Walter Long: you
+will oblige these worthy friends, and unite in your favour the
+suffrages of the truest and trustiest men living. There are
+many others, with whom I am in no habits of intercourse, who
+are known to entertain the same sentiments; and these also are
+among the country gentlemen, to whom our parliament owes the
+better part of its reputation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cromwell.</i> You country gentlemen bring with you into the
+People&#8217;s House a freshness and sweet savour which our citizens
+lack mightily. I would fain merit your esteem, heedless of
+those pursy fellows from hulks and warehouses, with one ear
+lappeted by the pen behind it, and the other an heirloom,
+as Charles would have had it, in Laud&#8217;s Star-chamber. Oh,
+they are proud and bloody men! My heart melts; but, alas!
+my authority is null: I am the servant of the Commonwealth.
+I will not, dare not, betray it. If Charles Stuart had threatened
+my death only, in the letter we ripped out of the saddle, I would
+have reproved him manfully and turned him adrift: but others
+are concerned; lives more precious than mine, worn as it is
+with fastings, prayers, long services, and preyed upon by a
+pouncing disease. The Lord hath led him into the toils laid
+for the innocent. Foolish man! he never could eschew evil
+counsel.</p>
+
+<p><i>Noble.</i> In comparison with you, he is but as a pinnacle to
+a buttress. I acknowledge his weaknesses, and cannot wink
+upon his crimes: but that which you visit as the heaviest of
+them perhaps was not so, although the most disastrous to both
+parties&mdash;the bearing of arms against his people. He fought
+for what he considered his hereditary property; we do the same:
+should we be hanged for losing a lawsuit?</p>
+
+<p><i>Cromwell.</i> No, unless it is the second. Thou talkest finely
+and foolishly, Wat, for a man of thy calm discernment. If a
+rogue holds a pistol to my breast, do I ask him who he is?
+Do I care whether his doublet be of cat-skin or of dog-skin?
+Fie upon such wicked sophisms! Marvellous, how the devil
+works upon good men&#8217;s minds!</p>
+
+<p><i>Noble.</i> Charles was always more to be dreaded by his friends
+than by his enemies, and now by neither.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cromwell.</i> God forbid that Englishmen should be feared by
+Englishmen! but to be daunted by the weakest, to bend before
+the worst&mdash;I tell thee, Walter Noble, if Moses and the prophets
+commanded me to this villainy, I would draw back and mount
+my horse.</p>
+
+<p><i>Noble.</i> I wish that our history, already too dark with blood,
+should contain, as far as we are concerned in it, some unpolluted
+pages.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cromwell.</i> &#8217;Twere better, much better. Never shall I be
+called, I promise thee, an unnecessary shedder of blood.
+Remember, my good, prudent friend, of what materials our
+sectaries are composed: what hostility against all eminence,
+what rancour against all glory. Not only kingly power offends
+them, but every other; and they talk of <i>putting to the sword</i>,
+as if it were the quietest, gentlest, and most ordinary thing in
+the world. The knaves even dictate from their stools and
+benches to men in armour, bruised and bleeding for them; and
+with school-dames&#8217; scourges in their fists do they give counsel
+to those who protect them from the cart and halter. In
+the name of the Lord, I must spit outright (or worse) upon
+these crackling bouncing firebrands, before I can make them
+tractable.</p>
+
+<p><i>Noble.</i> I lament their blindness; but follies wear out the faster
+by being hard run upon. This fermenting sourness will presently
+turn vapid, and people will cast it out. I am not surprised
+that you are discontented and angry at what thwarts
+your better nature. But come, Cromwell, overlook them,
+despise them, and erect to yourself a glorious name by sparing
+a mortal enemy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cromwell.</i> A glorious name, by God&#8217;s blessing, I will erect;
+and all our fellow-labourers shall rejoice at it: but I see better
+than they do the blow descending on them, and my arm better
+than theirs can ward it off. Noble, thy heart overflows with
+kindness for Charles Stuart: if he were at liberty to-morrow
+by thy intercession, he would sign thy death-warrant the day
+after, for serving the Commonwealth. A generation of vipers!
+there is nothing upright nor grateful in them: never was there
+a drop of even Scotch blood in their veins. Indeed, we have a
+clue to their bedchamber still hanging on the door, and I suspect
+that an Italian fiddler or French valet has more than once
+crossed the current.</p>
+
+<p><i>Noble.</i> That may be: nor indeed is it credible that any royal
+or courtly family has gone on for three generations without a
+spur from interloper. Look at France! some stout Parisian
+saint performed the last miracle there.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cromwell.</i> Now thou talkest gravely and sensibly: I could hear
+thee discourse thus for hours together.</p>
+
+<p><i>Noble.</i> Hear me, Cromwell, with equal patience on matters
+more important. We all have our sufferings: why increase
+one another&#8217;s wantonly? Be the blood Scotch or English,
+French or Italian, a drummer&#8217;s or a buffoon&#8217;s, it carries a soul
+upon its stream; and every soul has many places to touch at,
+and much business to perform, before it reaches its ultimate
+destination. Abolish the power of Charles; extinguish not his
+virtues. Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy
+to be preserved. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such
+should arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has
+done, or is likely to do, more service than injury to society.
+Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects to ours, and their
+business is never with virtues or with hopes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cromwell.</i> Walter! Walter! we laugh at speculators.</p>
+
+<p><i>Noble.</i> Many indeed are ready enough to laugh at speculators,
+because many profit, or expect to profit, by established and
+widening abuses. Speculations toward evil lose their name by
+adoption; speculations towards good are for ever speculations,
+and he who hath proposed them is a chimerical and silly creature.
+Among the matters under this denomination I never find a
+cruel project, I never find an oppressive or unjust one: how
+happens it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Cromwell.</i> Proportions should exist in all things. Sovereigns
+are paid higher than others for their office; they should therefore
+be punished more severely for abusing it, even if the
+consequences of this abuse were in nothing more grievous or
+extensive. We cannot clap them in the stocks conveniently,
+nor whip them at the market-place. Where there is a crown
+there must be an axe: I would keep it there only.</p>
+
+<p><i>Noble.</i> Lop off the rotten, press out the poisonous, preserve
+the rest; let it suffice to have given this memorable example of
+national power and justice.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cromwell.</i> Justice is perfect; an attribute of God: we must not
+trifle with it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Noble.</i> Should we be less merciful to our fellow-creatures
+than to our domestic animals? Before we deliver them to be
+killed, we weigh their services against their inconveniences.
+On the foundation of policy, when we have no better, let us
+erect the trophies of humanity: let us consider that, educated
+in the same manner and situated in the same position, we ourselves
+might have acted as reprovably. Abolish that for ever
+which must else for ever generate abuses; and attribute the
+faults of the man to the office, not the faults of the office
+to the man.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cromwell.</i> I have no bowels for hypocrisy, and I abominate
+and detest kingship.</p>
+
+<p><i>Noble.</i> I abominate and detest hangmanship; but in certain
+stages of society both are necessary. Let them go together;
+we want neither now.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cromwell.</i> Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they
+lose their direction and begin to bend: such nails are then
+thrown into the dust or into the furnace. I must do my duty;
+I must accomplish what is commanded me; I must not be turned
+aside. I am loath to be cast into the furnace or the dust; but
+God&#8217;s will be done! Prithee, Wat, since thou readest, as I see,
+the books of philosophers, didst thou ever hear of Digby&#8217;s
+remedies by sympathy?</p>
+
+<p><i>Noble.</i> Yes, formerly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cromwell.</i> Well, now, I protest, I do believe there is something
+in them. To cure my headache, I must breathe a vein in the
+neck of Charles.</p>
+
+<p><i>Noble.</i> Oliver, Oliver! others are wittiest over wine, thou over
+blood: cold-hearted, cruel man.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cromwell.</i> Why, dost thou verily think me so, Walter?
+Perhaps thou art right in the main: but He alone who fashioned
+me in my mother&#8217;s womb, and who sees things deeper than we
+do, knows that.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Ludlow, a most humane and temperate man, signed the death-warrant
+of Charles, for violating the constitution he had sworn to defend, for
+depriving the subject of property, liberty, limbs, and life unlawfully.
+In equity he could do no otherwise; and to equity was the only appeal,
+since the laws of the land had been erased by the king himself.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="LORD_BROOKE_AND_SIR_PHILIP_SIDNEY" id="LORD_BROOKE_AND_SIR_PHILIP_SIDNEY"></a>LORD BROOKE AND SIR PHILIP SIDNEY</h2>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Lord Brooke is less known than the personage with whom he converses,
+and upon whose friendship he had the virtue and good sense to found his
+chief distinction. On his monument at Warwick, written by himself,
+we read that he was servant of Queen Elizabeth, counsellor of King James
+and friend of Sir Philip Sidney. His style is stiff, but his sentiments are
+sound and manly.</i></p></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p><i>Brooke.</i> I come again unto the woods and unto the wilds of
+Penshurst, whither my heart and the friend of my heart have
+long invited me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sidney.</i> Welcome, welcome! And now, Greville, seat yourself
+under this oak; since if you had hungered or thirsted from
+your journey, you would have renewed the alacrity of your old
+servants in the hall.</p>
+
+<p><i>Brooke.</i> In truth I did; for no otherwise the good household
+would have it. The birds met me first, affrightened by the
+tossing up of caps; and by these harbingers I knew who were
+coming. When my palfrey eyed them askance for their
+clamorousness, and shrank somewhat back, they quarrelled
+with him almost before they saluted me, and asked him many
+pert questions. What a pleasant spot, Sidney, have you chosen
+here for meditation! A solitude is the audience-chamber of
+God. Few days in our year are like this; there is a fresh pleasure
+in every fresh posture of the limbs, in every turn the eye takes.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Youth! credulous of happiness, throw down</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Upon this turf thy wallet&mdash;stored and swoln</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With morrow-morns, bird-eggs, and bladders burst&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That tires thee with its wagging to and fro:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Thou too wouldst breathe more freely for it, Age!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Who lackest heart to laugh at life&#8217;s deceit.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>It sometimes requires a stout push, and sometimes a sudden
+resistance, in the wisest men, not to become for a moment the
+most foolish. What have I done? I have fairly challenged
+you, so much my master.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sidney.</i> You have warmed me: I must cool a little and watch
+my opportunity. So now, Greville, return you to your invitations,
+and I will clear the ground for the company; for Youth,
+for Age, and whatever comes between, with kindred and dependencies.
+Verily we need no taunts like those in your verses:
+here we have few vices, and consequently few repinings. I take
+especial care that my young labourers and farmers shall never
+be idle, and I supply them with bows and arrows, with bowls and
+ninepins, for their Sunday evening,<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> lest they drink and quarrel.
+In church they are taught to love God; after church they are
+practised to love their neighbour: for business on workdays
+keeps them apart and scattered, and on market-days they are
+prone to a rivalry bordering on malice, as competitors for
+custom. Goodness does not more certainly make men happy
+than happiness makes them good. We must distinguish between
+felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to
+ambition, and ambition to disappointment: the course is then
+over; the wheel turns round but once; while the reaction of
+goodness and happiness is perpetual.</p>
+
+<p><i>Brooke.</i> You reason justly and you act rightly. Piety&mdash;warm,
+soft, and passive as the ether round the throne of Grace&mdash;is
+made callous and inactive by kneeling too much: her vitality
+faints under rigorous and wearisome observances. A forced
+match between a man and his religion sours his temper, and leaves
+a barren bed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sidney.</i> Desire of lucre, the worst and most general country
+vice, arises here from the necessity of looking to small gains;
+it is, however, but the tartar that encrusts economy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Brooke.</i> Oh that anything so monstrous should exist in this
+profusion and prodigality of blessings! The herbs, elastic
+with health, seem to partake of sensitive and animated life,
+and to feel under my hand the benediction I would bestow on
+them. What a hum of satisfaction in God&#8217;s creatures! How
+is it, Sidney, the smallest do seem the happiest?</p>
+
+<p><i>Sidney.</i> Compensation for their weaknesses and their fears;
+compensation for the shortness of their existence. Their spirits
+mount upon the sunbeam above the eagle; and they have more
+enjoyment in their one summer than the elephant in his century.</p>
+
+<p><i>Brooke.</i> Are not also the little and lowly in our species the
+most happy?</p>
+
+<p><i>Sidney.</i> I would not willingly try nor over-curiously examine
+it. We, Greville, are happy in these parks and forests: we were
+happy in my close winter-walk of box and laurustine. In our
+earlier days did we not emboss our bosoms with the daffodils,
+and shake them almost unto shedding with our transport?
+Ay, my friend, there is a greater difference, both in the stages
+of life and in the seasons of the year, than in the conditions of
+men: yet the healthy pass through the seasons, from the clement
+to the inclement, not only unreluctantly but rejoicingly, knowing
+that the worst will soon finish, and the best begin anew; and we
+are desirous of pushing forward into every stage of life, excepting
+that alone which ought reasonably to allure us most, as opening
+to us the <i>Via Sacra</i>, along which we move in triumph to our
+eternal country. We may in some measure frame our minds
+for the reception of happiness, for more or for less; we should,
+however, well consider to what port we are steering in search of
+it, and that even in the richest its quantity is but too exhaustible.
+There is a sickliness in the firmest of us, which induceth us to
+change our side, though reposing ever so softly: yet, wittingly or
+unwittingly, we turn again soon into our old position.</p>
+
+<p>God hath granted unto both of us hearts easily contented,
+hearts fitted for every station, because fitted for every duty.
+What appears the dullest may contribute most to our genius;
+what is most gloomy may soften the seeds and relax the fibres
+of gaiety. We enjoy the solemnity of the spreading oak above
+us: perhaps we owe to it in part the mood of our minds at this
+instant; perhaps an inanimate thing supplies me, while I am
+speaking, with whatever I possess of animation. Do you imagine
+that any contest of shepherds can afford them the same pleasure
+as I receive from the description of it; or that even in their
+loves, however innocent and faithful, they are so free from
+anxiety as I am while I celebrate them? The exertion of
+intellectual power, of fancy and imagination, keeps from us
+greatly more than their wretchedness, and affords us greatly
+more than their enjoyment. We are motes in the midst of
+generations: we have our sunbeams to circuit and climb. Look
+at the summits of the trees around us, how they move, and the
+loftiest the most: nothing is at rest within the compass of our
+view, except the grey moss on the park-pales. Let it eat away
+the dead oak, but let it not be compared with the living one.</p>
+
+<p>Poets are in general prone to melancholy; yet the most
+plaintive ditty hath imparted a fuller joy, and of longer duration,
+to its composer, than the conquest of Persia to the Macedonian.
+A bottle of wine bringeth as much pleasure as the acquisition
+of a kingdom, and not unlike it in kind: the senses in both cases
+are confused and perverted.</p>
+
+<p><i>Brooke.</i> Merciful Heaven! and for the fruition of an hour&#8217;s
+drunkenness, from which they must awaken with heaviness,
+pain, and terror, men consume a whole crop of their kind at
+one harvest home. Shame upon those light ones who carol
+at the feast of blood! and worse upon those graver ones who nail
+upon their escutcheon the name of great! Ambition is but
+Avarice on stilts and masked. God sometimes sends a famine,
+sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the chastisement
+of mankind; none of them surely for our admiration.
+Only some cause like unto that which is now scattering the
+mental fog of the Netherlands, and is preparing them for the
+fruits of freedom, can justify us in drawing the sword abroad.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sidney.</i> And only the accomplishment of our purpose can
+permit us again to sheathe it; for the aggrandizement of our
+neighbour is nought of detriment to us: on the contrary, if we
+are honest and industrious, his wealth is ours. We have nothing
+to dread while our laws are equitable and our impositions light:
+but children fly from mothers who strip and scourge them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Brooke.</i> We are come to an age when we ought to read and
+speak plainly what our discretion tells us is fit: we are not to be
+set in a corner for mockery and derision, with our hands hanging
+down motionless and our pockets turned inside out.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>But away, away with politics: let not this city-stench infect our
+fresh country air!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Censurable as that practice may appear, it belonged to the age of
+Sidney. Amusements were permitted the English on the seventh day,
+nor were they restricted until the Puritans gained the ascendancy.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="SOUTHEY_AND_PORSON" id="SOUTHEY_AND_PORSON"></a>SOUTHEY AND PORSON</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Porson.</i> I suspect, Mr. Southey, you are angry with me for
+the freedom with which I have spoken of your poetry and
+Wordsworth&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> What could have induced you to imagine it, Mr.
+Professor? You have indeed bent your eyes upon me, since
+we have been together, with somewhat of fierceness and defiance:
+I presume you fancied me to be a commentator. You wrong
+me in your belief that any opinion on my poetical works hath
+molested me; but you afford me more than compensation in
+supposing me acutely sensible of injustice done to Wordsworth.
+If we must converse on these topics, we will converse on him.
+What man ever existed who spent a more inoffensive life, or
+adorned it with nobler studies?</p>
+
+<p><i>Porson.</i> I believe so; and they who attack him with virulence
+are men of as little morality as reflection. I have demonstrated
+that one of them, he who wrote the <i>Pursuits of Literature</i>, could
+not construe a Greek sentence or scan a verse; and I have fallen
+on the very <i>Index</i> from which he drew out his forlorn hope on
+the parade. This is incomparably the most impudent fellow
+I have met with in the course of my reading, which has lain,
+you know, in a province where impudence is no rarity.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>I had visited a friend in <i>King&#8217;s Road</i> when he entered.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Have you seen the <i>Review</i>?&#8217; cried he. &#8216;Worse than ever!
+I am resolved to insert a paragraph in the papers, declaring that
+I had no concern in the last number.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Is it so very bad?&#8217; said I, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Infamous! detestable!&#8217; exclaimed he.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Sit down, then: nobody will believe you,&#8217; was my answer.</p>
+
+<p>Since that morning he has discovered that I drink harder
+than usual, that my faculties are wearing fast away, that once,
+indeed, I had some Greek in my head, but&mdash;he then claps the
+forefinger to the side of his nose, turns his eye slowly upward,
+and looks compassionately and calmly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> Come, Mr. Porson, grant him his merits: no critic is
+better contrived to make any work a monthly one, no writer
+more dexterous in giving a finishing touch.</p>
+
+<p><i>Porson.</i> The plagiary has a greater latitude of choice than we;
+and if he brings home a parsnip or turnip-top, when he could as
+easily have pocketed a nectarine or a pineapple, he must be a
+blockhead. I never heard the name of the <i>Pursuer of Literature</i>,
+who has little more merit in having stolen than he would have
+had if he had never stolen at all; and I have forgotten that other
+man&#8217;s, who evinced his fitness to be the censor of our age, by a
+translation of the most naked and impure satires of antiquity&mdash;those
+of Juvenal, which owe their preservation to the partiality
+of the friars. I shall entertain an unfavourable opinion of him
+if he has translated them well: pray, has he?</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> Indeed, I do not know. I read poets for their poetry,
+and to extract that nutriment of the intellect and of the heart
+which poetry should contain. I never listen to the swans of
+the cesspool, and must declare that nothing is heavier to me
+than rottenness and corruption.</p>
+
+<p><i>Porson.</i> You are right, sir, perfectly right. A translator of
+Juvenal would open a public drain to look for a needle, and may
+miss it. My nose is not easily offended; but I must have something
+to fill my belly. Come, we will lay aside the scrip of the
+transpositor and the pouch of the pursuer, in reserve for the days
+of unleavened bread; and again, if you please, to the lakes and
+mountains. Now we are both in better humour, I must bring
+you to a confession that in your friend Wordsworth there is
+occasionally a little trash.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> A haunch of venison would be trash to a Brahmin,
+a bottle of Burgundy to the xerif of Mecca. We are guided by
+precept, by habit, by taste, by constitution. Hitherto our
+sentiments on poetry have been delivered down to us from
+authority; and if it can be demonstrated, as I think it may be,
+that the authority is inadequate, and that the dictates are often
+inapplicable and often misinterpreted, you will allow me to
+remove the cause out of court. Every man can see what is
+very bad in a poem; almost every one can see what is very good:
+but you, Mr. Porson, who have turned over all the volumes of
+all the commentators, will inform me whether I am right or
+wrong in asserting that no critic hath yet appeared who hath
+been able to fix or to discern the exact degrees of excellence
+above a certain point.</p>
+
+<p><i>Porson.</i> None.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> The reason is, because the eyes of no one have been
+upon a level with it. Supposing, for the sake of argument, the
+contest of Hesiod and Homer to have taken place: the judges
+who decided in favour of the worse, and he, indeed, in poetry
+has little merit, may have been elegant, wise, and conscientious
+men. Their decision was in favour of that to the species of
+which they had been the most accustomed. Corinna was
+preferred to Pindar no fewer than five times, and the best
+judges in Greece gave her the preference; yet whatever were
+her powers, and beyond a question they were extraordinary,
+we may assure ourselves that she stood many degrees below
+Pindar. Nothing is more absurd than the report that the judges
+were prepossessed by her beauty. Plutarch tells us that she
+was much older than her competitor, who consulted her judgment
+in his earlier odes. Now, granting their first competition to
+have been when Pindar was twenty years old, and that the
+others were in the years succeeding, her beauty must have been
+somewhat on the decline; for in Greece there are few women
+who retain the graces, none who retain the bloom of youth,
+beyond the twenty-third year. Her countenance, I doubt
+not, was expressive: but expression, although it gives beauty
+to men, makes women pay dearly for its stamp, and pay
+soon. Nature seems, in protection to their loveliness, to have
+ordered that they who are our superiors in quickness and
+sensibility should be little disposed to laborious thought, or to
+long excursions in the labyrinths of fancy. We may be convinced
+that the verdict of the judges was biased by nothing
+else than the habitudes of thinking; we may be convinced, too,
+that living in an age when poetry was cultivated highly, and
+selected from the most acute and the most dispassionate, they
+were subject to no greater errors of opinion than are the learned
+messmates of our English colleges.</p>
+
+<p><i>Porson.</i> You are more liberal in your largesses to the fair
+Greeks than a friend of mine was, who resided in Athens to
+acquire the language. He assured me that beauty there was in
+bud at thirteen, in full blossom at fifteen, losing a leaf or two
+every day at seventeen, trembling on the thorn at nineteen,
+and under the tree at twenty.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> Mr. Porson, it does not appear to me that anything
+more is necessary, in the first instance, than to interrogate our
+hearts in what manner they have been affected. If the ear is
+satisfied; if at one moment a tumult is aroused in the breast,
+and tranquillized at another, with a perfect consciousness of
+equal power exerted in both cases; if we rise up from the perusal
+of the work with a strong excitement to thought, to imagination,
+to sensibility; above all, if we sat down with some propensities
+toward evil, and walk away with much stronger toward good,
+in the midst of a world which we never had entered and of which
+we never had dreamed before&mdash;shall we perversely put on again
+the <i>old man</i> of criticism, and dissemble that we have been
+conducted by a most beneficent and most potent genius?
+Nothing proves to me so manifestly in what a pestiferous
+condition are its lazarettos, as when I observe how little hath
+been objected against those who have substituted words for
+things, and how much against those who have reinstated things
+for words.</p>
+
+<p>Let Wordsworth prove to the world that there may be
+animation without blood and broken bones, and tenderness
+remote from the stews. Some will doubt it; for even things
+the most evident are often but little perceived and strangely
+estimated. Swift ridiculed the music of Handel and the
+generalship of Marlborough; Pope the perspicacity and the
+scholarship of Bentley; Gray the abilities of Shaftesbury and
+the eloquence of Rousseau. Shakespeare hardly found those
+who would collect his tragedies; Milton was read from godliness;
+Virgil was antiquated and rustic; Cicero, Asiatic. What a rabble
+has persecuted my friend! An elephant is born to be consumed
+by ants in the midst of his unapproachable solitudes: Wordsworth
+is the prey of Jeffrey. Why repine? Let us rather amuse
+ourselves with allegories, and recollect that God in the creation
+left His noblest creature at the mercy of a serpent.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p><i>Porson.</i> Wordsworth goes out of his way to be attacked;
+he picks up a piece of dirt, throws it on the carpet in the midst
+of the company, and cries, <i>This is a better man than any of you!</i>
+He does indeed mould the base material into what form he
+chooses; but why not rather invite us to contemplate it than
+challenge us to condemn it? Here surely is false taste.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> The principal and the most general accusation
+against him is, that the vehicle of his thoughts is unequal to
+them. Now did ever the judges at the Olympic games say:
+&#8216;We would have awarded to you the meed of victory, if your
+chariot had been equal to your horses: it is true they have won;
+but the people are displeased at a car neither new nor richly
+gilt, and without a gryphon or sphinx engraved on the axle&#8217;?
+You admire simplicity in Euripides; you censure it in Wordsworth:
+believe me, sir, it arises in neither from penury of
+thought&mdash;which seldom has produced it&mdash;but from the strength
+of temperance, and at the suggestion of principle.</p>
+
+<p>Take up a poem of Wordsworth&#8217;s and read it&mdash;I would rather
+say, read them all; and, knowing that a mind like yours must
+grasp closely what comes within it, I will then appeal to you
+whether any poet of our country, since Milton, hath exerted
+greater powers with less of strain and less of ostentation. I
+would, however, by his permission, lay before you for this purpose
+a poem which is yet unpublished and incomplete.</p>
+
+<p><i>Porson.</i> Pity, with such abilities, he does not imitate the
+ancients somewhat more.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> Whom did they imitate? If his genius is equal to
+theirs he has no need of a guide. He also will be an ancient;
+and the very counterparts of those who now decry him will
+extol him a thousand years hence in malignity to the moderns.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_ABBE_DELILLE_AND_WALTER_LANDOR" id="THE_ABBE_DELILLE_AND_WALTER_LANDOR"></a>THE ABB&Eacute; DELILLE AND WALTER LANDOR</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Abb&eacute; Delille was the happiest of creatures, when he could
+weep over the charms of innocence and the country in some
+crowded and fashionable circle at Paris. We embraced most
+pathetically on our first meeting there, as if the one were
+condemned to quit the earth, the other to live upon it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Delille.</i> You are reported to have said that descriptive poetry
+has all the merits of a handkerchief that smells of roses?</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> This, if I said it, is among the things which are neither
+false enough nor true enough to be displeasing. But the Abb&eacute;
+Delille has merits of his own. To translate Milton well is more
+laudable than originality in trifling matters; just as to transport
+an obelisk from Egypt, and to erect it in one of the squares,
+must be considered a greater labour than to build a new chandler&#8217;s
+shop.</p>
+
+<p><i>Delille.</i> Milton is indeed extremely difficult to translate;
+for, however noble and majestic, he is sometimes heavy, and
+often rough and unequal.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> Dear Abb&eacute;, porphyry is heavy, gold is heavier; Ossa
+and Olympus are rough and unequal; the steppes of Tartary,
+though high, are of uniform elevation: there is not a rock, nor
+a birch, nor a cytisus, nor an arbutus upon them great enough
+to shelter a new-dropped lamb. Level the Alps one with another,
+and where is their sublimity? Raise up the vale of Tempe
+to the downs above, and where are those sylvan creeks and
+harbours in which the imagination watches while the soul
+reposes; those recesses in which the gods partook the weaknesses
+of mortals, and mortals the enjoyments of the gods?</p>
+
+<p>You have treated our poet with courtesy and distinction;
+in your trimmed and measured dress, he might be taken for a
+Frenchman. Do not think me flattering. You have conducted
+Eve from Paradise to Paris, and she really looks prettier and
+smarter than before she tripped. With what elegance she rises
+from a most awful dream! You represent her (I repeat your
+expression) as springing up <i>en sursaut</i>, as if you had caught her
+asleep and tickled the young creature on that sofa.</p>
+
+<p>Homer and Virgil have been excelled in sublimity by Shakespeare
+and Milton, as the Caucasus and Atlas of the old world
+by the Andes and Teneriffe of the new; but you would embellish
+them all.</p>
+
+<p><i>Delille.</i> I owe to Voltaire my first sentiment of admiration for
+Milton and Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> He stuck to them as a woodpecker to an old forest-tree,
+only for the purpose of picking out what was rotten: he
+has made the holes deeper than he found them, and, after all his
+cries and chatter, has brought home but scanty sustenance to
+his starveling nest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Delille.</i> You must acknowledge that there are fine verses in
+his tragedies.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> Whenever such is the first observation, be assured,
+M. l&#8217;Abb&eacute;, that the poem, if heroic or dramatic, is bad. Should
+a work of this kind be excellent, we say, &#8216;How admirably the
+characters are sustained! What delicacy of discrimination!
+There is nothing to be taken away or altered without an injury
+to the part or to the whole.&#8217; We may afterward descend on the
+versification. In poetry, there is a greater difference between
+the good and the excellent than there is between the bad and
+the good. Poetry has no golden mean; mediocrity here is of
+another metal, which Voltaire, however, had skill enough to
+encrust and polish. In the least wretched of his tragedies,
+whatever is tolerable is Shakespeare&#8217;s; but, gracious Heaven!
+how deteriorated! When he pretends to extol a poet he chooses
+some defective part, and renders it more so whenever he translates
+it. I will repeat a few verses from Metastasio in support
+of my assertion. Metastasio was both a better critic and a
+better poet, although of the second order in each quality; his
+tyrants are less philosophical, and his chambermaids less dogmatic.
+Voltaire was, however, a man of abilities, and author
+of many passable epigrams, beside those which are contained in
+his tragedies and heroics; yet it must be confessed that, like your
+Parisian lackeys, they are usually the smartest when out of
+place.</p>
+
+<p><i>Delille.</i> What you call epigram gives life and spirit to grave
+works, and seems principally wanted to relieve a long poem.
+I do not see why what pleases us in a star should not please us
+in a constellation.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="DIOGENES_AND_PLATO" id="DIOGENES_AND_PLATO"></a>DIOGENES AND PLATO</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Stop! stop! come hither! Why lookest thou so
+scornfully and askance upon me?</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Let me go! loose me! I am resolved to pass.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Nay, then, by Jupiter and this tub! thou leavest
+three good ells of Milesian cloth behind thee. Whither wouldst
+thou amble?</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> I am not obliged in courtesy to tell you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Upon whose errand? Answer me directly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Upon my own.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Oh, then, I will hold thee yet awhile. If it were
+upon another&#8217;s, it might be a hardship to a good citizen, though
+not to a good philosopher.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> That can be no impediment to my release: you do not
+think me one.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> No, by my Father Jove!</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Your father!</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Why not? Thou shouldst be the last man to doubt
+it. Hast not thou declared it irrational to refuse our belief
+to those who assert that they are begotten by the gods, though
+the assertion (these are thy words) be unfounded on reason or
+probability? In me there is a chance of it: whereas in the
+generation of such people as thou art fondest of frequenting,
+who claim it loudly, there are always too many competitors
+to leave it probable.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Those who speak against the great do not usually
+speak from morality, but from envy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Thou hast a glimpse of the truth in this place,
+but as thou hast already shown thy ignorance in attempting
+to prove to me what a <i>man</i> is, ill can I expect to learn from thee
+what is a <i>great man</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> No doubt your experience and intercourse will afford
+me the information.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Attend, and take it. The great man is he who hath
+nothing to fear and nothing to hope from another. It is he
+who, while he demonstrates the iniquity of the laws, and is
+able to correct them, obeys them peaceably. It is he who looks
+on the ambitious both as weak and fraudulent. It is he who
+hath no disposition or occasion for any kind of deceit, no reason
+for being or for appearing different from what he is. It is he
+who can call together the most select company when it pleases
+him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Excuse my interruption. In the beginning of your
+definition I fancied that you were designating your own person,
+as most people do in describing what is admirable; now I find
+that you have some other in contemplation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> I thank thee for allowing me what perhaps I <i>do</i>
+possess, but what I was not then thinking of; as is often the case
+with rich possessors: in fact, the latter part of the description
+suits me as well as any portion of the former.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> You may call together the best company, by using
+your hands in the call, as you did with me; otherwise I am not
+sure that you would succeed in it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> My thoughts are my company; I can bring them
+together, select them, detain them, dismiss them. Imbecile
+and vicious men cannot do any of these things. Their thoughts
+are scattered, vague, uncertain, cumbersome: and the worst
+stick to them the longest; many indeed by choice, the greater
+part by necessity, and accompanied, some by weak wishes,
+others by vain remorse.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Is there nothing of greatness, O Diogenes! in exhibiting
+how cities and communities may be governed best, how morals
+may be kept the purest, and power become the most stable?</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> <i>Something</i> of greatness does not constitute the great
+man. Let me, however, see him who hath done what thou sayest:
+he must be the most universal and the most indefatigable
+traveller, he must also be the oldest creature, upon earth.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> How so?</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Because he must know perfectly the climate, the
+soil, the situation, the peculiarities, of the races, of their allies,
+of their enemies; he must have sounded their harbours, he must
+have measured the quantity of their arable land and pasture,
+of their woods and mountains; he must have ascertained whether
+there are fisheries on their coasts, and even what winds are
+prevalent. On these causes, with some others, depend the
+bodily strength, the numbers, the wealth, the wants, the
+capacities of the people.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Such are low thoughts.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> The bird of wisdom flies low, and seeks her food
+under hedges: the eagle himself would be starved if he always
+soared aloft and against the sun. The sweetest fruit grows
+near the ground, and the plants that bear it require ventilation
+and lopping. Were this not to be done in thy garden, every
+walk and alley, every plot and border, would be covered with
+runners and roots, with boughs and suckers. We want no
+poets or logicians or metaphysicians to govern us: we want
+practical men, honest men, continent men, unambitious men,
+fearful to solicit a trust, slow to accept, and resolute never to
+betray one. Experimentalists may be the best philosophers:
+they are always the worst politicians. Teach people their
+duties, and they will know their interests. Change as little as
+possible, and correct as much.</p>
+
+<p>Philosophers are absurd from many causes, but principally
+from laying out unthriftily their distinctions. They set up
+four virtues: fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice.
+Now a man may be a very bad one, and yet possess three out of
+the four. Every cut-throat must, if he has been a cut-throat
+on many occasions, have more fortitude and more prudence
+than the greater part of those whom we consider as the best
+men. And what cruel wretches, both executioners and judges,
+have been strictly just! how little have they cared what gentleness,
+what generosity, what genius, their sentence hath removed
+from the earth! Temperance and beneficence contain all other
+virtues. Take them home, Plato; split them, expound them;
+do what thou wilt with them, if thou but use them.</p>
+
+<p>Before I gave thee this lesson, which is a better than thou
+ever gavest any one, and easier to remember, thou wert accusing
+me of invidiousness and malice against those whom thou callest
+the great, meaning to say the powerful. Thy imagination, I
+am well aware, had taken its flight toward Sicily, where thou
+seekest thy great man, as earnestly and undoubtingly as Ceres
+sought her Persephone. Faith! honest Plato, I have no reason
+to envy thy worthy friend Dionysius. Look at my nose! A
+lad seven or eight years old threw an apple at me yesterday,
+while I was gazing at the clouds, and gave me nose enough for
+two moderate men. Instead of such a godsend, what should I
+have thought of my fortune, if, after living all my lifetime
+among golden vases, rougher than my hand with their emeralds
+and rubies, their engravings and embossments; among Parian
+caryatides and porphyry sphinxes; among philosophers with rings
+upon their fingers and linen next their skin; and among singing-boys
+and dancing-girls, to whom alone thou speakest intelligibly&mdash;I
+ask thee again, what should I in reason have thought of my
+fortune, if, after these facilities and superfluities, I had at last
+been pelted out of my house, not by one young rogue, but by
+thousands of all ages, and not with an apple (I wish I could
+say a rotten one), but with pebbles and broken pots; and, to
+crown my deserts, had been compelled to become the teacher
+of so promising a generation? Great men, forsooth! thou
+knowest at last who they are.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> There are great men of various kinds.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> No, by my beard, are there not!</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> What! are there not great captains, great geometricians,
+great dialectitians?</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Who denied it? A great man was the postulate.
+Try thy hand now at the powerful one.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> On seeing the exercise of power, a child cannot doubt
+who is powerful, more or less; for power is relative. All men
+are weak, not only if compared to the Demiurgos, but if compared
+to the sea or the earth, or certain things upon each of
+them, such as elephants and whales. So placid and tranquil
+is the scene around us, we can hardly bring to mind the images
+of strength and force, the precipices, the abysses&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Prithee hold thy loose tongue, twinkling and glittering
+like a serpent&#8217;s in the midst of luxuriance and rankness!
+Did never this reflection of thine warn thee that, in human life,
+the precipices and abysses would be much farther from our
+admiration if we were less inconsiderate, selfish, and vile? I
+will not however stop thee long, for thou wert going on quite
+consistently. As thy great men are fighters and wranglers,
+so thy mighty things upon the earth and sea are troublesome
+and intractable encumbrances. Thou perceivedst not what
+was greater in the former case, neither art thou aware what is
+greater in this. Didst thou feel the gentle air that passed us?</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> I did not, just then.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> That air, so gentle, so imperceptible to thee, is
+more powerful not only than all the creatures that breathe and
+live by it; not only than all the oaks of the forest, which it rears
+in an age and shatters in a moment; not only than all the
+monsters of the sea, but than the sea itself, which it tosses up
+into foam, and breaks against every rock in its vast circumference;
+for it carries in its bosom, with perfect calm and
+composure, the incontrollable ocean and the peopled earth,
+like an atom of a feather.</p>
+
+<p>To the world&#8217;s turmoils and pageantries is attracted, not only
+the admiration of the populace, but the zeal of the orator, the
+enthusiasm of the poet, the investigation of the historian, and
+the contemplation of the philosopher: yet how silent and invisible
+are they in the depths of air! Do I say in those depths and
+deserts? No; I say in the distance of a swallow&#8217;s flight&mdash;at
+the distance she rises above us, ere a sentence brief as this
+could be uttered.</p>
+
+<p>What are its mines and mountains? Fragments welded up
+and dislocated by the expansion of water from below; the most
+part reduced to mud, the rest to splinters. Afterwards sprang
+up fire in many places, and again tore and mangled the mutilated
+carcass, and still growls over it.</p>
+
+<p>What are its cities and ramparts, and moles and monuments?
+Segments of a fragment, which one man puts together and
+another throws down. Here we stumble upon thy great ones
+at their work. Show me now, if thou canst, in history, three
+great warriors, or three great statesmen, who have acted
+otherwise than spiteful children.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> I will begin to look for them in history when I have
+discovered the same number in the philosophers or the poets.
+A prudent man searches in his own garden after the plant he
+wants, before he casts his eyes over the stalls in Kenkrea or
+Keramicos.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to your observation on the potency of the air, I
+am not ignorant or unmindful of it. May I venture to express
+my opinion to you, Diogenes, that the earlier discoverers and
+distributors of wisdom (which wisdom lies among us in ruins
+and remnants, partly distorted and partly concealed by theological
+allegory) meant by Jupiter the air in its agitated state;
+by Juno the air in its quiescent. These are the great agents,
+and therefore called the king and queen of the gods. Jupiter
+is denominated by Homer the <i>compeller of clouds</i>: Juno receives
+them, and remits them in showers to plants and animals.</p>
+
+<p>I may trust you, I hope, O Diogenes?</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Thou mayest lower the gods in my presence, as
+safely as men in the presence of Timon.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> I would not lower them: I would exalt them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> More foolish and presumptuous still!</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Fair words, O Sinopean! I protest to you my aim is
+truth.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> I cannot lead thee where of a certainty thou
+mayest always find it; but I will tell thee what it is. Truth is
+a point; the subtilest and finest; harder than adamant; never
+to be broken, worn away, or blunted. Its only bad quality is,
+that it is sure to hurt those who touch it; and likely to draw
+blood, perhaps the life-blood, of those who press earnestly upon
+it. Let us away from this narrow lane skirted with hemlock,
+and pursue our road again through the wind and dust toward
+the <i>great</i> man and the <i>powerful</i>. Him I would call the powerful
+one who controls the storms of his mind, and turns to good
+account the worst accidents of his fortune. The great man,
+I was going on to demonstrate, is somewhat more. He must
+be able to do this, and he must have an intellect which puts
+into motion the intellect of others.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Socrates, then, was your great man.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> He was indeed; nor can all thou hast attributed
+to him ever make me think the contrary. I wish he could
+have kept a little more at home, and have thought it as well
+worth his while to converse with his own children as with others.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> He knew himself born for the benefit of the human race.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Those who are born for the benefit of the human
+race go but little into it: those who are born for its curse are
+crowded.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> It was requisite to dispel the mists of ignorance and
+error.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Has he done it? What doubt has he elucidated,
+or what fact has he established? Although I was but twelve
+years old and resident in another city when he died, I have
+taken some pains in my inquiries about him from persons of
+less vanity and less perverseness than his disciples. He did
+not leave behind him any true philosopher among them; any
+who followed his mode of argumentation, his subjects of
+disquisition, or his course of life; any who would subdue the
+malignant passions or coerce the looser; any who would abstain
+from calumny or from cavil; any who would devote his days to
+the glory of his country, or, what is easier and perhaps wiser,
+to his own well-founded contentment and well-merited repose.
+Xenophon, the best of them, offered up sacrifices, believed in
+oracles, consulted soothsayers, turned pale at a jay, and was
+dysenteric at a magpie.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> He had courage at least.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> His courage was of so strange a quality, that he
+was ready, if jay or magpie did not cross him, to fight for Spartan
+or Persian. Plato, whom thou esteemest much, and knowest
+somewhat less, careth as little for portent and omen as doth
+Diogenes. What he would have done for a Persian I cannot
+say; certain I am that he would have no more fought for a
+Spartan than he would for his own father: yet he mortally hates
+the man who hath a kinder muse or a better milliner, or a seat
+nearer the minion of a king. So much for the two disciples of
+Socrates who have acquired the greatest celebrity!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Diogenes! if you must argue or discourse with me, I
+will endure your asperity for the sake of your acuteness; but it
+appears to me a more philosophical thing to avoid what is
+insulting and vexatious, than to breast and brave it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Thou hast spoken well.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> It belongs to the vulgar, not to us, to fly from a man&#8217;s
+opinions to his actions, and to stab him in his own house for
+having received no wound in the school. One merit you will
+allow me: I always keep my temper; which you seldom do.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Is mine a good or a bad one?</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Now, must I speak sincerely?</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Dost thou, a philosopher, ask such a question of
+me, a philosopher? Ay, sincerely or not at all.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Sincerely as you could wish, I must declare, then, your
+temper is the worst in the world.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> I am much in the right, therefore, not to keep it.
+Embrace me: I have spoken now in thy own manner. Because
+thou sayest the most malicious things the most placidly, thou
+thinkest or pretendest thou art sincere.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Certainly those who are most the masters of their
+resentments are likely to speak less erroneously than the
+passionate and morose.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> If they would, they might; but the moderate are
+not usually the most sincere, for the same circumspection which
+makes them moderate makes them likewise retentive of what
+could give offence: they are also timid in regard to fortune and
+favour, and hazard little. There is no mass of sincerity in any
+place. What there is must be picked up patiently, a grain or
+two at a time; and the season for it is after a storm, after the
+overflowing of banks, and bursting of mounds, and sweeping
+away of landmarks. Men will always hold something back;
+they must be shaken and loosened a little, to make them let go
+what is deepest in them, and weightiest and purest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Shaking and loosening as much about you as was
+requisite for the occasion, it became you to demonstrate where
+and in what manner I had made Socrates appear less sagacious
+and less eloquent than he was; it became you likewise to consider
+the great difficulty of finding new thoughts and new expressions
+for those who had more of them than any other men, and to
+represent them in all the brilliancy of their wit and in all the
+majesty of their genius. I do not assert that I have done it;
+but if I have not, what man has? what man has come so nigh
+to it? He who could bring Socrates, or Solon, or Diogenes
+through a dialogue, without disparagement, is much nearer
+in his intellectual powers to them, than any other is near
+to him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Let Diogenes alone, and Socrates, and Solon.
+None of the three ever occupied his hours in tingeing and curling
+the tarnished plumes of prostitute Philosophy, or deemed anything
+worth his attention, care, or notice, that did not make
+men brave and independent. As thou callest on me to show
+thee where and in what manner thou hast misrepresented thy
+teacher, and as thou seemest to set an equal value on eloquence
+and on reasoning, I shall attend to thee awhile on each of these
+matters, first inquiring of thee whether the axiom is Socratic,
+that it is never becoming to get drunk, <i>unless</i> in the solemnities
+of Bacchus?</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> This god was the discoverer of the vine and of its
+uses.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Is drunkenness one of its uses, or the discovery of
+a god? If Pallas or Jupiter hath given us reason, we should
+sacrifice our reason with more propriety to Jupiter or Pallas.
+To Bacchus is due a libation of wine; the same being his gift,
+as thou preachest.</p>
+
+<p>Another and a graver question.</p>
+
+<p>Did Socrates teach thee that &#8216;slaves are to be scourged, and
+by no means admonished as though they were the children of
+the master&#8217;?</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> He did not argue upon government.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> He argued upon humanity, whereon all government
+is founded: whatever is beside it is usurpation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Are slaves then never to be scourged, whatever be
+their transgressions and enormities?</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Whatever they be, they are less than his who
+reduced them to this condition.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> What! though they murder his whole family?</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Ay, and poison the public fountain of the city.</p>
+
+<p>What am I saying? and to whom? Horrible as is this crime,
+and next in atrocity to parricide, thou deemest it a lighter one
+than stealing a fig or grape. The stealer of these is scourged
+by thee; the sentence on the poisoner is to cleanse out the
+receptacle. There is, however, a kind of poisoning which, to
+do thee justice, comes before thee with all its horrors, and which
+thou wouldst punish capitally, even in such a sacred personage
+as an aruspex or diviner: I mean the poisoning by incantation.
+I, and my whole family, my whole race, my whole city, may bite
+the dust in agony from a truss of henbane in the well; and little
+harm done forsooth! Let an idle fool set an image of me in
+wax before the fire, and whistle and caper to it, and purr and
+pray, and chant a hymn to Hecate while it melts, entreating
+and imploring her that I may melt as easily&mdash;and thou wouldst,
+in thy equity and holiness, strangle him at the first stave of his
+psalmody.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> If this is an absurdity, can you find another?</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Truly, in reading thy book, I doubted at first, and
+for a long continuance, whether thou couldst have been serious;
+and whether it were not rather a satire on those busy-bodies
+who are incessantly intermeddling in other people&#8217;s affairs.
+It was only on the protestation of thy intimate friends that I
+believed thee to have written it in earnest. As for thy question,
+it is idle to stoop and pick out absurdities from a mass of
+inconsistency and injustice; but another and another I could
+throw in, and another and another afterward, from any page in
+the volume. Two bare, staring falsehoods lift their beaks one
+upon the other, like spring frogs. Thou sayest that no punishment
+decreed by the laws tendeth to evil. What! not if
+immoderate? not if partial? Why then repeal any penal statute
+while the subject of its animadversion exists? In prisons the less
+criminal are placed among the more criminal, the inexperienced
+in vice together with the hardened in it. This is part of the
+punishment, though it precedes the sentence; nay, it is often
+inflicted on those whom the judges acquit: the law, by allowing
+it, does it.</p>
+
+<p>The next is, that he who is punished by the laws is the better
+for it, however the less depraved. What! if anteriorly to the
+sentence he lives and converses with worse men, some of whom
+console him by deadening the sense of shame, others by removing
+the apprehension of punishment? Many laws as certainly make
+men bad, as bad men make many laws; yet under thy regimen
+they take us from the bosom of the nurse, turn the meat about
+upon the platter, pull the bed-clothes off, make us sleep when
+we would wake, and wake when we would sleep, and never
+cease to rummage and twitch us, until they see us safe landed
+at the grave. We can do nothing (but be poisoned) with impunity.
+What is worst of all, we must marry certain relatives
+and connexions, be they distorted, blear-eyed, toothless, carbuncled,
+with hair (if any) eclipsing the reddest torch of Hymen,
+and with a hide outrivalling in colour and plaits his trimmest
+saffron robe. At the mention of this indeed, friend Plato,
+even thou, although resolved to stand out of harm&#8217;s way,
+beginnest to make a wry mouth, and findest it difficult to pucker
+and purse it up again, without an astringent store of moral
+sentences. Hymen is truly no acquaintance of thine. We
+know the delicacies of love which thou wouldst reserve for
+the gluttony of heroes and the fastidiousness of philosophers.
+Heroes, like gods, must have their own way; but against thee
+and thy confraternity of elders I would turn the closet-key,
+and your mouths might water over, but your tongues should
+never enter those little pots of comfiture. Seriously, you who
+wear embroidered slippers ought to be very cautious of treading
+in the mire. Philosophers should not only live the simplest
+lives, but should also use the plainest language. Poets, in
+employing magnificent and sonorous words, teach philosophy
+the better by thus disarming suspicion that the finest poetry
+contains and conveys the finest philosophy. You will never
+let any man hold his right station: you would rank Solon with
+Homer for poetry. This is absurd. The only resemblance is
+in both being eminently wise. Pindar, too, makes even the
+cadences of his dithyrambics keep time to the flute of Reason.
+My tub, which holds fifty-fold thy wisdom, would crack at the
+reverberation of thy voice.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Farewell.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> I mean that every one of thy whimsies hath been
+picked up somewhere by thee in thy travels; and each of them
+hath been rendered more weak and puny by its place of concealment
+in thy closet. What thou hast written on the immortality
+of the soul goes rather to prove the immortality of the body;
+and applies as well to the body of a weasel or an eel as to the
+fairer one of Agathon or of Aster. Why not at once introduce
+a new religion, since religions keep and are relished in proportion
+as they are salted with absurdity, inside and out? and all of
+them must have one great crystal of it for the centre; but
+Philosophy pines and dies unless she drinks limpid water. When
+Pherecydes and Pythagoras felt in themselves the majesty of
+contemplation, they spurned the idea that flesh and bones and
+arteries should confer it: and that what comprehends the past
+and the future should sink in a moment and be annihilated for
+ever. &#8216;No,&#8217; cried they, &#8216;the power of thinking is no more in
+the brain than in the hair, although the brain may be the instrument
+on which it plays. It is not corporeal, it is not of this
+world; its existence is eternity, its residence is infinity.&#8217; I
+forbear to discuss the rationality of their belief, and pass on
+straightway to thine; if, indeed, I am to consider as one, belief
+and doctrine.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> As you will.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> I should rather, then, regard these things as mere
+ornaments; just as many decorate their apartments with lyres
+and harps, which they themselves look at from the couch,
+supinely complacent, and leave for visitors to admire and play on.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> I foresee not how you can disprove my argument on
+the immortality of the soul, which, being contained in the best
+of my dialogues, and being often asked for among my friends,
+I carry with me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> At this time?</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Even so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Give me then a certain part of it for my perusal.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Willingly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Hermes and Pallas! I wanted but a cubit of it,
+or at most a fathom, and thou art pulling it out by the plethron.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> This is the place in question.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Read it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> [<i>Reads.</i>] &#8216;Sayest thou not that death is the opposite
+of life, and that they spring the one from the other?&#8217; &#8216;<i>Yes.</i>&#8217;
+&#8216;What springs then from the living?&#8217; &#8216;<i>The dead.</i>&#8217; &#8216;And what
+from the dead?&#8217; &#8216;<i>The living.</i>&#8217; &#8216;Then all things alive spring
+from the dead.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Why the repetition? but go on.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> [<i>Reads.</i>] &#8216;Souls therefore exist after death in the
+infernal regions.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Where is the <i>therefore</i>? where is it even as to
+<i>existence</i>? As to the <i>infernal regions</i>, there is nothing that points
+toward a proof, or promises an indication. Death neither springs
+from life, nor life from death. Although death is the inevitable
+consequence of life, if the observation and experience of ages
+go for anything, yet nothing shows us, or ever hath signified,
+that life comes from death. Thou mightest as well say that a
+barley-corn dies before the germ of another barley-corn grows
+up from it, than which nothing is more untrue; for it is only the
+protecting part of the germ that perishes, when its protection
+is no longer necessary. The consequence, that souls exist after
+death, cannot be drawn from the corruption of the body, even
+if it were demonstrable that out of this corruption a live one
+could rise up. Thou hast not said that the soul is among those
+dead things which living things must spring from; thou hast
+not said that a living soul produces a dead soul, or that a dead
+soul produces a living one.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> No, indeed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> On my faith, thou hast said, however, things no less
+inconsiderate, no less inconsequent, no less unwise; and this
+very thing must be said and proved, to make thy argument of
+any value. Do dead men beget children?</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> I have not said it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Thy argument implies it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> These are high mysteries, and to be approached with
+reverence.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Whatever we cannot account for is in the same predicament.
+We may be gainers by being ignorant if we can be
+thought mysterious. It is better to shake our heads and to let
+nothing out of them, than to be plain and explicit in matters
+of difficulty. I do not mean in confessing our ignorance or
+our imperfect knowledge of them, but in clearing them up
+perspicuously: for, if we answer with ease, we may haply be
+thought good-natured, quick, communicative; never deep, never
+sagacious; not very defective possibly in our intellectual faculties,
+yet unequal and chinky, and liable to the probation of every
+clown&#8217;s knuckle.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> The brightest of stars appear the most unsteady and
+tremulous in their light; not from any quality inherent in themselves,
+but from the vapours that float below, and from the
+imperfection of vision in the surveyor.</p>
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> Draw thy robe round thee; let the folds fall gracefully,
+and look majestic. That sentence is an admirable one;
+but not for me. I want sense, not stars. What then? Do no
+vapours float below the others? and is there no imperfection
+in the vision of those who look at <i>them</i>, if they are the same men,
+and look the next moment? We must move on: I shall follow
+the dead bodies, and the benighted driver of their fantastic
+bier, close and keen as any hyena.</p>
+
+<p><i>Plato.</i> Certainly, O Diogenes, you excel me in elucidations
+and similes: mine was less obvious.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p><i>Diogenes.</i> I know the respect thou bearest to the dogly
+character, and can attribute to nothing else the complacency
+with which thou hast listened to me since I released thy cloak.
+If ever the Athenians, in their inconstancy, should issue a decree
+to deprive me of the appellation they have conferred on me,
+rise up, I pray thee, in my defence, and protest that I have not
+merited so severe a mulct. Something I do deserve at thy
+hands; having supplied thee, first with a store of patience,
+when thou wert going without any about thee, although it is
+the readiest viaticum and the heartiest sustenance of human
+life; and then with weapons from this tub, wherewith to drive
+the importunate cock before thee out of doors again.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="ALFIERI_AND_SALOMON_THE_FLORENTINE_JEW" id="ALFIERI_AND_SALOMON_THE_FLORENTINE_JEW"></a>ALFIERI AND SALOMON THE FLORENTINE JEW</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Alfieri.</i> Let us walk to the window, Signor Salomon. And
+now, instead of the silly, simpering compliments repeated at
+introductions, let me assure you that you are the only man in
+Florence with whom I would willingly exchange a salutation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Salomon.</i> I must think myself highly flattered, Signor Conte,
+having always heard that you are not only the greatest democrat,
+but also the greatest aristocrat, in Europe.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alfieri.</i> These two things, however opposite, which your smile
+would indicate, are not so irreconcilable as you imagine. Let
+us first understand the words, and then talk about them. The
+democrat is he who wishes the people to have a due share in the
+government, and this share if you please shall be the principal
+one. The aristocrat of our days is contented with no actual
+share in it; but if a man of family is conscious of his dignity,
+and resentful that another has invaded it, he may be, and is
+universally, called an aristocrat. The principal difference is,
+that one carries outward what the other carries inward. I am
+thought an aristocrat by the Florentines for conversing with
+few people, and for changing my shirt and shaving my beard
+on other days than festivals; which the most aristocratical of
+them never do, considering it, no doubt, as an excess. I am,
+however, from my soul a republican, if prudence and modesty
+will authorize any man to call himself so; and this, I trust, I
+have demonstrated in the most valuable of my works, the <i>Treatise
+on Tyranny</i> and the <i>Dialogue</i> with my friends at Siena. The
+aristocratical part of me, if part of me it must be called, hangs
+loose and keeps off insects. I see no aristocracy in the children
+of sharpers from behind the counter, nor, placing the matter in
+the most favourable point of view, in the descendants of free
+citizens who accepted from any vile enslaver&mdash;French, Spanish,
+German, or priest, or monk (represented with a piece of
+buffoonery, like a beehive on his head and a picklock key at
+his girdle)&mdash;the titles of counts and marquises. In Piedmont
+the matter is different: we must either have been the rabble or
+the lords; we were military, and we retain over the populace the
+same rank and spirit as our ancestors held over the soldiery.</p>
+
+<p><i>Salomon.</i> Signor Conte, I have heard of levellers, but I have
+never seen one: all are disposed to level down, but nobody to
+level up. As for nobility, there is none in Europe beside the
+Venetian. Nobility must be self-constituted and independent:
+the free alone are noble; slavery, like death, levels all. The
+English come nearest to the Venetian: they are independent,
+but want the main characteristic, the <i>self-constituted</i>. You
+have been in England, Signor Conte, and can judge of them
+better than I can.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p><i>Alfieri.</i> It is among those who stand between the peerage
+and the people that there exists a greater mass of virtue and of
+wisdom than in the rest of Europe. Much of their dignified
+simplicity may be attributed to the plainness of their religion,
+and, what will always be imitated, to the decorous life of their
+king: for whatever may be the defects of either, if we compare
+them with others round us, they are excellent.</p>
+
+<p><i>Salomon.</i> A young religion jumps upon the shoulders of an
+older one, and soon becomes like her, by mockery of her tricks,
+her cant, and her decrepitude. Meanwhile the old one shakes
+with indignation, and swears there is neither relationship nor
+likeness. Was there ever a religion in the world that was not
+the true religion, or was there ever a king that was not the
+best of kings?</p>
+
+<p><i>Alfieri.</i> In the latter case we must have arrived nigh perfection;
+since it is evident from the authority of the gravest
+men&mdash;theologians, presidents, judges, corporations, universities,
+senates&mdash;that every prince is better than his father, &#8216;of blessed
+memory, now with God&#8217;. If they continue to rise thus transcendently,
+earth in a little time will be incapable of holding them,
+and higher heavens must be raised upon the highest heavens
+for their reception. The lumber of our Italian courts, the most
+crazy part of which is that which rests upon a red cushion in
+a gilt chair, with stars and sheep and crosses dangling from
+it, must be approached as Artaxerxes and Domitian. These
+automatons, we are told nevertheless, are very condescending.
+Poor fools who tell us it! ignorant that where on one side is
+condescension, on the other side must be baseness. The rascals
+have ruined my physiognomy. I wear an habitual sneer upon
+my face, God confound them for it! even when I whisper a word
+of love in the prone ear of my donna.</p>
+
+<p><i>Salomon.</i> This temper or constitution of mind I am afraid
+may do injury to your works.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alfieri.</i> Surely not to all: my satire at least must be the better
+for it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Salomon.</i> I think differently. No satire can be excellent
+where displeasure is expressed with acrimony and vehemence.
+When satire ceases to smile, it should be momentarily, and for
+the purpose of inculcating a moral. Juvenal is hardly more
+a satirist than Lucan: he is indeed a vigorous and bold declaimer,
+but he stamps too often, and splashes up too much filth. We
+Italians have no delicacy in wit: we have indeed no conception
+of it; we fancy we must be weak if we are not offensive. The
+scream of Pulcinello is imitated more easily than the masterly
+strokes of Plautus, or the sly insinuations of Catullus and of
+Flaccus.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alfieri.</i> We are the least witty of men because we are the most
+trifling.</p>
+
+<p><i>Salomon.</i> You would persuade me then that to be witty one
+must be grave: this is surely a contradiction.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alfieri.</i> I would persuade you only that banter, pun, and
+quibble are the properties of light men and shallow capacities;
+that genuine humour and true wit require a sound and capacious
+mind, which is always a grave one. Contemptuousness is not
+incompatible with them: worthless is that man who feels no
+contempt for the worthless, and weak who treats their emptiness
+as a thing of weight. At first it may seem a paradox, but it is
+perfectly true, that the gravest nations have been the wittiest;
+and in those nations some of the gravest men. In England,
+Swift and Addison; in Spain, Cervantes. Rabelais and La
+Fontaine are recorded by their countrymen to have been
+<i>r&ecirc;veurs</i>. Few men have been graver than Pascal; few have
+been wittier.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>That Shakespeare was gay and pleasurable in conversation
+I can easily admit; for there never was a mind at once so plastic
+and so pliant: but without much gravity, could there have been
+that potency and comprehensiveness of thought, that depth of
+feeling, that creation of imperishable ideas, that sojourn in the
+souls of other men? He was amused in his workshop: such was
+society. But when he left it, he meditated intensely upon those
+limbs and muscles on which he was about to bestow new action,
+grace, and majesty; and so great an intensity of meditation
+must have strongly impressed his whole character.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p><i>Salomon.</i> Certainly no race of men upon earth ever was so
+unwarlike, so indifferent to national dignity and to personal
+honour, as the Florentines are now: yet in former days a certain
+pride, arising from a resemblance in their government to that
+of Athens, excited a vivifying desire of approximation where no
+danger or loss accompanied it; and Genius was no less confident
+of his security than of his power. Look from the window. That
+cottage on the declivity was Dante&#8217;s: that square and large
+mansion, with a circular garden before it elevated artificially,
+was the first scene of Boccaccio&#8217;s <i>Decameron</i>. A boy might
+stand at an equal distance between them, and break the windows
+of each with his sling. What idle fabricators of crazy systems
+will tell me that climate is the creator of genius? The climate
+of Austria is more regular and more temperate than ours, which
+I am inclined to believe is the most variable in the whole universe,
+subject, as you have perceived, to heavy fogs for two months in
+winter, and to a stifling heat, concentrated within the hills, for
+five more. Yet a single man of genius hath never appeared in
+the whole extent of Austria, an extent of several thousand times
+greater than our city; and this very street has given birth to fifty.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alfieri.</i> Since the destruction of the republic, Florence has
+produced only one great man, Galileo, and abandoned him to
+every indignity that fanaticism and despotism could invent.
+Extraordinary men, like the stones that are formed in the higher
+regions of the air, fall upon the earth only to be broken and cast
+into the furnace. The precursor of Newton lived in the deserts
+of the moral world, drank water, and ate locusts and wild honey.
+It was fortunate that his head also was not lopped off: had a
+singer asked it, instead of a dancer, it would have been.</p>
+
+<p><i>Salomon.</i> In fact it was; for the fruits of it were shaken down
+and thrown away: he was forbidden to publish the most important
+of his discoveries, and the better part of his manuscripts
+was burned after his death.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alfieri.</i> Yes, Signor Salomon, those things may rather be
+called our heads than this knob above the shoulder, of which
+(as matters stand) we are rather the porters than the proprietors,
+and which is really the joint concern of barber and dentist.</p>
+
+<p><i>Salomon.</i> Our thoughts, if they may not rest at home, may
+wander freely. Delighting in the remoter glories of my native
+city, I forget at times its humiliation and ignominy. A town
+so little that the voice of a cabbage-girl in the midst of it may
+be heard at the extremities, reared within three centuries a
+greater number of citizens illustrious for their genius than all
+the remainder of the Continent (excepting her sister Athens)
+in six thousand years. My ignorance of the Greek forbids me
+to compare our Dante with Homer. The propriety and force
+of language and the harmony of verse in the glorious Grecian
+are quite lost to me. Dante had not only to compose a poem,
+but in great part a language. Fantastical as the plan of his
+poem is, and, I will add, uninteresting and uninviting; unimportant,
+mean, contemptible, as are nine-tenths of his characters
+and his details, and wearisome as is the scheme of his versification&mdash;there
+are more thoughts highly poetical, there is more
+reflection, and the nobler properties of mind and intellect are
+brought into more intense action, not only than in the whole
+course of French poetry, but also in the whole of continental;
+nor do I think (I must here also speak with hesitation) that any
+one drama of Shakespeare contains so many. Smile as you will,
+Signor Conte, what must I think of a city where Michel Angelo,
+Frate Bartolomeo, Ghiberti (who formed them), Guicciardini,
+and Machiavelli were secondary men? And certainly such
+were they, if we compare them with Galileo and Boccaccio and
+Dante.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alfieri.</i> I smiled from pure delight, which I rarely do; for I
+take an interest deep and vital in such men, and in those who
+appreciate them rightly and praise them unreservedly. These
+are my fellow-citizens: I acknowledge no other; we are of the
+same tribe, of the same household; I bow to them as being older
+than myself, and I love them as being better.</p>
+
+<p><i>Salomon.</i> Let us hope that our Italy is not yet effete. Filangieri
+died but lately: what think you of him?</p>
+
+<p><i>Alfieri.</i> If it were possible that I could ever see his statue in
+a square at Constantinople, though I should be scourged for an
+idolater, I would kiss the pedestal. As this, however, is less
+likely than that I should suffer for writing satirically, and as
+criticism is less likely to mislead me than speculation, I will
+revert to our former subject.</p>
+
+<p>Indignation and contempt may be expressed in other poems
+than such as are usually called satires. Filicaia, in his celebrated
+address to Italy, steers a middle course.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>A perfect piece of criticism must exhibit <i>where</i> a work is good
+or bad; <i>why</i> it is good or bad; in what degree it is good or bad;
+must also demonstrate in what manner, and to what extent,
+the same ideas or reflections have come to others, and, if they
+be clothed in poetry, why by an apparently slight variation,
+what in one author is mediocrity, in another is excellence. I
+have never seen a critic of Florence, or Pisa, or Milan, or Bologna,
+who did not commend and admire the sonnet of Cassiani on the
+rape of Proserpine, without a suspicion of its manifold and
+grave defects.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>Does not this describe the devils of our carnival, rather than
+the majestic brother of Jupiter, at whose side upon asphodel
+and amaranth the sweet Persephone sits pensively contented,
+in that deep motionless quiet which mortals pity and which
+the gods enjoy; rather than him who, under the umbrage of
+Elysium, gazes at once upon all the beauties that on earth were
+separated&mdash;Helena and Eriphyle, Polyxena and Hermione,
+Deidamia and Deianira, Leda and Omphale, Atalanta and
+Cydippe, Laodamia, with her arm round the neck of a fond
+youth whom she still seems afraid of losing, and, apart, the
+daughters of Niobe clinging to their parent?</p>
+
+<p><i>Salomon.</i> These images are better than satires; but continue,
+in preference to other thoughts or pursuits, the noble career
+you have entered. Be contented, Signor Conte, with the glory
+of our first great dramatist, and neglect altogether any inferior
+one. Why vex and torment yourself about the French? They
+buzz and are troublesome while they are swarming; but the
+master will soon hive them. Is the whole nation worth the
+worst of your tragedies? All the present race of them, all the
+creatures in the world which excite your indignation, will lie in
+the grave, while young and old are clapping their hands or beating
+their bosoms at your <i>Bruto Primo</i>. Consider also that kings
+and emperors should in your estimation be but as grasshoppers
+and beetles: let them consume a few blades of your clover without
+molesting them, without bringing them to crawl on you and claw
+you. The difference between them and men of genius is almost
+as great as between men of genius and those higher intelligences
+who act in immediate subordination to the Almighty. Yes,
+I assert it, without flattery and without fear, the angels are not
+higher above mortals than you are above the proudest that
+trample on them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alfieri.</i> I believe, sir, you were the first in commending my
+tragedies.</p>
+
+<p><i>Salomon.</i> He who first praises a good book becomingly is
+next in merit to the author.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alfieri.</i> As a writer and as a man I know my station: if I
+found in the world five equal to myself, I would walk out of it,
+not to be jostled.</p>
+
+<p>I must now, Signor Salomon, take my leave of you; for his
+Eminence my coachman and their Excellencies my horses are
+waiting.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="ROUSSEAU_AND_MALESHERBES" id="ROUSSEAU_AND_MALESHERBES"></a>ROUSSEAU AND MALESHERBES</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> I am ashamed, sir, of my countrymen: let my
+humiliation expiate their offence. I wish it had not been a
+minister of the Gospel who received you with such inhospitality.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Nothing can be more ardent and more cordial
+than the expressions with which you greet me, M. Rousseau,
+on my return from your lakes and mountains.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> If the pastor took you for a courtier, I reverence
+him for his contemptuousness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Why so? Indeed you are in the wrong, my
+friend. No person has a right to treat another with contemptuousness
+unless he knows him to deserve it. When a
+courtier enters the house of a pastor in preference to the next,
+the pastor should partake in the sentiment that induced him,
+or at least not to be offended to be preferred. A courtier is
+such at court: in the house of a clergyman he is not a courtier,
+but a guest. If to be a courtier is offensive, remember that we
+punish offences where they are committed, where they can be
+examined, where pleadings can be heard for and against the
+accused, and where nothing is admitted extraneous from the
+indictment, excepting what may be adduced in his behalf by
+witnesses to the general tenor of his character.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> Is it really true that the man told you to mount
+the hayloft if you wished a night&#8217;s lodging?</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> He did: a certain proof that he no more took
+me to be a courtier than I took him to be. I accepted his offer,
+and never slept so soundly. Moderate fatigue, the Alpine air,
+the blaze of a good fire (for I was admitted to it some moments),
+and a profusion of odoriferous hay, below which a cow was
+sleeping, subdued my senses, and protracted my slumbers
+beyond the usual hour.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> You have no right, sir, to be the patron and remunerator
+of inhospitality. Three or four such men as you
+would corrupt all Switzerland, and prepare it for the fangs of
+France and Austria. Kings, like hyenas, will always fall upon
+dead carcasses, although their bellies are full, and although they
+are conscious that in the end they will tear one another to
+pieces over them. Why should you prepare their prey? Were
+your fire and effulgence given you for this? Why, in short,
+did you thank this churl? Why did you recommend him to his
+superiors for preferment on the next vacancy?</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> I must adopt your opinion of his behaviour in
+order to answer you satisfactorily. You suppose him inhospitable:
+what milder or more effectual mode of reproving him, than
+to make every dish at his table admonish him? If he did evil,
+have I no authority before me which commands me to render
+him good for it? Believe me, M. Rousseau, the execution of
+this command is always accompanied by the heart&#8217;s applause,
+and opportunities of obedience are more frequent here than
+anywhere. Would not you exchange resentment for the contrary
+feeling, even if religion or duty said nothing about the matter?
+I am afraid the most philosophical of us are sometimes a little
+perverse, and will not be so happy as they might be, because
+the path is pointed out to them, and because he who points it
+out is wise and powerful. Obstinacy and jealousy, the worst
+parts of childhood and of manhood, have range enough for their
+ill humours without the heavens.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> Sir, I perceive you are among my enemies. I
+did not think it; for, whatever may be my faults, I am totally
+free from suspicion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> And do not think it now, I entreat you, my good
+friend.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> Courts and society have corrupted the best heart
+in France, and have perverted the best intellect.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> They have done much evil then.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> Answer me, and your own conscience: how could
+you choose to live among the perfidies of Paris and Versailles?</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Lawyers, and advocates in particular, must live
+there; philosophers need not. If every honest man thought it
+requisite to leave those cities, would the inhabitants be the
+better?</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> You have entered into intimacies with the members
+of various administrations, opposite in plans and sentiments,
+but alike hostile to you, and all of whom, if they could have kept
+your talents down, would have done it. Finding the thing
+impossible, they ceased to persecute, and would gladly tempt
+you under the semblance of friendship and esteem to supplicate
+for some office, that they might indicate to the world your
+unworthiness by refusing you: a proof, as you know, quite
+sufficient and self-evident.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> They will never tempt me to supplicate for
+anything but justice, and that in behalf of others. I know
+nothing of parties. If I am acquainted with two persons of
+opposite sides in politics, I consider them as you consider a
+watchmaker and a cabinet-maker: one desires to rise by one
+way, the other by another. Administrations and systems of
+government would be quite indifferent to those very functionaries
+and their opponents, who appear the most zealous partisans, if
+their fortunes and consequence were not affixed to them.
+Several of these men seem consistent, and indeed are; the reason
+is, versatility would loosen and detach from them the public
+esteem and confidence&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> By which their girandoles are lighted, their dinners
+served, their lackeys liveried, and their opera-girls vie in
+benefit-nights. There is no State in Europe where the least
+wise have not governed the most wise. We find the light and
+foolish keeping up with the machinery of government easily
+and leisurely, just as we see butterflies keep up with carriages
+at full speed. This is owing in both cases to their levity and their
+position: the stronger and the more active are left behind. I
+am resolved to prove that farmers-general are the main causes
+of the defects in our music.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Prove it, or anything else, provided that the
+discussion does not irritate and torment you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> Truth is the object of philosophy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Not of philosophers: the display of ingenuity,
+for the most part, is and always has been it. I must here offer
+you an opinion of my own, which, if you think well of me, you will
+pardon, though you should disbelieve its solidity. My opinion
+then is, that truth is not reasonably the main and ultimate
+object of philosophy; but that philosophy should seek truth
+merely as the means of acquiring and of propagating happiness.
+Truths are simple; wisdom, which is formed by their apposition
+and application, is concrete: out of this, in its vast varieties,
+open to our wants and wishes, comes happiness. But the knowledge
+of all the truths ever yet discovered does not lead immediately
+to it, nor indeed will ever reach it, unless you make the
+more important of them bear upon your heart and intellect,
+and form, as it were, the blood that moves and nurtures them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> I never until now entertained a doubt that truth is
+the ultimate aim and object of philosophy: no writer has
+denied it, I think.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Designedly none may: but when it is agreed
+that happiness is the chief good, it must also be agreed that the
+chief wisdom will pursue it; and I have already said, what your
+own experience cannot but have pointed out to you, that no
+truth, or series of truths, hypothetically, can communicate or
+attain it. Come, M. Rousseau, tell me candidly, do you derive no
+pleasure from a sense of superiority in genius and independence?</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> The highest, sir, from a consciousness of
+independence.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> <i>Ingenuous</i> is the epithet we affix to modesty,
+but modesty often makes men act otherwise than ingenuously:
+you, for example, now. You are angry at the servility of
+people, and disgusted at their obtuseness and indifference, on
+matters of most import to their welfare. If they were equal
+to you, this anger would cease; but the fire would break out
+somewhere else, on ground which appears at present sound and
+level. Voltaire, for instance, is less eloquent than you: but
+Voltaire is wittier than any man living. This quality&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> Is the quality of a buffoon and a courtier. But
+the buffoon should have most of it, to support his higher dignity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Voltaire&#8217;s is Attic.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau</i>. If malignity is Attic. Petulance is not wit,
+although a few grains of wit may be found in petulance: quartz
+is not gold, although a few grains of gold may be found in
+quartz. Voltaire is a monkey in mischief, and a spaniel in
+obsequiousness. He declaims against the cruel and tyrannical;
+and he kisses the hands of adulteresses who murder their
+husbands, and of robbers who decimate their gang.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> I will not discuss with you the character of the
+man, and only that part of the author&#8217;s on which I spoke.
+There may be malignity in wit, there cannot be violence. You
+may irritate and disquiet with it; but it must be by means of a
+flower or a feather. Wit and humour stand on one side, irony
+and sarcasm on the other.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> They are in near neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> So are the Elysian fields and Tartarus.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> Pray, go on: teach me to stand quiet in my stall,
+while my masters and managers pass by.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Well then&mdash;Pascal argues as closely and methodically;
+Bossuet is as scientific in the structure of his sentences;
+Demosthenes, many think, has equal fire, vigour, dexterity:
+equal selection of topics and equal temperance in treating
+them, immeasurably as he falls short of you in appeals to the
+sensibility, and in everything which by way of excellence we
+usually call genius.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> Sir, I see no resemblance between a pleader at
+the bar, or a haranguer of the populace, and me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Certainly his questions are occasional: but one
+great question hangs in the centre, and high above the rest;
+and this is, whether the Mother of liberty and civilization shall
+exist, or whether she shall be extinguished in the bosom of her
+family. As we often apply to Eloquence and her parts the
+terms we apply to Architecture and hers, let me do it also, and
+remark that nothing can be more simple, solid, and symmetrical,
+nothing more frugal in decoration or more appropriate in distribution,
+than the apartments of Demosthenes. Yours excel
+them in space and altitude; your ornaments are equally chaste
+and beautiful, with more variety and invention, more airiness
+and light. But why, among the Loves and Graces, does Apollo
+flay Marsyas?&mdash;and why may not the tiara still cover the ears
+of Midas? Cannot you, who detest kings and courtiers, keep
+away from them? If I must be with them, let me be in good
+humour and good spirits. If I will tread upon a Persian carpet,
+let it at least be in clean shoes.</p>
+
+<p>As the raciest wine makes the sharpest vinegar, so the richest
+fancies turn the most readily to acrimony. Keep yours, my dear
+M. Rousseau, from the exposure and heats that generate it.
+Be contented; enjoy your fine imagination; and do not throw
+your salad out of window, nor shove your cat off your knee, on
+hearing it said that Shakespeare has a finer, or that a minister
+is of opinion that you know more of music than of state. My
+friend! the quarrels of ingenious men are generally far less
+reasonable and just, less placable and moderate, than those of
+the stupid and ignorant. We ought to blush at this: and we
+should blush yet more deeply if we bring them in as parties to
+our differences. Let us conquer by kindness; which we cannot
+do easily or well without communication.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> The minister would expel me from his antechamber,
+and order his valets to buffet me, if I offered him any proposal
+for the advantage of mankind.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Call to him, then, from this room, where the
+valets are civiler. Nature has given you a speaking-trumpet,
+which neither storm can drown nor enemy can silence. If you
+esteem him, instruct him; if you despise him, do the same.
+Surely, you who have much benevolence would not despise any
+one willingly or unnecessarily. Contempt is for the incorrigible:
+now, where upon earth is he whom your genius, if rightly and
+temperately exerted, would not influence and correct?</p>
+
+<p>I never was more flattered or honoured than by your patience
+in listening to me. Consider me as an old woman who sits by
+the bedside in your infirmity, who brings you no savoury
+viand, no exotic fruit, but a basin of whey or a basket of strawberries
+from your native hills; assures you that what oppressed
+you was a dream, occasioned by the wrong position in which
+you lay; opens the window, gives you fresh air, and entreats
+you to recollect the features of Nature, and to observe (which
+no man ever did so accurately) their beauty. In your politics
+you cut down a forest to make a toothpick, and cannot make
+even that out of it! Do not let us in jurisprudence be like
+critics in the classics, and change whatever can be changed,
+right or wrong. No statesman will take your advice. Supposing
+that any one is liberal in his sentiments and clear-sighted
+in his views, nevertheless love of power is jealous, and he would
+rejoice to see you fleeing from persecution or turning to meet it.
+The very men whom you would benefit will treat you worse.
+As the ministers of kings wish their masters to possess absolute
+power that the exercise of it may be delegated to them, which
+it naturally is from the violence and sloth alternate with despots
+as with wild beasts, and that they may apprehend no check or
+control from those who discover their misdemeanours, in like
+manner the people places more trust in favour than in fortune,
+and hopes to obtain by subserviency what it never might by
+election or by chance. Else in free governments, so some are
+called (for names once given are the last things lost), all minor
+offices and employments would be assigned by ballot. Each
+province or canton would present a list annually of such persons
+in it as are worthy to occupy the local administrations.</p>
+
+<p>To avoid any allusion to the country in which we live, let us
+take England for example. Is it not absurd, iniquitous, and
+revolting, that the minister of a church in Yorkshire should be
+appointed by a lawyer in London, who never knew him, never
+saw him, never heard from a single one of the parishioners a
+recommendation of any kind? Is it not more reasonable that a
+justice of the peace should be chosen by those who have always
+been witnesses of his integrity?</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> The king should appoint his ministers, and should
+invest them with power and splendour; but those ministers
+should not appoint to any civil or religious place of trust or
+profit which the community could manifestly fill better. The
+greater part of offices and dignities should be conferred for a
+short and stated time, that all might hope to attain and strive
+to deserve them. Embassies in particular should never exceed
+one year in Europe, nor consulates two. To the latter office I
+assign this duration as the more difficult to fulfil properly, from
+requiring a knowledge of trade, although a slight one, and
+because those who possess any such knowledge are inclined for
+the greater part to turn it to their own account, which a consul
+ought by no means to do. Frequent election of representatives
+and of civil officers in the subordinate employments would
+remove most causes of discontent in the people, and of instability
+in kingly power. Here is a lottery in which every one
+is sure of a prize, if not for himself, at least for somebody in
+his family or among his friends; and the ticket would be fairly
+paid for out of the taxes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> So it appears to me. What other system can
+present so obviously to the great mass of the people the two
+principal piers and buttresses of government, tangible interest
+and reasonable hope? No danger of any kind can arise from it,
+no antipathies, no divisions, no imposture of demagogues, no
+caprice of despots. On the contrary, many and great advantages
+in places which at the first survey do not appear to border
+on it. At present, the best of the English juridical institutions,
+that of justices of the peace, is viewed with diffidence and distrust.
+Elected as they would be, and increased in number, the
+whole judicature, civil and criminal, might be confided to them,
+and their labours be not only not aggravated but diminished.
+Suppose them in four divisions to meet at four places in every
+county once in twenty days, and to possess the power of imposing
+a fine not exceeding two hundred francs on every cause implying
+oppression, and one not exceeding fifty on such as they should
+unanimously declare frivolous.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> Few would become attorneys, and those from
+among the indigent.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Almost the greatest evil that exists in the
+world, moral or physical, would be removed. A second appeal
+might be made in the following session; a third could only come
+before Parliament, and this alone by means of attorneys, the
+number of whom altogether would not exceed the number of
+coroners; for in England there are as many who cut their own
+throats as who would cut their own purses.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> The famous <i>trial by jury</i> would cease: this would
+disgust the English.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> The number of justices would be much augmented:
+nearly all those who now are jurymen would enjoy
+this rank and dignity, and would be flattered by sitting on the
+same bench with the first gentlemen of the land.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> What number would sit?</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Three or five in the first instance; five or seven
+in the second&mdash;as the number of causes should permit.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> The laws of England are extremely intricate and
+perplexed: such men would be puzzled.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Such men having no interest in the perplexity,
+but on the contrary an interest in unravelling it, would see such
+laws corrected. Intricate as they are, questions on those which
+are the most so are usually referred by the judges themselves
+to private arbitration; of which my plan, I conceive, has all
+the advantages, united to those of open and free discussion
+among men of unperverted sense, and unbiased by professional
+hopes and interests. The different courts of law in England
+cost about seventy millions of francs annually. On my system,
+the justices or judges would receive five-and-twenty francs
+daily; as the <i>special jurymen</i> do now, without any sense of
+shame or impropriety, however rich they may be: such being
+the established practice.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> Seventy millions! seventy millions!</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> There are attorneys and conveyancers in London
+who gain one hundred thousand francs a year, and advocates
+more. The chancellor&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> The Celeno of these harpies&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Nets above one million, and is greatly more than
+an archbishop in the Church, scattering preferment in Cumberland
+and Cornwall from his bench at Westminster.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> Absurdities and enormities are great in proportion
+to custom or insuetude. If we had lived from childhood with
+a boa constrictor, we should think it no more a monster than a
+canary-bird. The sum you mentioned, of seventy millions, is
+incredible.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> In this estimate the expense of letters by the
+post, and of journeys made by the parties, is not and cannot
+be included.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> The whole machine of government, civil and
+religious, ought never to bear upon the people with a weight so
+oppressive. I do not add the national defence, which being
+principally naval is more costly, nor institutions for the promotion
+of the arts, which in a country like England ought to
+be liberal. But such an expenditure should nearly suffice for
+these also, in time of peace. Religion and law indeed should
+cost nothing: at present the one hangs property, the other
+quarters it. I am confounded at the profusion. I doubt
+whether the Romans expended so much in that year&#8217;s war
+which dissolved the Carthaginian empire, and left them masters
+of the universe. What is certain, and what is better, it did not
+cost a tenth of it to colonize Pennsylvania, in whose forests
+the cradle of freedom is suspended, and where the eye of philanthropy,
+tired with tears and vigils, may wander and may rest.
+Your system, or rather your arrangement of one already established,
+pleases me. Ministers would only lose thereby that
+portion of their possessions which they give away to needy
+relatives, unworthy dependants, or the requisite supporters of
+their authority and power.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> On this plan, no such supporters would be
+necessary, no such dependants could exist, and no such relatives
+could be disappointed. Beside, the conflicts of their opponents
+must be periodical, weak, and irregular.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> The craving for the rich carrion would be less keen;
+the zeal of opposition, as usual, would be measured by the
+stomach, whereon hope and overlooking have always a strong
+influence.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> My excellent friend, do not be offended with me
+for an ingenuous and frank confession: promise me your pardon.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> You need none.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Promise it, nevertheless.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> You have said nothing, done nothing, which could
+in any way displease me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> You grant me, then, a bill of indemnity for
+what I may have undertaken with a good intention since we
+have been together?</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> Willingly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> I fell into your views, I walked along with you
+side by side, merely to occupy your mind, which I perceived
+was agitated.</p>
+
+<p>In compliance with your humour, to engage your fancy, to
+divert it awhile from Switzerland, by which you appear and
+partly on my account to be offended, I began with reflections
+upon England: I raised up another cloud in the region of them,
+light enough to be fantastic and diaphanous, and to catch some
+little irradiation from its western sun. Do not run after it
+farther; it has vanished already. Consider: the three great
+nations&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> Pray, which are those?</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> I cannot in conscience give the palm to the
+Hottentots, the Greenlanders, or the Hurons: I meant to
+designate those who united to empire the most social virtue
+and civil freedom. Athens, Rome, and England have received
+on the subject of government elaborate treatises from their
+greatest men. You have reasoned more dispassionately and
+profoundly on it than Plato has done, or probably than Cicero,
+led away as he often is by the authority of those who are inferior
+to himself: but do you excel Aristoteles in calm and patient
+investigation? Or, think you, are your reading and range of
+thought more extensive than Harrington&#8217;s and Milton&#8217;s? Yet
+what effect have the political works of these marvellous men
+produced upon the world?&mdash;what effect upon any one state,
+any one city, any one hamlet? A clerk in office, an accountant,
+a gauger of small beer, a songwriter for a tavern dinner, produces
+more. He thrusts his rags into the hole whence the wind
+comes, and sleeps soundly. While you and I are talking about
+elevations and proportions, pillars and pilasters, architraves
+and friezes, the buildings we should repair are falling to the
+earth, and the materials for their restoration are in the quarry.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> I could answer you: but my mind has certain
+moments of repose, or rather of oscillation, which I would not
+for the world disturb. Music, eloquence, friendship, bring and
+prolong them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Enjoy them, my dear friend, and convert them
+if possible to months and years. It is as much at your arbitration
+on what theme you shall meditate, as in what meadow you
+shall botanize; and you have as much at your option the choice
+of your thoughts, as of the keys in your harpsichord.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rousseau.</i> If this were true, who could be unhappy?</p>
+
+<p><i>Malesherbes.</i> Those of whom it is not true. Those who from
+want of practice cannot manage their thoughts, who have few
+to select from, and who, because of their sloth or of their weakness,
+do not roll away the heaviest from before them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="LUCULLUS_AND_CAESAR" id="LUCULLUS_AND_CAESAR"></a>LUCULLUS AND CAESAR</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Lucius Lucullus, I come to you privately and unattended
+for reasons which you will know; confiding, I dare not
+say in your friendship, since no service of mine toward you hath
+deserved it, but in your generous and disinterested love of
+peace. Hear me on. Cneius Pompeius, according to the
+report of my connexions in the city, had, on the instant of my
+leaving it for the province, begun to solicit his dependants to
+strip me ignominiously of authority. Neither vows nor affinity
+can bind him. He would degrade the father of his wife; he
+would humiliate his own children, the unoffending, the unborn;
+he would poison his own nascent love&mdash;at the suggestion of
+Ambition. Matters are now brought so far, that either he or I
+must submit to a reverse of fortune; since no concession can
+assuage his malice, divert his envy, or gratify his cupidity.
+No sooner could I raise myself up, from the consternation and
+stupefaction into which the certainty of these reports had
+thrown me, than I began to consider in what manner my own
+private afflictions might become the least noxious to the republic.
+Into whose arms, then, could I throw myself more naturally
+and more securely, to whose bosom could I commit and consign
+more sacredly the hopes and destinies of our beloved country,
+than his who laid down power in the midst of its enjoyments,
+in the vigour of youth, in the pride of triumph, when Dignity
+solicited, when Friendship urged, entreated, supplicated, and
+when Liberty herself invited and beckoned to him from the
+senatorial order and from the curule chair? Betrayed and
+abandoned by those we had confided in, our next friendship,
+if ever our hearts receive any, or if any will venture in those
+places of desolation, flies forward instinctively to what is
+most contrary and dissimilar. Caesar is hence the visitant of
+Lucullus.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> I had always thought Pompeius more moderate
+and more reserved than you represent him, Caius Julius; and
+yet I am considered in general, and surely you also will consider
+me, but little liable to be prepossessed by him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Unless he may have ingratiated himself with you
+recently, by the administration of that worthy whom last winter
+his partisans dragged before the Senate, and forced to assert
+publicly that you and Cato had instigated a party to circumvent
+and murder him; and whose carcass, a few days afterward,
+when it had been announced that he had died by a natural
+death, was found covered with bruises, stabs, and dislocations.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> You bring much to my memory which had quite
+slipped out of it, and I wonder that it could make such an
+impression on yours. A proof to me that the interest you take
+in my behalf began earlier than your delicacy will permit you
+to acknowledge. You are fatigued, which I ought to have
+perceived before.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Not at all; the fresh air has given me life and alertness:
+I feel it upon my cheek even in the room.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> After our dinner and sleep, we will spend the
+remainder of the day on the subject of your visit.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Those Ethiopian slaves of yours shiver with cold
+upon the mountain here; and truly I myself was not insensible
+to the change of climate, in the way from Mutina.</p>
+
+<p>What white bread! I never found such even at Naples or
+Capua. This Formian wine (which I prefer to the Chian), how
+exquisite!</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> Such is the urbanity of Caesar, even while he bites
+his lip with displeasure. How! surely it bleeds! Permit me
+to examine the cup.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> I believe a jewel has fallen out of the rim in the
+carriage: the gold is rough there.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> Marcipor, let me never see that cup again! No
+answer, I desire. My guest pardons heavier faults. Mind that
+dinner be prepared for us shortly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> In the meantime, Lucullus, if your health permits it,
+shall we walk a few paces round the villa? for I have not seen
+anything of the kind before.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> The walls are double; the space between them two
+feet: the materials for the most part earth and straw. Two
+hundred slaves, and about as many mules and oxen, brought
+the beams and rafters up the mountain; my architects fixed
+them at once in their places: every part was ready, even the
+wooden nails. The roof is thatched, you see.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Is there no danger that so light a material should
+be carried off by the winds, on such an eminence?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> None resists them equally well.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> On this immensely high mountain, I should be
+apprehensive of the lightning, which the poets, and I think the
+philosophers too, have told us strikes the highest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> The poets are right; for whatever is received as
+truth is truth in poetry; and a fable may illustrate like a fact.
+But the philosophers are wrong, as they generally are, even in
+the commonest things; because they seldom look beyond their
+own tenets, unless through captiousness, and because they
+argue more than they meditate, and display more than they
+examine. Archimedes and Euclid are, in my opinion, after our
+Epicurus, the worthiest of the name, having kept apart to the
+demonstrable, the practical, and the useful. Many of the
+rest are good writers and good disputants; but unfaithful
+suitors of simple science, boasters of their acquaintance with
+gods and goddesses, plagiarists and impostors. I had forgotten
+my roof, although it is composed of much the same materials
+as the philosophers&#8217;. Let the lightning fall: one handful of
+silver, or less, repairs the damage.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Impossible! nor indeed one thousand, nor twenty, if
+those tapestries and pictures are consumed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> True; but only the thatch would burn. For,
+before the baths were tessellated, I filled the area with alum and
+water, and soaked the timbers and laths for many months, and
+covered them afterward with alum in powder, by means of
+liquid glue. Mithridates taught me this. Having in vain
+attacked with combustibles a wooden tower, I took it by
+stratagem, and found within it a mass of alum, which, if a great
+hurry had not been observed by us among the enemy in the
+attempt to conceal it, would have escaped our notice. I never
+scrupled to extort the truth from my prisoners; but my instruments
+were purple robes and plate, and the only wheel in my
+armoury destined to such purposes was the wheel of Fortune.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> I wish, in my campaigns, I could have equalled your
+clemency and humanity; but the Gauls are more uncertain,
+fierce, and perfidious than the wildest tribes of Caucasus; and
+our policy cannot be carried with us, it must be formed upon
+the spot. They love you, not for abstaining from hurting
+them, but for ceasing; and they embrace you only at two
+seasons&mdash;when stripes are fresh, or when stripes are imminent.
+Elsewhere, I hope to become the rival of Lucullus in this
+admirable part of virtue.</p>
+
+<p>I shall never build villas, because&mdash;but what are your proportions?
+Surely the edifice is extremely low.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> There is only one floor; the height of the apartments
+is twenty feet to the cornice, five above it; the breadth is
+twenty-five, the length forty. The building, as you perceive,
+is quadrangular: three sides contain four rooms each; the other
+has many partitions and two stories, for domestics and offices.
+Here is my salt-bath.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> A bath, indeed, for all the Nereids named by Hesiod,
+with room enough for the Tritons and their herds and horses.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> Here stand my two cows. Their milk is brought
+to me with its warmth and froth; for it loses its salubrity both
+by repose and by motion. Pardon me, Caesar: I shall appear to
+you to have forgotten that I am not conducting Marcus Varro.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> You would convert him into Cacus: he would drive
+them off. What beautiful beasts! how sleek and white and
+cleanly! I never saw any like them, excepting when we
+sacrifice to Jupiter the stately leader from the pastures of
+the Clitumnus.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> Often do I make a visit to these quiet creatures,
+and with no less pleasure than in former days to my horses.
+Nor indeed can I much wonder that whole nations have been
+consentaneous in treating them as objects of devotion: the only
+thing wonderful is that gratitude seems to have acted as powerfully
+and extensively as fear; indeed, more extensively, for no
+object of worship whatever has attracted so many worshippers.
+Where Jupiter has one, the cow has ten: she was venerated
+before he was born, and will be when even the carvers have
+forgotten him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Unwillingly should I see it; for the character of our
+gods hath formed the character of our nation. Serapis and
+Isis have stolen in among them within our memory, and others
+will follow, until at last Saturn will not be the only one emasculated
+by his successor. What can be more august than our
+rites? The first dignitaries of the republic are emulous to
+administer them: nothing of low or venal has any place in them;
+nothing pusillanimous, nothing unsocial and austere. I speak
+of them as they were; before Superstition woke up again from
+her slumber, and caught to her bosom with maternal love the
+alluvial monsters of the Nile. Philosophy, never fit for the
+people, had entered the best houses, and the image of Epicurus
+had taken the place of the Lemures. But men cannot bear to
+be deprived long together of anything they are used to, not
+even of their fears; and, by a reaction of the mind appertaining
+to our nature, new stimulants were looked for, not on the side
+of pleasure, where nothing new could be expected or imagined,
+but on the opposite. Irreligion is followed by fanaticism, and
+fanaticism by irreligion, alternately and perpetually.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> The religion of our country, as you observe, is well
+adapted to its inhabitants. Our progenitor, Mars, hath Venus
+recumbent on his breast and looking up to him, teaching us that
+pleasure is to be sought in the bosom of valour and by the means
+of war. No great alteration, I think, will ever be made in our
+rites and ceremonies&mdash;the best and most imposing that could
+be collected from all nations, and uniting them to us by our
+complacence in adopting them. The gods themselves may
+change names, to flatter new power: and, indeed, as we degenerate,
+Religion will accommodate herself to our propensities and
+desires. Our heaven is now popular: it will become monarchal;
+not without a crowded court, as befits it, of apparitors and
+satellites and minions of both sexes, paid and caressed for carrying
+to their stern, dark-bearded master prayers and supplications.
+Altars must be strown with broken minds, and incense rise
+amid abject aspirations. Gods will be found unfit for their
+places; and it is not impossible that, in the ruin imminent
+from our contentions for power, and in the necessary extinction
+both of ancient families and of generous sentiments, our consular
+fasces may become the water-sprinklers of some upstart priesthood,
+and that my son may apply for lustration to the son of my
+groom. The interest of such men requires that the spirit of
+arms and of arts be extinguished. They will predicate peace,
+that the people may be tractable to them; but a religion altogether
+pacific is the fomenter of wars and the nurse of crimes,
+alluring Sloth from within and Violence from afar. If ever it
+should prevail among the Romans, it must prevail alone: for
+nations more vigorous and energetic will invade them, close
+upon them, trample them under foot; and the name of Roman,
+which is now the most glorious, will become the most opprobrious
+upon earth.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> The time, I hope, may be distant; for next to my own
+name I hold my country&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> Mine, not coming from Troy or Ida, is lower in
+my estimation: I place my country&#8217;s first.</p>
+
+<p>You are surveying the little lake beside us. It contains no
+fish, birds never alight on it, the water is extremely pure and
+cold; the walk round is pleasant, not only because there is
+always a gentle breeze from it, but because the turf is fine
+and the surface of the mountain on this summit is perfectly on
+a level to a great extent in length&mdash;not a trifling advantage to
+me, who walk often and am weak. I have no alley, no garden,
+no enclosure; the park is in the vale below, where a brook
+supplies the ponds, and where my servants are lodged; for here
+I have only twelve in attendance.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> What is that so white, towards the Adriatic?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> The Adriatic itself. Turn round and you may
+descry the Tuscan Sea. Our situation is reported to be among
+the highest of the Apennines. Marcipor has made the sign to
+me that dinner is ready. Pass this way.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> What a library is here! Ah, Marcus Tullius! I salute
+thy image. Why frownest thou upon me&mdash;collecting the
+consular robe and uplifting the right arm, as when Rome stood
+firm again, and Catiline fled before thee?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> Just so; such was the action the statuary chose, as
+adding a new endearment to the memory of my absent friend.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Sylla, who honoured you above all men, is not here.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> I have his <i>Commentaries</i>: he inscribed them, as
+you know, to me. Something even of our benefactors may be
+forgotten, and gratitude be unreproved.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> The impression on that couch, and the two fresh
+honeysuckles in the leaves of those two books, would show,
+even to a stranger, that this room is peculiarly the master&#8217;s.
+Are they sacred?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> To me and Caesar.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> I would have asked permission&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> Caius Julius, you have nothing to ask of Polybius
+and Thucydides; nor of Xenophon, the next to them on the
+table.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Thucydides! the most generous, the most unprejudiced,
+the most sagacious, of historians. Now, Lucullus,
+you whose judgment in style is more accurate than any other
+Roman&#8217;s, do tell me whether a commander, desirous of writing
+his <i>Commentaries</i>, could take to himself a more perfect model
+than Thucydides?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> Nothing is more perfect, nor ever will be: the scholar
+of Pericles, the master of Demosthenes, the equal of the one in
+military science, and of the other not the inferior in civil and
+forensic; the calm dispassionate judge of the general by whom
+he was defeated, his defender, his encomiast. To talk of such
+men is conducive not only to virtue but to health.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>This other is my dining-room. You expect the dishes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> I misunderstood&mdash;I fancied&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> Repose yourself, and touch with the ebony wand,
+beside you, the sphinx on either of those obelisks, right or left.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Let me look at them first.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> The contrivance was intended for one person, or
+two at most, desirous of privacy and quiet. The blocks of
+jasper in my pair, and of porphyry in yours, easily yield in their
+grooves, each forming one partition. There are four, containing
+four platforms. The lower holds four dishes, such as sucking
+forest-boars, venison, hares, tunnies, sturgeons, which you will
+find within; the upper three, eight each, but diminutive. The
+confectionery is brought separately, for the steam would spoil
+it, if any should escape. The melons are in the snow, thirty
+feet under us: they came early this morning from a place in
+the vicinity of Luni, travelling by night.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> I wonder not at anything of refined elegance in
+Lucullus; but really here Antiochia and Alexandria seem to
+have cooked for us, and magicians to be our attendants.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> The absence of slaves from our repast is the luxury,
+for Marcipor alone enters, and he only when I press a spring
+with my foot or wand. When you desire his appearance, touch
+that chalcedony just before you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> I eat quick and rather plentifully; yet the valetudinarian
+(excuse my rusticity, for I rejoice at seeing it) appears
+to equal the traveller in appetite, and to be contented with one
+dish.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> It is milk: such, with strawberries, which ripen on
+the Apennines many months in continuance, and some other
+berries of sharp and grateful flavour, has been my only diet
+since my first residence here. The state of my health requires
+it; and the habitude of nearly three months renders this food
+not only more commodious to my studies and more conducive
+to my sleep, but also more agreeable to my palate than any
+other.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Returning to Rome or Baiae, you must domesticate
+and tame them. The cherries you introduced from Pontus
+are now growing in Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul; and the
+largest and best in the world, perhaps, are upon the more sterile
+side of Lake Larius.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> There are some fruits, and some virtues, which
+require a harsh soil and bleak exposure for their perfection.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> In such a profusion of viands, and so savoury, I
+perceive no odour.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> A flue conducts heat through the compartments of
+the obelisks; and, if you look up, you may observe that those
+gilt roses, between the astragals in the cornice, are prominent
+from it half a span. Here is an aperture in the wall, between
+which and the outer is a perpetual current of air. We are now
+in the dog-days; and I have never felt in the whole summer
+more heat than at Rome in many days of March.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Usually you are attended by troops of domestics and
+of dinner-friends, not to mention the learned and scientific, nor
+your own family, your attachment to which, from youth upward,
+is one of the higher graces in your character. Your brother
+was seldom absent from you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> Marcus was coming; but the vehement heats along
+the Arno, in which valley he has a property he never saw before,
+inflamed his blood, and he now is resting for a few days at
+Faesulae, a little town destroyed by Sylla within our memory,
+who left it only air and water, the best in Tuscany. The health
+of Marcus, like mine, has been declining for several months:
+we are running our last race against each other, and never was I,
+in youth along the Tiber, so anxious of first reaching the goal.
+I would not outlive him: I should reflect too painfully on earlier
+days, and look forward too despondently on future. As for
+friends, lampreys and turbots beget them, and they spawn
+not amid the solitude of the Apennines. To dine in company
+with more than two is a Gaulish and German thing. I can
+hardly bring myself to believe that I have eaten in concert with
+twenty; so barbarous and herdlike a practice does not now
+appeal to me&mdash;such an incentive to drink much and talk loosely;
+not to add, such a necessity to speak loud, which is clownish
+and odious in the extreme. On this mountain summit I hear
+no noises, no voices, not even of salutation; we have no flies about
+us, and scarcely an insect or reptile.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Your amiable son is probably with his uncle: is he
+well?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> Perfectly. He was indeed with my brother in his
+intended visit to me; but Marcus, unable to accompany him
+hither, or superintend his studies in the present state of his
+health, sent him directly to his Uncle Cato at Tusculum&mdash;a
+man fitter than either of us to direct his education, and preferable
+to any, excepting yourself and Marcus Tullius, in eloquence
+and urbanity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Cato is so great, that whoever is greater must be the
+happiest and first of men.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> That any such be still existing, O Julius, ought
+to excite no groan from the breast of a Roman citizen. But
+perhaps I wrong you; perhaps your mind was forced reluctantly
+back again, on your past animosities and contests in the Senate.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> I revere him, but cannot love him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> Then, Caius Julius, you groaned with reason; and
+I would pity rather than reprove you.</p>
+
+<p>On the ceiling at which you are looking, there is no gilding,
+and little painting&mdash;a mere trellis of vines bearing grapes, and
+the heads, shoulders, and arms rising from the cornice only,
+of boys and girls climbing up to steal them, and scrambling for
+them: nothing overhead; no giants tumbling down, no Jupiter
+thundering, no Mars and Venus caught at mid-day, no river-gods
+pouring out their urns upon us; for, as I think nothing so insipid
+as a flat ceiling, I think nothing so absurd as a storied one.
+Before I was aware, and without my participation, the painter
+had adorned that of my bedchamber with a golden shower,
+bursting from varied and irradiated clouds. On my expostulation,
+his excuse was that he knew the Dana&euml; of Scopas, in a
+recumbent posture, was to occupy the centre of the room. The
+walls, behind the tapestry and pictures, are quite rough. In
+forty-three days the whole fabric was put together and habitable.</p>
+
+<p>The wine has probably lost its freshness: will you try some
+other?</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Its temperature is exact; its flavour exquisite.
+Latterly I have never sat long after dinner, and am curious to
+pass through the other apartments, if you will trust me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> I attend you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Lucullus, who is here? What figure is that on the
+poop of the vessel? Can it be&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> The subject was dictated by myself; you gave it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Oh, how beautifully is the water painted! How
+vividly the sun strikes against the snows on Taurus! The
+grey temples and pierhead of Tarsus catch it differently, and
+the monumental mound on the left is half in shade. In the
+countenance of those pirates I did not observe such diversity,
+nor that any boy pulled his father back: I did not indeed mark
+them or notice them at all.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> The painter in this fresco, the last work finished,
+had dissatisfied me in one particular. &#8216;That beautiful young
+face,&#8217; said I, &#8216;appears not to threaten death.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Lucius,&#8217; he replied, &#8216;if one muscle were moved it were not
+Caesar&#8217;s: beside, he said it jokingly, though resolved.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;I am contented with your apology, Antipho; but what are
+you doing now? for you never lay down or suspend your pencil,
+let who will talk and argue. The lines of that smaller face in
+the distance are the same.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Not the same,&#8217; replied he, &#8216;nor very different: it smiles,
+as surely the goddess must have done at the first heroic act of
+her descendant.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> In her exultation and impatience to press forward
+she seems to forget that she is standing at the extremity of the
+shell, which rises up behind out of the water; and she takes no
+notice of the terror on the countenance of this Cupid who
+would detain her, nor of this who is flying off and looking back.
+The reflection of the shell has given a warmer hue below the knee;
+a long streak of yellow light in the horizon is on the level of her
+bosom, some of her hair is almost lost in it; above her head on
+every side is the pure azure of the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! and you would not have shown me this? You, among
+whose primary studies is the most perfect satisfaction of your
+guests!</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> In the next apartment are seven or eight other
+pictures from our history.</p>
+
+<p>There are no more: what do you look for?</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> I find not among the rest any descriptive of your
+own exploits. Ah, Lucullus! there is no surer way of making
+them remembered.</p>
+
+<p>This, I presume by the harps in the two corners, is the music-room.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> No, indeed; nor can I be said to have one here;
+for I love best the music of a single instrument, and listen to it
+willingly at all times, but most willingly while I am reading.
+At such seasons a voice or even a whisper disturbs me; but
+music refreshes my brain when I have read long, and strengthen
+it from the beginning. I find also that if I write anything in
+poetry (a youthful propensity still remaining), it gives rapidity
+and variety and brightness to my ideas. On ceasing, I command
+a fresh measure and instrument, or another voice; which is to
+the mind like a change of posture, or of air to the body. My
+heal this benefited by the gentle play thus opened to the most
+delicate of the fibres.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Let me augur that a disorder so tractable may be
+soon removed. What is it thought to be?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> I am inclined to think, and my physician did not
+long attempt to persuade me of the contrary, that the ancient
+realms of Aeaetes have supplied me with some other plants than
+the cherry, and such as I should be sorry to see domesticated
+here in Italy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> The gods forbid! Anticipate better things! The
+reason of Lucullus is stronger than the medicaments of Mithridates;
+but why not use them too? Let nothing be neglected.
+You may reasonably hope for many years of life: your mother
+still enjoys it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> To stand upon one&#8217;s guard against Death exasperates
+her malice and protracts our sufferings.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Rightly and gravely said: but your country at this
+time cannot do well without you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> The bowl of milk, which to-day is presented to me,
+will shortly be presented to my Manes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Do you suspect the hand?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> I will not suspect a Roman: let us converse no
+more about it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> It is the only subject on which I am resolved never
+to think, as relates to myself. Life may concern us, death not;
+for in death we neither can act nor reason, we neither can
+persuade nor command; and our statues are worth more than
+we are, let them be but wax.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> From being for ever in action, for ever in contention,
+and from excelling in them all other mortals, what
+advantage derive we? I would not ask what satisfaction, what
+glory? The insects have more activity than ourselves, the
+beasts more strength, even inert matter more firmness and
+stability; the gods alone more goodness. To the exercise of
+this every country lies open; and neither I eastward nor you
+westward have found any exhausted by contests for it.</p>
+
+<p>Must we give men blows because they will not look at us?
+or chain them to make them hold the balance evener?</p>
+
+<p>Do not expect to be acknowledged for what you are, much
+less for what you would be; since no one can well measure a
+great man but upon the bier. There was a time when the most
+ardent friend to Alexander of Macedon would have embraced
+the partisan for his enthusiasm, who should have compared
+him with Alexander of Pherae. It must have been at a splendid
+feast, and late at it, when Scipio should have been raised to an
+equality with Romulus, or Cato with Curius. It has been
+whispered in my ear, after a speech of Cicero, &#8216;If he goes on so,
+he will tread down the sandal of Marcus Antonius in the long
+run, and perhaps leave Hortensius behind.&#8217; Officers of mine,
+speaking about you, have exclaimed with admiration: &#8216;He
+fights like Cinna.&#8217; Think, Caius Julius (for you have been
+instructed to think both as a poet and as a philosopher), that
+among the hundred hands of Ambition, to whom we may
+attribute them more properly than to Briareus, there is not one
+which holds anything firmly. In the precipitancy of her course,
+what appears great is small, and what appears small is great.
+Our estimate of men is apt to be as inaccurate and inexact as
+that of things, or more. Wishing to have all on our side, we
+often leave those we should keep by us, run after those we should
+avoid, and call importunately on others who sit quiet and will
+not come. We cannot at once catch the applause of the vulgar
+and expect the approbation of the wise. What are parties?
+Do men really great ever enter into them? Are they not ball-courts,
+where ragged adventurers strip and strive, and where
+dissolute youths abuse one another, and challenge and game
+and wager? If you and I cannot quite divest ourselves of
+infirmities and passions, let us think, however, that there is
+enough in us to be divided into two portions, and let us keep the
+upper undisturbed and pure. A part of Olympus itself lies in
+dreariness and in clouds, variable and stormy; but it is not the
+highest: there the gods govern. Your soul is large enough to
+embrace your country: all other affection is for less objects,
+and less men are capable of it. Abandon, O Caesar! such
+thoughts and wishes as now agitate and propel you: leave them
+to mere men of the marsh, to fat hearts and miry intellects.
+Fortunate may we call ourselves to have been born in an age
+so productive of eloquence, so rich in erudition. Neither of us
+would be excluded, or hooted at, on canvassing for these honours.
+He who can think dispassionately and deeply as I do, is great
+as I am; none other. But his opinions are at freedom to diverge
+from mine, as mine are from his; and indeed, on recollection, I
+never loved those most who thought with me, but those rather
+who deemed my sentiments worth discussion, and who corrected
+me with frankness and affability.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Lucullus, you perhaps have taken the wiser and better
+part, certainly the pleasanter. I cannot argue with you: I
+would gladly hear one who could, but you again more gladly.
+I should think unworthily of you if I thought you capable of
+yielding or receding. I do not even ask you to keep our conversation
+long a secret, so greatly does it preponderate in your
+favour; so much more of gentleness, of eloquence, and of argument.
+I came hither with one soldier, avoiding the cities, and
+sleeping at the villa of a confidential friend. To-night I sleep
+in yours, and, if your dinner does not disturb me, shall sleep
+soundly. You go early to rest I know.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> Not, however, by daylight. Be assured, Caius
+Julius, that greatly as your discourse afflicts me, no part of it
+shall escape my lips. If you approach the city with arms,
+with arms I meet you; then your denouncer and enemy, at
+present your host and confidant.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> I shall conquer you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucullus.</i> That smile would cease upon it: you sigh already.</p>
+
+<p><i>Caesar.</i> Yes, Lucullus, if I am oppressed I shall overcome
+my oppressor: I know my army and myself. A sigh escaped
+me, and many more will follow; but one transport will rise amid
+them, when, vanquisher of my enemies and avenger of my
+dignity, I press again the hand of Lucullus, mindful of this day.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="EPICURUS_LEONTION_AND_TERNISSA" id="EPICURUS_LEONTION_AND_TERNISSA"></a>EPICURUS, LEONTION, AND TERNISSA</h2>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> The broad and billowy summits of yon monstrous
+trees, one would imagine, were made for the storms to rest upon
+when they are tired of raving. And what bark! It occurs to
+me, Epicurus, that I have rarely seen climbing plants attach
+themselves to these trees, as they do to the oak, the maple, the
+beech, and others.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> If your remark be true, perhaps the resinous are
+not embraced by them so frequently because they dislike the
+odour of the resin, or some other property of the juices; for they,
+too, have their affections and antipathies no less than countries
+and their climes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> For shame! what would you with me?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I would not interrupt you while you were speaking,
+nor while Leontion was replying; this is against my rules and
+practice. Having now ended, kiss me, Ternissa!</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Impudent man! in the name of Pallas, why should
+I kiss you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Because you expressed hatred.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Do we kiss when we hate?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> There is no better end of hating. The sentiment
+should not exist one moment; and if the hater gives a kiss on
+being ordered to do it, even to a tree or a stone, that tree or
+stone becomes the monument of a fault extinct.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> I promise you I never will hate a tree again.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I told you so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Nevertheless, I suspect, my Ternissa, you will
+often be surprised into it. I was very near saying, &#8216;I hate these
+rude square stones!&#8217; Why did you leave them here, Epicurus?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> It is true, they are the greater part square, and
+seem to have been cut out in ancient times for plinths and
+columns; they are also rude. Removing the smaller, that I
+might plant violets and cyclamens and convolvuluses and strawberries,
+and such other herbs as grow willingly in dry places, I
+left a few of these for seats, a few for tables and for couches.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Delectable couches!</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Laugh as you may, they will become so when they
+are covered with moss and ivy, and those other two sweet plants
+whose names I do not remember to have found in any ancient
+treatise, but which I fancy I have heard Theophrastus call
+&#8216;Leontion&#8217; and &#8216;Ternissa&#8217;.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> The bold, insidious, false creature!</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> What is that volume, may I venture to ask,
+Leontion? Why do you blush?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> I do not blush about it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> You are offended, then, my dear girl.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> No, nor offended. I will tell you presently what
+it contains. Account to me first for your choice of so strange a
+place to walk in: a broad ridge, the summit and one side barren,
+the other a wood of rose-laurels impossible to penetrate. The
+worst of all is, we can see nothing of the city or the Parthenon,
+unless from the very top.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> The place commands, in my opinion, a most perfect
+view.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Of what, pray?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Of itself; seeming to indicate that we, Leontion,
+who philosophize, should do the same.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Go on, go on! say what you please: I will not hate
+anything yet. Why have you torn up by the root all these
+little mountain ash-trees? This is the season of their beauty:
+come, Ternissa, let us make ourselves necklaces and armlets,
+such as may captivate old Sylvanus and Pan; you shall have
+your choice. But why have you torn them up?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> On the contrary, they were brought hither this
+morning. Sosimenes is spending large sums of money on an
+olive-ground, and has uprooted some hundreds of them, of all
+ages and sizes. I shall cover the rougher part of the hill with
+them, setting the clematis and vine and honeysuckle against
+them, to unite them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Oh, what a pleasant thing it is to walk in the green
+light of the vine trees, and to breathe the sweet odour of their
+invisible flowers!</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> The scent of them is so delicate that it requires a
+sigh to inhale it; and this, being accompanied and followed by
+enjoyment, renders the fragrance so exquisite. Ternissa, it is
+this, my sweet friend, that made you remember the green light
+of the foliage, and think of the invisible flowers as you would
+of some blessing from heaven.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> I see feathers flying at certain distances just above
+the middle of the promontory: what can they mean?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Cannot you imagine them to be the feathers from
+the wings of Zethes and Cal&auml;is, who came hither out of Thrace
+to behold the favourite haunts of their mother Oreithyia?
+From the precipice that hangs over the sea a few paces from the
+pinasters she is reported to have been carried off by Boreas;
+and these remains of the primeval forest have always been held
+sacred on that belief.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> The story is an idle one.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Oh no, Leontion! the story is very true.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Indeed!</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> I have heard not only odes, but sacred and most
+ancient hymns upon it; and the voice of Boreas is often audible
+here, and the screams of Oreithyia.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> The feathers, then, really may belong to Cal&auml;is and
+Zethes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> I don&#8217;t believe it; the winds would have carried
+them away.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> The gods, to manifest their power, as they often
+do by miracles, could as easily fix a feather eternally on the
+most tempestuous promontory, as the mark of their feet upon
+the flint.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> They could indeed; but we know the one to a certainty,
+and have no such authority for the other. I have seen
+these pinasters from the extremity of the Piraeus, and have heard
+mention of the altar raised to Boreas: where is it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> As it stands in the centre of the platform, we cannot
+see it from hence; there is the only piece of level ground in the
+place.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Ternissa intends the altar to prove the truth of
+the story.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Ternissa is slow to admit that even the young can
+deceive, much less the old; the gay, much less the serious.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> It is as wise to moderate our belief as our desires.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Some minds require much belief, some thrive on
+little. Rather an exuberance of it is feminine and beautiful.
+It acts differently on different hearts; it troubles some, it
+consoles others; in the generous it is the nurse of tenderness and
+kindness, of heroism and self-devotion; in the ungenerous it
+fosters pride, impatience of contradiction and appeal, and, like
+some waters, what it finds a dry stick or hollow straw, it leaves
+a stone.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> We want it chiefly to make the way of death an
+easy one.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> There is no easy path leading out of life, and few
+are the easy ones that lie within it. I would adorn and smoothen
+the declivity, and make my residence as commodious as its
+situation and dimensions may allow; but principally I would
+cast under-foot the empty fear of death.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Oh, how can you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> By many arguments already laid down: then
+by thinking that some perhaps, in almost every age, have been
+timid and delicate as Ternissa; and yet have slept soundly,
+have felt no parent&#8217;s or friend&#8217;s tear upon their faces, no throb
+against their breasts: in short, have been in the calmest of all
+possible conditions, while those around were in the most
+deplorable and desperate.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> It would pain me to die, if it were only at the idea
+that any one I love would grieve too much for me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Let the loss of our friends be our only grief, and
+the apprehension of displeasing them our only fear.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> No apostrophes! no interjections! Your argument
+was unsound; your means futile.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Tell me, then, whether the horse of a rider on the
+road should not be spurred forward if he started at a shadow.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Yes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I thought so: it would, however, be better to guide
+him quietly up to it, and to show him that it was one. Death
+is less than a shadow: it represents nothing, even imperfectly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Then at the best what is it? why care about it,
+think about it, or remind us that it must befall us? Would you
+take the same trouble, when you see my hair entwined with
+ivy, to make me remember that, although the leaves are green
+and pliable, the stem is fragile and rough, and that before I go
+to bed I shall have many knots and entanglements to extricate?
+Let me have them; but let me not hear of them until the time is
+come.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I would never think of death as an embarrassment,
+but as a blessing.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> How? a blessing?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> What, if it makes our enemies cease to hate us?
+what, if it makes our friends love us the more?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Us? According to your doctrine we shall not exist
+at all.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I spoke of that which is consolatory while we are
+here, and of that which in plain reason ought to render us
+contented to stay no longer. You, Leontion, would make
+others better; and better they certainly will be, when their
+hostilities languish in an empty field, and their rancour is tired
+with treading upon dust. The generous affections stir about us
+at the dreary hour of death, as the blossoms of the Median apple
+swell and diffuse their fragrance in the cold.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> I cannot bear to think of passing the Styx, lest
+Charon should touch me; he is so old and wilful, so cross and ugly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Ternissa! Ternissa! I would accompany you
+thither, and stand between. Would you not too, Leontion?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> I don&#8217;t know.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Oh, that we could go together!</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Indeed!</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> All three, I mean&mdash;I said&mdash;or was going to say it.
+How ill-natured you are, Leontion, to misinterpret me; I could
+almost cry.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Do not, do not, Ternissa! Should that tear drop
+from your eyelash you would look less beautiful.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> If it is well to conquer a world, it is better to
+conquer two.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> That is what Alexander of Macedon wept because
+he could not accomplish.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Ternissa! we three can accomplish it; or any one
+of us.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> How? pray!</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> We can conquer this world and the next; for you
+will have another, and nothing should be refused you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> The next by piety: but this, in what manner?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> By indifference to all who are indifferent to us;
+by taking joyfully the benefit that comes spontaneously; by
+wishing no more intensely for what is a hair&#8217;s-breadth beyond
+our reach than for a draught of water from the Ganges; and by
+fearing nothing in another life.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> This, O Epicurus! is the grand impossibility.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Do you believe the gods to be as benevolent and
+good as you are? or do you not?</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Much kinder, much better in every way.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Would you kill or hurt the sparrow that you keep
+in your little dressing-room with a string around the leg, because
+he hath flown where you did not wish him to fly?</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> No! it would be cruel; the string about the leg of
+so little and weak a creature is enough.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> You think so; I think so; God thinks so. This I
+may say confidently; for whenever there is a sentiment in which
+strict justice and pure benevolence unite, it must be His.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> O Epicurus! when you speak thus&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Well, Ternissa, what then?</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> When Epicurus teaches us such sentiments as
+these, I am grieved that he has not so great an authority with
+the Athenians as some others have.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> You will grieve more, I suspect, my Ternissa, when
+he possesses that authority.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> What will he do?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Why turn pale? I am not about to answer that
+he will forget or leave you. No; but the voice comes deepest
+from the sepulchre, and a great name hath its root in the dead
+body. If you invited a company to a feast, you might as well
+place round the table live sheep and oxen and vases of fish and
+cages of quails, as you would invite a company of friendly hearers
+to the philosopher who is yet living. One would imagine that
+the iris of our intellectual eye were lessened by the glory of
+his presence, and that, like eastern kings, he could be looked
+at near only when his limbs are stiff, by waxlight, in close
+curtains.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> One of whom we know little leaves us a ring or
+other token of remembrance, and we express a sense of pleasure
+and of gratitude; one of whom we know nothing writes a book,
+the contents of which might (if we would let them) have done
+us more good and might have given us more pleasure, and we
+revile him for it. The book may do what the legacy cannot;
+it may be pleasurable and serviceable to others as well as
+ourselves: we would hinder this too. In fact, all other love
+is extinguished by self-love: beneficence, humanity, justice,
+philosophy, sink under it. While we insist that we are looking
+for Truth, we commit a falsehood. It never was the first
+object with any one, and with few the second.</p>
+
+<p>Feed unto replenishment your quieter fancies, my sweetest
+little Ternissa! and let the gods, both youthful and aged, both
+gentle and boisterous, administer to them hourly on these
+sunny downs: what can they do better?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> But those feathers, Ternissa, what god&#8217;s may
+they be? since you will not pick them up, nor restore them to
+Cal&auml;is nor to Zethes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> I do not think they belong to any god whatever;
+and shall never be persuaded of it unless Epicurus says it is so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> O unbelieving creature! do you reason against the
+immortals?</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> It was yourself who doubted, or appeared to doubt,
+the flight of Oreithyia. By admitting too much we endanger
+our religion. Beside, I think I discern some upright stakes at
+equal distances, and am pretty sure the feathers are tied to them
+by long strings.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> You have guessed the truth.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Of what use are they there?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> If you have ever seen the foot of a statue broken
+off just below the ankle, you have then, Leontion and Ternissa,
+seen the form of the ground about us. The lower extremities
+of it are divided into small ridges, as you will perceive if you
+look around; and these are covered with corn, olives, and vines.
+At the upper part, where cultivation ceases, and where those
+sheep and goats are grazing, begins my purchase. The ground
+rises gradually unto near the summit, where it grows somewhat
+steep, and terminates in a precipice. Across the middle I have
+traced a line, denoted by those feathers, from one dingle to
+the other; the two terminations of my intended garden. The
+distance is nearly a thousand paces, and the path, perfectly on
+a level, will be two paces broad, so that I may walk between
+you; but another could not join us conveniently. From this
+there will be several circuitous and spiral, leading by the easiest
+ascent to the summit; and several more, to the road along the
+cultivation underneath: here will, however, be but one entrance.
+Among the projecting fragments and the massive stones yet
+standing of the boundary-wall, which old pomegranates imperfectly
+defend, and which my neighbour has guarded more
+effectively against invasion, there are hillocks of crumbling
+mould, covered in some places with a variety of moss; in others
+are elevated tufts, or dim labyrinths of eglantine.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Where will you place the statues? for undoubtedly
+you must have some.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I will have some models for statues. Pygmalion
+prayed the gods to give life to the image he adored: I will not
+pray them to give marble to mine. Never may I lay my wet
+cheek upon the foot under which is inscribed the name of
+Leontion or Ternissa!</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Do not make us melancholy; never let us think
+that the time can come when we shall lose our friends. Glory,
+literature, philosophy have this advantage over friendship:
+remove one object from them, and others fill the void; remove
+one from friendship, one only, and not the earth nor the universality
+of worlds, no, nor the intellect that soars above and
+comprehends them, can replace it!</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Dear Leontion! always amiable, always graceful!
+How lovely do you now appear to me! what beauteous action
+accompanied your words!</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> I used none whatever.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> That white arm was then, as it is now, over the
+shoulder of Ternissa; and her breath imparted a fresh bloom
+to your cheek, a new music to your voice. No friendship is
+so cordial or so delicious as that of girl for girl; no hatred so
+intense and immovable as that of woman for woman. In youth
+you love one above the others of your sex; in riper age you hate
+all, more or less, in proportion to similarity of accomplishments
+and pursuits&mdash;which sometimes (I wish it were oftener) are
+bonds of union to man. In us you more easily pardon faults
+than excellences in each other. <i>Your</i> tempers are such, my
+beloved scholars, that even this truth does not ruffle them; and
+such is your affection, that I look with confidence to its unabated
+ardour at twenty.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Oh, then I am to love Ternissa almost fifteen
+months!</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> And I am destined to survive the loss of it three
+months above four years!</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Incomparable creatures! may it be eternal! In
+loving ye shall follow no example; ye shall step securely over
+the iron rule laid down for others by the Destinies, and <i>you</i>
+for ever be Leontion, and <i>you</i> Ternissa.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Then indeed we should not want statues.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> But men, who are vainer creatures, would be good
+for nothing without them: they must be flattered even by the
+stones.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Very true. Neither the higher arts nor the civic
+virtues can flourish extensively without the statues of illustrious
+men. But gardens are not the places for them. Sparrows,
+wooing on the general&#8217;s truncheon (unless he be such a general
+as one of ours in the last war), and snails besliming the emblems
+of the poet, do not remind us worthily of their characters.
+Porticos are their proper situations, and those the most
+frequented. Even there they may lose all honour and distinction,
+whether from the thoughtlessness of magistrates or
+from the malignity of rivals. Our own city, the least exposed
+of any to the effects of either, presents us a disheartening
+example. When the Thebans in their jealousy condemned
+Pindar to the payment of a fine for having praised the Athenians
+too highly, our citizens erected a statue of bronze to him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Jealousy of Athens made the Thebans fine him;
+and jealousy of Thebes made the Athenians thus record it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> And jealousy of Pindar, I suspect, made some poet
+persuade the archons to render the distinction a vile and
+worthless one, by placing his effigy near a king&#8217;s&mdash;one Evagoras
+of Cyprus.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Evagoras, I think I remember to have read in the
+inscription, was rewarded in this manner for his reception of
+Conon, defeated by the Lacedemonians.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Gratitude was due to him, and some such memorial
+to record it. External reverence should be paid unsparingly to
+the higher magistrates of every country who perform their
+offices exemplarily; yet they are not on this account to be placed
+in the same degree with men of primary genius. They never
+exalt the human race, and rarely benefit it; and their benefits
+are local and transitory, while those of a great writer are universal
+and eternal.</p>
+
+<p>If the gods did indeed bestow on us a portion of their fire,
+they seem to have lighted it in sport and left it; the harder
+task and the nobler is performed by that genius who raises it
+clear and glowing from its embers, and makes it applicable to
+the purposes that dignify or delight our nature. I have ever
+said, &#8216;Reverence the rulers.&#8217; Let, then, his image stand; but
+stand apart from Pindar&#8217;s. Pallas and Jove! defend me from
+being carried down the stream of time among a shoal of royalets,
+and the rootless weeds they are hatched on!</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> So much piety would deserve the exemption, even
+though your writings did not hold out the decree.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Child, the compliment is ill turned: if you are
+ironical, as you must be on the piety of Epicurus, Atticism
+requires that you should continue to be so, at least to the end
+of the sentence.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Irony is my abhorrence. Epicurus may appear
+less pious than some others, but I am certain he is more; otherwise
+the gods would never have given him&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> What? what? let us hear!</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Leontion!</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Silly girl! Were there any hibiscus or broom growing
+near at hand, I would send him away and whip you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> There is fern, which is better.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> I was not speaking to you: but now you shall have
+something to answer for yourself. Although you admit no
+statues in the country, you might at least, methinks, have
+discovered a retirement with a fountain in it: here I see not
+even a spring.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Fountain I can hardly say there is; but on the
+left there is a long crevice or chasm, which we have never yet
+visited, and which we cannot discern until we reach it. This
+is full of soft mould, very moist, and many high reeds and canes
+are growing there; and the rock itself too drips with humidity
+along it, and is covered with more tufted moss and more variegated
+lichens. This crevice, with its windings and sinuosities,
+is about four hundred paces long, and in many parts eleven,
+twelve, thirteen feet wide, but generally six or seven. I shall
+plant it wholly with lilies of the valley, leaving the irises which
+occupy the sides as well as the clefts, and also those other
+flowers of paler purple, from the autumnal cups of which we
+collect the saffron; and forming a narrow path of such turf as I
+can find there, or rather following it as it creeps among the bays
+and hazels and sweet-brier, which had fallen at different times
+from the summit and are now grown old, with an infinity of
+primroses at the roots. There are nowhere twenty steps without
+a projection and a turn, nor in any ten together is the chasm
+of the same width or figure. Hence the ascent in its windings
+is easy and imperceptible quite to the termination, where the
+rocks are somewhat high and precipitous; at the entrance they
+lose themselves in privet and elder, and you must make your
+way between them through the canes. Do not you remember
+where I carried you both across the muddy hollow in the
+footpath?</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Leontion does.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> That place is always wet; not only in this month
+of Puanepsion,<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> which we are beginning to-day, but in midsummer.
+The water that causes it comes out a little way above
+it, but originates from the crevice, which I will cover at top with
+rose-laurel and mountain-ash, with clematis and vine; and I
+will intercept the little rill in its wandering, draw it from its
+concealment, and place it like Bacchus under the protection
+of the nymphs, who will smile upon it in its marble cradle,
+which at present I keep at home.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Leontion, why do you turn away your face? have
+the nymphs smiled upon you in it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> I bathed in it once, if you must know, Ternissa!
+Why now, Ternissa, why do you turn away yours? have the
+nymphs frowned upon you for invading their secrets?</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Epicurus, you are in the right to bring it away
+from Athens, from under the eye of Pallas: she might be angry.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> You approve of its removal then, my lovely friend?</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Mightily. [<i>Aside.</i>] I wish it may break in pieces
+on the road.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> What did you say?</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> I wish it were now on the road, that I might try
+whether it would hold me&mdash;I mean with my clothes on.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> It would hold you, and one a span longer. I
+have another in the house; but it is not decorated with fauns
+and satyrs and foliage, like this.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> I remember putting my hand upon the frightful
+satyr&#8217;s head, to leap in: it seems made for the purpose. But
+the sculptor needed not to place the naiad quite so near&mdash;he
+must have been a very impudent man; it is impossible to look
+for a moment at such a piece of workmanship.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> For shame! Leontion!&mdash;why, what was it? I do
+not desire to know.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I don&#8217;t remember it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Nor I neither; only the head.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I shall place the satyr toward the rock, that you
+may never see him, Ternissa.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Very right; he cannot turn round.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> The poor naiad had done it, in vain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> All these labourers will soon finish the plantation,
+if you superintend them, and are not appointed to some
+magistrature.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Those who govern us are pleased at seeing a
+philosopher out of the city, and more still at finding in a season
+of scarcity forty poor citizens, who might become seditious,
+made happy and quiet by such employment.</p>
+
+<p>Two evils, of almost equal weight, may befall the man of
+erudition: never to be listened to, and to be listened to always.
+Aware of these, I devote a large portion of my time and labours
+to the cultivation of such minds as flourish best in cities, where
+my garden at the gate, although smaller than this, we find
+sufficiently capacious. There I secure my listeners; here my
+thoughts and imaginations have their free natural current, and
+tarry or wander as the will invites: may it ever be among those
+dearest to me!&mdash;those whose hearts possess the rarest and
+divinest faculty, of retaining or forgetting at option what ought
+to be forgotten or retained.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> The whole ground then will be covered with trees
+and shrubs?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> There are some protuberances in various parts of
+the eminence, which you do not perceive till you are upon them
+or above them. They are almost level at the top, and overgrown
+with fine grass; for they catch the better soil brought
+down in small quantities by the rains. These are to be left
+unplanted: so is the platform under the pinasters, whence there
+is a prospect of the city, the harbour, the isle of Salamis, and
+the territory of Megara. &#8216;What then!&#8217; cried Sosimenes, &#8216;you
+would hide from your view my young olives, and the whole
+length of the new wall I have been building at my own expense
+between us! and, when you might see at once the whole of
+Attica, you will hardly see more of it than I could buy.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> I do not perceive the new wall, for which Sosimenes,
+no doubt, thinks himself another Pericles.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Those old junipers quite conceal it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> They look warm and sheltering; but I like the rose-laurels
+much better: and what a thicket of them here is!</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Leaving all the larger, I shall remove many
+thousands of them; enough to border the greater part of the
+walk, intermixed with roses.</p>
+
+<p>There is an infinity of other plants and flowers, or weeds as
+Sosimenes calls them, of which he has cleared his oliveyard,
+and which I shall adopt. Twenty of his slaves came in
+yesterday, laden with hyacinths and narcissi, anemones and
+jonquils. &#8216;The curses of our vineyards,&#8217; cried he, &#8216;and good
+neither for man nor beast. I have another estate infested with
+lilies of the valley: I should not wonder if you accepted these
+too.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;And with thanks,&#8217; answered I.</p>
+
+<p>The whole of his remark I could not collect: he turned aside,
+and (I believe) prayed. I only heard &#8216;Pallas&#8217;&mdash;&#8216;Father&#8217;&mdash;&#8216;sound
+mind&#8217;&mdash;&#8216;inoffensive man&#8217;&mdash;&#8216;good neighbour&#8217;. As we
+walked together I perceived him looking grave, and I could not
+resist my inclination to smile as I turned my eyes toward him.
+He observed it, at first with unconcern, but by degrees some
+doubts arose within him, and he said, &#8216;Epicurus, you have been
+throwing away no less than half a talent on this sorry piece of
+mountain, and I fear you are about to waste as much in labour:
+for nothing was ever so terrible as the price we are obliged to
+pay the workman, since the conquest of Persia and the increase
+of luxury in our city. Under three obols none will do his day&#8217;s
+work. But what, in the name of all the deities, could induce
+you to plant those roots, which other people dig up and throw
+away?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;I have been doing,&#8217; said I, &#8216;the same thing my whole life
+through, Sosimenes!&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;How!&#8217; cried he; &#8216;I never knew that.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Those very doctrines,&#8217; added I, &#8216;which others hate and
+extirpate, I inculcate and cherish. They bring no riches, and
+therefore are thought to bring no advantage; to me, they appear
+the more advantageous for that reason. They give us immediately
+what we solicit through the means of wealth. We toil
+for the wealth first; and then it remains to be proved whether
+we can purchase with it what we look for. Now, to carry our
+money to the market, and not to find in the market our money&#8217;s
+worth, is great vexation; yet much greater has already preceded,
+in running up and down for it among so many competitors, and
+through so many thieves.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>After a while he rejoined, &#8216;You really, then, have not overreached
+me?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;In what, my friend?&#8217; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;These roots,&#8217; he answered, &#8216;may perhaps be good and saleable
+for some purpose. Shall you send them into Persia? or
+whither?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Sosimenes, I shall make love-potions of the flowers.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> O Epicurus! should it ever be known in Athens
+that they are good for this, you will not have, with all your
+fences of prunes and pomegranates, and precipices with brier
+upon them, a single root left under ground after the month of
+Elaphebolion.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> It is not every one that knows the preparation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Everybody will try it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> And you, too, Ternissa?</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Will you teach me?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> This, and anything else I know. We must walk
+together when they are in flower.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> And can you teach me, then?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I teach by degrees.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> By very slow ones, Epicurus! I have no patience
+with you; tell us directly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> It is very material what kind of recipient you
+bring with you. Enchantresses use a brazen one; silver and
+gold are employed in other arts.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> I will bring any.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> My mother has a fine golden one. She will lend
+it me; she allows me everything.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Leontion and Ternissa, those eyes of yours brighten
+at inquiry, as if they carried a light within them for a guidance.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> No flattery!</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> No flattery! Come, teach us!</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Will you hear me through in silence?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> We promise.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Sweet girls! the calm pleasures, such as I hope
+you will ever find in your walks among these gardens, will
+improve your beauty, animate your discourse, and correct the
+little that may hereafter rise up for correction in your dispositions.
+The smiling ideas left in our bosoms from our
+infancy, that many plants are the favourites of the gods, and
+that others were even the objects of their love&mdash;having once
+been invested with the human form, beautiful and lively and
+happy as yourselves&mdash;give them an interest beyond the vision;
+yes, and a station&mdash;let me say it&mdash;on the vestibule of our affections.
+Resign your ingenuous hearts to simple pleasures; and
+there is none in man, where men are Attic, that will not follow
+and outstrip their movements.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> O Epicurus!</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> What said Ternissa?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Some of those anemones, I do think, must be still
+in blossom. Ternissa&#8217;s golden cup is at home; but she has
+brought with her a little vase for the filter&mdash;and has filled it
+to the brim. Do not hide your head behind my shoulder,
+Ternissa; no, nor in my lap.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Yes, there let it lie&mdash;the lovelier for that tendril
+of sunny brown hair upon it. How it falls and rises! Which
+is the hair? which the shadow?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Let the hair rest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I must not, perhaps, clasp the shadow!</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> You philosophers are fond of such unsubstantial
+things. Oh, you have taken my volume! This is deceit.</p>
+
+<p>You live so little in public, and entertain such a contempt
+for opinion, as to be both indifferent and ignorant what it is
+that people blame you for.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I know what it is I should blame myself for, if I
+attended to them. Prove them to be wiser and more disinterested
+in their wisdom than I am, and I will then go down
+to them and listen to them. When I have well considered a
+thing, I deliver it&mdash;regardless of what those think who neither
+take the time nor possess the faculty of considering anything
+well, and who have always lived far remote from the scope of
+our speculations.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> In the volume you snatched away from me so slyly,
+I have defended a position of yours which many philosophers
+turn into ridicule&mdash;namely, that politeness is among the
+virtues. I wish you yourself had spoken more at large upon
+the subject.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> It is one upon which a lady is likely to display
+more ingenuity and discernment. If philosophers have ridiculed
+my sentiment, the reason is, it is among those virtues which in
+general they find most difficult to assume or counterfeit.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Surely life runs on the smoother for this equability
+and polish; and the gratification it affords is more extensive
+than is afforded even by the highest virtue. Courage, on nearly
+all occasions, inflicts as much of evil as it imparts of good. It
+may be exerted in defence of our country, in defence of those
+who love us, in defence of the harmless and the helpless; but those
+against whom it is thus exerted may possess an equal share of it.
+If they succeed, then manifestly the ill it produces is greater
+than the benefit; if they succumb, it is nearly as great. For
+many of their adversaries are first killed and maimed, and many
+of their own kindred are left to lament the consequences of
+the aggression.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> You have spoken first of courage, as that virtue
+which attracts your sex principally.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Not me; I am always afraid of it. I love those
+best who can tell me the most things I never knew before, and
+who have patience with me, and look kindly while they teach
+me, and almost as if they were waiting for fresh questions. Now
+let me hear directly what you were about to say to Leontion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I was proceeding to remark that temperance comes
+next; and temperance has then its highest merit when it is the
+support of civility and politeness. So that I think I am right
+and equitable in attributing to politeness a distinguished rank,
+not among the ornaments of life, but among the virtues. And
+you, Leontion and Ternissa, will have leaned the more propensely
+toward this opinion, if you considered, as I am sure you
+did, that the peace and concord of families, friends, and cities
+are preserved by it; in other terms, the harmony of the world.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Leontion spoke of courage, you of temperance;
+the next great virtue, in the division made by the philosophers,
+is justice.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Temperance includes it; for temperance is imperfect
+if it is only an abstinence from too much food, too much
+wine, too much conviviality or other luxury. It indicates
+every kind of forbearance. Justice is forbearance from what
+belongs to another. Giving to this one rightly what that one
+would hold wrongfully in magistrature not in the abstract,
+and is only a part of its office. The perfectly temperate man is
+also the perfectly just man; but the perfectly just man (as
+philosophers now define him) may not be the perfectly temperate
+one. I include the less in the greater.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> We hear of judges, and upright ones too, being
+immoderate eaters and drinkers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> The Lacedemonians are temperate in food and
+courageous in battle; but men like these, if they existed in
+sufficient numbers, would devastate the universe. We alone,
+we Athenians, with less military skill perhaps, and certainly
+less rigid abstinence from voluptuousness and luxury, have set
+before it the only grand example of social government and of
+polished life. From us the seed is scattered; from us flow the
+streams that irrigate it; and ours are the hands, O Leontion,
+that collect it, cleanse it, deposit it, and convey and distribute it
+sound and weighty through every race and age. Exhausted
+as we are by war, we can do nothing better than lie down and
+doze while the weather is fine overhead, and dream (if we can)
+that we are affluent and free.</p>
+
+<p>O sweet sea air! how bland art thou and refreshing! Breathe
+upon Leontion! breathe upon Ternissa! bring them health and
+spirits and serenity, many springs and many summers, and
+when the vine-leaves have reddened and rustle under their feet!</p>
+
+<p>These, my beloved girls, are the children of Eternity: they
+played around Theseus and the beauteous Amazon; they gave
+to Pallas the bloom of Venus, and to Venus the animation of
+Pallas. Is it not better to enjoy by the hour their soft, salubrious
+influence, than to catch by fits the rancid breath of demagogues;
+than to swell and move under it without or against our will;
+than to acquire the semblance of eloquence by the bitterness of
+passion, the tone of philosophy by disappointment, or the credit
+of prudence by distrust? Can fortune, can industry, can
+desert itself, bestow on us anything we have not here?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> And when shall those three meet? The gods have
+never united them, knowing that men would put them asunder
+at the first appearance.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I am glad to leave the city as often as possible,
+full as it is of high and glorious reminiscences, and am inclined
+much rather to indulge in quieter scenes, whither the Graces
+and Friendship lead me. I would not contend even with men
+able to contend with me. You, Leontion, I see, think differently,
+and have composed at last your long-meditated work against
+the philosophy of Theophrastus.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Why not? he has been praised above his merits.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> My Leontion! you have inadvertently given me
+the reason and origin of all controversial writings. They flow
+not from a love of truth or a regard for science, but from
+envy and ill-will. Setting aside the evil of malignity&mdash;always
+hurtful to ourselves, not always to others&mdash;there is weakness
+in the argument you have adduced. When a writer is praised
+above his merits in his own times, he is certain of being estimated
+below them in the times succeeding. Paradox is dear to most
+people: it bears the appearance of originality, but is usually the
+talent of the superficial, the perverse, and the obstinate.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is more gratifying than the attention you are
+bestowing on me, which you always apportion to the seriousness
+of my observations.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> I dislike Theophrastus for his affected contempt
+of your doctrines.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Unreasonably, for the contempt of them; reasonably,
+if affected. Good men may differ widely from me, and
+wiser ones misunderstand me; for, their wisdom having raised
+up to them schools of their own, they have not found leisure
+to converse with me; and from others they have received a
+partial and inexact report. My opinion is, that certain things
+are indifferent and unworthy of pursuit or attention, as lying
+beyond our research and almost our conjecture; which things
+the generality of philosophers (for the generality are speculative)
+deem of the first importance. Questions relating to them I
+answer evasively, or altogether decline. Again, there are modes
+of living which are suitable to some and unsuitable to others.
+What I myself follow and embrace, what I recommend to the
+studious, to the irritable, to the weak in health, would ill agree
+with the commonality of citizens. Yet my adversaries cry out:
+&#8216;Such is the opinion and practice of Epicurus!&#8217; For instance,
+I have never taken a wife, and never will take one; but he from
+among the mass, who should avow his imitation of my example,
+would act as wisely and more religiously in saying that he chose
+celibacy because Pallas had done the same.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> If Pallas had many such votaries she would soon
+have few citizens to supply them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> And extremely bad ones, if all followed me in
+retiring from the offices of magistracy and of war. Having
+seen that the most sensible men are the most unhappy, I could
+not but examine the causes of it; and, finding that the same
+sensibility to which they are indebted for the activity of their
+intellect is also the restless mover of their jealousy and ambition,
+I would lead them aside from whatever operates upon these,
+and throw under their feet the terrors their imagination has
+created. My philosophy is not for the populace nor for the
+proud: the ferocious will never attain it; the gentle will embrace
+it, but will not call it mine. I do not desire that they should:
+let them rest their heads upon that part of the pillow which
+they find the softest, and enjoy their own dreams unbroken.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> The old are all against you, Epicurus, the name of
+pleasure is an affront to them: they know no other kind of it
+than that which has flowered and seeded, and of which the
+withered stems have indeed a rueful look.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Unhappily the aged are retentive of long-acquired
+maxims, and insensible to new impressions, whether from fancy
+or from truth: in fact, their eyes blend the two together. Well
+might the poet tell us:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fewer the gifts that gnarled Age presents</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To elegantly-handed Infancy,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Than elegantly-handed Infancy</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Presents to gnarled Age. From both they drop;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The middle course of life receives them all,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Save the light few that laughing Youth runs off with,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Unvalued as a mistress or a flower.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Since, in obedience to your institutions, O Epicurus,
+I must not say I am angry, I am offended at least with Theophrastus
+for having so misrepresented your opinions, on the
+necessity of keeping the mind composed and tranquil, and
+remote from every object and every sentiment by which a
+painful sympathy may be excited. In order to display his
+elegance of language, he runs wherever he can lay a censure on
+you, whether he believes in its equity or not.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> This is the case with all eloquent men, and all
+disputants. Truth neither warms nor elevates them, neither
+obtains for them profit nor applause.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> I have heard wise remarks very often and very
+warmly praised.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Not for the truth in them, but for the grace, or
+because they touched the spring of some preconception or some
+passion. Man is a hater of truth, a lover of fiction.</p>
+
+<p>Theophrastus is a writer of many acquirements and some
+shrewdness, usually judicious, often somewhat witty, always
+elegant; his thoughts are never confused, his sentences are
+never incomprehensible. If Aristoteles thought more highly
+of him than his due, surely you ought not to censure Theophrastus
+with severity on the supposition of his rating me below
+mine; unless you argue that a slight error in a short sum is less
+pardonable than in a longer. Had Aristoteles been living,
+and had he given the same opinion of me, your friendship and
+perhaps my self-love might have been wounded; for, if on one
+occasion he spoke too favourably, he never spoke unfavourably
+but with justice. This is among the indications of orderly and
+elevated minds; and here stands the barrier that separates them
+from the common and the waste. Is a man to be angry because
+an infant is fretful? Is a philosopher to unpack and throw
+away his philosophy, because an idiot has tried to overturn it
+on the road, and has pursued it with gibes and ribaldry?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Theophrastus would persuade us that, according
+to your system, we not only should decline the succour of the
+wretched, but avoid the sympathies that poets and historians
+would awaken in us. Probably for the sake of introducing
+some idle verses, written by a friend of his, he says that, following
+the guidance of Epicurus, we should altogether shun the theatre;
+and not only when Prometheus and Oedipus and Philoctetes
+are introduced, but even when generous and kindly sentiments
+are predominant, if they partake of that tenderness which
+belongs to pity. I know not what Thracian lord recovers his
+daughter from her ravisher; such are among the words they
+exchange:</p>
+
+<p><i>Father.</i></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Insects that dwell in rotten reeds, inert</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Upon the surface of a stream or pool,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Then rush into the air on meshy vans,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Are not so different in their varying lives</span><br />
+<span class="i0">As we are.&mdash;Oh! what father on this earth,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Holding his child&#8217;s cool cheek within his palms</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And kissing his fair front, would wish him man?&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Inheritor of wants and jealousies,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of labour, of ambition, of distress,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And, cruellest of all the passions, lust.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Who that behold me, persecuted, scorned,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A wanderer, e&#8217;er could think what friends were mine,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">How numerous, how devoted? with what glee</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Smiled my old house, with what acclaim my courts</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Rang from without whene&#8217;er my war-horse neighed?</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Daughter.</i></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thy fortieth birthday is not shouted yet</span><br />
+<span class="i0">By the young peasantry, with rural gifts</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And nightly fires along the pointed hills,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Yet do thy temples glitter with grey hair</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Scattered not thinly: ah, what sudden change!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Only thy voice and heart remain the same:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">No! that voice trembles, and that heart (I feel),</span><br />
+<span class="i0">While it would comfort and console me, breaks.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I would never close my bosom against the feelings
+of humanity; but I would calmly and well consider by what
+conduct of life they may enter it with the least importunity
+and violence. A consciousness that we have promoted the
+happiness of others, to the uttermost of our power, is certain
+not only to meet them at the threshold, but to bring them
+along with us, and to render them accurate and faithful
+prompters, when we bend perplexedly over the problem of evil
+figured by the tragedians. If there were more of pain than of
+pleasure in the exhibitions of the dramatist, no man in his
+senses would attend them twice. All the imitative arts have
+delight for the principal object: the first of these is poetry; the
+highest of poetry is tragic.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> The epic has been called so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Improperly; for the epic has much more in it of
+what is prosaic. Its magnitude is no argument. An Egyptian
+pyramid contains more materials than an Ionic temple, but
+requires less contrivance, and exhibits less beauty of design.
+My simile is yet a defective one; for a tragedy must be carried
+on with an unbroken interest, and, undecorated by loose foliage
+or fantastic branches, it must rise, like the palm-tree, with a
+lofty unity. On these matters I am unable to argue at large,
+or perhaps correctly; on those, however, which I have studied
+and treated, my terms are so explicit and clear, that Theophrastus
+can never have misunderstood them. Let me recall
+to your attention but two axioms.</p>
+
+<p>Abstinence from low pleasures is the only means of meriting
+or of obtaining the higher.</p>
+
+<p>Kindness in ourselves is the honey that blunts the sting of
+unkindness in another.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Explain to me, then, O Epicurus, why we suffer
+so much from ingratitude.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> We fancy we suffer from ingratitude, while in
+reality we suffer from self-love. Passion weeps while she says,
+&#8216;I did not deserve this from him&#8217;; Reason, while she says it,
+smoothens her brow at the clear fountain of the heart. Permit
+me also, like Theophrastus, to borrow a few words from a poet.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Borrow as many such as any one will entrust to
+you, and may Hermes prosper your commerce! Leontion may
+go to the theatre then; for she loves it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Girls! be the bosom friends of Antigone and Ismene;
+and you shall enter the wood of the Eumenides without shuddering,
+and leave it without the trace of a tear. Never did you
+appear so graceful to me, O Ternissa&mdash;no, not even after this
+walk do you&mdash;as when I saw you blow a fly from the forehead
+of Philoctetes in the propyl&euml;a. The wing, with which Sophocles
+and the statuary represent him, to drive away the summer
+insects in his agony, had wearied his flaccid arm, hanging down
+beside him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Do you imagine, then, I thought him a living man?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> The sentiment was both more delicate and more
+august from being indistinct. You would have done it, even
+if he <i>had</i> been a living man; even if he could have clasped you
+in his arms, imploring the deities to resemble you in gentleness,
+you would have done it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> He looked so abandoned by all, and so heroic, yet
+so feeble and so helpless! I did not think of turning around to
+see if any one was near me; or else, perhaps&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> If you could have thought of looking around, you
+would no longer have been Ternissa. The gods would have
+transformed you for it into some tree.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> And Epicurus had been walking under it this day,
+perhaps.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> With Leontion, the partner of his sentiments. But
+the walk would have been earlier or later than the present hour;
+since the middle of the day, like the middle of certain fruits, is
+good for nothing.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> For dinner, surely?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Dinner is a less gratification to me than to many:
+I dine alone.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Why?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> To avoid the noise, the heat, and the intermixture
+both of odours and of occupations. I cannot bear the indecency
+of speaking with a mouth in which there is food. I careen my
+body (since it is always in want of repair) in as unobstructed
+a space as I can, and I lie down and sleep awhile when the work
+is over.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Epicurus! although it would be very interesting,
+no doubt, to hear more of what you do after dinner&mdash;[<i>Aside to
+him.</i>] now don&#8217;t smile: I shall never forgive you if you say a
+single word&mdash;yet I would rather hear a little about the theatre,
+and whether you think at last that women should frequent it;
+for you have often said the contrary.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I think they should visit it rarely; not because it
+excites their affections, but because it deadens them. To me
+nothing is so odious as to be at once among the rabble and
+among the heroes, and, while I am receiving into my heart the
+most exquisite of human sensations, to feel upon my shoulder
+the hand of some inattentive and insensible young officer.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Oh, very bad indeed! horrible!</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> You quite fire at the idea.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Not I: I don&#8217;t care about it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Not about what is very bad indeed? quite horrible?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> I seldom go thither.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> The theatre is delightful when we erect it in our
+own house or arbour, and when there is but one spectator.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> You must lose the illusion in great part, if you
+only read the tragedy, which I fancy to be your meaning.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I lose the less of it. Do not imagine that the
+illusion is, or can be, or ought to be, complete. If it were
+possible, no Phalaris or Perillus could devise a crueller torture.
+Here are two imitations: first, the poet&#8217;s of the sufferer; secondly,
+the actor&#8217;s of both: poetry is superinduced. No man in pain
+ever uttered the better part of the language used by Sophocles.
+We admit it, and willingly, and are at least as much illuded by
+it as by anything else we hear or see upon the stage. Poets
+and statuaries and painters give us an adorned imitation of the
+object, so skilfully treated that we receive it for a correct one.
+This is the only illusion they aim at: this is the perfection of
+their arts.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Do you derive no pleasure from the representation
+of a consummate actor?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> High pleasure; but liable to be overturned in an
+instant: pleasure at the mercy of any one who sits beside me.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> In my treatise I have only defended your tenets
+against Theophrastus.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I am certain you have done it with spirit and
+eloquence, dear Leontion; and there are but two words in it I
+would wish you to erase.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Which are they?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Theophrastus and Epicurus. If you love me, you
+will do nothing that may make you uneasy when you grow
+older; nothing that may allow my adversary to say, &#8216;Leontion
+soon forgot her Epicurus.&#8217; My maxim is, never to defend my
+systems or paradoxes; if you undertake it, the Athenians will
+insist that I impelled you secretly, or that my philosophy and
+my friendship were ineffectual on you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> They shall never say that.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> I am not unmoved by the kindness of your intentions.
+Most people, and philosophers, too, among the rest,
+when their own conduct or opinions are questioned, are admirably
+prompt and dexterous in the science of defence; but when
+another&#8217;s are assailed, they parry with as ill a grace and faltering
+a hand as if they never had taken a lesson in it at home. Seldom
+will they see what they profess to look for; and, finding it, they
+pick up with it a thorn under the nail. They canter over the
+solid turf, and complain that there is no corn upon it; they
+canter over the corn, and curse the ridges and furrows. All
+schools of philosophy, and almost all authors, are rather to be
+frequented for exercise than for freight; but this exercise ought
+to acquire us health and strength, spirits and good-humour.
+There is none of them that does not supply some truth useful
+to every man, and some untruth equally so to the few that are
+able to wrestle with it. If there were no falsehood in the world,
+there would be no doubt; if there were no doubt, there would
+be no inquiry; if no inquiry, no wisdom, no knowledge, no genius:
+and Fancy herself would lie muffled up in her robe, inactive, pale,
+and bloated. I wish we could demonstrate the existence of
+utility in some other evils as easily as in this.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> My remarks on the conduct and on the style of
+Theophrastus are not confined to him solely. I have taken
+at last a general view of our literature, and traced as far as I
+am able its deviation and decline. In ancient works we sometimes
+see the mark of the chisel; in modern we might almost
+suppose that no chisel was employed at all, and that everything
+was done by grinding and rubbing. There is an ordinariness,
+an indistinctness, a generalization, not even to be found in a
+flock of sheep. As most reduce what is sand into dust, the few
+that avoid it run to a contrary extreme, and would force us to
+believe that what is original must be unpolished and uncouth.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> There have been in all ages, and in all there will
+be, sharp and slender heads made purposely and peculiarly for
+creeping into the crevices of our nature. While we contemplate
+the magnificence of the universe, and mensurate the fitness and
+adaptation of one part to another, the small philosopher hangs
+upon a hair or creeps within a wrinkle, and cries out shrilly
+from his elevation that we are blind and superficial. He discovers
+a wart, he pries into a pore; and he calls it knowledge of
+man. Poetry and criticism, and all the fine arts, have generated
+such living things, which not only will be co-existent with them
+but will (I fear) survive them. Hence history takes alternately
+the form of reproval and of panegyric; and science in its pulverized
+state, in its shapeless and colourless atoms, assumes the
+name of metaphysics. We find no longer the rich succulence
+of Herodotus, no longer the strong filament of Thucydides, but
+thoughts fit only for the slave, and language for the rustic and
+the robber. These writings can never reach posterity, nor serve
+better authors near us; for who would receive as documents the
+perversions of venality and party? Alexander we know was
+intemperate, and Philip both intemperate and perfidious: we
+require not a volume of dissertation on the thread of history,
+to demonstrate that one or other left a tailor&#8217;s bill unpaid, and
+the immorality of doing so; nor a supplement to ascertain on
+the best authorities which of the two it was. History should
+explain to us how nations rose and fell, what nurtured them in
+their growth, what sustained them in their maturity; not which
+orator ran swiftest through the crowd from the right hand to
+the left, which assassin was too strong for manacles, or which
+felon too opulent for crucifixion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> It is better, I own it, that such writers should amuse
+our idleness than excite our spleen.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> What is spleen?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Do not ask her; she cannot tell you. The spleen,
+Ternissa, is to the heart what Arimanes is to Oromazes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> I am little the wiser yet. Does he ever use such
+hard words with you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> He means the evil Genius and the good Genius,
+in the theogony of the Persians: and would perhaps tell you,
+as he hath told me, that the heart in itself is free from evil,
+but very capable of receiving and too tenacious of holding it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> In our moral system, the spleen hangs about the
+heart and renders it sad and sorrowful, unless we continually
+keep it in exercise by kind offices, or in its proper place by
+serious investigation and solitary questionings. Otherwise,
+it is apt to adhere and to accumulate, until it deadens the
+principles of sound action, and obscures the sight.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> It must make us very ugly when we grow old.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> In youth it makes us uglier, as not appertaining to
+it: a little more or less ugliness in decrepitude is hardly worth
+considering, there being quite enough of it from other quarters:
+I would stop it here, however.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Oh, what a thing is age!</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Death without death&#8217;s quiet.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Leontion said that even bad writers may amuse
+our idle hours: alas! even good ones do not much amuse mine,
+unless they record an action of love or generosity. As for the
+graver, why cannot they come among us and teach us, just as
+you do?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Would you wish it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> No, no! I do not want them: only I was imagining
+how pleasant it is to converse as we are doing, and how sorry
+I should be to pore over a book instead of it. Books always
+make me sigh, and think about other things. Why do you
+laugh, Leontion?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> She was mistaken in saying bad authors may amuse
+our idleness. Leontion knows not then how sweet and sacred
+idleness is.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> To render it sweet and sacred, the heart must have
+a little garden of its own, with its umbrage and fountains and
+perennial flowers&mdash;a careless company! Sleep is called sacred
+as well as sweet by Homer; and idleness is but a step from it.
+The idleness of the wise and virtuous should be both, it being the
+repose and refreshment necessary for past exertions and for
+future; it punishes the bad man, it rewards the good; the deities
+enjoy it, and Epicurus praises it. I was indeed wrong in my
+remark; for we should never seek amusement in the foibles of
+another, never in coarse language, never in low thoughts. When
+the mind loses its feeling for elegance, it grows corrupt and
+grovelling, and seeks in the crowd what ought to be found
+at home.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Aspasia believed so, and bequeathed to Leontion,
+with every other gift that Nature had bestowed upon her, the
+power of delivering her oracles from diviner lips.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> Fie! Epicurus! It is well you hide my face for me
+with your hand. Now take it away; we cannot walk in this
+manner.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> No word could ever fall from you without its weight;
+no breath from you ought to lose itself in the common air.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion.</i> For shame! What would you have?</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> He knows not what he would have nor what he
+would say. I must sit down again. I declare I scarcely
+understand a single syllable. Well, he is very good, to tease you
+no longer. Epicurus has an excellent heart; he would give pain
+to no one; least of all to you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Leontion,</i> I have pained him by this foolish book, and he would
+only assure me that he does not for a moment bear me malice.
+Take the volume; take it, Epicurus! tear it in pieces.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> No, Leontion! I shall often look with pleasure on
+this trophy of brave humanity; let me kiss the hand that
+raises it!</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> I am tired of sitting: I am quite stiff: when shall
+we walk homeward?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Take my arm, Ternissa!</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Oh! I had forgotten that I proposed to myself a
+trip as far up as the pinasters, to look at the precipice of
+Oreithyia. Come along! come along! how alert does the sea
+air make us! I seem to feel growing at my feet and shoulders
+the wings of Zethes or Cal&auml;is.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Leontion walks the nimblest to-day.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> To display her activity and strength, she runs
+before us. Sweet Leontion, how good she is! but she should
+have stayed for us: it would be in vain to try to overtake her.</p>
+
+<p>No, Epicurus! Mind! take care! you are crushing these little
+oleanders&mdash;and now the strawberry plants&mdash;the whole heap.
+Not I, indeed. What would my mother say, if she knew it?
+And Leontion! she will certainly look back.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> The fairest of the Eudaimones never look back:
+such are the Hours and Love, Opportunity and Leontion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> How could you dare to treat me in this manner?
+I did not say again I hated anything.</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Forgive me!</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Violent creature!</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> If tenderness is violence. Forgive me; and say
+you love me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> All at once? could you endure such boldness?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Pronounce it! whisper it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> Go, go. Would it be proper?</p>
+
+<p><i>Epicurus.</i> Is that sweet voice asking its heart or me? let the
+worthier give the answer.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ternissa.</i> O Epicurus! you are very, very dear to me;
+and are the last in the world that would ever tell you were
+called so.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> The Attic month of Puanepsion had its commencement in the latter
+days of October; its name is derived from <ins class="greek" title="puana">&#960;&#8059;&#945;&#957;&#945;</ins>, the legumes which were
+offered in sacrifice to Apollo at that season.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> The thirteenth of Elaphebolion was the tenth of April.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="DANTE_AND_BEATRICE" id="DANTE_AND_BEATRICE"></a>DANTE AND BEATRICE</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> When you saw me profoundly pierced with love, and
+reddening and trembling, did it become you, did it become you,
+you whom I have always called <i>the most gentle Bice</i>, to join in
+the heartless laughter of those girls around you? Answer me.
+Reply unhesitatingly. Requires it so long a space for dissimulation
+and duplicity? Pardon! pardon! pardon! My senses
+have left me; my heart being gone, they follow.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Childish man! pursuing the impossible.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> And was it this you laughed at? We cannot touch
+the hem of God&#8217;s garment; yet we fall at His feet and weep.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> But weep not, gentle Dante! fall not before the
+weakest of His creatures, willing to comfort, unable to relieve you.
+Consider a little. Is laughter at all times the signal or the
+precursor of derision? I smiled, let me avow it, from the pride
+I felt in your preference of me; and if I laughed, it was to conceal
+my sentiments. Did you never cover sweet fruit with worthless
+leaves? Come, do not drop again so soon so faint a smile.
+I will not have you grave, nor very serious. I pity you; I must
+not love you: if I might, I would.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Yet how much love is due to me, O Bice, who have
+loved you, as you well remember, even from your tenth year.
+But it is reported, and your words confirm it, that you are going
+to be married.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> If so, and if I could have laughed at that, and if
+my laughter could have estranged you from me, would you
+blame me?</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Tell me the truth.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> The report is general.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> The truth! the truth! Tell me, Bice.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Marriages, it is said, are made in heaven.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Is heaven then under the paternal roof?</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> It has been to me hitherto.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> And now you seek it elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> I seek it not. The wiser choose for the weaker.
+Nay, do not sigh so. What would you have, my grave pensive
+Dante? What can I do?</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Love me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> I always did.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Love me? O bliss of heaven!</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> No, no, no! Forbear! Men&#8217;s kisses are always
+mischievous and hurtful; everybody says it. If you truly
+loved me, you would never think of doing so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Nor even this!</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> You forget that you are no longer a boy; and that
+it is not thought proper at your time of life to continue the arm
+at all about the waist. Beside, I think you would better not
+put your head against my bosom; it beats too much to be
+pleasant to you. Why do you wish it? why fancy it can do you
+any good? It grows no cooler; it seems to grow even hotter.
+Oh, how it burns! Go, go; it hurts me too: it struggles, it aches,
+it sobs. Thank you, my gentle friend, for removing your brow
+away; your hair is very thick and long; and it began to heat me
+more than you can imagine. While it was there, I could not
+see your face so well, nor talk with you so quietly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Oh, when shall we talk quietly in future?</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> When I am married. I shall often come to visit
+my father. He has always been solitary since my mother&#8217;s
+death, which happened in my infancy, long before you knew me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> How can he endure the solitude of his house when
+you have left it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> The very question I asked him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> You did not then wish to ... to ... go away?</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Ah no! It is sad to be an outcast at fifteen.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> An outcast?</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Forced to leave a home.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> For another?</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Childhood can never have a second.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> But childhood is now over.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> I wonder who was so malicious as to tell my father
+that? He wanted me to be married a whole year ago.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> And, Bice, you hesitated?</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> No; I only wept. He is a dear good father. I never
+disobeyed him but in those wicked tears; and they ran the
+faster the more he reprehended them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Say, who is the happy youth?</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> I know not who ought to be happy if you are not.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> I?</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Surely you deserve all happiness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Happiness! any happiness is denied me. Ah, hours of
+childhood! bright hours! what fragrant blossoms ye unfold!
+what bitter fruits to ripen!</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Now cannot you continue to sit under that old
+fig-tree at the corner of the garden? It is always delightful
+to me to think of it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Again you smile: I wish I could smile too.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> You were usually more grave than I, although very
+often, two years ago, you told me I was the graver. Perhaps
+I <i>was</i> then indeed; and perhaps I ought to be now: but really
+I must smile at the recollection, and make you smile with me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Recollection of what in particular?</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Of your ignorance that a fig-tree is the brittlest of
+trees, especially when it is in leaf; and moreover of your tumble,
+when your head was just above the wall, and your hand (with
+the verses in it) on the very coping-stone. Nobody suspected
+that I went every day to the bottom of our garden, to hear you
+repeat your poetry on the other side; nobody but yourself;
+you soon found me out. But on that occasion I thought you
+might have been hurt; and I clambered up our high peach-tree
+in the grass plot nearest the place; and thence I saw Messer
+Dante, with his white sleeve reddened by the fig-juice, and the
+seeds sticking to it pertinaciously, and Messer blushing, and
+trying to conceal his calamity, and still holding the verses.
+They were all about me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Never shall any verse of mine be uttered from my lips,
+or from the lips of others, without the memorial of Bice.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Sweet Dante! in the purity of your soul shall Bice
+live; as (we are told by the goatherds and foresters) poor
+creatures have been found preserved in the serene and lofty
+regions of the Alps, many years after the breath of life had left
+them. Already you rival Guido Cavalcante and Cino da
+Pistoja: you must attempt, nor perhaps shall it be vainly, to
+surpass them in celebrity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> If ever I am above them ... and I must be ... I
+know already what angel&#8217;s hand will have helped me up the
+ladder. Beatrice, I vow to heaven, shall stand higher than
+Selvaggia, high and glorious and immortal as that name will
+be. You have given me joy and sorrow; for the worst of these
+(I will not say the least) I will confer on you all the generations
+of our Italy, all the ages of our world. But first (alas, from me
+you must not have it!) may happiness, long happiness, attend
+you!</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Ah, those words rend your bosom! why should they?</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> I could go away contented, or almost contented, were
+I sure of it. Hope is nearly as strong as despair, and greatly
+more pertinacious and enduring. You have made me see
+clearly that you never can be mine in this world: but at the
+same time, O Beatrice, you have made me see quite as clearly
+that you may and must be mine in another! I am older than
+you: precedency is given to age, and not to worthiness; I will
+pray for you when I am nearer to God, and purified from the
+stains of earth and mortality. He will permit me to behold
+you, lovely as when I left you. Angels in vain should call
+me onward.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Hush, sweetest Dante! hush!</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> It is there where I shall have caught the first glimpse
+of you again, that I wish all my portion of Paradise to be
+assigned me; and there, if far below you, yet within the sight of
+you, to establish my perdurable abode.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Is this piety? Is this wisdom? O Dante! And
+may not I be called away first?</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Alas, alas, how many small feet have swept off the
+early dew of life, leaving the path black behind them! But to
+think that you should go before me! It almost sends me
+forward on my way, to receive and welcome you. If indeed,
+O Beatrice, such should be God&#8217;s immutable will, sometimes
+look down on me when the song to Him is suspended. Oh!
+look often on me with prayer and pity; for there all prayers are
+accepted, and all pity is devoid of pain! Why are you silent?</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> It is very sinful not to love all creatures in the world.
+But it is true, O Dante! that we always love those the most
+who make us the most unhappy?</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> The remark, I fear, is just.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Then, unless the Virgin be pleased to change my
+inclinations, I shall begin at last to love my betrothed; for
+already the very idea of him renders me sad, wearisome, and
+comfortless. Yesterday he sent me a bunch of violets. When
+I took them up, delighted as I felt at that sweetest of odours,
+which you and I once inhaled together....</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> And only once.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> You know why. Be quiet now, and hear me.
+I dropped the posy; for around it, hidden by various kinds of
+foliage, was twined the bridal necklace of pearls. O Dante,
+how worthless are the finest of them (and there are many fine
+ones) in comparison with those little pebbles, some of which
+(for perhaps I may not have gathered up all) may be still lying
+under the peach-tree, and some (do I blush to say it?) under
+the fig! Tell me not who threw these, nor for what. But you
+know you were always thoughtful, and sometimes reading,
+sometimes writing, and sometimes forgetting me, while I waited
+to see the crimson cap, and the two bay-leaves I fastened in it,
+rise above the garden-wall. How silently you are listening, if
+you do listen!</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Oh, could my thoughts incessantly and eternally
+dwell among these recollections, undisturbed by any other
+voice ... undistracted by any other presence! Soon must
+they abide with me alone, and be repeated by none but me ...
+repeated in the accents of anguish and despair! Why could
+you not have held in the sad home of your heart that necklace
+and those violets?</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> My Dante! we must all obey ... I my father,
+you your God. He will never abandon you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> I have ever sung, and will for ever sing, the most
+glorious of His works: and yet, O Bice! He abandons me, He
+casts me off; and He uses your hand for this infliction.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Men travel far and wide, and see many on whom to
+fix or transfer their affections; but we maidens have neither the
+power nor the will. Casting our eyes on the ground, we walk
+along the straight and narrow road prescribed for us; and,
+doing this, we avoid in great measure the thorns and entanglements
+of life. We know we are performing our duty; and the
+fruit of this knowledge is contentment. Season after season,
+day after day, you have made me serious, pensive, meditative,
+and almost wise. Being so little a girl, I was proud that you,
+so much taller, should lean on my shoulder to overlook my work.
+And greatly more proud was I when in time you taught me
+several Latin words, and then whole sentences, both in prose
+and verse, pasting a strip of paper over, or obscuring with
+impenetrable ink, those passages in the poets which were
+beyond my comprehension, and might perplex me. But
+proudest of all was I when you began to reason with me. What
+will now be my pride if you are convinced by the first arguments
+I ever have opposed to you; or if you only take them up and try
+if they are applicable. Certainly do I know (indeed, indeed I
+do) that even the patience to consider them will make you
+happier. Will it not then make me so? I entertain no other
+wish. Is not this true love?</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Ah, yes! the truest, the purest, the least perishable,
+but not the sweetest. Here are the rue and hyssop; but where
+the rose?</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Wicked must be whatever torments you: and will
+you let love do it? Love is the gentlest and kindest breath of
+God. Are you willing that the tempter should intercept it,
+and respire it polluted into your ear? Do not make me hesitate
+to pray to the Virgin for you, nor tremble lest she look down on
+you with a reproachful pity. To her alone, O Dante, dare I
+confide all my thoughts! Lessen not my confidence in my
+only refuge.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> God annihilate a power so criminal! Oh, could my
+love flow into your breast with hers! It should flow with
+equal purity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> You have stored my little mind with many thoughts;
+dear because they are yours, and because they are virtuous.
+May I not, O my Dante! bring some of them back again to your
+bosom; as the <i>contadina</i> lets down the string from the cottage-beam
+in winter, and culls a few bunches of the soundest for the
+master of the vineyard? You have not given me glory that
+the world should shudder at its eclipse. To prove that I am
+worthy of the smallest part of it, I must obey God; and, under
+God, my father. Surely the voice of Heaven comes to us
+audibly from a parent&#8217;s lips. You will be great, and, what is
+above, all greatness, good.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Rightly and wisely, my sweet Beatrice, have you
+spoken in this estimate. Greatness is to goodness what gravel
+is to porphyry: the one is a movable accumulation, swept along
+the surface of the earth; the other stands fixed and solid and
+alone, above the violence of war and of the tempest; above all
+that is residuous of a wasted world. Little men build up great
+ones; but the snow colossus soon melts: the good stand under
+the eye of God; and therefore stand.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Now you are calm and reasonable, listen to me, Bice.
+You must marry.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Marry?</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Unless you do, how can we meet again unreservedly?
+Worse, worse than ever! I cannot bear to see those large heavy
+tears following one another, heavy and slow as nuns at the
+funeral of a sister. Come, I will kiss off one, if you will promise
+me faithfully to shed no more. Be tranquil, be tranquil; only
+hear reason. There are many who know you; and all who know
+you must love you. Don&#8217;t you hear me? Why turn aside?
+and why go farther off? I will have that hand. It twists
+about as if it hated its confinement. Perverse and peevish
+creature! you have no more reason to be sorry than I have;
+and you have many to the contrary which I have not. Being
+a man, you are at liberty to admire a variety, and to make a
+choice. Is that no comfort to you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Bid this bosom cease to grieve?</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Bid these eyes fresh objects see?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Where&#8217;s the comfort to believe</span><br />
+<span class="i1">None might once have rivall&#8217;d me?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">What! my freedom to receive?</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Broken hearts, are they the free?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">For another can I live</span><br />
+<span class="i1">When I may not live for thee?</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> I will never be fond of you again if you are so violent.
+We have been together too long, and we may be noticed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dante.</i> Is this our last meeting? If it is ... and that it is,
+my heart has told me ... you will not, surely you will not
+refuse....</p>
+
+<p><i>Beatrice.</i> Dante! Dante! they make the heart sad after: do
+not wish it. But prayers ... oh, how much better are they,
+how much quieter and lighter they render it! They carry it
+up to heaven with them; and those we love are left behind
+no longer.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="FRA_FILIPPO_LIPPI_AND_POPE_EUGENIUS_THE_FOURTH" id="FRA_FILIPPO_LIPPI_AND_POPE_EUGENIUS_THE_FOURTH"></a>FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND POPE EUGENIUS THE FOURTH</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Filippo! I am informed by my son Cosimo de&#8217;
+Medici of many things relating to thy life and actions, and
+among the rest, of thy throwing off the habit of a friar.
+Speak to me as to a friend. Was that well done?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Holy Father! it was done most unadvisedly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Continue to treat me with the same confidence
+and ingenuousness; and, beside the remuneration I intend to
+bestow on thee for the paintings wherewith thou hast adorned
+my palace, I will remove with my own hand the heavy accumulation
+of thy sins, and ward off the peril of fresh ones, placing
+within thy reach every worldly solace and contentment.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Infinite thanks, Holy Father! from the innermost
+heart of your unworthy servant, whose duty and wishes bind
+him alike and equally to a strict compliance with your paternal
+commands.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Was it a love of the world and its vanities that
+induced thee to throw aside the frock?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> It was indeed, Holy Father! I never had the
+courage to mention it in confession among my manifold offences.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Bad! bad! Repentance is of little use to the
+sinner, unless he pour it from a full and overflowing heart into
+the capacious ear of the confessor. Ye must not go straightforward
+and bluntly up to your Maker, startling Him with the
+horrors of your guilty conscience. Order, decency, time, place,
+opportunity, must be observed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> I have observed the greater part of them: time,
+place, and opportunity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> That is much. In consideration of it, I hereby
+absolve thee.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> I feel quite easy, quite new-born.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> I am desirous of hearing what sort of feelings
+thou experiencest, when thou givest loose to thy intractable
+and unruly wishes. Now, this love of the world, what can
+it mean? A love of music, of dancing, of riding? What in
+short is it in thee?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Holy Father! I was ever of a hot and amorous
+constitution.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Well, well! I can guess, within a trifle, what that
+leads unto. I very much disapprove of it, whatever it may be.
+And then? and then? Prithee go on: I am inflamed with a
+miraculous zeal to cleanse thee.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> I have committed many follies, and some sins.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Let me hear the sins; I do not trouble my head
+about the follies; the Church has no business with them. The
+State is founded on follies, the Church on sins. Come then,
+unsack them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Concupiscence is both a folly and a sin. I felt more
+and more of it when I ceased to be a monk, not having (for a
+time) so ready means of allaying it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> No doubt. Thou shouldst have thought again
+and again before thou strippedst off the cowl.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Ah! Holy Father! I am sore at heart. I thought
+indeed how often it had held two heads together under it, and
+that stripping it off was double decapitation. But compensation
+and contentment came, and we were warm enough without it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> I am minded to reprove thee gravely. No wonder
+it pleased the Virgin, and the saints about her, to permit that
+the enemy of our faith should lead thee captive into Barbary.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> The pleasure was all on their side.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> I have heard a great many stories both of males
+and females who were taken by Tunisians and Algerines: and
+although there is a sameness in certain parts of them, my
+especial benevolence toward thee, worthy Filippo, would induce
+me to lend a vacant ear to thy report. And now, good Filippo,
+I could sip a small glass of Muscatel or Orvieto, and turn over a
+few bleached almonds, or essay a smart dried apricot at intervals,
+and listen while thou relatest to me the manners and customs of
+that country, and particularly as touching thy own adversities.
+First, how wast thou taken?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> I was visiting at Pesaro my worshipful friend the
+canonico Andrea Paccone, who delighted in the guitar, played
+it skilfully, and was always fond of hearing it well accompanied
+by the voice. My own instrument I had brought with me,
+together with many gay Florentine songs, some of which were
+of such a turn and tendency, that the canonico thought they
+would sound better on water, and rather far from shore, than
+within the walls of the canonicate. He proposed then, one
+evening when there was little wind stirring, to exercise three
+young abbates<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> on their several parts, a little way out of hearing
+from the water&#8217;s edge.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> I disapprove of exercising young abbates in that
+manner.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Inadvertently, O Holy Father! I have made the
+affair seem worse than it really was. In fact, there were only
+two genuine abbates; the third was Donna Lisetta, the good
+canonico&#8217;s pretty niece, who looks so archly at your Holiness
+when you bend your knees before her at bedtime.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> How? Where?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> She is the angel on the right-hand side of the Holy
+Family, with a tip of amethyst-coloured wing over a basket of
+figs and pomegranates. I painted her from memory: she was
+then only fifteen, and worthy to be the niece of an archbishop.
+Alas! she never will be: she plays and sings among the infidels,
+and perhaps would eat a landrail on a Friday as unreluctantly
+as she would a roach.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Poor soul! So this is the angel with the amethyst-coloured
+wing? I thought she looked wanton: we must pray
+for her release ... from the bondage of sin. What followed
+in your excursion?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Singing, playing, fresh air, and plashing water,
+stimulated our appetites. We had brought no eatable with
+us but fruit and thin <i>marzopane</i>, of which the sugar and rose-water
+were inadequate to ward off hunger; and the sight of a
+fishing-vessel between us and Ancona, raised our host immoderately.
+&#8216;Yonder smack,&#8217; said he, &#8216;is sailing at this moment just
+over the best sole-bank in the Adriatic. If she continues
+her course and we run toward her, we may be supplied, I trust
+in God, with the finest fish in Christendom. Methinks I see
+already the bellies of those magnificent sole bestar the deck,
+and emulate the glories of the orient sky.&#8217; He gave his orders
+with such a majestic air, that he looked rather like an admiral
+than a priest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> How now, rogue! Why should not the churchman
+look majestically and courageously? I myself have found
+occasion for it, and exerted it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> The world knows the prowess of your Holiness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Not mine, not mine, Filippo! but His who gave
+me the sword and the keys, and the will and the discretion to
+use them. I trust the canonico did not misapply his station
+and power, by taking the fish at any unreasonably low price;
+and that he gave his blessing to the remainder, and to the poor
+fishermen and to their nets.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> He was angry at observing that the vessel, while
+he thought it was within hail, stood out again to sea.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> He ought to have borne more manfully so slight a
+vexation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> On the contrary, he swore bitterly he would have
+the master&#8217;s ear between his thumb and forefinger in another
+half-hour, and regretted that he had cut his nails in the morning
+lest they should grate on his guitar. &#8216;They may fish well,&#8217;
+cried he, &#8216;but they can neither sail nor row; and, when I am in
+the middle of that tub of theirs, I will teach them more than
+they look for.&#8217; Sure enough he was in the middle of it at the
+time he fixed: but it was by aid of a rope about his arms and
+the end of another laid lustily on his back and shoulders.
+&#8216;Mount, lazy long-chined turnspit, as thou valuest thy life,&#8217;
+cried Abdul the corsair, &#8216;and away for Tunis.&#8217; If silence is
+consent, he had it. The captain, in the Sicilian dialect, told us
+we might talk freely, for he had taken his siesta. &#8216;Whose
+guitars are those?&#8217; said he. As the canonico raised his eyes to
+heaven and answered nothing, I replied, &#8216;Sir, one is mine: the
+other is my worthy friend&#8217;s there.&#8217; Next he asked the canonico
+to what market he was taking those young slaves, pointing to
+the abbates. The canonico sobbed and could not utter one
+word. I related the whole story; at which he laughed. He
+then took up the music, and commanded my reverend guest
+to sing an air peculiarly tender, invoking the compassion of a
+nymph, and calling her cold as ice. Never did so many or such
+profound sighs accompany it. When it ended, he sang one
+himself in his own language, on a lady whose eyes were exactly
+like the scimitars of Damascus, and whose eyebrows met in
+the middle like the cudgels of prize-fighters. On the whole she
+resembled both sun and moon, with the simple difference that
+she never allowed herself to be seen, lest all the nations of the
+earth should go to war for her, and not a man to be left to breathe
+out his soul before her. This poem had obtained the prize at
+the University of Fez, had been translated into the Arabic,
+the Persian, and the Turkish languages, and was the favourite
+lay of the corsair. He invited me lastly to try my talent. I
+played the same air on the guitar, and apologized for omitting
+the words, from my utter ignorance of the Moorish. Abdul
+was much pleased, and took the trouble to convince me that the
+poetry they conveyed, which he translated literally, was incomparably
+better than ours. &#8216;Cold as ice!&#8217; he repeated,
+scoffing: &#8216;anybody might say that who had seen Atlas: but a
+genuine poet would rather say, &ldquo;Cold as a lizard or a lobster.&rdquo;&#8217;
+There is no controverting a critic who has twenty stout rowers,
+and twenty well-knotted rope-ends. Added to which, he
+seemed to know as much of the matter as the generality of those
+who talked about it. He was gratified by my attention and
+edification, and thus continued: &#8216;I have remarked in the songs
+I have heard, that these wild woodland creatures of the west,
+these nymphs, are a strange fantastical race. But are your
+poets not ashamed to complain of their inconstancy? whose
+fault is that? If ever it should be my fortune to take one, I
+would try whether I could not bring her down to the level of
+her sex; and if her inconstancy caused any complaints, by Allah!
+they should be louder and shriller than ever rose from the
+throat of Abdul.&#8217; I still thought it better to be a disciple than
+a commentator.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> If we could convert this barbarian and detain
+him awhile at Rome, he would learn that women and nymphs
+(and inconstancy also) are one and the same. These cruel men
+have no lenity, no suavity. They who do not as they would
+be done by, are done by very much as they do. Women will
+glide away from them like water; they can better bear two
+masters than half one; and a new metal must be discovered
+before any bars are strong enough to confine them. But
+proceed with your narrative.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Night had now closed upon us. Abdul placed the
+younger of the company apart, and after giving them some
+boiled rice, sent them down into his own cabin. The sailors,
+observing the consideration and distinction with which their
+master had treated me, were civil and obliging. Permission
+was granted me, at my request, to sleep on deck.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> What became of your canonico?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> The crew called him a conger, a priest, and a
+porpoise.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Foul-mouthed knaves! could not one of these
+terms content them? On thy leaving Barbary was he left
+behind?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Your Holiness consecrated him, the other day,
+Bishop of Macerata.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> True, true; I remember the name, Saccone. How
+did he contrive to get off?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> He was worth little at any work; and such men
+are the quickest both to get off and to get on. Abdul told me
+he had received three thousand crowns for his ransom.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> He was worth more to him than to me. I received
+but two first-fruits, and such other things as of right belong to
+me by inheritance. The bishopric is passably rich: he may
+serve thee.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> While he was a canonico he was a jolly fellow; not
+very generous; for jolly fellows are seldom that; but he would
+give a friend a dinner, a flask of wine or two in preference, and
+a piece of advice as readily as either. I waited on monsignor
+at Macerata, soon after his elevation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> He must have been heartily glad to embrace his
+companion in captivity, and the more especially as he himself
+was the cause of so grievous a misfortune.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> He sent me word he was so unwell he could not see
+me. &#8216;What!&#8217; said I to his valet, &#8216;is monsignor&#8217;s complaint in
+his eyes?&#8217; The fellow shrugged up his shoulders and walked
+away. Not believing that the message was a refusal to admit
+me, I went straight upstairs, and finding the door of an antechamber
+half open, and a chaplain milling an egg-posset over
+the fire, I accosted him. The air of familiarity and satisfaction
+he observed in me left no doubt in his mind that I had been
+invited by his patron. &#8216;Will the man never come?&#8217; cried his
+lordship. &#8216;Yes, monsignor!&#8217; exclaimed I, running in and
+embracing him; &#8216;behold him here!&#8217; He started back, and then
+I first discovered the wide difference between an old friend and
+an egg-posset.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Son Filippo! thou hast seen but little of the world,
+and art but just come from Barbary. Go on.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> &#8216;Fra Filippo!&#8217; said he gravely, &#8216;I am glad to see you.
+I did not expect you just at present: I am not very well: I had
+ordered a medicine and was impatient to take it. If you will
+favour me with the name of your inn, I will send for you when
+I am in a condition to receive you; perhaps within a day or two.&#8217;
+&#8216;Monsignor!&#8217; said I, &#8216;a change of residence often gives a man a
+cold, and oftener a change of fortune. Whether you caught
+yours upon deck (where we last saw each other), from being
+more exposed than usual, or whether the mitre holds wind, is
+no question for me, and no concern of mine.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> A just reproof, if an archbishop had made it. On
+uttering it, I hope thou kneeledst and kissedst his hand.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> I did not indeed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Oh, there wert thou greatly in the wrong! Having,
+it is reported, a good thousand crowns yearly of patrimony,
+and a canonicate worth six hundred more, he might have
+attempted to relieve thee from slavery, by assisting thy relatives
+in thy redemption.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> The three thousand crowns were the uttermost he
+could raise, he declared to Abdul, and he asserted that a part
+of the money was contributed by the inhabitants of Pesaro.
+&#8216;Do they act out of pure mercy?&#8217; said he. &#8216;Ay, they must,
+for what else could move them in behalf of such a lazy, unserviceable
+street-fed cur?&#8217; In the morning, at sunrise, he was
+sent aboard. And now, the vessel being under weigh, &#8216;I have
+a letter from my lord Abdul,&#8217; said the master, &#8216;which, being in
+thy language, two fellow slaves shall read unto thee publicly.&#8217;
+They came forward and began the reading. &#8216;Yesterday I
+purchased these two slaves from a cruel, unrelenting master,
+under whose lash they have laboured for nearly thirty years.
+I hereby give orders that five ounces of my own gold be weighed
+out to them.&#8217; Here one of the slaves fell on his face; the other
+lifted up his hands, praised God, and blessed his benefactor.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> The pirate? the unconverted pirate?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Even so. &#8216;Here is another slip of paper for thyself
+to read immediately in my presence,&#8217; said the master. The
+words it contained were, &#8216;Do thou the same, or there enters thy
+lips neither food nor water until thou landest in Italy. I permit
+thee to carry away more than double the sum: I am no sutler:
+I do not contract for thy sustenance.&#8217; The canonico asked of
+the master whether he knew the contents of the letter; he
+replied no. &#8216;Tell your master, lord Abdul, that I shall take
+them into consideration.&#8217; &#8216;My lord expected a much plainer
+answer, and commanded me, in case of any such as thou hast
+delivered, to break this seal.&#8217; He pressed it to his forehead
+and then broke it. Having perused the characters reverentially,
+&#8216;Christian! dost thou consent?&#8217; The canonico fell on his knees,
+and overthrew the two poor wretches who, saying their prayers,
+had remained in the same posture before him quite unnoticed.
+&#8216;Open thy trunk and take out thy money-bag, or I will make
+room for it in thy bladder.&#8217; The canonico was prompt in the
+execution of the command. The master drew out his scales,
+and desired the canonico to weigh with his own hand five
+ounces. He groaned and trembled: the balance was unsteady.
+&#8216;Throw in another piece: it will not vitiate the agreement,&#8217;
+cried the master. It was done. Fear and grief are among the
+thirsty passions, but add little to the appetite. It seemed,
+however, as if every sigh had left a vacancy in the stomach of
+the canonico. At dinner the cook brought him a salted bonito,
+half an ell in length; and in five minutes his reverence was
+drawing his middle finger along the white backbone, out of sheer
+idleness, until were placed before him some as fine dried locusts
+as ever provisioned the tents of Africa, together with olives the
+size of eggs and colour of bruises, shining in oil and brine. He
+found them savoury and pulpy, and, as the last love supersedes
+the foregoing, he gave them the preference, even over the delicate
+locusts. When he had finished them, he modestly requested
+a can of water. A sailor brought a large flask, and poured forth
+a plentiful supply. The canonico engulfed the whole, and
+instantly threw himself back in convulsive agony. &#8216;How is
+this?&#8217; cried the sailor. The master ran up and, smelling the
+water, began to buffet him, exclaiming, as he turned round to all
+the crew, &#8216;How came this flask here?&#8217; All were innocent.
+It appeared, however, that it was a flask of mineral water,
+strongly sulphureous, taken out of a Neapolitan vessel, laden
+with a great abundance of it for some hospital in the Levant.
+It had taken the captor by surprise in the same manner as the
+canonico. He himself brought out instantly a capacious stone jar
+covered with dew, and invited the sufferer into the cabin. Here he
+drew forth two richly-cut wineglasses, and, on filling one of them,
+the outside of it turned suddenly pale, with a myriad of indivisible
+drops, and the senses were refreshed with the most delicious fragrance.
+He held up the glass between himself and his guest, and
+looking at it attentively, said, &#8216;Here is no appearance of wine; all
+I can see is water. Nothing is wickeder than too much curiosity:
+we must take what Allah sends us, and render thanks for it,
+although it fall far short of our expectations. Besides, our Prophet
+would rather we should even drink wine than poison.&#8217; The
+canonico had not tasted wine for two months: a longer abstinence
+than ever canonico endured before. He drooped: but the master
+looked still more disconsolate. &#8216;I would give whatever I possess
+on earth rather than die of thirst,&#8217; cried the canonico. &#8216;Who
+would not?&#8217; rejoined the captain, sighing and clasping his
+fingers. &#8216;If it were not contrary to my commands, I could
+touch at some cove or inlet.&#8217; &#8216;Do, for the love of Christ!&#8217;
+exclaimed the canonico. &#8216;Or even sail back,&#8217; continued the
+captain. &#8216;O Santa Vergine!&#8217; cried in anguish the canonico.
+&#8216;Despondency,&#8217; said the captain, with calm solemnity, &#8216;has left
+many a man to be thrown overboard: it even renders the plague,
+and many other disorders, more fatal. Thirst too has a powerful
+effect in exasperating them. Overcome such weaknesses, or I
+must do my duty. The health of the ship&#8217;s company is placed
+under my care; and our lord Abdul, if he suspected the pest,
+would throw a Jew, or a Christian, or even a bale of silk, into
+the sea: such is the disinterestedness and magnanimity of my
+lord Abdul.&#8217; &#8216;He believes in fate; does he not?&#8217; said the
+canonico. &#8216;Doubtless: but he says it is as much fated that he
+should throw into the sea a fellow who is infected, as that the
+fellow should have ever been so.&#8217; &#8216;Save me, oh, save me!&#8217;
+cried the canonico, moist as if the spray had pelted him. &#8216;Willingly,
+if possible,&#8217; answered calmly the master. &#8216;At present I
+can discover no certain symptoms; for sweat, unless followed
+by general prostration, both of muscular strength and animal
+spirits, may be cured without a hook at the heel.&#8217; &#8216;Giesu-Maria!&#8217;
+ejaculated the canonico.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> And the monster could withstand that appeal?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> It seems so. The renegade who related to me, on
+my return, these events as they happened, was very circumstantial.
+He is a Corsican, and had killed many men in battle,
+and more out; but is (he gave me his word for it) on the whole
+an honest man.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> How so? honest? and a renegade?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> He declared to me that, although the Mahomedan
+is the best religion to live in, the Christian is the best to die in;
+and that, when he has made his fortune, he will make his confession,
+and lie snugly in the bosom of the Church.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> See here the triumphs of our holy faith! The lost
+sheep will be found again.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Having played the butcher first.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Return we to that bad man, the master or captain,
+who evinced no such dispositions.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> He added, &#8216;The other captives, though older men,
+have stouter hearts than mine.&#8217; &#8216;Alas! they are longer used
+to hardships,&#8217; answered he. &#8216;Dost thou believe, in thy conscience,&#8217;
+said the captain, &#8216;that the water we have aboard would
+be harmless to them? for we have no other; and wine is costly;
+and our quantity might be insufficient for those who can afford
+to pay for it.&#8217; &#8216;I will answer for their lives,&#8217; replied the canonico.
+&#8216;With thy own?&#8217; interrogated sharply the Tunisian. &#8216;I must
+not tempt God,&#8217; said, in tears, the religious man. &#8216;Let us be
+plain,&#8217; said the master. &#8216;Thou knowest thy money is safe;
+I myself counted it before thee when I brought it from the
+scrivener&#8217;s; thou hast sixty broad gold pieces; wilt thou be
+answerable, to the whole amount of them, for the lives of thy
+two countrymen if they drink this water?&#8217; &#8216;O sir!&#8217; said the
+canonico, &#8216;I will give it, if, only for these few days of voyage,
+you vouchsafe me one bottle daily of that restorative wine of
+Bordeaux. The other two are less liable to the plague: they
+do not sorrow and sweat as I do. They are spare men. There
+is enough of me to infect a fleet with it; and I cannot bear to
+think of being in any wise the cause of evil to my fellow-creatures.&#8217;
+&#8216;The wine is my patron&#8217;s,&#8217; cried the Tunisian; &#8216;he leaves everything
+at my discretion: should I deceive him?&#8217; &#8216;If he leaves
+everything at your discretion,&#8217; observed the logician of Pesaro,
+&#8216;there is no deceit in disposing of it.&#8217; The master appeared to
+be satisfied with the argument. &#8216;Thou shalt not find me
+exacting,&#8217; said he; &#8216;give me the sixty pieces, and the wine shall
+be thine.&#8217; At a signal, when the contract was agreed to, the
+two slaves entered, bringing a hamper of jars. &#8216;Read the
+contract before thou signest,&#8217; cried the master. He read.
+&#8216;How is this? how is this? <i>Sixty golden ducats to the brothers
+Antonio and Bernabo Panini, for wine received from them?</i>&#8217;
+The aged men tottered under the stroke of joy; and Bernabo,
+who would have embraced his brother, fainted.</p>
+
+<p>On the morrow there was a calm, and the weather was
+extremely sultry. The canonico sat in his shirt on deck, and
+was surprised to see, I forget which of the brothers, drink from
+a goblet a prodigious draught of water. &#8216;Hold!&#8217; cried he
+angrily; &#8216;you may eat instead; but putrid or sulphureous water,
+you have heard, may produce the plague, and honest men be
+the sufferers by your folly and intemperance.&#8217; They assured
+him the water was tasteless, and very excellent, and had been
+kept cool in the same kind of earthern jars as the wine. He
+tasted it, and lost his patience. It was better, he protested,
+than any wine in the world. They begged his acceptance of
+the jar containing it. But the master, who had witnessed at a
+distance the whole proceeding, now advanced, and, placing his
+hand against it, said sternly, &#8216;Let him have his own.&#8217; Usually,
+when he had emptied the second bottle, a desire of converting
+the Mohammedans came over him: and they showed themselves
+much less obstinate and refractory than they are generally
+thought. He selected those for edification who swore the
+oftenest and the loudest by the Prophet; and he boasted in his
+heart of having overcome, by precept and example, the stiffest
+tenet of their abominable creed. Certainly they drank wine,
+and somewhat freely. The canonico clapped his hands, and
+declared that even some of the apostles had been more
+pertinacious recusants of the faith.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Did he so? Cappari! I would not have made him
+a bishop for twice the money if I had known it earlier. Could
+not he have left them alone? Suppose one or other of them
+did doubt and persecute, was he the man to blab it out among
+the heathen?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> A judgment, it appears, fell on him for so doing.
+A very quiet sailor, who had always declined his invitations,
+and had always heard his arguments at a distance and in silence,
+being pressed and urged by him, and reproved somewhat
+arrogantly and loudly, as less docile than his messmates, at last
+lifted up his leg behind him, pulled off his right slipper, and
+counted deliberately and distinctly thirty-nine sound strokes
+of the same, on the canonico&#8217;s broadest tablet, which (please
+your Holiness) might be called, not inaptly, from that day the
+tablet of memory. In vain he cried out. Some of the mariners
+made their moves at chess and waved their left hands as if
+desirous of no interruption; others went backward and forward
+about their business, and took no more notice than if their
+messmate was occupied in caulking a seam or notching a flint.
+The master himself, who saw the operation, heard the complaint
+in the evening, and lifted up his shoulders and eyebrows,
+as if the whole were quite unknown to him. Then, acting as
+judge-advocate, he called the young man before him and repeated
+the accusation. To this the defence was purely interrogative.
+&#8216;Why would he convert me? I never converted
+him.&#8217; Turning to his spiritual guide, he said, &#8216;I quite forgive
+thee: nay, I am ready to appear in thy favour, and to declare
+that, in general, thou hast been more decorous than people
+of thy faith and profession usually are, and hast not scattered
+on deck that inflammatory language which I, habited in the dress
+of a Greek, heard last Easter. I went into three churches; and
+the preachers in all three denounced the curse of Allah on every
+soul that differed from them a tittle. They were children of
+perdition, children of darkness, children of the devil, one and all.
+It seemed a matter of wonder to me, that, in such numerous
+families and of such indifferent parentage, so many slippers
+were kept under the heel. Mine, in an evil hour, escaped me:
+but I quite forgive thee. After this free pardon I will indulge
+thee with a short specimen of my preaching. I will call none of
+you a generation of vipers, as ye call one another; for vipers
+neither bite nor eat during many months of the year: I will call
+none of you wolves in sheep&#8217;s clothing; for if ye are, it must be
+acknowledged that the clothing is very clumsily put on. You
+priests, however, take people&#8217;s souls aboard whether they will
+or not, just as we do your bodies: and you make them pay much
+more for keeping these in slavery than we make you pay for
+setting you free body and soul together. You declare that the
+precious souls, to the especial care of which Allah has called and
+appointed you, frequently grow corrupt, and stink in His nostrils.
+Now, I invoke thy own testimony to the fact that thy soul, gross
+as I imagine it to be from the greasy wallet that holds it, had no
+carnal thoughts whatsoever, and that thy carcass did not even
+receive a fly-blow, while it was under my custody. Thy guardian
+angel (I speak it in humility) could not ventilate thee better.
+Nevertheless, I should scorn to demand a single maravedi for
+my labour and skill, or for the wear and tear of my pantoufle.
+My reward will be in Paradise, where a houri is standing in
+the shade, above a vase of gold and silver fish, with a kiss on her
+lip, and an unbroken pair of green slippers in her hand for me.&#8217;
+Saying which, he took off his foot again, the one he had been
+using, and showed the sole of it, first to the master, then to all
+the crew, and declared it had become (as they might see) so
+smooth and oily by the application, that it was dangerous to
+walk on deck in it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> See! what notions these creatures have, both of
+their fool&#8217;s paradise and of our holy faith! The seven Sacraments,
+I warrant you, go for nothing! Purgatory, purgatory
+itself, goes for nothing!</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Holy Father! we must stop thee. <i>That</i> does not
+go for nothing, however.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Filippo! God forbid I should suspect thee of any
+heretical taint; but this smells very like it. If thou hast it now,
+tell me honestly. I mean, hold thy tongue. Florentines are
+rather lax. Even Son Cosimo might be stricter: so they say:
+perhaps his enemies. The great always have them abundantly,
+beside those by whom they are served, and those also whom they
+serve. Now would I give a silver rose with my benediction on
+it, to know of a certainty what became of those poor creatures
+the abbates. The initiatory rite of Mohammedanism is most
+diabolically malicious. According to the canons of our Catholic
+Church, it disqualifies the neophyte for holy orders, without
+going so far as adapting him to the choir of the pontifical chapel.
+They limp; they halt.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Beatitude! which of them?</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> The unbelievers: they surely are found wanting.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> The unbelievers too?</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Ay, ay, thou half renegade! Couldst not thou go
+over with a purse of silver, and try whether the souls of these
+captives be recoverable? Even if they should have submitted
+to such unholy rites, I venture to say they have repented.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> The devil is in them if they have not.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> They may become again as good Christians as
+before.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Easily, methinks.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Not so easily; but by aid of Holy Church in the
+administration of indulgences.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> They never wanted those, whatever they want.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> The corsair then is not one of those ferocious
+creatures which appear to connect our species with the lion and
+panther.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> By no means, Holy Father! He is an honest man;
+so are many of his countrymen, bating the Sacrament.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Bating! poor beguiled Filippo! Being unbaptized,
+they are only as the beasts that perish: nay worse: for the soul
+being imperishable, it must stick to their bodies at the last day,
+whether they will or no, and must sink with it into the fire
+and brimstone.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Unbaptized! why, they baptize every morning.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Worse and worse! I thought they only missed
+the stirrup; I find they overleap the saddle. Obstinate blind
+reprobates! of whom it is written ... of whom it is written
+... of whom, I say, it is written ... as shall be manifest
+before men and angels in the day of wrath.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> More is the pity! for they are hospitable, frank,
+and courteous. It is delightful to see their gardens, when one
+has not the weeding and irrigation of them. What fruit! what
+foliage! what trellises! what alcoves! what a contest of rose and
+jessamine for supremacy in odour! of lute and nightingale for
+victory in song! And how the little bright ripples of the docile
+brooks, the fresher for their races, leap up against one another,
+to look on! and how they chirrup and applaud, as if they too
+had a voice of some importance in these parties of pleasure
+that are loath to separate.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Parties of pleasure! birds, fruits, shallow-running
+waters, lute-players, and wantons! Parties of pleasure! and
+composed of these! Tell me now, Filippo, tell me truly, what
+complexion in general have the discreeter females of that
+hapless country.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> The colour of an orange-flower, on which an overladen
+bee has left a slight suffusion of her purest honey.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> We must open their eyes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Knowing what excellent hides the slippers of this
+people are made of, I never once ventured on their less perfect
+theology, fearing to find it written that I should be abed on
+my face the next fortnight. My master had expressed his
+astonishment that a religion so admirable as ours was represented
+should be the only one in the world the precepts of which
+are disregarded by all conditions of men. &#8216;Our Prophet,&#8217; said
+he, &#8216;our Prophet ordered us to go forth and conquer; we
+did it: yours ordered you to sit quiet and forbear; and, after
+spitting in His face, you threw the order back into it, and fought
+like devils.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> The barbarians talk of our Holy Scriptures as if
+they understood them perfectly. The impostor they follow
+has nothing but fustian and rodomontade in his impudent
+lying book from beginning to end. I know it, Filippo, from those
+who have contrasted it, page by page, paragraph by paragraph,
+and have given the knave his due.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Abdul is by no means deficient in a good opinion
+of his own capacity and his Prophet&#8217;s all-sufficiency, but he
+never took me to task about my faith or his own.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> How wert thou mainly occupied?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> I will give your Holiness a sample both of my employments
+and of his character. He was going one evening to a
+country-house, about fifteen miles from Tunis; and he ordered
+me to accompany him. I found there a spacious garden, overrun
+with wild flowers and most luxuriant grass, in irregular
+tufts, according to the dryness or the humidity of the spot.
+The clematis overtopped the lemon and orange-trees; and the
+perennial pea sent forth here a pink blossom, here a purple,
+here a white one, and after holding (as it were) a short conversation
+with the humbler plants, sprang up about an old cypress,
+played among its branches, and mitigated its gloom. White
+pigeons, and others in colour like the dawn of day, looked down
+on us and ceased to coo, until some of their companions, in whom
+they had more confidence, encouraged them loudly from remoter
+boughs, or alighted on the shoulders of Abdul, at whose side I
+was standing. A few of them examined me in every position
+their inquisitive eyes could take; displaying all the advantages
+of their versatile necks, and pretending querulous fear in the
+midst of petulant approaches.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Is it of pigeons thou art talking, O Filippo?
+I hope it may be.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Of Abdul&#8217;s pigeons. He was fond of taming all
+creatures; men, horses, pigeons, equally: but he tamed them all
+by kindness. In this wilderness is an edifice not unlike our
+Italian chapter-houses built by the Lombards, with long narrow
+windows, high above the ground. The centre is now a bath,
+the waters of which, in another part of the enclosure, had
+supplied a fountain, at present in ruins, and covered by tufted
+canes, and by every variety of aquatic plants. The structure
+has no remains of roof: and, of six windows, one alone is unconcealed
+by ivy. This had been walled up long ago, and the
+cement in the inside of it was hard and polished. &#8216;Lippi!&#8217;
+said Abdul to me, after I had long admired the place in silence,
+&#8216;I leave to thy superintendence this bath and garden. Be
+sparing of the leaves and branches: make paths only wide
+enough for me. Let me see no mark of hatchet or pruning-hook,
+and tell the labourers that whoever takes a nest or an egg
+shall be impaled.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Monster! so then he would really have impaled a
+poor wretch for eating a bird&#8217;s egg? How disproportionate is
+the punishment to the offence!</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> He efficiently checked in his slaves the desire of
+transgressing his command. To spare them as much as possible,
+I ordered them merely to open a few spaces, and to remove the
+weaker trees from the stronger. Meanwhile I drew on the
+smooth blank window the figure of Abdul and of a beautiful girl.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Rather say handmaiden: choicer expression; more
+decorous.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Holy Father! I have been lately so much out of
+practice, I take the first that comes in my way. Handmaiden
+I will use in preference for the future.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> On then! and God speed thee!</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> I drew Abdul with a blooming handmaiden. One
+of his feet is resting on her lap, and she is drying the ankle with
+a saffron robe, of which the greater part is fallen in doing it.
+That she is a bondmaid is discernible, not only by her occupation,
+but by her humility and patience, by her loose and flowing
+brown hair, and by her eyes expressing the timidity at once of
+servitude and of fondness. The countenance was taken from
+fancy, and was the loveliest I could imagine: of the figure I
+had some idea, having seen it to advantage in Tunis. After
+seven days Abdul returned. He was delighted with the improvement
+made in the garden. I requested him to visit the bath.
+&#8216;We can do nothing to that,&#8217; answered he impatiently. &#8216;There
+is no sudatory, no dormitory, no dressing-room, no couch.
+Sometimes I sit an hour there in the summer, because I never
+found a fly in it&mdash;the principal curse of hot countries, and
+against which plague there is neither prayer nor amulet, nor
+indeed any human defence.&#8217; He went away into the house.
+At dinner he sent me from his table some quails and ortolans,
+and tomatoes and honey and rice, beside a basket of fruit
+covered with moss and bay-leaves, under which I found a
+verdino fig, deliciously ripe, and bearing the impression of several
+small teeth, but certainly no reptile&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> There might have been poison in them, for all that.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> About two hours had passed, when I heard a whir
+and a crash in the windows of the bath (where I had dined and
+was about to sleep), occasioned by the settling and again the
+flight of some pheasants. Abdul entered. &#8216;Beard of the
+Prophet! what hast thou been doing? That is myself! No,
+no, Lippi! thou never canst have seen her: the face proves it:
+but those limbs! thou hast divined them aright: thou hast had
+sweet dreams then! Dreams are large possessions: in them
+the possessor may cease to possess his own. To the slave,
+O Allah! to the slave is permitted what is not his!... I burn
+with anguish to think how much ... yea, at that very hour.
+I would not another should, even in a dream.... But, Lippi!
+thou never canst have seen above the sandal?&#8217; To which I
+answered, &#8216;I never have allowed my eyes to look even on that.
+But if any one of my lord Abdul&#8217;s fair slaves resembles, as they
+surely must all do, in duty and docility, the figure I have
+represented, let it express to him my congratulation on his
+happiness.&#8217; &#8216;I believe,&#8217; said he, &#8216;such representations are
+forbidden by the Koran; but as I do not remember it, I do not
+sin. There it shall stay, unless the angel Gabriel comes to
+forbid it.&#8217; He smiled in saying so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> There is hope of this Abdul. His faith hangs about
+him more like oil than pitch.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> He inquired of me whether I often thought of those
+I loved in Italy, and whether I could bring them before my eyes
+at will. To remove all suspicion from him, I declared I always
+could, and that one beautiful object occupied all the cells of
+my brain by night and day. He paused and pondered, and then
+said, &#8216;Thou dost not love deeply.&#8217; I thought I had given the
+true signs. &#8216;No, Lippi! we who love ardently, we, with all our
+wishes, all the efforts of our souls, cannot bring before us the
+features which, while they were present, we thought it impossible
+we ever could forget. Alas! when we most love the absent,
+when we most desire to see her, we try in vain to bring her
+image back to us. The troubled heart shakes and confounds
+it, even as ruffled waters do with shadows. Hateful things are
+more hateful when they haunt our sleep: the lovely flee away,
+or are changed into less lovely.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> What figures now have these unbelievers?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Various in their combinations as the letters or the
+numerals; but they all, like these, signify something. Almeida
+(did I not inform your Holiness?) has large hazel eyes....</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Has she? thou never toldest me that. Well,
+well! and what else has she? Mind! be cautious! use decent
+terms.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Somewhat pouting lips.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Ha! ha! What did they pout at?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> And she is rather plump than otherwise.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> No harm in that.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> And moreover is cool, smooth, and firm as a nectarine
+gathered before sunrise.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Ha! ha! do not remind me of nectarines. I am
+very fond of them; and this is not the season! Such females
+as thou describest are said to be among the likeliest to give
+reasonable cause for suspicion. I would not judge harshly,
+I would not think uncharitably; but, unhappily, being at so
+great a distance from spiritual aid, peradventure a desire, a
+suggestion, an inkling ... ay? If she, the lost Almeida, came
+before thee when her master was absent ... which I trust
+she never did.... But those flowers and shrubs and odours
+and alleys and long grass and alcoves, might strangely hold,
+perplex, and entangle, two incautious young persons ... ay?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> I confessed all I had to confess in this matter the
+evening I landed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Ho! I am no candidate for a seat at the rehearsal
+of confessions: but perhaps my absolution might be somewhat
+more pleasing and unconditional. Well! well! since I am unworthy
+of such confidence, go about thy business ... paint!
+paint!</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Am I so unfortunate as to have offended your
+Beatitude?</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Offend <i>me</i>, man! who offends <i>me</i>? I took an
+interest in thy adventures, and was concerned lest thou mightest
+have sinned; for by my soul! Filippo! those are the women
+that the devil hath set his mark on.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> It would do your Holiness&#8217;s heart good to rub it
+out again, wherever he may have had the cunning to make it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Deep! deep!</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Yet it may be got at; she being a Biscayan by birth,
+as she told me, and not only baptized, but going by sea along
+the coast for confirmation, when she was captured.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Alas! to what an imposition of hands was this
+tender young thing devoted! Poor soul!</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> I sigh for her myself when I think of her.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Beware lest the sigh be mundane, and lest the
+thought recur too often. I wish it were presently in my power
+to examine her myself on her condition. What thinkest thou?
+Speak.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Holy Father! she would laugh in your face.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> So lost!</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> She declared to me she thought she should have died,
+from the instant she was captured until she was comforted by
+Abdul: but that she was quite sure she should if she were
+ransomed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Has the wretch then shaken her faith?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> The very last thing he would think of doing. Never
+did I see the virtue of resignation in higher perfection than in
+the laughing, light-hearted Almeida.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Lamentable! Poor lost creature! lost in this world
+and in the next.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> What could she do? how could she help herself?</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> She might have torn his eyes out, and have died
+a martyr.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Or have been bastinadoed, whipped, and given up
+to the cooks and scullions for it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Martyrdom is the more glorious the greater the
+indignities it endures.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Almeida seems unambitious. There are many in
+our Tuscany who would jump at the crown over those sloughs
+and briers, rather than perish without them: she never sighs
+after the like.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Nevertheless, what must she witness! what
+abominations! what superstitions!</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Abdul neither practises nor exacts any other superstition
+than ablutions.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Detestable rites! without our authority. I venture
+to affirm that, in the whole of Italy and Spain, no convent of
+monks or nuns contains a bath; and that the worst inmate of
+either would shudder at the idea of observing such a practice
+in common with the unbeliever. For the washing of the feet
+indeed we have the authority of the earlier Christians; and it
+may be done; but solemnly and sparingly. Thy residence
+among the Mahomedans, I am afraid, hath rendered thee more
+favourable to them than beseems a Catholic, and thy mind, I do
+suspect, sometimes goes back into Barbary unreluctantly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> While I continued in that country, although I was
+well treated, I often wished myself away, thinking of my friends
+in Florence, of music, of painting, of our villeggiatura at the
+vintage-time; whether in the green and narrow glades of
+Pratolino, with lofty trees above us, and little rills unseen, and
+little bells about the necks of sheep and goats, tinkling together
+ambiguously; or amid the grey quarries, or under the majestic
+walls of modern Fiesole; or down in the woods of the Doccia,
+where the cypresses are of such a girth that, when a youth
+stands against one of them, and a maiden stands opposite, and
+they clasp it, their hands at the time do little more than meet.
+Beautiful scenes, on which heaven smiles eternally, how often
+has my heart ached for you! He who hath lived in this country
+can enjoy no distant one. He breathes here another air; he
+lives more life; a brighter sun invigorates his studies, and
+serener stars influence his repose. Barbary hath also the
+blessing of climate; and although I do not desire to be there
+again, I feel sometimes a kind of regret at leaving it. A bell
+warbles the more mellifluously in the air when the sound of the
+stroke is over, and when another swims out from underneath it,
+and pants upon the element that gave it birth. In like manner
+the recollection of a thing is frequently more pleasing than the
+actuality; what is harsh is dropped in the space between. There
+is in Abdul a nobility of soul on which I often have reflected
+with admiration. I have seen many of the highest rank and
+distinction, in whom I could find nothing of the great man,
+excepting a fondness for low company, and an aptitude to shy
+and start at every spark of genius or virtue that sprang up
+above or before them. Abdul was solitary, but affable: he was
+proud, but patient and complacent. I ventured once to ask
+him how the master of so rich a house in the city, of so many
+slaves, of so many horses and mules, of such cornfields, of such
+pastures, of such gardens, woods, and fountains, should experience
+any delight or satisfaction in infesting the open sea, the high-road
+of nations. Instead of answering my question, he asked
+me in return whether I would not respect any relative of mine
+who avenged his country, enriched himself by his bravery, and
+endeared to him his friends and relatives by his bounty. On
+my reply in the affirmative, he said that his family had been
+deprived of possessions in Spain much more valuable than all
+the ships and cargoes he could ever hope to capture, and that
+the remains of his nation were threatened with ruin and expulsion.
+&#8216;I do not fight,&#8217; said he, &#8216;whenever it suits the convenience,
+or gratifies the malignity, or the caprice of two silly,
+quarrelsome princes, drawing my sword in perfectly good
+humour, and sheathing it again at word of command, just when
+I begin to get into a passion. No; I fight on my own account;
+not as a hired assassin, or still baser journeyman.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> It appears then really that the Infidels have some
+semblances of magnanimity and generosity?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> I thought so when I turned over the many changes
+of fine linen; and I was little short of conviction when I found
+at the bottom of my chest two hundred Venetian zecchins.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Corpo di Bacco! Better things, far better things,
+I would fain do for thee, not exactly of this description; it would
+excite many heart-burnings. Information has been laid before
+me, Filippo, that thou art attached to a certain young person,
+by name Lucrezia, daughter of Francesco Buti, a citizen of Prato.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> I acknowledge my attachment: it continues.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Furthermore, that thou hast offspring by her.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Alas! &#8217;tis undeniable.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> I will not only legitimatize the said offspring by
+<i>motu proprio</i> and rescript to consistory and chancery....</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Holy Father! Holy Father! For the love of the
+Virgin, not a word to consistory or chancery of the two hundred
+zecchins. As I hope for salvation, I have but forty left, and
+thirty-nine would not serve them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Fear nothing. Not only will I perform what I
+have promised, not only will I give the strictest order that no
+money be demanded by any officer of my courts, but, under the
+seal of Saint Peter, I will declare thee and Lucrezia Buti man
+and wife.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> Man and wife!</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Moderate thy transport.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> O Holy Father! may I speak?</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Surely she is not the wife of another?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> No, indeed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Nor within the degrees of consanguinity and
+affinity?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> No, no, no. But ... man and wife! Consistory
+and chancery are nothing to this fulmination.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> How so?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> It is man and wife the first fortnight, but wife and
+man ever after. The two figures change places: the unit is the
+decimal and the decimal is the unit.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> What, then, can I do for thee?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> I love Lucrezia; let me love her; let her love me.
+I can make her at any time what she is not; I could never
+make her again what she is.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> The only thing I can do then is to promise I will
+forget that I have heard anything about the matter. But, to
+forget it, I must hear it first.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> In the beautiful little town of Prato, reposing in its
+idleness against the hill that protects it from the north, and
+looking over fertile meadows, southward to Poggio Cajano,
+westward to Pistoja, there is the convent of Santa Margarita.
+I was invited by the sisters to paint an altar-piece for the chapel.
+A novice of fifteen, my own sweet Lucrezia, came one day alone
+to see me work at my Madonna. Her blessed countenance had
+already looked down on every beholder lower by the knees.
+I myself who made her could almost have worshipped her.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Not while incomplete; no half-virgin will do.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> But there knelt Lucrezia! there she knelt! first
+looking with devotion at the Madonna, then with admiring
+wonder and grateful delight at the artist. Could so little a
+heart be divided? &#8217;Twere a pity! There was enough for me;
+there is never enough for the Madonna. Resolving on a sudden
+that the object of my love should be the object of adoration to
+thousands, born and unborn, I swept my brush across the
+maternal face, and left a blank in heaven. The little girl
+screamed; I pressed her to my bosom.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> In the chapel?</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> I knew not where I was; I thought I was in Paradise.</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> If it was not in the chapel, the sin is venial. But a
+brush against a Madonna&#8217;s mouth is worse than a beard against
+her votary&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p><i>Filippo.</i> I thought so too, Holy Father!</p>
+
+<p><i>Eugenius.</i> Thou sayest thou hast forty zecchins; I will try
+in due season to add forty more. The fisherman must not
+venture to measure forces with the pirate. Farewell! I pray
+God my son Filippo, to have thee alway in His holy keeping.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Little boys, wearing clerical habits, are often called <i>abbati</i>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="TASSO_AND_CORNELIA" id="TASSO_AND_CORNELIA"></a>TASSO AND CORNELIA</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> She is dead, Cornelia! she is dead!</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Torquato! my Torquato! after so many years of
+separation do I bend once more your beloved head to my
+embrace?</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> She is dead!</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Tenderest of brothers! bravest and best and most
+unfortunate of men! What, in the name of heaven, so bewilders
+you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Sister! sister! sister! I could not save her.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Certainly it was a sad event; and they who are out
+of spirits may be ready to take it for an evil omen. At this
+season of the year the vintagers are joyous and negligent.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> How! What is this?</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> The little girl was crushed, they say, by a wheel of
+the car laden with grapes, as she held out a handful of vine-leaves
+to one of the oxen. And did you happen to be there
+at the moment?</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> So then the little too can suffer! the ignorant, the
+indigent, the unaspiring! Poor child! She was kind-hearted,
+else never would calamity have befallen her.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> I wish you had not seen the accident.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> I see it? I? I saw it not. No other is crushed where
+I am. The little girl died for her kindness! Natural death!</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Be calm, be composed, my brother!</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> You would not require me to be composed or calm if
+you comprehended a thousandth part of my sufferings.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Peace! peace! we know them all.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Who has dared to name them? Imprisonment,
+derision, madness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Hush! sweet Torquato! If ever these existed, they
+are past.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> You do think they are sufferings? ay?</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Too surely.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> No, not too surely: I will not have that answer. They
+would have been; but Leonora was then living. Unmanly as
+I am! did I complain of them? and while she was left me?</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> My own Torquato! is there no comfort in a sister&#8217;s
+love? Is there no happiness but under the passions? Think,
+O my brother, how many courts there are in Italy: are the princes
+more fortunate than you? Which among them all loves truly,
+deeply, and virtuously? Among them all is there any one, for
+his genius, for his generosity, for his gentleness, ay, for his mere
+humanity, worthy to be beloved?</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Princes! talk to me of princes! How much cross-grained
+wood a little gypsum covers! a little carmine quite
+beautifies! Wet your forefinger with your spittle; stick a
+broken gold-leaf on the sinciput; clip off a beggar&#8217;s beard to
+make it tresses; kiss it; fall down before it; worship it. Are
+you not irradiated by the light of its countenance? Princes!
+princes! Italian princes! Estes! What matters that costly
+carrion? Who thinks about it? [<i>After a pause.</i>] She is dead!
+She is dead!</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> We have not heard it here.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> At Sorrento you hear nothing but the light surges of
+the sea, and the sweet sprinkles of the guitar.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Suppose the worst to be true.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Always, always.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> If she ceases, as then perhaps she must, to love and
+to lament you, think gratefully, contentedly, devoutly, that her
+arms had clasped your neck before they were crossed upon her
+bosom, in that long sleep which you have rendered placid, and
+from which your harmonious voice shall once more awaken
+her. Yes, Torquato! her bosom had throbbed to yours, often
+and often, before the organ peal shook the fringes round
+the catafalque. Is not this much, from one so high, so
+beautiful?</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Much? yes; for abject me. But I did so love her!
+so love her!</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Ah! let the tears flow: she sends you that balm from
+heaven.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> So love her did poor Tasso! Else, O Cornelia, it had
+indeed been much. I thought, in the simplicity of my heart,
+that God was as great as an emperor, and could bestow and had
+bestowed on me as much as the German had conferred or could
+confer on his vassal. No part of my insanity was ever held in
+such ridicule as this. And yet the idea cleaves to me strangely,
+and is liable to stick to my shroud.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Woe betide the woman who bids you to forget that
+woman who has loved you: she sins against her sex. Leonora
+was unblameable. Never think ill of her for what you have
+suffered.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Think ill of her? I? I? I? No; those we love, we
+love for everything; even for the pain they have given us. But
+she gave me none; it was where she was not that pain was.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Surely, if love and sorrow are destined for companionship,
+there is no reason why the last comer of the two
+should supersede the first.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Argue with me, and you drive me into darkness. I
+am easily persuaded and led on while no reasons are thrown
+before me. With these you have made my temples throb again.
+Just heaven! dost thou grant us fairer fields, and wider, for the
+whirlwind to lay waste? Dost thou build us up habitations
+above the street, above the palace, above the citadel, for the
+plague to enter and carouse in? Has not my youth paid its
+dues, paid its penalties? Cannot our griefs come first, while we
+have strength to bear them? The fool! the fool! who thinks
+it a misfortune that his love is unrequited. Happier young
+man! look at the violets until thou drop asleep on them. Ah!
+but thou must awake!</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> O heavens! what must you have suffered! for a
+man&#8217;s heart is sensitive in proportion to its greatness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> And a woman&#8217;s?</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Alas! I know not; but I think it can be no other.
+Comfort thee, comfort thee, dear Torquato!</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Then do not rest thy face upon my arm; it so reminds
+me of her. And thy tears too! they melt me into her grave.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Hear you not her voice as it appeals to you, saying
+to you, as the priests around have been saying to <i>her</i>, Blessed
+soul! rest in peace?</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> I heard it not; and yet I am sure she said it. A
+thousand times has she repeated it, laying her head on my heart
+to quiet it, simple girl! She told it to rest in peace ... and
+she went from me! Insatiable love! ever self-torturer, never
+self-destroyer! the world, with all its weight of miseries, cannot
+crush thee, cannot keep thee down. Generally men&#8217;s tears,
+like the droppings of certain springs, only harden and petrify
+what they fall on; but mine sank deep into a tender heart, and
+were its very blood. Never will I believe she has left me utterly.
+Oftentimes, and long before her departure, I fancied we were in
+heaven together. I fancied it in the fields, in the gardens, in
+the palace, in the prison. I fancied it in the broad daylight,
+when my eyes were open, when blessed spirits drew around me
+that golden circle which one only of earth&#8217;s inhabitants could
+enter. Oftentimes in my sleep also I fancied it; and sometimes
+in the intermediate state, in that serenity which breathes about
+the transported soul, enjoying its pure and perfect rest, a span
+below the feet of the Immortal.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> She has not left you; do not disturb her peace by
+these repinings.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> She will bear with them. Thou knowest not what
+she was, Cornelia; for I wrote to thee about her while she seemed
+but human. In my hours of sadness, not only her beautiful
+form, but her very voice bent over me. How girlish in the
+gracefulness of her lofty form! how pliable in her majesty!
+what composure at my petulance and reproaches! what pity in
+her reproofs! Like the air that angels breathe in the metropolitan
+temple of the Christian world, her soul at every season
+preserved one temperature. But it was when she could and
+did love me! Unchanged must ever be the blessed one who has
+leaned in fond security on the unchangeable. The purifying
+flame shoots upward, and is the glory that encircles their brows
+when they meet above.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Indulge in these delightful thoughts, my Torquato!
+and believe that your love is and ought to be imperishable as
+your glory. Generations of men move forward in endless procession
+to consecrate and commemorate both. Colour-grinders
+and gilders, year after year, are bargained with to refresh the
+crumbling monuments and tarnished decorations of rude,
+unregarded royalty, and to fasten the nails that cramp the crown
+upon its head. Meanwhile, in the laurels of my Torquato
+there will always be one leaf above man&#8217;s reach, above time&#8217;s
+wrath and injury, inscribed with the name of Leonora.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> O Jerusalem! I have not then sung in vain the Holy
+Sepulchre.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> After such devotion of your genius, you have
+undergone too many misfortunes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Congratulate the man who has had many, and may
+have more. I have had, I have, I can have, one only.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Life runs not smoothly at all seasons, even with
+the happiest; but after a long course, the rocks subside, the
+views widen, and it flows on more equably at the end.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Have the stars smooth surfaces? No, no; but how
+they shine!</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Capable of thoughts so exalted, so far above the
+earth we dwell on, why suffer any to depress and anguish you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Cornelia, Cornelia! the mind has within its temples
+and porticoes and palaces and towers: the mind has under it,
+ready for the course, steeds brighter than the sun and stronger
+than the storm; and beside them stand winged chariots, more in
+number than the Psalmist hath attributed to the Almighty.
+The mind, I tell thee again, hath its hundred gates, compared
+whereto the Theban are but willow wickets; and all those hundred
+gates can genius throw open. But there are some that groan
+heavily on their hinges, and the hand of God alone can close them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Torquato has thrown open those of His holy temple;
+Torquato hath stood, another angel, at His tomb; and am I
+the sister of Torquato? Kiss me, my brother, and let my tears
+run only from my pride and joy! Princes have bestowed
+knighthood on the worthy and unworthy; thou hast called forth
+those princes from their ranks, pushing back the arrogant and
+presumptuous of them like intrusive varlets, and conferring on
+the bettermost crowns and robes, imperishable and unfading.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> I seem to live back into those days. I feel the helmet
+on my head; I wave the standard over it: brave men smile
+upon me; beautiful maidens pull them gently back by the scarf,
+and will not let them break my slumber, nor undraw the curtain.
+Corneliolina!...</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Well, my dear brother! why do you stop so suddenly
+in the midst of them? They are the pleasantest and best
+company, and they make you look quite happy and joyous.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Corneliolina, dost thou remember Bergamo? What
+city was ever so celebrated for honest and valiant men, in all
+classes, or for beautiful girls! There is but one class of those:
+Beauty is above all ranks; the true Madonna, the patroness
+and bestower of felicity, the queen of heaven.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Hush, Torquato, hush! talk not so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> What rivers, how sunshiny and revelling, are the
+Brembo and the Serio! What a country the Valtellina! I went
+back to our father&#8217;s house, thinking to find thee again, my little
+sister; thinking to kick away thy ball of yellow silk as thou wast
+stooping for it, to make thee run after me and beat me. I
+woke early in the morning; thou wert grown up and gone.
+Away to Sorrento: I knew the road: a few strides brought me
+back: here I am. To-morrow, my Cornelia, we will walk
+together, as we used to do, into the cool and quiet caves on the
+shore; and we will catch the little breezes as they come in and
+go out again on the backs of the jocund waves.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> We will indeed to-morrow; but before we set out
+we must take a few hours&#8217; rest, that we may enjoy our ramble
+the better.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Our Sorrentines, I see, are grown rich and avaricious.
+They have uprooted the old pomegranate hedges, and have
+built high walls to prohibit the wayfarer from their vineyards.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> I have a basket of grapes for you in the book-room
+that overlooks our garden.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Does the old twisted sage-tree grow still against the
+window?</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> It harboured too many insects at last, and there was
+always a nest of scorpions in the crevice.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Oh! what a prince of a sage-tree! And the well, too,
+with its bucket of shining metal, large enough for the largest
+cocomero to cool in it for dinner.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> The well, I assure you, is as cool as ever.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Delicious! delicious! And the stone-work round it,
+bearing no other marks of waste than my pruning-hook and
+dagger left behind?</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> None whatever.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> White in that place no longer; there has been time
+enough for it to become all of one colour: grey, mossy, half-decayed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> No, no; not even the rope has wanted repair.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Who sings yonder?</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Enchanter! No sooner did you say the word
+cocomero than here comes a boy carrying one upon his head.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Listen! listen! I have read in some book or other those
+verses long ago. They are not unlike my <i>Aminta</i>. The very words!</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Purifier of love, and humanizer of ferocity, how
+many, my Torquato, will your gentle thoughts make happy!</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> At this moment I almost think I am one among them.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Be quite persuaded of it. Come, brother, come
+with me. You shall bathe your heated brow and weary limbs
+in the chamber of your childhood. It is there we are always
+the most certain of repose. The boy shall sing to you those
+sweet verses; and we will reward him with a slice of his own fruit.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> He deserves it; cut it thick.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Come then, my truant! Come along, my sweet
+smiling Torquato!</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> The passage is darker than ever. Is this the way to
+the little court? Surely those are not the steps that lead down
+toward the bath? Oh yes! we are right; I smell the lemon-blossoms.
+Beware of the old wilding that bears them;
+it may catch your veil; it may scratch your fingers! Pray,
+take care: it has many thorns about it. And now, Leonora!
+you shall hear my last verses! Lean your ear a little toward
+me; for I must repeat them softly under this low archway,
+else others may hear them too. Ah! you press my hand once
+more. Drop it, drop it! or the verses will sink into my breast
+again, and lie there silent! Good girl!</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Many, well I know, there are</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Ready in your joys to share,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And (I never blame it) you</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Are almost as ready too.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But when comes the darker day,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And those friends have dropt away,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Which is there among them all</span><br />
+<span class="i0">You should, if you could, recall?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">One who wisely loves and well</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Hears and shares the griefs you tell;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Him you ever call apart</span><br />
+<span class="i0">When the springs o&#8217;erflow the heart;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">For you know that he alone</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Wishes they were <i>but</i> his own.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Give, while these he may divide,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Smiles to all the world beside.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> We are now in the full light of the chamber; cannot
+you remember it, having looked so intently all around?</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> O sister! I could have slept another hour. You
+thought I wanted rest: why did you waken me so early? I
+could have slept another hour or longer. What a dream!
+But I am calm and happy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> May you never more be otherwise! Indeed, he
+cannot be whose last verses are such as those.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Have you written any since that morning?</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> What morning?</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> When you caught the swallow in my curtains, and
+trod upon my knees in catching it, luckily with naked feet.
+The little girl of thirteen laughed at the outcry of her brother
+Torquatino, and sang without a blush her earliest lay.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> I do not recollect it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> I do.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Rondinello! rondinello!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Tu sei nero, ma sei bello.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Cosa f&agrave; se tu sei nero?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Rondinello! sei il primiero</span><br />
+<span class="i0">De&#8217; volanti, palpitanti,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">(E vi sono quanti quanti!)</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Mai tenuto a questo petto,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">E perci&ograve; sei il mio diletto.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Cornelia.</i> Here is the cocomero; it cannot be more insipid.
+Try it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tasso.</i> Where is the boy who brought it? where is the boy
+who sang my <i>Aminta</i>? Serve him first; give him largely. Cut
+deeper; the knife is too short: deeper; mia brava Corneliolina!
+quite through all the red, and into the middle of the seeds.
+Well done!</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> The miseries of Tasso arose not only from the imagination and the
+heart. In the metropolis of the Christian world, with many admirers
+and many patrons, bishops, cardinals, princes, he was left destitute, and
+almost famished. These are his own words: &#8216;<i>Appena</i> in questo stato ho
+comprato <i>due meloni</i>: e bench&egrave; io sia stato <i>quasi sempre infermo</i>, molte
+volte mi sono contentato del manzo: e la ministra di latte o di zucca,
+<i>quando ho potuto averne</i>, mi &egrave; stata in vece di delizie.&#8217; In another part he
+says that he was unable to pay the carriage of a parcel. No wonder;
+if he had not wherewithal to buy enough of zucca for a meal. Even
+had he been in health and appetite, he might have satisfied his hunger
+with it for about five farthings, and have left half for supper. And now
+a word on his insanity. Having been so imprudent not only as to make it
+too evident in his poetry that he was the lover of Leonora, but also to
+signify (not very obscurely) that his love was returned, he much perplexed
+the Duke of Ferrara, who, with great discretion, suggested to him the
+necessity of feigning madness. The lady&#8217;s honour required it from a
+brother; and a true lover, to convince the world, would embrace the project
+with alacrity. But there was no reason why the seclusion should be in a
+dungeon, or why exercise and air should be interdicted. This cruelty,
+and perhaps his uncertainty of Leonora&#8217;s compassion, may well be imagined
+to have produced at last the malady he had feigned. But did Leonora love
+Tasso as a man would be loved? If we wish to do her honour, let us hope
+it: for what greater glory can there be, than to have estimated at the
+full value so exalted a genius, so affectionate and so generous a heart!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> The author wrote the verses first in English, but he found it easy to
+write them better in Italian: they stood in the text as below: they only
+do for a girl of thirteen:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&#8216;Swallow! swallow! though so jetty</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Are your pinions, you are pretty:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And what matter were it though</span><br />
+<span class="i0">You were blacker than a crow?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of the many birds that fly</span><br />
+<span class="i0">(And how many pass me by!)</span><br />
+<span class="i0">You &#8217;re the first I ever prest,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of the many, to my breast:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Therefore it is very right</span><br />
+<span class="i0">You should be my own delight.&#8217;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="LA_FONTAINE_AND_DE_LA_ROCHEFOUCAULT" id="LA_FONTAINE_AND_DE_LA_ROCHEFOUCAULT"></a>LA FONTAINE AND DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> I am truly sensible of the honour I receive,
+M. de la Rochefoucault, in a visit from a personage so distinguished
+by his birth and by his genius. Pardon my ambition,
+if I confess to you that I have long and ardently wished for the
+good fortune, which I never could promise myself, of knowing
+you personally.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> My dear M. de la Fontaine!</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Not &#8216;<i>de</i> la&#8217;, not &#8216;<i>de</i> la&#8217;. I am <i>La</i> Fontaine,
+purely and simply.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> The whole; not derivative. You appear, in
+the midst of your purity, to have been educated at court, in
+the lap of the ladies. What was the last day (pardon!) I had
+the misfortune to miss you there?</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> I never go to court. They say one cannot go
+without silk stockings; and I have only thread: plenty of them
+indeed, thank God! Yet, would you believe it? Nanon, in
+putting a <i>solette</i> to the bottom of one, last week, sewed it so
+carelessly, she made a kind of cord across: and I verily believe
+it will lame me for life; for I walked the whole morning upon it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> She ought to be whipped.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> I thought so too, and grew the warmer at being
+unable to find a wisp of osier or a roll of packthread in the house.
+Barely had I begun with my garter, when in came the Bishop
+of Grasse, my old friend Godeau, and another lord, whose name
+he mentioned, and they both interceded for her so long and so
+touchingly, that at last I was fain to let her rise up and go.
+I never saw men look down on the erring and afflicted more
+compassionately. The bishop was quite concerned for me also.
+But the other, although he professed to feel even more, and said
+that it must surely be the pain of purgatory to me, took a pinch
+of snuff, opened his waistcoat, drew down his ruffles, and seemed
+rather more indifferent.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Providentially, in such moving scenes, the
+worst is soon over. But Godeau&#8217;s friend was not too sensitive.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Sensitive! no more than if he had been educated
+at the butcher&#8217;s or the Sorbonne.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> I am afraid there are as many hard hearts
+under satin waistcoats as there are ugly visages under the same
+material in miniature cases.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> My lord, I could show you a miniature case which
+contains your humble servant, in which the painter has done
+what no tailor in his senses would do; he has given me credit
+for a coat of violet silk, with silver frogs as large as tortoises.
+But I am loath to get up for it while the generous heart of this
+dog (if I mentioned his name he would jump up) places such
+confidence on my knee.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Pray do not move on any account; above all,
+lest you should disturb that amiable grey cat, fast asleep in his
+innocence on your shoulder.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Ah, rogue! art thou there? Why! thou hast
+not licked my face this half-hour.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> And more, too, I should imagine. I do not
+judge from his somnolency, which, if he were President of the
+Parliament, could not be graver, but from his natural sagacity.
+Cats weigh practicabilities. What sort of tongue has he?</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> He has the roughest tongue and the tenderest
+heart of any cat in Paris. If you observe the colour of his coat,
+it is rather blue than grey; a certain indication of goodness in
+these contemplative creatures.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> We were talking of his tongue alone; by which
+cats, like men, are flatterers.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Ah! you gentlemen of the court are much
+mistaken in thinking that vices have so extensive a range.
+There are some of our vices, like some of our diseases, from which
+the quadrupeds are exempt; and those, both diseases and vices,
+are the most discreditable.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> I do not bear patiently any evil spoken of the
+court: for it must be acknowledged, by the most malicious, that
+the court is the purifier of the whole nation.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> I know little of the court, and less of the whole
+nation; but how can this be?</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> It collects all ramblers and gamblers; all the
+market-men and market-women who deal in articles which God
+has thrown into their baskets, without any trouble on their part;
+all the seducers and all who wish to be seduced; all the duellists
+who erase their crimes with their swords, and sweat out their
+cowardice with daily practice; all the nobles whose patents of
+nobility lie in gold snuff-boxes, or have worn Mechlin ruffles,
+or are deposited within the archives of knee-deep waistcoats; all
+stock-jobbers and church-jobbers, the black-legged and the red-legged
+game, the flower of the <i>justaucorps</i>, the <i>robe</i>, and the
+<i>soutane</i>. If these were spread over the surface of France,
+instead of close compressure in the court or cabinet, they would
+corrupt the whole country in two years. As matters now stand,
+it will require a quarter of a century to effect it.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Am I not right then in preferring my beasts
+to yours? But if yours were loose, mine (as you prove to me)
+would be the last to suffer by it, poor dear creatures! Speaking
+of cats, I would have avoided all personality that might be
+offensive to them: I would not exactly have said, in so many
+words, that, by their tongues, they are flatterers, like men.
+Language may take a turn advantageously in favour of our
+friends. True, we resemble all animals in something. I am quite
+ashamed and mortified that your lordship, or anybody, should
+have had the start of me in this reflection. When a cat flatters
+with his tongue he is not insincere: you may safely take it for
+a real kindness. He is loyal, M. de la Rochefoucault! my word
+for him, he is loyal. Observe too, if you please, no cat ever
+licks you when he wants anything from you; so that there is
+nothing of baseness in such an act of adulation, if we must call
+it so. For my part, I am slow to designate by so foul a name,
+that (be it what it may) which is subsequent to a kindness.
+Cats ask plainly for what they want.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> And, if they cannot get it by protocols they
+get it by invasion and assault.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> No! no! usually they go elsewhere, and fondle
+those from whom they obtain it. In this I see no resemblance
+to invaders and conquerors. I draw no parallels: I would excite
+no heart-burnings between us and them. Let all have their due.</p>
+
+<p>I do not like to lift this creature off, for it would waken him,
+else I could find out, by some subsequent action, the reason
+why he has not been on the alert to lick my cheek for so long
+a time.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Cats are wary and provident. He would not
+enter into any contest with you, however friendly. He only
+licks your face, I presume, while your beard is but a match
+for his tongue.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Ha! you remind me. Indeed I did begin to
+think my beard was rather of the roughest; for yesterday
+Madame de Rambouillet sent me a plate of strawberries, the
+first of the season, and raised (would you believe it?) under
+glass. One of these strawberries was dropping from my lips,
+and I attempted to stop it. When I thought it had fallen
+to the ground, &#8216;Look for it, Nanon; pick it up and eat it,&#8217;
+said I.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Master!&#8217; cried the wench, &#8216;your beard has skewered and
+spitted it.&#8217; &#8216;Honest girl,&#8217; I answered, &#8216;come, cull it from the
+bed of its adoption.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>I had resolved to shave myself this morning: but our wisest
+and best resolutions too often come to nothing, poor mortals!</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> We often do very well everything but the only
+thing we hope to do best of all; and our projects often drop from
+us by their weight. A little while ago your friend Moli&egrave;re
+exhibited a remarkable proof of it.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Ah, poor Moli&egrave;re! the best man in the world;
+but flighty, negligent, thoughtless. He throws himself into
+other men, and does not remember where. The sight of an eagle,
+M. de la Rochefoucault, but the memory of a fly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault</i>. I will give you an example: but perhaps it is
+already known to you.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Likely enough. We have each so many friends,
+neither of us can trip but the other is invited to the laugh.
+Well; I am sure he has no malice, and I hope I have none: but
+who can see his own faults?</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> He had brought out a new edition of his
+comedies.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> There will be fifty; there will be a hundred:
+nothing in our language, or in any, is so delightful, so graceful;
+I will add, so clear at once and so profound.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> You are among the few who, seeing well his
+other qualities, see that Moli&egrave;re is also profound. In order
+to present the new edition to the dauphin, he had put on a
+sky-blue velvet coat, powdered with fleurs-de-lis. He laid the
+volume on his library table; and, resolving that none of the
+courtiers should have an opportunity of ridiculing him for
+anything like absence of mind, he returned to his bedroom,
+which, as may often be the case in the economy of poets, is also
+his dressing-room. Here he surveyed himself in his mirror,
+as well as the creeks and lagoons in it would permit.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> I do assure you, from my own observation,
+M. de la Rochefoucault, that his mirror is a splendid one. I
+should take it to be nearly three feet high, reckoning the frame,
+with the Cupid above and the elephant under. I suspected it
+was the present of some great lady; and indeed I have since
+heard as much.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Perhaps then the whole story may be quite
+as fabulous as the part of it which I have been relating.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> In that case, I may be able to set you right again.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> He found his peruke a model of perfection;
+tight, yet easy; not an inch more on one side than on the other.
+The black patch on the forehead....</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Black patch too! I would have given a fifteen-sous
+piece to have caught him with that black patch.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> He found it lovely, marvellous, irresistible.
+Those on each cheek....</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Do you tell me he had one on each cheek?</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Symmetrically. The cravat was of its proper
+descent, and with its appropriate charge of the best Strasburg
+snuff upon it. The waistcoat, for a moment, puzzled and perplexed
+him. He was not quite sure whether the right number
+of buttons were in their holes; nor how many above, nor how
+many below, it was the fashion of the week to leave without
+occupation. Such a piece of ignorance is enough to disgrace
+any courtier on earth. He was in the act of striking his forehead
+with desperation; but he thought of the patch, fell on his
+knees, and thanked Heaven for the intervention.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Just like him! just like him! good soul!</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> The breeches ... ah! those require attention:
+all proper: everything in its place. Magnificent. The stockings
+rolled up, neither too loosely nor too negligently. A picture!
+The buckles in the shoes ... all but one ... soon set to
+rights ... well thought of! And now the sword ... ah,
+that cursed sword! it will bring at least one man to the ground
+if it has its own way much longer ... up with it! up with it
+higher.... <i>Allons!</i> we are out of danger.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Delightful! I have him before my eyes. What
+simplicity! aye, what simplicity!</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Now for hat. Feather in? Five at least.
+Bravo!</p>
+
+<p>He took up hat and plumage, extended his arm to the full
+length, raised it a foot above his head, lowered it thereon, opened
+his fingers, and let them fall again at his side.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Something of the comedian in that; aye, M. de
+la Rochefoucault? But, on the stage or off, all is natural in
+Moli&egrave;re.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Away he went: he reached the palace, stood
+before the dauphin.... O consternation! O despair! &#8216;Morbleu!
+b&ecirc;te que je suis,&#8217; exclaimed the hapless man, &#8216;le livre, o&ugrave;
+donc est-il?&#8217; You are forcibly struck, I perceive, by this
+adventure of your friend.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Strange coincidence! quite unaccountable!
+There are agents at work in our dreams, M. de la Rochefoucault,
+which we shall never see out of them, on this side the grave.
+[<i>To himself.</i>] Sky-blue? no. Fleurs-de-lis? bah! bah! Patches?
+I never wore one in my life.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> It well becomes your character for generosity,
+M. La Fontaine, to look grave, and ponder, and ejaculate, on a
+friend&#8217;s untoward accident, instead of laughing, as those who
+little know you, might expect. I beg your pardon for relating
+the occurrence.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Right or wrong, I cannot help laughing any
+longer. Comical, by my faith! above the tiptop of comedy.
+Excuse my flashes and dashes and rushes of merriment. Incontrollable!
+incontrollable! Indeed the laughter is immoderate.
+And you all the while are sitting as grave as a judge; I
+mean a criminal one; who has nothing to do but to keep up
+his popularity by sending his rogues to the gallows. The civil
+indeed have much weighty matter on their minds: they must
+displease one party: and sometimes a doubt arises whether the
+fairer hand or the fuller shall turn the balance.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> I congratulate you on the return of your
+gravity and composure.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Seriously now: all my lifetime I have been the
+plaything of dreams. Sometimes they have taken such possession
+of me, that nobody could persuade me afterward they
+were other than real events. Some are very oppressive, very
+painful, M. de la Rochefoucault! I have never been able,
+altogether, to disembarrass my head of the most wonderful
+vision that ever took possession of any man&#8217;s. There are some
+truly important differences, but in many respects this laughable
+adventure of my innocent, honest friend Moli&egrave;re seemed to have
+befallen myself. I can only account for it by having heard the
+tale when I was half asleep.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Nothing more probable.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> You absolutely have relieved me from an
+incubus.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> I do not yet see how.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> No longer ago than when you entered this
+chamber, I would have sworn that I myself had gone to the
+Louvre, that I myself had been commanded to attend the
+dauphin, that I myself had come into his presence, had fallen
+on my knee, and cried, &#8216;Peste! o&ugrave; est donc le livre?&#8217; Ah,
+M. de la Rochefoucault, permit me to embrace you: this is
+really to find a friend at court.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> My visit is even more auspicious than I could
+have ventured to expect: it was chiefly for the purpose of asking
+your permission to make another at my return to Paris.... I
+am forced to go into the country on some family affairs: but
+hearing that you have spoken favourably of my <i>Maxims</i>, I
+presume to express my satisfaction and delight at your good
+opinion.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Pray, M. de la Rochefoucault, do me the favour
+to continue here a few minutes. I would gladly reason with
+you on some of your doctrines.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> For the pleasure of hearing your sentiments
+on the topics I have treated, I will, although it is late, steal a
+few minutes from the court, of which I must take my leave on
+parting for the province.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Are you quite certain that all your <i>Maxims</i>
+are true, or, what is of greater consequence, that they are all
+original? I have lately read a treatise written by an Englishman,
+Mr. Hobbes; so loyal a man that, while others tell you
+kings are appointed by God, he tells you God is appointed by
+kings.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Ah! such are precisely the men we want.
+If he establishes this verity, the rest will follow.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> He does not seem to care so much about the
+rest. In his treatise I find the ground-plan of your chief
+positions.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> I have indeed looked over his publication; and
+we agree on the natural depravity of man.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Reconsider your expression. It appears to me
+that what is natural is not depraved: that depravity is deflection
+from nature. Let it pass: I cannot, however, concede to you
+that the generality of men are bad. Badness is accidental,
+like disease. We find more tempers good than bad, where
+proper care is taken in proper time.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Care is not nature.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Nature is soon inoperative without it; so soon
+indeed as to allow no opportunity for experiment or hypothesis.
+Life itself requires care, and more continually than tempers
+and morals do. The strongest body ceases to be a body in a
+few days without a supply of food. When we speak of men
+being naturally bad or good, we mean susceptible and retentive
+and communicative of them. In this case (and there can be
+no other true or ostensible one) I believe that the more are good;
+and nearly in the same proportion as there are animals and
+plants produced healthy and vigorous than wayward and weakly.
+Strange is the opinion of Mr. Hobbes, that, when God hath
+poured so abundantly His benefits on other creatures, the only
+one capable of great good should be uniformly disposed to
+greater evil.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Yet Holy Writ, to which Hobbes would
+reluctantly appeal, countenances the supposition.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> The Jews, above all nations, were morose and
+splenetic. Nothing is holy to me that lessens in my view the
+beneficence of my Creator. If you could show Him ungentle
+and unkind in a single instance, you would render myriads of
+men so, throughout the whole course of their lives, and those too
+among the most religious. The less that people talk about
+God the better. He has left us a design to fill up: He has placed
+the canvas, the colours, and the pencils, within reach; His directing
+hand is over ours incessantly; it is our business to follow it,
+and neither to turn round and argue with our Master, nor to kiss
+and fondle Him. We must mind our lesson, and not neglect
+our time: for the room is closed early, and the lights are suspended
+in another, where no one works. If every man would
+do all the good he might within an hour&#8217;s walk from his house,
+he would live the happier and the longer: for nothing is so
+conducive to longevity as the union of activity and content.
+But, like children, we deviate from the road, however well we
+know it, and run into mire and puddles in despite of frown and
+ferule.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Go on, M. La Fontaine! pray go on. We are
+walking in the same labyrinth, always within call, always within
+sight of each other. We set out at its two extremities, and shall
+meet at last.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> I doubt it. From deficiency of care proceed
+many vices, both in men and children, and more still from care
+taken improperly. Mr. Hobbes attributes not only the order
+and peace of society, but equity and moderation and every
+other virtue, to the coercion and restriction of the laws. The
+laws, as now constituted, do a great deal of good; they also do
+a great deal of mischief. They transfer more property from the
+right owner in six months than all the thieves of the kingdom
+do in twelve. What the thieves take they soon disseminate
+abroad again; what the laws take they hoard. The thief takes
+a part of your property: he who prosecutes the thief for you takes
+another part: he who condemns the thief goes to the tax-gatherer
+and takes the third. Power has been hitherto occupied in no
+employment but in keeping down Wisdom. Perhaps the time
+may come when Wisdom shall exert her energy in repressing the
+sallies of Power.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> I think it more probable that they will agree;
+that they will call together their servants of all liveries, to
+collect what they can lay their hands upon; and that meanwhile
+they will sit together like good housewives, making nets from
+our purses to cover the coop for us. If you would be plump
+and in feather, pick up your millet and be quiet in your darkness.
+Speculate on nothing here below, and I promise you a nosegay
+in Paradise.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Believe me, I shall be most happy to receive it
+there at your hands, my lord duke.</p>
+
+<p>The greater number of men, I am inclined to think, with all
+the defects of education, all the frauds committed on their
+credulity, all the advantages taken of their ignorance and
+supineness, are disposed, on most occasions, rather to virtue
+than to vice, rather to the kindly affections than the unkindly,
+rather to the social than the selfish.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Here we differ: and were my opinion the same
+as yours, my book would be little read and less commended.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Why think so?</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> For this reason. Every man likes to hear evil
+of all men: every man is delighted to take the air of the common,
+though not a soul will consent to stand within his own allotment.
+No enclosure act! no finger-posts! You may call every
+creature under heaven fool and rogue, and your auditor will
+join with you heartily: hint to him the slightest of his own
+defects or foibles, and he draws the rapier. You and he are the
+judges of the world, but not its denizens.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Mr. Hobbes has taken advantage of these
+weaknesses. In his dissertation he betrays the timidity and
+malice of his character. It must be granted he reasons well,
+according to the view he has taken of things; but he has given
+no proof whatever that his view is a correct one. I will believe
+that it is, when I am persuaded that sickness is the natural
+state of the body, and health the unnatural. If you call him a
+sound philosopher, you may call a mummy a sound man. Its
+darkness, its hardness, its forced uprightness, and the place in
+which you find it, may commend it to you; give me rather some
+weakness and peccability, with vital warmth and human sympathies.
+A shrewd reasoner in one thing, a sound philosopher
+is another. I admire your power and precision. Monks will
+admonish us how little the author of the <i>Maxims</i> knows of the
+world; and heads of colleges will cry out &#8216;a libel on human
+nature!&#8217; but when they hear your titles, and, above all, your
+credit at court, they will cast back cowl, and peruke, and lick
+your boots. You start with great advantages. Throwing off
+from a dukedom, you are sure of enjoying, if not the tongue of
+these puzzlers, the full cry of the more animating, and will
+certainly be as long-lived as the imperfection of our language
+will allow. I consider your <i>Maxims</i> as a broken ridge of hills,
+on the shady side of which you are fondest of taking your
+exercise: but the same ridge hath also a sunny one. You
+attribute (let me say it again) all actions to self-interest. Now,
+a sentiment of interest must be preceded by calculation, long or
+brief, right or erroneous. Tell me then in what region lies the
+origin of that pleasure which a family in the country feels on
+the arrival of an unexpected friend. I say a family in the
+country; because the sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers,
+soon canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity
+of delight. If I may judge from the few examples I have been
+in a position to see, no earthly one can be greater. There are
+pleasures which lie near the surface, and which are blocked up
+by artificial ones, or are diverted by some mechanical scheme,
+or are confined by some stiff evergreen vista of low advantage.
+But these pleasures do occasionally burst forth in all their
+brightness; and, if ever you shall by chance find one of them,
+you will sit by it, I hope, complacently and cheerfully, and turn
+toward it the kindliest aspect of your meditations.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Many, indeed most people, will differ from
+me. Nothing is quite the same to the intellect of any two
+men, much less of all. When one says to another, &#8216;I am entirely
+of your opinion,&#8217; he uses in general an easy and indifferent
+phrase, believing in its accuracy, without examination, without
+thought. The nearest resemblance in opinions, if we could
+trace every line of it, would be found greatly more divergent
+than the nearest in the human form or countenance, and in the
+same proportion as the varieties of mental qualities are more
+numerous and fine than of the bodily. Hence I do not expect
+nor wish that my opinions should in all cases be similar to those
+of others: but in many I shall be gratified if, by just degrees and
+after a long survey, those of others approximate to mine. Nor
+does this my sentiment spring from a love of power, as in many
+good men quite unconsciously, when they would make proselytes,
+since I shall see few and converse with fewer of them, and profit
+in no way by their adherence and favour; but it springs from a
+natural and a cultivated love of all truths whatever, and from
+a certainty that these delivered by me are conducive to the
+happiness and dignity of man. You shake your head.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Make it out.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> I have pointed out to him at what passes he
+hath deviated from his true interest, and where he hath mistaken
+selfishness for generosity, coldness for judgment, contraction
+of heart for policy, rank for merit, pomp for dignity;
+of all mistakes, the commonest and the greatest. I am accused
+of paradox and distortion. On paradox I shall only say, that
+every new moral truth has been called so. Inexperienced
+and negligent observers see no difference in the operations of
+ravelling and unravelling: they never come close enough: they
+despise plain work.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> The more we simplify things, the better we
+descry their substances and qualities. A good writer will not
+coil them up and press them into the narrowest possible space,
+nor macerate them into such particles that nothing shall be
+remaining of their natural contexture. You are accused of
+this too, by such as have forgotten your title-page, and who look
+for treatises where maxims only have been promised. Some
+of them perhaps are spinning out sermons and dissertations from
+the poorest paragraph in the volume.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Let them copy and write as they please;
+against or for, modestly or impudently. I have hitherto
+had no assailant who is not of too slender a make to be detained
+an hour in the stocks he had unwarily put his foot into. If
+you hear of any, do not tell of them. On the subjects of my
+remarks, had others thought as I do, my labour would have
+been spared me. I am ready to point out the road where I
+know it, to whosoever wants it; but I walk side by side with
+few or none.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> We usually like those roads which show us the
+fronts of our friends&#8217; houses and the pleasure-grounds about
+them, and the smooth garden-walks, and the trim espaliers,
+and look at them with more satisfaction than at the docks and
+nettles that are thrown in heaps behind. The <i>Offices</i> of Cicero
+are imperfect; yet who would not rather guide his children by
+them than by the line and compass of harder-handed guides;
+such as Hobbes for instance?</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Imperfect as some gentlemen in hoods may
+call the <i>Offices</i>, no founder of a philosophical or of a religious
+sect has been able to add to them anything important.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Pity! that Cicero carried with him no better
+authorities than reason and humanity. He neither could
+work miracles, nor damn you for disbelieving them. Had he
+lived fourscore years later, who knows but he might have been
+another Simon Peter, and have talked Hebrew as fluently as
+Latin, all at once! Who knows but we might have heard of his
+patrimony! who knows but our venerable popes might have
+claimed dominion from him, as descendant from the kings of
+Rome!</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> The hint, some centuries ago, would have
+made your fortune, and that saintly cat there would have
+kittened in a mitre.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Alas! the hint could have done nothing: Cicero
+could not have lived later.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> I warrant him. Nothing is easier to correct
+than chronology. There is not a lady in Paris, nor a jockey in
+Normandy, that is not eligible to a professor&#8217;s chair in it. I
+have seen a man&#8217;s ancestor, whom nobody ever saw before,
+spring back over twenty generations. Our Vatican Jupiters
+have as little respect for old Chronos as the Cretan had: they
+mutilate him when and where they think necessary, limp as
+he may by the operation.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> When I think, as you make me do, how
+ambitious men are, even those whose teeth are too loose (one
+would fancy) for a bite at so hard an apple as the devil of
+ambition offers them, I am inclined to believe that we are
+actuated not so much by selfishness as you represent it, but under
+another form, the love of power. Not to speak of territorial
+dominion or political office, and such other things as we usually
+class under its appurtenances, do we not desire an exclusive
+control over what is beautiful and lovely? the possession of
+pleasant fields, of well-situated houses, of cabinets, of images,
+of pictures, and indeed of many things pleasant to see but useless
+to possess; even of rocks, of streams, and of fountains? These
+things, you will tell me, have their utility. True, but not to
+the wisher, nor does the idea of it enter his mind. Do not we
+wish that the object of our love should be devoted to us only;
+and that our children should love us better than their brothers
+and sisters, or even than the mother who bore them? Love
+would be arrayed in the purple robe of sovereignty, mildly as
+he may resolve to exercise his power.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Many things which appear to be incontrovertible
+are such for their age only, and must yield to others
+which, in their age, are equally so. There are only a few points
+that are always above the waves. Plain truths, like plain dishes,
+are commended by everybody, and everybody leaves them
+whole. If it were not even more impertinent and presumptuous
+to praise a great writer in his presence than to censure him in
+his absence, I would venture to say that your prose, from the
+few specimens you have given of it, is equal to your verse.
+Yet, even were I the possessor of such a style as yours, I would
+never employ it to support my <i>Maxims</i>. You would think a
+writer very impudent and self-sufficient who should quote
+his own works: to defend them is doing more. We are the
+worst auxiliaries in the world to the opinions we have brought
+into the field. Our business is, to measure the ground, and to
+calculate the forces; then let them try their strength. If the
+weak assails me, he thinks me weak; if the strong, he thinks me
+strong. He is more likely to compute ill his own vigour than
+mine. At all events, I love inquiry, even when I myself sit
+down. And I am not offended in my walks if my visitor asks
+me whither does that alley lead. It proves that he is ready to
+go on with me; that he sees some space before him; and that he
+believes there may be something worth looking after.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> You have been standing a long time, my lord
+duke: I must entreat you to be seated.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Excuse me, my dear M. la Fontaine; I would
+much rather stand.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Mercy on us! have you been upon your legs
+ever since you rose to leave me?</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> A change of position is agreeable: a friend
+always permits it.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Sad doings! sad oversight! The other two chairs
+were sent yesterday evening to be scoured and mended. But
+that dog is the best tempered dog! an angel of a dog, I do
+assure you; he would have gone down in a moment, at a word.
+I am quite ashamed of myself for such inattention. With your
+sentiments of friendship for me, why could you not have taken
+the liberty to shove him gently off, rather than give me this
+uneasiness?</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> My true and kind friend! we authors are too
+sedentary; we are heartily glad of standing to converse, whenever
+we can do it without any restraint on our acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> I must reprove that animal when he uncurls
+his body. He seems to be dreaming of Paradise and houris.
+Ay, twitch thy ear, my child! I wish at my heart there were
+as troublesome a fly about the other: God forgive me! The
+rogue covers all my clean linen! shirt and cravat! what cares he!</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Dogs are not very modest.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Never say that, M. de la Rochefoucault! The
+most modest people upon earth! Look at a dog&#8217;s eyes, and he
+half closes them, or gently turns them away, with a motion of
+the lips, which he licks languidly, and of the tail, which he stirs
+tremulously, begging your forbearance. I am neither blind nor
+indifferent to the defects of these good and generous creatures.
+They are subject to many such as men are subject to: among
+the rest, they disturb the neighbourhood in the discussion
+of their private causes; they quarrel and fight on small motives,
+such as a little bad food, or a little vainglory, or the sex. But
+it must be something present or near that excites them;
+and they calculate not the extent of evil they may do or
+suffer.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Certainly not: how should dogs calculate?</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> I know nothing of the process. I am unable
+to inform you how they leap over hedges and brooks, with
+exertion just sufficient, and no more. In regard to honour and
+a sense of dignity, let me tell you, a dog accepts the subsidies
+of his friends, but never claims them: a dog would not take the
+field to obtain power for a son, but would leave the son to obtain
+it by his own activity and prowess. He conducts his visitor or
+inmate out a-hunting, and makes a present of the game to him
+as freely as an emperor to an elector. Fond as he is of slumber,
+which is indeed one of the pleasantest and best things in the
+universe, particularly after dinner, he shakes it off as willingly
+as he would a gadfly, in order to defend his master from theft
+or violence. Let the robber or assailant speak as courteously
+as he may, he waives your diplomatical terms, gives his reasons
+in plain language, and makes war. I could say many other
+things to his advantage; but I never was malicious, and would
+rather let both parties plead for themselves; give me the dog,
+however.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Faith! I will give you both, and never boast of
+my largess in so doing.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> I trust I have removed from you the suspicion
+of selfishness in my client, and I feel it quite as easy to make
+a properer disposal of another ill attribute, namely cruelty,
+which we vainly try to shuffle off our own shoulders upon others,
+by employing the offensive and most unjust term, brutality.
+But to convince you of my impartiality, now I have defended
+the dog from the first obloquy, I will defend the man from the
+last, hoping to make you think better of each. What you
+attribute to cruelty, both while we are children and afterward,
+may be assigned, for the greater part, to curiosity. Cruelty
+tends to the extinction of life, the dissolution of matter, the
+imprisonment and sepulture of truth; and if it were our ruling
+and chief propensity, the human race would have been extinguished
+in a few centuries after its appearance. Curiosity,
+in its primary sense, implies care and consideration.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Words often deflect from their primary sense.
+We find the most curious men the most idle and silly, the least
+observant and conservative.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> So we think; because we see every hour the
+idly curious, and not the strenuously; we see only the persons
+of the one set, and only the works of the other.</p>
+
+<p>More is heard of cruelty than of curiosity, because while
+curiosity is silent both in itself and about its object, cruelty
+on most occasions is like the wind, boisterous in itself, and
+exciting a murmur and bustle in all the things it moves among.
+Added to which, many of the higher topics whereto our curiosity
+would turn, are intercepted from it by the policy of our guides
+and rulers; while the principal ones on which cruelty is most
+active, are pointed to by the sceptre and the truncheon, and
+wealth and dignity are the rewards of their attainment. What
+perversion! He who brings a bullock into a city for its sustenance
+is called a butcher, and nobody has the civility to take off
+the hat to him, although knowing him as perfectly as I know
+Matthieu le Mince, who served me with those fine kidneys
+you must have remarked in passing through the kitchen:
+on the contrary, he who reduces the same city to famine is
+styled M. le G&eacute;n&eacute;ral or M. le Mar&eacute;chal, and gentlemen like you,
+unprejudiced (as one would think) and upright, make room for
+him in the antechamber.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> He obeys orders without the degrading
+influence of any passion.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Then he commits a baseness the more, a cruelty
+the greater. He goes off at another man&#8217;s setting, as ingloriously
+as a rat-trap: he produces the worst effects of fury, and feels
+none: a Cain unirritated by a brother&#8217;s incense.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> I would hide from you this little rapier, which,
+like the barber&#8217;s pole, I have often thought too obtrusive in
+the streets.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Never shall I think my countrymen half civilized
+while on the dress of a courtier is hung the instrument of a cut-throat.
+How deplorably feeble must be that honour which
+requires defending at every hour of the day!</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Ingenious as you are, M. La Fontaine, I do not
+believe that, on this subject, you could add anything to what
+you have spoken already; but really, I do think one of the most
+instructive things in the world would be a dissertation on dress
+by you.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Nothing can be devised more commodious
+than the dress in fashion. Perukes have fallen among us
+by the peculiar dispensation of Providence. As in all the
+regions of the globe the indigenous have given way to stronger
+creatures, so have they (partly at least) on the human head.
+At present the wren and the squirrel are dominant there.
+Whenever I have a mind for a filbert, I have only to shake my
+foretop. Improvement does not end in that quarter. I might
+forget to take my pinch of snuff when it would do me good, unless
+I saw a store of it on another&#8217;s cravat. Furthermore, the slit
+in the coat behind tells in a moment what it was made for: a
+thing of which, in regard to ourselves, the best preachers have to
+remind us all our lives: then the central part of our habiliment
+has either its loop-hole or its portcullis in the opposite direction,
+still more demonstrative. All these are for very mundane
+purposes: but Religion and Humanity have whispered some
+later utilities. We pray the more commodiously, and of course
+the more frequently, for rolling up a royal ell of stocking round
+about our knees: and our high-heeled shoes must surely have been
+worn by some angel, to save those insects which the flat-footed
+would have crushed to death.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Ah! the good dog has awakened: he saw me
+and my rapier, and ran away. Of what breed is he? for I know
+nothing of dogs.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> And write so well!</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Is he a truffler?</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> No, not he; but quite as innocent.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Something of the shepherd-dog, I suspect.</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> Nor that neither; although he fain would make
+you believe it. Indeed he is very like one: pointed nose, pointed
+ears, apparently stiff, but readily yielding; long hair, particularly
+about the neck; noble tail over his back, three curls deep,
+exceedingly pleasant to stroke down again; straw-colour all
+above, white all below. He might take it ill if you looked for
+it; but so it is, upon my word: an ermeline might envy it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> What are his pursuits?</p>
+
+<p><i>La Fontaine.</i> As to pursuit and occupation, he is good for
+nothing. In fact, I like those dogs best ... and those men too.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rochefoucault.</i> Send Nanon then for a pair of silk stockings,
+and mount my carriage with me: it stops at the Louvre.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="LUCIAN_AND_TIMOTHEUS" id="LUCIAN_AND_TIMOTHEUS"></a>LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> I am delighted, my Cousin Lucian, to observe
+how popular are become your <i>Dialogues of the Dead</i>. Nothing
+can be so gratifying and satisfactory to a rightly disposed mind,
+as the subversion of imposture by the force of ridicule. It
+hath scattered the crowd of heathen gods as if a thunderbolt
+had fallen in the midst of them. Now, I am confident you never
+would have assailed the false religion, unless you were prepared
+for the reception of the true. For it hath always been an
+indication of rashness and precipitancy, to throw down an
+edifice before you have collected materials for reconstruction.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Of all metaphors and remarks, I believe this of yours,
+my good cousin Timotheus, is the most trite, and pardon me if
+I add, the most untrue. Surely we ought to remove an error
+the instant we detect it, although it may be out of our competence
+to state and establish what is right. A lie should be
+exposed as soon as born: we are not to wait until a healthier
+child is begotten. Whatever is evil in any way should be
+abolished. The husbandman never hesitates to eradicate weeds,
+or to burn them up, because he may not happen at the time to
+carry a sack on his shoulder with wheat or barley in it. Even
+if no wheat or barley is to be sown in future, the weeding and
+burning are in themselves beneficial, and something better will
+spring up.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> That is not so certain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Doubt it as you may, at least you will allow that the
+temporary absence of evil is an advantage.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> I think, O Lucian, you would reason much better
+if you would come over to our belief.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I was unaware that belief is an encourager and guide
+to reason.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Depend upon it, there can be no stability of truth,
+no elevation of genius, without an unwavering faith in our holy
+mysteries. Babes and sucklings who are blest with it, stand
+higher, intellectually as well as morally, than stiff unbelievers
+and proud sceptics.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I do not wonder that so many are firm holders of
+this novel doctrine. It is pleasant to grow wise and virtuous
+at so small an expenditure of thought or time. This saying of
+yours is exactly what I heard spoken with angry gravity not
+long ago.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Angry! no wonder! for it is impossible to keep our
+patience when truths so incontrovertible are assailed. What
+was your answer?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> My answer was: If you talk in this manner, my
+honest friend, you will excite a spirit of ridicule in the gravest
+and most saturnine of men, who never had let a laugh out of
+their breasts before. Lie to <i>me</i>, and welcome; but beware lest
+your own heart take you to task for it, reminding you that both
+anger and falsehood are reprehended by all religions, yours
+included.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Lucian! Lucian! you have always been called
+profane.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> For what? for having turned into ridicule the gods
+whom you have turned out of house and home, and are reducing
+to dust?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Well; but you are equally ready to turn into
+ridicule the true and holy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> In other words, to turn myself into a fool. He
+who brings ridicule to bear against Truth, finds in his hand a
+blade without a hilt. The most sparkling and pointed flame of
+wit flickers and expires against the incombustible walls of
+her sanctuary.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Fine talking! Do you know, you have really
+been called an atheist?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Yes, yes; I know it well. But, in fact, I believe there
+are almost as few atheists in the world as there are Christians.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> How! as few? Most of Europe, most of Asia,
+most of Africa, is Christian.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Show me five men in each who obey the commands
+of Christ, and I will show you five hundred in this very city
+who observe the dictates of Pythagoras. Every Pythagorean
+obeys his defunct philosopher; and almost every Christian disobeys
+his living God. Where is there one who practises the
+most important and the easiest of His commands, to abstain
+from strife? Men easily and perpetually find something new
+to quarrel about; but the objects of affection are limited in
+number, and grow up scantily and slowly. Even a small house
+is often too spacious for them, and there is a vacant seat at the
+table. Religious men themselves, when the Deity has bestowed
+on them everything they prayed for, discover, as a peculiar
+gift of Providence, some fault in the actions or opinions of a
+neighbour, and run it down, crying and shouting after it, with
+more alacrity and more clamour than boys would a leveret or a
+squirrel in the playground. Are our years and our intellects,
+and the word of God itself, given us for this, O Timotheus?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> A certain latitude, a liberal construction....</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Ay, ay! These &#8216;liberal constructions&#8217; let loose all
+the worst passions into those &#8216;certain latitudes&#8217;. The priests
+themselves, who ought to be the poorest, are the richest; who
+ought to be the most obedient, are the most refractory and
+rebellious. All trouble and all piety are vicarious. They send
+missionaries, at the cost of others, into foreign lands, to teach
+observances which they supersede at home. I have ridiculed
+the puppets of all features, all colours, all sizes, by which an
+impudent and audacious set of impostors have been gaining an
+easy livelihood these two thousand years.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Gently! gently! Ours have not been at it yet
+two hundred. We abolish all idolatry. We know that Jupiter
+was not the father of gods and men: we know that Mars was not
+the Lord of Hosts: we know who is: we are quite at ease upon
+that question.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Are you so fanatical, my good Timotheus, as to
+imagine that the Creator of the world cares a fig by what
+appellation you adore Him? whether you call Him on one occasion
+Jupiter, on another Apollo? I will not add Mars or Lord of
+Hosts; for, wanting as I may be in piety, I am not, and never
+was, so impious as to call the Maker the Destroyer; to call Him
+Lord of Hosts who, according to your holiest of books, declared
+so lately and so plainly that He permits no hosts at all; much less
+will He take the command of one against another. Would any
+man in his senses go down into the cellar, and seize first an
+amphora from the right, and then an amphora from the left,
+for the pleasure of breaking them in pieces, and of letting out
+the wine he had taken the trouble to put in? We are not contented
+with attributing to the gods our own infirmities; we make
+them even more wayward, even more passionate, even more
+exigent and more malignant: and then some of us try to coax
+and cajole them, and others run away from them outright.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> No wonder: but only in regard to yours: and even
+those are types.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> There are honest men who occupy their lives in discovering
+types for all things.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Truly and rationally thou speakest now. Honest
+men and wise men above their fellows are they, and the greatest
+of all discoverers. There are many types above thy reach,
+O Lucian!</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> And one which my mind, and perhaps yours also,
+can comprehend. There is in Italy, I hear, on the border of
+a quiet and beautiful lake, a temple dedicated to Diana; the
+priests of which temple have murdered each his predecessor for
+unrecorded ages.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> What of that? They were idolaters.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> They made the type, however: take it home with
+you, and hang it up in your temple.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Why! you seem to have forgotten on a sudden
+that I am a Christian: you are talking of the heathens.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> True! true! I am near upon eighty years of age, and
+to my poor eyesight one thing looks very like another.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> You are too indifferent.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> No indeed. I love those best who quarrel least,
+and who bring into public use the most civility and good
+humour.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Our holy religion inculcates this duty especially.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Such being the case, a pleasant story will not be
+thrown away upon you. Xenophanes, my townsman of Samosata,
+was resolved to buy a new horse: he had tried him, and liked
+him well enough. I asked him why he wished to dispose of
+his old one, knowing how sure-footed he was, how easy in
+his paces, and how quiet in his pasture. &#8216;Very true, O Lucian,&#8217;
+said he; &#8216;the horse is a clever horse; noble eye, beautiful figure,
+stately step; rather too fond of neighing and of shuffling a little
+in the vicinity of a mare; but tractable and good tempered.&#8217;
+&#8216;I would not have parted with him then,&#8217; said I. &#8216;The fact is,&#8217;
+replied he, &#8216;my grandfather, whom I am about to visit, likes
+no horses but what are <i>Saturnized</i>. To-morrow I begin my
+journey: come and see me set out.&#8217; I went at the hour
+appointed. The new purchase looked quiet and demure; but
+<i>he</i> also pricked up his ears, and gave sundry other tokens of
+equinity, when the more interesting part of his fellow-creatures
+came near him. As the morning oats began to operate, he grew
+more and more unruly, and snapped at one friend of Xenophanes,
+and sidled against another, and gave a kick at a third.
+&#8216;All in play! all in play!&#8217; said Xenophanes; &#8216;his nature is more
+of a lamb&#8217;s than a horse&#8217;s.&#8217; However, these mute salutations
+being over, away went Xenophanes. In the evening, when my
+lamp had just been replenished for the commencement of my
+studies, my friend came in striding as if he were still across
+the saddle. &#8216;I am apprehensive, O Xenophanes,&#8217; said I, &#8216;your
+new acquaintance has disappointed you.&#8217; &#8216;Not in the least,&#8217;
+answered he. &#8216;I do assure you, O Lucian! he is the very horse
+I was looking out for.&#8217; On my requesting him to be seated,
+he no more thought of doing so than if it had been in the presence
+of the Persian king. I then handed my lamp to him, telling
+him (as was true) it contained all the oil I had in the house,
+and protesting I should be happier to finish my Dialogue in the
+morning. He took the lamp into my bedroom, and appeared
+to be much refreshed on his return. Nevertheless, he treated
+his chair with great delicacy and circumspection, and evidently
+was afraid of breaking it by too sudden a descent. I did not
+revert to the horse: but he went on of his own accord. &#8216;I
+declare to you, O Lucian! it is impossible for me to be mistaken
+in a palfrey. My new one is the only one in Samosata that
+could carry me at one stretch to my grandfather&#8217;s.&#8217; &#8216;But
+<i>has</i> he?&#8217; said I, timidly. &#8216;No; he has not yet,&#8217; answered my
+friend. &#8216;To-morrow, then, I am afraid, we really must lose you.&#8217;
+&#8216;No,&#8217; said he; &#8216;the horse does trot hard: but he is the better for
+that: I shall soon get used to him.&#8217; In fine, my worthy friend
+deferred his visit to his grandfather: his rides were neither
+long nor frequent: he was ashamed to part with his purchase,
+boasted of him everywhere, and, humane as he is by nature,
+could almost have broken on the cross the quiet contented
+owner of old Bucephalus.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Am I to understand by this, O Cousin Lucian,
+that I ought to be contented with the impurities of paganism?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Unless you are very unreasonable. A moderate man
+finds plenty in it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> We abominate the Deities who patronize them,
+and we hurl down the images of the monsters.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Sweet cousin! be tenderer to my feelings. In such
+a tempest as this, my spark of piety may be blown out. Hold
+your hand cautiously before it, until I can find my way. Believe
+me, no Deities (out of their own houses) patronize immorality;
+none patronize unruly passions, least of all the fierce and
+ferocious. In my opinion, you are wrong in throwing down the
+images of those among them who look on you benignly: the
+others I give up to your discretion. But I think it impossible
+to stand habitually in the presence of a sweet and open countenance,
+graven or depicted, without in some degree partaking of
+the character it expresses. Never tell any man that he can
+derive no good, in his devotions, from this or from that: abolish
+neither hope nor gratitude.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> God is offended at vain efforts to represent Him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> No such thing, my dear Timotheus. If you knew
+Him at all, you would not talk of Him so irreverently. He is
+pleased, I am convinced, at every effort to resemble Him, at
+every wish to remind both ourselves and others of His benefits.
+You cannot think so often of Him without an effigy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> What likeness is there in the perishable to the
+Unperishable?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I see no reason why there may not be a similitude.
+All that the senses can comprehend may be represented by any
+material; clay or fig-tree, bronze or ivory, porphyry or gold.
+Indeed I have a faint remembrance that, according to your
+sacred volumes, man was made by God after His own image.
+If so, man&#8217;s intellectual powers are worthily exercised in attempting
+to collect all that is beautiful, serene, and dignified, and to
+bring Him back to earth again by showing Him the noblest of
+His gifts, the work most like His own. Surely He cannot hate
+or abandon those who thus cherish His memory, and thus
+implore His regard. Perishable and imperfect is everything
+human: but in these very qualities I find the best reason for
+striving to attain what is least so. Would not any father be
+gratified by seeing his child attempt to delineate his features?
+And would not the gratification be rather increased than
+diminished by his incapacity? How long shall the narrow
+mind of man stand between goodness and omnipotence? Perhaps
+the effigy of your ancestor Isknos is unlike him; whether
+it is or no, you cannot tell; but you keep it in your hall, and would
+be angry if anybody broke it to pieces or defaced it. Be quite
+sure there are many who think as much of their gods as you
+think of your ancestor Isknos, and who see in their images as
+good a likeness. Let men have their own way, especially their
+way to the temples. It is easier to drive them out of one road
+than into another. Our judicious and good-humoured Trajan
+has found it necessary on many occasions to chastise the law-breakers
+of your sect, indifferent as he is what gods are worshipped,
+so long as their followers are orderly and decorous.
+The fiercest of the Dacians never knocked off Jupiter&#8217;s beard, or
+broke an arm off Venus; and the emperor will hardly tolerate
+in those who have received a liberal education what he would
+punish in barbarians. Do not wear out his patience: try rather
+to imitate his equity, his equanimity, and forbearance.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> I have been listening to you with much attention,
+O Lucian! for I seldom have heard you speak with such gravity.
+And yet, O Cousin Lucian! I really do find in you a sad
+deficiency of that wisdom which alone is of any value. You
+talk of Trajan! what is Trajan?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> A beneficent citizen, an impartial judge, a sagacious
+ruler; the comrade of every brave soldier, the friend and
+associate of every man eminent in genius, throughout his empire,
+the empire of the world. All arts, all sciences, all philosophies,
+all religions, are protected by him. Wherefore his name will
+flourish, when the proudest of these have perished in the land
+of Egypt. Philosophies and religions will strive, struggle, and
+suffocate one another. Priesthoods, I know not how many, are
+quarrelling and scuffling in the street at this instant, all calling
+on Trajan to come and knock an antagonist on the head; and
+the most peaceful of them, as it wishes to be thought, proclaiming
+him an infidel for turning a deaf ear to its imprecations.
+Mankind was never so happy as under his guidance; and he has
+nothing now to do but to put down the battles of the gods.
+If they must fight it out, he will insist on our neutrality.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> He has no authority and no influence over us in
+matters of faith. A wise and upright man, whose serious
+thoughts lead him forward to religion, will never be turned
+aside from it by any worldly consideration or any human
+force.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> True: but mankind is composed not entirely of the
+upright and the wise. I suspect that we may find some, here
+and there, who are rather too fond of novelties in the furniture
+of temples; and I have observed that new sects are apt to warp,
+crack, and split, under the heat they generate. Our homely old
+religion has run into fewer quarrels, ever since the Centaurs and
+Lapiths (whose controversy was on a subject quite comprehensible),
+than yours has engendered in twenty years.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> We shall obviate that inconvenience by electing
+a supreme Pontiff to decide all differences. It has been seriously
+thought about long ago: and latterly we have been making out
+an ideal series down to the present day, in order that our successors
+in the ministry may have stepping-stones up to the
+fountain-head. At first the disseminators of our doctrines were
+equal in their commission; we do not approve of this any longer,
+for reasons of our own.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> You may shut, one after another, all our other
+temples, but, I plainly see, you will never shut the temple of
+Janus. The Roman Empire will never lose its pugnacious
+character while your sect exists. The only danger is, lest the
+fever rage internally and consume the vitals. If you sincerely
+wish your religion to be long-lived, maintain in it the spirit
+of its constitution, and keep it patient, humble, abstemious,
+domestic, and zealous only in the services of humanity. Whenever
+the higher of your priesthood shall attain the riches they
+are aiming at, the people will envy their possessions and revolt
+from their impostures. Do not let them seize upon the palace,
+and shove their God again into the manger.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Lucian! Lucian! I call this impiety.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> So do I, and shudder at its consequences. Caverns
+which at first look inviting, the roof at the aperture green with
+overhanging ferns and clinging mosses, then glittering with
+native gems and with water as sparkling and pellucid, freshening
+the air all around; these caverns grow darker and closer, until
+you find yourself among animals that shun the daylight, adhering
+to the walls, hissing along the bottom, flapping, screeching,
+gaping, glaring, making you shrink at the sounds, and sicken
+at the smells, and afraid to advance or retreat.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> To what can this refer? Our caverns open on
+verdure, and terminate in veins of gold.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Veins of gold, my good Timotheus, such as your
+excavations have opened and are opening, in the spirit of avarice
+and ambition, will be washed (or as you would say, <i>purified</i>)
+in streams of blood. Arrogance, intolerance, resistance to
+authority and contempt of law, distinguish your aspiring
+sectarians from the other subjects of the empire.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Blindness hath often a calm and composed
+countenance; but, my Cousin Lucian! it usually hath also the
+advantage of a cautious and a measured step. It hath pleased
+God to blind you, like all the other adversaries of our faith;
+but He has given you no staff to lean upon. You object against
+us the very vices from which we are peculiarly exempt.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Then it is all a story, a fable, a fabrication, about one
+of your earlier leaders cutting off with his sword a servant&#8217;s
+ear? If the accusation is true, the offence is heavy. For not
+only was the wounded man innocent of any provocation, but
+he is represented as being in the service of the high priest at
+Jerusalem. Moreover, from the direction and violence of the
+blow, it is evident that his life was aimed at. According to law,
+you know, my dear cousin, all the party might have been
+condemned to death, as accessories to an attempt at murder.
+I am unwilling to think so unfavourably of your sect; nor indeed
+do I see the possibility that, in such an outrage, the principal
+could be pardoned. For any man but a soldier to go about
+armed is against the Roman law, which, on that head, as on
+many others, is borrowed from the Athenian; and it is incredible
+that in any civilized country so barbarous a practice can be
+tolerated. Travellers do indeed relate that, in certain parts of
+India, there are princes at whose courts even civilians are armed.
+But <i>traveller</i> has occasionally the same signification as <i>liar</i>,
+and <i>India</i> as <i>fable</i>. However, if the practice really does exist
+in that remote and rarely visited country, it must be in some
+region of it very far beyond the Indus or the Ganges: for
+the nations situated between those rivers are, and were in
+the reign of Alexander, and some thousand years before his
+birth, as civilized as the Europeans; nay, incomparably more
+courteous, more industrious, and more pacific; the three grand
+criterions.</p>
+
+<p>But answer my question: is there any foundation for so
+mischievous a report?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> There was indeed, so to say, an ear, or something
+of the kind, abscinded; probably by mistake. But high priests&#8217;
+servants are propense to follow the swaggering gait of their
+masters, and to carry things with a high hand, in such wise as
+to excite the choler of the most quiet. If you knew the character
+of the eminently holy man who punished the atrocious
+insolence of that bloody-minded wretch, you would be sparing
+of your animadversions. We take him for our model.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I see you do.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> We proclaim him Prince of the Apostles.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I am the last in the world to question his princely
+qualifications; but, if I might advise you, it should be to follow
+in preference Him whom you acknowledge to be an unerring
+guide; who delivered to you His ordinances with His own
+hand, equitable, plain, explicit, compendious, and complete; who
+committed no violence, who countenanced no injustice, whose
+compassion was without weakness, whose love was without
+frailty, whose life was led in humility, in purity, in beneficence,
+and, at the end, laid down in obedience to His Father&#8217;s will.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Ah, Lucian! what strangely imperfect notions!
+all that is little.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Enough to follow.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Not enough to compel others. I did indeed
+hope, O Lucian! that you would again come forward with the
+irresistible arrows of your wit, and unite with us against our
+adversaries. By what you have just spoken, I doubt no longer
+that you approve of the doctrines inculcated by the blessed
+Founder of our religion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> To the best of my understanding.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> So ardent is my desire for the salvation of your
+precious soul, O my cousin! that I would devote many hours
+of every day to disputation with you on the principal points of
+our Christian controversy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Many thanks, my kind Timotheus! But I think
+the blessed Founder of your religion very strictly forbade that
+there should be <i>any</i> points of controversy. Not only has He
+prohibited them on the doctrines He delivered, but on everything
+else. Some of the most obstinate might never have doubted
+of His Divinity, if the conduct of His followers had not repelled
+them from the belief of it. How can they imagine you sincere
+when they see you disobedient? It is in vain for you to protest
+that you worship the God of Peace, when you are found daily
+in the courts and market-places with clenched fists and bloody
+noses. I acknowledge the full value of your offer; but really I
+am as anxious for the salvation of your precious time as you
+appear to be for the salvation of my precious soul, particularly
+since I am come to the conclusion that souls cannot be lost,
+and that time can.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> We mean by <i>salvation</i> exemption from eternal
+torments.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Among all my old gods and their children, morose
+as some of the senior are, and mischievous as are some of the
+junior, I have never represented the worst of them as capable
+of inflicting such atrocity. Passionate and capricious and unjust
+are several of them; but a skin stripped off the shoulder, and a
+liver tossed to a vulture, are among the worst of their inflictions.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> This is scoffing.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Nobody but an honest man has a right to scoff at
+anything.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> And yet people of a very different cast are usually
+those who scoff the most.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> We are apt to push forward at that which we are
+without: the low-born at titles and distinctions, the silly at
+wit, the knave at the semblance of probity. But I was about
+to remark, that an honest man may fairly scoff at all philosophies
+and religions which are proud, ambitious, intemperate, and
+contradictory. The thing most adverse to the spirit and
+essence of them all is falsehood. It is the business of the
+philosophical to seek truth: it is the office of the religious to
+worship her; under what name is unimportant. The falsehood
+that the tongue commits is slight in comparison with what is
+conceived by the heart, and executed by the whole man, throughout
+life. If, professing love and charity to the human race at
+large, I quarrel day after day with my next neighbour; if, professing
+that the rich can never see God, I spend in the luxuries
+of my household a talent monthly; if, professing to place so much
+confidence in His word, that, in regard to wordly weal, I need
+take no care for to-morrow, I accumulate stores even beyond
+what would be necessary, though I quite distrusted both His
+providence and His veracity; if, professing that &#8216;he who giveth
+to the poor lendeth to the Lord&#8217;, I question the Lord&#8217;s security,
+and haggle with Him about the amount of the loan; if, professing
+that I am their steward, I keep ninety-nine parts in the hundred
+as the emolument of my stewardship; how, when God hates
+liars and punishes defrauders, shall I, and other such thieves
+and hypocrites, fare hereafter?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Let us hope there are few of them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> We cannot hope against what is: we may, however,
+hope that in future these will be fewer; but never while the
+overseers of a priesthood look for offices out of it, taking the
+lead in politics, in debate, and strife. Such men bring to ruin
+all religion, but their own first, and raise unbelievers not only
+in Divine Providence, but in human faith.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> If they leave the altar for the market-place, the
+sanctuary for the senate-house, and agitate party questions
+instead of Christian verities, everlasting punishments await
+them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Everlasting?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Certainly: at the very least. I rank it next to
+heresy in the catalogue of sins; and the Church supports my
+opinion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I have no measure for ascertaining the distance
+between the opinions and practices of men; I only know that
+they stand widely apart in all countries on the most important
+occasions; but this newly-hatched word <i>heresy</i>, alighting on my
+ear, makes me rub it. A beneficent God descends on earth in
+the human form, to redeem us from the slavery of sin, from the
+penalty of our passions: can you imagine He will punish an error
+in opinion, or even an obstinacy in unbelief, with everlasting
+torments? Supposing it highly criminal to refuse to weigh
+a string of arguments, or to cross-question a herd of witnesses,
+on a subject which no experience has warranted and no sagacity
+can comprehend; supposing it highly criminal to be contented
+with the religion which our parents taught us, which they
+bequeathed to us as the most precious of possessions, and which
+it would have broken their hearts if they had foreseen we should
+cast aside; yet are eternal pains the just retribution of what at
+worst is but indifference and supineness?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Our religion has clearly this advantage over yours:
+it teaches us to regulate our passions.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Rather say it <i>tells</i> us. I believe all religions do the
+same; some indeed more emphatically and primarily than others;
+but <i>that</i> indeed would be incontestably of Divine origin, and
+acknowledged at once by the most sceptical, which should
+thoroughly teach it. Now, my friend Timotheus, I think you
+are about seventy-five years of age.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Nigh upon it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Seventy-five years, according to my calculation, are
+equivalent to seventy-five gods and goddesses in regulating
+our passions for us, if we speak of the amatory, which are always
+thought in every stage of life the least to be pardoned.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Execrable!</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I am afraid the sourest hang longest on the tree.
+Mimnermus says:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In early youth we often sigh</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Because our pulses beat so high;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">All this we conquer, and at last</span><br />
+<span class="i0">We sigh that we are grown so chaste.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Swine!</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> No animal sighs oftener or louder. But, my dear
+cousin, the quiet swine is less troublesome and less odious than
+the grumbling and growling and fierce hyena, which will not let
+the dead rest in their graves. We may be merry with the
+follies and even the vices of men, without doing or wishing
+them harm; punishment should come from the magistrate,
+not from us. If we are to give pain to any one because he
+thinks differently from us, we ought to begin by inflicting a
+few smart stripes on ourselves; for both upon light and upon
+grave occasions, if we have thought much and often, our opinions
+must have varied. We are always fond of seizing and managing
+what appertains to others. In the savage state all belongs to
+all. Our neighbours the Arabs, who stand between barbarism
+and civilization, waylay travellers, and plunder their equipage
+and their gold. The wilier marauders in Alexandria start up
+from under the shadow of temples, force us to change our habiliments
+for theirs, and strangle us with fingers dipped in holy
+water if we say they sit uneasily.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> This is not the right view of things.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> That is never the right view which lets in too much
+light. About two centuries have elapsed since your religion
+was founded. Show me the pride it has humbled; show me the
+cruelty it has mitigated; show me the lust it has extinguished
+or repressed. I have now been living ten years in Alexandria;
+and you never will accuse me, I think, of any undue partiality
+for the system in which I was educated; yet, from all my
+observation, I find no priest or elder, in your community, wise,
+tranquil, firm, and sedate as Epicurus, and Carneades, and Zeno,
+and Epictetus; or indeed in the same degree as some who were
+often called forth into political and military life; Epaminondas,
+for instance, and Phocion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> I pity them from my soul: they were ignorant
+of the truth: they are lost, my cousin! take my word for it, they
+are lost men.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Unhappily, they are. I wish we had them back
+again; or that, since we have lost them, we could at least find
+among us the virtues they left for our example.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Alas, my poor cousin! you too are blind; you do
+not understand the plainest words, nor comprehend those
+verities which are the most evident and palpable. Virtues!
+if the poor wretches had any, they were false ones.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Scarcely ever has there been a politician, in any free
+state, without much falsehood and duplicity. I have named the
+most illustrious exceptions. Slender and irregular lines of a
+darker colour run along the bright blade that decides the fate
+of nations, and may indeed be necessary to the perfection of
+its temper. The great warrior has usually his darker lines of
+character, necessary (it may be) to constitute his greatness. No
+two men possess the same quantity of the same virtues, if they
+have many or much. We want some which do not far outstep
+us, and which we may follow with the hope of reaching; we
+want others to elevate, and others to defend us. The order
+of things would be less beautiful without this variety. Without
+the ebb and flow of our passions, but guided and moderated by
+a beneficent light above, the ocean of life would stagnate; and
+zeal, devotion, eloquence, would become dead carcasses, collapsing
+and wasting on unprofitable sands. The vices of some men
+cause the virtues of others, as corruption is the parent of fertility.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> O my cousin! this doctrine is diabolical.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> What is it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Diabolical; a strong expression in daily use among
+us. We turn it a little from its origin.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Timotheus, I love to sit by the side of a clear water,
+although there is nothing in it but naked stones. Do not take
+the trouble to muddy the stream of language for my benefit;
+I am not about to fish in it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Well, we will speak about things which come nearer
+to your apprehension. I only wish you were somewhat less
+indifferent in your choice between the true and the false.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> We take it for granted that what is not true must
+be false.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Surely we do.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> This is erroneous.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Are you grown captious? Pray explain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> What is not true, I need not say, must be untrue;
+but that alone is false which is intended to deceive. A witness
+may be mistaken, yet would not you call him a false witness
+unless he asserted what he knew to be false.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Quibbles upon words!</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> On words, on quibbles, if you please to call distinctions
+so, rests the axis of the intellectual world. A winged word hath
+stuck ineradicably in a million hearts, and envenomed every
+hour throughout their hard pulsation. On a winged word hath
+hung the destiny of nations. On a winged word hath human
+wisdom been willing to cast the immortal soul, and to leave it
+dependent for all its future happiness. It is because a word is
+unsusceptible of explanation, or because they who employed
+it were impatient of any, that enormous evils have prevailed,
+not only against our common sense, but against our common
+humanity. Hence the most pernicious of absurdities, far
+exceeding in folly and mischief the worship of threescore gods;
+namely, that an implicit faith in what outrages our reason, which
+we know is God&#8217;s gift, and bestowed on us for our guidance,
+that this weak, blind, stupid faith is surer of His favour than the
+constant practice of every human virtue. They at whose hands
+one prodigious lie, such as this, hath been accepted, may reckon
+on their influence in the dissemination of many smaller, and
+may turn them easily to their own account. Be sure they will
+do it sooner or later. The fly floats on the surface for a while,
+but up springs the fish at last and swallows it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Was ever man so unjust as you are? The
+abominable old priesthoods are avaricious and luxurious: ours
+is willing to stand or fall by maintaining its ordinances of fellowship
+and frugality. Point out to me a priest of our religion whom
+you could, by any temptation or entreaty, so far mislead, that
+he shall reserve for his own consumption one loaf, one plate of
+lentils, while another poor Christian hungers. In the meanwhile
+the priests of Isis are proud and wealthy, and admit none
+of the indigent to their tables. And now, to tell you the whole
+truth, my Cousin Lucian, I come to you this morning to propose
+that we should lay our heads together and compose a merry
+dialogue on these said priests of Isis. What say you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> These said priests of Isis have already been with me,
+several times, on a similar business in regard to yours.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Malicious wretches!</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Beside, they have attempted to persuade me that
+your religion is borrowed from theirs, altering a name a little
+and laying the scene of action in a corner, in the midst of
+obscurity and ruins.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> The wicked dogs! the hellish liars! We have
+nothing in common with such vile impostors. Are they not
+ashamed of taking such unfair means of lowering us in the
+estimation of our fellow-citizens? And so, they artfully came
+to you, craving any spare jibe to throw against us! They lie
+open to these weapons; we do not: we stand above the malignity,
+above the strength, of man. You would do justly in turning
+their own devices against them: it would be amusing to see how
+they would look. If you refuse me, I am resolved to write a
+Dialogue of the Dead, myself, and to introduce these hypocrites
+in it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Consider well first, my good Timotheus, whether you
+can do any such thing with propriety; I mean to say judiciously
+in regard to composition.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> I always thought you generous and open-hearted,
+and quite inaccessible to jealousy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Let nobody ever profess himself so much as that:
+for, although he may be insensible of the disease, it lurks within
+him, and only waits its season to break out. But really, my
+cousin, at present I feel no symptoms: and, to prove that I
+am ingenuous and sincere with you, these are my reasons for
+dissuasion. We believers in the Homeric family of gods and
+goddesses, believe also in the locality of Tartarus and Elysium.
+We entertain no doubt whatever that the passions of men and
+demigods and gods are nearly the same above ground and below;
+and that Achilles would dispatch his spear through the body
+of any shade who would lead Briseis too far among the myrtles,
+or attempt to throw the halter over the ears of any chariot
+horse belonging to him in the meads of asphodel. We admit
+no doubt of these verities, delivered down to us from the ages
+when Theseus and Hercules had descended into Hades itself.
+Instead of a few stadions in a cavern, with a bank and a bower
+at the end of it, under a very small portion of our diminutive
+Hellas, you Christians possess the whole cavity of the earth for
+punishment, and the whole convex of the sky for felicity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Our passions are burnt out amid the fires of
+purification, and our intellects are elevated to the enjoyment of
+perfect intelligence.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> How silly then and incongruous would it be, not to
+say how impious, to represent your people as no better and no
+wiser than they were before, and discoursing on subjects which
+no longer can or ought to concern them. Christians must
+think your Dialogue of the Dead no less irreligious than their
+opponents think mine, and infinitely more absurd. If indeed
+you are resolved on this form of composition, there is no topic
+which may not, with equal facility, be discussed on earth; and
+you may intersperse as much ridicule as you please, without
+any fear of censure for inconsistency or irreverence. Hitherto
+such writers have confined their view mostly to speculative
+points, sophistic reasonings, and sarcastic interpellations.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Ha! you are always fond of throwing a little pebble
+at the lofty Plato, whom we, on the contrary, are ready to
+receive (in a manner) as one of ourselves.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> To throw pebbles is a very uncertain way of showing
+where lie defects. Whenever I have mentioned him seriously,
+I have brought forward, not accusations, but passages from his
+writings, such as no philosopher or scholar or moralist can
+defend.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> His doctrines are too abstruse and too sublime
+for you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Solon, Anaxagoras, and Epicurus, are more sublime,
+if truth is sublimity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Truth is, indeed; for God is truth.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> We are upon earth to learn what can be learnt upon
+earth, and not to speculate on what never can be. This you,
+O Timotheus, may call philosophy: to me it appears the idlest
+of curiosity; for every other kind may teach us something, and
+may lead to more beyond. Let men learn what benefits men;
+above all things, to contract their wishes, to calm their passions,
+and, more especially, to dispel their fears. Now these are to
+be dispelled, not by collecting clouds, but by piercing and
+scattering them. In the dark we may imagine depths and
+heights immeasurable, which, if a torch be carried right before
+us, we find it easy to leap across. Much of what we call sublime
+is only the residue of infancy, and the worst of it.</p>
+
+<p>The philosophers I quoted are too capacious for schools and
+systems. Without noise, without ostentation, without mystery,
+not quarrelsome, not captious, not frivolous, their lives were
+commentaries on their doctrine. Never evaporating into mist,
+never stagnating into mire, their limpid and broad morality
+runs parallel with the lofty summits of their genius.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Genius! was ever genius like Plato&#8217;s?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> The most admired of his Dialogues, his <i>Banquet</i>,
+is beset with such puerilities, deformed with such pedantry,
+and disgraced with such impurity, that none but the thickest
+beards, and chiefly of the philosophers and the satyrs, should
+bend over it. On a former occasion he has given us a specimen
+of history, than which nothing in our language is worse: here
+he gives us one of poetry, in honour of Love, for which the god
+has taken ample vengeance on him, by perverting his taste and
+feelings. The grossest of all the absurdities in this dialogue is,
+attributing to Aristophanes, so much of a scoffer and so little
+of a visionary, the silly notion of male and female having been
+originally complete in one person, and walking circuitously.
+He may be joking: who knows?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Forbear! forbear! do not call this notion a silly
+one: he took it from our Holy Scriptures, but perverted it somewhat.
+Woman was made from man&#8217;s rib, and did not require
+to be cut asunder all the way down: this is no proof of bad reasoning,
+but merely of misinterpretation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> If you would rather have bad reasoning, I will adduce
+a little of it. Farther on, he wishes to extol the wisdom of
+Agathon by attributing to him such a sentence as this:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;It is evident that Love is the most beautiful of the gods,
+<i>because</i> he is the youngest of them.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Now, even on earth, the youngest is not always the most
+beautiful; how infinitely less cogent, then, is the argument
+when we come to speak of the Immortals, with whom age can
+have no concern! There was a time when Vulcan was the
+youngest of the gods: was he, also, at that time, and for that
+reason, the most beautiful? Your philosopher tells us, moreover,
+that &#8216;Love is of all deities the most <i>liquid</i>; else he never
+could fold himself about everything, and flow into and out of
+men&#8217;s souls.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>The three last sentences of Agathon&#8217;s rhapsody are very
+harmonious, and exhibit the finest specimen of Plato&#8217;s style;
+but we, accustomed as we are to hear him lauded for his poetical
+diction, should hold that poem a very indifferent one which
+left on the mind so superficial an impression. The garden of
+Academus is flowery without fragrance, and dazzling without
+warmth: I am ready to dream away an hour in it after dinner,
+but I think it insalutary for a night&#8217;s repose. So satisfied was
+Plato with his <i>Banquet</i>, that he says of himself, in the person
+of Socrates, &#8216;How can I or any one but find it difficult to speak
+after a discourse so eloquent? It would have been wonderful
+if the brilliancy of the sentences at the end of it, and the choice
+of expression throughout, had not astonished all the auditors.
+I, who can never say anything nearly so beautiful, would if
+possible have made my escape, and have fairly run off for shame.&#8217;
+He had indeed much better run off before he made so wretched
+a pun on the name of Gorgias. &#8216;I dreaded,&#8217; says he, &#8216;lest
+Agathon, <i>measuring my discourse by the head of the eloquent
+Gorgias, should turn me to stone</i> for inability of utterance.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Was there ever joke more frigid? What painful twisting of
+unelastic stuff! If Socrates was the wisest man in the world,
+it would require another oracle to persuade us, after this, that
+he was the wittiest. But surely a small share of common
+sense would have made him abstain from hazarding such failures.
+He falls on his face in very flat and very dry ground; and, when
+he gets up again, his quibbles are well-nigh as tedious as his
+witticisms. However, he has the presence of mind to throw
+them on the shoulders of Diotima, whom he calls a prophetess,
+and who, ten years before the plague broke out in Athens,
+obtained from the gods (he tells us) that delay. Ah! the gods
+were doubly mischievous: they sent her first. Read her words,
+my cousin, as delivered by Socrates; and if they have another
+plague in store for us, you may avert it by such an act of
+expiation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> The world will have ended before ten years are
+over.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Indeed!</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> It has been pronounced.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> How the threads of belief and unbelief run woven
+close together in the whole web of human life! Come, come;
+take courage; you will have time for your Dialogue. Enlarge
+the circle; enrich it with a variety of matter, enliven it with a
+multitude of characters, occupy the intellect of the thoughtful,
+the imagination of the lively; spread the board with solid viands,
+delicate rarities, and sparkling wines; and throw, along the
+whole extent of it, geniality and festal crowns.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> What writer of dialogues hath ever done this, or
+undertaken, or conceived, or hoped it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> None whatever; yet surely you yourself may, when
+even your babes and sucklings are endowed with abilities incomparably
+greater than our niggardly old gods have bestowed
+on the very best of us.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> I wish, my dear Lucian, you would let our babes
+and sucklings lie quiet, and say no more about them: as for
+your gods, I leave them at your mercy. Do not impose on me
+the performance of a task in which Plato himself, if he had
+attempted it, would have failed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> No man ever detected false reasoning with more
+quickness; but unluckily he called in Wit at the exposure;
+and Wit, I am sorry to say, held the lowest place in his household.
+He sadly mistook the qualities of his mind in attempting
+the facetious; or, rather, he fancied he possessed one quality
+more than belonged to him. But, if he himself had not been a
+worse quibbler than any whose writings are come down to us,
+we might have been gratified by the exposure of wonderful
+acuteness wretchedly applied. It is no small service to the
+community to turn into ridicule the grave impostors, who are
+contending which of them shall guide and govern us, whether
+in politics or religion. There are always a few who will take the
+trouble to walk down among the seaweeds and slippery stones,
+for the sake of showing their credulous fellow-citizens that
+skins filled with sand, and set upright at the forecastle, are
+neither men nor merchandise.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> I can bring to mind, O Lucian, no writer possessing
+so great a variety of wit as you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> No man ever possessed any variety of this gift; and
+the holder is not allowed to exchange the quality for another.
+Banter (and such is Plato&#8217;s) never grows large, never sheds its
+bristles, and never do they soften into the humorous or the
+facetious.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> I agree with you that banter is the worst species
+of wit. We have indeed no correct idea what persons those
+really were whom Plato drags by the ears, to undergo slow
+torture under Socrates. One sophist, I must allow, is precisely
+like another: no discrimination of character, none of manner,
+none of language.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> He wanted the fancy and fertility of Aristophanes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Otherwise, his mind was more elevated and more
+poetical.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Pardon me if I venture to express my dissent in both
+particulars. Knowledge of the human heart, and discrimination
+of character, are requisites of the poet. Few ever have
+possessed them in an equal degree with Aristophanes: Plato
+has given no indication of either.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> But consider his imagination.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> On what does it rest? He is nowhere so imaginative
+as in his <i>Polity</i>. Nor is there any state in the world that is, or
+would be, governed by it. One day you may find him at his
+counter in the midst of old-fashioned toys, which crack and
+crumble under his fingers while he exhibits and recommends
+them; another day, while he is sitting on a goat&#8217;s bladder, I
+may discover his bald head surmounting an enormous mass
+of loose chaff and uncleanly feathers, which he would persuade
+you is the pleasantest and healthiest of beds, and that dreams
+descend on it from the gods.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&#8216;Open your mouth, and shut your eyes, and see what Zeus shall send you,&#8217;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>says Aristophanes in his favourite metre. In this helpless
+condition of closed optics and hanging jaw, we find the followers
+of Plato. It is by shutting their eyes that they see, and
+by opening their mouths that they apprehend. Like certain
+broad-muzzled dogs, all stand equally stiff and staunch, although
+few scent the game, and their lips wag, and water, at whatever
+distance from the net. We must leave them with their hands
+hanging down before them, confident that they are wiser than
+we are, were it only for this attitude of humility. It is amusing
+to see them in it before the tall, well-robed Athenian, while he
+mis-spells the charms, and plays clumsily the tricks, he acquired
+from the conjurors here in Egypt. I wish you better success
+with the same materials. But in my opinion all philosophers
+should speak clearly. The highest things are the purest and
+brightest; and the best writers are those who render them the
+most intelligible to the world below. In the arts and sciences,
+and particularly in music and metaphysics, this is difficult:
+but the subjects not being such as lie within the range of the
+community, I lay little stress upon them, and wish authors to
+deal with them as they best may, only beseeching that they
+recompense us, by bringing within our comprehension the other
+things with which they are entrusted for us. The followers of
+Plato fly off indignantly from any such proposal. If I ask
+them the meaning of some obscure passage, they answer that
+I am unprepared and unfitted for it, and that his mind is so
+far above mine, I cannot grasp it. I look up into the faces of
+these worthy men, who mingle so much commiseration with so
+much calmness, and wonder at seeing them look no less vacant
+than my own.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> You have acknowledged his eloquence, while you
+derided his philosophy and repudiated his morals.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Certainly there was never so much eloquence with
+so little animation. When he has heated his oven, he forgets
+to put the bread into it; instead of which, he throws in another
+bundle of faggots. His words and sentences are often too large
+for the place they occupy. If a water-melon is not to be placed
+in an oyster-shell, neither is a grain of millet in a golden salver.
+At high festivals a full band may enter: ordinary conversation
+goes on better without it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> There is something so spiritual about him, that
+many of us Christians are firmly of opinion he must have been
+partially enlightened from above.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I hope and believe we all are. His entire works are
+in our library. Do me the favour to point out to me a few of
+those passages where in poetry he approaches the spirit of
+Aristophanes, or where in morals he comes up to Epictetus.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> It is useless to attempt it if you carry your
+prejudices with you. Beside, my dear cousin, I would not offend
+you, but really your mind has no point about it which could be
+brought to contact or affinity with Plato&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> In the universality of his genius there must surely
+be some atom coincident with another in mine. You acknowledge,
+as everybody must do, that his wit is the heaviest and
+lowest: pray, is the specimen he has given us of history at all
+better?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> I would rather look to the loftiness of his mind,
+and the genius that sustains him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> So would I. Magnificent words, and the pomp
+and procession of stately sentences, may accompany genius,
+but are not always nor frequently called out by it. The voice
+ought not to be perpetually nor much elevated in the ethic
+and didactic, nor to roll sonorously, as if it issued from a mask
+in the theatre. The horses in the plain under Troy are not
+always kicking and neighing; nor is the dust always raised in
+whirlwinds on the banks of Simois and Scamander; nor are the
+rampires always in a blaze. Hector has lowered his helmet to
+the infant of Andromache, and Achilles to the embraces of
+Briseis. I do not blame the prose-writer who opens his bosom
+occasionally to a breath of poetry; neither, on the contrary, can
+I praise the gait of that pedestrian who lifts up his legs as high
+on a bare heath as in a cornfield. Be authority as old and
+obstinate as it may, never let it persuade you that a man is
+the stronger for being unable to keep himself on the ground,
+or the weaker for breathing quietly and softly on ordinary
+occasions. Tell me, over and over, that you find every great
+quality in Plato: let me only once ask you in return, whether he
+ever is ardent and energetic, whether he wins the affections,
+whether he agitates the heart. Finding him deficient in every
+one of these faculties, I think his disciples have extolled him too
+highly. Where power is absent, we may find the robes of genius,
+but we miss the throne. He would acquit a slave who killed
+another in self-defence, but if he killed any free man, even in
+self-defence; he was not only to be punished with death, but to
+undergo the cruel death of a parricide. This effeminate philosopher
+was more severe than the manly Demosthenes, who
+quotes a law against the striking of a slave: and Diogenes,
+when one ran away from him, remarked that it would be horrible
+if Diogenes could not do without a slave, when a slave could do
+without Diogenes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Surely the allegories of Plato are evidences of
+his genius.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> A great poet in the hours of his idleness may indulge
+in allegory: but the highest poetical character will never rest on
+so unsubstantial a foundation. The poet must take man from
+God&#8217;s hands, must look into every fibre of his heart and brain,
+must be able to take the magnificent work to pieces, and to
+reconstruct it. When this labour is completed, let him throw
+himself composedly on the earth, and care little how many of its
+ephemeral insects creep over him. In regard to these allegories
+of Plato, about which I have heard so much, pray what and
+where are they? You hesitate, my fair cousin Timotheus!
+Employ one morning in transcribing them, and another in noting
+all the passages which are of practical utility in the commerce
+of social life, or purify our affections at home, or excite and
+elevate our enthusiasm in the prosperity and glory of our
+country. Useful books, moral books, instructive books are
+easily composed: and surely so great a writer should present
+them to us without blot or blemish: I find among his many
+volumes no copy of a similar composition. My enthusiasm is
+not easily raised indeed; yet such a whirlwind of a poet must
+carry it away with him; nevertheless, here I stand, calm and
+collected, not a hair of my beard in commotion. Declamation
+will find its echo in vacant places: it beats ineffectually on the
+well-furnished mind. Give me proof; bring the work; show the
+passages; convince, confound, overwhelm me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> I may do that another time with Plato. And yet,
+what effect can I hope to produce on an unhappy man who
+doubts even that the world is on the point of extinction?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Are there many of your association who believe that
+this catastrophe is so near at hand?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> We all believe it; or rather, we all are certain of it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> How so? Have you observed any fracture in the
+disk of the sun? Are any of the stars loosened in their orbits?
+Has the beautiful light of Venus ceased to pant in the heavens,
+or has the belt of Orion lost its gems?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Oh, for shame!</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Rather should I be ashamed of indifference on so
+important an occasion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> We know the fact by surer signs.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> These, if you could vouch for them, would be sure
+enough for me. The least of them would make me sweat as
+profusely as if I stood up to the neck in the hot preparation of
+a mummy. Surely no wise or benevolent philosopher could
+ever have uttered what he knew or believed might be distorted
+into any such interpretation. For if men are persuaded that
+they and their works are so soon about to perish, what
+provident care are they likely to take in the education and
+welfare of their families? What sciences will they improve,
+what learning will they cultivate, what monuments of past
+ages will they be studious to preserve, who are certain that there
+can be no future ones? Poetry will be censured as rank profaneness,
+eloquence will be converted into howls and execrations,
+statuary will exhibit only Midases and Ixions, and all the
+colours of painting will be mixed together to produce one grand
+conflagration: <i>flammantia moenia mundi</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Do not quote an atheist; especially in Latin.
+I hate the language; the Romans are beginning to differ from
+us already.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Ah! you will soon split into smaller fractions. But
+pardon me my unusual fault of quoting. Before I let fall a
+quotation I must be taken by surprise. I seldom do it in conversation,
+seldomer in composition; for it mars the beauty and
+unity of style, especially when it invades it from a foreign
+tongue. A quoter is either ostentatious of his acquirements or
+doubtful of his cause. And moreover, he never walks gracefully
+who leans upon the shoulder of another, however gracefully
+that other may walk. Herodotus, Plato, Aristoteles, Demosthenes,
+are no quoters. Thucydides, twice or thrice, inserts a
+few sentences of Pericles: but Thucydides is an emanation of
+Pericles, somewhat less clear indeed, being lower, although at
+no great distance from that purest and most pellucid source.
+The best of the Romans, I agree with you, are remote from such
+originals, if not in power of mind, or in acuteness of remark, or
+in sobriety of judgment, yet in the graces of composition.
+While I admired, with a species of awe such as not Homer
+himself ever impressed me with, the majesty and sanctimony of
+Livy, I have been informed by learned Romans that in the
+structure of his sentences he is often inharmonious, and
+sometimes uncouth. I can imagine such uncouthness in the
+goddess of battles, confident of power and victory, when part of
+her hair is waving round the helmet, loosened by the rapidity of
+her descent or the vibration of her spear. Composition may be
+too adorned even for beauty. In painting it is often requisite to
+cover a bright colour with one less bright; and, in language, to
+relieve the ear from the tension of high notes, even at the
+cost of a discord. There are urns of which the borders are
+too prominent and too decorated for use, and which appear to
+be brought out chiefly for state, at grand carousals. The
+author who imitates the artificers of these, shall never have my
+custom.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> I think you judge rightly: but I do not understand
+languages: I only understand religion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> He must be a most accomplished, a most extraordinary
+man, who comprehends them both together. We do
+not even talk clearly when we are walking in the dark.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Thou art not merely walking in the dark, but fast
+asleep.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> And thou, my cousin, wouldst kindly awaken me with
+a red-hot poker. I have but a few paces to go along the corridor
+of life: prithee let me turn into my bed again and lie quiet.
+Never was any man less an enemy to religion than I am, whatever
+may be said to the contrary: and you shall judge of me by
+the soundness of my advice. If your leaders are in earnest, as
+many think, do persuade them to abstain from quarrelsomeness
+and contention, and not to declare it necessary that there should
+perpetually be a religious as well as a political war between
+east and west. No honest and considerate man will believe in
+their doctrines, who, inculcating peace and good-will, continue
+all the time to assail their fellow-citizens with the utmost
+rancour at every divergency of opinion, and, forbidding the
+indulgence of the kindlier affections, exercise at full stretch the
+fiercer. This is certain: if they obey any commander, they will
+never sound a charge when his order is to sound a retreat: if
+they acknowledge any magistrate, they will never tear down the
+tablet of his edicts.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> We have what is all-sufficient.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I see you have.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> You have ridiculed all religion and all philosophy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I have found but little of either. I have cracked
+many a nut, and have come only to dust or maggots.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> To say nothing of the saints, are all philosophers
+fools or impostors? And, because you cannot rise to the
+ethereal heights of Plato, nor comprehend the real magnitude
+of a man so much above you, must he be a dwarf?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> The best sight is not that which sees best in the dark
+or the twilight; for no objects are then visible in their true
+colours, and just proportions; but it is that which presents to
+us things as they are, and indicates what is within our reach
+and what is beyond it. Never were any three writers, of high
+celebrity, so little understood in the main character, as Plato,
+Diogenes, and Epicurus. Plato is a perfect master of logic and
+rhetoric; and whenever he errs in either, as I have proved to you
+he does occasionally, he errs through perverseness, not through
+unwariness. His language often settles into clear and most
+beautiful prose, often takes an imperfect and incoherent shape
+of poetry, and often, cloud against cloud, bursts with a vehement
+detonation in the air. Diogenes was hated both by the vulgar
+and the philosophers. By the philosophers, because he exposed
+their ignorance, ridiculed their jealousies, and rebuked their
+pride: by the vulgar, because they never can endure a man
+apparently of their own class who avoids their society and partakes
+in none of their humours, prejudices, and animosities.
+What right has he to be greater or better than they are? he who
+wears older clothes, who eats staler fish, and possesses no vote
+to imprison or banish anybody. I am now ashamed that I
+mingled in the rabble, and that I could not resist the childish
+mischief of smoking him in his tub. He was the wisest man of
+his time, not excepting Aristoteles; for he knew that he was
+greater than Philip or Alexander. Aristoteles did not know
+that he himself was, or knowing it, did not act up to his knowledge;
+and here is a deficiency of wisdom.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Whether you did or did not strike the cask,
+Diogenes would have closed his eyes equally. He would never
+have come forth and seen the truth, had it shone upon the world
+in that day. But, intractable as was this recluse, Epicurus,
+I fear, is quite as lamentable. What horrible doctrines!</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Enjoy, said he, the pleasant walks where you are:
+repose and eat gratefully the fruit that falls into your bosom:
+do not weary your feet with an excursion, at the end whereof
+you will find no resting-place: reject not the odour of roses for
+the fumes of pitch and sulphur. What horrible doctrines!</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Speak seriously. He was much too bad for
+ridicule.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I will then speak as you desire me, seriously. His
+smile was so unaffected and so graceful, that I should have
+thought it very injudicious to set my laugh against it. No
+philosopher ever lived with such uniform purity, such abstinence
+from censoriousness, from controversy, from jealousy, and
+from arrogance.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Ah, poor mortal! I pity him, as far as may be;
+he is in hell: it would be wicked to wish him out: we are not to
+murmur against the all-wise dispensations.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I am sure he would not; and it is therefore I hope he
+is more comfortable than you believe.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Never have I defiled my fingers, and never will
+I defile them, by turning over his writings. But in regard to
+Plato, I can have no objection to take your advice.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> He will reward your assiduity: but he will assist you
+very little if you consult him principally (and eloquence for this
+should principally be consulted) to strengthen your humanity.
+Grandiloquent and sonorous, his lungs seem to play the better
+for the absence of the heart. His imagination is the most
+conspicuous, buoyed up by swelling billows over unsounded
+depths. There are his mild thunders, there are his glowing
+clouds, his traversing coruscations, and his shooting stars.
+More of true wisdom, more of trustworthy manliness, more of
+promptitude and power to keep you steady and straightforward
+on the perilous road of life, may be found in the little manual
+of Epictetus, which I could write in the palm of my left
+hand, than there is in all the rolling and redundant volumes
+of this mighty rhetorician, which you may begin to transcribe
+on the summit of the Great Pyramid, carry down over the
+Sphinx at the bottom, and continue on the sands half-way to
+Memphis. And indeed the materials are appropriate; one part
+being far above our sight, and the other on what, by the most
+befitting epithet, Homer calls the <i>no-corn-bearing</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> There are many who will stand against you on
+this ground.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> With what perfect ease and fluency do some of the
+dullest men in existence toss over and discuss the most elaborate
+of all works! How many myriads of such creatures would be
+insufficient to furnish intellect enough for any single paragraph
+in them! Yet &#8216;<i>we think this</i>&#8217;, &#8216;<i>we advise that</i>&#8217;, are expressions
+now become so customary, that it would be difficult to turn
+them into ridicule. We must pull the creatures out while they
+are in the very act, and show who and what they are. One of
+these fellows said to Caius Fuscus in my hearing, that there was
+a time when it was permitted him to doubt occasionally on
+particular points of criticism, but that the time was now over.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> And what did you think of such arrogance?
+What did you reply to such impertinence?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Let me answer one question at a time. First: I
+thought him a legitimate fool, of the purest breed. Secondly:
+I promised him I would always be contented with the judgment
+he had rejected, leaving him and his friends in the enjoyment
+of the rest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> And what said he?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I forget. He seemed pleased at my acknowledgment
+of his discrimination, at my deference and delicacy. He
+wished, however, I had studied Plato, Xenophon, and Cicero,
+more attentively; without which preparatory discipline, no two
+persons could be introduced advantageously into a dialogue.
+I agreed with him on this position, remarking that we ourselves
+were at that very time giving our sentence on the fact. He
+suggested a slight mistake on my side, and expressed a wish
+that he were conversing with a writer able to sustain the opposite
+part. With his experience and skill in rhetoric, his long habitude
+of composition, his knowledge of life, of morals, and of
+character, he should be less verbose than Cicero, less gorgeous
+than Plato, and less trimly attired than Xenophon.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> If he spoke in that manner, he might indeed be
+ridiculed for conceitedness and presumption, but his language
+is not altogether a fool&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I deliver his sentiments, not his words: for who
+would read, or who would listen to me, if such fell from me
+as from him? Poetry has its probabilities, so has prose: when
+people cry out against the representation of a dullard, <i>Could he
+have spoken all that?</i> &#8216;Certainly no,&#8217; is the reply: neither did
+Priam implore, in harmonious verse, the pity of Achilles. We
+say only what might be said, when great postulates are conceded.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> We will pretermit these absurd and silly men:
+but, Cousin Lucian! Cousin Lucian! the name of Plato will be
+durable as that of Sesostris.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> So will the pebbles and bricks which gangs of slaves
+erected into a pyramid. I do not hold Sesostris in much higher
+estimation than those quieter lumps of matter. They, O Timotheus,
+who survive the wreck of ages, are by no means, as a body,
+the worthiest of our admiration. It is in these wrecks, as in those
+at sea, the best things are not always saved. Hen-coops and
+empty barrels bob upon the surface, under a serene and smiling
+sky, when the graven or depicted images of the gods are scattered
+on invisible rocks, and when those who most resemble them in
+knowledge and beneficence are devoured by cold monsters below.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> You now talk reasonably, seriously, almost
+religiously. Do you ever pray?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I do. It was no longer than five years ago that I was
+deprived by death of my dog Melanops. He had uniformly led
+an innocent life; for I never would let him walk out with me,
+lest he should bring home in his mouth the remnant of some god
+or other, and at last get bitten or stung by one. I reminded
+Anubis of this: and moreover I told him, what he ought to be
+aware of, that Melanops did honour to his relationship.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> I cannot ever call it piety to pray for dumb and
+dead beasts.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Timotheus! Timotheus! have you no heart? have
+you no dog? do you always pray only for yourself?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> We do not believe that dogs can live again.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> More shame for you! If they enjoy and suffer,
+if they hope and fear, if calamities and wrongs befall them, such
+as agitate their hearts and excite their apprehensions; if they
+possess the option of being grateful or malicious, and choose
+the worthier; if they exercise the same sound judgment on many
+other occasions, some for their own benefit and some for the
+benefit of their masters, they have as good a chance of a future
+life, and a better chance of a happy one, than half the priests
+of all the religions in the world. Wherever there is the choice
+of doing well or ill, and that choice (often against a first impulse)
+decides for well, there must not only be a soul of the same nature
+as man&#8217;s, although of less compass and comprehension, but,
+being of the same nature, the same immortality must appertain
+to it; for spirit, like body, may change, but cannot be annihilated.</p>
+
+<p>It was among the prejudices of former times that pigs are
+uncleanly animals, and fond of wallowing in the mire for mire&#8217;s
+sake. Philosophy has now discovered that when they roll in
+mud and ordure, it is only from an excessive love of cleanliness,
+and a vehement desire to rid themselves of scabs and vermin.
+Unfortunately, doubts keep pace with discoveries. They are
+like warts, of which the blood that springs from a great one
+extirpated, makes twenty little ones.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> The Hydra would be a more noble simile.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I was indeed about to illustrate my position by the
+old Hydra, so ready at hand and so tractable; but I will never
+take hold of a hydra, when a wart will serve my turn.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Continue then.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Even children are now taught, in despite of Aesop,
+that animals never spoke. The uttermost that can be advanced
+with any show of confidence is, that if they spoke at all, they
+spoke in unknown tongues. Supposing the fact, is this a reason
+why they should not be respected? Quite the contrary. If
+the tongues were unknown, it tends to demonstrate <i>our</i> ignorance,
+not <i>theirs</i>. If we could not understand them, while they
+possessed the gift, here is no proof that they did not speak to
+the purpose, but only that it was not to <i>our</i> purpose; which may
+likewise be said with equal certainty of the wisest men that ever
+existed. How little have we learned from them, for the conduct
+of life or the avoidance of calamity! Unknown tongues, indeed!
+yes, so are all tongues to the vulgar and the negligent.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> It comforts me to hear you talk in this manner,
+without a glance at our gifts and privileges.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I am less incredulous than you suppose, my cousin!
+Indeed I have been giving you what ought to be a sufficient
+proof of it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> You have spoken with becoming gravity, I must
+confess.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Let me then submit to your judgment some fragments
+of history which have lately fallen into my hands. There is
+among them a <i>hymn</i>, of which the metre is so incondite, and the
+phraseology so ancient, that the grammarians have attributed
+it to Linus. But the hymn will interest you less, and is less to
+our purpose, than the tradition; by which it appears that certain
+priests of high antiquity were of the brute creation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> No better, any of them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Now you have polished the palms of your hands,
+I will commence my narrative from the manuscript.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Pray do.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> There existed in the city of Nephosis a fraternity of
+priests, reverenced by the appellation of <i>Gasteres</i>. It is reported
+that they were not always of their present form, but were
+birds aquatic and migratory, a species of cormorant. The poet
+Linus, who lived nearer the transformation (if there indeed
+was any), sings thus, in his Hymn to Zeus:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Thy power is manifest, O Zeus! in the Gasteres. Wild birds
+were they, strong of talon, clanging of wing, and clamorous of
+gullet. Wild birds, O Zeus! wild birds; now cropping the tender
+grass by the river of Adonis, and breaking the nascent reed at
+the root, and depasturing the sweet nymphaea; now again
+picking up serpents and other creeping things on each hand of
+old Aegyptos, whose head is hidden in the clouds.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Oh that Mnemosyne would command the staidest of her
+three daughters to stand and sing before me! to sing clearly and
+strongly. How before thy throne, Saturnian! sharp voices
+arose, even the voices of Her&eacute; and of thy children. How they
+cried out that innumerable mortal men, various-tongued, kid-roasters
+in tent and tabernacle, devising in their many-turning
+hearts and thoughtful minds how to fabricate well-rounded spits
+of beech-tree, how such men having been changed into brute
+animals, it behoved thee to trim the balance, and in thy wisdom
+to change sundry brute animals into men; in order that they
+might pour out flame-coloured wine unto thee, and sprinkle the
+white flower of the sea upon the thighs of many bulls, to pleasure
+thee. Then didst thou, O storm-driver! overshadow far lands
+with thy dark eyebrows, looking down on them, to accomplish
+thy will. And then didst thou behold the Gasteres, fat, tall,
+prominent-crested, purple-legged, daedal-plumed, white and
+black, changeable in colour as Iris. And lo! thou didst will it,
+and they were men.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> No doubt whatever can be entertained of this
+hymn&#8217;s antiquity. But what farther says the historian?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I will read on, to gratify you.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;It is recorded that this ancient order of a most lordly priesthood
+went through many changes of customs and ceremonies,
+which indeed they were always ready to accommodate to the
+maintenance of their authority and the enjoyment of their
+riches. It is recorded that, in the beginning, they kept various
+tame animals, and some wild ones, within the precincts of the
+temple: nevertheless, after a time, they applied to their own
+uses everything they could lay their hands on, whatever might
+have been the vow of those who came forward with the offering.
+And when it was expected of them to make sacrifices, they not
+only would make none, but declared it an act of impiety to
+expect it. Some of the people, who feared the Immortals, were
+dismayed and indignant at this backwardness; and the discontent
+at last grew universal. Whereupon, the two chief
+priests held a long conference together, and agreed that something
+must be done to pacify the multitude. But it was not
+until the greater of them, acknowledging his despondency, called
+on the gods to answer for him that his grief was only because
+he never could abide bad precedents: and the other, on his side,
+protested that he was overruled by his superior, and moreover
+had a serious objection (founded on principle) to be knocked on
+the head. Meanwhile the elder was looking down on the folds
+of his robe, in deep melancholy. After long consideration, he
+sprang upon his feet, pushing his chair behind him, and said,
+&ldquo;Well, it is grown old, and was always too long for me: I am
+resolved to cut off a finger&#8217;s breadth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;Having, in your wisdom and piety, well contemplated the
+bad precedent,&rdquo; said the other, with much consternation in his
+countenance at seeing so elastic a spring in a heel by no means
+bearing any resemblance to a stag&#8217;s.... &ldquo;I have, I have,&rdquo;
+replied the other, interrupting him; &ldquo;say no more; I am sick at
+heart; you must do the same.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;A cursed dog has torn a hole in mine,&rdquo; answered the other,
+&ldquo;and, if I cut anywhere about it, I only make bad worse. In
+regard to its length, I wish it were as long again.&rdquo; &ldquo;Brother!
+brother! never be worldly-minded,&rdquo; said the senior. &ldquo;Follow
+my example: snip off it not a finger&#8217;s breadth, half a finger&#8217;s
+breadth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;But,&rdquo; expostulated the other, &ldquo;will that satisfy the gods?&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Who talked about them?&rdquo; placidly said the senior. &ldquo;It is
+very unbecoming to have them always in our mouths: surely
+there are appointed times for them. Let us be contented with
+laying the snippings on the altar, and thus showing the people
+our piety and condescension. They, and the gods also, will be
+just as well satisfied, as if we offered up a buttock of beef, with
+a bushel of salt and the same quantity of wheaten flour on it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;Well, if that will do ... and you know best,&rdquo; replied the
+other, &ldquo;so be it.&rdquo; Saying which words, he carefully and considerately
+snipped off as much in proportion (for he was shorter
+by an inch) as the elder had done, yet leaving on his shoulders
+quite enough of materials to make handsome cloaks for seven
+or eight stout-built generals. Away they both went, arm-in-arm,
+and then holding up their skirts a great deal higher than
+was necessary, told the gods what they two had been doing for
+them and their glory. About the court of the temple the sacred
+swine were lying in indolent composure: seeing which, the
+brotherly twain began to commune with themselves afresh:
+and the senior said repentantly, &ldquo;What fools we have been!
+The populace will laugh outright at the curtailment of our
+vestures, but would gladly have seen these animals eat daily a
+quarter less of the lentils.&rdquo; The words were spoken so earnestly
+and emphatically that they were overheard by the quadrupeds.
+Suddenly there was a rising of all the principal ones in the sacred
+enclosure: and many that were in the streets took up, each
+according to his temperament and condition, the gravest or
+shrillest tone of reprobation. The thinner and therefore the
+more desperate of the creatures, pushing their snouts under the
+curtailed habiliments of the high priests, assailed them with
+ridicule and reproach. For it had pleased the gods to work a
+miracle in their behoof, and they became as loquacious as those
+who governed them, and who were appointed to speak in the
+high places. &ldquo;Let the worst come to the worst, we at least
+have our tails to our hams,&rdquo; said they. &ldquo;For how long?&rdquo;
+whined others, piteously: others incessantly ejaculated tremendous
+imprecations: others, more serious and sedate, groaned
+inwardly; and, although under their hearts there lay a huge
+mass of indigestible sourness ready to rise up against the chief
+priests, they ventured no farther than expostulation. &ldquo;We
+shall lose our voices,&rdquo; said they, &ldquo;if we lose our complement of
+lentils; and then, most reverend lords, what will ye do for
+choristers?&rdquo; Finally, one of grand dimensions, who seemed
+almost half-human, imposed silence on every debater. He lay
+stretched out apart from his brethren, covering with his side the
+greater portion of a noble dunghill, and all its verdure native
+and imported. He crushed a few measures of peascods to cool
+his tusks; then turned his pleasurable longitudinal eyes far
+toward the outer extremities of their sockets, and leered fixedly
+and sarcastically at the high priests, showing every tooth in
+each jaw. Other men might have feared them; the high priests
+envied them, seeing what order they were in, and what exploits
+they were capable of. A great painter, who flourished many
+olympiads ago, has, in his volume entitled the <i>Canon</i>, defined
+the line of beauty. It was here in its perfection: it followed
+with winning obsequiousness every member, but delighted more
+especially to swim along that placid and pliant curvature on
+which Nature had ranged the implements of mastication.
+Pawing with his cloven hoof, he suddenly changed his countenance
+from the contemplative to the wrathful. At one effort
+he rose up to his whole length, breadth, and height: and they
+who had never seen him in earnest, nor separate from the
+common swine of the enclosure, with which he was in the habit
+of husking what was thrown to him, could form no idea what a
+prodigious beast he was. Terrible were the expressions of
+choler and comminations which burst forth from his fulminating
+tusks. Erimanthus would have hidden his puny offspring
+before them; and Hercules would have paused at the encounter.
+Thrice he called aloud to the high priests: thrice he swore in
+their own sacred language that they were a couple of thieves
+and impostors: thrice he imprecated the worst maledictions
+on his own head if they had not violated the holiest of their
+vows, and were not ready even to sell their gods. A tremor
+ran throughout the whole body of the united swine; so awful
+was the adjuration! Even the Gasteres themselves in some sort
+shuddered, not perhaps altogether at the solemn tone of its
+impiety; for they had much experience in these matters. But
+among them was a Gaster who was calmer than the swearer,
+and more prudent and conciliating than those he swore against.
+Hearing this objurgation, he went blandly up to the sacred
+porker, and, lifting the flap of his right ear between forefinger
+and thumb with all delicacy and gentleness, thus whispered
+into it: &ldquo;You do not in your heart believe that any of us are
+such fools as to sell our gods, at least while we have such a
+reserve to fall back upon.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;Are we to be devoured?&rdquo; cried the noble porker, twitching
+his ear indignantly from under the hand of the monitor. &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo;
+said he, laying it again, most soothingly, rather farther from
+the tusks: &ldquo;hush! sweet friend! Devoured? Oh, certainly
+not: that is to say, not <i>all</i>: or, if all, not all at once. Indeed
+the holy men my brethren may perhaps be contented with
+taking a little blood from each of you, entirely for the advantage
+of your health and activity, and merely to compose a few
+slender black-puddings for the inferior monsters of the temple,
+who latterly are grown very exacting, and either are, or pretend
+to be, hungry after they have eaten a whole handful of acorns,
+swallowing I am ashamed to say what a quantity of water to
+wash them down. We do not grudge them it, as they well
+know: but they appear to have forgotten how recently no
+inconsiderable portion of this bounty has been conferred. If
+we, as they object to us, eat more, they ought to be aware that
+it is by no means for our gratification, since we have abjured
+it before the gods, but to maintain the dignity of the priesthood,
+and to exhibit the beauty and utility of subordination.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;The noble porker had beaten time with his muscular tail
+at many of these periods; but again his heart panted visibly,
+and he could bear no more.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;All this for our good! for our activity! for our health!
+Let us alone: we have health enough; we want no activity.
+Let us alone, I say again, or by the Immortals!...&rdquo; &ldquo;Peace,
+my son! Your breath is valuable: evidently you have but little
+to spare: and what mortal knows how soon the gods may
+demand the last of it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;At the beginning of this exhortation, the worthy high priest
+had somewhat repressed the ebullient choler of his refractory
+and pertinacious disciple, by applying his flat soft palm to the
+signet-formed extremity of the snout.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;We are ready to hear complaints at all times,&rdquo; added he,
+&ldquo;and to redress any grievance at our own. But beyond a doubt,
+if you continue to raise your abominable outcries, some of the
+people are likely to hit upon two discoveries: first that your
+lentils would be sufficient to make daily for every poor family
+a good wholesome porridge; and secondly, that your flesh,
+properly cured, might hang up nicely against the forthcoming
+bean-season.&rdquo; Pondering these mighty words, the noble porker
+kept his eyes fixed upon him for some instants, then leaned
+forward dejectedly, then tucked one foot under him, then
+another, cautious to descend with dignity. At last he grunted
+(it must for ever be ambiguous whether with despondency or
+with resignation), pushed his wedgy snout far within the straw
+subjacent, and sank into that repose which is granted to the
+just.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Cousin! there are glimmerings of truth and wisdom
+in sundry parts of this discourse, not unlike little broken shells
+entangled in dark masses of seaweed. But I would rather you
+had continued to adduce fresh arguments to demonstrate the
+beneficence of the Deity, proving (if you could) that our horses
+and dogs, faithful servants and companions to us, and often
+treated cruelly, may recognize us hereafter, and we them. We
+have no authority for any such belief.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> We have authority for thinking and doing whatever
+is humane. Speaking of humanity, it now occurs to me, I have
+heard a report that some well-intentioned men of your religion
+so interpret the words or wishes of its Founder, they would
+abolish slavery throughout the empire.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Such deductions have been drawn indeed from
+our Master&#8217;s doctrine: but the saner part of us receive it metaphorically,
+and would only set men free from the bonds of sin.
+For if domestic slaves were manumitted, we should neither have
+a dinner dressed nor a bed made, unless by our own children:
+and as to labour in the fields, who would cultivate them in this
+hot climate? We must import slaves from Ethiopia and elsewhere,
+wheresoever they can be procured: but the hardship
+lies not on them; it lies on us, and bears heavily; for we must
+first buy them with our money, and then feed them; and not
+only must we maintain them while they are hale and hearty
+and can serve us, but likewise in sickness and (unless we can
+sell them for a trifle) in decrepitude. Do not imagine, my
+cousin, that we are no better than enthusiasts, visionaries,
+subverters of order, and ready to roll society down into one
+flat surface.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I thought you were maligned: I said so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> When the subject was discussed in our congregation,
+the meaner part of the people were much in favour of the
+abolition: but the chief priests and ministers absented themselves,
+and gave no vote at all, deeming it secular, and saying
+that in such matters the laws and customs of the country ought
+to be observed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Several of these chief priests and ministers are robed
+in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> I have hopes of you now.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Why so suddenly?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Because you have repeated those blessed words,
+which are only to be found in our Scriptures.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> There indeed I found them. But I also found in
+the same volume words of the same speaker, declaring that the
+rich shall never see His face in heaven.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> He does not always mean what you think He does.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> How is this? Did He then direct His discourses to
+none but men more intelligent than I am?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Unless He gave you understanding for the occasion,
+they might mislead you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Indeed!</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Unquestionably. For instance, He tells us to
+take no heed of to-morrow: He tells us to share equally all our
+worldly goods: but we know that we cannot be respected unless
+we bestow due care on our possessions, and that not only the
+vulgar but the well-educated esteem us in proportion to the
+gifts of fortune.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> The eclectic philosophy is most flourishing among
+you Christians. You take whatever suits your appetites, and
+reject the rest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> We are not half so rich as the priests of Isis.
+Give us their possessions; and we will not sit idle as they do,
+but be able and ready to do incalculable good to our fellow-creatures.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I have never seen great possessions excite to great
+alacrity. Usually they enfeeble the sympathies, and often
+overlie and smother them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Our religion is founded less on sympathies than
+on miracles. Cousin! you smile most when you ought to be
+most serious.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I was smiling at the thought of one whom I would
+recommend to your especial notice, as soon as you disinherit
+the priests of Isis. He may perhaps be refractory; for he
+pretends (the knave!) to work miracles.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Impostor! who is he?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Aulus of Pelusium. Idle and dissolute, he never
+gained anything honestly but a scourging, if indeed he ever
+made, what he long merited, this acquisition. Unable to run
+into debt where he was known, he came over to Alexandria.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> I know him: I know him well. Here, of his own
+accord, he has betaken himself to a new and regular life.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> He will presently wear it out, or make it sit easier
+on his shoulders. My metaphor brings me to my story. Having
+nothing to carry with him beside an empty valise, he resolved
+on filling it with something, however worthless, lest, seeing his
+utter destitution, and hopeless of payment, a receiver of lodgers
+should refuse to admit him into the hostelry. Accordingly,
+he went to a tailor&#8217;s, and began to joke about his poverty.
+Nothing is more apt to bring people into good humour; for, if
+they are poor themselves, they enjoy the pleasure of discovering
+that others are no better off; and, if not poor, there is the
+consciousness of superiority.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;The favour I am about to ask of a man so wealthy and so
+liberal as you are,&#8217; said Aulus, &#8216;is extremely small: you can
+materially serve me, without the slightest loss, hazard, or
+inconvenience. In few words, my valise is empty: and to some
+ears an empty valise is louder and more discordant than a
+bagpipe: I cannot say I like the sound of it myself. Give me
+all the shreds and snippings you can spare me. They will feel
+like clothes; not exactly so to me and my person, but to those
+who are inquisitive, and who may be importunate.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>The tailor laughed, and distended both arms of Aulus with his
+munificence. Soon was the valise well filled and rammed down.
+Plenty of boys were in readiness to carry it to the boat. Aulus
+waved them off, looking at some angrily, at others suspiciously.
+Boarding the skiff, he lowered his treasure with care and caution,
+staggering a little at the weight, and shaking it gently on deck,
+with his ear against it: and then, finding all safe and compact,
+he sat on it; but as tenderly as a pullet on her first eggs. When
+he was landed, his care was even greater, and whoever came
+near him was warned off with loud vociferations. Anxiously
+as the other passengers were invited by the innkeepers to give
+their houses the preference, Aulus was importuned most: the
+others were only beset; he was borne off in triumphant captivity.
+He ordered a bedroom, and carried his valise with him; he
+ordered a bath, and carried with him his valise. He started
+up from the company at dinner, struck his forehead, and cried
+out, &#8216;Where is my valise?&#8217; &#8216;We are honest men here,&#8217; replied
+the host. &#8216;You have left it, sir, in your chamber: where else
+indeed should you leave it?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Honesty is seated on your brow,&#8217; exclaimed Aulus; &#8216;but
+there are few to be trusted in the world we live in. I now
+believe I can eat.&#8217; And he gave a sure token of the belief that
+was in him, not without a start now and then and a finger at
+his ear, as if he heard somebody walking in the direction of his
+bedchamber. Now began his first miracle: for now he contrived
+to pick up, from time to time, a little money. In the
+presence of his host and fellow-lodgers, he threw a few obols,
+negligently and indifferently, among the beggars. &#8216;These poor
+creatures,&#8217; said he, &#8216;know a new-comer as well as the gnats do:
+in one half-hour I am half ruined by them; and this daily.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Nearly a month had elapsed since his arrival, and no account
+of board and lodging had been delivered or called for. Suspicion
+at length arose in the host whether he really was rich. When
+another man&#8217;s honesty is doubted, the doubter&#8217;s is sometimes
+in jeopardy. The host was tempted to unsew the valise. To
+his amazement and horror he found only shreds within it. However,
+he was determined to be cautious, and to consult his wife,
+who, although a Christian like Aulus, and much edified by his
+discourses, might dissent from him in regard to a community
+of goods, at least in her own household, and might defy him to
+prove by any authority that the doctrine was meant for innkeepers.
+Aulus, on his return in the evening, found out that his
+valise had been opened. He hurried back, threw its contents
+into the canal, and, borrowing an old cloak, he tucked it up
+under his dress, and returned. Nobody had seen him enter
+or come back again, nor was it immediately that his host or
+hostess were willing to appear. But, after he had called them
+loudly for some time, they entered his apartment: and he
+thus addressed the woman:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;O Eucharis! no words are requisite to convince you (firm as
+you are in the faith) of eternal verities, however mysterious.
+But your unhappy husband has betrayed his incredulity in
+regard to the most awful. If my prayers, offered up in our
+holy temples all day long, have been heard, and that they have
+been heard I feel within me the blessed certainty, something
+miraculous has been vouchsafed for the conversion of this miserable
+sinner. Until the present hour, the valise before you was
+filled with precious relics from the apparel of saints and martyrs,
+fresh as when on them.&#8217; &#8216;True, by Jove!&#8217; said the husband to
+himself. &#8216;Within the present hour,&#8217; continued Aulus, &#8216;they are
+united into one raiment, signifying our own union, our own
+restoration.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>He drew forth the cloak, and fell on his face. Eucharis fell
+also, and kissed the saintly head prostrate before her. The
+host&#8217;s eyes were opened, and he bewailed his hardness of heart.
+Aulus is now occupied in strengthening his faith, not without
+an occasional support to the wife&#8217;s: all three live together
+in unity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> And do you make a joke even of this? Will
+you never cease from the habitude?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Too soon. The farther we descend into the vale of
+years, the fewer illusions accompany us: we have little inclination,
+little time, for jocularity and laughter. Light things are
+easily detached from us, and we shake off heavier as we can.
+Instead of levity, we are liable to moroseness: for always near
+the grave there are more briers than flowers, unless we plant
+them ourselves, or our friends supply them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Thinking thus, do you continue to dissemble
+or to distort the truth? The shreds are become a cable for the
+faithful. That they were miraculously turned into one entire
+garment who shall gainsay? How many hath it already clothed
+with righteousness? Happy men, casting their doubts away
+before it! Who knows, O Cousin Lucian, but on some future
+day you yourself will invoke the merciful interposition of Aulus!</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Possibly: for if ever I fall among thieves, nobody is
+likelier to be at the head of them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Uncharitable man! how suspicious! how ungenerous!
+how hardened in unbelief! Reason is a bladder on
+which you may paddle like a child as you swim in summer
+waters: but, when the winds rise and the waves roughen, it
+slips from under you, and you sink; yes, O Lucian, you sink
+into a gulf whence you never can emerge.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I deem those the wisest who exert the soonest their
+own manly strength, now with the stream and now against it,
+enjoying the exercise in fine weather, venturing out in foul, if
+need be, yet avoiding not only rocks and whirlpools, but also
+shallows. In such a light, my cousin, I look on your dispensations.
+I shut them out as we shut out winds blowing from the
+desert; hot, debilitating, oppressive, laden with impalpable
+sands and pungent salts, and inflicting an incurable blindness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Well, Cousin Lucian! I can bear all you say while
+you are not witty. Let me bid you farewell in this happy interval.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Is it not serious and sad, O my cousin, that what the
+Deity hath willed to lie incomprehensible in His mysteries, we
+should fall upon with tooth and nail, and ferociously growl over,
+or ignorantly dissect?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Ho! now you come to be serious and sad, there are
+hopes of you. Truth always begins or ends so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Undoubtedly. But I think it more reverential to
+abstain from that which, with whatever effort, I should never
+understand.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> You are lukewarm, my cousin, you are lukewarm.
+A most dangerous state.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> For milk to continue in, not for men. I would not
+fain be frozen or scalded.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Alas! you are blind, my sweet cousin!</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Well; do not open my eyes with pincers, nor compose
+for them a collyrium of spurge.</p>
+
+<p>May not men eat and drink and talk together, and perform
+in relation one to another all the duties of social life, whose
+opinions are different on things immediately under their eyes?
+If they can and do, surely they may as easily on things equally
+above the comprehension of each party. The wisest and most
+virtuous man in the whole extent of the Roman Empire is
+Plutarch of Cheronaea: yet Plutarch holds a firm belief in the
+existence of I know not how many gods, every one of whom
+has committed notorious misdemeanours. The nearest to the
+Cheronaean in virtue and wisdom is Trajan, who holds all the
+gods dog-cheap. These two men are friends. If either of them
+were influenced by your religion, as inculcated and practised
+by the priesthood, he would be the enemy of the other, and
+wisdom and virtue would plead for the delinquent in vain.
+When your religion had existed, as you tell us, about a century,
+Caius Caecilius, of Novum Comum, was proconsul in Bithynia.
+Trajan, the mildest and most equitable of mankind, desirous
+to remove from them, as far as might be, the hatred and invectives
+of those whose old religion was assailed by them, applied
+to Caecilius for information on their behaviour as good citizens.
+The reply of Caecilius was favourable. Had Trajan applied
+to the most eminent and authoritative of the sect, they would
+certainly have brought into jeopardy all who differed in one
+tittle from any point of their doctrine or discipline. For the
+thorny and bitter aloe of dissension required less than a century
+to flower on the steps of your temple.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> You are already half a Christian, in exposing to
+the world the vanities both of philosophy and of power.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I have done no such thing: I have exposed the
+vanities of the philosophizing and the powerful. Philosophy
+is admirable; and Power may be glorious: the one conduces to
+truth, the other has nearly all the means of conferring peace and
+happiness, but it usually, and indeed almost always, takes a
+contrary direction. I have ridiculed the futility of speculative
+minds, only when they would pave the clouds instead of the
+streets. To see distant things better than near is a certain
+proof of a defective sight. The people I have held in derision
+never turn their eyes to what they can see, but direct them
+continually where nothing is to be seen. And this, by their
+disciples, is called the sublimity of speculation! There is little
+merit acquired, or force exhibited, in blowing off a feather that
+would settle on my nose: and this is all I have done in regard to
+the philosophers: but I claim for myself the approbation of
+humanity, in having shown the true dimensions of the great.
+The highest of them are no higher than my tunic; but they
+are high enough to trample on the necks of those wretches who
+throw themselves on the ground before them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Was Alexander of Macedon no higher?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> What region of the earth, what city, what theatre,
+what library, what private study, hath he enlightened? If
+you are silent, I may well be. It is neither my philosophy
+nor your religion which casts the blood and bones of men in
+their faces, and insists on the most reverence for those who have
+made the most unhappy. If the Romans scourged by the hands
+of children the schoolmaster who would have betrayed them,
+how greatly more deserving of flagellation, from the same
+quarter, are those hundreds of pedagogues who deliver up the
+intellects of youth to such immoral revellers and mad murderers!
+They would punish a thirsty child for purloining a bunch of
+grapes from a vineyard, and the same men on the same day
+would insist on his reverence for the subverter of Tyre, the
+plunderer of Babylon, and the incendiary of Persepolis. And
+are these men teachers? are these men philosophers? are these
+men priests? Of all the curses that ever afflicted the earth, I
+think Alexander was the worst. Never was he in so little mischief
+as when he was murdering his friends.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Yet he built this very city; a noble and opulent
+one when Rome was of hurdles and rushes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> He built it! I wish, O Timotheus! he had been as
+well employed as the stone-cutters or the plasterers. No, no:
+the wisest of architects planned the most beautiful and commodious
+of cities, by which, under a rational government and
+equitable laws, Africa might have been civilized to the centre,
+and the palm have extended her conquests through the remotest
+desert. Instead of which, a dozen of Macedonian thieves
+rifled a dying drunkard and murdered his children. In process
+of time, another drunkard reeled hitherward from Rome, made
+an easy mistake in mistaking a palace for a brothel, permitted
+a stripling boy to beat him soundly, and a serpent to receive
+the last caresses of his paramour.</p>
+
+<p>Shame upon historians and pedagogues for exciting the
+worst passions of youth by the display of such false glories!
+If your religion hath any truth or influence, her professors will
+extinguish the promontory lights, which only allure to breakers.
+They will be assiduous in teaching the young and ardent that
+great abilities do not constitute great men, without the right
+and unremitting application of them; and that, in the sight of
+Humanity and Wisdom, it is better to erect one cottage than to
+demolish a hundred cities. Down to the present day we have
+been taught little else than falsehood. We have been told to
+do this thing and that: we have been told we shall be punished
+unless we do: but at the same time we are shown by the finger
+that prosperity and glory, and the esteem of all about us, rest
+upon other and very different foundations. Now, do the ears
+or the eyes seduce the most easily and lead the most directly to
+the heart? But both eyes and ears are won over, and alike are
+persuaded to corrupt us.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Cousin Lucian, I was leaving you with the
+strangest of all notions in my head. I began to think for a
+moment that you doubted my sincerity in the religion I profess;
+and that a man of your admirable good sense, and at your
+advanced age, could reject that only sustenance which supports
+us through the grave into eternal life.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I am the most docile and practicable of men, and
+never reject what people set before me: for if it is bread, it is
+good for my own use; if bone or bran, it will do for my dog or
+mule. But, although you know my weakness and facility, it
+is unfair to expect I should have admitted at once what the
+followers and personal friends of your Master for a long time
+hesitated to receive. I remember to have read in one of the
+early commentators, that His disciples themselves could not
+swallow the miracle of the loaves; and one who wrote more
+recently says, that even His brethren did not believe in Him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Yet, finally, when they have looked over each
+other&#8217;s accounts, they cast them up, and make them all tally
+in the main sum; and if one omits an article, the next supplies
+its place with a commodity of the same value. What would
+you have? But it is of little use to argue on religion with a
+man who, professing his readiness to believe, and even his
+credulity, yet disbelieves in miracles.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I should be obstinate and perverse if I disbelieved
+in the existence of a thing for no better reason than because
+I never saw it, and cannot understand its operations. Do you
+believe, O Timotheus, that Perictione, the mother of Plato,
+became his mother by the sole agency of Apollo&#8217;s divine spirit,
+under the phantasm of that god?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> I indeed believe such absurdities?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> You touch me on a vital part if you call an absurdity
+the religion or philosophy in which I was educated. Anaxalides,
+and Clearagus, and Speusippus, his own nephew, assert it.
+Who should know better than they?</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Where are their proofs?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I would not be so indelicate as to require them on
+such an occasion. A short time ago I conversed with an old
+centurion, who was in service by the side of Vespasian, when
+Titus, and many officers and soldiers of the army, and many
+captives, were present, and who saw one Eleazar put a ring
+to the nostril of a demoniac (as the patient was called) and draw
+the demon out of it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> And do you pretend to believe this nonsense?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I only believe that Vespasian and Titus had nothing
+to gain or accomplish by the miracle; and that Eleazar, if he
+had been detected in a trick by two acute men and several
+thousand enemies, had nothing to look forward to but a cross&mdash;the
+only piece of upholstery for which Judea seems to have
+either wood or workmen, and which are as common in that
+country as direction-posts are in any other.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> The Jews are a stiff-necked people.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> On such occasions, no doubt.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Would you, O Lucian, be classed among the
+atheists, like Epicurus?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> It lies not at my discretion what name shall be given
+me at present or hereafter, any more than it did at my birth.
+But I wonder at the ignorance and precipitancy of those who
+call Epicurus an atheist. He saw on the same earth with
+himself a great variety of inferior creatures, some possessing
+more sensibility and more thoughtfulness than others. Analogy
+would lead so contemplative a reasoner to the conclusion that
+if many were inferior and in sight, others might be superior
+and out of sight. He never disbelieved in the existence of the
+gods; he only disbelieved that they troubled their heads with
+our concerns. Have they none of their own? If they are happy,
+does their happiness depend on us, comparatively so imbecile
+and vile? He believed, as nearly all nations do, in different
+ranks and orders of superhuman beings; and perhaps he thought
+(but I never was in his confidence or counsels) that the higher
+were rather in communication with the next to them in intellectual
+faculties, than with the most remote. To me the suggestion
+appears by no means irrational, that if we are managed
+or cared for at all by beings wiser than ourselves (which in truth
+would be no sign of any great wisdom in them), it can only
+be by such as are very far from perfection, and who indulge us
+in the commission of innumerable faults and follies, for their
+own speculation or amusement.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> There is only one such; and he is the devil.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> If he delights in our wickedness, which you believe,
+he must be incomparably the happiest of beings, which you do
+not believe. No god of Epicurus rests his elbow on his armchair
+with less energetic exertion or discomposure.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> We lead holier and purer lives than such ignorant
+mortals as are not living under Grace.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I also live under Grace, O Timotheus! and I
+venerate her for the pleasures I have received at her hands.
+I do not believe she has quite deserted me. If my grey
+hairs are unattractive to her, and if the trace of her fingers
+is lost in the wrinkles of my forehead, still I sometimes am
+told it is discernible even on the latest and coldest of my
+writings.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> You are wilful in misapprehension. The Grace
+of which I speak is adverse to pleasure and impurity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Rightly do you separate impurity and pleasure,
+which indeed soon fly asunder when the improvident would
+unite them. But never believe that tenderness of heart signifies
+corruption of morals, if you happen to find it (which indeed is
+unlikely) in the direction you have taken; on the contrary, no
+two qualities are oftener found together, on mind as on matter,
+than hardness and lubricity.</p>
+
+<p>Believe me, Cousin Timotheus, when we come to eighty years
+of age we are all Essenes. In our kingdom of heaven there is
+no marrying or giving in marriage; and austerity in ourselves,
+when Nature holds over us the sharp instrument with which
+Jupiter operated on Saturn, makes us austere to others. But
+how happens it that you, both old and young, break every
+bond which connected you anciently with the Essenes? Not
+only do you marry (a height of wisdom to which I never have
+attained, although in others I commend it), but you never
+share your substance with the poorest of your community, as
+they did, nor live simply and frugally, nor purchase nor employ
+slaves, nor refuse rank and offices in the State, nor abstain from
+litigation, nor abominate and execrate the wounds and cruelties
+of war. The Essenes did all this, and greatly more, if Josephus
+and Philo, whose political and religious tenets are opposite to
+theirs, are credible and trustworthy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Doubtless you would also wish us to retire into
+the desert, and eschew the conversation of mankind.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> No, indeed; but I would wish the greater part of
+your people to eschew mine, for they bring all the worst of the
+desert with them whenever they enter; its smothering heats,
+its blinding sands, its sweeping suffocation. Return to the pure
+spirit of the Essenes, without their asceticism; cease from controversy,
+and drop party designations. If you will not do this,
+do less, and be merely what you profess to be, which is quite
+enough for an honest, a virtuous, and a religious man.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Cousin Lucian, I did not come hither to receive
+a lecture from you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I have often given a dinner to a friend who did not
+come to dine with me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Then, I trust, you gave him something better
+for dinner than bay-salt and dandelions. If you will not assist
+us in nettling our enemies a little for their absurdities and
+impositions, let me entreat you, however, to let us alone, and to
+make no remarks on us. I myself run into no extravagances,
+like the Essenes, washing and fasting, and retiring into solitude.
+I am not called to them; when I am, I go.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I am apprehensive the Lord may afflict you with
+deafness in that ear.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Nevertheless, I am indifferent to the world, and
+all things in it. This, I trust, you will acknowledge to be true
+religion and true philosophy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> That is not philosophy which betrays an indifference
+to those for whose benefit philosophy was designed; and those
+are the whole human race. But I hold it to be the most unphilosophical
+thing in the world to call away men from useful
+occupations and mutual help, to profitless speculations and
+acrid controversies. Censurable enough, and contemptible,
+too, is that supercilious philosopher, sneeringly sedate, who
+narrates in full and flowing periods the persecutions and tortures
+of a fellow-man, led astray by his credulity, and ready to die in
+the assertion of what in his soul he believes to be the truth.
+But hardly less censurable, hardly less contemptible, is the
+tranquilly arrogant sectarian, who denies that wisdom or
+honesty can exist beyond the limits of his own ill-lighted
+chamber.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> What! is he sanguinary?</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Whenever he can be, he is; and he always has it in
+his power to be even worse than that, for he refuses his custom
+to the industrious and honest shopkeeper who has been taught
+to think differently from himself in matters which he has had
+no leisure to study, and by which, if he had enjoyed that leisure,
+he would have been a less industrious and a less expert artificer.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> We cannot countenance those hard-hearted men
+who refuse to hear the word of the Lord.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> The hard-hearted knowing this of the tender-hearted,
+and receiving the declaration from their own lips, will
+refuse to hear the word of the Lord all their lives.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Well, well; it cannot be helped. I see, cousin,
+my hopes of obtaining a little of your assistance in your own
+pleasant way are disappointed; but it is something to have
+conceived a better hope of saving your soul, from your readiness
+to acknowledge your belief in miracles.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Miracles have existed in all ages and in all religions.
+Witnesses to some of them have been numerous; to others of
+them fewer. Occasionally, the witnesses have been disinterested
+in the result.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Now indeed you speak truly and wisely.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> But sometimes the most honest and the most
+quiescent have either been unable or unwilling to push themselves
+so forward as to see clearly and distinctly the whole
+of the operation; and have listened to some knave who felt a
+pleasure in deluding their credulity, or some other who himself
+was either an enthusiast or a dupe. It also may have happened
+in the ancient religions, of Egypt for instance, or of India, or
+even of Greece, that narratives have been attributed to authors
+who never heard of them; and have been circulated by honest
+men who firmly believed them; by half-honest, who indulged
+their vanity in becoming members of a novel and bustling
+society; and by utterly dishonest, who, having no other means
+of rising above the shoulders of the vulgar, threw dust into their
+eyes and made them stoop.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Ha! the rogues! It is nearly all over with them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> Let us hope so. Parthenius and the Roman poet
+Ovidius Naso, have related the transformations of sundry men,
+women, and gods.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> Idleness! Idleness! I never read such lying
+authors.</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I myself have seen enough to incline me toward a
+belief in them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> You? Why! you have always been thought an
+utter infidel; and now you are running, hot and heedless as any
+mad dog, to the opposite extreme!</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> I have lived to see, not indeed one man, but certainly
+one animal turned into another; nay, great numbers. I have
+seen sheep with the most placid faces in the morning, one
+nibbling the tender herb with all its dew upon it; another,
+negligent of its own sustenance, and giving it copiously to the
+tottering lamb aside it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Timotheus.</i> How pretty! half poetical!</p>
+
+<p><i>Lucian.</i> In the heat of the day I saw the very same sheep
+tearing off each other&#8217;s fleeces with long teeth and longer claws,
+and imitating so admirably the howl of wolves, that at last the
+wolves came down on them in a body, and lent their best assistance
+at the general devouring. What is more remarkable,
+the people of the villages seemed to enjoy the sport; and,
+instead of attacking the wolves, waited until they had filled
+their stomachs, ate the little that was left, said piously and
+from the bottom of their hearts what you call <i>grace</i>, and
+went home singing and piping.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="BISHOP_SHIPLEY_AND_BENJAMIN_FRANKLIN" id="BISHOP_SHIPLEY_AND_BENJAMIN_FRANKLIN"></a>BISHOP SHIPLEY AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Shipley.</i> There are very few men, even in the bushes and the
+wilderness, who delight in the commission of cruelty; but
+nearly all, throughout the earth, are censurable for the admission.
+When we see a blow struck, we go on and think no more
+about it: yet every blow aimed at the most distant of our
+fellow-creatures, is sure to come back, some time or other, to our
+families and descendants. He who lights a fire in one quarter
+is ignorant to what other the winds may carry it, and whether
+what is kindled in the wood may not break out again in the
+cornfield.</p>
+
+<p><i>Franklin.</i> If we could restrain but one generation from deeds
+of violence, the foundation for a new and a more graceful edifice
+of society would not only have been laid, but would have been
+consolidated.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shipley.</i> We already are horrified at the bare mention of
+religious wars; we should then be horrified at the mention of
+political. Why should they who, when they are affronted or
+offended, abstain from inflicting blows, some from a sense of
+decorousness and others from a sense of religion, be forward to
+instigate the infliction of ten thousand, all irremediable, all
+murderous? Every chief magistrate should be arbitrator and
+umpire in all differences between any two, forbidding war.
+Much would be added to the dignity of the most powerful king
+by rendering him an efficient member of such a grand Amphictyonic
+council. Unhappily they are persuaded in childhood
+that a reign is made glorious by a successful war. What schoolmaster
+ever taught a boy to question it? or indeed any point
+of political morality, or any incredible thing in history? Caesar
+and Alexander are uniformly clement: Themistocles died by a
+draught of bull&#8217;s blood: Portia by swallowing red-hot pieces of
+charcoal.</p>
+
+<p><i>Franklin.</i> Certainly no woman or man could perform either
+of these feats. In my opinion it lies beyond a doubt that
+Portia suffocated herself by the fumes of charcoal; and that
+the Athenian, whose stomach must have been formed on the
+model of other stomachs, and must therefore have rejected a
+much less quantity of blood than would have poisoned him,
+died by some chemical preparation, of which a bull&#8217;s blood might,
+or might not, have been part. Schoolmasters who thus betray
+their trust, ought to be scourged by their scholars, like him of
+their profession who underwent the just indignation of the
+Roman Consul. You shut up those who are infected with the
+plague; why do you lay no coercion on those who are incurably
+possessed by the legion devil of carnage? When a creature is
+of intellect so perverted that he can discern no difference between
+a review and a battle, between the animating bugle and the
+dying groan, it were expedient to remove him, as quietly as
+may be, from his devastation of God&#8217;s earth and his usurpation
+of God&#8217;s authority. Compassion points out the cell for him at
+the bottom of the hospital, and listens to hear the key turned
+in the ward: until then the house is insecure.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shipley.</i> God grant our rulers wisdom, and our brethren peace!</p>
+
+<p><i>Franklin.</i> Here are but indifferent specimens and tokens.
+Those fellows throw stones pretty well: if they practise much
+longer, they will hit us: let me entreat you, my lord, to leave me
+here. So long as the good people were contented with hooting
+and shouting at us, no great harm was either done or apprehended:
+but now they are beginning to throw stones, perhaps
+they may prove themselves more dexterous in action than their
+rulers have done latterly in council.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shipley.</i> Take care, Doctor Franklin! <i>That</i> was very near
+being the philosopher&#8217;s stone.</p>
+
+<p><i>Franklin.</i> Let me pick it up, then, and send it to London by
+the diligence. But I am afraid your ministers, and the nation
+at large, are as little in the way of wealth as of wisdom, in the
+experiment they are making.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shipley.</i> While I was attending to you, William had started.
+Look! he has reached them: they are listening to him. Believe
+me, he has all the courage of an Englishman and of a Christian;
+and, if the stoutest of them force him to throw off his new black
+coat, the blusterer would soon think it better to have listened
+to less polemical doctrine.</p>
+
+<p><i>Franklin.</i> Meantime a few of the town boys are come nearer,
+and begin to grow troublesome. I am sorry to requite your
+hospitality with such hard fare.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shipley.</i> True, these young bakers make their bread very
+gritty, but we must partake of it together so long as you are
+with us.</p>
+
+<p><i>Franklin.</i> Be pleased, my lord, to give us grace; our repast
+is over; this is my boat.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shipley.</i> We will accompany you as far as to the ship.
+Thank God! we are now upon the water, and all safe. Give
+me your hand, my good Doctor Franklin! and although you
+have failed in the object of your mission, yet the intention will
+authorize me to say, in the holy words of our Divine Redeemer,
+Blessed are the peacemakers!</p>
+
+<p><i>Franklin.</i> My dear lord! if God ever blessed a man at the
+intercession of another, I may reasonably and confidently hope
+in such a benediction. Never did one arise from a warmer, a
+tenderer, or a purer heart.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shipley.</i> Infatuation! that England should sacrifice to her
+king so many thousands of her bravest men, and ruin so many
+thousands of her most industrious, in a vain attempt to destroy
+the very principles on which her strength and her glory are
+founded! The weakest prince that ever sat upon a throne, and
+the most needy and sordid Parliament that ever pandered to
+distempered power, are thrusting our blindfold nation from the
+pinnacle of prosperity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Franklin.</i> I believe <i>your</i> king (from this moment it is permitted
+me to call him <i>ours</i> no longer) to be as honest and as
+wise a man as any of those about him: but unhappily he can see
+no difference between a review and a battle. Such are the
+optics of most kings and rulers. His Parliament, in both Houses,
+acts upon calculation. There is hardly a family, in either, that
+does not anticipate the clear profit of several thousands a year,
+to itself and its connexions. Appointments to regiments and
+frigates raise the price of papers; and forfeited estates fly
+confusedly about, and darken the air from the Thames to the
+Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shipley.</i> It is lamentable to think that war, bringing with it
+every species of human misery, should become a commercial
+speculation. Bad enough when it arises from revenge; another
+word for honour.</p>
+
+<p><i>Franklin.</i> A strange one indeed! but not more strange than
+fifty others that come under the same title. Wherever there
+is nothing of religion, nothing of reason, nothing of truth, we
+come at once to honour; and here we draw the sword, dispense
+with what little of civilization we ever pretended to, and murder
+or get murdered, as may happen. But these ceremonials
+both begin and end with an appeal to God, who, before we
+appealed to Him, plainly told us we should do no such thing,
+and that He would punish us most severely if we did. And yet,
+my lord, even the gentlemen upon your bench turn a deaf ear
+to Him on these occasions: nay, they go further; they pray to
+Him for success in that which He has forbidden so strictly, and
+when they have broken His commandment, thank Him. Upon
+seeing these mockeries and impieties age after age repeated, I
+have asked myself whether the depositaries and expounders
+of religion have really any whatever of their own; or rather,
+like the lawyers, whether they do not defend professionally a
+cause that otherwise does not interest them in the least. Surely,
+if these holy men really believed in a just retributive God,
+they would never dare to utter the word <i>war</i>, without horror
+and deprecation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shipley.</i> Let us attribute to infirmity what we must else
+attribute to wickedness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Franklin.</i> Willingly would I: but children are whipped
+severely for inobservance of things less evident, for disobedience
+of commands less audible and less awful. I am loath to attribute
+cruelty to your order: men so entirely at their ease have seldom
+any. Certain I am that several of the bishops would not have
+patted Cain upon the back while he was about to kill Abel;
+and my wonder is that the very same holy men encourage
+their brothers in England to kill their brothers in America;
+not one, not two nor three, but thousands, many thousands.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shipley.</i> I am grieved at the blindness with which God has
+afflicted us for our sins. These unhappy men are little aware
+what combustibles they are storing under the Church, and how
+soon they may explode. Even the wisest do not reflect on the
+most important and the most certain of things; which is, that
+every act of inhumanity and injustice goes far beyond what is
+apparent at the time of its commission; that these, and all other
+things, have their consequences; and that the consequences are
+infinite and eternal. If this one truth alone could be deeply
+impressed upon the hearts of men, it would regenerate the whole
+human race.</p>
+
+<p><i>Franklin.</i> In regard to politics, I am not quite certain whether
+a politician may not be too far-sighted: but I am quite certain
+that, if it be a fault, it is one into which few have fallen. The
+policy of the Romans in the time of the republic, seems to have
+been prospective. Some of the Dutch also, and of the Venetians,
+used the telescope. But in monarchies the prince, not the
+people, is consulted by the minister of the day; and what
+pleases the weakest supersedes what is approved by the wisest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shipley.</i> We have had great statesmen: Burleigh, Cromwell,
+Marlborough, Somers: and whatever may have been in the
+eyes of a moralist the vices of Walpole, none ever understood
+more perfectly, or pursued more steadily, the direct and palpable
+interests of the country. Since his administration, our affairs
+have never been managed by men of business; and it was more
+than could have been expected that, in our war against the
+French in Canada, the appointment fell on an able commander.</p>
+
+<p><i>Franklin.</i> Such an anomaly is unlikely to recur. You have
+in the English Parliament (I speak of both Houses) only two
+great men; only two considerate and clear-sighted politicians;
+Chatham and Burke. Three or four can say clever things;
+several have sonorous voices; many vibrate sharp comminations
+from the embrasures of portentously slit sleeves; and there
+are those to be found who deliver their oracles out of wigs as
+worshipful as the curls of Jupiter, however they may be
+grumbled at by the flour-mills they have laid under such heavy
+contribution; yet nearly all of all parties want alike the sagacity
+to discover that in striking America you shake Europe; that
+kings will come out of the war either to be victims or to be
+despots; and that within a quarter of a century they will be
+hunted down like vermin by the most servile nations, or slain
+in their palaces by their own courtiers. In a peace of twenty
+years you might have paid off the greater part of your National
+Debt, indeed as much of it as it would be expedient to discharge,
+and you would have left your old enemy France labouring and
+writhing under the intolerable and increasing weight of hers.
+This is the only way in which you can ever quite subdue her;
+and in this you subdue her without a blow, without a menace,
+and without a wrong. As matters now stand, you are calling
+her from attending to the corruptions of her court, and inviting
+her from bankruptcy to glory.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shipley.</i> I see not how bankruptcy can be averted by the
+expenditure of war.</p>
+
+<p><i>Franklin.</i> It cannot. But war and glory are the same thing
+to France, and she sings as shrilly and as gaily after a beating
+as before. With a subsidy to a less amount than she has lately
+been accustomed to squander in six weeks, and with no more
+troops than would garrison a single fortress, she will enable us
+to set you at defiance, and to do you a heavier injury in two
+campaigns than she has been able to do in two centuries,
+although your king was in her pay against you. She will
+instantly be our ally, and soon our scholar. Afterward she will
+sell her crown jewels and her church jewels, which cover the
+whole kingdom, and will derive unnatural strength from her
+vices and her profligacy. You ought to have conciliated us
+as your ally, and to have had no other, excepting Holland and
+Denmark. England could never have, unless by her own folly,
+more than one enemy. Only one is near enough to strike her;
+and that one is down. All her wars for six hundred years have
+not done this; and the first trumpet will untrance her. You
+leave your house open to incendiaries while you are running
+after a refractory child. Had you laid down the rod, the child
+would have come back. And because he runs away from the
+rod, you take up the poker. Seriously, what means do you
+possess of enforcing your unjust claims and insolent authority?
+Never since the Norman Conquest had you an army so utterly
+inefficient, or generals so notoriously unskilful: no, not even in
+the reign of that venal traitor, that French stipendiary, the
+second Charles. Those were yet living who had fought bravely
+for his father, and those also who had vanquished him: and
+Victory still hovered over the mast that had borne the banners
+of our Commonwealth: <i>ours</i>, <i>ours</i>, my lord! the word is the
+right word here.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shipley.</i> I am depressed in spirit, and can sympathize but
+little in your exultation. All the crimes of Nero and Caligula
+are less afflicting to humanity, and consequently we may
+suppose will bring down on the offenders a less severe retribution,
+than an unnecessary and unjust war. And yet the authors
+and abettors of this most grievous among our earthly calamities,
+the enactors and applauders (on how vast a theatre!) of the first
+and greatest crime committed upon earth, are quiet complacent
+creatures, jovial at dinner, hearty at breakfast, and refreshed
+with sleep! Nay, the prime movers in it are called most
+religious and most gracious; and the hand that signs in cold
+blood the death-warrant of nations, is kissed by the kind-hearted,
+and confers distinction upon the brave! The prolongation of
+a life that shortens so many others, is prayed for by the conscientious
+and the pious! Learning is inquisitive in the research
+of phrases to celebrate him who has conferred such blessings,
+and the eagle of genius holds the thunderbolt by his throne!
+Philosophy, O my friend, has hitherto done little for the social
+state; and Religion has nearly all her work to do! She too hath
+but recently washed her hands from blood, and stands neutrally
+by, yes, worse than neutrally, while others shed it. I am convinced
+that no day of my life will be so censured by my own
+clergy, as this, the day on which the last hopes of peace have
+abandoned us, and the only true minister of it is pelted from our
+shores. Farewell, until better times! may the next generation
+be wiser! and wiser it surely will be, for the lessons of Calamity
+are far more impressive than those which repudiated Wisdom
+would have taught.</p>
+
+<p><i>Franklin.</i> Folly hath often the same results as Wisdom:
+but Wisdom would not engage in her schoolroom so expensive
+an assistant as Calamity. There are, however, some noisy and
+unruly children whom she alone has the method of rendering
+tame and tractable: perhaps it may be by setting them to
+their tasks both sore and supperless. The ship is getting under
+weigh. Adieu once more, my most reverend and noble friend!
+Before me in imagination do I see America, beautiful as Leda
+in her infant smiles, when her father Jove first raised her from
+the earth; and behind me I leave England, hollow, unsubstantial,
+and broken, as the shell she burst from.</p>
+
+<p><i>Shipley.</i> O worst of miseries, when it is impiety to pray that
+our country may be successful. Farewell! may every good
+attend you! with as little of evil to endure or to inflict, as
+national sins can expect from the Almighty.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="SOUTHEY_AND_LANDOR" id="SOUTHEY_AND_LANDOR"></a>SOUTHEY AND LANDOR</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> Of all the beautiful scenery round King&#8217;s Weston
+the view from this terrace, and especially from this sundial,
+is the pleasantest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> The last time I ever walked hither in company
+(which, unless with ladies, I rarely have done anywhere) was
+with a just, a valiant, and a memorable man, Admiral Nichols,
+who usually spent his summer months at the village of Shirehampton,
+just below us. There, whether in the morning or
+evening, it was seldom I found him otherwise engaged than in
+cultivating his flowers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> I never had the same dislike to company in my
+walks and rambles as you profess to have, but of which I perceived
+no sign whatever when I visited you, first at Llanthony
+Abbey and afterward on the Lake of Como. Well do I remember
+our long conversations in the silent and solitary church
+of Sant&#8217; Abondio (surely the coolest spot in Italy), and how
+often I turned back my head toward the open door, fearing lest
+some pious passer-by, or some more distant one in the wood
+above, pursuing the pathway that leads to the tower of Luitprand,
+should hear the roof echo with your laughter, at the stories
+you had collected about the brotherhood and sisterhood of
+the place.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> I have forgotten most of them, and nearly all: but
+I have not forgotten how we speculated on the possibility that
+Milton might once have been sitting on the very bench we then
+occupied, although we do not hear of his having visited that
+part of the country. Presently we discoursed on his poetry;
+as we propose to do again this morning.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> In that case, it seems we must continue to be seated
+on the turf.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> Why so?</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> Because you do not like to walk in company: it
+might disturb and discompose you: and we never lose our
+temper without losing at the same time many of our thoughts,
+which are loath to come forward without it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> From my earliest days I have avoided society as
+much as I could decorously, for I received more pleasure in
+the cultivation and improvement of my own thoughts than in
+walking up and down among the thoughts of others. Yet, as
+you know, I never have avoided the intercourse of men distinguished
+by virtue and genius; of genius, because it warmed
+and invigorated me by my trying to keep pace with it; of virtue,
+that if I had any of my own it might be called forth by such
+vicinity. Among all men elevated in station who have made a
+noise in the world (admirable old expression!) I never saw any
+in whose presence I felt inferiority, excepting Kosciusco. But
+how many in the lower paths of life have exerted both virtues
+and abilities which I never exerted, and never possessed! what
+strength and courage and perseverance in some, in others what
+endurance and forbearance! At the very moment when most,
+beside yourself, catching up half my words, would call and
+employ against me in its ordinary signification what ought to
+convey the most honorific, the term <i>self-sufficiency</i>, I bow my
+head before the humble, with greatly more than their humiliation.
+You are better tempered than I am, and are readier to
+converse. There are half-hours when, although in good humour
+and good spirits, I would, not be disturbed by the necessity of
+talking, to be the possessor of all the rich marshes we see yonder.
+In this interval there is neither storm nor sunshine of the mind,
+but calm and (as the farmer would call it) <i>growing</i> weather, in
+which the blades of thought spring up and dilate insensibly.
+Whatever I do, I must do in the open air, or in the silence of
+night: either is sufficient: but I prefer the hours of exercise, or,
+what is next to exercise, of field-repose. Did you happen to
+know the admiral?</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> Not personally: but I believe the terms you have
+applied to him are well merited. After some experience, he
+contended that public men, public women, and the public press,
+may be all designated by one and the same trisyllable. He is
+reported to have been a strict disciplinarian. In the mutiny
+at the Nore he was seized by his crew, and summarily condemned
+by them to be hanged. Many taunting questions were
+asked him, to which he made no reply. When the rope was
+fastened round his neck, the ringleader cried, &#8216;Answer this one
+thing, however, before you go, sir! What would you do with
+any of us, if we were in your power as you are now in ours?&#8217;
+The admiral, then captain, looked sternly and contemptuously,
+and replied, &#8216;Hang you, by God!&#8217; Enraged at this answer,
+the mutineer tugged at the rope: but another on the instant
+rushed forward, exclaiming, &#8216;No, captain!&#8217; (for thus he called
+the fellow) &#8216;he has been cruel to us, flogging here and flogging
+there, but before so brave a man is hanged like a dog, you heave
+me overboard.&#8217; Others among the most violent now interceded:
+and an old seaman, not saying a single word, came forward with
+his knife in his hand, and cut the noose asunder. Nichols did
+not thank him, nor notice him, nor speak: but, looking round
+at the other ships, in which there was the like insubordination,
+he went toward his cabin slow and silent. Finding it locked,
+he called to a midshipman: &#8216;Tell that man with a knife to come
+down and open the door.&#8217; After a pause of a few minutes, it
+was done: but he was confined below until the quelling of the
+mutiny.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> His conduct as Controller of the Navy was no less
+magnanimous and decisive. In this office he presided at the
+trial of Lord Melville. His lordship was guilty, we know, of all
+the charges brought against him; but, having more patronage
+than ever minister had before, he refused to answer the questions
+which (to repeat his own expression) might incriminate him.
+And his refusal was given with a smile of indifference, a
+consciousness of security. In those days, as indeed in most others,
+the main use of power was promotion and protection: and
+<i>honest man</i> was never in any age among the titles of nobility,
+and has always been the appellation used toward the feeble and
+inferior by the prosperous. Nichols said on the present occasion,
+&#8216;If this man is permitted to skulk away under such pretences,
+trial is here a mockery.&#8217; Finding no support, he threw up his
+office as Controller of the Navy, and never afterward entered
+the House of Commons. Such a person, it appears to me, leads
+us aptly and becomingly to that steadfast patriot on whose
+writings you promised me your opinion; not incidentally, as
+before, but turning page after page. It would ill beseem us to
+treat Milton with generalities. Radishes and salt are the
+picnic quota of slim spruce reviewers: let us hope to find somewhat
+more solid and of better taste. Desirous to be a listener
+and a learner when you discourse on his poetry, I have been
+more occupied of late in examining the prose.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> Do you retain your high opinion of it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> Experience makes us more sensible of faults than of
+beauties. Milton is more correct than Addison, but less correct
+than Hooker, whom I wish he had been contented to receive
+as a model in style, rather than authors who wrote in another
+and a poorer language; such, I think, you are ready to
+acknowledge is the Latin.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> This was always my opinion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> However, I do not complain that in oratory and
+history his diction is sometimes poetical.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> Little do I approve of it in prose on any subject.
+Demosthenes and Aeschines, Lisias and Isaeus, and finally
+Cicero, avoided it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> They did: but Chatham and Burke and Grattan did
+not; nor indeed the graver and greater Pericles; of whom the
+most memorable sentence on record is pure poetry. On the fall
+of the young Athenians in the field of battle, he said, &#8216;The year
+hath lost its spring.&#8217; But how little are these men, even
+Pericles himself, if you compare them as men of genius with
+Livy! In Livy, as in Milton, there are bursts of passion which
+cannot by the nature of things be other than poetical, nor (being
+so) come forth in other language. If Milton had executed his
+design of writing a history of England, it would probably have
+abounded in such diction, especially in the more turbulent
+scenes and in the darker ages.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> There are quiet hours and places in which a taper
+may be carried steadily, and show the way along the ground;
+but you must stand a-tiptoe and raise a blazing torch above your
+head, if you would bring to our vision the obscure and time-worn
+figures depicted on the lofty vaults of antiquity. The philosopher
+shows everything in one clear light; the historian
+loves strong reflections and deep shadows, but, above all, prominent
+and moving characters. We are little pleased with the
+man who disenchants us: but whoever can make us wonder,
+must himself (we think) be wonderful, and deserve our
+admiration.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> Believing no longer in magic and its charms, we still
+shudder at the story told by Tacitus, of those which were
+discovered in the mournful house of Germanicus.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> Tacitus was also a great poet, and would have been
+a greater, had he been more contented with the external and
+ordinary appearances of things. Instead of which, he looked
+at a part of his pictures through a prism, and at another part
+through a <i>camera obscura</i>. If the historian were as profuse
+of moral as of political axioms, we should tolerate him less:
+for in the political we fancy a writer is but meditating; in the
+moral we regard him as declaiming. In history we desire to
+be conversant with only the great, according to our notions of
+greatness: we take it as an affront, on such an invitation, to be
+conducted into the lecture-room, or to be desired to amuse
+ourselves in the study.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> Pray go on. I am desirous of hearing more.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> Being now alone, with the whole day before us,
+and having carried, as we agreed at breakfast, each his Milton
+in his pocket, let us collect all the graver faults we can lay our
+hands upon, without a too minute and troublesome research;
+not in the spirit of Johnson, but in our own.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> That is, abasing our eyes in reverence to so great a
+man, but without closing them. The beauties of his poetry
+we may omit to notice, if we can: but where the crowd claps the
+hands, it will be difficult for us always to refrain. Johnson,
+I think, has been charged unjustly with expressing too freely
+and inconsiderately the blemishes of Milton. There are many
+more of them than he has noticed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> If we add any to the number, and the literary world
+hears of it, we shall raise an outcry from hundreds who never
+could see either his excellences or his defects, and from several
+who never have perused the noblest of his writings.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> It may be boyish and mischievous, but I acknowledge
+I have sometimes felt a pleasure in irritating, by the cast of a
+pebble, those who stretch forward to the full extent of the chain
+their open and frothy mouths against me. I shall seize upon
+this conjecture of yours, and say everything that comes into my
+head on the subject. Beside which, if any collateral thoughts
+should spring up, I may throw them in also; as you perceive
+I have frequently done in my <i>Imaginary Conversations</i>, and as
+we always do in real ones.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> When we adhere to one point, whatever the form,
+it should rather be called a disquisition than a conversation.
+Most writers of dialogue take but a single stride into questions
+the most abstruse, and collect a heap of arguments to be blown
+away by the bloated whiffs of some rhetorical charlatan, tricked
+out in a multiplicity of ribbons for the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Before we open the volume of poetry, let me confess to you
+I admire his prose less than you do.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> Probably because you dissent more widely from
+the opinions it conveys: for those who are displeased with
+anything are unable to confine the displeasure to one spot.
+We dislike everything a little when we dislike anything much.
+It must indeed be admitted that his prose is often too latinized
+and stiff. But I prefer his heavy cut velvet, with its ill-placed
+Roman fibula, to the spangled gauze and gummed-on flowers
+and puffy flounces of our present street-walking literature. So
+do you, I am certain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> Incomparably. But let those who have gone
+astray, keep astray, rather than bring Milton into disrepute by
+pushing themselves into his company and imitating his manner.
+Milton is none of these: and his language is never a patchwork.
+We find daily, in almost every book we open, expressions which
+are not English, never were, and never will be: for the writers are
+by no means of sufficiently high rank to be masters of the mint.
+To arrive at this distinction, it is not enough to scatter in all
+directions bold, hazardous, undisciplined thoughts: there must
+be lordly and commanding ones, with a full establishment of
+well-appointed expressions adequate to their maintenance.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally I have been dissatisfied with Milton, because
+in my opinion that is ill said in prose which can be said more
+plainly. Not so in poetry: if it were, much of Pindar and
+Aeschylus, and no little of Dante, would be censurable.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> Acknowledge that he whose poetry I am holding in
+my hand is free from every false ornament in his prose, unless
+a few bosses of latinity may be called so; and I am ready to
+admit the full claims of your favourite South. Acknowledge
+that, heading all the forces of our language, he was the great
+antagonist of every great monster which infested our country;
+and he disdained to trim his lion-skin with lace. No other
+English writer has equalled Raleigh, Hooker, and Milton, in
+the loftier parts of their works.</p>
+
+<p><i>Southey.</i> But Hooker and Milton, you allow, are sometimes
+pedantic. In Hooker there is nothing so elevated as there is
+in Raleigh.</p>
+
+<p><i>Landor.</i> Neither he, however, nor any modern, nor any
+ancient, has attained to that summit on which the sacred ark
+of Milton strikes and rests. Reflections, such as we indulged
+in on the borders of the Larius, come over me here again. Perhaps
+from the very sod where you are sitting, the poet in his
+youth sate looking at the Sabrina he was soon to celebrate.
+There is pleasure in the sight of a glebe which never has been
+broken; but it delights me particularly in those places where
+great men have been before. I do not mean warriors: for
+extremely few among the most remarkable of them will a considerate
+man call great: but poets and philosophers and philanthropists,
+the ornaments of society, the charmers of solitude,
+the warders of civilization, the watchmen at the gate which
+Tyranny would batter down, and the healers of those wounds
+which she left festering in the field. And now, to reduce this
+demon into its proper toad-shape again, and to lose sight of it,
+open your <i>Paradise Lost</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_EMPEROR_OF_CHINA_AND_TSING-TI" id="THE_EMPEROR_OF_CHINA_AND_TSING-TI"></a>THE EMPEROR OF CHINA AND TSING-TI</h2>
+
+
+<p>On the morrow I was received at the folding-doors by Pru-Tsi,
+and ushered by him into the presence of his majesty the
+Emperor, who was graciously pleased to inform me that he had
+rendered thanks to Almighty God for enlightening his mind,
+and for placing his empire far beyond the influence of the
+persecutor and fanatic. &#8216;But,&#8217; continued his majesty, &#8216;this
+story of the sorcerer&#8217;s man quite confounds me. Little as the
+progress is which the Europeans seem to have made in the
+path of humanity, yet the English, we know, are less cruel than
+their neighbours, and more given to reflection and meditation.
+How then is it possible they should allow any portion of their
+fellow-citizens to be hoodwinked, gagged, and carried away
+into darkness, by such conspirators and assassins? Why didst
+thou not question the man thyself?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Tsing-Ti.</i> I did, O Emperor! and his reply was, &#8216;We can bury
+such only as were in the household of the faith. It would be
+a mockery to bid those spirits go in peace which we know are
+condemned to everlasting fire.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Emperor.</i> Amazing! have they that? Who invented it?
+Everlasting fire! It surely might be applied to better purposes.
+And have those rogues authority to throw people into it? In
+what part of the kingdom is it? If natural, it ought to have
+been marked more plainly in the maps. The English, no doubt,
+are ashamed of letting it be known abroad that they have any
+such places in their country. If artificial, it is no wonder they
+keep such a secret to themselves. Tsing-Ti, I commend thy
+prudence in asking no questions about it; for I see we are equally
+at a loss on this curiosity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tsing-Ti.</i> The sorcerer has a secret for diluting it. Oysters
+and the white of eggs, applied on lucky days, enter into the
+composition; but certain charms in a strange language must also
+be employed, and must be repeated a certain number of times.
+There are stones likewise, and wood cut into particular forms,
+good against this eternal fire, as they believe. The sorcerer
+has the power, they pretend, of giving the faculty of hearing and
+seeing to these stones and pieces of wood; and when he has
+given them the faculties, they become so sensible and grateful,
+they do whatever he orders. Some roll their eyes, some sweat,
+some bleed; and the people beat their breasts before them, calling
+themselves miserable sinners.</p>
+
+<p><i>Emperor.</i> <i>Sinners</i> is not the name I should have given them,
+although no doubt they are in the right.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tsing-Ti.</i> Sometimes, if they will not bleed freely, nor sweat,
+nor roll their eyes, the devouter break their heads with clubs,
+and look out for others who will.</p>
+
+<p><i>Emperor.</i> Take heed, Tsing-Ti! Take heed! I do believe
+thou art talking all the while of idols. Thou must be respectful;
+remember I am head of all the religions in the empire. We have
+something in our own country not very unlike them, only the
+people do not worship them; they merely fall down before
+them as representatives of a higher power. So they say.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tsing-Ti.</i> I do not imagine they go much farther in Europe,
+excepting the introduction of this club-law into their adoration.</p>
+
+<p><i>Emperor.</i> And difference enough, in all conscience. Our
+people is less ferocious and less childish. If any man break an
+idol here for not sweating, he himself would justly be condemned
+to sweat, showing him how inconvenient a thing it is when the
+sweater is not disposed. As for rolling the eyes, surely they
+know best whom they should ogle; as for bleeding, that must be
+regulated by the season of the year. Let every man choose his
+idol as freely as he chooses his wife; let him be constant if he can;
+if he cannot, let him at least be civil. Whoever dares to scratch
+the face of any one in my empire, shall be condemned to varnish
+it afresh, and moreover to keep it in repair all his lifetime.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tsing-Ti.</i> In Europe such an offence would be punished with
+the extremities of torture.</p>
+
+<p><i>Emperor.</i> Perhaps their idols cost more, and are newer.
+Is there no chance, in all their changes, that we may be called
+upon to supply them with a few?</p>
+
+<p><i>Tsing-Ti.</i> They have plenty for the present, and they dig
+up fresh occasionally.</p>
+
+<p><i>Emperor.</i> In regard to the worship of idols, they have not a
+great deal to learn from us; and what is deficient will come by
+degrees as they grow humaner. But how little care can any
+ruler have for the happiness and improvement of his people,
+who permits such ferocity in the priesthood. If its members
+are employed by the government to preside at burials, as
+according to thy discourse I suppose, a virtuous prince would
+order a twelvemonth&#8217;s imprisonment, and spare diet, to whichever
+of them should refuse to perform the last office of humanity
+toward a fellow-creature. What separation of citizen from
+citizen, and necessarily what diminution of national strength,
+must be the consequence of such a system! A single act of it
+ought to be punished more severely than any single act of
+sedition, not only as being a greater distractor of civic union,
+but, in its cruel sequestration of the best affections, a fouler
+violator of domestic peace. I always had fancied, from the
+books in my library, that the Christian religion was founded
+on brotherly love and pure equality. I may calculate ill; but,
+in my hasty estimate, damnation and dog-burial stand many
+removes from these.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Wait a little,&#8217; the Emperor continued: &#8216;I wish to read in
+my library the two names that my father said are considered
+the two greatest in the West, and may vie nearly with the highest
+of our own country.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon did his majesty walk forth into his library; and
+my eyes followed his glorious figure as he passed through the
+doorway, traversing the <i>gallery of the peacocks</i>, so called because
+fifteen of those beautiful birds unite their tails in the centre
+of the ceiling, painted so naturally as to deceive the beholder,
+each carrying in his beak a different flower, the most beautiful
+in China, and bending his neck in such a manner as to present
+it to the passer below. Traversing this gallery, his majesty
+with his own hand drew aside the curtain of the library door.
+His majesty then entered; and, after some delay, he appeared
+with two long scrolls, and shook them gently over the fish-pond,
+in this dormitory of the sages. Suddenly there were so
+many splashes and plunges that I was aware of the gratification
+the fishes had received from the grubs in them, and the disappointment
+in the atoms of dust. His majesty, with his own
+right hand, drew the two scrolls trailing on the marble pavement,
+and pointing to them with his left, said:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Here they are; Nhu-Tong: Pa-Kong. Suppose they had
+died where the sorcerer&#8217;s men held firm footing, would the
+priests have refused them burial?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>I bowed my head at the question; for a single tinge of red,
+whether arising from such ultra-bestial cruelty in those who
+have the impudence to accuse the cannibals of theirs, or whether
+from abhorrent shame at the corroding disease of intractable
+superstition, hereditary in the European nations for fifteen
+centuries, a tinge of red came over the countenance of the
+emperor. When I raised up again my forehead, after such time
+as I thought would have removed all traces of it, still fixing my
+eyes on the ground, I answered:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;O Emperor! the most zealous would have done worse. They
+would have prepared these great men for burial, and then have
+left them unburied.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Emperor.</i> So! so! they would have embalmed them, in their
+reverence for meditation and genius, although their religion
+prohibits the ceremony of interring them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tsing-Ti.</i> Alas, sire, my meaning is far different. They
+would have dislocated their limbs with pulleys, broken them
+with hammers, and then have burnt the flesh off the bones.
+This is called an <i>act of faith</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Emperor.</i> <i>Faith</i>, didst thou say? Tsing-Ti, thou speakest
+bad Chinese: thy native tongue is strangely occidentalized.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tsing-Ti.</i> So they call it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Emperor.</i> God hath not given unto all men the use of speech.
+Thou meanest to designate the ancient inhabitants of the
+country, not those who have lived there within the last three
+centuries.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tsing-Ti.</i> The Spaniards and Italians (such are the names of
+the nations who are most under the influence of the spells)
+were never so barbarous and cruel as during the first of the last
+three centuries. The milder of them would have refused two
+cubits of earth to the two philosophers; and not only would
+have rejected them from the cemetery of the common citizens,
+but from the side of the common hangman; the most ignorant
+priest thinking himself much wiser, and the most enlightened
+prince not daring to act openly as one who could think otherwise.
+The Italians had formerly two illustrious men among them; the
+earlier was a poet, the later a philosopher; one was exiled, the
+other was imprisoned, and both were within a span of being
+burnt alive.</p>
+
+<p><i>Emperor.</i> We have in Asia some odd religions and some
+barbarous princes, but neither are like the Europeans. In
+the name of God! do the fools think of their Christianity as our
+neighbours in Tartary (with better reason) think of their milk;
+that it will keep the longer for turning sour? or that it must be
+wholesome because it is heady? Swill it out, swill it out, say I,
+and char the tub.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="LOUIS_XVIII_AND_TALLEYRAND" id="LOUIS_XVIII_AND_TALLEYRAND"></a>LOUIS XVIII AND TALLEYRAND</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> M. Talleyrand! in common with all my family, all
+France, all Europe, I entertain the highest opinion of your
+abilities and integrity. You have convinced me that your heart,
+throughout the storms of the revolution, leaned constantly
+toward royalty; and that you permitted and even encouraged
+the caresses of the usurper, merely that you might strangle
+the more certainly and the more easily his new-born empire.
+After this, it is impossible to withhold my confidence from you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> Conscious of the ridicule his arrogance and presumption
+would incur, the usurper attempted to silence and
+stifle it with other and far different emotions. Half his cruelties
+were perpetrated that his vanity might not be wounded: for
+scorn is superseded by horror. Whenever he committed an
+action or uttered a sentiment which would render him an object
+of derision, he instantly gave vent to another which paralysed
+by its enormous wickedness. He would extirpate a nation to
+extinguish a smile. No man alive could deceive your majesty:
+the extremely few who would wish to do it, lie under that
+vigilant and piercing eye, which discerned in perspective from
+the gardens of Hartwell those of the Tuileries and Versailles.
+As joy arises from calamity, so spring arises from the bosom of
+winter, purely to receive your majesty, inviting the august
+descendant of their glorious founder to adorn and animate
+them again with his beneficent and gracious presence. The
+waters murmur, in voices half-suppressed, the reverential hymn
+of peace restored: the woods bow their heads....</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> Talking of woods, I am apprehensive all the game has
+been woefully killed up in my forests.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> A single year will replenish them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> Meanwhile! M. Talleyrand! meanwhile!</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> Honest and active and watchful gamekeepers,
+in sufficient number, must be sought; and immediately.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> Alas! if the children of my nobility had been educated
+like the children of the English, I might have promoted some
+hundreds of them in this department. But their talents lie
+totally within the binding of their breviaries. Those of them
+who shoot, can shoot only with pistols; which accomplishment
+they acquired in England, that they might challenge any of the
+islanders who should happen to look with surprise or displeasure
+in their faces, expecting to be noticed by them in
+Paris, for the little hospitalities the proud young gentlemen,
+and their prouder fathers, were permitted to offer them in
+London and at their country-seats. What we call <i>reconnaissance</i>,
+they call <i>gratitude</i>, treating a recollector like a debtor. This is
+a want of courtesy, a defect in civilization, which it behoves
+us to supply. Our memories are as tenacious as theirs, and
+rather more eclectic.</p>
+
+<p>Since my return to my kingdom I have undergone great
+indignities from this unreflecting people. One Canova, a
+sculptor at Rome, visited Paris in the name of the Pope, and in
+quality of his envoy, and insisted on the cession of those statues
+and pictures which were brought into France by the French
+armies. He began to remove them out of the gallery: I told
+him I would never give my consent: he replied, he thought it
+sufficient that he had Wellington&#8217;s. Therefore, the next time
+Wellington presented himself at the Tuileries, I turned my back
+upon him before the whole court. Let the English and their
+allies be aware, that I owe my restoration not to them, but
+partly to God and partly to Saint Louis. They and their
+armies are only brute instruments in the hands of my progenitor
+and intercessor.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> Fortunate, that the conqueror of France bears
+no resemblance to the conqueror of Spain. Peterborough (I
+shudder at the idea) would have ordered a file of soldiers
+to seat your Majesty in your travelling carriage, and would
+have reinstalled you at Hartwell. The English people are so
+barbarous, that he would have done it not only with impunity,
+but with applause.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> But the sovereign of his country ... would the
+sovereign suffer it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> Alas! sire! Confronted with such men, what are
+sovereigns, when the people are the judges? Wellington can
+drill armies: Peterborough could marshal nations.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> Thank God! we have no longer any such pests on earth.
+The most consummate general of our days (such is Wellington)
+sees nothing one single inch beyond the field of battle; and he is
+so observant of discipline, that if I ordered him to be flogged
+in the presence of the allied armies, he would not utter a complaint
+nor shrug a shoulder; he would only write a dispatch.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> But his soldiers would execute the Duke of
+Brunswick&#8217;s manifesto, and Paris would sink into her catacombs.
+No man so little beloved was ever so well obeyed:
+and there is not a man in England, of either party, citizen or
+soldier, who would not rather die than see him disgraced.
+His firmness, his moderation, his probity, place him more
+opposite to Napoleon than he stood in the field of Waterloo.
+These are his lofty lines of Torres Vedras, which no enemy dares
+assail throughout their whole extent.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> M. Talleyrand! is it quite right to extol an enemy
+and an Englishman in this manner?</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> Pardon! Sire! I stand corrected. Forgive me
+a momentary fit of enthusiasm, in favour of those qualities by
+which, although an Englishman&#8217;s, I am placed again in your
+majesty&#8217;s service.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> We will now then go seriously to business. Wellington
+and the allied armies have interrupted and occupied us. I will
+instantly write, with my own hand, to the Marquis of Buckingham,
+desiring him to send me five hundred pheasants&#8217; eggs.
+I am restored to my throne, M. Talleyrand! but in what a
+condition! Not a pheasant on the table! I must throw myself
+on the mercy of foreigners, even for a pheasant! When I have
+written my letter, I shall be ready to converse with you on the
+business on which I desired your presence. [<i>Writes.</i>] Here; read
+it. Give me your opinion: is not the note a model?</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> If the charms of language could be copied, it
+would be. But what is intended for delight may terminate in
+despair: and there are words which, unapproachable by distance
+and sublimity, may wither the laurels on the most exalted of
+literary brows.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> There is grace in that expression of yours, M. Talleyrand!
+there is really no inconsiderable grace in it. Seal my
+letter: direct it to the Marquis of Buckingham at Stowe. Wait:
+open it again: no, no: write another in your own name: instruct
+him how sure you are it will be agreeable to me, if he sends
+at the same time fifty or a hundred brace of the birds as well as
+the eggs. At present I am desolate. My heart is torn, M.
+Talleyrand! it is almost plucked out of my bosom. I have no
+other care, no other thought, day or night, but the happiness
+of my people. The allies, who have most shamefully overlooked
+the destitution of my kitchen, seem resolved to turn a
+deaf ear to its cries evermore; nay, even to render them shriller
+and shriller. The allies, I suspect, are resolved to execute the
+design of the mischievous Pitt.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> May it please your majesty to inform me <i>which</i>
+of them; for he formed a thousand, all mischievous, but greatly
+more mischievous to England than to France. Resolved to
+seize the sword, in his drunkenness, he seized it by the edge,
+and struck at us with the hilt, until he broke it off and until he
+himself was exhausted by loss of breath and of blood. We owe
+alike to him the energy of our armies, the bloody scaffolds of
+public safety, the Reign of Terror, the empire of usurpation,
+and finally, as the calm is successor to the tempest, and sweet
+fruit to bitter kernel, the blessing of your majesty&#8217;s restoration.
+Excepting in this one event, he was mischievous to our country;
+but in all events, and in all undertakings, he was pernicious to
+his own. No man ever brought into the world such enduring
+evil; few men such extensive.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> His king ordered it. George III loved battles and
+blood.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> But he was prudent in his appetite for them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> He talked of peppering his people as I would talk of
+peppering a capon.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> Having split it. His subjects cut up by his
+subjects were only capers to his leg of mutton. From none
+of his palaces and parks was there any view so rural, so composing
+to his spirits, as the shambles. When these were not
+fresh, the gibbet would do.</p>
+
+<p>I wish better luck to the pheasants&#8217; eggs than befell Mr. Pitt&#8217;s
+designs. Not one brought forth anything.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> No: but he declared in the face of his Parliament, and of
+Europe, that he would insist on indemnity for the past and
+security for the future. These were his words. Now, all the
+money and other wealth the French armies levied in Spain,
+Portugal, Italy, and everywhere else, would scarcely be sufficient
+for this indemnity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> England shall never receive from us a tithe of
+that amount.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> A tithe of it! She may demand a quarter or a third,
+and leave us wondering at her moderation and forbearance.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> The matter must be arranged immediately, before
+she has time for calculation or reflection. A new peace maddens
+England to the same paroxysm as a new war maddens France.
+She hath sent over hither her minister ... or rather her
+prime minister himself is come to transact all the business ...
+the most ignorant and most shortsighted man to be found in
+any station of any public office throughout the whole of Europe.
+He must be treated as her arbiter: we must talk to him of restoring
+her, of regenerating her, of preserving her, of guiding her,
+which (we must protest with our hands within our frills) he
+alone is capable of doing. We must enlarge on his generosity
+(and generous he indeed is), and there is nothing he will not
+concede.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> But if they do not come over in a week, we shall lose
+the season. I ought to be eating a pheasant-poult by the middle
+of July. Oh, but you were talking to me about the other
+matter, and perhaps the weightier of the two; ay, certainly.
+If this indemnity is paid to England, what becomes of our
+civil list, the dignity of my family and household?</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> I do assure your majesty, England shall never
+receive ... did I say a tithe?... I say she shall never
+receive a fiftieth of what she expended in the war against us.
+It would be out of all reason, and out of all custom in her to
+expect it. Indeed it would place her in almost as good a
+condition as ourselves. Even if she were beaten she could
+hardly hope <i>that</i>: she never in the last three centuries has
+demanded it when she was victorious. Of all the sufferers by
+the war, we shall be the best off.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> The English are calculators and traders.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> Wild speculators, gamblers in trade, who hazard
+more ventures than their books can register. It will take
+England some years to cast up the amount of her losses.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> But she, in common with her allies, will insist on
+our ceding those provinces which my predecessor Louis XIV
+annexed to his kingdom. Be quite certain that nothing short
+of Alsace, Lorraine, and Franc Comt&eacute;, will satisfy the German
+princes. They must restore the German language in those
+provinces: for languages are the only true boundaries of nations,
+and there will always be dissension where there is difference of
+tongue. We must likewise be prepared to surrender the remainder
+of the Netherlands; not indeed to England, who refused
+them in the reign of Elizabeth: she wants only Dunkirk, and
+Dunkirk she will have.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> This seems reasonable: for which reason it must
+never be. Diplomacy, when she yields to such simple arguments
+as plain reason urges against her, loses her office, her efficacy,
+and her name.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> I would not surrender our conquests in Germany, if
+I could help it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> Nothing more easy. The Emperor Alexander
+may be persuaded that Germany united and entire, as she would
+then become, must be a dangerous rival to Russia.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> It appears to me that Poland will be more so, with her
+free institutions.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> There is only one statesman in the whole number
+of those assembled at Paris, who believes that her institutions
+will continue free; and he would rather they did not; but he
+stipulates for it, to gratify and mystify the people of England.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> I see this clearly. I have a great mind to send Blacas
+over to Stowe. I can trust to him to look to the crates and
+coops, and to see that the pheasants have enough of air and
+water, and that the Governor of Calais finds a commodious
+place for them to roost in, forbidding the drums to beat and
+disturb them, evening or morning. The next night, according
+to my calculation, they repose at Montreuil. I must look at
+them before they are let loose. I cannot well imagine why the
+public men employed by England are usually, indeed constantly
+so inferior in abilities to those of France, Prussia, Austria, and
+Russia. What say you, M. Talleyrand? I do not mean about
+the pheasants; I mean about the envoys.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> It can only be that I have considered the subject
+more frequently and attentively than suited the avocations of
+your majesty, that the reason comes out before me clearly and
+distinctly. The prime ministers, in all these countries, are
+independent, and uncontrolled in the choice of agents. A prime
+minister in France may perhaps be willing to promote the
+interests of his own family; and hence he may appoint from it
+one unworthy of the place. In regard to other families, he
+cares little or nothing about them, knowing that his power lies
+in the palace, and not in the club-room. Whereas in England he
+must conciliate the great families, the hereditary dependants of
+his faction, Whig or Tory. Hence even the highest commands
+have been conferred on such ignorant and worthless men as the
+Duke of York and the Earl of Chatham, although the minister
+was fully aware that the honour of his nation was tarnished,
+and that its safety was in jeopardy, by such appointments.
+Meanwhile he kept his seat however, and fed from it his tame
+creatures in the cub.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> Do you apprehend any danger (talking of cubs) that
+my pheasants will be bruised against the wooden bars, or suffer
+by sea-sickness? I would not command my bishops to offer
+up public prayers against such contingencies: for people must
+never have positive evidence that the prayers of the Church
+can possibly be ineffectual: and we cannot pray for pheasants
+as we pray for fine weather, by the barometer. We must drop
+it. Now go on with the others, if you have done with England.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> A succession of intelligent men rules Prussia,
+Russia, and Austria; because these three are economical, and
+must get their bread by creeping, day after day, through the
+hedges next to them, and by filching a sheaf or two, early and
+late, from cottager or small farmer; that is to say, from free
+states and petty princes. Prussia, like a mongrel, would fly
+at the legs of Austria and Russia, catching them with the sack
+upon their shoulders, unless they untied it and tossed a morsel
+to her. These great powers take especial care to impose a
+protective duty on intellect; to let none enter the country,
+and none leave it, without a passport. Their diplomatists are
+as clever and conciliatory as those of England are ignorant and
+repulsive, who, while they offer an uncounted sum of secret-service
+money with the left hand, give a sounding slap on the
+face with the right.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> We, by adopting a contrary policy, gain more information,
+raise more respect, inspire more awe, and exercise more
+authority. The weightiest of our disbursements are smiles and
+flatteries, with a ribbon and a cross at the end of them.</p>
+
+<p>But, between the Duke of York and the Earl of Chatham, I
+must confess, I find very little difference.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> Some, however. The one was only drunk all the
+evening and all the night; the other was only asleep all the
+day. The accumulated fogs of Walcheren seemed to concentrate
+in his brain, puffing out at intervals just sufficient
+to affect with typhus and blindness four thousand soldiers.
+A cake of powder rusted their musket-pans, which they were
+too weak to open and wipe. Turning round upon their scanty
+and mouldy straw, they beheld their bayonets piled together
+against the green dripping wall of the chamber, which neither
+bayonet nor soldier was ever to leave again.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> We suffer by the presence of the allied armies in our
+capital: but we shall soon be avenged: for the English minister
+in another fortnight will return and remain at home.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> England was once so infatuated as to give up
+Malta to us, although fifty Gibraltars would be of inferior value
+to her. Napoleon laughed at her: she was angry: she began
+to suspect she had been duped and befooled: and she broke
+her faith.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> For the first time, M. Talleyrand, and with a man
+who never had any.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> We shall now induce her to evacuate Sicily, in
+violation of her promises to the people of that island. Faith,
+having lost her virginity, braves public opinion, and never
+blushes more.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> Sicily is the key to India, Egypt is the lock.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> What, if I induce the minister to restore to us
+Pondicherry?</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> M. Talleyrand! you have done great things, and
+without boasting. Whenever you do boast, let it be that you
+will perform only the thing which is possible. The English
+know well enough what it is to allow us a near standing-place
+anywhere. If they permit a Frenchman to plant one foot in
+India, it will upset all Asia before the other touches the ground.
+It behoves them to prohibit a single one of us from ever landing
+on those shores. Improbable as it is that a man uniting to the
+same degree as Hyder-Ali did political and military genius, will
+appear in the world again for centuries; most of the princes
+are politic, some are brave, and perhaps no few are credulous.
+While England is confiding in our loyalty, we might expatiate
+on her perfidy, and our tears fall copiously on the broken
+sceptre in the dust of Delhi. Ignorant and stupid as the king&#8217;s
+ministers may be, the East India Company is well-informed
+on its interests, and alert in maintaining them. I wonder that
+a republic so wealthy and so wise should be supported on the
+bosom of royalty. Believe me, her merchants will take alarm,
+and arouse the nation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> We must do all we have to do, while the nation
+is feasting and unsober. It will awaken with sore eyes and
+stiff limbs.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> Profuse as the English are, they will never cut the
+bottom of their purses.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> They have already done it. Whenever I look
+toward the shores of England, I fancy I descry the Dana&iuml;ds
+there, toiling at the replenishment of their perforated vases,
+and all the Nereids leering and laughing at them in the mischievous
+fullness of their hearts.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> Certainly she can do me little harm at present, and
+for several years to come: but we must always have an eye
+upon her, and be ready to assert our superiority.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> We feel it. In fifty years, by abstaining from
+war, we may discharge our debt and replenish our arsenals.
+England will never shake off the heavy old man from her
+shoulders. Overladen and morose, she will be palsied in the
+hand she unremittingly holds up against Ireland. Proud and
+perverse, she runs into domestic warfare as blindly as France
+runs into foreign: and she refuses to her subject what she
+surrenders to her enemy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> Her whole policy tends to my security.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> We must now consider how your majesty may
+enjoy it at home, all the remainder of your reign.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> Indeed you must, M. Talleyrand! Between you and
+me be it spoken, I trust but little my loyal people; their loyalty
+being so ebullient, that it often overflows the vessel which should
+contain it, and is a perquisite of scouts and scullions. I do not
+wish to offend you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> Really I can see no other sure method of containing
+and controlling them, than by bastions and redoubts,
+the whole circuit of the city.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> M. Talleyrand! I will not doubt your sincerity: I
+am confident you have reserved the whole of it for my service;
+and there are large arrears. But M. Talleyrand! such an attempt
+would be resisted by any people which had ever heard of liberty,
+and much more by a people which had ever dreamt of enjoying it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> Forts are built in all directions above Genoa.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> Yes; by her conqueror, not by her king.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> Your majesty comes with both titles, and rules,
+like your great progenitor,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Et par droit de conqu&ecirc;te et par droit de naissance.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> True; my arms have subdued the rebellious; but not
+without great firmness and great valour on my part, and some
+assistance (however tardy) on the part of my allies. Conquerors
+must conciliate: fatherly kings must offer digestible spoon-meat
+to their ill-conditioned children. There would be sad
+screaming and kicking were I to swaddle mine in stone-work.
+No, M. Talleyrand; if ever Paris is surrounded by fortifications
+to coerce the populace, it must be the work of some democrat,
+some aspirant to supreme power, who resolves to maintain it,
+exercising a domination too hazardous for legitimacy. I will
+only scrape from the chambers the effervescence of superficial
+letters and corrosive law.</p>
+
+<p><i>Talleyrand.</i> Sire! under all their governments the good
+people of Paris have submitted to the <i>octroi</i>. Now, all complaints,
+physical or political, arise from the stomach. Were it
+decorous in a subject to ask a question (however humbly) of his
+king, I would beg permission to inquire of your majesty, in your
+wisdom, whether a bar across the shoulders is less endurable
+than a bar across the palate. Sire! the French can bear anything
+now they have the honour of bowing before your majesty.</p>
+
+<p><i>Louis.</i> The compliment is in a slight degree (a <i>very</i> slight
+degree) ambiguous, and (accept in good part my criticism,
+M. Talleyrand) not turned with your usual grace.</p>
+
+<p>Announce it as my will and pleasure that the Duc de Blacas
+do superintend the debarkation of the pheasants; and I pray
+God, M. de Talleyrand, to have you in His holy keeping.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="OLIVER_CROMWELL_AND_SIR_OLIVER_CROMWELL" id="OLIVER_CROMWELL_AND_SIR_OLIVER_CROMWELL"></a>OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> How many saints and Sions dost carry under thy
+cloak, lad? Ay, what dost groan at? What art about to be
+delivered of? Troth, it must be a vast and oddly-shapen piece
+of roguery which findeth no issue at such capacious quarters.
+I never thought to see thy face again. Prithee what, in God&#8217;s
+name, hath brought thee to Ramsey, fair Master Oliver?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> In His name verily I come, and upon His errand;
+and the love and duty I bear unto my godfather and uncle have
+added wings, in a sort, unto my zeal.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> Take &#8217;em off thy zeal and dust thy conscience
+with &#8217;em. I have heard an account of a saint, one Phil Neri,
+who in the midst of his devotions was lifted up several yards
+from the ground. Now I do suspect, Nol, thou wilt finish by
+being a saint of his order; and nobody will promise or wish
+thee the luck to come down on thy feet again, as he did. So!
+because a rabble of fanatics at Huntingdon have equipped thee
+as their representative in Parliament, thou art free of all men&#8217;s
+houses, forsooth! I would have thee to understand, sirrah,
+that thou art fitter for the House they have chaired thee unto
+than for mine. Yet I do not question but thou wilt be as
+troublesome and unruly there as here. Did I not turn thee out
+of Hinchinbrook when thou wert scarcely half the rogue thou art
+latterly grown up to? And yet wert thou immeasurably too
+big a one for it to hold.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> It repenteth me, O mine uncle! that in my boyhood
+and youth the Lord had not touched me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> Touch thee! thou wast too dirty a dog by half.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> Yes, sorely doth it vex and harrow me that I was
+then of ill conditions, and that my name ... even your
+godson&#8217;s ... stank in your nostrils.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> Ha! polecat! it was not thy name, although bad
+enough, that stank first; in my house, at least. But perhaps
+there are worse maggots in stauncher mummeries.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> Whereas in the bowels of your charity you then
+vouchsafed me forgiveness, so the more confidently may I
+crave it now in this my urgency.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> More confidently! What! hast got more confidence?
+Where didst find it? I never thought the wide
+circle of the world had within it another jot for thee. Well,
+Nol, I see no reason why shouldst stand before me with thy hat
+off, in the courtyard and in the sun, counting the stones in the
+pavement. Thou hast some knavery in thy head, I warrant
+thee. Come, put on thy beaver.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> Uncle Sir Oliver! I know my duty too well to stand
+covered in the presence of so worshipful a kinsman, who, moreover,
+hath answered at baptism for my good behaviour.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> God forgive me for playing the fool before Him
+so presumptuously and unprofitably! Nobody shall ever take
+me in again to do such an absurd and wicked thing. But thou
+hast some left-handed business in the neighbourhood, no doubt,
+or thou wouldst never more have come under my archway.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> These are hard times for them that seek peace. We
+are clay in the hands of the potter.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> I wish your potters sought nothing costlier, and
+dug in their own grounds for it. Most of us, as thou sayest,
+have been upon the wheel of these artificers; and little was left
+but rags when we got off. Sanctified folks are the cleverest
+skinners in all Christendom, and their Jordan tans and constringes
+us to the avoirdupois of mummies.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> The Lord hath chosen His own vessels.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> I wish heartily He would pack them off, and send
+them anywhere on ass-back or cart (cart preferably), to rid our
+country of &#8217;em. But now again to the point: for if we fall among
+the potsherds we shall hobble on but lamely. Since thou art
+raised unto a high command in the army, and hast a dragoon
+to hold thy solid and stately piece of horse-flesh, I cannot but
+take it into my fancy that thou hast some commission of array
+or disarray to execute hereabout.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> With a sad sinking of spirit, to the pitch well-nigh of
+swounding, and with a sight of bitter tears, which will not
+be put back nor stayed in any wise, as you bear testimony unto
+me, Uncle Oliver!</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> No tears, Master Nol, I beseech thee! Wet
+days, among those of thy kidney, portend the letting of blood.
+What dost whimper at?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> That I, that I, of all men living, should be put upon
+this work!</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> What work, prithee?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> I am sent hither by them who (the Lord in His loving
+kindness having pity, and mercy upon these poor realms) do,
+under His right hand, administer unto our necessities, and
+righteously command us, <i>by the aforesaid as aforesaid</i> (thus
+runs the commission), hither am I deputed (woe is me!) to levy
+certain fines in this county, or shire, on such as the Parliament
+in its wisdom doth style malignants.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> If there is anything left about the house, never
+be over-nice: dismiss thy modesty and lay hands upon it. In
+this county or shire, we let go the civet-bag to save the weazon.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> O mine uncle and godfather! be witness for me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> Witness for thee! not I indeed. But I would
+rather be witness than surety, lad, where thou art docketed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> From the most despised doth the Lord ever choose
+His servants.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> Then, faith! thou art His first butler.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> Serving Him with humility, I may peradventure be
+found worthy of advancement.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> Ha! now if any devil speaks from within thee, it
+is thy own: he does not snuffle: to my ears he speaks plain English.
+Worthy or unworthy of advancement, thou wilt attain it.
+Come in; at least for an hour&#8217;s rest. Formerly thou knewest
+the means of setting the heaviest heart afloat, let it be sticking
+in what mud-bank it might: and my wet dock at Ramsey is
+pretty near as commodious as that over yonder at Hinchinbrook
+was erewhile. Times are changed, and places too! yet the
+cellar holds good.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> Many and great thanks! But there are certain men
+on the other side of the gate, who might take it ill if I turn
+away and neglect them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> Let them enter also, or eat their victuals where
+they are.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> They have proud stomachs: they are recusants.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> Recusants of what? of beef and ale? We have
+claret, I trust, for the squeamish, if they are above the condition
+of tradespeople. But of course you leave no person of higher
+quality in the outer court.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> Vain are they and worldly, although such wickedness
+is the most abominable in their cases. Idle folks are fond of
+sitting in the sun: I would not forbid them this indulgence.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> But who are they?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> The Lord knows. Maybe priests, deacons, and such-like.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> Then, sir, they are gentlemen. And the commission
+you bear from the parliamentary thieves, to sack and pillage
+my mansion-house, is far less vexatious and insulting to me,
+than your behaviour in keeping them so long at my stable-door.
+With your permission, or without it, I shall take the
+liberty to invite them to partake of my poor hospitality.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> But, Uncle Sir Oliver! there are rules and ordinances
+whereby it must be manifested that they lie under displeasure
+... not mine ... not mine ... but my milk must not
+flow for them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> You may enter the house or remain where you are,
+at your option; I make my visit to these gentlemen immediately,
+for I am tired of standing. If thou ever reachest my age,<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a>
+Oliver! (but God will not surely let this be) thou wilt know that
+the legs become at last of doubtful fidelity in the service of the
+body.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> Uncle Sir Oliver! now that, as it seemeth, you have
+been taking a survey of the courtyard and its contents, am I
+indiscreet in asking your worship whether I acted not prudently
+in keeping the <i>men-at-belly</i> under the custody of the <i>men-at-arms</i>?
+This pestilence, like unto one I remember to have read
+about in some poetry of Master Chapman&#8217;s,<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> began with the
+dogs and mules, and afterwards crope up into the breasts
+of men.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> I call such treatment barbarous; their troopers
+will not let the gentlemen come with me into the house, but
+insist on sitting down to dinner with them. And yet, having
+brought them out of their colleges, these brutal half-soldiers
+must know that they are fellows.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> Yea, of a truth are they, and fellows well met. Out
+of their superfluities they give nothing to the Lord or His saints;
+no, not even stirrup or girth, wherewith we may mount our
+horses and go forth against those who thirst for our blood.
+Their eyes are fat, and they raise not up their voices to cry for
+our deliverance.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> Art mad? What stirrups and girths are hung up
+in college halls and libraries? For what are these gentlemen
+brought hither?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> They have elected me, with somewhat short of
+unanimity, not indeed to be one of themselves, for of that
+distinction I acknowledge and deplore my unworthiness, nor
+indeed to be a poor scholar, to which, unless it be a very poor
+one, I have almost as small pretension, but simply to undertake
+a while the heavier office of bursar for them; to cast up their
+accounts; to overlook the scouring of their plate; and to lay a
+list thereof, with a few specimens, before those who fight the
+fight of the Lord, that His saints, seeing the abasement of the
+proud and the chastisement of worldly-mindedness, may rejoice.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> I am grown accustomed to such saints and such
+rejoicings. But, little could I have thought, threescore years
+ago, that the hearty and jovial people of England would ever
+join in so filching and stabbing a jocularity. Even the petticoated
+torchbearers from rotten Rome, who lighted the faggots
+in Smithfield some years before, if more blustering and cocksy,
+were less bitter and vulturine. They were all intolerant, but
+they were not all hypocritical; they had not always &#8216;<i>the Lord</i>&#8217;
+in their mouth.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> According to their own notions, they might have had,
+at an outlay of a farthing.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> Art facetious, Nol? for it is as hard to find that
+out as anything else in thee, only it makes thee look, at times,
+a little the grimmer and sourer.</p>
+
+<p>But, regarding these gentlemen from Cambridge. Not being
+such as, by their habits and professions, could have opposed you
+in the field, I hold it unmilitary and unmanly to put them under
+any restraint, and to lead them away from their peaceful and
+useful occupations.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> I always bow submissively before the judgment of
+mine elders; and the more reverentially when I know them to
+be endowed with greater wisdom, and guided by surer experience
+than myself. Alas! these collegians not only are strong
+men, as you may readily see if you measure them round the
+waistband, but boisterous and pertinacious challengers. When
+we, who live in the fear of God, exhorted them earnestly unto
+peace and brotherly love, they held us in derision. Thus far
+indeed it might be an advantage to us, teaching us forbearance
+and self-seeking, but we cannot countenance the evil spirit
+moving them thereunto. Their occupations, as you remark
+most wisely, might have been useful and peaceful, and had
+formerly been so. Why then did they gird the sword of strife
+about their loins against the children of Israel? By their own
+declaration, not only are they our enemies, but enemies the
+most spiteful and untractable. When I came quietly, lawfully,
+and in the name of the Lord, for their plate, what did they?
+Instead of surrendering it like honest and conscientious men,
+they attacked me and my people on horseback, with syllogisms
+and enthymemes, and the Lord knows with what other such
+gimcracks; such venomous and rankling old weapons as those
+who have the fear of God before their eyes are fain to lay aside.
+Learning should not make folks mockers ... should not make
+folks malignants ... should not harden their hearts. We
+came with bowels for them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> That ye did! and bowels which would have stowed
+within them all the plate on board of a galleon. If tankards
+and wassail-bowls had stuck between your teeth, you would not
+have felt them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> We did feel them; some at least: perhaps we missed
+too many.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> How can these learned societies raise the money
+you exact from them, beside plate? dost think they can create
+and coin it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> In Cambridge, Uncle Sir Oliver, and more especially
+in that college named in honour (as they profanely call it) of
+the Blessed Trinity, there are great conjurors or chemists. Now
+the said conjurors or chemists not only do possess the faculty
+of making the precious metals out of old books and parchments,
+but out of the skulls of young lordlings and gentlefolks, which
+verily promise less. And this they bring about by certain
+gold wires fastened at the top of certain caps. Of said metals,
+thus devilishly converted, do they make a vain and sumptuous
+use; so that, finally, they are afraid of cutting their lips with
+glass. But indeed it is high time to call them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> Well ... at last thou hast some mercy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver.</i> [<i>Aloud.</i>] Cuffsatan Ramsbottom! Sadsoul Kiteclaw!
+advance! Let every gown, together with the belly that is
+therein, mount up behind you and your comrades in good fellowship.
+And forasmuch as you at the country places look to bit
+and bridle, it seemeth fair and equitable that ye should leave
+unto them, in full propriety, the mancipular office of discharging
+the account. If there be any spare beds at the inns, allow the
+doctors and dons to occupy the same ... they being used to
+lie softly; and be not urgent that more than three lie in
+each ... they being mostly corpulent. Let pass quietly and
+unreproved any light bubble of pride or impetuosity, seeing
+that they have not always been accustomed to the service of
+guards and ushers. The Lord be with ye!... Slow trot!
+And now, Uncle Sir Oliver, I can resist no longer your loving
+kindness. I kiss you, my godfather, in heart&#8217;s and soul&#8217;s duty;
+and most humbly and gratefully do I accept of your invitation
+to dine and lodge with you, albeit the least worthy of your
+family and kinsfolk. After the refreshment of needful food,
+more needful prayer, and that sleep which descendeth on the
+innocent like the dew of Hermon, to-morrow at daybreak I
+proceed on my journey Londonward.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver.</i> [<i>Aloud.</i>] Ho, there! [<i>To a servant.</i>] Let dinner be
+prepared in the great dining-room; let every servant be in waiting,
+each in full livery; let every delicacy the house affords be
+placed upon the table in due courses; arrange all the plate upon
+the sideboard: a gentleman by descent ... a stranger ...
+has claimed my hospitality. [<i>Servant goes.</i>]</p>
+
+<p>Sir! you are now master. Grant me dispensation, I entreat
+you, from a further attendance on you.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Sir Oliver, who died in 1655, aged ninety-three, might, by possibility,
+have seen all the men of great genius, excepting Chaucer and Roger Bacon,
+whom England had produced from its first discovery down to our own times,
+Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, and the prodigious shoal
+that attended these leviathans through the intellectual deep. Newton
+was but in his thirteenth year at Sir Oliver&#8217;s death. Raleigh, Spenser,
+Hooker, Eliot, Selden, Taylor, Hobbes, Sidney, Shaftesbury, and Locke,
+were existing in his lifetime; and several more, who may be compared
+with the smaller of these.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Chapman&#8217;s <i>Homer</i>, first book.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_COUNT_GLEICHEM_THE_COUNTESS_THEIR" id="THE_COUNT_GLEICHEM_THE_COUNTESS_THEIR_CHILDREN_AND_ZAIDA"></a>THE COUNT GLEICHEM: THE COUNTESS: THEIR CHILDREN, AND ZAIDA.</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Ludolph! my beloved Ludolph! do we meet again?
+Ah! I am jealous of these little ones, and of the embraces you
+are giving them.</p>
+
+<p>Why sigh, my sweet husband?</p>
+
+<p>Come back again, Wilhelm! Come back again, Annabella!
+How could you run away? Do you think you can see better
+out of the corner?</p>
+
+<p><i>Annabella.</i> Is this indeed our papa? What, in the name
+of mercy, can have given him so dark a colour? I hope I shall
+never be like that; and yet everybody tells me I am very like
+papa.</p>
+
+<p><i>Wilhelm.</i> Do not let her plague you, papa; but take me
+between your knees (I am too old to sit upon them), and tell me
+all about the Turks, and how you ran away from them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Wilhelm! if your father had run away from the
+enemy, we should not have been deprived of him two whole
+years.</p>
+
+<p><i>Wilhelm.</i> I am hardly such a child as to suppose that a
+Christian knight would run away from a rebel Turk in battle.
+But even Christians are taken, somehow, by their tricks and
+contrivances, and their dog Mahomet. Beside, you know you
+yourself told me, with tear after tear, and scolding me for mine,
+that papa was taken by them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Annabella.</i> Neither am I, who am only one year younger, so
+foolish as to believe there is any dog Mahomet. And, if there
+were, we have dogs that are better and faithfuller and stronger.</p>
+
+<p><i>Wilhelm.</i> [<i>To his father.</i>] I can hardly help laughing to think
+what curious fancies girls have about Mahomet. We know that
+Mahomet is a dog-spirit with three horsetails.</p>
+
+<p><i>Annabella.</i> Papa! I am glad to see you smile at Wilhelm.
+I do assure you he is not half so bad a boy as he was, although
+he did point at me, and did tell you some mischief.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> I ought to be indeed most happy at seeing you all
+again.</p>
+
+<p><i>Annabella.</i> And so you are. Don&#8217;t pretend to look grave now.
+I very easily find you out. I often look grave when I am the
+happiest. But forth it bursts at last: there is no room for it
+in tongue, or eyes, or anywhere.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> And so, my little angel, you begin to recollect me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Annabella.</i> At first I used to dream of papa, but at last I
+forgot how to dream of him: and then I cried, but at last I left
+off crying. And then, papa, who could come to me in my
+sleep, seldom came again.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> Why do you now draw back from me, Annabella?</p>
+
+<p><i>Annabella.</i> Because you really are so very very brown: just
+like those ugly Turks who sawed the pines in the saw-pit under
+the wood, and who refused to drink wine in the heat of summer,
+when Wilhelm and I brought it to them. Do not be angry;
+we did it only once.</p>
+
+<p><i>Wilhelm.</i> Because one of them stamped and frightened her
+when the other seemed to bless us.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> Are they still living?</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> One of them is.</p>
+
+<p><i>Wilhelm.</i> The fierce one.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> We will set him free, and wish it were the other.</p>
+
+<p><i>Annabella.</i> Papa! I am glad you are come back without
+your spurs.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Hush, child, hush.</p>
+
+<p><i>Annabella.</i> Why, mamma? Do not you remember how
+they tore my frock when I clung to him at parting? Now I
+begin to think of him again: I lose everything between that
+day and this.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> The girl&#8217;s idle prattle about the spurs has pained
+you: always too sensitive; always soon hurt, though never soon
+offended.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> O God! O my children! O my wife! it is not the
+loss of spurs I now must blush for.</p>
+
+<p><i>Annabella.</i> Indeed, papa, you never can blush at all, until
+you cut that horrid beard off.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Well may you say, my own Ludolph, as you do;
+for most gallant was your bearing in the battle.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> Ah! why was it ever fought?</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Why were most battles? But they may lead to
+glory even through slavery.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> And to shame and sorrow.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Have I lost the little beauty I possessed, that you
+hold my hand so languidly, and turn away your eyes when they
+meet mine? It was not so formerly ... unless when first
+we loved.</p>
+
+<p>That one kiss restores to me all my lost happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Come; the table is ready: there are your old wines upon it:
+you must want that refreshment.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> Go, my sweet children! you must eat your supper
+before I do.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Run into your own room for it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Annabella.</i> I will not go until papa has patted me again on the
+shoulder, now I begin to remember it. I do not much mind the
+beard: I grow used to it already: but indeed I liked better to
+stroke and pat the smooth laughing cheek, with my arm across
+the neck behind. It is very pleasant even so. Am I not grown?
+I can put the whole length of my finger between your lips.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> And now, will not <i>you</i> come, Wilhelm?</p>
+
+<p><i>Wilhelm.</i> I am too tall and too heavy: she is but a child.
+[<i>Whispers.</i>] Yet I think, papa, I am hardly so much of a man
+but you may kiss me over again ... if you will not let her see it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> My dears! why do not you go to your supper?</p>
+
+<p><i>Annabella.</i> Because he has come to show us what Turks
+are like.</p>
+
+<p><i>Wilhelm.</i> Do not be angry with her. Do not look down, papa!</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> Blessings on you both, sweet children!</p>
+
+<p><i>Wilhelm.</i> We may go now.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> And now, Ludolph, come to the table, and tell me
+all your sufferings.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> The worst begin here.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Ungrateful Ludolph!</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> I am he: that is my name in full.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> You have then ceased to love me?</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> Worse; if worse can be: I have ceased to deserve
+your love.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> No: Ludolph hath spoken falsely for once; but
+Ludolph is not false.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> I have forfeited all I ever could boast of, your affection
+and my own esteem. Away with caresses! Repulse me,
+abjure me; hate, and never pardon me. Let the abject heart
+lie untorn by one remorse. Forgiveness would split and shiver
+what slavery but abased.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Again you embrace me; and yet tell me never to
+pardon you! O inconsiderate man! O idle deviser of impossible
+things!</p>
+
+<p>But you have not introduced to me those who purchased your
+freedom, or who achieved it by their valour.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> Mercy! O God!</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Are they dead? Was the plague abroad.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> I will not dissemble ... such was never my intention
+... that my deliverance was brought about by means of&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Say it at once ... a lady.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> It was.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> She fled with you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> She did.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> And have you left her, sir?</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> Alas! alas! I have not; and never can.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Now come to my arms, brave, honourable Ludolph!
+Did I not say thou couldst not be ungrateful? Where, where
+is she who has given me back my husband?</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> Dare I utter it! in this house.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Call the children.</p>
+
+<p><i>Count.</i> No; they must not affront her: they must not even
+stare at her: other eyes, not theirs, must stab me to the heart.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> They shall bless her; we will all. Bring her in.</p>
+
+<p>[<i>Zaida is led in by the Count.</i>]</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> We three have stood silent long enough: and much
+there may be on which we will for ever keep silence. But,
+sweet young creature! can I refuse my protection, or my love,
+to the preserver of my husband? Can I think it a crime, or
+even a folly, to have pitied the brave and the unfortunate?
+to have pressed (but alas! that it ever should have been so here!)
+a generous heart to a tender one?</p>
+
+<p>Why do you begin to weep?</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> Under your kindness, O lady, lie the sources of these
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>But why has he left us? He might help me to say many things
+which I want to say.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Did he never tell you he was married?</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> He did indeed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> That he had children?</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> It comforted me a little to hear it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Why? prithee why?</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> When I was in grief at the certainty of holding but
+the second place in his bosom, I thought I could at least go and
+play with them, and win perhaps their love.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> According to our religion, a man must have only
+one wife.</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> That troubled me again. But the dispenser of your
+religion, who binds and unbinds, does for sequins or services
+what our Prophet does purely through kindness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> We can love but one.</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> We indeed can love only one: but men have large
+hearts.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Unhappy girl!</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> The very happiest in the world.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Ah! inexperienced creature!</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> The happier for that perhaps.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> But the sin!</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> Where sin is, there must be sorrow: and I, my sweet
+sister, feel none whatever. Even when tears fall from my eyes,
+they fall only to cool my breast: I would not have one the fewer:
+they all are for him: whatever he does, whatever he causes, is
+dear to me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> [<i>Aside.</i>] This is too much. I could hardly endure
+to have him so beloved by another, even at the extremity of
+the earth. [<i>To Zaida.</i>] You would not lead him into perdition?</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> I have led him (Allah be praised!) to his wife and
+children. It was for those I left my father. He whom we love
+might have stayed with me at home: but there he would have
+been only half happy, even had he been free. I could not often
+let him see me through the lattice; I was too afraid; and I dared
+only once let fall the water-melon; it made such a noise in
+dropping and rolling on the terrace: but, another day, when
+I had pared it nicely, and had swathed it up well among vine-leaves,
+dipped in sugar and sherbet, I was quite happy. I
+leaped and danced to have been so ingenious. I wonder what
+creature could have found and eaten it. I wish he were here,
+that I might ask him if he knew.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> He quite forgot home then!</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> When we could speak together at all, he spoke perpetually
+of those whom the calamity of war had separated from
+him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> It appears that you could comfort him in his distress,
+and did it willingly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> It is delightful to kiss the eye-lashes of the beloved: is
+it not? but never so delightful as when fresh tears are on them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> And even this too? you did this?</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> Fifty times.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Insupportable!</p>
+
+<p>He often then spoke about me?</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> As sure as ever we met: for he knew I loved him the
+better when I heard him speak so fondly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> [<i>To herself.</i>] Is this possible? It may be ... of
+the absent, the unknown, the unfeared, the unsuspected.</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> We shall now be so happy, all three.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> How can we all live together?</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> Now he is here, is there no bond of union?</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> Of union? of union? [<i>Aside</i>.] Slavery is a frightful
+thing! slavery for life, too! And she released him from it.
+What then? Impossible! impossible! [<i>To Zaida.</i>] We are
+rich....</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> I am glad to hear it. Nothing anywhere goes on
+well without riches.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> We can provide for you amply....</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> Our husband....</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess. Our!... husband!...</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> Yes, yes; I know he is yours too; and you, being the
+elder and having children, are lady above all. He can tell you
+how little I want: a bath, a slave, a dish of pilau, one jonquil
+every morning, as usual; nothing more. But he must swear
+that he has kissed it first. No, he need not swear it; I may
+always see him do it, now.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> [<i>Aside.</i>] She agonizes me. [<i>To Zaida.</i>] Will you
+never be induced to return to your own country? Could not
+Ludolph persuade you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> He who could once persuade me anything, may now
+command me everything: when he says I must go, I go. But
+he knows what awaits me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> No, child! he never shall say it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Zaida.</i> Thanks, lady! eternal thanks! The breaking of his
+word would break my heart; and better <i>that</i> break first. Let
+the command come from you, and not from him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Countess.</i> [<i>Calling aloud.</i>] Ludolph! Ludolph! hither! Kiss
+the hand I present to you, and never forget it is the hand of a
+preserver.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE PENTAMERON;</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><b>OR,</b></p>
+
+<h3>INTERVIEWS OF MESSER GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO<br />
+AND MESSER FRANCESCO PETRARCA</h3>
+
+<p class="center"><b>WHEN</b></p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>SAID MESSER GIOVANNI LAY INFIRM AT HIS VILLETTA</b><br />
+<b>HARD BY CERTALDO;</b><br />
+<br />
+<b>AFTER WHICH THEY SAW NOT EACH OTHER ON OUR SIDE</b><br />
+<b>OF PARADISE.</b></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h3>THE PENTAMERON</h3>
+
+<h4><a name="FIRST_DAYS_INTERVIEW" id="FIRST_DAYS_INTERVIEW"></a>FIRST DAY&#8217;S INTERVIEW</h4>
+
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Who is he that entered, and now steps so silently
+and softly, yet with a foot so heavy it shakes my curtains?</p>
+
+<p>Frate Biagio! can it possibly be you?</p>
+
+<p>No more physic for me, nor masses neither, at present.</p>
+
+<p>Assunta! Assuntina! who is it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> I cannot say, Signor Padrone! he puts his finger
+in the dimple of his chin, and smiles to make me hold my tongue.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Fra Biagio! are you come from Samminiato for
+this? You need not put your finger there. We want no secrets.
+The girl knows her duty and does her business. I have slept
+well, and wake better. [<i>Raising himself up a little.</i>]</p>
+
+<p>Why? who are you? It makes my eyes ache to look aslant
+over the sheets; and I cannot get to sit quite upright so
+conveniently; and I must not have the window-shutters opened,
+they tell me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Dear Giovanni! have you then been very unwell?</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> O that sweet voice! and this fat friendly hand of
+thine, Francesco!</p>
+
+<p>Thou hast distilled all the pleasantest flowers, and all the
+wholesomest herbs of spring, into my breast already.</p>
+
+<p>What showers we have had this April, ay! How could you
+come along such roads? If the devil were my labourer, I would
+make him work upon these of Certaldo. He would have little
+time and little itch for mischief ere he had finished them, but
+would gladly fan himself with an Agnus-castus, and go to sleep
+all through the carnival.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Let us cease to talk both of the labour and the
+labourer. You have then been dangerously ill?</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I do not know: they told me I was: and truly a
+man might be unwell enough, who has twenty masses said for
+him, and fain sigh when he thinks what he has paid for them.
+As I hope to be saved, they cost me a lira each. Assunta is a
+good market-girl in eggs, and mutton, and cow-heel; but I
+would not allow her to argue and haggle about the masses.
+Indeed she knows best whether they were not fairly worth all
+that was asked for them, although I could have bought a winter
+cloak for less money. However, we do not want both at the
+same time. I did not want the cloak: I wanted <i>them</i>, it seems.
+And yet I begin to think God would have had mercy on me, if I
+had begged it of him myself in my own house. What think you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I think he might.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Particularly if I offered him the sacrifice on which
+I wrote to you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> That letter has brought me hither.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> You do then insist on my fulfilling my promise,
+the moment I can leave my bed. I am ready and willing.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Promise! none was made. You only told me that,
+if it pleased God to restore you to your health again, you are
+ready to acknowledge His mercy by the holocaust of your
+<i>Decameron</i>. What proof have you that God would exact it?
+If you could destroy the <i>Inferno</i> of Dante, would you?</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Not I, upon my life! I would not promise to burn
+a copy of it on the condition of a recovery for twenty years.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> You are the only author who would not rather
+demolish another&#8217;s work than his own; especially if he thought
+it better: a thought which seldom goes beyond suspicion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I am not jealous of any one: I think admiration
+pleasanter. Moreover, Dante and I did not come forward at
+the same time, nor take the same walks. His flames are too
+fierce for you and me: we had trouble enough with milder. I
+never felt any high gratification in hearing of people being
+damned; and much less would I toss them into the fire myself.
+I might indeed have put a nettle under the nose of the learned
+judge in Florence, when he banished you and your family;
+but I hardly think I could have voted for more than a scourging
+to the foulest and fiercest of the party.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Be as compassionate, be as amiably irresolute,
+toward your own <i>Novelle</i>, which have injured no friend of yours,
+and deserve more affection.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Francesco! no character I ever knew, ever heard
+of, or ever feigned, deserves the same affection as you do;
+the tenderest lover, the truest friend, the firmest patriot, and,
+rarest of glories! the poet who cherishes another&#8217;s fame as dearly
+as his own.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> If aught of this is true, let it be recorded of me
+that my exhortations and entreaties have been successful, in
+preserving the works of the most imaginative and creative
+genius that our Italy, or indeed our world, hath in any age beheld.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I would not destroy his poems, as I told you, or
+think I told you. Even the worst of the Florentines, who in
+general keep only one of God&#8217;s commandments, keep it rigidly
+in regard to Dante&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Love them who curse you.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>He called them all scoundrels, with somewhat less courtesy
+than cordiality, and less afraid of censure for veracity than
+adulation: he sent their fathers to hell, with no inclination
+to separate the child and parent: and now they are hugging
+him for it in his shroud! Would you ever have suspected them
+of being such lovers of justice?</p>
+
+<p>You must have mistaken my meaning; the thought never
+entered my head: the idea of destroying a single copy of Dante!
+And what effect would that produce? There must be fifty,
+or near it, in various parts of Italy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I spoke of you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Of me! My poetry is vile; I have already thrown
+into the fire all of it within my reach.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Poetry was not the question. We neither of us
+are such poets as we thought ourselves when we were younger,
+and as younger men think us still. I meant your <i>Decameron</i>;
+in which there is more character, more nature, more invention,
+than either modern or ancient Italy, or than Greece, from whom
+she derived her whole inheritance, ever claimed or ever knew.
+Would you consume a beautiful meadow because there are
+reptiles in it; or because a few grubs hereafter may be generated
+by the succulence of the grass?</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> You amaze me: you utterly confound me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> If you would eradicate twelve or thirteen of the
+<i>Novelle</i>, and insert the same number of better, which you could
+easily do within as many weeks, I should be heartily glad to see
+it done. Little more than a tenth of the <i>Decameron</i> is bad:
+less than a twentieth of the <i>Divina Commedia</i> is good.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> So little?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Let me never seem irreverent to our master.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Speak plainly and fearlessly, Francesco! Malice
+and detraction are strangers to you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Well then: at least sixteen parts in twenty of the
+<i>Inferno</i> and <i>Purgatorio</i> are detestable, both in poetry and
+principle: the higher parts are excellent indeed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I have been reading the <i>Paradiso</i> more recently.
+Here it is, under the pillow. It brings me happier dreams
+than the others, and takes no more time in bringing them.
+Preparation for my lectures made me remember a great deal of
+the poem. I did not request my auditors to admire the beauty
+of the metrical version:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Osanna sanctus deus Sabbaoth,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Super-illustrans charitate tu&acirc;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Felices ignes horum Malahoth,</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>nor these, with a slip of Italian between two pales of Latin:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Modicum,<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> et non videbitis me,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Et iterum, sorelle mie dilette,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Modicum, et vos videbitis me.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>I dare not repeat all I recollect of</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pepe Setan, Pepe Setan, aleppe,</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>as there is no holy-water-sprinkler in the room: and you are
+aware that other dangers awaited me, had I been so imprudent
+as to show the Florentines the allusion of our poet. His <i>gergo</i> is
+perpetually in play, and sometimes plays very roughly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> We will talk again of him presently. I must now
+rejoice with you over the recovery and safety of your prodigal
+son, the <i>Decameron</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> So then, you would preserve at any rate my
+favourite volume from the threatened conflagration.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Had I lived at the time of Dante, I would have
+given him the same advice in the same circumstances. Yet how
+different is the tendency of the two productions! Yours is
+somewhat too licentious; and young men, in whose nature, or
+rather in whose education and habits, there is usually this failing,
+will read you with more pleasure than is commendable or
+innocent. Yet the very time they occupy with you, would
+perhaps be spent in the midst of those excesses or irregularities,
+to which the moralist, in his utmost severity, will argue that
+your pen directs them. Now there are many who are fond of
+standing on the brink of precipices, and who nevertheless are
+as cautious as any of falling in. And there are minds desirous
+of being warmed by description, which without this warmth
+might seek excitement among the things described.</p>
+
+<p>I would not tell you in health what I tell you in convalescence,
+nor urge you to compose what I dissuade you from cancelling.
+After this avowal, I do declare to you, Giovanni, that in my
+opinion, the very idlest of your tales will do the world as much
+good as evil; not reckoning the pleasure of reading, nor the
+exercise and recreation of the mind, which in themselves are
+good. What I reprove you for, is the indecorous and uncleanly;
+and these, I trust, you will abolish. Even these, however, may
+repel from vice the ingenuous and graceful spirit, and can never
+lead any such toward them. Never have you taken an inhuman
+pleasure in blunting and fusing the affections at the furnace of
+the passions; never, in hardening by sour sagacity and ungenial
+strictures, that delicacy which is more productive of innocence
+and happiness, more estranged from every track and tendency
+of their opposites, than what in cold, crude systems hath holden
+the place and dignity of the highest virtue. May you live,
+O my friend, in the enjoyment of health, to substitute the
+facetious for the licentious, the simple for the extravagant, the
+true and characteristic for the indefinite and diffuse.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> And after all this, can you bear to think what
+I am?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Complacently and joyfully; venturing, nevertheless,
+to offer you a friend&#8217;s advice.</p>
+
+<p>Enter into the mind and heart of your own creatures: think
+of them long, entirely, solely: never of style, never of self, never
+of critics, cracked or sound. Like the miles of an open country,
+and of an ignorant population, when they are correctly measured
+they become smaller. In the loftiest rooms and richest entablatures
+are suspended the most spider-webs; and the quarry out
+of which palaces are erected is the nursery of nettle and bramble.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> It is better to keep always in view such writers
+as Cicero, than to run after those idlers who throw stones that
+can never reach us.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> If you copied him to perfection, and on no occasion
+lost sight of him, you would be an indifferent, not to say a bad
+writer.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I begin to think you are in the right. Well then,
+retrenching some of my licentious tales, I must endeavour to
+fill up the vacancy with some serious and some pathetic.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I am heartily glad to hear of this decision; for,
+admirable as you are in the jocose, you descend from your
+natural position when you come to the convivial and the festive.
+You were placed among the Affections, to move and master
+them, and gifted with the rod that sweetens the fount of tears.
+My nature leads me also to the pathetic; in which, however,
+an imbecile writer may obtain celebrity. Even the hard-hearted
+are fond of such reading, when they are fond of any;
+and nothing is easier in the world than to find and accumulate
+its sufferings. Yet this very profusion and luxuriance of misery
+is the reason why few have excelled in describing it. The eye
+wanders over the mass without noticing the peculiarities. To
+mark them distinctly is the work of genius; a work so rarely
+performed, that, if time and space may be compared, specimens
+of it stand at wider distances than the trophies of Sesostris.
+Here we return again to the <i>Inferno</i> of Dante, who overcame the
+difficulty. In this vast desert are its greater and its less oasis;
+Ugolino and Francesca di Rimini. The peopled region is
+peopled chiefly with monsters and moschitoes: the rest for the
+most part is sand and suffocation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Ah! had Dante remained through life the pure
+solitary lover of Bice, his soul had been gentler, tranquiller, and
+more generous. He scarcely hath described half the curses
+he went through, nor the roads he took on the journey: theology,
+politics, and that barbican of the <i>Inferno</i>, marriage, surrounded
+with its</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Admirable is indeed the description of Ugolino, to whoever can
+endure the sight of an old soldier gnawing at the scalp of an old
+archbishop.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> The thirty lines from</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ed io sentii,</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>are unequalled by any other continuous thirty in the whole
+dominions of poetry.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Give me rather the six on Francesca: for if in the
+former I find the simple, vigorous, clear narration, I find also
+what I would not wish, the features of Ugolino reflected full in
+Dante. The two characters are similar in themselves; hard,
+cruel, inflexible, malignant, but, whenever moved, moved
+powerfully. In Francesca, with the faculty of divine spirits,
+he leaves his own nature (not indeed the exact representative
+of theirs) and converts all his strength into tenderness. The great
+poet, like the original man of the Platonists, is double, possessing
+the further advantage of being able to drop one half at his
+option, and to resume it. Some of the tenderest on paper
+have no sympathies beyond; and some of the austerest in their
+intercourse with their fellow-creatures have deluged the world
+with tears. It is not from the rose that the bee gathers her
+honey, but often from the most acrid and the most bitter leaves
+and petals:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Quando leggemmo il disiato viso</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Esser baciato di cotanto amante,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Questi, chi mai da me non sia diviso!</span><br />
+<span class="i1">La bocca mi baci&ograve; tutto tremante ...</span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>Galeotto</i> f&ugrave; il libro, e chi lo scrisse ...</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Quel giorno pi&ugrave; non vi leggemmo avante.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the midst of her punishment, Francesca, when she comes to
+the tenderest part of her story, tells it with complacency and
+delight; and, instead of naming Paolo, which indeed she never
+has done from the beginning, she now designates him as</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Questi chi mai da me non sia diviso!</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Are we not impelled to join in her prayer, wishing them happier
+in their union?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> If there be no sin in it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Ay, and even if there be ... God help us!</p>
+
+<p>What a sweet aspiration in each cesura of the verse! three
+love-sighs fixed and incorporate! Then, when she hath said</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">La bocca mi baci&ograve;, tutto tremante,</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>she stops: she would avert the eyes of Dante from her: he
+looks for the sequel: she thinks he looks severely: she says:
+&#8216;<i>Galeotto</i> is the name of the book,&#8217; fancying by this timorous
+little flight she has drawn him far enough from the nest of her
+young loves. No, the eagle beak of Dante and his piercing eyes
+are yet over her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;<i>Galeotto</i> is the name of the book.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;What matters that?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;And of the writer.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Or that either?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>At last she disarms him: but how?</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;<i>That</i> day we read no more.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Such a depth of intuitive judgment, such a delicacy of
+perception, exists not in any other work of human genius; and
+from an author who, on almost all occasions, in this part of
+the work, betrays a deplorable want of it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Perfection of poetry! The greater is my wonder at
+discovering nothing else of the same order or cast in this whole
+section of the poem. He who fainted at the recital of Francesca,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And he who fell as a dead body falls,</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>would exterminate all the inhabitants of every town in Italy!
+What execrations against Florence, Pistoia, Siena, Pisa, Genoa!
+what hatred against the whole human race! what exultation
+and merriment at eternal and immitigable sufferings! Seeing
+this, I cannot but consider the <i>Inferno</i> as the most immoral
+and impious book that ever was written. Yet, hopeless that our
+country shall ever see again such poetry, and certain that without
+it our future poets would be more feebly urged forward to
+excellence, I would have dissuaded Dante from cancelling it,
+if this had been his intention. Much however as I admire his
+vigour and severity of style in the description of Ugolino, I
+acknowledge with you that I do not discover so much imagination,
+so much creative power, as in the Francesca. I find indeed
+a minute detail of probable events: but this is not all I want
+in a poet: it is not even all I want most in a scene of horror.
+Tribunals of justice, dens of murderers, wards of hospitals,
+schools of anatomy, will afford us nearly the same sensations,
+if we hear them from an accurate observer, a clear reporter, a
+skilful surgeon, or an attentive nurse. There is nothing of
+sublimity in the horrific of Dante, which there always is in
+Aeschylus and Homer. If you, Giovanni, had described so
+nakedly the reception of Guiscardo&#8217;s heart by Gismonda, or
+Lorenzo&#8217;s head by Lisabetta, we could hardly have endured it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Prithee, dear Francesco, do not place me over
+Dante: I stagger at the idea of approaching him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Never think I am placing you blindly or indiscriminately.
+I have faults to find with you, and even here.
+Lisabetta should by no means have been represented cutting
+off the head of her lover, &#8216;<i>as well as she could</i>,&#8217; with a clasp-knife.
+This is shocking and improbable. She might have found
+it already cut off by her brothers, in order to bury the corpse
+more commodiously and expeditiously. Nor indeed is it likely
+that she should have entrusted it to her waiting-maid, who carried
+home in her bosom a treasure so dear to her, and found so
+unexpectedly and so lately.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> That is true: I will correct the oversight. Why do
+we never hear of our faults until everybody knows them, and
+until they stand in record against us?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Because our ears are closed to truth and friendship
+for some time after the triumphal course of composition. We
+are too sensitive for the gentlest touch; and when we really
+have the most infirmity, we are angry to be told that we
+have any.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Ah, Francesco! thou art poet from scalp to heel:
+but what other would open his breast as thou hast done! They
+show ostentatiously far worse weaknesses; but the most honest
+of the tribe would forswear himself on this. Again, I acknowledge
+it, you have reason to complain of Lisabetta and Gismonda.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> In my delight to listen to you after so long an
+absence, I have been too unwary; and you have been speaking
+too much for one infirm. Greatly am I to blame, not to have
+moderated my pleasure and your vivacity. You must rest now:
+to-morrow we will renew our conversation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> God bless thee, Francesco! I shall be talking
+with thee all night in my slumbers. Never have I seen thee
+with such pleasure as to-day, excepting when I was deemed
+worthy by our fellow-citizens of bearing to thee, and of placing
+within this dear hand of thine, the sentence of recall from
+banishment, and when my tears streamed over the ordinance
+as I read it, whereby thy paternal lands were redeemed from
+the public treasury.</p>
+
+<p>Again God bless thee! Those tears were not quite exhausted:
+take the last of them.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> It may puzzle an Englishman to read the lines beginning with
+&#8216;Modicum&#8217;, so as to give the metre. The secret is, to draw out <i>et</i> into a
+disyllable, et-te, as the Italians do, who pronounce Latin verse, if possible,
+worse than we, adding a syllable to such as end with a consonant.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h4><a name="THIRD_DAYS_INTERVIEW" id="THIRD_DAYS_INTERVIEW"></a>THIRD DAY&#8217;S INTERVIEW</h4>
+
+<p>It being now the Lord&#8217;s day, Messer Francesco thought it meet
+that he should rise early in the morning and bestir himself, to
+hear mass in the parish church at Certaldo. Whereupon he
+went on tiptoe, if so weighty a man could indeed go in such a
+fashion, and lifted softly the latch of Ser Giovanni&#8217;s chamber
+door, that he might salute him ere he departed, and occasion
+no wonder at the step he was about to take. He found Ser
+Giovanni fast asleep, with the missal wide open across his nose,
+and a pleasant smile on his genial, joyous mouth. Ser Francesco
+leaned over the couch, closed his hands together, and looking
+with even more than his usual benignity, said in a low voice:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;God bless thee, gentle soul! the mother of purity and innocence
+protect thee!&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>He then went into the kitchen, where he found the girl
+Assunta, and mentioned his resolution. She informed him that
+the horse had eaten his two beans,<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> and was as strong as a lion
+and as ready as a lover. Ser Francesco patted her on the
+cheek, and called her <i>semplicetta</i>! She was overjoyed at this
+honour from so great a man, the bosom friend of her good master,
+whom she had always thought the greatest man in the world,
+not excepting Monsignore, until he told her he was only a
+dog confronted with Ser Francesco. She tripped alertly across
+the paved court into the stable, and took down the saddle
+and bridle from the farther end of the rack. But Ser Francesco,
+with his natural politeness, would not allow her to equip his
+palfrey.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;This is not the work for maidens,&#8217; said he; &#8216;return to the
+house, good girl!&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>She lingered a moment, then went away; but, mistrusting
+the dexterity of Ser Francesco, she stopped and turned back
+again, and peeped through the half-closed door, and heard
+sundry sobs and wheezes round about the girth. Ser Francesco&#8217;s
+wind ill seconded his intention; and, although he had
+thrown the saddle valiantly and stoutly in its station, yet the
+girths brought him into extremity. She entered again, and
+dissembling the reason, asked him whether he would not take
+a small beaker of the sweet white wine before he set out, and
+offered to girdle the horse while his Reverence bitted and
+bridled him. Before any answer could be returned, she had
+begun. And having now satisfactorily executed her undertaking,
+she felt irrepressible delight and glee at being able to
+do what Ser Francesco had failed in. He was scarcely more
+successful with his allotment of the labour; found unlooked-for
+intricacies and complications in the machinery, wondered that
+human wit could not simplify it, and declared that the animal had
+never exhibited such restiveness before. In fact, he never had
+experienced the same grooming. At this conjuncture, a green
+cap made its appearance, bound with straw-coloured ribbon, and
+surmounted with two bushy sprigs of hawthorn, of which the
+globular buds were swelling, and some bursting, but fewer yet
+open. It was young Simplizio Nardi, who sometimes came on
+the Sunday morning to sweep the courtyard for Assunta.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Oh! this time you are come just when you were wanted,&#8217;
+said the girl.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Bridle, directly, Ser Francesco&#8217;s horse, and then go away
+about your business.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>The youth blushed, and kissed Ser Francesco&#8217;s hand, begging
+his permission. It was soon done. He then held the stirrup;
+and Ser Francesco, with scarcely three efforts, was seated and
+erect on the saddle. The horse, however, had somewhat more
+inclination for the stable than for the expedition; and, as
+Assunta was handing to the rider his long ebony staff, bearing
+an ivory caduceus, the quadruped turned suddenly round.
+Simplizio called him <i>bestiaccia</i>! and then, softening it, <i>poco
+garbato</i>! and proposed to Ser Francesco that he should leave the
+bastone behind, and take the crab-switch he presented to him,
+giving at the same time a sample of its efficacy, which covered
+the long grizzle hair of the worthy quadruped with a profusion
+of pink blossoms, like embroidery. The offer was declined; but
+Assunta told Simplizio to carry it himself, and to walk by the
+side of Ser Canonico quite up to the church porch, having seen
+what a sad, dangerous beast his reverence had under him.</p>
+
+<p>With perfect good will, partly in the pride of obedience to
+Assunta, and partly to enjoy the renown of accompanying a
+canon of Holy Church, Simplizio did as she enjoined.</p>
+
+<p>And now the sound of village bells, in many hamlets and
+convents and churches out of sight, was indistinctly heard,
+and lost again; and at last the five of Certaldo seemed to crow
+over the faintness of them all. The freshness of the morning
+was enough of itself to excite the spirits of youth; a portion of
+which never fails to descend on years that are far removed from
+it, if the mind has partaken in innocent mirth while it was its
+season and its duty to enjoy it. Parties of young and old passed
+the canonico and his attendant with mute respect, bowing and
+bare-headed; for that ebony staff threw its spell over the tongue,
+which the frank and hearty salutation of the bearer was inadequate
+to break. Simplizio, once or twice, attempted to call
+back an intimate of the same age with himself; but the utmost
+he could obtain was a <i>riveritissimo</i>! and a genuflexion to the rider.
+It is reported that a heart-burning rose up from it in the breast
+of a cousin, some days after, too distinctly apparent in the long-drawn
+appellation of <i>Gnor</i><a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> Simplizio.</p>
+
+<p>Ser Francesco moved gradually forward, his steed picking
+his way along the lane, and looking fixedly on the stones with
+all the sobriety of a mineralogist. He himself was well satisfied
+with the pace, and told Simplizio to be sparing of the switch,
+unless in case of a hornet or a gadfly. Simplizio smiled, toward
+the hedge, and wondered at the condescension of so great a
+theologian and astrologer, in joking with him about the gadflies
+and hornets in the beginning of April. &#8216;Ah! there are men
+in the world who can make wit out of anything!&#8217; said he to
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>As they approached the walls of the town, the whole country
+was pervaded by a stirring and diversified air of gladness.
+Laughter and songs and flutes and viols, inviting voices and
+complying responses, mingled with merry bells and with processional
+hymns, along the woodland paths and along the yellow
+meadows. It was really the <i>Lord&#8217;s Day</i>, for He made His creatures
+happy in it, and their hearts were thankful. Even the cruel
+had ceased from cruelty; and the rich man alone exacted from
+the animal his daily labour. Ser Francesco made this remark,
+and told his youthful guide that he had never been before
+where he could not walk to church on a Sunday; and that
+nothing should persuade him to urge the speed of his beast, on
+the seventh day, beyond his natural and willing foot&#8217;s-pace.
+He reached the gates of Certaldo more than half an hour before
+the time of service, and he found laurels suspended over them,
+and being suspended; and many pleasant and beautiful faces
+were protruded between the ranks of gentry and clergy who
+awaited him. Little did he expect such an attendance; but
+Fra Biagio of San Vivaldo, who himself had offered no
+obsequiousness or respect, had scattered the secret of his visit
+throughout the whole country. A young poet, the most
+celebrated in the town, approached the canonico with a long
+scroll of verses, which fell below the knee, beginning:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How shall we welcome our illustrious guest?</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>To which Ser Francesco immediately replied: &#8216;Take your
+favourite maiden, lead the dance with her, and bid all your
+friends follow; you have a good half-hour for it.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Universal applauses succeeded, the music struck up, couples
+were instantly formed. The gentry on this occasion led out
+the cittadinanza, as they usually do in the villeggiatura, rarely
+in the carnival, and never at other times. The elder of the
+priests stood round in their sacred vestments, and looked with
+cordiality and approbation on the youths, whose hands and
+arms could indeed do much, and did it, but whose active eyes
+could rarely move upward the modester of their partners.</p>
+
+<p>While the elder of the clergy were thus gathering the fruits
+of their liberal cares and paternal exhortations, some of the
+younger looked on with a tenderer sentiment, not unmingled
+with regret. Suddenly the bells ceased; the figure of the dance
+was broken; all hastened into the church; and many hands that
+joined on the green, met together at the font, and touched the
+brow reciprocally with its lustral waters, in soul-devotion.</p>
+
+<p>After the service, and after a sermon a good church-hour in
+length to gratify him, enriched with compliments from all
+authors, Christian and Pagan, informing him at the conclusion
+that, although he had been crowned in the Capitol, he must die,
+being born mortal, Ser Francesco rode homeward. The sermon
+seemed to have sunk deeply into him, and even into the horse
+under him, for both of them nodded, both snorted, and one
+stumbled. Simplizio was twice fain to cry:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Ser Canonico! Riverenza! in this country if we sleep before
+dinner it does us harm. There are stones in the road, Ser
+Canonico, loose as eggs in a nest, and pretty nigh as thick
+together, huge as mountains.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Good lad!&#8217; said Ser Francesco, rubbing his eyes, &#8216;toss the
+biggest of them out of the way, and never mind the rest.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>The horse, although he walked, shuffled almost into an amble
+as he approached the stable, and his master looked up at it
+with nearly the same contentment. Assunta had been ordered
+to wait for his return, and cried:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;O Ser Francesco! you are looking at our long apricot, that
+runs the whole length of the stable and barn, covered with
+blossoms as the old white hen is with feathers. You must come
+in the summer, and eat this fine fruit with Signor Padrone.
+You cannot think how ruddy and golden and sweet and mellow
+it is. There are peaches in all the fields, and plums, and pears,
+and apples, but there is not another apricot for miles and miles.
+Ser Giovanni brought the stone from Naples before I was born:
+a lady gave it to him when she had eaten only half the fruit off
+it: but perhaps you may have seen her, for you have ridden
+as far as Rome, or beyond. Padrone looks often at the fruit,
+and eats it willingly; and I have seen him turn over the stones
+in his plate, and choose one out from the rest, and put it into
+his pocket, but never plant it.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Where is the youth?&#8217; inquired Ser Francesco.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Gone away,&#8217; answered the maiden.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;I wanted to thank him,&#8217; said the Canonico.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;May I tell him so?&#8217; asked she.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;And give him ...&#8217; continued he, holding a piece of silver.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;I will give him something of my own, if he goes on and
+behaves well,&#8217; said she; &#8216;but Signor Padrone would drive him
+away for ever, I am sure, if he were tempted in an evil hour to
+accept a quattrino for any service he could render the friends
+of the house.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Ser Francesco was delighted with the graceful animation of
+this ingenuous girl, and asked her, with a little curiosity, how
+she could afford to make him a present.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;I do not intend to make him a present,&#8217; she replied: &#8216;but it
+is better he should be rewarded by me,&#8217; she blushed and
+hesitated, &#8216;or by Signor Padrone,&#8217; she added, &#8216;than by your
+reverence. He has not done half his duty yet; not half. I will
+teach him: he is quite a child; four months younger than me.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Ser Francesco went into the house, saying to himself at the
+doorway:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Truth, innocence, and gentle manners have not yet left the
+earth. There are sermons that never make the ears weary.
+I have heard but few of them, and come from church for this.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Whether Simplizio had obeyed some private signal from
+Assunta, or whether his own delicacy had prompted him to
+disappear, he was now again in the stable, and the manger was
+replenished with hay. A bucket was soon after heard ascending
+from the well; and then two words: &#8216;Thanks, Simplizio.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>When Petrarca entered the chamber, he found Boccaccio with
+his breviary in his hand, not looking into it indeed, but repeating
+a thanksgiving in an audible and impassioned tone of voice.
+Seeing Ser Francesco, he laid the book down beside him, and
+welcomed him.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;I hope you have an appetite after your ride,&#8217; said he, &#8216;for
+you have sent home a good dinner before you.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Ser Francesco did not comprehend him, and expressed it not
+in words but in looks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;I am afraid you will dine sadly late to-day: noon has struck
+this half-hour, and you must wait another, I doubt. However,
+by good luck, I had a couple of citrons in the house, intended
+to assuage my thirst if the fever had continued. This being
+over, by God&#8217;s mercy, I will try (please God!) whether we two
+greyhounds cannot be a match for a leveret.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;How is this?&#8217; said Ser Francesco.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Young Marc-Antonio Grilli, the cleverest lad in the parish
+at noosing any wild animal, is our patron of the feast. He has
+wanted for many a day to say something in the ear of Matilda
+Vercelli. Bringing up the leveret to my bedside, and opening
+the lips, and cracking the knuckles, and turning the foot round
+to show the quality and quantity of the hair upon it, and to
+prove that it really and truly was a leveret, and might be eaten
+without offence to my teeth, he informed me that he had left
+his mother in the yard, ready to dress it for me; she having been
+cook to the prior. He protested he owed the <i>crowned martyr</i>
+a forest of leverets, boars, deers, and everything else within
+them, for having commanded the most backward girls to
+dance directly. Whereupon he darted forth at Matilda, saying,
+&ldquo;The <i>crowned martyr</i> orders it,&rdquo; seizing both her hands, and
+swinging her round before she knew what she was about. He
+soon had an opportunity of applying a word, no doubt as
+dexterously as hand or foot; and she said submissively, but
+seriously, and almost sadly, &ldquo;Marc-Antonio, now all the people
+have seen it, they will think it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;And after a pause:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;I am quite ashamed: and so should you be: are not you
+now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;The others had run into the church. Matilda, who scarcely
+had noticed it, cried suddenly:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;O Santissima! we are quite alone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;Will you be mine?&rdquo; cried he, enthusiastically.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;Oh! they will hear you in the church,&rdquo; replied she.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;They shall, they shall,&rdquo; cried he again, as loudly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;If you will only go away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;And then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;Yes, yes, indeed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;The Virgin hears you: fifty saints are witnesses.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;Ah! they know you made me: they will look kindly
+on us.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;He released her hand: she ran into the church, doubling her
+veil (I will answer for her) at the door, and kneeling as near it
+as she could find a place.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;&ldquo;By St. Peter,&rdquo; said Marc-Antonio, &ldquo;if there is a leveret
+in the wood, the <i>crowned martyr</i> shall dine upon it this blessed
+day.&rdquo; And he bounded off, and set about his occupation.
+I inquired what induced him to designate you by such a title.
+He answered, that everybody knew you had received the crown
+of martyrdom at Rome, between the pope and antipope, and
+had performed many miracles, for which they had canonized
+you, and that you wanted only to die to become a saint.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>The leveret was now served up, cut into small pieces, and
+covered with a rich tenacious sauce, composed of sugar, citron,
+and various spices. The appetite of Ser Francesco was contagious.
+Never was dinner more enjoyed by two companions,
+and never so much by a greater number. One glass of a fragrant
+wine, the colour of honey, and unmixed with water, crowned
+the repast. Ser Francesco then went into his own chamber,
+and found, on his ample mattress, a cool, refreshing sleep, quite
+sufficient to remove all the fatigues of the morning; and Ser
+Giovanni lowered the pillow against which he had seated himself,
+and fell into his usual repose. Their separation was not of long continuance:
+and, the religious duties of the Sabbath having been performed,
+a few reflections on literature were no longer interdicted.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> The land, O Giovanni, of your early youth, the
+land of my only love, fascinates us no longer. Italy is our
+country; and not ours only, but every man&#8217;s, wherever may
+have been his wanderings, wherever may have been his birth,
+who watches with anxiety the recovery of the Arts, and acknowledges
+the supremacy of Genius. Besides, it is in Italy at last
+that all our few friends are resident. Yours were left behind
+you at Paris in your adolescence, if indeed any friendship can
+exist between a Florentine and a Frenchman: mine at Avignon
+were Italians, and older for the most part than myself. Here
+we know that we are beloved by some, and esteemed by many.
+It indeed gave me pleasure the first morning as I lay in bed,
+to overhear the fondness and earnestness which a worthy priest
+was expressing in your behalf.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> In mine?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Yes indeed: what wonder?</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> A worthy priest?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> None else, certainly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Heard in bed! dreaming, dreaming; ay?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> No indeed: my eyes and ears were wide open.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> The little parlour opens into your room. But
+what priest could that be? Canonico Casini? He only comes
+when we have a roast of thrushes, or some such small matter,
+at table: and this is not the season; they are pairing. Plover
+eggs might tempt him hitherward. If he heard a plover he
+would not be easy, and would fain make her drop her oblation
+before she had settled her nest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> It is right and proper that you should be informed
+who the clergyman was, to whom you are under an obligation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Tell me something about it, for truly I am at a
+loss to conjecture.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> He must unquestionably have been expressing a
+kind and ardent solicitude for your eternal welfare. The first
+words I heard on awakening were these:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Ser Giovanni, although the best of masters ...&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Those were Assuntina&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> &#8216;... may hardly be quite so holy (not being priest
+or friar) as your Reverence.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>She was interrupted by the question: &#8216;What conversation
+holdeth he?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>She answered:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;He never talks of loving our neighbour with all our heart,
+all our soul, and all our strength, although he often gives away
+the last loaf in the pantry.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> It was she! Why did she say that? the slut!</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> &#8216;He doth well,&#8217; replied the confessor. &#8216;Of the
+Church, of the brotherhood, that is, of me, what discourses
+holdeth he?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>I thought the question an indiscreet one; but confessors vary
+in their advances to the seat of truth.</p>
+
+<p>She proceeded to answer:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;He never said anything about the power of the Church to
+absolve us, if we should happen to go astray a little in good
+company, like your Reverence.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Here, it is easy to perceive, is some slight ambiguity. Evidently
+she meant to say, by the seduction of &#8216;bad&#8217; company, and to
+express that his Reverence had asserted his power of absolution;
+which is undeniable.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I have my version.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> What may yours be?</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Frate Biagio; broad as daylight; the whole frock
+round!</p>
+
+<p>I would wager a flask of oil against a turnip, that he laid
+another trap for a penance. Let us see how he went on. I
+warrant, as he warmed, he left off limping in his paces, and bore
+hard upon the bridle.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> &#8216;Much do I fear,&#8217; continued the expositor, &#8216;he
+never spoke to thee, child, about another world.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence of some continuance.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Speak!&#8217; said the confessor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;No indeed he never did, poor Padrone!&#8217; was the slow and
+evidently reluctant avowal of the maiden; for, in the midst of
+the acknowledgment her sighs came through the crevices of
+the door: then, without any farther interrogation, and with
+little delay, she added:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;But he often makes this look like it.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> And now, if he had carried a holy scourge, it would
+not have been on his shoulders that he would have laid it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Zeal carries men often too far afloat; and confessors
+in general wish to have the sole steerage of the conscience.
+When she told him that your benignity made this world another
+heaven, he warmly and sharply answered:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;It is only we who ought to do that.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Hush,&#8217; said the maiden; and I verily believe she at that
+moment set her back against the door, to prevent the sounds
+from coming through the crevices, for the rest of them seemed
+to be just over my night-cap. &#8216;Hush,&#8217; said she, in the whole
+length of that softest of all articulations. &#8216;There is Ser Francesco
+in the next room: he sleeps long into the morning, but he is so
+clever a clerk, he may understand you just the same. I doubt
+whether he thinks Ser Giovanni in the wrong for making so
+many people quite happy; and if he should, it would grieve me
+very much to think he blamed Ser Giovanni.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Who is Ser Francesco?&#8217; he asked, in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Ser Canonico,&#8217; she answered.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Of what Duomo?&#8217; continued he.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Who knows?&#8217; was the reply; &#8216;but he is Padrone&#8217;s heart&#8217;s
+friend, for certain.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Cospetto di Bacco! It can then be no other than Petrarca.
+He makes rhymes and love like the devil. Don&#8217;t listen to him,
+or you are undone. Does he love you too, as well as Padrone?&#8217;
+he asked, still lowering his voice.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;I cannot tell that matter,&#8217; she answered, somewhat impatiently;
+&#8216;but I love him.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;To my face!&#8217; cried he, smartly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;To the Santissima!&#8217; replied she, instantaneously; &#8216;for have
+not I told your Reverence he is Padrone&#8217;s true heart&#8217;s friend!
+And are not you my confessor, when you come on purpose?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;True, true!&#8217; answered he; &#8216;but there are occasions when we
+are shocked by the confession, and wish it made less daringly.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;I was bold; but who can help loving him who loves my good
+Padrone?&#8217; said she, much more submissively.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Brave girl, for that!</p>
+
+<p>Dog of a Frate! They are all of a kidney; all of a kennel.
+I would dilute their meal well and keep them low. They should
+not waddle and wallop in every hollow lane, nor loll out their
+watery tongues at every wash-pool in the parish. We shall
+hear, I trust, no more about Fra Biagio in the house while you
+are with us. Ah! were it then for life.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> The man&#8217;s prudence may be reasonably doubted,
+but it were uncharitable to question his sincerity. Could a
+neighbour, a religious one in particular, be indifferent to the
+welfare of Boccaccio, or any belonging to him?</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I do not complain of his indifference. Indifferent!
+no, not he. He might as well be, though. My villetta here is
+my castle: it was my father&#8217;s; it was his father&#8217;s. Cowls did
+not hang to dry upon the same cord with caps in their podere;
+they shall not in mine. The girl is an honest girl, Francesco,
+though I say it. Neither she nor any other shall be befooled
+and bamboozled under my roof. Methinks Holy Church might
+contrive some improvement upon confession.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Hush! Giovanni! But, it being a matter of discipline,
+who knows but she might.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Discipline! ay, ay, ay! faith and troth there are
+some who want it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> You really terrify me. These are sad surmises.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Sad enough: but I am keeper of my handmaiden&#8217;s
+probity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> It could not be kept safer.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I wonder what the Frate would be putting into
+her head?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Nothing, nothing: be assured.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Why did he ask her all those questions?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Confessors do occasionally take circuitous ways to
+arrive at the secrets of the human heart.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> And sometimes they drive at it, me thinks, a whit
+too directly. He had no business to make remarks about me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Anxiety.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> &#8217;Fore God, Francesco, he shall have more of that;
+for I will shut him out the moment I am again up and stirring,
+though he stand but a nose&#8217;s length off. I have no fear about
+the girl; no suspicion of her. He might whistle to the moon on
+a frosty night, and expect as reasonably her descending. Never
+was a man so entirely at his ease as I am about that; never,
+never. She is adamant; a bright sword now first unscabbarded;
+no breath can hang about it. A seal of beryl, of chrysolite, of
+ruby; to make impressions (all in good time and proper place
+though) and receive none: incapable, just as they are, of splitting,
+or cracking, or flawing, or harbouring dirt. Let him mind that.
+Such, I assure you, is that poor little wench, Assuntina.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I am convinced that so well-behaved a young
+creature as Assunta&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Right! Assunta is her name by baptism; we
+usually call her Assuntina, because she is slender, and scarcely
+yet full-grown, perhaps: but who can tell?</p>
+
+<p>As for those friars, I never was a friend to impudence: I hate
+loose suggestions. In girls&#8217; minds you will find little dust but
+what is carried there by gusts from without. They seldom
+want sweeping; when they do, the broom should be taken from
+behind the house door, and the master should be the sacristan.</p>
+
+<p>... Scarcely were these words uttered when Assunta was
+heard running up the stairs; and the next moment she rapped.
+Being ordered to come in, she entered with a willow twig in
+her hand, from the middle of which willow twig (for she held
+the two ends together) hung a fish, shining with green and gold.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;What hast there, young maiden?&#8217; said Ser Francesco.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;A fish, Riverenza!&#8217; answered she. &#8216;In Tuscany we call
+it <i>tinca</i>.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I too am a little of a Tuscan.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Indeed! well, you really speak very like one, but
+only more sweetly and slowly. I wonder how you can keep
+up with Signor Padrone&mdash;he talks fast when he is in health;
+and you have made him so. Why did not you come before?
+Your Reverence has surely been at Certaldo in time past.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Yes, before thou wert born.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Ah, sir! it must have been long ago then.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Thou hast just entered upon life.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> I am no child.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> What then art thou?</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> I know not: I have lost both father and mother;
+there is a name for such as I am.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> And a place in heaven.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Who brought us that fish, Assunta? hast paid for
+it? there must be seven pounds: I never saw the like.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> I could hardly lift up my apron to my eyes with it
+in my hand. Luca, who brought it all the way from the Padule,
+could scarcely be entreated to eat a morsel of bread or sit down.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Give him a flask or two of our wine; he will like it
+better than the sour puddle of the plain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> He is gone back.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Gone! who is he, pray?</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Luca, to be sure.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> What Luca?</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Dominedio! O Riverenza! how sadly must Ser
+Giovanni, my poor Padrone, have lost his memory in this cruel
+long illness! he cannot recollect young Luca of the Bientola,
+who married Maria.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I never heard of either, to the best of my knowledge.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Be pleased to mention this in your prayers to-night,
+Ser Canonico! May Our Lady soon give him back his memory!
+and everything else she has been pleased (only in play, I hope)
+to take away from him! Ser Francesco, you must have heard
+all over the world how Maria Gargarelli, who lived in the service
+of our paroco, somehow was outwitted by Satanasso. Monsignore
+thought the paroco had not done all he might have done
+against his wiles and craftiness, and sent his Reverence over
+to the monastery in the mountains, Laverna yonder, to make
+him look sharp; and there he is yet.</p>
+
+<p>And now does Signor Padrone recollect?</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Rather more distinctly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Ah me! Rather more distinctly! have patience,
+Signor Padrone! I am too venturous, God help me! But,
+Riverenza, when Maria was the scorn or the abhorrence of
+everybody else, excepting poor Luca Sabbatini, who had always
+cherished her, and excepting Signor Padrone, who had never
+seen her in his lifetime ... for paroco Snello said he desired
+no visits from any who took liberties with Holy Church ...
+as if Padrone did! Luca one day came to me out of breath,
+with money in his hand for our duck. Now it so happened that
+the duck, stuffed with noble chestnuts, was going to table at
+that instant. I told Signor Padrone....</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Assunta, I never heard thee repeat so long and
+tiresome a story before, nor put thyself out of breath so. Come,
+we have had enough of it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> She is mortified: pray let her proceed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> As you will.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> I told Signor Padrone how Luca was lamenting that
+Maria was seized with an <i>imagination</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> No wonder then she fell into misfortune, and her
+neighbours and friends avoided her.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Riverenza! how can you smile? Signor Padrone!
+and you too? You shook your head and sighed at it when it
+happened. The Demonio, who had caused all the first mischief,
+was not contented until he had given her the <i>imagination</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> He could not have finished his work more effectually.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> He was balked, however. Luca said:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;She shall not die under her wrongs, please God!&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>I repeated the words to Signor Padrone.... He seems to
+listen, Riverenza! and will remember presently ... and Signor
+Padrone cut away one leg for himself, clean forgetting all the
+chestnuts inside, and said sharply, &#8216;Give the bird to Luca;
+and, hark ye, bring back the minestra.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Maria loved Luca with all her heart, and Luca loved Maria
+with all his: but they both hated paroco Snello for such neglect
+about the evil one. And even Monsignore, who sent for Luca
+on purpose, had some difficulty in persuading him to forbear
+from choler and discourse. For Luca, who never swears, swore
+bitterly that the devil should play no such tricks again, nor
+alight on girls napping in the parsonage. Monsignore thought
+he intended to take violent possession, and to keep watch there
+himself without consent of the incumbent. &#8216;I will have no
+scandal,&#8217; said Monsignore; so there was none. Maria, though
+she did indeed, as I told your Reverence, love her Luca dearly,
+yet she long refused to marry him, and cried very much at last
+on the wedding day, and said, as she entered the porch:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Luca! it is not yet too late to leave me.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>He would have kissed her, but her face was upon his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Pievano Locatelli married them, and gave them his blessing:
+and going down from the altar, he said before the people, as
+he stood on the last step: &#8216;Be comforted, child! be comforted!
+God above knows that thy husband is honest, and that thou
+art innocent.&#8217; Pievano&#8217;s voice trembled, for he was an aged
+and holy man, and had walked two miles on the occasion.
+Pulcheria, his governante, eighty years old, carried an apronful
+of lilies to bestrew the altar; and partly from the lilies, and
+partly from the blessed angels who (although invisible) were
+present, the church was filled with fragrance. Many who heretofore
+had been frightened at hearing the mention of Maria&#8217;s
+name, ventured now to walk up toward her; and some gave her
+needles, and some offered skeins of thread, and some ran home
+again for pots of honey.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> And why didst not thou take her some trifle?</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> I had none.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Surely there are always such about the premises.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Not mine to give away.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> So then at thy hands, Assunta, she went off not
+overladen. Ne&#8217;er a bone-bodkin out of thy bravery, ay?</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> I ran out knitting, with the woodbine and syringa
+in the basket for the parlour. I made the basket ... I and
+... but myself chiefly, for boys are loiterers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Well, well: why not bestow the basket, together
+with its rich contents?</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> I am ashamed to say it ... I covered my half-stocking
+with them as quickly as I could, and ran after her,
+and presented it. Not knowing what was under the flowers,
+and never minding the liberty I had taken, being a stranger to
+her, she accepted it as graciously as possible, and bade me be
+happy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I hope you have always kept her command.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Nobody is ever unhappy here, except Fra Biagio,
+who frets sometimes: but that may be the walk; or he may
+fancy Ser Giovanni to be worse than he really is.</p>
+
+<p>... Having now performed her mission and concluded her
+narrative, she bowed, and said:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Excuse me, Riverenza! excuse me, Signor Padrone! my arm
+aches with this great fish.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Then, bowing again, and moving her eyes modestly toward
+each, she added, &#8216;with permission!&#8217; and left the chamber.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;About the sposina,&#8217; after a pause began Ser Francesco:
+&#8216;about the sposina, I do not see the matter clearly.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;You have studied too much for seeing all things clearly,&#8217;
+answered Ser Giovanni; &#8216;you see only the greatest. In fine,
+the devil, on this count, is acquitted by acclamation; and the
+paroco Snello eats lettuce and chicory up yonder at Laverna.
+He has mendicant friars for his society every day; and snails,
+as pure as water can wash and boil them, for his repast on
+festivals. Under this discipline, if they keep it up, surely one
+devil out of legion will depart from him.&#8217;</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Literally, <i>due fave</i>, the expression on such occasions to signify a small
+quantity.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Contraction of <i>signor</i>, customary in Tuscany.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h4><a name="FOURTH_DAYS_INTERVIEW" id="FOURTH_DAYS_INTERVIEW"></a>FOURTH DAY&#8217;S INTERVIEW</h4>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Giovanni, you are unsuspicious, and would scarcely
+see a monster in a minotaur. It is well, however, to draw good
+out of evil, and it is the peculiar gift of an elevated mind.
+Nevertheless, you must have observed, although with greater
+curiosity than concern, the slipperiness and tortuousness of
+your detractors.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Whatever they detract from me, they leave more
+than they can carry away. Beside, they always are detected.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> When they are detected, they raise themselves up
+fiercely, as if their nature were erect and they could reach your
+height.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Envy would conceal herself under the shadow and
+shelter of contemptuousness, but she swells too huge for the den
+she creeps into. Let her lie there and crack, and think no more
+about her. The people you have been talking of can find no
+greater and no other faults in my writings than I myself am
+willing to show them, and still more willing to correct. There
+are many things, as you have just now told me, very unworthy
+of their company.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> He who has much gold is none the poorer for having
+much silver too. When a king of old displayed his wealth and
+magnificence before a philosopher, the philosopher&#8217;s exclamation
+was:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;How many things are here which I do not want!&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Does not the same reflection come upon us, when we have
+laid aside our compositions for a time, and look into them again
+more leisurely? Do we not wonder at our own profusion, and
+say like the philosopher:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;How many things are here which I do not want!&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>It may happen that we pull up flowers with weeds; but
+better this than rankness. We must bear to see our first-born
+dispatched before our eyes, and give them up quietly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> The younger will be the most reluctant. There
+are poets among us who mistake in themselves the freckles
+of the hay-fever for beauty-spots. In another half-century their
+volumes will be inquired after; but only for the sake of cutting
+out an illuminated letter from the title-page, or of transplanting
+the willow at the end, that hangs so prettily over the tomb of
+Amaryllis. If they wish to be healthy and vigorous, let them
+open their bosoms to the breezes of Sunium; for the air of
+Latium is heavy and overcharged. Above all, they must
+remember two admonitions; first, that sweet things hurt
+digestion; secondly, that great sails are ill adapted to small
+vessels. What is there lovely in poetry unless there be moderation
+and composure? Are they not better than the hot,
+uncontrollable harlotry of a flaunting, dishevelled enthusiasm?
+Whoever has the power of creating, has likewise the inferior
+power of keeping his creation in order. The best poets are the
+most impressive, because their steps are regular; for without
+regularity there is neither strength nor state. Look at Sophocles,
+look at Aeschylus, look at Homer.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I agree with you entirely to the whole extent of
+your observations; and, if you will continue, I am ready to lay
+aside my Dante for the present.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> No, no; we must have him again between us: there
+is no danger that he will sour our tempers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> In comparing his and yours, since you forbid me
+to declare all I think of your genius, you will at least allow me
+to congratulate you as being the happier of the two.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Frequently, where there is great power in poetry,
+the imagination makes encroachments on the heart, and uses
+it as her own. I have shed tears on writings which never cost
+the writer a sigh, but which occasioned him to rub the palms
+of his hands together, until they were ready to strike fire,
+with satisfaction at having overcome the difficulty of being
+tender.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Giovanni! are you not grown satirical?</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Not in this. It is a truth as broad and glaring
+as the eye of the Cyclops. To make you amends for your
+shuddering, I will express my doubt, on the other hand, whether
+Dante felt all the indignation he threw into his poetry. We
+are immoderately fond of warming ourselves; and we do not
+think, or care, what the fire is composed of. Be sure it is not
+always of cedar, like Circe&#8217;s. Our Alighieri had slipped into
+the habit of vituperation; and he thought it fitted him; so he
+never left it off.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Serener colours are pleasanter to our eyes and more
+becoming to our character. The chief desire in every man of
+genius is to be thought one; and no fear or apprehension lessens
+it. Alighieri, who had certainly studied the gospel, must have
+been conscious that he not only was inhumane, but that he
+betrayed a more vindictive spirit than any pope or prelate who
+is enshrined within the fretwork of his golden grating.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Unhappily, his strong talon had grown into him,
+and it would have pained him to suffer amputation. This
+eagle, unlike Jupiter&#8217;s, never loosened the thunderbolt from it
+under the influence of harmony.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> The only good thing we can expect in such minds
+and tempers is good poetry: let us at least get that; and, having
+it, let us keep and value it. If you had never written some
+wanton stories, you would never have been able to show the
+world how much wiser and better you grew afterward.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Alas! if I live, I hope to show it. You have
+raised my spirits: and now, dear Francesco! do say a couple of
+prayers for me, while I lay together the materials of a tale;
+a right merry one, I promise you. Faith! it shall amuse you,
+and pay decently for the prayers; a good honest litany-worth.
+I hardly know whether I ought to have a nun in it: do you
+think I may?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Cannot you do without one?</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> No; a nun I must have: say nothing against her;
+I can more easily let the abbess alone. Yet Frate Biagio ...
+that Frate Biagio, who never came to visit me but when he
+thought I was at extremities or asleep.... Assuntina! are
+you there?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> No; do you want her?</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Not a bit. That Frate Biagio has heightened my
+pulse when I could not lower it again. The very devil is that
+Frate for heightening pulses. And with him I shall now make
+merry ... God willing ... in God&#8217;s good time ... should
+it be His divine will to restore me! which I think He has begun
+to do miraculously. I seem to be within a frog&#8217;s leap of well
+again; and we will presently have some rare fun in my <i>Tale of
+the Frate</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Do not openly name him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> He shall recognize himself by one single expression.
+He said to me, when I was at the worst:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Ser Giovanni! it would not be much amiss (with permission!)
+if you begin to think (at any spare time), just a morsel, of
+eternity.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Ah! Fra Biagio!&#8217; answered I, contritely, &#8216;I never heard a
+sermon of yours but I thought of it seriously and uneasily, long
+before the discourse was over.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;So must all,&#8217; replied he, &#8216;and yet few have the grace to own it.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Now mind, Francesco! if it should please the Lord to call
+me unto Him, I say, <i>The Nun and Fra Biagio</i> will be found, after
+my decease, in the closet cut out of the wall, behind yon Saint
+Zacharias in blue and yellow.</p>
+
+<p>Well done! well done! Francesco. I never heard any man
+repeat his prayers so fast and fluently. Why! how many (at a
+guess) have you repeated? Such is the power of friendship,
+and such the habit of religion! They have done me good:
+I feel myself stronger already. To-morrow I think I shall be
+able, by leaning on that stout maple stick in the corner, to walk
+half over my podere.</p>
+
+<p>Have you done? have you done?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Be quiet: you may talk too much.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I cannot be quiet for another hour; so, if you have
+any more prayers to get over, stick the spur into the other side
+of them: they must verily speed, if they beat the last.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Be more serious, dear Giovanni.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Never bid a convalescent be more serious: no, nor
+a sick man neither. To health it may give that composure
+which it takes away from sickness. Every man will have his
+hours of seriousness; but, like the hours of rest, they often are
+ill-chosen and unwholesome. Be assured, our heavenly Father
+is as well pleased to see His children in the playground as in the
+schoolroom. He has provided both for us, and has given us
+intimations when each should occupy us.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> You are right, Giovanni! but we know which bell
+is heard the most distinctly. We fold our arms at the one, try
+the cooler part of the pillow, and turn again to slumber; at the
+first stroke of the other, we are beyond our monitors. As for
+you, hardly Dante himself could make you grave.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I do not remember how it happened that we slipped
+away from his side. One of us must have found him tedious.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> If you were really and substantially at his side, he
+would have no mercy on you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> In sooth, our good Alighieri seems to have had
+the appetite of a dogfish or shark, and to have bitten the harder
+the warmer he was. I would not voluntarily be under his
+manifold rows of dentals. He has an incisor to every saint in
+the calendar. I should fare, methinks, like Brutus and the
+archbishop. He is forced to stretch himself, out of sheer listlessness,
+in so idle a place as Purgatory: he loses half his strength
+in Paradise: Hell alone makes him alert and lively: there he
+moves about and threatens as tremendously as the serpent
+that opposed the legions on their march in Africa. He would
+not have been contented in Tuscany itself, even had his enemies
+left him unmolested. Were I to write on his model a tripartite
+poem, I think it should be entitled, <i>Earth, Italy, and Heaven</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> You will never give yourself the trouble.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I should not succeed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Perhaps not: but you have done very much, and
+may be able to do very much more.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Wonderful is it to me, when I consider that an
+infirm and helpless creature, as I am, should be capable of laying
+thoughts up in their cabinets of words, which Time, as he rushes
+by, with the revolutions of stormy and destructive years, can
+never move from their places. On this coarse mattress, one
+among the homeliest in the fair at Impruneta, is stretched an
+old burgess of Certaldo, of whom perhaps more will be known
+hereafter than we know of the Ptolemies and the Pharaohs;
+while popes and princes are lying as unregarded as the fleas
+that are shaken out of the window. Upon my life, Francesco!
+to think of this is enough to make a man presumptuous.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> No, Giovanni! not when the man thinks justly
+of it, as such a man ought to do, and must. For so mighty a
+power over Time, who casts all other mortals under his, comes
+down to us from a greater; and it is only if we abuse the victory
+that it were better we had encountered a defeat. Unremitting
+care must be taken that nothing soil the monuments we are
+raising: sure enough we are that nothing can subvert, and
+nothing but our negligence, or worse than negligence, efface
+them. Under the glorious lamp entrusted to your vigilance,
+one among the lights of the world, which the ministering angels
+of our God have suspended for His service, let there stand, with
+unclosing eyes, Integrity, Compassion, Self-denial.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> These are holier and cheerfuller images than
+Dante has been setting up before us. I hope every thesis in
+dispute among his theologians will be settled ere I set foot among
+them. I like Tuscany well enough: it answers all my purposes
+for the present: and I am without the benefit of those preliminary
+studies which might render me a worthy auditor of
+incomprehensible wisdom.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I do not wonder you are attached to Tuscany.
+Many as have been your visits and adventures in other parts,
+you have rendered it pleasanter and more interesting than any:
+and indeed we can scarcely walk in any quarter from the gates
+of Florence without the recollection of some witty or affecting
+story related by you. Every street, every farm, is peopled
+by your genius: and this population cannot change with seasons
+or with ages, with factions or with incursions. Ghibellines and
+Guelphs will have been contested for only by the worms, long
+before the <i>Decameron</i> has ceased to be recited on our banks of
+blue lilies and under our arching vines. Another plague may
+come amidst us; and something of a solace in so terrible a
+visitation would be found in your pages, by those to whom letters
+are a refuge and relief.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I do indeed think my little bevy from Santa Maria
+Novella would be better company on such an occasion, than a
+devil with three heads, who diverts the pain his claws inflicted,
+by sticking his fangs in another place.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> This is atrocious, not terrific nor grand. Alighieri
+is grand by his lights, not by his shadows; by his human
+affections, not by his infernal. As the minutest sands are the
+labours of some profound sea, or the spoils of some vast mountain,
+in like manner his horrid wastes and wearying minutenesses
+are the chafings of a turbulent spirit, grasping the loftiest things
+and penetrating the deepest, and moving and moaning on the
+earth in loneliness and sadness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Among men he is what among waters is</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The strange, mysterious, solitary Nile.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Is that his verse? I do not remember it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> No, it is mine for the present: how long it may
+continue mine I cannot tell. I never run after those who steal
+my apples: it would only tire me: and they are hardly worth recovering
+when they are bruised and bitten, as they are usually.
+I would not stand upon my verses: it is a perilous boy&#8217;s trick,
+which we ought to leave off when we put on square shoes. Let
+our prose show what we are, and our poetry what we have been.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> You would never have given this advice to Alighieri.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I would never plough porphyry; there is ground
+fitter for grain. Alighieri is the parent of his system, like the
+sun, about whom all the worlds are but particles thrown forth
+from him. We may write little things well, and accumulate
+one upon another; but never will any be justly called a great
+poet unless he has treated a great subject worthily. He may
+be the poet of the lover and of the idler, he may be the poet of
+green fields or gay society; but whoever is this can be no more.
+A throne is not built of birds&#8217;-nests, nor do a thousand reeds
+make a trumpet.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I wish Alighieri had blown his on nobler occasions.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> We may rightly wish it: but, in regretting what
+he wanted, let us acknowledge what he had: and never forget
+(which we omitted to mention) that he borrowed less from his
+predecessors than any of the Roman poets from theirs. Reasonably
+may it be expected that almost all who follow will be greatly
+more indebted to antiquity, to whose stores we, every year,
+are making some addition.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> It can be held no flaw in the title-deeds of genius,
+if the same thoughts reappear as have been exhibited long ago.
+The indisputable sign of defect should be looked for in the
+proportion they bear to the unquestionably original. There are
+ideas which necessarily must occur to minds of the like magnitude
+and materials, aspect and temperature. When two ages
+are in the same phasis, they will excite the same humours, and
+produce the same coincidences and combinations. In addition
+to which, a great poet may really borrow: he may even condescend
+to an obligation at the hand of an equal or inferior: but
+he forfeits his title if he borrows more than the amount of his
+own possessions. The nightingale himself takes somewhat of
+his song from birds less glorified: and the lark, having beaten
+with her wing the very gates of heaven, cools her breast among
+the grass. The lowlier of intellect may lay out a table in their
+field, at which table the highest one shall sometimes be disposed
+to partake: want does not compel him. Imitation, as we call
+it, is often weakness, but it likewise is often sympathy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Our poet was seldom accessible in this quarter.
+Invective picks up the first stone on the wayside, and wants
+leisure to consult a forerunner.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Dante (original enough everywhere) is coarse and
+clumsy in this career. Vengeance has nothing to do with comedy,
+nor properly with satire. The satirist who told us that Indignation
+made his verses for him, might have been told in return
+that she excluded him thereby from the first class, and thrust
+him among the rhetoricians and declaimers. Lucretius, in his
+vituperation, is graver and more dignified than Alighieri.
+Painful; to see how tolerant is the atheist, how intolerant the
+Catholic: how anxiously the one removes from among the sufferings
+of Mortality, her last and heaviest, the fear of a vindictive
+Fury pursuing her shadow across rivers of fire and tears; how
+laboriously the other brings down Anguish and Despair, even
+when Death has done his work. How grateful the one is to
+that beneficent philosopher who made him at peace with himself,
+and tolerant and kindly toward his fellow-creatures! how
+importunate the other that God should forgo His divine mercy,
+and hurl everlasting torments both upon the dead and the living!</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I have always heard that Ser Dante was a very
+good man and sound Catholic: but Christ forgive me if my
+heart is oftener on the side of Lucretius!<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> Observe, I say, my
+heart; nothing more. I devoutly hold to the sacraments and
+the mysteries: yet somehow I would rather see men tranquillized
+than frightened out of their senses, and rather fast asleep than
+burning. Sometimes I have been ready to believe, as far as
+our holy faith will allow me, that it were better our Lord were
+nowhere, than torturing in His inscrutable wisdom, to all eternity,
+so many myriads of us poor devils, the creatures of His hands.
+Do not cross thyself so thickly, Francesco! nor hang down thy
+nether lip so loosely, languidly, and helplessly; for I would be
+a good Catholic, alive or dead. But, upon my conscience, it
+goes hard with me to think it of Him, when I hear that woodlark
+yonder, gushing with joyousness, or when I see the beautiful
+clouds, resting so softly one upon another, dissolving ... and
+not damned for it. Above all, I am slow to apprehend it, when
+I remember His great goodness vouchsafed to me, and reflect
+on my sinful life heretofore, chiefly in summer time, and in cities,
+or their vicinity. But I was tempted beyond my strength; and
+I fell as any man might do. However, this last illness, by God&#8217;s
+grace, has well-nigh brought me to my right mind again in all
+such matters: and if I get stout in the present month, and can
+hold out the next without sliding, I do verily think I am safe,
+or nearly so, until the season of beccaficoes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Be not too confident!</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Well, I will not be.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> But be firm.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Assuntina! what! are you come in again?</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Did you or my master call me, Riverenza?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> No, child!</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Oh! get you gone! Get you gone! you little
+rogue you!</p>
+
+<p>Francesco, I feel quite well. Your kindness to my playful
+creatures in the <i>Decameron</i> has revived me, and has put me
+into good humour with the greater part of them. Are you quite
+certain the Madonna will not expect me to keep my promise?
+You said you were: I need not ask you again. I will accept the
+whole of your assurances, and half your praises.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> To represent so vast a variety of personages so
+characteristically as you have done, to give the wise all their
+wisdom, the witty all their wit, and (what is harder to do
+advantageously) the simple all their simplicity, requires a genius
+such as you alone possess. Those who doubt it are the least
+dangerous of your rivals.</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Qy. How much of Lucretius (or Petronius or Catullus, before cited)
+was then known?</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h4><a name="FIFTH_DAYS_INTERVIEW" id="FIFTH_DAYS_INTERVIEW"></a>FIFTH DAY&#8217;S INTERVIEW</h4>
+
+<p>It being now the last morning that Petrarca could remain with
+his friend, he resolved to pass early into his bedchamber.
+Boccaccio had risen and was standing at the open window, with
+his arms against it. Renovated health sparkled in the eyes of
+the one; surprise and delight and thankfulness to Heaven
+filled the other&#8217;s with sudden tears. He clasped Giovanni,
+kissed his flaccid and sallow cheek, and falling on his knees,
+adored the Giver of life, the source of health to body and soul.
+Giovanni was not unmoved: he bent one knee as he leaned on
+the shoulder of Francesco, looking down into his face, repeating
+his words, and adding:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Blessed be Thou, O Lord! who sendest me health again!
+and blessings on Thy messenger who brought it.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>He had slept soundly; for ere he closed his eyes he had unburdened
+his mind of its freight, not only by employing the
+prayers appointed by Holy Church, but likewise by ejaculating;
+as sundry of the fathers did of old. He acknowledged his
+contrition for many transgressions, and chiefly for uncharitable
+thoughts of Fra Biagio: on which occasion he turned fairly
+round on his couch, and leaning his brow against the wall, and
+his body being in a becomingly curved position, and proper for
+the purpose, he thus ejaculated:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Thou knowest, O most Holy Virgin! that never have I
+spoken to handmaiden at this villetta, or within my mansion
+at Certaldo, wantonly or indiscreetly, but have always been,
+inasmuch as may be, the guardian of innocence; deeming it
+better, when irregular thoughts assailed me, to ventilate them
+abroad than to poison the house with them. And if, sinner as
+I am, I have thought uncharitably of others, and more especially
+of Fra Biagio, pardon me, out of thy exceeding great mercies!
+And let it not be imputed to me, if I have kept, and may keep
+hereafter, an eye over him, in wariness and watchfulness; not
+otherwise. For thou knowest, O Madonna! that many who
+have a perfect and unwavering faith in thee, yet do cover up
+their cheese from the nibblings of vermin.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon, he turned round again, threw himself on his back
+at full length, and feeling the sheets cool, smooth, and refreshing,
+folded his arms, and slept instantaneously. The consequence
+of his wholesome slumber was a calm alacrity: and
+the idea that his visitor would be happy at seeing him on his
+feet again, made him attempt to get up: at which he succeeded,
+to his own wonder. And it was increased by the manifestation
+of his strength in opening the casement, stiff from being closed,
+and swelled by the continuance of the rains. The morning was
+warm and sunny: and it is known that on this occasion he
+composed the verses below:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My old familiar cottage-green!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I see once more thy pleasant sheen;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The gossamer suspended over</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Smart celandine by lusty clover;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And the last blossom of the plum</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Inviting her first leaves to come;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Which hang a little back, but show</span><br />
+<span class="i0">&#8217;Tis not their nature to say no.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I scarcely am in voice to sing</span><br />
+<span class="i0">How graceful are the steps of Spring;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And ah! it makes me sigh to look</span><br />
+<span class="i0">How leaps along my merry brook,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The very same to-day as when</span><br />
+<span class="i0">He chirrupt first to maids and men.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I can rejoice at the freshness of your feelings: but
+the sight of the green turf reminds me rather of its ultimate
+use and destination.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For many serves the parish pall,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The turf in common serves for all.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Very true; and, such being the case, let us carefully
+fold it up, and lay it by until we call for it.</p>
+
+<p>Francesco, you made me quite light-headed yesterday. I
+am rather too old to dance either with Spring, as I have been
+saying, or with Vanity: and yet I accepted her at your hand as
+a partner. In future, no more of comparisons for me! You
+not only can do me no good, but you can leave me no pleasure:
+for here I shall remain the few days I have to live, and shall
+see nobody who will be disposed to remind me of your praises.
+Beside, you yourself will get hated for them. We neither can
+deserve praise nor receive it with impunity.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Have you never remarked that it is into quiet
+water that children throw pebbles to disturb it? and that it
+is into deep caverns that the idle drop sticks and dirt? We
+must expect such treatment.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Your admonition shall have its wholesome influence
+over me, when the fever your praises have excited has grown
+moderate.</p>
+
+<p>... After the conversation on this topic and various others
+had continued some time, it was interrupted by a visitor. The
+clergy and monkery at Certaldo had never been cordial with
+Messer Giovanni, it being suspected that certain of his <i>Novelle</i>
+were modelled on originals in their orders. Hence, although
+they indeed both professed and felt esteem for Canonico Petrarca,
+they abstained from expressing it at the villetta. But Frate
+Biagio of San Vivaldo was (by his own appointment) the friend
+of the house; and, being considered as very expert in pharmacy,
+had, day after day, brought over no indifferent store of simples,
+in ptisans, and other refections, during the continuance of
+Ser Giovanni&#8217;s ailment. Something now moved him to cast
+about in his mind whether it might not appear dutiful to make
+another visit. Perhaps he thought it possible that, among those
+who peradventure had seen him lately on the road, one or other
+might expect from him a solution of the questions, What sort of
+person was the <i>crowned martyr</i>? whether he carried a palm in
+his hand? whether a seam was visible across the throat? whether
+he wore a ring over his glove, with a chrysolite in it, like the
+bishops, but representing the city of Jerusalem and the judgment-seat
+of Pontius Pilate? Such were the reports; but the inhabitants
+of San Vivaldo could not believe the Certaldese, who,
+inhabiting the next township to them, were naturally their
+enemies. Yet they might believe Frate Biagio, and certainly
+would interrogate him accordingly. He formed his determination,
+put his frock and hood on, and gave a curvature to his
+shoe, to evince his knowledge of the world, by pushing the
+extremity of it with his breast-bone against the corner of his
+cell. Studious of his figure and of his attire, he walked as much
+as possible on his heels, to keep up the reformation he had
+wrought in the workmanship of the cordwainer. On former
+occasions he had borrowed a horse, as being wanted to hear
+confession or to carry medicines, which might otherwise be too
+late. But, having put on an entirely new habiliment, and it
+being the season when horses are beginning to do the same, he
+deemed it prudent to travel on foot. Approaching the villetta,
+his first intention was to walk directly into his patient&#8217;s room:
+but he found it impossible to resist the impulses of pride, in
+showing Assunta his rigid and stately frock, and shoes rather
+of the equestrian order than the monastic. So he went into the
+kitchen where the girl was at work, having just taken away the
+remains of the breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Frate Biagio!&#8217; cried she, &#8216;is this you? Have you been sleeping
+at Conte Jeronimo&#8217;s?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Not I,&#8217; replied he.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Why!&#8217; said she, &#8216;those are surely his shoes! Santa Maria!
+you must have put them on in the dusk of the morning, to say
+your prayers in! Here! here! take these old ones of Signor
+Padrone, for the love of God! I hope your Reverence met
+nobody.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> What dost smile at?</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Smile at! I could find in my heart to laugh outright,
+if I only were certain that nobody had seen your Reverence
+in such a funny trim. Riverenza! put on these.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> Not I indeed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Allow me then?</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> No, nor you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Then let me stand upon yours, to push down the
+points.</p>
+
+<p>... Frate Biagio now began to relent a little, when Assunta,
+who had made one step toward the project, bethought herself
+suddenly, and said:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;No; I might miss my footing. But, mercy upon us! what
+made you cramp your Reverence with those ox-yoke shoes?
+and strangle your Reverence with that hangdog collar?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;If you must know,&#8217; answered the Frate, reddening, &#8216;it was
+because I am making a visit to the Canonico of Parma. I
+should like to know something about him: perhaps you could
+tell me?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Ever so much.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> I thought no less: indeed I knew it. Which goes to
+bed first?</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Both together.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> Demonio! what dost mean?</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> He tells me never to sit up waiting, but to say my
+prayers and dream of the Virgin.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> As if it was any business of his! Does he put out his
+lamp himself?</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> To be sure he does: why should not he? what
+should he be afraid of? It is not winter: and beside, there is a
+mat upon the floor, all round the bed, excepting the top and
+bottom.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> I am quite convinced he never said anything to make
+you blush. Why are you silent?</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> I have a right.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> He did then? ay? Do not nod your head: that will
+never do. Discreet girls speak plainly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> What would you have?</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> The truth; the truth; again, I say, the truth.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> He <i>did</i> then.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> I knew it! The most dangerous man living!</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Ah! indeed he is! Signor Padrone said so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> He knows him of old: he warned you, it seems.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Me! He never said it was I who was in danger.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> He might: it was his duty.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Am I so fat? Lord! you may feel every rib. Girls
+who run about as I do, slip away from apoplexy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> Ho! ho! that is all, is it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> And bad enough too! that such good-natured men
+should ever grow so bulky; and stand in danger, as Padrone
+said they both do, of such a seizure?</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> What? and art ready to cry about it? Old folks cannot
+die easier: and there are always plenty of younger to run
+quick enough for a confessor. But I must not trifle in this
+manner. It is my duty to set your feet in the right way: it
+is my bounden duty to report to Ser Giovanni all irregularities
+I know of, committed in his domicile. I could indeed, and
+would, remit a trifle, on hearing the worst. Tell me now,
+Assunta! tell me, you little angel! did you ... we all may,
+the very best of us may, and do ... sin, my sweet?</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> You may be sure I did not: for whenever I sin I
+run into church directly, although it snows or thunders: else I
+never could see again Padrone&#8217;s face, or any one&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> You do not come to me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> You live at San Vivaldo.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> But when there is sin so pressing I am always ready
+to be found. You perplex, you puzzle me. Tell me at once
+how he made you blush.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Well then!</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> Well then! you did not hang back so before him. I
+lose all patience.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> So famous a man!...</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> No excuse in that.</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> So dear to Padrone....</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> The more shame for him!</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Called me....</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> And <i>called</i> you, did he! the traitorous swine!</p>
+
+<p><i>Assunta.</i> Called me ... <i>good girl</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> Psha! the wenches, I think, are all mad: but few of
+them in this manner.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>... Without saying another word, Fra Biagio went forward
+and opened the bedchamber door, saying briskly:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Servant! Ser Giovanni! Ser Canonico! most devoted! most
+obsequious! I venture to incommode you. Thanks to God,
+Ser Canonico, you are looking well for your years. They tell
+me you were formerly (who would believe it?) the handsomest
+man in Christendom, and worked your way glibly, yonder
+at Avignon.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Capperi! Ser Giovanni! I never observed that you were
+sitting bolt-upright in that long-backed armchair, instead of
+lying abed. Quite in the right. I am rejoiced at such a change
+for the better. Who advised it?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> So many thanks to Fra Biagio! I not only am
+sitting up, but have taken a draught of fresh air at the window,
+and every leaf had a little present of sunshine for me.</p>
+
+<p>There is one pleasure, Fra Biagio, which I fancy you never
+have experienced, and I hardly know whether I ought to
+wish it you; the first sensation of health after a long
+confinement.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> Thanks! infinite! I would take any man&#8217;s word for
+that, without a wish to try it. Everybody tells me I am exactly
+what I was a dozen years ago; while, for my part, I see everybody
+changed: those who ought to be much about my age,
+even those.... Per Bacco! I told them my thoughts when
+they had told me theirs; and they were not so agreeable as they
+used to be in former days.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> How people hate sincerity!</p>
+
+<p>Cospetto! why, Frate! what hast got upon thy toes? Hast
+killed some Tartar and tucked his bow into one, and torn the
+crescent from the vizier&#8217;s tent to make the other match it?
+Hadst thou fallen in thy mettlesome expedition (and it is a
+mercy and a miracle thou didst not) those sacrilegious shoes
+would have impaled thee.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> It was a mistake in the shoemaker. But no pain or
+incommodity whatsoever could detain me from paying my duty
+to Ser Canonico, the first moment I heard of his auspicious arrival,
+or from offering my congratulations to Ser Giovanni, on the
+annunciation that he was recovered and looking out of the
+window. All Tuscany was standing on the watch for it, and
+the news flew like lightning. By this time it is upon the
+Danube.</p>
+
+<p>And pray, Ser Canonico, how does Madonna Laura do?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Peace to her gentle spirit! she is departed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> Ay, true. I had quite forgotten: that is to say, I
+recollect it. You told us as much, I think, in a poem on her
+death. Well, and do you know! our friend Giovanni here is
+a bit of an author in his way.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Frate! you confuse my modesty.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> Murder will out. It is a fact, on my conscience.
+Have you never heard anything about it, Canonico! Ha! we
+poets are sly fellows: we can keep a secret.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Are you quite sure you can?</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> Try, and trust me with any. I am a confessional
+on legs: there is no more a whisper in me than in a woolsack.</p>
+
+<p>I am in feather again, as you see; and in tune, as you shall hear.</p>
+
+<p>April is not the month for moping. Sing it lustily.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Let it be your business to sing it, being a Frate;
+I can only recite it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> Pray do, then.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Frate Biagio! sempre quando</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Qu&agrave; tu vieni cavalcando,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Pensi che le buone strade</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Per il mondo sien ben rade;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">E, di quante sono brutte,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">La pi&ugrave; brutta &egrave; tua di tutte.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Badi, non cascare sulle</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Graziosissime fanciulle,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Che con capo dritto, alzato,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Uova portano al mercato.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Pessima mi pare l&#8217;opra</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Rovesciarle sottosopra.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Deh! scansando le erte e sassi,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Sempre con premura passi.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Caro amico! Frate Biagio!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Passi pur, ma passi adagio.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Frate.</i> Well now really, Canonico, for one not exactly one of
+us, that canzone of Ser Giovanni has merit; has not it? I did
+not ride, however, to-day; as you may see by the lining of my
+frock. But <i>plus non vitiat</i>; ay, Canonico! About the roads
+he is right enough; they are the devil&#8217;s own roads; that must be
+said for them.</p>
+
+<p>Ser Giovanni! with permission; your mention of eggs in the
+canzone has induced me to fancy I could eat a pair of them.
+The hens lay well now: that white one of yours is worth more
+than the goose that laid the golden: and you have a store of
+others, her equals or betters: we have none like them at poor
+St. Vivaldo. <i>A riverderci, Ser Giovanni! Schiavo! Ser Canonico!
+mi commandino.</i></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<p>... Fra Biagio went back into the kitchen, helped himself
+to a quarter of a loaf, ordered a flask of wine, and, trying several
+eggs against his lips, selected seven, which he himself fried in
+oil, although the maid offered her services. He never had been
+so little disposed to enter into conversation with her; and on
+her asking him how he found her master, he replied, that in
+bodily health Ser Giovanni, by his prayers and ptisans, had much
+improved, but that his faculties were wearing out apace. &#8216;He
+may now run in the same couples with the Canonico: they cannot
+catch the mange one of the other: the one could say nothing
+to the purpose, and the other nothing at all. The whole conversation
+was entirely at my charge,&#8217; added he. &#8216;And now,
+Assunta, since you press it, I will accept the service of your
+master&#8217;s shoes. How I shall ever get home I don&#8217;t know.&#8217;
+He took the shoes off the handles of the bellows, where Assunta
+had placed them out of her way, and tucking one of his own
+under each arm, limped toward St. Vivaldo.</p>
+
+<p>The unwonted attention to smartness of apparel, in the only
+article wherein it could be displayed, was suggested to Frate
+Biagio by hearing that Ser Francesco, accustomed to courtly
+habits and elegant society, and having not only small hands,
+but small feet, usually wore red slippers in the morning. Fra
+Biagio had scarcely left the outer door, than he cordially cursed
+Ser Francesco for making such a fool of him, and wearing slippers
+of black list. &#8216;These canonicoes,&#8217; said he, &#8216;not only lie themselves,
+but teach everybody else to do the same. He has lamed
+me for life: I burn as if I had been shod at the blacksmith&#8217;s forge.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>The two friends said nothing about him, but continued the
+discourse which his visit had interrupted.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Turn again, I entreat you, to the serious; and do
+not imagine that because by nature you are inclined to playfulness,
+you must therefore write ludicrous things better. Many
+of your stories would make the gravest men laugh, and yet there
+is little wit in them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I think so myself; though authors, little disposed
+as they are to doubt their possession of any quality they would
+bring into play, are least of all suspicious on the side of wit.
+You have convinced me. I am glad to have been tender, and
+to have written tenderly: for I am certain it is this alone that
+has made you love me with such affection.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Not this alone, Giovanni! but this principally. I
+have always found you kind and compassionate, liberal and
+sincere, and when Fortune does not stand very close to such a
+man, she leaves only the more room for Friendship.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Let her stand off then, now and for ever! To
+my heart, to my heart, Francesco! preserver of my health, my
+peace of mind, and (since you tell me I may claim it) my glory.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Recovering your strength you must pursue your
+studies to complete it. What can you have been doing with
+your books? I have searched in vain this morning for the
+treasury. Where are they kept? Formerly they were always
+open. I found only a short manuscript, which I suspect is
+poetry, but I ventured not on looking into it, until I had brought
+it with me and laid it before you.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Well guessed! They are verses written by a
+gentleman who resided long in this country, and who much
+regretted the necessity of leaving it. He took great delight in
+composing both Latin and Italian, but never kept a copy
+of them latterly, so that these are the only ones I could obtain
+from him. Read: for your voice will improve them:</p>
+
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">TO MY CHILD CARLINO</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Carlino! what art thou about, my boy?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Often I ask that question, though in vain,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">For we are far apart: ah! therefore &#8217;tis</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I often ask it; not in such a tone</span><br />
+<span class="i0">As wiser fathers do, who know too well.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Were we not children, you and I together?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Stole we not glances from each other&#8217;s eyes?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Swore we not secrecy in such misdeeds?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Well could we trust each other. Tell me then</span><br />
+<span class="i0">What thou art doing. Carving out thy name,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Or haply mine, upon my favourite seat,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With the new knife I sent thee over sea?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Or hast thou broken it, and hid the hilt</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Among the myrtles, starr&#8217;d with flowers, behind?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Or under that high throne whence fifty lilies</span><br />
+<span class="i0">(With sworded tuberoses dense around)</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Lift up their heads at once, not without fear</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That they were looking at thee all the while.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">Does Cincirillo follow thee about?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Inverting one swart foot suspensively,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And wagging his dread jaw at every chirp</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of bird above him on the olive-branch?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Frighten him then away! &#8217;twas he who slew</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Our pigeons, our white pigeons peacock-tailed,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That fear&#8217;d not you and me ... alas, nor him!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I flattened his striped sides along my knee,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And reasoned with him on his bloody mind,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Till he looked blandly, and half-closed his eyes</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To ponder on my lecture in the shade.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I doubt his memory much, his heart a little,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And in some minor matters (may I say it?)</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Could wish him rather sager. But from thee</span><br />
+<span class="i0">God hold back wisdom yet for many years!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Whether in early season or in late</span><br />
+<span class="i0">It always comes high-priced. For thy pure breast</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I have no lesson; it for me has many.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Come throw it open then! What sports, what cares</span><br />
+<span class="i0">(Since there are none too young for these) engage</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Thy busy thoughts? Are you again at work,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Walter and you, with those sly labourers,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Geppo, Giovanni, Cecco, and Poeta,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To build more solidly your broken dam</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Among the poplars, whence the nightingale</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Inquisitively watch&#8217;d you all day long?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I was not of your council in the scheme,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Or might have saved you silver without end,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And sighs too without number. Art thou gone</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Below the mulberry, where that cold pool</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Urged to devise a warmer, and more fit</span><br />
+<span class="i0">For mighty swimmers, swimming three abreast?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Or art thou panting in this summer noon</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Upon the lowest step before the hall,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Drawing a slice of water-melon, long</span><br />
+<span class="i0">As Cupid&#8217;s bow, athwart thy wetted lips</span><br />
+<span class="i0">(Like one who plays Pan&#8217;s pipe) and letting drop</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The sable seeds from all their separate cells,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And leaving bays profound and rocks abrupt,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Redder than coral round Calypso&#8217;s cave?</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> There have been those anciently who would have
+been pleased with such poetry, and perhaps there may be again.
+I am not sorry to see the Muses by the side of childhood, and
+forming a part of the family. But now tell me about the books.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Resolving to lay aside the more valuable of those
+I had collected or transcribed, and to place them under the
+guardianship of richer men, I locked them up together in the
+higher story of my tower at Certaldo. You remember the old
+tower?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Well do I remember the hearty laugh we had
+together (which stopped us upon the staircase) at the calculation
+we made, how much longer you and I, if we continued to
+thrive as we had thriven latterly, should be able to pass within
+its narrow circle. Although I like this little villa much better,
+I would gladly see the place again, and enjoy with you, as we
+did before, the vast expanse of woodlands and mountains and
+maremma; frowning fortresses inexpugnable; and others more
+prodigious for their ruins; then below them, lordly abbeys,
+overcanopied with stately trees and girded with rich luxuriance;
+and towns that seem approaching them to do them honour, and
+villages nestling close at their sides for sustenance and protection.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> My disorder, if it should keep its promise of
+leaving me at last, will have been preparing me for the accomplishment
+of such a project. Should I get thinner and thinner
+at this rate, I shall soon be able to mount not only a turret or
+a belfry, but a tube of macarone, while a Neapolitan is
+suspending it for deglutition.</p>
+
+<p>What I am about to mention will show you how little you
+can rely on me! I have preserved the books, as you desired,
+but quite contrary to my resolution: and, no less contrary to it,
+by your desire I shall now preserve the <i>Decameron</i>. In vain
+had I determined not only to mend in future, but to correct the
+past; in vain had I prayed most fervently for grace to accomplish
+it, with a final aspiration to Fiametta that she would unite with
+your beloved Laura, and that, gentle and beatified spirits as
+they are, they would breathe together their purer prayers on
+mine. See what follows.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Sigh not at it. Before we can see all that follows
+from their intercession, we must join them again. But let me
+hear anything in which they are concerned.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I prayed; and my breast, after some few tears,
+grew calmer. Yet sleep did not ensue until the break of morning,
+when the dropping of soft rain on the leaves of the fig-tree
+at the window, and the chirping of a little bird, to tell another
+there was shelter under them, brought me repose and slumber.
+Scarcely had I closed my eyes, if indeed time can be reckoned
+any more in sleep than in heaven, when my Fiametta seemed to
+have led me into the meadow. You will see it below you: turn
+away that branch: gently! gently! do not break it; for the little
+bird sat there.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I think, Giovanni, I can divine the place. Although
+this fig-tree, growing out of the wall between the cellar and us,
+is fantastic enough in its branches, yet that other which I see
+yonder, bent down and forced to crawl along the grass by the
+prepotency of the young shapely walnut-tree, is much more so.
+It forms a seat, about a cubit above the ground, level and long
+enough for several.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Ha! you fancy it must be a favourite spot with me,
+because of the two strong forked stakes wherewith it is propped
+and supported!</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Poets know the haunts of poets at first sight; and
+he who loved Laura.... O Laura! did I say he who <i>loved</i> thee?
+... hath whisperings where those feet would wander which
+have been restless after Fiametta.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> It is true, my imagination has often conducted
+her thither; but there in this chamber she appeared to me more
+visibly in a dream.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Thy prayers have been heard, O Giovanni,&#8217; said she.</p>
+
+<p>I sprang to embrace her.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Do not spill the water! Ah! you have spilt a part of it.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>I then observed in her hand a crystal vase. A few drops
+were sparkling on the sides and running down the rim: a few
+were trickling from the base and from the hand that held it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;I must go down to the brook,&#8217; said she, &#8216;and fill it again as
+it was filled before.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>What a moment of agony was this to me! Could I be certain
+how long might be her absence? She went: I was following:
+she made a sign for me to turn back: I disobeyed her only an
+instant: yet my sense of disobedience, increasing my feebleness
+and confusion, made me lose sight of her. In the next moment
+she was again at my side, with the cup quite full. I stood
+motionless: I feared my breath might shake the water over.
+I looked her in the face for her commands ... and to see it
+... to see it so calm, so beneficent, so beautiful. I was forgetting
+what I had prayed for, when she lowered her head,
+tasted of the cup, and gave it me. I drank; and suddenly
+sprang forth before me many groves and palaces and gardens,
+and their statues and their avenues, and their labyrinths of
+alaternus and bay, and alcoves of citron, and watchful loopholes
+in the retirements of impenetrable pomegranate. Farther off,
+just below where the fountain slipped away from its marble
+hall and guardian gods, arose, from their beds of moss and
+drosera and darkest grass, the sisterhood of oleanders, fond
+of tantalizing with their bosomed flowers and their moist and
+pouting blossoms the little shy rivulet, and of covering its face
+with all the colours of the dawn. My dream expanded and
+moved forward. I trod again the dust of Posilipo, soft as the
+feathers in the wings of Sleep. I emerged on Baia; I crossed
+her innumerable arches; I loitered in the breezy sunshine of her
+mole; I trusted the faithful seclusion of her caverns, the keepers
+of so many secrets; and I reposed on the buoyancy of her tepid
+sea. Then Naples, and her theatres and her churches, and
+grottoes and dells and forts and promontories, rushed forward
+in confusion, now among soft whispers, now among sweetest
+sounds, and subsided, and sank, and disappeared. Yet a
+memory seemed to come fresh from every one: each had time
+enough for its tale, for its pleasure, for its reflection, for its pang.
+As I mounted with silent steps the narrow staircase of the old
+palace, how distinctly did I feel against the palm of my hand
+the coldness of that smooth stone-work, and the greater of the
+cramps of iron in it!</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Ah me! is this forgetting?&#8217; cried I anxiously to Fiametta.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;We must recall these scenes before us,&#8217; she replied: &#8216;such is
+the punishment of them. Let us hope and believe that the
+apparition, and the compunction which must follow it, will be
+accepted as the full penalty, and that both will pass away
+almost together.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>I feared to lose anything attendant on her presence: I feared
+to approach her forehead with my lips: I feared to touch the
+lily on its long wavy leaf in her hair, which filled my whole heart
+with fragrance. Venerating, adoring, I bowed my head at
+last to kiss her snow-white robe, and trembled at my presumption.
+And yet the effulgence of her countenance vivified
+while it chastened me. I loved her ... I must not say <i>more</i>
+than ever ... <i>better</i> than ever; it was Fiametta who had
+inhabited the skies. As my hand opened toward her:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Beware!&#8217; said she, faintly smiling; &#8216;beware, Giovanni!
+Take only the crystal; take it, and drink again.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Must all be then forgotten?&#8217; said I sorrowfully.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Remember your prayer and mine, Giovanni. Shall both
+have been granted ... oh, how much worse than in vain?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>I drank instantly; I drank largely. How cool my bosom
+grew; how could it grow so cool before her! But it was not to
+remain in its quiescency; its trials were not yet over. I will
+not, Francesco! no, I may not commemorate the incidents she
+related to me, nor which of us said, &#8216;I blush for having loved
+<i>first</i>;&#8217; nor which of us replied, &#8216;Say <i>least</i>, say <i>least</i>, and blush
+again.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>The charm of the words (for I felt not the encumbrance of
+the body nor the acuteness of the spirit) seemed to possess me
+wholly. Although the water gave me strength and comfort,
+and somewhat of celestial pleasure, many tears fell around the
+border of the vase as she held it up before me, exhorting me to
+take courage, and inviting me with more than exhortation to
+accomplish my deliverance. She came nearer, more tenderly,
+more earnestly; she held the dewy globe with both hands, leaning
+forward, and sighed and shook her head, drooping at my
+pusillanimity. It was only when a ringlet had touched the rim,
+and perhaps the water (for a sunbeam on the surface could
+never have given it such a golden hue), that I took courage,
+clasped it, and exhausted it. Sweet as was the water, sweet
+as was the serenity it gave me ... alas! that also which it
+moved away from me was sweet!</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;This time you can trust me alone,&#8217; said she, and parted
+my hair, and kissed my brow. Again she went toward the brook:
+again my agitation, my weakness, my doubt, came over me:
+nor could I see her while she raised the water, nor knew I whence
+she drew it. When she returned, she was close to me at once:
+she smiled: her smile pierced me to the bones: it seemed an
+angel&#8217;s. She sprinkled the pure water on me; she looked most
+fondly; she took my hand; she suffered me to press hers to my
+bosom; but, whether by design I cannot tell, she let fall a few
+drops of the chilly element between.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;And now, O my beloved!&#8217; said she, &#8216;we have consigned to
+the bosom of God our earthly joys and sorrows. The joys cannot
+return, let not the sorrows. These alone would trouble my
+repose among the blessed.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Trouble thy repose! Fiametta! Give me the chalice!&#8217;
+cried I ... &#8216;not a drop will I leave in it, not a drop.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Take it!&#8217; said that soft voice. &#8216;O now most dear Giovanni!
+I know thou hast strength enough; and there is but little ...
+at the bottom lies our first kiss.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Mine! didst thou say, beloved one? and is that left thee still?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;<i>Mine</i>,&#8217; said she, pensively; and as she abased her head, the
+broad leaf of the lily hid her brow and her eyes; the light of
+heaven shone through the flower.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;O Fiametta! Fiametta!&#8217; cried I in agony, &#8216;God is the God
+of mercy, God is the God of love ... can I, can I ever?&#8217; I
+struck the chalice against my head, unmindful that I held it;
+the water covered my face and my feet. I started up, not yet
+awake, and I heard the name of Fiametta in the curtains.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Love, O Giovanni, and life itself, are but dreams
+at best. I do think</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Never so gloriously was Sleep attended</span><br />
+<span class="i0">As with the pageant of that heavenly maid.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But to dwell on such subjects is sinful. The recollection of
+them, with all their vanities, brings tears into my eyes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> And into mine too ... they were so very
+charming.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Alas, alas! the time always comes when we must
+regret the enjoyments of our youth.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> If we have let them pass us.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I mean our indulgence in them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Francesco! I think you must remember Raffaellino
+degli Alfani.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Was it Raffaellino who lived near San Michele in
+Orto?</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> The same. He was an innocent soul, and fond of
+fish. But whenever his friend Sabbatelli sent him a trout from
+Pratolino, he always kept it until next day or the day after,
+just long enough to render it unpalatable. He then turned it
+over in the platter, smelt at it closer, although the news of its
+condition came undeniably from a distance, touched it with his
+forefinger, solicited a testimony from the gills which the eyes had
+contradicted, sighed over it, and sent it for a present to somebody
+else. Were I a lover of trout as Raffaellino was, I think
+I should have taken an opportunity of enjoying it while the
+pink and crimson were glittering on it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Trout, yes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> And all other fish I could encompass.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> O thou grave mocker! I did not suspect such
+slyness in thee: proof enough I had almost forgotten thee.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Listen! listen! I fancied I caught a footstep in
+the passage. Come nearer; bend your head lower, that I may
+whisper a word in your ear. Never let Assunta hear you sigh.
+She is mischievous: she may have been standing at the door:
+not that I believe she would be guilty of any such impropriety:
+but who knows what girls are capable of! She has no malice,
+only in laughing; and a sigh sets her windmill at work, van over
+van, incessantly.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I should soon check her. I have no notion....</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> After all, she is a good girl ... a trifle of the
+wilful. She must have it that many things are hurtful to me
+... reading in particular ... it makes people so odd. Tina
+is a small matter of the madcap ... in her own particular
+way ... but exceedingly discreet, I do assure you, if they will
+only leave her alone.</p>
+
+<p>I find I was mistaken, there was nobody.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> A cat, perhaps.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> No such thing. I order him over to Certaldo
+while the birds are laying and sitting: and he knows by experience,
+favourite as he is, that it is of no use to come back before
+he is sent for. Since the first impetuosities of youth, he has
+rarely been refractory or disobliging. We have lived together
+now these five years, unless I miscalculate; and he seems to have
+learnt something of my manners, wherein violence and enterprise
+by no means predominate. I have watched him looking
+at a large green lizard; and, their eyes being opposite and near,
+he has doubted whether it might be pleasing to me if he began
+the attack; and their tails on a sudden have touched one another
+at the decision.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Seldom have adverse parties felt the same desire
+of peace at the same moment, and none ever carried it more
+simultaneously and promptly into execution.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> He enjoys his <i>otium cum dignitate</i> at Certaldo:
+there he is my castellan, and his chase is unlimited in those
+domains. After the doom of relegation is expired, he comes
+hither at midsummer. And then if you could see his joy!
+His eyes are as deep as a well, and as clear as a fountain: he
+jerks his tail into the air like a royal sceptre, and waves it like
+the wand of a magician. You would fancy that, as Horace
+with his head, he was about to smite the stars with it. There
+is ne&#8217;er such another cat in the parish; and he knows it, a rogue!
+We have rare repasts together in the bean-and-bacon time,
+although in regard to the bean he sides with the philosopher of
+Samos; but after due examination. In cleanliness he is a very
+nun; albeit in that quality which lies between cleanliness and
+godliness, there is a smack of Fra Biagio about him. What
+is that book in your hand?</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> My breviary.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Well, give me mine too ... there, on the little
+table in the corner, under the glass of primroses. We can do
+nothing better.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> What prayer were you looking for? let me find it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> I don&#8217;t know how it is: I am scarcely at present
+in a frame of mind for it. We are of one faith: the prayers of
+the one will do for the other: and I am sure, if you omitted my
+name, you would say them all over afresh. I wish you could
+recollect in any book as dreamy a thing to entertain me as I have
+been just repeating. We have had enough of Dante: I believe
+few of his beauties have escaped us: and small faults, which
+we readily pass by, are fitter for small folks, as grubs are the
+proper bait for gudgeons.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> I have had as many dreams as most men. We
+are all made up of them, as the webs of the spider are particles
+of her own vitality. But how infinitely less do we profit by
+them! I will relate to you, before we separate, one among the
+multitude of mine, as coming the nearest to the poetry of yours,
+and as having been not totally useless to me. Often have I
+reflected on it; sometimes with pensiveness, with sadness never.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Then, Francesco, if you had with you as copious
+a choice of dreams as clustered on the elm-trees where the
+Sibyl led Aeneas, this, in preference to the whole swarm of them,
+is the queen dream for me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> When I was younger I was fond of wandering in
+solitary places, and never was afraid of slumbering in woods
+and grottoes. Among the chief pleasures of my life, and among
+the commonest of my occupations, was the bringing before me
+such heroes and heroines of antiquity, such poets and sages,
+such of the prosperous and the unfortunate, as most interested
+me by their courage, their wisdom, their eloquence, or their
+adventures. Engaging them in the conversation best suited
+to their characters, I knew perfectly their manners, their steps,
+their voices: and often did I moisten with my tears the models
+I had been forming of the less happy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Great is the privilege of entering into the studies
+of the intellectual; great is that of conversing with the guides of
+nations, the movers of the mass, the regulators of the unruly
+will, stiff, in its impurity and rust, against the finger of the
+Almighty Power that formed it: but give me, Francesco, give
+me rather the creature to sympathize with; apportion me the
+sufferings to assuage. Ah, gentle soul! thou wilt never send
+them over to another; they have better hopes from thee.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> We both alike feel the sorrows of those around us.
+He who suppresses or allays them in another, breaks many
+thorns off his own; and future years will never harden fresh ones.</p>
+
+<p>My occupation was not always in making the politician talk
+politics, the orator toss his torch among the populace, the
+philosopher run down from philosophy to cover the retreat or
+the advances of his sect; but sometimes in devising how such
+characters must act and discourse, on subjects far remote from
+the beaten track of their career. In like manner the philologist,
+and again the dialectician, were not indulged in the review and
+parade of their trained bands, but, at times, brought forward
+to show in what manner and in what degree external habits
+had influenced the conformation of the internal man. It was
+far from unprofitable to set passing events before past actors,
+and to record the decisions of those whose interests and passions
+are unconcerned in them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> This is surely no easy matter. The thoughts are
+in fact your own, however you distribute them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> All cannot be my own; if you mean by <i>thoughts</i>
+the opinions and principles I should be the most desirous to
+inculcate. Some favourite ones perhaps may obtrude too
+prominently, but otherwise no misbehaviour is permitted them:
+reprehension and rebuke are always ready, and the offence is
+punished on the spot.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boccaccio.</i> Certainly you thus throw open, to its full extent,
+the range of poetry and invention; which cannot but be very
+limited and sterile, unless where we find displayed much diversity
+of character as disseminated by nature, much peculiarity of
+sentiment as arising from position, marked with unerring skill
+through every shade and gradation; and finally and chiefly,
+much intertexture and intensity of passion. You thus convey
+to us more largely and expeditiously the stores of your understanding
+and imagination, than you ever could by sonnets or
+canzonets, or sinewless and sapless allegories.</p>
+
+<p>But weightier works are less captivating. If you had published
+any such as you mention, you must have waited for their
+acceptance. Not only the fame of Marcellus, but every other,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Crescit occulto velut arbor aevo;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>and that which makes the greatest vernal shoot is apt to make
+the least autumnal. Authors in general who have met celebrity
+at starting, have already had their reward; always their utmost
+due, and often much beyond it. We cannot hope for both
+celebrity and fame: supremely fortunate are the few who are
+allowed the liberty of choice between them. We two prefer
+the strength that springs from exercise and toil, acquiring it
+gradually and slowly: we leave to others the earlier blessing of
+that sleep which follows enjoyment. How many at first sight
+are enthusiastic in their favour! Of these how large a portion
+come away empty-handed and discontented! like idlers who
+visit the seacoast, fill their pockets with pebbles bright from the
+passing wave, and carry them off with rapture. After a short
+examination at home, every streak seems faint and dull, and
+the whole contexture coarse, uneven, and gritty: first one is
+thrown away, then another; and before the week&#8217;s end the store
+is gone, of things so shining and wonderful.</p>
+
+<p><i>Petrarca.</i> Allegory, which you named with sonnets and
+canzonets, had few attractions for me, believing it to be the
+delight in general of idle, frivolous, inexcursive minds, in whose
+mansions there is neither hall nor portal to receive the loftier
+of the Passions. A stranger to the Affections, she holds a low
+station among the handmaidens of Poetry, being fit for little
+but an apparition in a mask. I had reflected for some time on
+this subject, when, wearied with the length of my walk over
+the mountains, and finding a soft old molehill, covered with
+grey grass, by the wayside, I laid my head upon it and slept.
+I cannot tell how long it was before a species of dream or vision
+came over me.</p>
+
+<p>Two beautiful youths appeared beside me; each was winged;
+but the wings were hanging down, and seemed ill adapted to
+flight. One of them, whose voice was the softest I ever heard,
+looking at me frequently, said to the other:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;He is under my guardianship for the present: do not awaken
+him with that feather.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Methought, hearing the whisper, I saw something like the
+feather on an arrow; and then the arrow itself; the whole of it,
+even to the point; although he carried it in such a manner
+that it was difficult at first to discover more than a palm&#8217;s length
+of it: the rest of the shaft, and the whole of the barb, was behind
+his ankles.</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;This feather never awakens any one,&#8217; replied he, rather
+petulantly; &#8216;but it brings more of confident security, and more
+of cherished dreams, than you without me are capable of
+imparting.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Be it so!&#8217; answered the gentler ... &#8216;none is less inclined to
+quarrel or dispute than I am. Many whom you have wounded
+grievously, call upon me for succour. But so little am I disposed
+to thwart you, it is seldom I venture to do more for them than
+to whisper a few words of comfort in passing. How many
+reproaches on these occasions have been cast upon me for
+indifference and infidelity! Nearly as many, and nearly in
+the same terms, as upon you!&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Odd enough that we, O Sleep! should be thought so alike,&#8217;
+said Love, contemptuously. &#8216;Yonder is he who bears a nearer
+resemblance to you: the dullest have observed it.&#8217; I fancied
+I turned my eyes to where he was pointing, and saw at a distance
+the figure he designated. Meanwhile the contention went on
+uninterruptedly. Sleep was slow in asserting his power or his
+benefits. Love recapitulated them; but only that he might
+assert his own above them. Suddenly he called on me to
+decide, and to choose my patron. Under the influence, first of
+the one, then of the other, I sprang from repose to rapture, I
+alighted from rapture on repose ... and knew not which
+was sweetest. Love was very angry with me, and declared
+he would cross me throughout the whole of my existence.
+Whatever I might on other occasions have thought of his
+veracity, I now felt too surely the conviction that he would
+keep his word. At last, before the close of the altercation, the
+third Genius had advanced, and stood near us. I cannot tell
+how I knew him, but I knew him to be the Genius of Death.
+Breathless as I was at beholding him, I soon became familiar
+with his features. First they seemed only calm; presently
+they grew contemplative; and lastly beautiful: those of the
+Graces themselves are less regular, less harmonious, less composed.
+Love glanced at him unsteadily, with a countenance
+in which there was somewhat of anxiety, somewhat of disdain;
+and cried: &#8216;Go away! go away! nothing that thou touchest,
+lives.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Say rather, child!&#8217; replied the advancing form, and advancing
+grew loftier and statelier, &#8216;say rather that nothing of beautiful
+or of glorious lives its own true life until my wing hath passed
+over it.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>Love pouted, and rumpled and bent down with his forefinger
+the stiff short feathers on his arrow-head; but replied not.
+Although he frowned worse than ever, and at me, I dreaded him
+less and less, and scarcely looked toward him. The milder and
+calmer Genius, the third, in proportion as I took courage to
+contemplate him, regarded me with more and more complacency.
+He held neither flower nor arrow, as the others did; but, throwing
+back the clusters of dark curls that overshadowed his
+countenance, he presented to me his hand, openly and benignly.
+I shrank on looking at him so near, and yet I sighed to love him.
+He smiled, not without an expression of pity, at perceiving my
+diffidence, my timidity: for I remembered how soft was the
+hand of Sleep, how warm and entrancing was Love&#8217;s. By
+degrees, I became ashamed of my ingratitude; and turning my
+face away, I held out my arms, and felt my neck within his.
+Composure strewed and allayed all the throbbings of my bosom;
+the coolness of freshest morning breathed around: the heavens
+seemed to open above me; while the beautiful cheek of my
+deliverer rested on my head. I would now have looked for
+those others; but knowing my intention by my gesture, he
+said, consolatorily:</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;Sleep is on his way to the Earth, where many are calling
+him; but it is not to these he hastens; for every call only makes
+him fly farther off. Sedately and gravely as he looks, he is
+nearly as capricious and volatile as the more arrogant and
+ferocious one.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;And Love!&#8217; said I, &#8216;whither is he departed? If not too late,
+I would propitiate and appease him.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8216;He who cannot follow me, he who cannot overtake and pass
+me,&#8217; said the Genius, &#8216;is unworthy of the name, the most glorious
+in earth or heaven. Look up! Love is yonder, and ready to
+receive thee.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>I looked: the earth was under me: I saw only the clear blue
+sky, and something brighter above it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="POEMS" id="POEMS"></a>POEMS</h2>
+
+
+<h3><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She I love (alas in vain!)</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Floats before my slumbering eyes:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">When she comes she lulls my pain,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">When she goes what pangs arise!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Thou whom love, whom memory flies,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Gentle Sleep! prolong thy reign!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">If even thus she soothe my sighs,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Never let me wake again!</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pleasure! why thus desert the heart</span><br />
+<span class="i2">In its spring-tide?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I could have seen her, I could part,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">And but have sigh&#8217;d!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O&#8217;er every youthful charm to stray,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">To gaze, to touch....</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Pleasure! why take so much away,</span><br />
+<span class="i2">Or give so much?</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Past ruin&#8217;d Ilion Helen lives,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Alcestis rises from the shades;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Verse calls them forth; &#8217;tis verse that gives</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Immortal youth to mortal maids.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Soon shall Oblivion&#8217;s deepening veil</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Hide all the peopled hills you see,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The gay, the proud, while lovers hail</span><br />
+<span class="i1">These many summers you and me.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ianthe! you are call&#8217;d to cross the sea!</span><br />
+<span class="i3">A path forbidden <i>me</i>!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Remember, while the Sun his blessing sheds</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Upon the mountain-heads,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">How often we have watcht him laying down</span><br />
+<span class="i3">His brow, and dropt our own</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Against each other&#8217;s, and how faint and short</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And sliding the support!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">What will succeed it now? Mine is unblest,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Ianthe! nor will rest</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But on the very thought that swells with pain.</span><br />
+<span class="i3">O bid me hope again!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">O give me back what Earth, what (without you)</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Not Heaven itself can do,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">One of the golden days that we have past;</span><br />
+<span class="i3">And let it be my last!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Or else the gift would be, however sweet,</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Fragile and incomplete.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The gates of fame and of the grave</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Stand under the same architrave.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Twenty years hence my eyes may grow</span><br />
+<span class="i0">If not quite dim, yet rather so,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Still yours from others they shall know</span><br />
+<span class="i8">Twenty years hence.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Twenty years hence tho&#8217; it may hap</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That I be call&#8217;d to take a nap</span><br />
+<span class="i0">In a cool cell where thunder-clap</span><br />
+<span class="i8">Was never heard,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">There breathe but o&#8217;er my arch of grass</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A not too sadly sigh&#8217;d <i>Alas</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And I shall catch, ere you can pass,</span><br />
+<span class="i8">That winged word.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Here, ever since you went abroad,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">If there be change, no change I see,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I only walk our wonted road,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">The road is only walkt by me.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yes; I forgot; a change there is;</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Was it of <i>that</i> you bade me tell?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I catch at times, at times I miss</span><br />
+<span class="i1">The sight, the tone, I know so well.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Only two months since you stood here!</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Two shortest months! then tell me why</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Voices are harsher than they were,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">And tears are longer ere they dry.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tell me not things past all belief;</span><br />
+<span class="i1">One truth in you I prove;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The flame of anger, bright and brief,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Sharpens the barb of Love.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Proud word you never spoke, but you will speak</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Four not exempt from pride some future day.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Resting on one white hand a warm wet cheek</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Over my open volume you will say,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">&#8216;This man loved <i>me</i>!&#8217; then rise and trip away.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h3>
+
+<h4>FIESOLE IDYL</h4>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Here, where precipitate Spring, with one light bound</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Into hot Summer&#8217;s lusty arms, expires,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And where go forth at morn, at eve, at night,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Soft airs that want the lute to play with &#8217;em,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And softer sighs that know not what they want,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Aside a wall, beneath an orange-tree,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Whose tallest flowers could tell the lowlier ones</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of sights in Fiesole right up above,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">While I was gazing a few paces off</span><br />
+<span class="i0">At what they seem&#8217;d to show me with their nods,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Their frequent whispers and their pointing shoots,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A gentle maid came down the garden-steps</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And gathered the pure treasure in her lap.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I heard the branches rustle, and stept forth</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To drive the ox away, or mule, or goat,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Such I believed it must be. How could I</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Let beast o&#8217;erpower them? When hath wind or rain</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Borne hard upon weak plant that wanted me,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And I (however they might bluster round)</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Walkt off? &#8217;Twere most ungrateful: for sweet scents</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Are the swift vehicles of still sweeter thoughts,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And nurse and pillow the dull memory</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That would let drop without them her best stores.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">They bring me tales of youth and tones of love,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And &#8217;tis and ever was my wish and way</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To let all flowers live freely, and all die</span><br />
+<span class="i0">(Whene&#8217;er their Genius bids their souls depart)</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Among their kindred in their native place.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I never pluck the rose; the violet&#8217;s head</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Hath shaken with my breath upon its bank</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And not reproacht me; the ever-sacred cup</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of the pure lily hath between my hands</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Felt safe, unsoil&#8217;d, nor lost one grain of gold.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I saw the light that made the glossy leaves</span><br />
+<span class="i0">More glossy; the fair arm, the fairer cheek</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Warmed by the eye intent on its pursuit;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I saw the foot that, although half-erect</span><br />
+<span class="i0">From its grey slipper, could not lift her up</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To what she wanted: I held down a branch</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And gather&#8217;d her some blossoms; since their hour</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Was come, and bees had wounded them, and flies</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of harder wing were working their way thro&#8217;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And scattering them in fragments under-foot.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">So crisp were some, they rattled unevolved,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Others, ere broken off, fell into shells,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">For such appear the petals when detacht,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Unbending, brittle, lucid, white like snow,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And like snow not seen thro&#8217;, by eye or sun:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Yet every one her gown received from me</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Was fairer than the first. I thought not so,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But so she praised them to reward my care.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I said, &#8216;You find the largest.&#8217;</span><br />
+<span class="i10">&#8216;This indeed,&#8217;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Cried she, &#8216;is large and sweet.&#8217; She held one forth,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Whether for me to look at or to stake</span><br />
+<span class="i0">She knew not, nor did I; but taking it</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Would best have solved (and this she felt) her doubt.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I dared not touch it; for it seemed a part</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of her own self; fresh, full, the most mature</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of blossoms, yet a blossom; with a touch</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To fall, and yet unfallen. She drew back</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The boon she tender&#8217;d, and then, finding not</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The ribbon at her waist to fix it in,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Dropt it, as loath to drop it, on the rest.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah what avails the sceptred race,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Ah what the form divine!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">What every virtue, every grace!</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Rose Aylmer, all were thine.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes</span><br />
+<span class="i1">May weep, but never see,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A night of memories and of sighs</span><br />
+<span class="i1">I consecrate to thee.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With rosy hand a little girl prest down</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A boss of fresh-cull&#8217;d cowslips in a rill:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Often as they sprang up again, a frown</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Show&#8217;d she disliked resistance to her will:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But when they droopt their heads and shone much less,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">She shook them to and fro, and threw them by,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And tript away. &#8216;Ye loathe the heaviness</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Ye love to cause, my little girls!&#8217; thought I,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">&#8216;And what had shone for you, by you must die.&#8217;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i3">Ternissa! you are fled!</span><br />
+<span class="i3">I say not to the dead,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But to the happy ones who rest below:</span><br />
+<span class="i3">For, surely, surely, where</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Your voice and graces are,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Nothing of death can any feel or know.</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Girls who delight to dwell</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Where grows most asphodel,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Gather to their calm breasts each word you speak:</span><br />
+<span class="i3">The mild Persephone</span><br />
+<span class="i3">Places you on her knee,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And your cool palm smooths down stern Pluto&#8217;s cheek.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Various the roads of life; in one</span><br />
+<span class="i1">All terminate, one lonely way</span><br />
+<span class="i0">We go; and &#8216;Is he gone?&#8217;</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Is all our best friends say.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yes; I write verses now and then,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But blunt and flaccid is my pen,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">No longer talkt of by young men</span><br />
+<span class="i8">As rather clever:</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the last quarter are my eyes,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">You see it by their form and size;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Is it not time then to be wise?</span><br />
+<span class="i8">Or now or never.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fairest that ever sprang from Eve!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">While Time allows the short reprieve,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Just look at me! would you believe</span><br />
+<span class="i8">&#8217;Twas once a lover?</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I cannot clear the five-bar gate,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But, trying first its timber&#8217;s state,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Climb stiffly up, take breath, and wait</span><br />
+<span class="i8">To trundle over.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thro&#8217; gallopade I cannot swing</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The entangling blooms of Beauty&#8217;s spring:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I cannot say the tender thing,</span><br />
+<span class="i8">Be &#8217;t true or false,</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And am beginning to opine</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Those girls are only half-divine</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Whose waists yon wicked boys entwine</span><br />
+<span class="i8">In giddy waltz.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I fear that arm above that shoulder,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I wish them wiser, graver, older,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Sedater, and no harm if colder</span><br />
+<span class="i8">And panting less.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah! people were not half so wild</span><br />
+<span class="i0">In former days, when, starchly mild,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Upon her high-heel&#8217;d Essex smiled</span><br />
+<span class="i8">The brave Queen Bess.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI</h3>
+
+<h4>ON SEEING A HAIR OF LUCRETIA BORGIA</h4>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Borgia, thou once wert almost too august</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And high for adoration; now thou&#8217;rt dust.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">All that remains of thee these plaits unfold,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Calm hair, meandering in pellucid gold.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Once, and once only, have I seen thy face,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Elia! once only has thy tripping tongue</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Run o&#8217;er my breast, yet never has been left</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Impression on it stronger or more sweet.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Cordial old man! what youth was in thy years,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">What wisdom in thy levity, what truth</span><br />
+<span class="i0">In every utterance of that purest soul!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Few are the spirits of the glorified</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I&#8217;d spring to earlier at the gate of Heaven.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII</h3>
+
+<h4>TO WORDSWORTH</h4>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Those who have laid the harp aside</span><br />
+<span class="i1">And turn&#8217;d to idler things,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">From very restlessness have tried</span><br />
+<span class="i1">The loose and dusty strings.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And, catching back some favourite strain,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Run with it o&#8217;er the chords again.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But Memory is not a Muse,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">O Wordsworth! though &#8217;tis said</span><br />
+<span class="i0">They all descend from her, and use</span><br />
+<span class="i1">To haunt her fountain-head:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That other men should work for me</span><br />
+<span class="i0">In the rich mines of Poesie,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Pleases me better than the toil</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Of smoothing under hardened hand,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With Attic emery and oil,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">The shining point for Wisdom&#8217;s wand,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Like those thou temperest &#8217;mid the rills</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Descending from thy native hills.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Without his governance, in vain</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Manhood is strong, and Youth is bold</span><br />
+<span class="i0">If oftentimes the o&#8217;er-piled strain</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Clogs in the furnace, and grows cold</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Beneath his pinions deep and frore,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And swells and melts and flows no more,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That is because the heat beneath</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Pants in its cavern poorly fed.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Life springs not from the couch of Death,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Nor Muse nor Grace can raise the dead;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Unturn&#8217;d then let the mass remain,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Intractable to sun or rain.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A marsh, where only flat leaves lie,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And showing but the broken sky,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Too surely is the sweetest lay</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That wins the ear and wastes the day,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Where youthful Fancy pouts alone</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And lets not Wisdom touch her zone.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He who would build his fame up high,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The rule and plummet must apply,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Nor say, &#8216;I&#8217;ll do what I have plann&#8217;d,&#8217;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Before he try if loam or sand</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Be still remaining in the place</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Delved for each polisht pillar&#8217;s base.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With skilful eye and fit device</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Thou raisest every edifice,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Whether in sheltered vale it stand</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Or overlook the Dardan strand,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Amid the cypresses that mourn</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Laodameia&#8217;s love forlorn.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We both have run o&#8217;er half the space</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Listed for mortal&#8217;s earthly race;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">We both have crost life&#8217;s fervid line,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And other stars before us shine:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">May they be bright and prosperous</span><br />
+<span class="i0">As those that have been stars for us!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Our course by Milton&#8217;s light was sped,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And Shakespeare shining overhead:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Chatting on deck was Dryden too,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The Bacon of the rhyming crew;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">None ever crost our mystic sea</span><br />
+<span class="i0">More richly stored with thought than he;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Tho&#8217; never tender nor sublime,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">He wrestles with and conquers Time.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To learn my lore on Chaucer&#8217;s knee,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I left much prouder company;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Thee gentle Spenser fondly led,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But me he mostly sent to bed.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I wish them every joy above</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That highly blessed spirits prove,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Save one: and that too shall be theirs,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But after many rolling years,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">When &#8217;mid their light thy light appears.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX</h3>
+
+<h4>TO CHARLES DICKENS</h4>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Go then to Italy; but mind</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To leave the pale low France behind;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Pass through that country, nor ascend</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The Rhine, nor over Tyrol wend:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Thus all at once shall rise more grand</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The glories of the ancient land.</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Dickens! how often, when the air</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Breath&#8217;d genially, I&#8217;ve thought me there,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And rais&#8217;d to heaven my thankful eyes</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To see three spans of deep blue skies.</span><br />
+<span class="i1">In Genoa now I hear a stir,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A shout ... <i>Here comes the Minister!</i></span><br />
+<span class="i0">Yes, thou art he, although not sent</span><br />
+<span class="i0">By cabinet or parliament:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Yes, thou art he. Since Milton&#8217;s youth</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Bloom&#8217;d in the Eden of the South,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Spirit so pure and lofty none</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Hath heavenly Genius from his throne</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Deputed on the banks of Thames</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To speak his voice and urge his claims.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Let every nation know from thee</span><br />
+<span class="i0">How less than lovely Italy</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Is the whole world beside; let all</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Into their grateful breasts recall</span><br />
+<span class="i0">How Prospero and Miranda dwelt</span><br />
+<span class="i0">In Italy: the griefs that melt</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The stoniest heart, each sacred tear</span><br />
+<span class="i0">One lacrymatory gathered here;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">All Desdemona&#8217;s, all that fell</span><br />
+<span class="i0">In playful Juliet&#8217;s bridal cell.</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Ah! could my steps in life&#8217;s decline</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Accompany or follow thine!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But my own vines are not for me</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To prune, or from afar to see.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I miss the tales I used to tell</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With cordial Hare and joyous Gell,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And that good old Archbishop whose</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Cool library, at evening&#8217;s close</span><br />
+<span class="i0">(Soon as from Ischia swept the gale</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And heav&#8217;d and left the dark&#8217;ning sail),</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Its lofty portal open&#8217;d wide</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To me, and very few beside:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Yet large his kindness. Still the poor</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Flock round Taranto&#8217;s palace door,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And find no other to replace</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The noblest of a noble race.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Amid our converse you would see</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Each with white cat upon his knee,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And flattering that grand company:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">For Persian kings might proudly own</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Such glorious cats to share the throne.</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Write me few letters: I&#8217;m content</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With what for all the world is meant;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Write then for all: but, since my breast</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Is far more faithful than the rest,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Never shall any other share</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With little Nelly nestling there.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX</h3>
+
+<h4>TO BARRY CORNWALL</h4>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Barry! your spirit long ago</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Has haunted me; at last I know</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The heart it sprung from: one more sound</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Ne&#8217;er rested on poetic ground.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But, Barry Cornwall! by what right</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Wring you my breast and dim my sight,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And make me wish at every touch</span><br />
+<span class="i0">My poor old hand could do as much?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">No other in these later times</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Has bound me in so potent rhymes.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I have observed the curious dress</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And jewelry of brave Queen Bess,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But always found some o&#8217;ercharged thing,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Some flaw in even the brightest ring,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Admiring in her men of war,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A rich but too argute guitar.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Our foremost now are more prolix,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And scrape with three-fell fiddlesticks,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And, whether bound for griefs or smiles,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Are slow to turn as crocodiles.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Once, every court and country bevy</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Chose the gallant of loins less heavy,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And would have laid upon the shelf</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Him who could talk but of himself.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Reason is stout, but even Reason</span><br />
+<span class="i0">May walk too long in Rhyme&#8217;s hot season.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I have heard many folks aver</span><br />
+<span class="i0">They have caught horrid colds with her.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Imagination&#8217;s paper kite,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Unless the string is held in tight,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Whatever fits and starts it takes,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Soon bounces on the ground, and breaks.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">You, placed afar from each extreme,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Nor dully drowse nor wildly dream,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But, ever flowing with good-humour,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Are bright as spring and warm as summer.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Mid your Penates not a word</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of scorn or ill-report is heard;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Nor is there any need to pull</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A sheaf or truss from cart too full,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Lest it o&#8217;erload the horse, no doubt,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Or clog the road by falling out.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">We, who surround a common table,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And imitate the fashionable,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Wear each two eyeglasses: <i>this</i> lens</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Shows us our faults, <i>that</i> other men&#8217;s.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">We do not care how dim may be</span><br />
+<span class="i0"><i>This</i> by whose aid our own we see,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But, ever anxiously alert</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That all may have their whole desert,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">We would melt down the stars and sun</span><br />
+<span class="i0">In our heart&#8217;s furnace, to make one</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Thro&#8217; which the enlighten&#8217;d world might spy</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A mote upon a brother&#8217;s eye.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI</h3>
+
+<h4>TO ROBERT BROWNING</h4>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There is delight in singing, tho&#8217; none hear</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Beside the singer: and there is delight</span><br />
+<span class="i0">In praising, tho&#8217; the praiser sit alone</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And see the prais&#8217;d far off him, far above.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world&#8217;s,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">No man hath walkt along our roads with step</span><br />
+<span class="i0">So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue</span><br />
+<span class="i0">So varied in discourse. But warmer climes</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of Alpine highths thou playest with, borne on</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII</h3>
+
+<h4>AGE</h4>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Death, tho&#8217; I see him not, is near</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And grudges me my eightieth year.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Now, I would give him all these last</span><br />
+<span class="i0">For one that fifty have run past.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Ah! he strikes all things, all alike,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But bargains: those he will not strike.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Leaf after leaf drops off, flower after flower,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Some in the chill, some in the warmer hour:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Alike they flourish and alike they fall,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And Earth who nourisht them receives them all.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Should we, her wiser sons, be less content</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To sink into her lap when life is spent?</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Well I remember how you smiled</span><br />
+<span class="i1">To see me write your name upon</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The soft sea-sand&mdash;&#8216;<i>O! what a child!</i></span><br />
+<span class="i1"><i>You think you&#8217;re writing upon stone!</i>&#8217;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I have since written what no tide</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Shall ever wash away, what men</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Unborn shall read o&#8217;er ocean wide</span><br />
+<span class="i1">And find Ianthe&#8217;s name again.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I warmed both hands before the fire of Life;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">It sinks, and I am ready to depart.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI"></a>XXVI</h3>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Death stands above me, whispering low</span><br />
+<span class="i1">I know not what into my ear:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of his strange language all I know</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Is, there is not a word of fear.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII"></a>XXVII</h3>
+
+<h4>A PASTORAL</h4>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Damon was sitting in the grove</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With Phyllis, and protesting love;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And she was listening; but no word</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of all he loudly swore she heard.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">How! was she deaf then? no, not she,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Phyllis was quite the contrary.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Tapping his elbow, she said, &#8216;Hush!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">O what a darling of a thrush!</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I think he never sang so well</span><br />
+<span class="i0">As now, below us, in the dell.&#8217;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII"></a>XXVIII</h3>
+
+<h4>THE LOVER</h4>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now thou art gone, tho&#8217; not gone far,</span><br />
+<span class="i1">It seems that there are worlds between us;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Shine here again, thou wandering star!</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Earth&#8217;s planet! and return with Venus.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At times thou broughtest me thy light</span><br />
+<span class="i1">When restless sleep had gone away;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">At other times more blessed night</span><br />
+<span class="i1">Stole over, and prolonged thy stay.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX"></a>XXIX</h3>
+
+<h4>THE POET WHO SLEEPS</h4>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">One day, when I was young, I read</span><br />
+<span class="i0">About a poet, long since dead,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Who fell asleep, as poets do</span><br />
+<span class="i0">In writing&mdash;and make others too.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But herein lies the story&#8217;s gist,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">How a gay queen came up and kist</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The sleeper.</span><br />
+<span class="i5">&#8216;Capital!&#8217; thought I.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">&#8216;A like good fortune let me try.&#8217;</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Many the things we poets feign.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I feign&#8217;d to sleep, but tried in vain.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I tost and turn&#8217;d from side to side,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With open mouth and nostrils wide.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">At last there came a pretty maid,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And gazed; then to myself I said,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">&#8216;Now for it!&#8217; She, instead of kiss,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Cried, &#8216;What a lazy lout is this!&#8217;</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XXX" id="XXX"></a>XXX</h3>
+
+<h4>DANIEL DEFOE</h4>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Few will acknowledge what they owe</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To persecuted, brave Defoe.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Achilles, in Homeric song,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">May, or he may not, live so long</span><br />
+<span class="i0">As Crusoe; few their strength had tried</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Without so staunch and safe a guide.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">What boy is there who never laid</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Under his pillow, half afraid,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">That precious volume, lest the morrow</span><br />
+<span class="i0">For unlearnt lessons might bring sorrow?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">But nobler lessons he has taught</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Wide-awake scholars who fear&#8217;d naught:</span><br />
+<span class="i0">A Rodney and a Nelson may</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Without him not have won the day.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI"></a>XXXI</h3>
+
+<h4>IDLE WORDS</h4>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">They say that every idle word</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Is numbered by the Omniscient Lord.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">O Parliament! &#8217;tis well that He</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Endureth for Eternity,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And that a thousand Angels wait</span><br />
+<span class="i0">To write them at thy inner gate.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3><a name="XXXII" id="XXXII"></a>XXXII</h3>
+
+<h4>TO THE RIVER AVON</h4>
+
+<div class="cpoem">
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Avon! why runnest thou away so fast?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Rest thee before that Chancel where repose</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The bones of him whose spirit moves the world.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I have beheld thy birthplace, I have seen</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Thy tiny ripples where they play amid</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The golden cups and ever-waving blades.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">I have seen mighty rivers, I have seen</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Padus, recovered from his fiery wound,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And Tiber, prouder than them all to bear</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Upon his tawny bosom men who crusht</span><br />
+<span class="i0">The world they trod on, heeding not the cries</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Of culprit kings and nations many-tongued.</span><br />
+<span class="i0">What are to me these rivers, once adorn&#8217;d</span><br />
+<span class="i0">With crowns they would not wear but swept away?</span><br />
+<span class="i0">Worthier art thou of worship, and I bend</span><br />
+<span class="i0">My knees upon thy bank, and call thy name,</span><br />
+<span class="i0">And hear, or think I hear, thy voice reply.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="bbox">
+<p><b>Transcriber&#8217;s Note:</b></p>
+
+<p>Minor errors (missing or transposed letters, omitted punctuation, etc.)
+have been corrected without note. The author used a lot of archaic spelling,
+which remains unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>There is a single Greek word, indicated with a thin red dotted underline;
+you may need to adjust your browser settings if it does not display properly.
+A <ins class="greek" title="like this">transliteration</ins> is provided, hover
+your mouse over it to see it.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Imaginary Conversations and Poems, by 
+Walter Savage Landor
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS AND POEMS ***
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@@ -0,0 +1,17137 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Imaginary Conversations and Poems, by
+Walter Savage Landor
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Imaginary Conversations and Poems
+       A Selection
+
+Author: Walter Savage Landor
+
+Release Date: May 28, 2007 [EBook #21628]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS AND POEMS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sam W. and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+      IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS
+      AND POEMS: A SELECTION
+
+               By
+       WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS
+
+          Marcellus and Hannibal
+
+          Queen Elizabeth and Cecil
+
+          Epictetus and Seneca
+
+          Peter the Great and Alexis
+
+          Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn
+
+          Joseph Scaliger and Montaigne
+
+          Boccaccio and Petrarca
+
+          Bossuet and the Duchess de Fontanges
+
+          John of Gaunt and Joanna of Kent
+
+          Leofric and Godiva
+
+          Essex and Spenser
+
+          Lord Bacon and Richard Hooker
+
+          Oliver Cromwell and Walter Noble
+
+          Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney
+
+          Southey and Porson
+
+          The Abbe Delille and Walter Landor
+
+          Diogenes and Plato
+
+          Alfieri and Salomon the Florentine Jew
+
+          Rousseau and Malesherbes
+
+          Lucullus and Caesar
+
+          Epicurus, Leontion, and Ternissa
+
+          Dante and Beatrice
+
+          Fra Filippo Lippi and Pope Eugenius the Fourth
+
+          Tasso and Cornelia
+
+          La Fontaine and de La Rochefoucault
+
+          Lucian and Timotheus
+
+          Bishop Shipley and Benjamin Franklin
+
+          Southey and Landor
+
+          The Emperor of China and Tsing-Ti
+
+          Louis XVIII and Talleyrand
+
+          Oliver Cromwell and Sir Oliver Cromwell
+
+          The Count Gleichem: the Countess: their Children, and Zaida
+
+
+THE PENTAMERON
+
+          First Day's Interview
+
+          Third Day's Interview
+
+          Fourth Day's Interview
+
+          Fifth Day's Interview
+
+
+POEMS
+
+       I. She I love (alas in vain!)
+
+      II. Pleasure! why thus desert the heart
+
+     III. Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives
+
+      IV. Ianthe! you are call'd to cross the sea!
+
+       V. The gates of fame and of the grave
+
+      VI. Twenty years hence my eyes may grow
+
+     VII. Here, ever since you went abroad
+
+    VIII. Tell me not things past all belief
+
+      IX. Proud word you never spoke, but you will speak
+
+       X. Fiesole Idyl
+
+      XI. Ah what avails the sceptred race
+
+     XII. With rosy hand a little girl prest down
+
+    VIII. Ternissa! you are fled!
+
+     XIV. Various the roads of life; in one
+
+      XV. Yes; I write verses now and then
+
+     XVI. On seeing a hair of Lucretia Borgia
+
+    XVII. Once, and once only, have I seen thy face
+
+   XVIII. To Wordsworth
+
+     XIX. To Charles Dickens
+
+      XX. To Barry Cornwall
+
+     XXI. To Robert Browning
+
+    XXII. Age
+
+   XXIII. Leaf after leaf drops off, flower after flower
+
+    XXIV. Well I remember how you smiled
+
+     XXV. I strove with none, for none was worth my strife
+
+    XXVI. Death stands above me, whispering low
+
+   XXVII. A Pastoral
+
+  XXVIII. The Lover
+
+    XXIX. The Poet who Sleeps
+
+     XXX. Daniel Defoe
+
+    XXXI. Idle Words
+
+   XXXII. To the River Avon
+
+
+
+
+IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS
+
+
+
+
+MARCELLUS AND HANNIBAL
+
+
+_Hannibal._ Could a Numidian horseman ride no faster? Marcellus! oh!
+Marcellus! He moves not--he is dead. Did he not stir his fingers?
+Stand wide, soldiers--wide, forty paces; give him air; bring water;
+halt! Gather those broad leaves, and all the rest, growing under the
+brushwood; unbrace his armour. Loose the helmet first--his breast
+rises. I fancied his eyes were fixed on me--they have rolled back
+again. Who presumed to touch my shoulder? This horse? It was surely
+the horse of Marcellus! Let no man mount him. Ha! ha! the Romans, too,
+sink into luxury: here is gold about the charger.
+
+_Gaulish Chieftain._ Execrable thief! The golden chain of our king
+under a beast's grinders! The vengeance of the gods hath overtaken the
+impure----
+
+_Hannibal._ We will talk about vengeance when we have entered Rome,
+and about purity among the priests, if they will hear us. Sound for
+the surgeon. That arrow may be extracted from the side, deep as it is.
+The conqueror of Syracuse lies before me. Send a vessel off to
+Carthage. Say Hannibal is at the gates of Rome. Marcellus, who stood
+alone between us, fallen. Brave man! I would rejoice and cannot. How
+awfully serene a countenance! Such as we hear are in the islands of
+the Blessed. And how glorious a form and stature! Such too was theirs!
+They also once lay thus upon the earth wet with their blood--few other
+enter there. And what plain armour!
+
+_Gaulish Chieftain._ My party slew him; indeed, I think I slew him
+myself. I claim the chain: it belongs to my king; the glory of Gaul
+requires it. Never will she endure to see another take it.
+
+_Hannibal._ My friend, the glory of Marcellus did not require him to
+wear it. When he suspended the arms of your brave king in the temple,
+he thought such a trinket unworthy of himself and of Jupiter. The
+shield he battered down, the breast-plate he pierced with his
+sword--these he showed to the people and to the gods; hardly his wife
+and little children saw this, ere his horse wore it.
+
+_Gaulish Chieftain._ Hear me; O Hannibal!
+
+_Hannibal._ What! when Marcellus lies before me? when his life may
+perhaps be recalled? when I may lead him in triumph to Carthage? when
+Italy, Sicily, Greece, Asia, wait to obey me? Content thee! I will
+give thee mine own bridle, worth ten such.
+
+_Gaulish Chieftain._ For myself?
+
+_Hannibal._ For thyself.
+
+_Gaulish Chieftain._ And these rubies and emeralds, and that
+scarlet----?
+
+_Hannibal._ Yes, yes.
+
+_Gaulish Chieftain._ O glorious Hannibal! unconquerable hero! O my
+happy country! to have such an ally and defender. I swear eternal
+gratitude--yes, gratitude, love, devotion, beyond eternity.
+
+_Hannibal._ In all treaties we fix the time: I could hardly ask a
+longer. Go back to thy station. I would see what the surgeon is about,
+and hear what he thinks. The life of Marcellus! the triumph of
+Hannibal! what else has the world in it? Only Rome and Carthage: these
+follow.
+
+_Marcellus._ I must die then? The gods be praised! The commander of a
+Roman army is no captive.
+
+_Hannibal._ [_To the Surgeon._] Could not he bear a sea voyage?
+Extract the arrow.
+
+_Surgeon._ He expires that moment.
+
+_Marcellus._ It pains me: extract it.
+
+_Hannibal._ Marcellus, I see no expression of pain on your
+countenance, and never will I consent to hasten the death of an enemy
+in my power. Since your recovery is hopeless, you say truly you are no
+captive.
+
+[_To the Surgeon._] Is there nothing, man, that can assuage the mortal
+pain? for, suppress the signs of it as he may, he must feel it. Is
+there nothing to alleviate and allay it?
+
+_Marcellus._ Hannibal, give me thy hand--thou hast found it and
+brought it me, compassion.
+
+[_To the Surgeon._] Go, friend; others want thy aid; several fell
+around me.
+
+_Hannibal._ Recommend to your country, O Marcellus, while time permits
+it, reconciliation and peace with me, informing the Senate of my
+superiority in force, and the impossibility of resistance. The tablet
+is ready: let me take off this ring--try to write, to sign it, at
+least. Oh, what satisfaction I feel at seeing you able to rest upon
+the elbow, and even to smile!
+
+_Marcellus._ Within an hour or less, with how severe a brow would
+Minos say to me, 'Marcellus, is this thy writing?'
+
+Rome loses one man: she hath lost many such, and she still hath many
+left.
+
+_Hannibal._ Afraid as you are of falsehood, say you this? I confess in
+shame the ferocity of my countrymen. Unfortunately, too, the nearer
+posts are occupied by Gauls, infinitely more cruel. The Numidians are
+so in revenge: the Gauls both in revenge and in sport. My presence is
+required at a distance, and I apprehend the barbarity of one or other,
+learning, as they must do, your refusal to execute my wishes for the
+common good, and feeling that by this refusal you deprive them of
+their country, after so long an absence.
+
+_Marcellus._ Hannibal, thou art not dying.
+
+_Hannibal._ What then? What mean you?
+
+_Marcellus._ That thou mayest, and very justly, have many things yet
+to apprehend: I can have none. The barbarity of thy soldiers is
+nothing to me: mine would not dare be cruel. Hannibal is forced to be
+absent; and his authority goes away with his horse. On this turf lies
+defaced the semblance of a general; but Marcellus is yet the regulator
+of his army. Dost thou abdicate a power conferred on thee by thy
+nation? Or wouldst thou acknowledge it to have become, by thy own sole
+fault, less plenary than thy adversary's?
+
+I have spoken too much: let me rest; this mantle oppresses me.
+
+_Hannibal._ I placed my mantle on your head when the helmet was first
+removed, and while you were lying in the sun. Let me fold it under,
+and then replace the ring.
+
+_Marcellus._ Take it, Hannibal. It was given me by a poor woman who
+flew to me at Syracuse, and who covered it with her hair, torn off in
+desperation that she had no other gift to offer. Little thought I that
+her gift and her words should be mine. How suddenly may the most
+powerful be in the situation of the most helpless! Let that ring and
+the mantle under my head be the exchange of guests at parting. The
+time may come, Hannibal, when thou (and the gods alone know whether as
+conqueror or conquered) mayest sit under the roof of my children, and
+in either case it shall serve thee. In thy adverse fortune, they will
+remember on whose pillow their father breathed his last; in thy
+prosperity (Heaven grant it may shine upon thee in some other
+country!) it will rejoice thee to protect them. We feel ourselves the
+most exempt from affliction when we relieve it, although we are then
+the most conscious that it may befall us.
+
+There is one thing here which is not at the disposal of either.
+
+_Hannibal._ What?
+
+_Marcellus._ This body.
+
+_Hannibal._ Whither would you be lifted? Men are ready.
+
+_Marcellus._ I meant not so. My strength is failing. I seem to hear
+rather what is within than what is without. My sight and my other
+senses are in confusion. I would have said--this body, when a few
+bubbles of air shall have left it, is no more worthy of thy notice
+than of mine; but thy glory will not let thee refuse it to the piety
+of my family.
+
+_Hannibal._ You would ask something else. I perceive an inquietude not
+visible till now.
+
+_Marcellus._ Duty and Death make us think of home sometimes.
+
+_Hannibal._ Thitherward the thoughts of the conqueror and of the
+conquered fly together.
+
+_Marcellus._ Hast thou any prisoners from my escort?
+
+_Hannibal._ A few dying lie about--and let them lie--they are Tuscans.
+The remainder I saw at a distance, flying, and but one brave man among
+them--he appeared a Roman--a youth who turned back, though wounded.
+They surrounded and dragged him away, spurring his horse with their
+swords. These Etrurians measure their courage carefully, and tack it
+well together before they put it on, but throw it off again with
+lordly ease.
+
+Marcellus, why think about them? or does aught else disquiet your
+thoughts?
+
+_Marcellus._ I have suppressed it long enough. My son--my beloved son!
+
+_Hannibal._ Where is he? Can it be? Was he with you?
+
+_Marcellus._ He would have shared my fate--and has not. Gods of my
+country! beneficent throughout life to me, in death surpassingly
+beneficent: I render you, for the last time, thanks.
+
+
+
+
+QUEEN ELIZABETH AND CECIL
+
+
+_Elizabeth._ I advise thee again, churlish Cecil, how that our Edmund
+Spenser, whom thou callest most uncourteously a whining whelp, hath
+good and solid reason for his complaint. God's blood! shall the lady
+that tieth my garter and shuffles the smock over my head, or the lord
+that steadieth my chair's back while I eat, or the other that looketh
+to my buck-hounds lest they be mangy, be holden by me in higher esteem
+and estate than he who hath placed me among the bravest of past times,
+and will as safely and surely set me down among the loveliest in the
+future?
+
+_Cecil._ Your Highness must remember he carouseth fully for such
+deserts: fifty pounds a year of unclipped moneys, and a butt of canary
+wine; not to mention three thousand acres in Ireland, worth fairly
+another fifty and another butt, in seasonable and quiet years.
+
+_Elizabeth._ The moneys are not enough to sustain a pair of grooms and
+a pair of palfreys, and more wine hath been drunken in my presence at
+a feast. The moneys are given to such men, that they may not incline
+nor be obligated to any vile or lowly occupation; and the canary, that
+they may entertain such promising wits as court their company and
+converse; and that in such manner there may be alway in our land a
+succession of these heirs unto fame. He hath written, not indeed with
+his wonted fancifulness, nor in learned and majestical language, but
+in homely and rustic wise, some verses which have moved me, and haply
+the more inasmuch as they demonstrate to me that his genius hath been
+dampened by his adversities. Read them.
+
+_Cecil._
+
+      How much is lost when neither heart nor eye
+        Rosewinged Desire or fabling Hope deceives;
+      When boyhood with quick throb hath ceased to spy
+        The dubious apple in the yellow leaves;
+
+      When, rising from the turf where youth reposed,
+        We find but deserts in the far-sought shore;
+      When the huge book of Faery-land lies closed,
+        And those strong brazen clasps will yield no more.
+
+_Elizabeth._ The said Edmund hath also furnished unto the weaver at
+Arras, John Blanquieres, on my account, a description for some of his
+cunningest wenches to work at, supplied by mine own self, indeed, as
+far as the subject-matter goes, but set forth by him with figures and
+fancies, and daintily enough bedecked. I could have wished he had
+thereunto joined a fair comparison between Dian--no matter--he might
+perhaps have fared the better for it; but poets' wits--God help
+them!--when did they ever sit close about them? Read the poesy, not
+over-rich, and concluding very awkwardly and meanly.
+
+_Cecil._
+
+      Where forms the lotus, with its level leaves
+        And solid blossoms, many floating isles,
+      What heavenly radiance swift descending cleaves
+        The darksome wave! Unwonted beauty smiles
+
+      On its pure bosom, on each bright-eyed flower,
+        On every nymph, and twenty sate around,
+      Lo! 'twas Diana--from the sultry hour
+        Hither she fled, nor fear'd she sight or sound.
+
+      Unhappy youth, whom thirst and quiver-reeds
+        Drew to these haunts, whom awe forbade to fly!
+      Three faithful dogs before him rais'd their heads,
+        And watched and wonder'd at that fixed eye.
+
+      Forth sprang his favourite--with her arrow-hand
+        Too late the goddess hid what hand may hide,
+      Of every nymph and every reed complain'd,
+        And dashed upon the bank the waters wide.
+
+      On the prone head and sandal'd feet they flew--
+        Lo! slender hoofs and branching horns appear!
+      The last marr'd voice not e'en the favourite knew,
+        But bay'd and fasten'd on the upbraiding deer.
+
+      Far be, chaste goddess, far from me and mine
+        The stream that tempts thee in the summer noon!
+      Alas, that vengeance dwells with charms divine----
+
+_Elizabeth._ Pshaw! give me the paper: I forewarned thee how it
+ended--pitifully, pitifully.
+
+_Cecil._ I cannot think otherwise than that the undertaker of the
+aforecited poesy hath chosen your Highness; for I have seen painted--I
+know not where, but I think no farther off than Putney--the
+identically same Dian, with full as many nymphs, as he calls them, and
+more dogs. So small a matter as a page of poesy shall never stir my
+choler nor twitch my purse-string.
+
+_Elizabeth._ I have read in Plinius and Mela of a runlet near Dodona,
+which kindled by approximation an unlighted torch, and extinguished a
+lighted one. Now, Cecil, I desire no such a jetty to be celebrated as
+the decoration of my court: in simpler words, which your gravity may
+more easily understand, I would not from the fountain of honour give
+lustre to the dull and ignorant, deadening and leaving in its tomb the
+lamp of literature and genius. I ardently wish my reign to be
+remembered: if my actions were different from what they are, I should
+as ardently wish it to be forgotten. Those are the worst of suicides,
+who voluntarily and propensely stab or suffocate their fame, when God
+hath commanded them to stand on high for an example. We call him
+parricide who destroys the author of his existence: tell me, what
+shall we call him who casts forth to the dogs and birds of prey its
+most faithful propagator and most firm support? Mark me, I do not
+speak of that existence which the proudest must close in a ditch--the
+narrowest, too, of ditches and the soonest filled and fouled, and
+whereunto a pinch of ratsbane or a poppy-head may bend him; but of
+that which reposes on our own good deeds, carefully picked up,
+skilfully put together, and decorously laid out for us by another's
+kind understanding: I speak of an existence such as no father is
+author of, or provides for. The parent gives us few days and
+sorrowful; the poet, many and glorious: the one (supposing him
+discreet and kindly) best reproves our faults; the other best
+remunerates our virtues.
+
+A page of poesy is a little matter: be it so; but of a truth I do tell
+thee, Cecil, it shall master full many a bold heart that the Spaniard
+cannot trouble; it shall win to it full many a proud and flighty one
+that even chivalry and manly comeliness cannot touch. I may shake
+titles and dignities by the dozen from my breakfast-board; but I may
+not save those upon whose heads I shake them from rottenness and
+oblivion. This year they and their sovereign dwell together; next
+year, they and their beagle. Both have names, but names perishable.
+The keeper of my privy seal is an earl: what then? the keeper of my
+poultry-yard is a Caesar. In honest truth, a name given to a man is no
+better than a skin given to him: what is not natively his own falls
+off and comes to nothing.
+
+I desire in future to hear no contempt of penmen, unless a depraved
+use of the pen shall have so cramped them as to incapacitate them for
+the sword and for the council chamber. If Alexander was the Great,
+what was Aristoteles who made him so, and taught him every art and
+science he knew, except three--those of drinking, of blaspheming, and
+of murdering his bosom friends? Come along: I will bring thee back
+again nearer home. Thou mightest toss and tumble in thy bed many
+nights, and never eke out the substance of a stanza; but Edmund, if
+perchance I should call upon him for his counsel, would give me as
+wholesome and prudent as any of you. We should indemnify such men for
+the injustice we do unto them in not calling them about us, and for
+the mortification they must suffer at seeing their inferiors set
+before them. Edmund is grave and gentle: he complains of fortune, not
+of Elizabeth; of courts, not of Cecil. I am resolved--so help me,
+God!--he shall have no further cause for his repining. Go, convey unto
+him those twelve silver spoons, with the apostles on them, gloriously
+gilded; and deliver into his hand these twelve large golden pieces,
+sufficing for the yearly maintenance of another horse and groom.
+Beside which, set open before him with due reverence this Bible,
+wherein he may read the mercies of God toward those who waited in
+patience for His blessing; and this pair of crimson silk hose, which
+thou knowest I have worn only thirteen months, taking heed that the
+heel-piece be put into good and sufficient restoration, at my sole
+charges, by the Italian woman nigh the pollard elm at Charing Cross.
+
+
+
+
+EPICTETUS AND SENECA
+
+
+_Seneca._ Epictetus, I desired your master, Epaphroditus, to send you
+hither, having been much pleased with his report of your conduct, and
+much surprised at the ingenuity of your writings.
+
+_Epictetus._ Then I am afraid, my friend----
+
+_Seneca._ _My friend!_ are these the expressions--Well, let it pass.
+Philosophers must bear bravely. The people expect it.
+
+_Epictetus._ Are philosophers, then, only philosophers for the people;
+and, instead of instructing them, must they play tricks before them?
+Give me rather the gravity of dancing dogs. Their motions are for the
+rabble; their reverential eyes and pendant paws are under the
+pressure of awe at a master; but they are dogs, and not below their
+destinies.
+
+_Seneca._ Epictetus! I will give you three talents to let me take that
+sentiment for my own.
+
+_Epictetus._ I would give thee twenty, if I had them, to make it
+thine.
+
+_Seneca._ You mean, by lending it the graces of my language?
+
+_Epictetus._ I mean, by lending it to thy conduct. And now let me
+console and comfort thee, under the calamity I brought on thee by
+calling thee _my friend_. If thou art not my friend, why send for me?
+Enemy I can have none: being a slave, Fortune has now done with me.
+
+_Seneca._ Continue, then, your former observations. What were you
+saying?
+
+_Epictetus._ That which thou interruptedst.
+
+_Seneca._ What was it?
+
+_Epictetus._ I should have remarked that, if thou foundest ingenuity
+in my writings, thou must have discovered in them some deviation from
+the plain, homely truths of Zeno and Cleanthes.
+
+_Seneca._ We all swerve a little from them.
+
+_Epictetus._ In practice too?
+
+_Seneca._ Yes, even in practice, I am afraid.
+
+_Epictetus._ Often?
+
+_Seneca._ Too often.
+
+_Epictetus._ Strange! I have been attentive, and yet have remarked but
+one difference among you great personages at Rome.
+
+_Seneca._ What difference fell under your observation?
+
+_Epictetus._ Crates and Zeno and Cleanthes taught us that our desires
+were to be subdued by philosophy alone. In this city, their acute and
+inventive scholars take us aside, and show us that there is not only
+one way, but two.
+
+_Seneca._ Two ways?
+
+_Epictetus._ They whisper in our ear, 'These two ways are philosophy
+and enjoyment: the wiser man will take the readier, or, not finding
+it, the alternative.' Thou reddenest.
+
+_Seneca._ Monstrous degeneracy.
+
+_Epictetus._ What magnificent rings! I did not notice them until thou
+liftedst up thy hands to heaven, in detestation of such effeminacy and
+impudence.
+
+_Seneca._ The rings are not amiss; my rank rivets them upon my
+fingers: I am forced to wear them. Our emperor gave me one,
+Epaphroditus another, Tigellinus the third. I cannot lay them aside a
+single day, for fear of offending the gods, and those whom they love
+the most worthily.
+
+_Epictetus._ Although they make thee stretch out thy fingers, like the
+arms and legs of one of us slaves upon a cross.
+
+_Seneca._ Oh, horrible! Find some other resemblance.
+
+_Epictetus._ The extremities of a fig-leaf.
+
+_Seneca._ Ignoble!
+
+_Epictetus._ The claws of a toad, trodden on or stoned.
+
+_Seneca._ You have great need, Epictetus, of an instructor in
+eloquence and rhetoric: you want topics, and tropes, and figures.
+
+_Epictetus._ I have no room for them. They make such a buzz in the
+house, a man's own wife cannot understand what he says to her.
+
+_Seneca._ Let us reason a little upon style. I would set you right,
+and remove from before you the prejudices of a somewhat rustic
+education. We may adorn the simplicity of the wisest.
+
+_Epictetus._ Thou canst not adorn simplicity. What is naked or
+defective is susceptible of decoration: what is decorated is
+simplicity no longer. Thou mayest give another thing in exchange for
+it; but if thou wert master of it, thou wouldst preserve it inviolate.
+It is no wonder that we mortals, little able as we are to see truth,
+should be less able to express it.
+
+_Seneca._ You have formed at present no idea of style.
+
+_Epictetus._ I never think about it. First, I consider whether what I
+am about to say is true; then, whether I can say it with brevity, in
+such a manner as that others shall see it as clearly as I do in the
+light of truth; for, if they survey it as an ingenuity, my desire is
+ungratified, my duty unfulfilled. I go not with those who dance round
+the image of Truth, less out of honour to her than to display their
+agility and address.
+
+_Seneca._ We must attract the attention of readers by novelty, and
+force, and grandeur of expression.
+
+_Epictetus._ We must. Nothing is so grand as truth, nothing so
+forcible, nothing so novel.
+
+_Seneca._ Sonorous sentences are wanted to awaken the lethargy of
+indolence.
+
+_Epictetus._ Awaken it to what? Here lies the question; and a weighty
+one it is. If thou awakenest men where they can see nothing and do no
+work, it is better to let them rest: but will not they, thinkest thou,
+look up at a rainbow, unless they are called to it by a clap of
+thunder?
+
+_Seneca._ Your early youth, Epictetus, has been, I will not say
+neglected, but cultivated with rude instruments and unskilful hands.
+
+_Epictetus._ I thank God for it. Those rude instruments have left the
+turf lying yet toward the sun; and those unskilful hands have plucked
+out the docks.
+
+_Seneca._ We hope and believe that we have attained a vein of
+eloquence, brighter and more varied than has been hitherto laid open
+to the world.
+
+_Epictetus._ Than any in the Greek?
+
+_Seneca._ We trust so.
+
+_Epictetus._ Than your Cicero's?
+
+_Seneca._ If the declaration may be made without an offence to
+modesty. Surely, you cannot estimate or value the eloquence of that
+noble pleader?
+
+_Epictetus._ Imperfectly, not being born in Italy; and the noble
+pleader is a much less man with me than the noble philosopher. I
+regret that, having farms and villas, he would not keep his distance
+from the pumping up of foul words against thieves, cut-throats, and
+other rogues; and that he lied, sweated, and thumped his head and
+thighs, in behalf of those who were no better.
+
+_Seneca._ Senators must have clients, and must protect them.
+
+_Epictetus._ Innocent or guilty?
+
+_Seneca._ Doubtless.
+
+_Epictetus._ If I regret what is and might not be, I may regret more
+what both is and must be. However, it is an amiable thing, and no
+small merit in the wealthy, even to trifle and play at their leisure
+hours with philosophy. It cannot be expected that such a personage
+should espouse her, or should recommend her as an inseparable mate to
+his heir.
+
+_Seneca._ I would.
+
+_Epictetus._ Yes, Seneca, but thou hast no son to make the match for;
+and thy recommendation, I suspect, would be given him before he could
+consummate the marriage. Every man wishes his sons to be philosophers
+while they are young; but takes especial care, as they grow older, to
+teach them its insufficiency and unfitness for their intercourse with
+mankind. The paternal voice says: 'You must not be particular; you are
+about to have a profession to live by; follow those who have thriven
+the best in it.' Now, among these, whatever be the profession, canst
+thou point out to me one single philosopher?
+
+_Seneca._ Not just now; nor, upon reflection, do I think it feasible.
+
+_Epictetus._ Thou, indeed, mayest live much to thy ease and
+satisfaction with philosophy, having (they say) two thousand talents.
+
+_Seneca._ And a trifle to spare--pressed upon me by that godlike
+youth, my pupil Nero.
+
+_Epictetus._ Seneca! where God hath placed a mine, He hath placed the
+materials of an earthquake.
+
+_Seneca._ A true philosopher is beyond the reach of Fortune.
+
+_Epictetus._ The false one thinks himself so. Fortune cares little
+about philosophers; but she remembers where she hath set a rich man,
+and she laughs to see the Destinies at his door.
+
+
+
+
+PETER THE GREAT AND ALEXIS
+
+
+_Peter._ And so, after flying from thy father's house, thou hast
+returned again from Vienna. After this affront in the face of Europe,
+thou darest to appear before me?
+
+_Alexis._ My emperor and father! I am brought before your Majesty, not
+at my own desire.
+
+_Peter._ I believe it well.
+
+_Alexis._ I would not anger you.
+
+_Peter._ What hope hadst thou, rebel, in thy flight to Vienna?
+
+_Alexis._ The hope of peace and privacy; the hope of security; and,
+above all things, of never more offending you.
+
+_Peter._ That hope thou hast accomplished. Thou imaginedst, then, that
+my brother of Austria would maintain thee at his court--speak!
+
+_Alexis._ No, sir! I imagined that he would have afforded me a place
+of refuge.
+
+_Peter._ Didst thou, then, take money with thee?
+
+_Alexis._ A few gold pieces.
+
+_Peter._ How many?
+
+_Alexis._ About sixty.
+
+_Peter._ He would have given thee promises for half the money; but the
+double of it does not purchase a house, ignorant wretch!
+
+_Alexis._ I knew as much as that: although my birth did not appear to
+destine me to purchase a house anywhere; and hitherto your liberality,
+my father, hath supplied my wants of every kind.
+
+_Peter._ Not of wisdom, not of duty, not of spirit, not of courage,
+not of ambition. I have educated thee among my guards and horses,
+among my drums and trumpets, among my flags and masts. When thou wert
+a child, and couldst hardly walk, I have taken thee into the arsenal,
+though children should not enter according to regulations: I have
+there rolled cannon-balls before thee over iron plates; and I have
+shown thee bright new arms, bayonets and sabres; and I have pricked
+the back of my hands until the blood came out in many places; and I
+have made thee lick it; and I have then done the same to thine.
+Afterward, from thy tenth year, I have mixed gunpowder in thy grog; I
+have peppered thy peaches; I have poured bilge-water (with a little
+good wholesome tar in it) upon thy melons; I have brought out girls to
+mock thee and cocker thee, and talk like mariners, to make thee
+braver. Nothing would do. Nay, recollect thee! I have myself led thee
+forth to the window when fellows were hanged and shot; and I have
+shown thee every day the halves and quarters of bodies; and I have
+sent an orderly or chamberlain for the heads; and I have pulled the
+cap up from over the eyes; and I have made thee, in spite of thee,
+look steadfastly upon them, incorrigible coward!
+
+And now another word with thee about thy scandalous flight from the
+palace, in time of quiet, too! To the point! Did my brother of Austria
+invite thee? Did he, or did he not?
+
+_Alexis._ May I answer without doing an injury or disservice to his
+Imperial Majesty?
+
+_Peter._ Thou mayest. What injury canst thou or any one do, by the
+tongue, to such as he is?
+
+_Alexis._ At the moment, no; he did not. Nor indeed can I assert that
+he at any time invited me; but he said he pitied me.
+
+_Peter._ About what? hold thy tongue; let that pass. Princes never
+pity but when they would make traitors: then their hearts grow
+tenderer than tripe. He pitied thee, kind soul, when he would throw
+thee at thy father's head; but finding thy father too strong for him,
+he now commiserates the parent, laments the son's rashness and
+disobedience, and would not make God angry for the world. At first,
+however, there must have been some overture on his part; otherwise
+thou are too shamefaced for intrusion. Come--thou hast never had wit
+enough to lie--tell me the truth, the whole truth.
+
+_Alexis._ He said that if ever I wanted an asylum, his court was open
+to me.
+
+_Peter._ Open! so is the tavern; but folks pay for what they get
+there. Open, truly! and didst thou find it so?
+
+_Alexis._ He received me kindly.
+
+_Peter._ I see he did.
+
+_Alexis._ Derision, O my father! is not the fate I merit.
+
+_Peter._ True, true! it was not intended.
+
+_Alexis._ Kind father! punish me then as you will.
+
+_Peter._ Villain! wouldst thou kiss my hand, too? Art thou ignorant
+that the Austrian threw thee away from him, with the same indifference
+as he would the outermost leaf of a sandy sunburnt lettuce?
+
+_Alexis._ Alas! I am not ignorant of this.
+
+_Peter._ He dismissed thee at my order. If I had demanded from him his
+daughter, to be the bedfellow of a Kalmuc, he would have given her,
+and praised God.
+
+_Alexis._ O father! is his baseness my crime?
+
+_Peter._ No; thine is greater. Thy intention, I know, is to subvert
+the institutions it has been the labour of my lifetime to establish.
+Thou hast never rejoiced at my victories.
+
+_Alexis._ I have rejoiced at your happiness and your safety.
+
+_Peter._ Liar! coward! traitor! when the Polanders and Swedes fell
+before me, didst thou from thy soul congratulate me? Didst thou get
+drunk at home or abroad, or praise the Lord of Hosts and Saint
+Nicholas? Wert thou not silent and civil and low-spirited?
+
+_Alexis._ I lamented the irretrievable loss of human life; I lamented
+that the bravest and noblest were swept away the first; that the
+gentlest and most domestic were the earliest mourners; that frugality
+was supplanted by intemperance; that order was succeeded by confusion;
+and that your Majesty was destroying the glorious plans you alone were
+capable of devising.
+
+_Peter._ I destroy them! how? Of what plans art thou speaking?
+
+_Alexis._ Of civilizing the Muscovites. The Polanders in part were
+civilized: the Swedes, more than any other nation on the Continent;
+and so excellently versed were they in military science, and so
+courageous, that every man you killed cost you seven or eight.
+
+_Peter._ Thou liest; nor six. And civilized, forsooth? Why, the robes
+of the metropolitan, him at Upsal, are not worth three ducats, between
+Jew and Livornese. I have no notion that Poland and Sweden shall be
+the only countries that produce great princes. What right have they to
+such as Gustavus and Sobieski? Europe ought to look to this before
+discontents become general, and the people do to us what we have the
+privilege of doing to the people. I am wasting my words: there is no
+arguing with positive fools like thee. So thou wouldst have desired me
+to let the Polanders and Swedes lie still and quiet! Two such powerful
+nations!
+
+_Alexis._ For that reason and others I would have gladly seen them
+rest, until our own people had increased in numbers and prosperity.
+
+_Peter._ And thus thou disputest my right, before my face, to the
+exercise of the supreme power.
+
+_Alexis._ Sir! God forbid!
+
+_Peter._ God forbid, indeed! What care such villains as thou art what
+God forbids! He forbids the son to be disobedient to the father; He
+forbids--He forbids--twenty things. I do not wish, and will not have,
+a successor who dreams of dead people.
+
+_Alexis._ My father! I have dreamed of none such.
+
+_Peter._ Thou hast, and hast talked about them--Scythians, I think,
+they call 'em. Now, who told thee, Mr. Professor, that the Scythians
+were a happier people than we are; that they were inoffensive; that
+they were free; that they wandered with their carts from pasture to
+pasture, from river to river; that they traded with good faith; that
+they fought with good courage; that they injured none, invaded none,
+and feared none? At this rate I have effected nothing. The great
+founder of Rome, I heard in Holland, slew his brother for despiting
+the weakness of his walls; and shall the founder of this better place
+spare a degenerate son, who prefers a vagabond life to a civilized
+one, a cart to a city, a Scythian to a Muscovite? Have I not shaved my
+people, and breeched them? Have I not formed them into regular armies,
+with bands of music and haversacks? Are bows better than cannon?
+shepherds than dragoons, mare's milk than brandy, raw steaks than
+broiled? Thine are tenets that strike at the root of politeness and
+sound government. Every prince in Europe is interested in rooting them
+out by fire and sword. There is no other way with false doctrines:
+breath against breath does little.
+
+_Alexis._ Sire, I never have attempted to disseminate my opinions.
+
+_Peter._ How couldst thou? the seed would fall only on granite. Those,
+however, who caught it brought it to me.
+
+_Alexis._ Never have I undervalued civilization: on the contrary, I
+regretted whatever impeded it. In my opinion, the evils that have been
+attributed to it sprang from its imperfections and voids; and no
+nation has yet acquired it more than very scantily.
+
+_Peter._ How so? give me thy reasons--thy fancies, rather; for reason
+thou hast none.
+
+_Alexis._ When I find the first of men, in rank and genius, hating one
+another, and becoming slanderers and liars in order to lower and
+vilify an opponent; when I hear the God of mercy invoked to massacres,
+and thanked for furthering what He reprobates and condemns--I look
+back in vain on any barbarous people for worse barbarism. I have
+expressed my admiration of our forefathers, who, not being Christians,
+were yet more virtuous than those who are; more temperate, more just,
+more sincere, more chaste, more peaceable.
+
+_Peter._ Malignant atheist!
+
+_Alexis._ Indeed, my father, were I malignant I must be an atheist;
+for malignity is contrary to the command, and inconsistent with the
+belief, of God.
+
+_Peter._ Am I Czar of Muscovy, and hear discourses on reason and
+religion? from my own son, too! No, by the Holy Trinity! thou art no
+son of mine. If thou touchest my knee again, I crack thy knuckles with
+this tobacco-stopper: I wish it were a sledge-hammer for thy sake.
+Off, sycophant! Off, runaway slave!
+
+_Alexis._ Father! father! my heart is broken! If I have offended,
+forgive me!
+
+_Peter._ The State requires thy signal punishment.
+
+_Alexis._ If the State requires it, be it so; but let my father's
+anger cease!
+
+_Peter._ The world shall judge between us. I will brand thee with
+infamy.
+
+_Alexis._ Until now, O father! I never had a proper sense of glory.
+Hear me, O Czar! let not a thing so vile as I am stand between you and
+the world! Let none accuse you!
+
+_Peter._ Accuse me, rebel! Accuse me, traitor!
+
+_Alexis._ Let none speak ill of you, O my father! The public voice
+shakes the palace; the public voice penetrates the grave; it precedes
+the chariot of Almighty God, and is heard at the judgment-seat.
+
+_Peter._ Let it go to the devil! I will have none of it here in
+Petersburg. Our church says nothing about it; our laws forbid it. As
+for thee, unnatural brute, I have no more to do with thee neither!
+
+Ho, there! chancellor! What! come at last! Wert napping, or counting
+thy ducats?
+
+_Chancellor._ Your Majesty's will and pleasure!
+
+_Peter._ Is the Senate assembled in that room?
+
+_Chancellor._ Every member, sire.
+
+_Peter._ Conduct this youth with thee, and let them judge him; thou
+understandest me.
+
+_Chancellor._ Your Majesty's commands are the breath of our nostrils.
+
+_Peter._ If these rascals are amiss, I will try my new cargo of
+Livonian hemp upon 'em.
+
+_Chancellor._ [_Returning._] Sire, sire!
+
+_Peter._ Speak, fellow! Surely they have not condemned him to death,
+without giving themselves time to read the accusation, that thou
+comest back so quickly.
+
+_Chancellor._ No, sire! Nor has either been done.
+
+_Peter._ Then thy head quits thy shoulders.
+
+_Chancellor._ O sire!
+
+_Peter._ Curse thy silly _sires_! what art thou about?
+
+_Chancellor._ Alas! he fell.
+
+_Peter._ Tie him up to thy chair, then. Cowardly beast! what made him
+fall?
+
+_Chancellor._ The hand of Death; the name of father.
+
+_Peter._ Thou puzzlest me; prithee speak plainlier.
+
+_Chancellor._ We told him that his crime was proven and manifest; that
+his life was forfeited.
+
+_Peter._ So far, well enough.
+
+_Chancellor._ He smiled.
+
+_Peter._ He did! did he? Impudence shall do him little good. Who could
+have expected it from that smock-face! Go on--what then?
+
+_Chancellor._ He said calmly, but not without sighing twice or thrice,
+'Lead me to the scaffold: I am weary of life; nobody loves me.' I
+condoled with him, and wept upon his hand, holding the paper against
+my bosom. He took the corner of it between his fingers, and said,
+'Read me this paper; read my death-warrant. Your silence and tears
+have signified it; yet the law has its forms. Do not keep me in
+suspense. My father says, too truly, I am not courageous; but the
+death that leads me to my God shall never terrify me.'
+
+_Peter._ I have seen these white-livered knaves die resolutely; I have
+seen them quietly fierce like white ferrets with their watery eyes and
+tiny teeth. You read it?
+
+_Chancellor._ In part, sire! When he heard your Majesty's name
+accusing him of treason and attempts at rebellion and parricide, he
+fell speechless. We raised him up: he was motionless; he was dead!
+
+_Peter._ Inconsiderate and barbarous varlet as thou art, dost thou
+recite this ill accident to a father! and to one who has not dined!
+Bring me a glass of brandy.
+
+_Chancellor._ And it please your Majesty, might I call a--a----
+
+_Peter._ Away and bring it: scamper! All equally and alike shall obey
+and serve me.
+
+Hark ye! bring the bottle with it: I must cool myself--and--hark ye! a
+rasher of bacon on thy life! and some pickled sturgeon, and some krout
+and caviare, and good strong cheese.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY VIII AND ANNE BOLEYN
+
+
+_Henry._ Dost thou know me, Nanny, in this yeoman's dress? 'Sblood!
+does it require so long and vacant a stare to recollect a husband
+after a week or two? No tragedy-tricks with me! a scream, a sob, or
+thy kerchief a trifle the wetter, were enough. Why, verily the little
+fool faints in earnest. These whey faces, like their kinsfolk the
+ghosts, give us no warning. Hast had water enough upon thee? Take
+that, then: art thyself again?
+
+_Anne._ Father of mercies! do I meet again my husband, as was my last
+prayer on earth? Do I behold my beloved lord--in peace--and pardoned,
+my partner in eternal bliss? it was his voice. I cannot see him: why
+cannot I? Oh, why do these pangs interrupt the transports of the
+blessed?
+
+_Henry._ Thou openest thy arms: faith! I came for that. Nanny, thou
+art a sweet slut. Thou groanest, wench: art in labour? Faith! among
+the mistakes of the night, I am ready to think almost that thou hast
+been drinking, and that I have not.
+
+_Anne._ God preserve your Highness: grant me your forgiveness for one
+slight offence. My eyes were heavy; I fell asleep while I was reading.
+I did not know of your presence at first; and, when I did, I could
+not speak. I strove for utterance: I wanted no respect for my liege
+and husband.
+
+_Henry._ My pretty warm nestling, thou wilt then lie! Thou wert
+reading, and aloud too, with thy saintly cup of water by thee,
+and--what! thou art still girlishly fond of those dried cherries!
+
+_Anne._ I had no other fruit to offer your Highness the first time I
+saw you, and you were then pleased to invent for me some reason why
+they should be acceptable. I did not dry these: may I present them,
+such as they are? We shall have fresh next month.
+
+_Henry._ Thou art always driving away from the discourse. One moment
+it suits thee to know me, another not.
+
+_Anne._ Remember, it is hardly three months since I miscarried. I am
+weak, and liable to swoons.
+
+_Henry._ Thou hast, however, thy bridal cheeks, with lustre upon them
+when there is none elsewhere, and obstinate lips resisting all
+impression; but, now thou talkest about miscarrying, who is the father
+of that boy?
+
+_Anne._ Yours and mine--He who hath taken him to his own home, before
+(like me) he could struggle or cry for it.
+
+_Henry._ Pagan, or worse, to talk so! He did not come into the world
+alive: there was no baptism.
+
+_Anne._ I thought only of our loss: my senses are confounded. I did
+not give him my milk, and yet I loved him tenderly; for I often
+fancied, had he lived, how contented and joyful he would have made you
+and England.
+
+_Henry._ No subterfuges and escapes. I warrant, thou canst not say
+whether at my entrance thou wert waking or wandering.
+
+_Anne._ Faintness and drowsiness came upon me suddenly.
+
+_Henry._ Well, since thou really and truly sleepedst, what didst dream
+of?
+
+_Anne._ I begin to doubt whether I did indeed sleep.
+
+_Henry._ Ha! false one--never two sentences of truth together! But
+come, what didst think about, asleep or awake?
+
+_Anne._ I thought that God had pardoned me my offences, and had
+received me unto Him.
+
+_Henry._ And nothing more?
+
+_Anne._ That my prayers had been heard and my wishes were
+accomplishing: the angels alone can enjoy more beatitude than this.
+
+_Henry._ Vexatious little devil! She says nothing now about me, merely
+from perverseness. Hast thou never thought about me, nor about thy
+falsehood and adultery?
+
+_Anne._ If I had committed any kind of falsehood, in regard to you or
+not, I should never have rested until I had thrown myself at your feet
+and obtained your pardon; but, if ever I had been guilty of that other
+crime, I know not whether I should have dared to implore it, even of
+God's mercy.
+
+_Henry._ Thou hast heretofore cast some soft glances upon Smeaton;
+hast thou not?
+
+_Anne._ He taught me to play on the virginals, as you know, when I was
+little, and thereby to please your Highness.
+
+_Henry._ And Brereton and Norris--what have they taught thee?
+
+_Anne._ They are your servants, and trusty ones.
+
+_Henry._ Has not Weston told thee plainly that he loved thee?
+
+_Anne._ Yes; and----
+
+_Henry._ What didst thou?
+
+_Anne._ I defied him.
+
+_Henry._ Is that all?
+
+_Anne._ I could have done no more if he had told me that he hated me.
+Then, indeed, I should have incurred more justly the reproaches of
+your Highness: I should have smiled.
+
+_Henry._ We have proofs abundant: the fellows shall one and all
+confront thee. Aye, clap thy hands and kiss thy sleeve, harlot!
+
+_Anne._ Oh that so great a favour is vouchsafed me! My honour is
+secure; my husband will be happy again; he will see my innocence.
+
+_Henry._ Give me now an account of the moneys thou hast received from
+me within these nine months. I want them not back: they are letters of
+gold in record of thy guilt. Thou hast had no fewer than fifteen
+thousand pounds in that period, without even thy asking; what hast
+done with it, wanton?
+
+_Anne._ I have regularly placed it out to interest.
+
+_Henry._ Where? I demand of thee.
+
+_Anne._ Among the needy and ailing. My Lord Archbishop has the account
+of it, sealed by him weekly. I also had a copy myself; those who took
+away my papers may easily find it; for there are few others, and they
+lie open.
+
+_Henry._ Think on my munificence to thee; recollect who made thee.
+Dost sigh for what thou hast lost?
+
+_Anne._ I do, indeed.
+
+_Henry._ I never thought thee ambitious; but thy vices creep out one
+by one.
+
+_Anne._ I do not regret that I have been a queen and am no longer
+one; nor that my innocence is called in question by those who never
+knew me; but I lament that the good people who loved me so cordially,
+hate and curse me; that those who pointed me out to their daughters
+for imitation check them when they speak about me; and that he whom
+next to God I have served with most devotion is my accuser.
+
+_Henry._ Wast thou conning over something in that dingy book for thy
+defence? Come, tell me, what wast thou reading?
+
+_Anne._ This ancient chronicle. I was looking for someone in my own
+condition, and must have missed the page. Surely in so many hundred
+years there shall have been other young maidens, first too happy for
+exaltation, and after too exalted for happiness--not, perchance,
+doomed to die upon a scaffold, by those they ever honoured and served
+faithfully; that, indeed, I did not look for nor think of; but my
+heart was bounding for any one I could love and pity. She would be
+unto me as a sister dead and gone; but hearing me, seeing me,
+consoling me, and being consoled. O my husband! it is so heavenly a
+thing----
+
+_Henry._ To whine and whimper, no doubt, is vastly heavenly.
+
+_Anne._ I said not so; but those, if there be any such, who never
+weep, have nothing in them of heavenly or of earthly. The plants, the
+trees, the very rocks and unsunned clouds, show us at least the
+semblances of weeping; and there is not an aspect of the globe we live
+on, nor of the waters and skies around it, without a reference and a
+similitude to our joys or sorrows.
+
+_Henry._ I do not remember that notion anywhere. Take care no enemy
+rake out of it something of materialism. Guard well thy empty hot
+brain; it may hatch more evil. As for those odd words, I myself would
+fain see no great harm in them, knowing that grief and frenzy strike
+out many things which would else lie still, and neither spurt nor
+sparkle. I also know that thou hast never read anything but Bible and
+history--the two worst books in the world for young people, and the
+most certain to lead astray both prince and subject. For which reason
+I have interdicted and entirely put down the one, and will (by the
+blessing of the Virgin and of holy Paul) commit the other to a rigid
+censor. If it behoves us kings to enact what our people shall eat and
+drink--of which the most unruly and rebellious spirit can entertain no
+doubt--greatly more doth it behove us to examine what they read and
+think. The body is moved according to the mind and will; we must take
+care that the movement be a right one, on pain of God's anger in this
+life and the next.
+
+_Anne._ O my dear husband! it must be a naughty thing, indeed, that
+makes Him angry beyond remission. Did you ever try how pleasant it is
+to forgive any one? There is nothing else wherein we can resemble God
+perfectly and easily.
+
+_Henry._ Resemble God perfectly and easily! Do vile creatures talk
+thus of the Creator?
+
+_Anne._ No, Henry, when His creatures talk thus of Him, they are no
+longer vile creatures! When they know that He is good, they love Him;
+and, when they love Him, they are good themselves. O Henry! my husband
+and king! the judgments of our Heavenly Father are righteous; on this,
+surely, we must think alike.
+
+_Henry._ And what, then? Speak out; again I command thee, speak
+plainly! thy tongue was not so torpid but this moment. Art ready? Must
+I wait?
+
+_Anne._ If any doubt remains upon your royal mind of your equity in
+this business: should it haply seem possible to you that passion or
+prejudice, in yourself or another, may have warped so strong an
+understanding--do but supplicate the Almighty to strengthen and
+enlighten it, and He will hear you.
+
+_Henry._ What! thou wouldst fain change thy quarters, ay?
+
+_Anne._ My spirit is detached and ready, and I shall change them
+shortly, whatever your Highness may determine.
+
+_Henry._ Yet thou appearest hale and resolute, and (they tell me)
+smirkest and smilest to everybody.
+
+_Anne._ The withered leaf catches the sun sometimes, little as it can
+profit by it; and I have heard stories of the breeze in other climates
+that sets in when daylight is about to close, and how constant it is,
+and how refreshing. My heart, indeed, is now sustained strangely; it
+became the more sensibly so from that time forward, when power and
+grandeur and all things terrestrial were sunk from sight. Every act of
+kindness in those about me gives me satisfaction and pleasure, such as
+I did not feel formerly. I was worse before God chastened me; yet I
+was never an ingrate. What pains have I taken to find out the
+village-girls who placed their posies in my chamber ere I arose in the
+morning! How gladly would I have recompensed the forester who lit up a
+brake on my birthnight, which else had warmed him half the winter! But
+these are times past: I was not Queen of England.
+
+_Henry._ Nor adulterous, nor heretical.
+
+_Anne._ God be praised!
+
+_Henry._ Learned saint! thou knowest nothing of the lighter, but
+perhaps canst inform me about the graver, of them.
+
+_Anne._ Which may it be, my liege?
+
+_Henry._ Which may it be? Pestilence! I marvel that the walls of this
+tower do not crack around thee at such impiety.
+
+_Anne._ I would be instructed by the wisest of theologians: such is
+your Highness.
+
+_Henry._ Are the sins of the body, foul as they are, comparable to
+those of the soul?
+
+_Anne._ When they are united, they must be worse.
+
+_Henry._ Go on, go on: thou pushest thy own breast against the sword.
+God hath deprived thee of thy reason for thy punishment. I must hear
+more: proceed, I charge thee.
+
+_Anne._ An aptitude to believe one thing rather than another, from
+ignorance or weakness, or from the more persuasive manner of the
+teacher, or from his purity of life, or from the strong impression of
+a particular text at a particular time, and various things beside, may
+influence and decide our opinion; and the hand of the Almighty, let us
+hope, will fall gently on human fallibility.
+
+_Henry._ Opinion in matters of faith! rare wisdom! rare religion!
+Troth, Anne! thou hast well sobered me. I came rather warmly and
+lovingly; but these light ringlets, by the holy rood, shall not shade
+this shoulder much longer. Nay, do not start; I tap it for the last
+time, my sweetest. If the Church permitted it, thou shouldst set forth
+on thy long journey with the Eucharist between thy teeth, however
+loath.
+
+_Anne._ Love your Elizabeth, my honoured lord, and God bless you! She
+will soon forget to call me. Do not chide her: think how young she is.
+
+Could I, could I kiss her, but once again! it would comfort my
+heart--or break it.
+
+
+
+
+JOSEPH SCALIGER AND MONTAIGNE
+
+
+_Montaigne._ What could have brought you, M. de l'Escale, to visit the
+old man of the mountain, other than a good heart? Oh, how delighted
+and charmed I am to hear you speak such excellent Gascon. You rise
+early, I see: you must have risen with the sun, to be here at this
+hour; it is a stout half-hour's walk from the brook. I have capital
+white wine, and the best cheese in Auvergne. You saw the goats and
+the two cows before the castle.
+
+Pierre, thou hast done well: set it upon the table, and tell Master
+Matthew to split a couple of chickens and broil them, and to pepper
+but one. Do you like pepper, M. de l'Escale?
+
+_Scaliger._ Not much.
+
+_Montaigne._ Hold hard! let the pepper alone: I hate it. Tell him to
+broil plenty of ham; only two slices at a time, upon his salvation.
+
+_Scaliger._ This, I perceive, is the antechamber to your library: here
+are your everyday books.
+
+_Montaigne._ Faith! I have no other. These are plenty, methinks; is
+not that your opinion?
+
+_Scaliger._ You have great resources within yourself, and therefore
+can do with fewer.
+
+_Montaigne._ Why, how many now do you think here may be?
+
+_Scaliger._ I did not believe at first that there could be above
+fourscore.
+
+_Montaigne._ Well! are fourscore few?--are we talking of peas and
+beans?
+
+_Scaliger._ I and my father (put together) have written well-nigh as
+many.
+
+_Montaigne._ Ah! to write them is quite another thing: but one reads
+books without a spur, or even a pat from our Lady Vanity. How do you
+like my wine?--it comes from the little knoll yonder: you cannot see
+the vines, those chestnut-trees are between.
+
+_Scaliger._ The wine is excellent; light, odoriferous, with a
+smartness like a sharp child's prattle.
+
+_Montaigne._ It never goes to the head, nor pulls the nerves, which
+many do as if they were guitar-strings. I drink a couple of bottles a
+day, winter and summer, and never am the worse for it. You gentlemen
+of the Agennois have better in your province, and indeed the very best
+under the sun. I do not wonder that the Parliament of Bordeaux should
+be jealous of their privileges, and call it Bordeaux. Now, if you
+prefer your own country wine, only say it: I have several bottles in
+my cellar, with corks as long as rapiers, and as polished. I do not
+know, M. de l'Escale, whether you are particular in these matters: not
+quite, I should imagine, so great a judge in them as in others?
+
+_Scaliger._ I know three things: wine, poetry, and the world.
+
+_Montaigne._ You know one too many, then. I hardly know whether I know
+anything about poetry; for I like Clem Marot better than Ronsard.
+Ronsard is so plaguily stiff and stately, where there is no occasion
+for it; I verily do think the man must have slept with his wife in a
+cuirass.
+
+_Scaliger._ It pleases me greatly that you like Marot. His versions of
+the Psalms is lately set to music, and added to the New Testament of
+Geneva.
+
+_Montaigne._ It is putting a slice of honeycomb into a barrel of
+vinegar, which will never grow the sweeter for it.
+
+_Scaliger._ Surely, you do not think in this fashion of the New
+Testament!
+
+_Montaigne._ Who supposes it? Whatever is mild and kindly is there.
+But Jack Calvin has thrown bird-lime and vitriol upon it, and whoever
+but touches the cover dirties his fingers or burns them.
+
+_Scaliger._ Calvin is a very great man, I do assure you, M. de
+Montaigne.
+
+_Montaigne._ I do not like your great men who beckon me to them, call
+me their begotten, their dear child, and their entrails; and, if I
+happen to say on any occasion, 'I beg leave, sir, to dissent a little
+from you,' stamp and cry, 'The devil you do!' and whistle to the
+executioner.
+
+_Scaliger._ You exaggerate, my worthy friend!
+
+_Montaigne._ Exaggerate do I, M. de l'Escale? What was it he did the
+other day to the poor devil there with an odd name?--Melancthon, I
+think it is.
+
+_Scaliger._ I do not know: I have received no intelligence of late
+from Geneva.
+
+_Montaigne._ It was but last night that our curate rode over from
+Lyons (he made two days of it, as you may suppose) and supped with me.
+He told me that Jack had got his old friend hanged and burned. I could
+not join him in the joke, for I find none such in the New Testament,
+on which he would have founded it; and, if it is one, it is not in my
+manner or to my taste.
+
+_Scaliger._ I cannot well believe the report, my dear sir. He was
+rather urgent, indeed, on the combustion of the heretic Michael
+Servetus some years past.
+
+_Montaigne._ A thousand to one, my spiritual guide mistook the name.
+He has heard of both, I warrant him, and thinks in his conscience that
+either is as good a roast as the other.
+
+_Scaliger._ Theologians are proud and intolerant, and truly the
+farthest of all men from theology, if theology means the rational
+sense of religion, or indeed has anything to do with it in any way.
+Melancthon was the very best of the reformers; quiet, sedate,
+charitable, intrepid, firm in friendship, ardent in faith, acute in
+argument, and profound in learning.
+
+_Montaigne._ Who cares about his argumentation or his learning, if he
+was the rest?
+
+_Scaliger._ I hope you will suspend your judgment on this affair until
+you receive some more certain and positive information.
+
+_Montaigne._ I can believe it of the Sieur Calvin.
+
+_Scaliger._ I cannot. John Calvin is a grave man, orderly and
+reasonable.
+
+_Montaigne._ In my opinion he has not the order nor the reason of my
+cook. Mat never took a man for a sucking-pig, cleaning and scraping
+and buttering and roasting him; nor ever twitched God by the sleeve
+and swore He should not have His own way.
+
+_Scaliger._ M. de Montaigne, have you ever studied the doctrine of
+predestination?
+
+_Montaigne._ I should not understand it, if I had; and I would not
+break through an old fence merely to get into a cavern. I would not
+give a fig or a fig-leaf to know the truth of it, as far as any man
+can teach it me. Would it make me honester or happier, or, in other
+things, wiser?
+
+_Scaliger._ I do not know whether it would materially.
+
+_Montaigne._ I should be an egregious fool then to care about it. Our
+disputes on controverted points have filled the country with
+missionaries and cut-throats. Both parties have shown a disposition to
+turn this comfortable old house of mine into a fortress. If I had
+inclined to either, the other would have done it. Come walk about it
+with me; after a ride, you can do nothing better to take off fatigue.
+
+_Scaliger._ A most spacious kitchen!
+
+_Montaigne._ Look up!
+
+_Scaliger._ You have twenty or more flitches of bacon hanging there.
+
+_Montaigne._ And if I had been a doctor or a captain, I should have
+had a cobweb and predestination in the place of them. Your soldiers of
+the _religion_ on the one side, and of the _good old faith_ on the
+other, would not have left unto me safe and sound even that good old
+woman there.
+
+_Scaliger._ Oh, yes! they would, I hope.
+
+_Old Woman._ Why dost giggle, Mat? What should he know about the
+business? He speaks mighty bad French, and is as spiteful as the
+devil. Praised be God, we have a kind master, who thinks about us, and
+feels for us.
+
+_Scaliger._ Upon my word, M. de Montaigne, this gallery is an
+interesting one.
+
+_Montaigne._ I can show you nothing but my house and my dairy. We have
+no chase in the month of May, you know--unless you would like to bait
+the badger in the stable. This is rare sport in rainy days.
+
+_Scaliger._ Are you in earnest, M. de Montaigne?
+
+_Montaigne._ No, no, no, I cannot afford to worry him outright: only a
+little for pastime--a morning's merriment for the dogs and wenches.
+
+_Scaliger._ You really are then of so happy a temperament that, at
+your time of life, you can be amused by baiting a badger!
+
+_Montaigne._ Why not? Your father, a wiser and graver and older man
+than I am, was amused by baiting a professor or critic. I have not a
+dog in the kennel that would treat the badger worse than brave Julius
+treated Cardan and Erasmus, and some dozens more. We are all childish,
+old as well as young; and our very last tooth would fain stick, M. de
+l'Escale, in some tender place of a neighbour. Boys laugh at a person
+who falls in the dirt; men laugh rather when they make him fall, and
+most when the dirt is of their own laying.
+
+Is not the gallery rather cold, after the kitchen? We must go through
+it to get into the court where I keep my tame rabbits; the stable is
+hard by: come along, come along.
+
+_Scaliger._ Permit me to look a little at those banners. Some of them
+are old indeed.
+
+_Montaigne._ Upon my word, I blush to think I never took notice how
+they are tattered. I have no fewer than three women in the house, and
+in a summer's evening, only two hours long, the worst of these rags
+might have been darned across.
+
+_Scaliger._ You would not have done it surely!
+
+_Montaigne._ I am not over-thrifty; the women might have been better
+employed. It is as well as it is then; ay?
+
+_Scaliger._ I think so.
+
+_Montaigne._ So be it.
+
+_Scaliger._ They remind me of my own family, we being descended from
+the great Cane della Scala, Prince of Verona, and from the House of
+Hapsburg, as you must have heard from my father.
+
+_Montaigne._ What signifies it to the world whether the great Cane was
+tied to his grandmother or not? As for the House of Hapsburg, if you
+could put together as many such houses as would make up a city larger
+than Cairo, they would not be worth his study, or a sheet of paper on
+the table of it.
+
+
+
+
+BOCCACCIO AND PETRARCA
+
+
+_Boccaccio._ Remaining among us, I doubt not that you would soon
+receive the same distinctions in your native country as others have
+conferred upon you: indeed, in confidence I may promise it. For
+greatly are the Florentines ashamed that the most elegant of their
+writers and the most independent of their citizens lives in exile, by
+the injustice he had suffered in the detriment done to his property,
+through the intemperate administration of their laws.
+
+_Petrarca._ Let them recall me soon and honourably: then perhaps I may
+assist them to remove their ignominy, which I carry about with me
+wherever I go, and which is pointed out by my exotic laurel.
+
+_Boccaccio._ There is, and ever will be, in all countries and under
+all governments, an ostracism for their greatest men.
+
+_Petrarca._ At present we will talk no more about it. To-morrow I
+pursue my journey towards Padua, where I am expected; where some few
+value and esteem me, honest and learned and ingenious men; although
+neither those Transpadane regions, nor whatever extends beyond them,
+have yet produced an equal to Boccaccio.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Then, in the name of friendship, do not go thither!--form
+such rather from your fellow-citizens. I love my equals heartily; and
+shall love them the better when I see them raised up here, from our
+own mother earth, by you.
+
+_Petrarca._ Let us continue our walk.
+
+_Boccaccio._ If you have been delighted (and you say you have been) at
+seeing again, after so long an absence, the house and garden wherein I
+have placed the relaters of my stories, as reported in the _Decameron_,
+come a little way farther up the ascent, and we will pass through the
+vineyard on the west of the villa. You will see presently another on
+the right, lying in its warm little garden close to the roadside, the
+scene lately of somewhat that would have looked well, as illustration,
+in the midst of your Latin reflections. It shows us that people the
+most serious and determined may act at last contrariwise to the line
+of conduct they have laid down.
+
+_Petrarca._ Relate it to me, Messer Giovanni; for you are able to give
+reality the merits and charms of fiction, just as easily as you give
+fiction the semblance, the stature, and the movement of reality.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I must here forgo such powers, if in good truth I possess
+them.
+
+_Petrarca._ This long green alley, defended by box and cypresses, is
+very pleasant. The smell of box, although not sweet, is more agreeable
+to me than many that are: I cannot say from what resuscitation of
+early and tender feeling. The cypress, too, seems to strengthen the
+nerves of the brain. Indeed, I delight in the odour of most trees and
+plants.
+
+Will not that dog hurt us?--he comes closer.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Dog! thou hast the colours of a magpie and the tongue of
+one; prithee be quiet: art thou not ashamed?
+
+_Petrarca._ Verily he trots off, comforting his angry belly with his
+plenteous tail, flattened and bestrewn under it. He looks back, going
+on, and puffs out his upper lip without a bark.
+
+_Boccaccio._ These creatures are more accessible to temperate and just
+rebuke than the creatures of our species, usually angry with less
+reason, and from no sense, as dogs are, of duty. Look into that white
+arcade! Surely it was white the other day; and now I perceive it is
+still so: the setting sun tinges it with yellow.
+
+_Petrarca._ The house has nothing of either the rustic or the
+magnificent about it; nothing quite regular, nothing much varied. If
+there is anything at all affecting, as I fear there is, in the story
+you are about to tell me, I could wish the edifice itself bore
+externally some little of the interesting that I might hereafter turn
+my mind toward it, looking out of the catastrophe, though not away
+from it. But I do not even find the peculiar and uncostly decoration
+of our Tuscan villas: the central turret, round which the kite
+perpetually circles in search of pigeons or smaller prey, borne
+onward, like the Flemish skater, by effortless will in motionless
+progression. The view of Fiesole must be lovely from that window; but
+I fancy to myself it loses the cascade under the single high arch of
+the Mugnone.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I think so. In this villa--come rather farther off: the
+inhabitants of it may hear us, if they should happen to be in the
+arbour, as most people are at the present hour of day--in this villa,
+Messer Francesco, lives Monna Tita Monalda, who tenderly loved Amadeo
+degli Oricellari. She, however, was reserved and coy; and Father
+Pietro de' Pucci, an enemy to the family of Amadeo, told her nevermore
+to think of him, for that, just before he knew her, he had thrown his
+arm round the neck of Nunciata Righi, his mother's maid, calling her
+most immodestly a sweet creature, and of a whiteness that marble would
+split with envy at.
+
+Monna Tita trembled and turned pale. 'Father, is the girl really so
+very fair?' said she anxiously.
+
+'Madonna,' replied the father, 'after confession she is not much
+amiss: white she is, with a certain tint of pink not belonging to her,
+but coming over her as through the wing of an angel pleased at the
+holy function; and her breath is such, the very ear smells it: poor,
+innocent, sinful soul! Hei! The wretch, Amadeo, would have endangered
+her salvation.'
+
+'She must be a wicked girl to let him,' said Monna Tita. 'A young man
+of good parentage and education would not dare to do such a thing of
+his own accord. I will see him no more, however. But it was before he
+knew me: and it may not be true. I cannot think any young woman would
+let a young man do so, even in the last hour before Lent. Now in what
+month was it supposed to be?'
+
+'Supposed to be!' cried the father indignantly: 'in June; I say in
+June.'
+
+'Oh! that now is quite impossible: for on the second of July,
+forty-one days from this, and at this very hour of it, he swore to me
+eternal love and constancy. I will inquire of him whether it is true:
+I will charge him with it.'
+
+She did. Amadeo confessed his fault, and, thinking it a venial one,
+would have taken and kissed her hand as he asked forgiveness.
+
+_Petrarca._ Children! children! I will go into the house, and if their
+relatives, as I suppose, have approved of the marriage, I will
+endeavour to persuade the young lady that a fault like this, on the
+repentance of her lover, is not unpardonable. But first, is Amadeo a
+young man of loose habits?
+
+_Boccaccio._ Less than our others: in fact, I never heard of any
+deviation, excepting this.
+
+_Petrarca._ Come, then, with me.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Wait a little.
+
+_Petrarca._ I hope the modest Tita, after a trial, will not be too
+severe with him.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Severity is far from her nature; but, such is her purity
+and innocence, she shed many and bitter tears at his confession, and
+declared her unalterable determination of taking the veil among the
+nuns of Fiesole. Amadeo fell at her feet, and wept upon them. She
+pushed him from her gently, and told him she would still love him if
+he would follow her example, leave the world, and become a friar of
+San Marco. Amadeo was speechless; and, if he had not been so, he never
+would have made a promise he intended to violate. She retired from
+him. After a time he arose, less wounded than benumbed by the sharp
+uncovered stones in the garden-walk; and, as a man who fears to fall
+from a precipice goes farther from it than is necessary, so did Amadeo
+shun the quarter where the gate is, and, oppressed by his agony and
+despair, throw his arms across the sundial and rest his brow upon it,
+hot as it must have been on a cloudless day in August. When the
+evening was about to close, he was aroused by the cries of rooks
+overhead; they flew towards Florence, and beyond; he, too, went back
+into the city.
+
+Tita fell sick from her inquietude. Every morning ere sunrise did
+Amadeo return; but could hear only from the labourers in the field
+that Monna Tita was ill, because she had promised to take the veil and
+had not taken it, knowing, as she must do, that the heavenly
+bridegroom is a bridegroom never to be trifled with, let the spouse be
+young and beautiful as she may be. Amadeo had often conversed with the
+peasant of the farm, who much pitied so worthy and loving a gentleman;
+and, finding him one evening fixing some thick and high stakes in the
+ground, offered to help him. After due thanks, 'It is time,' said the
+peasant, 'to rebuild the hovel and watch the grapes.'
+
+'This is my house,' cried he. 'Could I never, in my stupidity, think
+about rebuilding it before? Bring me another mat or two: I will sleep
+here to-night, to-morrow night, every night, all autumn, all winter.'
+
+He slept there, and was consoled at last by hearing that Monna Tita
+was out of danger, and recovering from her illness by spiritual means.
+His heart grew lighter day after day. Every evening did he observe the
+rooks, in the same order, pass along the same track in the heavens,
+just over San Marco; and it now occurred to him, after three weeks,
+indeed, that Monna Tita had perhaps some strange idea, in choosing his
+monastery, not unconnected with the passage of these birds. He grew
+calmer upon it, until he asked himself whether he might hope. In the
+midst of this half-meditation, half-dream, his whole frame was shaken
+by the voices, however low and gentle, of two monks, coming from the
+villa and approaching him. He would have concealed himself under this
+bank whereon we are standing; but they saw him, and called him by
+name. He now perceived that the younger of them was Guiberto Oddi,
+with whom he had been at school about six or seven years ago, and who
+admired him for his courage and frankness when he was almost a child.
+
+'Do not let us mortify poor Amadeo,' said Guiberto to his companion.
+'Return to the road: I will speak a few words to him, and engage him
+(I trust) to comply with reason and yield to necessity.' The elder
+monk, who saw he should have to climb the hill again, assented to the
+proposal, and went into the road. After the first embraces and few
+words, 'Amadeo! Amadeo!' said Guiberto, 'it was love that made me a
+friar; let anything else make you one.'
+
+'Kind heart!' replied Amadeo. 'If death or religion, or hatred of me,
+deprives me of Tita Monalda, I will die, where she commanded me, in
+the cowl. It is you who prepare her, then, to throw away her life and
+mine!'
+
+'Hold! Amadeo!' said Guiberto, 'I officiate together with good Father
+Fontesecco, who invariably falls asleep amid our holy function.'
+
+Now, Messer Francesco, I must inform you that Father Fontesecco has
+the heart of a flower. It feels nothing, it wants nothing; it is pure
+and simple, and full of its own little light. Innocent as a child, as
+an angel, nothing ever troubled him but how to devise what he should
+confess. A confession costs him more trouble to invent than any
+Giornata in my _Decameron_ cost me. He was once overheard to say on
+this occasion, 'God forgive me in His infinite mercy, for making it
+appear that I am a little worse than He has chosen I should be!' He is
+temperate; for he never drinks more than exactly half the wine and
+water set before him. In fact, he drinks the wine and leaves the
+water, saying: 'We have the same water up at San Domenico; we send it
+hither: it would be uncivil to take back our own gift, and still more
+to leave a suspicion that we thought other people's wine poor
+beverage.' Being afflicted by the gravel, the physician of his convent
+advised him, as he never was fond of wine, to leave it off entirely;
+on which he said, 'I know few things; but this I know well--in water
+there is often gravel, in wine never. It hath pleased God to afflict
+me, and even to go a little out of His way in order to do it, for the
+greater warning to other sinners. I will drink wine, brother
+Anselmini, and help His work.'
+
+I have led you away from the younger monk.
+
+'While Father Fontesecco is in the first stage of beatitude, chanting
+through his nose the _Benedicite_, I will attempt,' said Guiberto, 'to
+comfort Monna Tita.'
+
+'Good, blessed Guiberto!' exclaimed Amadeo in a transport of
+gratitude, at which Guiberto smiled with his usual grace and suavity.
+'O Guiberto! Guiberto! my heart is breaking. Why should she want you
+to comfort her?--but--comfort her then!' and he covered his face
+within his hands.
+
+'Remember,' said Guiberto placidly, 'her uncle is bedridden; her aunt
+never leaves him; the servants are old and sullen, and will stir for
+nobody. Finding her resolved, as they believe, to become a nun, they
+are little assiduous in their services. Humour her, if none else does,
+Amadeo; let her fancy that you intend to be a friar; and, for the
+present, walk not on these grounds.'
+
+'Are you true, or are you traitorous?' cried Amadeo, grasping his
+friend's hand most fiercely.
+
+'Follow your own counsel, if you think mine insincere,' said the young
+friar, not withdrawing his hand, but placing the other on Amadeo's.
+'Let me, however, advise you to conceal yourself; and I will direct
+Silvestrina to bring you such accounts of her mistress as may at least
+make you easy in regard to her health. Adieu.'
+
+Amadeo was now rather tranquil; more than he had ever been, not only
+since the displeasure of Monna Tita, but since the first sight of her.
+Profuse at all times in his gratitude to Silvestrina, whenever she
+brought him good news, news better than usual, he pressed her to his
+bosom. Silvestrina Pioppi is about fifteen, slender, fresh,
+intelligent, lively, good-humoured, sensitive; and any one but Amadeo
+might call her very pretty.
+
+_Petrarca._ Ah, Giovanni! here I find your heart obtaining the mastery
+over your vivid and volatile imagination. Well have you said, the
+maiden being really pretty, any one but Amadeo might think her so. On
+the banks of the Sorga there are beautiful maids; the woods and the
+rocks have a thousand times repeated it. I heard but one echo; I heard
+but one name: I would have fled from them for ever at another.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Francesco, do not beat your breast just now: wait a
+little. Monna Tita would take the veil. The fatal certainty was
+announced to Amadeo by his true Guiberto, who had earnestly and
+repeatedly prayed her to consider the thing a few months longer.
+
+'I will see her first! By all the saints of heaven I will see her!'
+cried the desperate Amadeo, and ran into the house, toward the still
+apartment of his beloved. Fortunately Guiberto was neither less active
+nor less strong than he, and overtaking him at the moment, drew him
+into the room opposite. 'If you will be quiet and reasonable, there is
+yet a possibility left you,' said Guiberto in his ear, although
+perhaps he did not think it. 'But if you utter a voice or are seen by
+any one, you ruin the fame of her you love, and obstruct your own
+prospects for ever. It being known that you have not slept in Florence
+these several nights, it will be suspected by the malicious that you
+have slept in the villa with the connivance of Monna Tita. Compose
+yourself; answer nothing; rest where you are: do not add a worse
+imprudence to a very bad one. I promise you my assistance, my speedy
+return, and best counsel: you shall be released at daybreak.' He
+ordered Silvestrina to supply the unfortunate youth with the cordials
+usually administered to the uncle, or with the rich old wine they were
+made of; and she performed the order with such promptitude and
+attention, that he was soon in some sort refreshed.
+
+_Petrarca._ I pity him from my innermost heart, poor young man! Alas,
+we are none of us, by original sin, free from infirmities or from
+vices.
+
+_Boccaccio._ If we could find a man exempt by nature from vices and
+infirmities, we should find one not worth knowing: he would also be
+void of tenderness and compassion. What allowances then could his best
+friends expect from him in their frailties? What help, consolation,
+and assistance in their misfortunes? We are in the midst of a workshop
+well stored with sharp instruments: we may do ill with many, unless we
+take heed; and good with all, if we will but learn how to employ them.
+
+_Petrarca._ There is somewhat of reason in this. You strengthen me to
+proceed with you: I can bear the rest.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Guiberto had taken leave of his friend, and had advanced
+a quarter of a mile, which (as you perceive) is nearly the whole way,
+on his return to the monastery, when he was overtaken by some peasants
+who were hastening homeward from Florence. The information he
+collected from them made him determine to retrace his steps. He
+entered the room again, and, from the intelligence he had just
+acquired, gave Amadeo the assurance that Monna Tita must delay her
+entrance into the convent; for that the abbess had that moment gone
+down the hill on her way toward Siena to venerate some holy relics,
+carrying with her three candles, each five feet long, to burn before
+them; which candles contained many particles of the myrrh presented at
+the Nativity of our Saviour by the Wise Men of the East. Amadeo
+breathed freely, and was persuaded by Guiberto to take another cup of
+old wine, and to eat with him some cold roast kid, which had been
+offered him for _merenda_. After the agitation of his mind a heavy
+sleep fell upon the lover, coming almost before Guiberto departed: so
+heavy indeed that Silvestrina was alarmed. It was her apartment; and
+she performed the honours of it as well as any lady in Florence could
+have done.
+
+_Petrarca._ I easily believe it: the poor are more attentive than the
+rich, and the young are more compassionate than the old.
+
+_Boccaccio._ O Francesco! what inconsistent creatures are we!
+
+_Petrarca._ True, indeed! I now foresee the end. He might have done
+worse.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I think so.
+
+_Petrarca._ He almost deserved it.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I think that too.
+
+_Petrarca._ Wretched mortals! our passions for ever lead us into this,
+or worse.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Ay, truly; much worse generally.
+
+_Petrarca._ The very twig on which the flowers grew lately scourges us
+to the bone in its maturity.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Incredible will it be to you, and, by my faith, to me it
+was hardly credible. Certain, however, is it that Guiberto on his
+return by sunrise found Amadeo in the arms of sleep.
+
+_Petrarca._ Not at all, not at all: the truest lover might suffer and
+act as he did.
+
+_Boccaccio._ But, Francesco, there was another pair of arms about him,
+worth twenty such, divinity as he is. A loud burst of laughter from
+Guiberto did not arouse either of the parties; but Monna Tita heard
+it, and rushed into the room, tearing her hair, and invoking the
+saints of heaven against the perfidy of man. She seized Silvestrina by
+that arm which appeared the most offending: the girl opened her eyes,
+turned on her face, rolled out of bed, and threw herself at the feet
+of her mistress, shedding tears, and wiping them away with the only
+piece of linen about her. Monna Tita too shed tears. Amadeo still
+slept profoundly; a flush, almost of crimson, overspreading his
+cheeks. Monna Tita led away, after some pause, poor Silvestrina, and
+made her confess the whole. She then wept more and more, and made the
+girl confess it again, and explain her confession. 'I cannot believe
+such wickedness,' she cried: 'he could not be so hardened. O sinful
+Silvestrina! how will you ever tell Father Doni one half, one quarter?
+He never can absolve you.'
+
+_Petrarca._ Giovanni, I am glad I did not enter the house; you were
+prudent in restraining me. I have no pity for the youth at all: never
+did one so deserve to lose a mistress.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Say, rather, to gain a wife.
+
+_Petrarca._ Absurdity! impossibility!
+
+_Boccaccio._ He won her fairly; strangely, and on a strange table, as
+he played his game. Listen! that guitar is Monna Tita's. Listen! what
+a fine voice (do not you think it?) is Amadeo's.
+
+_Amadeo._ [_Singing._]
+
+            Oh, I have err'd!
+      I laid my hand upon the nest
+      (Tita, I sigh to sing the rest)
+            Of the wrong bird.
+
+_Petrarca._ She laughs too at it! Ah! Monna Tita was made by nature to
+live on this side of Fiesole.
+
+
+
+
+BOSSUET AND THE DUCHESS DE FONTANGES
+
+
+_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle, it is the king's desire that I compliment you
+on the elevation you have attained.
+
+_Fontanges._ O monseigneur, I know very well what you mean. His
+Majesty is kind and polite to everybody. The last thing he said to me
+was, 'Angelique! do not forget to compliment Monseigneur the bishop on
+the dignity I have conferred upon him, of almoner to the dauphiness. I
+desired the appointment for him only that he might be of rank
+sufficient to confess, now you are duchess. Let him be your confessor,
+my little girl.'
+
+_Bossuet._ I dare not presume to ask you, mademoiselle, what was your
+gracious reply to the condescension of our royal master.
+
+_Fontanges._ Oh, yes! you may. I told him I was almost sure I should
+be ashamed of confessing such naughty things to a person of high rank,
+who writes like an angel.
+
+_Bossuet._ The observation was inspired, mademoiselle, by your
+goodness and modesty.
+
+_Fontanges._ You are so agreeable a man, monseigneur, I will confess
+to you, directly, if you like.
+
+_Bossuet._ Have you brought yourself to a proper frame of mind, young
+lady?
+
+_Fontanges._ What is that?
+
+_Bossuet._ Do you hate sin?
+
+_Fontanges._ Very much.
+
+_Bossuet._ Are you resolved to leave it off?
+
+_Fontanges._ I have left it off entirely since the king began to love
+me. I have never said a spiteful word of anybody since.
+
+_Bossuet._ In your opinion, mademoiselle, are there no other sins than
+malice?
+
+_Fontanges._ I never stole anything; I never committed adultery; I
+never coveted my neighbour's wife; I never killed any person, though
+several have told me they should die for me.
+
+_Bossuet._ Vain, idle talk! Did you listen to it?
+
+_Fontanges._ Indeed I did, with both ears; it seemed so funny.
+
+_Bossuet._ You have something to answer for, then.
+
+_Fontanges._ No, indeed, I have not, monseigneur. I have asked many
+times after them, and found they were all alive, which mortified me.
+
+_Bossuet._ So, then! you would really have them die for you?
+
+_Fontanges._ Oh, no, no! but I wanted to see whether they were in
+earnest, or told me fibs; for, if they told me fibs, I would never
+trust them again.
+
+_Bossuet._ Do you hate the world, mademoiselle?
+
+_Fontanges._ A good deal of it: all Picardy, for example, and all
+Sologne; nothing is uglier--and, oh my life! what frightful men and
+women!
+
+_Bossuet._ I would say, in plain language, do you hate the flesh and
+the devil?
+
+_Fontanges._ Who does not hate the devil? If you will hold my hand the
+while, I will tell him so. I hate you, beast! There now. As for flesh,
+I never could bear a fat man. Such people can neither dance nor hunt,
+nor do anything that I know of.
+
+_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle Marie-Angelique de Scoraille de Rousille,
+Duchess de Fontanges! do you hate titles and dignities and yourself?
+
+_Fontanges._ Myself! does any one hate me? Why should I be the first?
+Hatred is the worst thing in the world: it makes one so very ugly.
+
+_Bossuet._ To love God, we must hate ourselves. We must detest our
+bodies, if we would save our souls.
+
+_Fontanges._ That is hard: how can I do it? I see nothing so
+detestable in mine. Do you? To love is easier. I love God whenever I
+think of Him, He has been so very good to me; but I cannot hate
+myself, if I would. As God hath not hated me, why should I? Beside, it
+was He who made the king to love me; for I heard you say in a sermon
+that the hearts of kings are in His rule and governance. As for titles
+and dignities, I do not care much about them while his Majesty loves
+me, and calls me his Angelique. They make people more civil about us;
+and therefore it must be a simpleton who hates or disregards them, and
+a hypocrite who pretends it. I am glad to be a duchess. Manon and
+Lisette have never tied my garter so as to hurt me since, nor has the
+mischievous old La Grange said anything cross or bold: on the
+contrary, she told me what a fine colour and what a plumpness it gave
+me. Would not you rather be a duchess than a waiting-maid or a nun, if
+the king gave you your choice?
+
+_Bossuet._ Pardon me, mademoiselle, I am confounded at the levity of
+your question.
+
+_Fontanges._ I am in earnest, as you see.
+
+_Bossuet._ Flattery will come before you in other and more dangerous
+forms: you will be commended for excellences which do not belong to
+you; and this you will find as injurious to your repose as to your
+virtue. An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest
+reproof. If you reject it, you are unhappy; if you accept it, you are
+undone. The compliments of a king are of themselves sufficient to
+pervert your intellect.
+
+_Fontanges._ There you are mistaken twice over. It is not my person
+that pleases him so greatly: it is my spirit, my wit, my talents, my
+genius, and that very thing which you have mentioned--what was it? my
+intellect. He never complimented me the least upon my beauty. Others
+have said that I am the most beautiful young creature under heaven; a
+blossom of Paradise, a nymph, an angel; worth (let me whisper it in
+your ear--do I lean too hard?) a thousand Montespans. But his Majesty
+never said more on the occasion than that I was _imparagonable!_ (what
+is that?) and that he adored me; holding my hand and sitting quite
+still, when he might have romped with me and kissed me.
+
+_Bossuet._ I would aspire to the glory of converting you.
+
+_Fontanges._ You may do anything with me but convert me: you must not
+do that; I am a Catholic born. M. de Turenne and Mademoiselle de Duras
+were heretics: you did right there. The king told the chancellor that
+he prepared them, that the business was arranged for you, and that you
+had nothing to do but get ready the arguments and responses, which you
+did gallantly--did not you? And yet Mademoiselle de Duras was very
+awkward for a long while afterwards in crossing herself, and was once
+remarked to beat her breast in the litany with the points of two
+fingers at a time, when every one is taught to use only the second,
+whether it has a ring upon it or not. I am sorry she did so; for
+people might think her insincere in her conversion, and pretend that
+she kept a finger for each religion.
+
+_Bossuet._ It would be as uncharitable to doubt the conviction of
+Mademoiselle de Duras as that of M. le Marechal.
+
+_Fontanges._ I have heard some fine verses, I can assure you,
+monseigneur, in which you are called the conqueror of Turenne. I
+should like to have been his conqueror myself, he was so great a man.
+I understand that you have lately done a much more difficult thing.
+
+_Bossuet._ To what do you refer, mademoiselle?
+
+_Fontanges._ That you have overcome quietism. Now, in the name of
+wonder, how could you manage that?
+
+_Bossuet._ By the grace of God.
+
+_Fontanges._ Yes, indeed; but never until now did God give any
+preacher so much of His grace as to subdue this pest.
+
+_Bossuet._ It has appeared among us but lately.
+
+_Fontanges._ Oh, dear me! I have always been subject to it dreadfully,
+from a child.
+
+_Bossuet._ Really! I never heard so.
+
+_Fontanges._ I checked myself as well as I could, although they
+constantly told me I looked well in it.
+
+_Bossuet._ In what, mademoiselle?
+
+_Fontanges._ In quietism; that is, when I fell asleep at sermon time.
+I am ashamed that such a learned and pious man as M. de Fenelon should
+incline to it,[1] as they say he does.
+
+_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle, you quite mistake the matter.
+
+_Fontanges._ Is not then M. de Fenelon thought a very pious and
+learned person?
+
+_Bossuet._ And justly.
+
+_Fontanges._ I have read a great way in a romance he has begun, about
+a knight-errant in search of a father. The king says there are many
+such about his court; but I never saw them nor heard of them before.
+The Marchioness de la Motte, his relative, brought it to me, written
+out in a charming hand, as much as the copy-book would hold; and I got
+through, I know not how far. If he had gone on with the nymphs in the
+grotto, I never should have been tired of him; but he quite forgot his
+own story, and left them at once; in a hurry (I suppose) to set out
+upon his mission to Saintonge in the _pays de d'Aunis_, where the king
+has promised him a famous _heretic hunt_. He is, I do assure you, a
+wonderful creature: he understands so much Latin and Greek, and knows
+all the tricks of the sorceresses. Yet you keep him under.
+
+_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle, if you really have anything to confess, and
+if you desire that I should have the honour of absolving you, it would
+be better to proceed in it, than to oppress me with unmerited eulogies
+on my humble labours.
+
+_Fontanges._ You must first direct me, monseigneur: I have nothing
+particular. The king assures me there is no harm whatever in his love
+toward me.
+
+_Bossuet._ That depends on your thoughts at the moment. If you
+abstract the mind from the body, and turn your heart toward Heaven----
+
+_Fontanges._ O monseigneur, I always did so--every time but once--you
+quite make me blush. Let us converse about something else, or I shall
+grow too serious, just as you made me the other day at the funeral
+sermon. And now let me tell you, my lord, you compose such pretty
+funeral sermons, I hope I shall have the pleasure of hearing you
+preach mine.
+
+_Bossuet._ Rather let us hope, mademoiselle, that the hour is yet far
+distant when so melancholy a service will be performed for you. May he
+who is unborn be the sad announcer of your departure hence![2] May he
+indicate to those around him many virtues not perhaps yet full-blown
+in you, and point triumphantly to many faults and foibles checked by
+you in their early growth, and lying dead on the open road, you shall
+have left behind you! To me the painful duty will, I trust, be
+spared: I am advanced in age; you are a child.
+
+_Fontanges._ Oh, no! I am seventeen.
+
+_Bossuet._ I should have supposed you younger by two years at least.
+But do you collect nothing from your own reflection, which raises so
+many in my breast? You think it possible that I, aged as I am, may
+preach a sermon at your funeral. We say that our days are few; and
+saying it, we say too much. Marie-Angelique, we have but one: the past
+are not ours, and who can promise us the future? This in which we live
+is ours only while we live in it; the next moment may strike it off
+from us; the next sentence I would utter may be broken and fall
+between us.[3] The beauty that has made a thousand hearts to beat at
+one instant, at the succeeding has been without pulse and colour,
+without admirer, friend, companion, follower. She by whose eyes the
+march of victory shall have been directed, whose name shall have
+animated armies at the extremities of the earth, drops into one of its
+crevices and mingles with its dust. Duchess de Fontanges! think on
+this! Lady! so live as to think on it undisturbed!
+
+_Fontanges._ O God! I am quite alarmed. Do not talk thus gravely. It
+is in vain that you speak to me in so sweet a voice. I am frightened
+even at the rattle of the beads about my neck: take them off, and let
+us talk on other things. What was it that dropped on the floor as you
+were speaking? It seemed to shake the room, though it sounded like a
+pin or button.
+
+_Bossuet._ Leave it there!
+
+_Fontanges._ Your ring fell from your hand, my lord bishop! How quick
+you are! Could not you have trusted me to pick it up?
+
+_Bossuet._ Madame is too condescending: had this happened, I should
+have been overwhelmed with confusion. My hand is shrivelled: the ring
+has ceased to fit it. A mere accident may draw us into perdition; a
+mere accident may bestow on us the means of grace. A pebble has moved
+you more than my words.
+
+_Fontanges._ It pleases me vastly: I admire rubies. I will ask the
+king for one exactly like it. This is the time he usually comes from
+the chase. I am sorry you cannot be present to hear how prettily I
+shall ask him: but that is impossible, you know; for I shall do it
+just when I am certain he would give me anything. He said so himself:
+he said but yesterday--
+
+      'Such a sweet creature is worth a world':
+
+and no actor on the stage was more like a king than his Majesty was
+when he spoke it, if he had but kept his wig and robe on. And yet you
+know he is rather stiff and wrinkled for so great a monarch; and his
+eyes, I am afraid, are beginning to fail him, he looks so close at
+things.
+
+_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle, such is the duty of a prince who desires to
+conciliate our regard and love.
+
+_Fontanges._ Well, I think so, too, though I did not like it in him at
+first. I am sure he will order the ring for me, and I will confess to
+you with it upon my finger. But first I must be cautious and
+particular to know of him how much it is his royal will that I should
+say.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] The opinions of Molinos on Mysticism and Quietism had begun to
+spread abroad; but Fenelon, who had acquired already a very high
+celebrity for eloquence, had not yet written on the subject. We may
+well suppose that Bossuet was among the earliest assailants of a
+system which he afterward attacked so vehemently.
+
+[2] Bossuet was in his fifty-fourth year; Mademoiselle de Fontanges
+died in child-bed the year following: he survived her twenty-three
+years.
+
+[3] Though Bossuet was capable of uttering and even of feeling such a
+sentiment, his conduct towards Fenelon, the fairest apparition that
+Christianity ever presented, was ungenerous and unjust.
+
+While the diocese of Cambray was ravaged by Louis, it was spared by
+Marlborough; who said to the archbishop that, if he was sorry he had
+not taken Cambray, it was chiefly because he lost for a time the
+pleasure of visiting so great a man. Peterborough, the next of our
+generals in glory, paid his respects to him some years afterward.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN OF GAUNT AND JOANNA OF KENT
+
+
+      Joanna, called the Fair Maid of Kent, was cousin of
+      the Black Prince, whom she married. John of Gaunt was
+      suspected of aiming at the crown in the beginning of
+      Richard's minority, which, increasing the hatred of
+      the people against him for favouring the sect of
+      Wickliffe, excited them to demolish his house and to
+      demand his impeachment.
+
+_Joanna._ How is this, my cousin, that you are besieged in your own
+house by the citizens of London? I thought you were their idol.
+
+_Gaunt._ If their idol, madam, I am one which they may tread on as
+they list when down; but which, by my soul and knighthood! the ten
+best battle-axes among them shall find it hard work to unshrine.
+
+Pardon me: I have no right, perhaps, to take or touch this hand; yet,
+my sister, bricks and stones and arrows are not presents fit for you.
+Let me conduct you some paces hence.
+
+_Joanna._ I will speak to those below in the street. Quit my hand:
+they shall obey me.
+
+_Gaunt._ If you intend to order my death, madam, your guards who have
+entered my court, and whose spurs and halberts I hear upon the
+staircase, may overpower my domestics; and, seeing no such escape as
+becomes my dignity, I submit to you. Behold my sword and gauntlet at
+your feet! Some formalities, I trust, will be used in the proceedings
+against me. Entitle me, in my attainder, not John of Gaunt, not Duke
+of Lancaster, not King of Castile; nor commemorate my father, the most
+glorious of princes, the vanquisher and pardoner of the most powerful;
+nor style me, what those who loved or who flattered me did when I was
+happier, cousin to the Fair Maid of Kent. Joanna, those days are over!
+But no enemy, no law, no eternity can take away from me, or move
+further off, my affinity in blood to the conqueror in the field of
+Crecy, of Poitiers, and Najera. Edward was my brother when he was but
+your cousin; and the edge of my shield has clinked on his in many a
+battle. Yes, we were ever near--if not in worth, in danger. She weeps.
+
+_Joanna._ Attainder! God avert it! Duke of Lancaster, what dark
+thought--alas! that the Regency should have known it! I came hither,
+sir, for no such purpose as to ensnare or incriminate or alarm you.
+
+These weeds might surely have protected me from the fresh tears you
+have drawn forth.
+
+_Gaunt._ Sister, be comforted! this visor, too, has felt them.
+
+_Joanna._ O my Edward! my own so lately! Thy memory--thy beloved
+image--which never hath abandoned me, makes me bold: I dare not say
+'generous'; for in saying it I should cease to be so--and who could be
+called generous by the side of thee? I will rescue from perdition the
+enemy of my son.
+
+Cousin, you loved your brother. Love, then, what was dearer to him
+than his life: protect what he, valiant as you have seen him, cannot!
+The father, who foiled so many, hath left no enemies; the innocent
+child, who can injure no one, finds them!
+
+Why have you unlaced and laid aside your visor? Do not expose your
+body to those missiles. Hold your shield before yourself, and step
+aside. I need it not. I am resolved----
+
+_Gaunt._ On what, my cousin? Speak, and, by the saints! it shall be
+done. This breast is your shield; this arm is mine.
+
+_Joanna._ Heavens! who could have hurled those masses of stone from
+below? they stunned me. Did they descend all of them together; or did
+they split into fragments on hitting the pavement?
+
+_Gaunt._ Truly, I was not looking that way: they came, I must believe,
+while you were speaking.
+
+_Joanna._ Aside, aside! further back! disregard _me_! Look! that last
+arrow sticks half its head deep in the wainscot. It shook so violently
+I did not see the feather at first.
+
+No, no, Lancaster! I will not permit it. Take your shield up again;
+and keep it all before you. Now step aside: I am resolved to prove
+whether the people will hear me.
+
+_Gaunt._ Then, madam, by your leave----
+
+_Joanna._ Hold!
+
+_Gaunt._ Villains! take back to your kitchens those spits and skewers
+that you, forsooth, would fain call swords and arrows; and keep your
+bricks and stones for your graves!
+
+_Joanna._ Imprudent man! who can save you? I shall be frightened: I
+must speak at once.
+
+O good kind people! ye who so greatly loved me, when I am sure I had
+done nothing to deserve it, have I (unhappy me!) no merit with you
+now, when I would assuage your anger, protect your fair fame, and send
+you home contented with yourselves and me? Who is he, worthy citizens,
+whom ye would drag to slaughter?
+
+True, indeed, he did revile someone. Neither I nor you can say
+whom--some feaster and rioter, it seems, who had little right (he
+thought) to carry sword or bow, and who, to show it, hath slunk away.
+And then another raised his anger: he was indignant that, under his
+roof, a woman should be exposed to stoning. Which of you would not be
+as choleric in a like affront? In the house of which among you should
+I not be protected as resolutely?
+
+No, no: I never can believe those angry cries. Let none ever tell me
+again he is the enemy of my son, of his king, your darling child,
+Richard. Are your fears more lively than a poor weak female's? than a
+mother's? yours, whom he hath so often led to victory, and praised to
+his father, naming each--he, John of Gaunt, the defender of the
+helpless, the comforter of the desolate, the rallying signal of the
+desperately brave!
+
+Retire, Duke of Lancaster! This is no time----
+
+_Gaunt._ Madam, I obey; but not through terror of that puddle at the
+house door, which my handful of dust would dry up. Deign to command
+me!
+
+_Joanna._ In the name of my son, then, retire!
+
+_Gaunt._ Angelic goodness! I must fairly win it.
+
+_Joanna._ I think I know his voice that crieth out: 'Who will answer
+for him?' An honest and loyal man's, one who would counsel and save me
+in any difficulty and danger. With what pleasure and satisfaction,
+with what perfect joy and confidence, do I answer our right-trusty and
+well-judging friend!
+
+'Let Lancaster bring his sureties,' say you, 'and we separate.' A
+moment yet before we separate; if I might delay you so long, to
+receive your sanction of those securities: for, in such grave matters,
+it would ill become us to be over-hasty. I could bring fifty, I could
+bring a hundred, not from among soldiers, not from among courtiers;
+but selected from yourselves, were it equitable and fair to show such
+partialities, or decorous in the parent and guardian of a king to
+offer any other than herself.
+
+Raised by the hand of the Almighty from amidst you, but still one of
+you, if the mother of a family is a part of it, here I stand surety
+for John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, for his loyalty and allegiance.
+
+_Gaunt._ [_Running back toward Joanna._] Are the rioters, then,
+bursting into the chamber through the windows?
+
+_Joanna._ The windows and doors of this solid edifice rattled and
+shook at the people's acclamation. My word is given for you: this was
+theirs in return. Lancaster! what a voice have the people when they
+speak out! It shakes me with astonishment, almost with consternation,
+while it establishes the throne: what must it be when it is lifted up
+in vengeance!
+
+_Gaunt._ Wind; vapour----
+
+_Joanna._ Which none can wield nor hold. Need I say this to my cousin
+of Lancaster?
+
+_Gaunt._ Rather say, madam, that there is always one star above which
+can tranquillize and control them.
+
+_Joanna._ Go, cousin! another time more sincerity!
+
+_Gaunt._ You have this day saved my life from the people; for I now
+see my danger better, when it is no longer close before me. My Christ!
+if ever I forget----
+
+_Joanna._ Swear not: every man in England hath sworn what you would
+swear. But if you abandon my Richard, my brave and beautiful child,
+may--Oh! I could never curse, nor wish an evil; but, if you desert him
+in the hour of need, you will think of those who have not deserted
+you, and your own great heart will lie heavy on you, Lancaster!
+
+Am I graver than I ought to be, that you look dejected? Come, then,
+gentle cousin, lead me to my horse, and accompany me home. Richard
+will embrace us tenderly. Every one is dear to every other upon rising
+out fresh from peril; affectionately then will he look, sweet boy,
+upon his mother and his uncle! Never mind how many questions he may
+ask you, nor how strange ones. His only displeasure, if he has any,
+will be that he stood not against the rioters or among them.
+
+_Gaunt._ Older than he have been as fond of mischief, and as fickle in
+the choice of a party.
+
+I shall tell him that, coming to blows, the assailant is often in the
+right; that the assailed is always.
+
+
+
+
+LEOFRIC AND GODIVA
+
+
+_Godiva._ There is a dearth in the land, my sweet Leofric! Remember
+how many weeks of drought we have had, even in the deep pastures of
+Leicestershire; and how many Sundays we have heard the same prayers
+for rain, and supplications that it would please the Lord in His mercy
+to turn aside His anger from the poor, pining cattle. You, my dear
+husband, have imprisoned more than one malefactor for leaving his dead
+ox in the public way; and other hinds have fled before you out of the
+traces, in which they, and their sons and their daughters, and haply
+their old fathers and mothers, were dragging the abandoned wain
+homeward. Although we were accompanied by many brave spearmen and
+skilful archers, it was perilous to pass the creatures which the
+farmyard dogs, driven from the hearth by the poverty of their masters,
+were tearing and devouring; while others, bitten and lamed, filled the
+air either with long and deep howls or sharp and quick barkings, as
+they struggled with hunger and feebleness, or were exasperated by heat
+and pain. Nor could the thyme from the heath, nor the bruised branches
+of the fir-tree, extinguish or abate the foul odour.
+
+_Leofric._ And now, Godiva, my darling, thou art afraid we should be
+eaten up before we enter the gates of Coventry; or perchance that in
+the gardens there are no roses to greet thee, no sweet herbs for thy
+mat and pillow.
+
+_Godiva._ Leofric, I have no such fears. This is the month of roses: I
+find them everywhere since my blessed marriage. They, and all other
+sweet herbs, I know not why, seem to greet me wherever I look at them,
+as though they knew and expected me. Surely they cannot feel that I am
+fond of them.
+
+_Leofric._ O light, laughing simpleton! But what wouldst thou? I came
+not hither to pray; and yet if praying would satisfy thee, or remove
+the drought, I would ride up straightway to Saint Michael's and pray
+until morning.
+
+_Godiva._ I would do the same, O Leofric! but God hath turned away His
+ear from holier lips than mine. Would my own dear husband hear me, if
+I implored him for what is easier to accomplish--what he can do like
+God?
+
+_Leofric._ How! what is it?
+
+_Godiva._ I would not, in the first hurry of your wrath, appeal to
+you, my loving lord, on behalf of these unhappy men who have offended
+you.
+
+_Leofric._ Unhappy! is that all?
+
+_Godiva._ Unhappy they must surely be, to have offended you so
+grievously. What a soft air breathes over us! how quiet and serene and
+still an evening! how calm are the heavens and the earth! Shall none
+enjoy them; not even we, my Leofric? The sun is ready to set: let it
+never set, O Leofric, on your anger. These are not my words: they are
+better than mine. Should they lose their virtue from my unworthiness
+in uttering them?
+
+_Leofric._ Godiva, wouldst thou plead to me for rebels?
+
+_Godiva._ They have, then, drawn the sword against you? Indeed, I knew
+it not.
+
+_Leofric._ They have omitted to send me my dues, established by my
+ancestors, well knowing of our nuptials, and of the charges and
+festivities they require, and that in a season of such scarcity my own
+lands are insufficient.
+
+_Godiva._ If they were starving, as they said they were----
+
+_Leofric._ Must I starve too? Is it not enough to lose my vassals?
+
+_Godiva._ Enough! O God! too much! too much! May you never lose them!
+Give them life, peace, comfort, contentment. There are those among
+them who kissed me in my infancy, and who blessed me at the baptismal
+font. Leofric, Leofric! the first old man I meet I shall think is one
+of those; and I shall think on the blessing he gave, and (ah me!) on
+the blessing I bring back to him. My heart will bleed, will burst; and
+he will weep at it! he will weep, poor soul, for the wife of a cruel
+lord who denounces vengeance on him, who carries death into his
+family!
+
+_Leofric._ We must hold solemn festivals.
+
+_Godiva._ We must, indeed.
+
+_Leofric._ Well, then?
+
+_Godiva._ Is the clamorousness that succeeds the death of God's dumb
+creatures, are crowded halls, are slaughtered cattle festivals?--are
+maddening songs, and giddy dances, and hireling praises from
+parti-coloured coats? Can the voice of a minstrel tell us better
+things of ourselves than our own internal one might tell us; or can
+his breath make our breath softer in sleep? O my beloved! let
+everything be a joyance to us: it will, if we will. Sad is the day,
+and worse must follow, when we hear the blackbird in the garden, and
+do not throb with joy. But, Leofric, the high festival is strown by
+the servant of God upon the heart of man. It is gladness, it is
+thanksgiving; it is the orphan, the starveling, pressed to the bosom,
+and bidden as its first commandment to remember its benefactor. We
+will hold this festival; the guests are ready: we may keep it up for
+weeks, and months, and years together, and always be the happier and
+the richer for it. The beverage of this feast, O Leofric, is sweeter
+than bee or flower or vine can give us: it flows from heaven; and in
+heaven will it abundantly be poured out again to him who pours it out
+here abundantly.
+
+_Leofric._ Thou art wild.
+
+_Godiva._ I have, indeed, lost myself. Some Power, some good kind
+Power, melts me (body and soul and voice) into tenderness and love. O
+my husband, we must obey it. Look upon me! look upon me! lift your
+sweet eyes from the ground! I will not cease to supplicate; I dare
+not.
+
+_Leofric._ We may think upon it.
+
+_Godiva._ Oh, never say that! What! think upon goodness when you can
+be good? Let not the infants cry for sustenance! The Mother of Our
+Blessed Lord will hear them; us never, never afterward.
+
+_Leofric._ Here comes the bishop: we are but one mile from the walls.
+Why dismountest thou? no bishop can expect this. Godiva! my honour and
+rank among men are humbled by this. Earl Godwin will hear of it. Up!
+up! the bishop hath seen it: he urgeth his horse onward. Dost thou not
+hear him now upon the solid turf behind thee?
+
+_Godiva._ Never, no, never will I rise, O Leofric, until you remit
+this most impious task--this tax on hard labour, on hard life.
+
+_Leofric._ Turn round: look how the fat nag canters, as to the tune of
+a sinner's psalm, slow and hard-breathing. What reason or right can
+the people have to complain, while their bishop's steed is so sleek
+and well caparisoned? Inclination to change, desire to abolish old
+usages. Up! up! for shame! They shall smart for it, idlers! Sir
+Bishop, I must blush for my young bride.
+
+_Godiva._ My husband, my husband! will you pardon the city?
+
+_Leofric._ Sir Bishop! I could think you would have seen her in this
+plight. Will I pardon? Yea, Godiva, by the holy rood, will I pardon
+the city, when thou ridest naked at noontide through the streets!
+
+_Godiva._ O my dear, cruel Leofric, where is the heart you gave me? It
+was not so: can mine have hardened it?
+
+_Bishop._ Earl, thou abashest thy spouse; she turneth pale, and
+weepeth. Lady Godiva, peace be with thee.
+
+_Godiva._ Thanks, holy man! peace will be with me when peace is with
+your city. Did you hear my lord's cruel word?
+
+_Bishop._ I did, lady.
+
+_Godiva._ Will you remember it, and pray against it?
+
+_Bishop._ Wilt _thou_ forget it, daughter?
+
+_Godiva._ I am not offended.
+
+_Bishop._ Angel of peace and purity!
+
+_Godiva._ But treasure it up in your heart: deem it an incense, good
+only when it is consumed and spent, ascending with prayer and
+sacrifice. And, now, what was it?
+
+_Bishop._ Christ save us! that He will pardon the city when thou
+ridest naked through the streets at noon.
+
+_Godiva._ Did he swear an oath?
+
+_Bishop._ He sware by the holy rood.
+
+_Godiva._ My Redeemer, Thou hast heard it! save the city!
+
+_Leofric._ We are now upon the beginning of the pavement: these are
+the suburbs. Let us think of feasting: we may pray afterward;
+to-morrow we shall rest.
+
+_Godiva._ No judgments, then, to-morrow, Leofric?
+
+_Leofric._ None: we will carouse.
+
+_Godiva._ The saints of heaven have given me strength and confidence;
+my prayers are heard; the heart of my beloved is now softened.
+
+_Leofric._ Ay, ay.
+
+_Godiva._ Say, dearest Leofric, is there indeed no other hope, no
+other mediation?
+
+_Leofric._ I have sworn. Beside, thou hast made me redden and turn my
+face away from thee, and all the knaves have seen it: this adds to the
+city's crime.
+
+_Godiva._ I have blushed, too, Leofric, and was not rash nor obdurate.
+
+_Leofric._ But thou, my sweetest, art given to blushing: there is no
+conquering it in thee. I wish thou hadst not alighted so hastily and
+roughly: it hath shaken down a sheaf of thy hair. Take heed thou sit
+not upon it, lest it anguish thee. Well done! it mingleth now sweetly
+with the cloth of gold upon the saddle, running here and there, as if
+it had life and faculties and business, and were working thereupon
+some newer and cunninger device. O my beauteous Eve! there is a
+Paradise about thee! the world is refreshed as thou movest and
+breathest on it. I cannot see or think of evil where thou art. I could
+throw my arms even here about thee. No signs for me! no shaking of
+sunbeams! no reproof or frown of wonderment.--I _will_ say it--now,
+then, for worse--I could close with my kisses thy half-open lips, ay,
+and those lovely and loving eyes, before the people.
+
+_Godiva._ To-morrow you shall kiss me, and they shall bless you for
+it. I shall be very pale, for to-night I must fast and pray.
+
+_Leofric._ I do not hear thee; the voices of the folk are so loud
+under this archway.
+
+_Godiva._ [_To herself._] God help them! good kind souls! I hope they
+will not crowd about me so to-morrow. O Leofric! could my name be
+forgotten, and yours alone remembered! But perhaps my innocence may
+save me from reproach; and how many as innocent are in fear and
+famine! No eye will open on me but fresh from tears. What a young
+mother for so large a family! Shall my youth harm me? Under God's hand
+it gives me courage. Ah! when will the morning come? Ah! when will the
+noon be over?
+
+      The story of Godiva, at one of whose festivals or
+      fairs I was present in my boyhood, has always much
+      interested me; and I wrote a poem on it, sitting, I
+      remember, by the _square pool_ at Rugby. When I showed
+      it to the friend in whom I had most confidence, he
+      began to scoff at the subject; and, on his reaching
+      the last line, his laughter was loud and immoderate.
+      This conversation has brought both laughter and stanza
+      back to me, and the earnestness with which I entreated
+      and implored my friend _not to tell the lads_, so
+      heart-strickenly and desperately was I ashamed. The
+      verses are these, if any one else should wish another
+      laugh at me:
+
+      'In every hour, in every mood,
+      O lady, it is sweet and good
+        To bathe the soul in prayer;
+      And, at the close of such a day,
+      When we have ceased to bless and pray,
+        To dream on thy long hair.'
+
+      May the peppermint be still growing on the bank in
+      that place!
+
+
+
+
+ESSEX AND SPENSER
+
+
+_Essex._ Instantly on hearing of thy arrival from Ireland, I sent a
+message to thee, good Edmund, that I might learn, from one so
+judicious and dispassionate as thou art, the real state of things in
+that distracted country; it having pleased the queen's Majesty to
+think of appointing me her deputy, in order to bring the rebellious to
+submission.
+
+_Spenser._ Wisely and well considered; but more worthily of her
+judgment than her affection. May your lordship overcome, as you have
+ever done, the difficulties and dangers you foresee.
+
+_Essex._ We grow weak by striking at random; and knowing that I must
+strike, and strike heavily, I would fain see exactly where the stroke
+shall fall.
+
+Now what tale have you for us?
+
+_Spenser._ Interrogate me, my lord, that I may answer each question
+distinctly, my mind being in sad confusion at what I have seen and
+undergone.
+
+_Essex._ Give me thy account and opinion of these very affairs as thou
+leftest them; for I would rather know one part well than all
+imperfectly; and the violences of which I have heard within the day
+surpass belief.
+
+Why weepest thou, my gentle Spenser? Have the rebels sacked thy house?
+
+_Spenser._ They have plundered and utterly destroyed it.
+
+_Essex._ I grieve for thee, and will see thee righted.
+
+_Spenser._ In this they have little harmed me.
+
+_Essex._ How! I have heard it reported that thy grounds are fertile,
+and thy mansion large and pleasant.
+
+_Spenser._ If river and lake and meadow-ground and mountain could
+render any place the abode of pleasantness, pleasant was mine, indeed!
+
+On the lovely banks of Mulla I found deep contentment. Under the dark
+alders did I muse and meditate. Innocent hopes were my gravest cares,
+and my playfullest fancy was with kindly wishes. Ah! surely of all
+cruelties the worst is to extinguish our kindness. Mine is gone: I
+love the people and the land no longer. My lord, ask me not about
+them: I may speak injuriously.
+
+_Essex._ Think rather, then, of thy happier hours and busier
+occupations; these likewise may instruct me.
+
+_Spenser._ The first seeds I sowed in the garden, ere the old castle
+was made habitable for my lovely bride, were acorns from Penshurst. I
+planted a little oak before my mansion at the birth of each child. My
+sons, I said to myself, shall often play in the shade of them when I
+am gone; and every year shall they take the measure of their growth,
+as fondly as I take theirs.
+
+_Essex._ Well, well; but let not this thought make thee weep so
+bitterly.
+
+_Spenser._ Poison may ooze from beautiful plants; deadly grief from
+dearest reminiscences. I _must_ grieve, I _must_ weep: it seems the
+law of God, and the only one that men are not disposed to contravene.
+In the performance of this alone do they effectually aid one another.
+
+_Essex._ Spenser! I wish I had at hand any arguments or persuasions of
+force sufficient to remove thy sorrow; but, really, I am not in the
+habit of seeing men grieve at anything except the loss of favour at
+court, or of a hawk, or of a buck-hound. And were I to swear out
+condolences to a man of thy discernment, in the same round, roll-call
+phrases we employ with one another upon these occasions, I should be
+guilty, not of insincerity, but of insolence. True grief hath ever
+something sacred in it; and, when it visiteth a wise man and a brave
+one, is most holy.
+
+Nay, kiss not my hand: he whom God smiteth hath God with him. In His
+presence what am I?
+
+_Spenser._ Never so great, my lord, as at this hour, when you see
+aright who is greater. May He guide your counsels, and preserve your
+life and glory!
+
+_Essex._ Where are thy friends? Are they with thee?
+
+_Spenser._ Ah, where, indeed! Generous, true-hearted Philip! where art
+thou, whose presence was unto me peace and safety; whose smile was
+contentment, and whose praise renown? My lord! I cannot but think of
+him among still heavier losses: he was my earliest friend, and would
+have taught me wisdom.
+
+_Essex._ Pastoral poetry, my dear Spenser, doth not require tears and
+lamentations. Dry thine eyes; rebuild thine house: the queen and
+council, I venture to promise thee, will make ample amends for every
+evil thou hast sustained. What! does that enforce thee to wail still
+louder?
+
+_Spenser._ Pardon me, bear with me, most noble heart! I have lost what
+no council, no queen, no Essex, can restore.
+
+_Essex._ We will see that. There are other swords, and other arms to
+yield them, beside a Leicester's and a Raleigh's. Others can crush
+their enemies, and serve their friends.
+
+_Spenser._ O my sweet child! And of many so powerful, many so wise and
+so beneficent, was there none to save thee? None, none!
+
+_Essex._ I now perceive that thou lamentest what almost every father
+is destined to lament. Happiness must be bought, although the payment
+may be delayed. Consider: the same calamity might have befallen thee
+here in London. Neither the houses of ambassadors, nor the palaces of
+kings, nor the altars of God Himself, are asylums against death. How
+do I know but under this very roof there may sleep some latent
+calamity, that in an instant shall cover with gloom every inmate of
+the house, and every far dependent?
+
+_Spenser._ God avert it!
+
+_Essex._ Every day, every hour of the year, do hundreds mourn what
+thou mournest.
+
+_Spenser._ Oh, no, no, no! Calamities there are around us; calamities
+there are all over the earth; calamities there are in all seasons: but
+none in any season, none in any place, like mine.
+
+_Essex._ So say all fathers, so say all husbands. Look at any old
+mansion-house, and let the sun shine as gloriously as it may on the
+golden vanes, or the arms recently quartered over the gateway or the
+embayed window, and on the happy pair that haply is toying at it:
+nevertheless, thou mayest say that of a certainty the same fabric hath
+seen much sorrow within its chambers, and heard many wailings; and
+each time this was the heaviest stroke of all. Funerals have passed
+along through the stout-hearted knights upon the wainscot, and amid
+the laughing nymphs upon the arras. Old servants have shaken their
+heads, as if somebody had deceived them, when they found that beauty
+and nobility could perish.
+
+Edmund! the things that are too true pass by us as if they were not
+true at all; and when they have singled us out, then only do they
+strike us. Thou and I must go too. Perhaps the next year may blow us
+away with its fallen leaves.
+
+_Spenser._ For you, my lord, many years (I trust) are waiting: I never
+shall see those fallen leaves. No leaf, no bud, will spring upon the
+earth before I sink into her breast for ever.
+
+_Essex._ Thou, who art wiser than most men, shouldst bear with
+patience, equanimity, and courage what is common to all.
+
+_Spenser._ Enough, enough, enough! Have all men seen their infant
+burnt to ashes before their eyes?
+
+_Essex._ Gracious God! Merciful Father! what is this?
+
+_Spenser._ Burnt alive! burnt to ashes! burnt to ashes! The flames
+dart their serpent tongues through the nursery window. I cannot quit
+thee, my Elizabeth! I cannot lay down our Edmund! Oh, these flames!
+They persecute, they enthral me; they curl round my temples; they hiss
+upon my brain; they taunt me with their fierce, foul voices; they carp
+at me, they wither me, they consume me, throwing back to me a little
+of life to roll and suffer in, with their fangs upon me. Ask me, my
+lord, the things you wish to know from me: I may answer them; I am now
+composed again. Command me, my gracious lord! I would yet serve you:
+soon I shall be unable. You have stooped to raise me up; you have
+borne with me; you have pitied me, even like one not powerful. You
+have brought comfort, and will leave it with me, for gratitude is
+comfort.
+
+Oh! my memory stands all a-tiptoe on one burning point: when it drops
+from it, then it perishes. Spare me: ask me nothing; let me weep
+before you in peace--the kindest act of greatness.
+
+_Essex._ I should rather have dared to mount into the midst of the
+conflagration than I now dare entreat thee not to weep. The tears that
+overflow thy heart, my Spenser, will staunch and heal it in their
+sacred stream; but not without hope in God.
+
+_Spenser._ My hope in God is that I may soon see again what He has
+taken from me. Amid the myriads of angels, there is not one so
+beautiful; and even he (if there be any) who is appointed my guardian
+could never love me so. Ah! these are idle thoughts, vain wanderings,
+distempered dreams. If there ever were guardian angels, he who so
+wanted one--my helpless boy--would not have left these arms upon my
+knees.
+
+_Essex._ God help and sustain thee, too gentle Spenser! I never will
+desert thee. But what am I? Great they have called me! Alas, how
+powerless, then, and infantile is greatness in the presence of
+calamity!
+
+Come, give me thy hand: let us walk up and down the gallery. Bravely
+done! I will envy no more a Sidney or a Raleigh.
+
+
+
+
+LORD BACON AND RICHARD HOOKER
+
+
+_Bacon._ Hearing much of your worthiness and wisdom, Master Richard
+Hooker, I have besought your comfort and consolation in this my too
+heavy affliction: for we often do stand in need of hearing what we
+know full well, and our own balsams must be poured into our breasts by
+another's hand. As the air at our doors is sometimes more expeditious
+in removing pain and heaviness from the body than the most far-fetched
+remedies would be, so the voice alone of a neighbourly and friendly
+visitant may be more effectual in assuaging our sorrows, than whatever
+is most forcible in rhetoric and most recondite in wisdom. On these
+occasions we cannot put ourselves in a posture to receive the latter,
+and still less are we at leisure to look into the corners of our
+store-room, and to uncurl the leaves of our references. As for Memory,
+who, you may tell me, would save us the trouble, she is footsore
+enough in all conscience with me, without going farther back.
+Withdrawn as you live from court and courtly men, and having ears
+occupied by better reports than such as are flying about me, yet haply
+so hard a case as mine, befalling a man heretofore not averse from the
+studies in which you take delight, may have touched you with some
+concern.
+
+_Hooker._ I do think, my Lord of Verulam, that, unhappy as you appear,
+God in sooth has forgone to chasten you, and that the day which in His
+wisdom He appointed for your trial, was the very day on which the
+king's Majesty gave unto your ward and custody the great seal of his
+English realm. And yet perhaps it may be--let me utter it without
+offence--that your features and stature were from that day forward no
+longer what they were before. Such an effect do power and rank and
+office produce even on prudent and religious men.
+
+A hound's whelp howleth, if you pluck him up above where he stood:
+man, in much greater peril from falling, doth rejoice. You, my lord,
+as befitted you, are smitten and contrite, and do appear in deep
+wretchedness and tribulation to your servants and those about you; but
+I know that there is always a balm which lies uppermost in these
+afflictions, and that no heart rightly softened can be very sore.
+
+_Bacon._ And yet, Master Richard, it is surely no small matter to
+lose the respect of those who looked up to us for countenance; and the
+favour of a right learned king; and, O Master Hooker, such a power of
+money! But money is mere dross. I should always hold it so, if it
+possessed not two qualities: that of making men treat us reverently,
+and that of enabling us to help the needy.
+
+_Hooker._ The respect, I think, of those who respect us for what a
+fool can give and a rogue can take away, may easily be dispensed with;
+but it is indeed a high prerogative to help the needy; and when it
+pleases the Almighty to deprive us of it, let us believe that He
+foreknoweth our inclination to negligence in the charge entrusted to
+us, and that in His mercy He hath removed from us a most fearful
+responsibility.
+
+_Bacon._ I know a number of poor gentlemen to whom I could have
+rendered aid.
+
+_Hooker._ Have you examined and sifted their worthiness?
+
+_Bacon._ Well and deeply.
+
+_Hooker._ Then must you have known them long before your adversity,
+and while the means of succouring them were in your hands.
+
+_Bacon._ You have circumvented and entrapped me, Master Hooker. Faith!
+I am mortified: you the schoolman, I the schoolboy!
+
+_Hooker._ Say not so, my lord. Your years, indeed, are fewer than
+mine, by seven or thereabout; but your knowledge is far higher, your
+experience richer. Our wits are not always in blossom upon us. When
+the roses are overcharged and languid, up springs a spike of rue.
+Mortified on such an occasion? God forfend it! But again to the
+business. I should never be over-penitent for my neglect of needy
+gentlemen who have neglected themselves much worse. They have chosen
+their profession with its chances and contingencies. If they had
+protected their country by their courage or adorned it by their
+studies, they would have merited, and under a king of such learning
+and such equity would have received in some sort, their reward. I look
+upon them as so many old cabinets of ivory and tortoise-shell,
+scratched, flawed, splintered, rotten, defective both within and
+without, hard to unlock, insecure to lock up again, unfit to use.
+
+_Bacon._ Methinks it beginneth to rain, Master Richard. What if we
+comfort our bodies with a small cup of wine, against the ill-temper of
+the air. Wherefore, in God's name, are you affrightened?
+
+_Hooker._ Not so, my lord; not so.
+
+_Bacon._ What then affects you?
+
+_Hooker._ Why, indeed, since your lordship interrogates me--I looked,
+idly and imprudently, into that rich buffet; and I saw, unless the
+haze of the weather has come into the parlour, or my sight is the
+worse for last night's reading, no fewer than six silver pints.
+Surely, six tables for company are laid only at coronations.
+
+_Bacon._ There are many men so squeamish that forsooth they would keep
+a cup to themselves, and never communicate it to their nearest and
+best friend; a fashion which seems to me offensive in an honest house,
+where no disease of ill repute ought to be feared. We have lately,
+Master Richard, adopted strange fashions; we have run into the wildest
+luxuries. The Lord Leicester, I heard it from my father--God forfend
+it should ever be recorded in our history!--when he entertained Queen
+Elizabeth at Kenilworth Castle, laid before her Majesty a fork of pure
+silver. I the more easily credit it, as Master Thomas Coriatt doth
+vouch for having seen the same monstrous sign of voluptuousness at
+Venice. We are surely the especial favourites of Providence, when such
+wantonness hath not melted us quite away. After this portent, it would
+otherwise have appeared incredible that we should have broken the
+Spanish Armada.
+
+Pledge me: hither comes our wine.
+
+[_To the Servant._] Dolt! villain! is not this the beverage I reserve
+for myself?
+
+The blockhead must imagine that Malmsey runs in a stream under the
+ocean, like the Alpheus. Bear with me, good Master Hooker, but verily
+I have little of this wine, and I keep it as a medicine for my many
+and growing infirmities. You are healthy at present: God in His
+infinite mercy long maintain you so! Weaker drink is more wholesome
+for you. The lighter ones of France are best accommodated by Nature to
+our constitutions, and therefore she has placed them so within our
+reach that we have only to stretch out our necks, in a manner, and
+drink them from the vat. But this Malmsey, this Malmsey, flies from
+centre to circumference, and makes youthful blood boil.
+
+_Hooker._ Of a truth, my knowledge in such matters is but spare. My
+Lord of Canterbury once ordered part of a goblet, containing some
+strong Spanish wine, to be taken to me from his table when I dined by
+sufferance with his chaplains, and, although a most discreet, prudent
+man as befitteth his high station, was not so chary of my health as
+your lordship. Wine is little to be trifled with, physic less. The
+Cretans, the brewers of this Malmsey, have many aromatic and powerful
+herbs among them. On their mountains, and notably on Ida, grows that
+dittany which works such marvels, and which perhaps may give activity
+to this hot medicinal drink of theirs. I would not touch it,
+knowingly: an unregarded leaf, dropped into it above the ordinary,
+might add such puissance to the concoction as almost to break the
+buckles in my shoes; since we have good and valid authority that the
+wounded hart, on eating thereof, casts the arrow out of his haunch or
+entrails, although it stuck a palm deep.[4]
+
+_Bacon._ When I read of such things I doubt them. Religion and
+politics belong to God, and to God's vicegerent the king; we must not
+touch upon them unadvisedly: but if I could procure a plant of dittany
+on easy terms, I would persuade my apothecary and my gamekeeper to
+make some experiments.
+
+_Hooker._ I dare not distrust what grave writers have declared in
+matters beyond my knowledge.
+
+_Bacon._ Good Master Hooker, I have read many of your reasonings, and
+they are admirably well sustained: added to which, your genius has
+given such a strong current to your language as can come only from a
+mighty elevation and a most abundant plenteousness. Yet forgive me, in
+God's name, my worthy master, if you descried in me some expression of
+wonder at your simplicity. We are all weak and vulnerable somewhere:
+common men in the higher parts; heroes, as was feigned of Achilles, in
+the lower. You would define to a hair's-breadth the qualities, states,
+and dependencies of principalities, dominations, and powers; you would
+be unerring about the apostles and the churches; and 'tis marvellous
+how you wander about a pot-herb!
+
+_Hooker._ I know my poor weak intellects, most noble lord, and how
+scantily they have profited by my hard painstaking. Comprehending few
+things, and those imperfectly, I say only what others have said
+before, wise men and holy; and if, by passing through my heart into
+the wide world around me, it pleaseth God that this little treasure
+shall have lost nothing of its weight and pureness, my exultation is
+then the exultation of humility. Wisdom consisteth not in knowing many
+things, nor even in knowing them thoroughly; but in choosing and in
+following what conduces the most certainly to our lasting happiness
+and true glory. And this wisdom, my Lord of Verulam, cometh from
+above.
+
+_Bacon._ I have observed among the well-informed and the ill-informed
+nearly the same quantity of infirmities and follies: those who are
+rather the wiser keep them separate, and those who are wisest of all
+keep them better out of sight. Now, examine the sayings and writings
+of the prime philosophers, and you will often find them, Master
+Richard, to be untruths made to resemble truths. The business with
+them is to approximate as nearly as possible, and not to touch it: the
+goal of the charioteer is _evitata fervidis rotis_, as some poet
+saith. But we who care nothing for chants and cadences, and have no
+time to catch at applauses, push forward over stones and sands
+straightway to our object. I have persuaded men, and shall persuade
+them for ages, that I possess a wide range of thought unexplored by
+others, and first thrown open by me, with many fair enclosures of
+choice and abstruse knowledge. I have incited and instructed them to
+examine all subjects of useful and rational inquiry; few that occurred
+to me have I myself left untouched or untried: one, however, hath
+almost escaped me, and surely one worth the trouble.
+
+_Hooker._ Pray, my lord, if I am guilty of no indiscretion, what may
+it be?
+
+_Bacon._ Francis Bacon.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[4] Lest it be thought that authority is wanting for the strong
+expression of Hooker on the effects of dittany, the reader is referred
+to the curious treatise of Plutarch on the reasoning faculty of
+animals, in which (near the end) he asks: 'Who instructed deer wounded
+by the Cretan arrow to seek for dittany? on the tasting of which herb
+the bolts fall immediately from their bodies.'
+
+
+
+
+OLIVER CROMWELL AND WALTER NOBLE
+
+
+_Cromwell._ What brings thee back from Staffordshire, friend Walter?
+
+_Noble._ I hope, General Cromwell, to persuade you that the death of
+Charles will be considered by all Europe as a most atrocious action.
+
+_Cromwell._ Thou hast already persuaded me: what then?
+
+_Noble._ Surely, then, you will prevent it, for your authority is
+great. Even those who upon their consciences found him guilty would
+remit the penalty of blood, some from policy, some from mercy. I have
+conversed with Hutchinson, with Ludlow,[5] your friend and mine, with
+Henry Nevile, and Walter Long: you will oblige these worthy friends,
+and unite in your favour the suffrages of the truest and trustiest men
+living. There are many others, with whom I am in no habits of
+intercourse, who are known to entertain the same sentiments; and these
+also are among the country gentlemen, to whom our parliament owes the
+better part of its reputation.
+
+_Cromwell._ You country gentlemen bring with you into the People's
+House a freshness and sweet savour which our citizens lack mightily. I
+would fain merit your esteem, heedless of those pursy fellows from
+hulks and warehouses, with one ear lappeted by the pen behind it, and
+the other an heirloom, as Charles would have had it, in Laud's
+Star-chamber. Oh, they are proud and bloody men! My heart melts; but,
+alas! my authority is null: I am the servant of the Commonwealth. I
+will not, dare not, betray it. If Charles Stuart had threatened my
+death only, in the letter we ripped out of the saddle, I would have
+reproved him manfully and turned him adrift: but others are concerned;
+lives more precious than mine, worn as it is with fastings, prayers,
+long services, and preyed upon by a pouncing disease. The Lord hath
+led him into the toils laid for the innocent. Foolish man! he never
+could eschew evil counsel.
+
+_Noble._ In comparison with you, he is but as a pinnacle to a
+buttress. I acknowledge his weaknesses, and cannot wink upon his
+crimes: but that which you visit as the heaviest of them perhaps was
+not so, although the most disastrous to both parties--the bearing of
+arms against his people. He fought for what he considered his
+hereditary property; we do the same: should we be hanged for losing a
+lawsuit?
+
+_Cromwell._ No, unless it is the second. Thou talkest finely and
+foolishly, Wat, for a man of thy calm discernment. If a rogue holds a
+pistol to my breast, do I ask him who he is? Do I care whether his
+doublet be of cat-skin or of dog-skin? Fie upon such wicked sophisms!
+Marvellous, how the devil works upon good men's minds!
+
+_Noble._ Charles was always more to be dreaded by his friends than by
+his enemies, and now by neither.
+
+_Cromwell._ God forbid that Englishmen should be feared by Englishmen!
+but to be daunted by the weakest, to bend before the worst--I tell
+thee, Walter Noble, if Moses and the prophets commanded me to this
+villainy, I would draw back and mount my horse.
+
+_Noble._ I wish that our history, already too dark with blood, should
+contain, as far as we are concerned in it, some unpolluted pages.
+
+_Cromwell._ 'Twere better, much better. Never shall I be called, I
+promise thee, an unnecessary shedder of blood. Remember, my good,
+prudent friend, of what materials our sectaries are composed: what
+hostility against all eminence, what rancour against all glory. Not
+only kingly power offends them, but every other; and they talk of
+_putting to the sword_, as if it were the quietest, gentlest, and most
+ordinary thing in the world. The knaves even dictate from their stools
+and benches to men in armour, bruised and bleeding for them; and with
+school-dames' scourges in their fists do they give counsel to those
+who protect them from the cart and halter. In the name of the Lord, I
+must spit outright (or worse) upon these crackling bouncing
+firebrands, before I can make them tractable.
+
+_Noble._ I lament their blindness; but follies wear out the faster by
+being hard run upon. This fermenting sourness will presently turn
+vapid, and people will cast it out. I am not surprised that you are
+discontented and angry at what thwarts your better nature. But come,
+Cromwell, overlook them, despise them, and erect to yourself a
+glorious name by sparing a mortal enemy.
+
+_Cromwell._ A glorious name, by God's blessing, I will erect; and all
+our fellow-labourers shall rejoice at it: but I see better than they
+do the blow descending on them, and my arm better than theirs can ward
+it off. Noble, thy heart overflows with kindness for Charles Stuart:
+if he were at liberty to-morrow by thy intercession, he would sign thy
+death-warrant the day after, for serving the Commonwealth. A
+generation of vipers! there is nothing upright nor grateful in them:
+never was there a drop of even Scotch blood in their veins. Indeed, we
+have a clue to their bedchamber still hanging on the door, and I
+suspect that an Italian fiddler or French valet has more than once
+crossed the current.
+
+_Noble._ That may be: nor indeed is it credible that any royal or
+courtly family has gone on for three generations without a spur from
+interloper. Look at France! some stout Parisian saint performed the
+last miracle there.
+
+_Cromwell._ Now thou talkest gravely and sensibly: I could hear thee
+discourse thus for hours together.
+
+_Noble._ Hear me, Cromwell, with equal patience on matters more
+important. We all have our sufferings: why increase one another's
+wantonly? Be the blood Scotch or English, French or Italian, a
+drummer's or a buffoon's, it carries a soul upon its stream; and every
+soul has many places to touch at, and much business to perform, before
+it reaches its ultimate destination. Abolish the power of Charles;
+extinguish not his virtues. Whatever is worthy to be loved for
+anything is worthy to be preserved. A wise and dispassionate
+legislator, if any such should arise among men, will not condemn to
+death him who has done, or is likely to do, more service than injury
+to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects to ours, and
+their business is never with virtues or with hopes.
+
+_Cromwell._ Walter! Walter! we laugh at speculators.
+
+_Noble._ Many indeed are ready enough to laugh at speculators, because
+many profit, or expect to profit, by established and widening abuses.
+Speculations toward evil lose their name by adoption; speculations
+towards good are for ever speculations, and he who hath proposed them
+is a chimerical and silly creature. Among the matters under this
+denomination I never find a cruel project, I never find an oppressive
+or unjust one: how happens it?
+
+_Cromwell._ Proportions should exist in all things. Sovereigns are
+paid higher than others for their office; they should therefore be
+punished more severely for abusing it, even if the consequences of
+this abuse were in nothing more grievous or extensive. We cannot clap
+them in the stocks conveniently, nor whip them at the market-place.
+Where there is a crown there must be an axe: I would keep it there
+only.
+
+_Noble._ Lop off the rotten, press out the poisonous, preserve the
+rest; let it suffice to have given this memorable example of national
+power and justice.
+
+_Cromwell._ Justice is perfect; an attribute of God: we must not
+trifle with it.
+
+_Noble._ Should we be less merciful to our fellow-creatures than to
+our domestic animals? Before we deliver them to be killed, we weigh
+their services against their inconveniences. On the foundation of
+policy, when we have no better, let us erect the trophies of humanity:
+let us consider that, educated in the same manner and situated in the
+same position, we ourselves might have acted as reprovably. Abolish
+that for ever which must else for ever generate abuses; and attribute
+the faults of the man to the office, not the faults of the office to
+the man.
+
+_Cromwell._ I have no bowels for hypocrisy, and I abominate and detest
+kingship.
+
+_Noble._ I abominate and detest hangmanship; but in certain stages of
+society both are necessary. Let them go together; we want neither now.
+
+_Cromwell._ Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose
+their direction and begin to bend: such nails are then thrown into the
+dust or into the furnace. I must do my duty; I must accomplish what is
+commanded me; I must not be turned aside. I am loath to be cast into
+the furnace or the dust; but God's will be done! Prithee, Wat, since
+thou readest, as I see, the books of philosophers, didst thou ever
+hear of Digby's remedies by sympathy?
+
+_Noble._ Yes, formerly.
+
+_Cromwell._ Well, now, I protest, I do believe there is something in
+them. To cure my headache, I must breathe a vein in the neck of
+Charles.
+
+_Noble._ Oliver, Oliver! others are wittiest over wine, thou over
+blood: cold-hearted, cruel man.
+
+_Cromwell._ Why, dost thou verily think me so, Walter? Perhaps thou
+art right in the main: but He alone who fashioned me in my mother's
+womb, and who sees things deeper than we do, knows that.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[5] Ludlow, a most humane and temperate man, signed the death-warrant
+of Charles, for violating the constitution he had sworn to defend, for
+depriving the subject of property, liberty, limbs, and life
+unlawfully. In equity he could do no otherwise; and to equity was the
+only appeal, since the laws of the land had been erased by the king
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+LORD BROOKE AND SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
+
+
+      Lord Brooke is less known than the personage with whom
+      he converses, and upon whose friendship he had the
+      virtue and good sense to found his chief distinction.
+      On his monument at Warwick, written by himself, we
+      read that he was servant of Queen Elizabeth,
+      counsellor of King James and friend of Sir Philip
+      Sidney. His style is stiff, but his sentiments are
+      sound and manly.
+
+_Brooke._ I come again unto the woods and unto the wilds of Penshurst,
+whither my heart and the friend of my heart have long invited me.
+
+_Sidney._ Welcome, welcome! And now, Greville, seat yourself under
+this oak; since if you had hungered or thirsted from your journey, you
+would have renewed the alacrity of your old servants in the hall.
+
+_Brooke._ In truth I did; for no otherwise the good household would
+have it. The birds met me first, affrightened by the tossing up of
+caps; and by these harbingers I knew who were coming. When my palfrey
+eyed them askance for their clamorousness, and shrank somewhat back,
+they quarrelled with him almost before they saluted me, and asked him
+many pert questions. What a pleasant spot, Sidney, have you chosen
+here for meditation! A solitude is the audience-chamber of God. Few
+days in our year are like this; there is a fresh pleasure in every
+fresh posture of the limbs, in every turn the eye takes.
+
+      Youth! credulous of happiness, throw down
+      Upon this turf thy wallet--stored and swoln
+      With morrow-morns, bird-eggs, and bladders burst--
+      That tires thee with its wagging to and fro:
+      Thou too wouldst breathe more freely for it, Age!
+      Who lackest heart to laugh at life's deceit.
+
+It sometimes requires a stout push, and sometimes a sudden resistance,
+in the wisest men, not to become for a moment the most foolish. What
+have I done? I have fairly challenged you, so much my master.
+
+_Sidney._ You have warmed me: I must cool a little and watch my
+opportunity. So now, Greville, return you to your invitations, and I
+will clear the ground for the company; for Youth, for Age, and
+whatever comes between, with kindred and dependencies. Verily we need
+no taunts like those in your verses: here we have few vices, and
+consequently few repinings. I take especial care that my young
+labourers and farmers shall never be idle, and I supply them with bows
+and arrows, with bowls and ninepins, for their Sunday evening,[6]
+lest they drink and quarrel. In church they are taught to love God;
+after church they are practised to love their neighbour: for business
+on workdays keeps them apart and scattered, and on market-days they
+are prone to a rivalry bordering on malice, as competitors for custom.
+Goodness does not more certainly make men happy than happiness makes
+them good. We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for
+prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment:
+the course is then over; the wheel turns round but once; while the
+reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual.
+
+_Brooke._ You reason justly and you act rightly. Piety--warm, soft,
+and passive as the ether round the throne of Grace--is made callous
+and inactive by kneeling too much: her vitality faints under rigorous
+and wearisome observances. A forced match between a man and his
+religion sours his temper, and leaves a barren bed.
+
+_Sidney._ Desire of lucre, the worst and most general country vice,
+arises here from the necessity of looking to small gains; it is,
+however, but the tartar that encrusts economy.
+
+_Brooke._ Oh that anything so monstrous should exist in this profusion
+and prodigality of blessings! The herbs, elastic with health, seem to
+partake of sensitive and animated life, and to feel under my hand the
+benediction I would bestow on them. What a hum of satisfaction in
+God's creatures! How is it, Sidney, the smallest do seem the happiest?
+
+_Sidney._ Compensation for their weaknesses and their fears;
+compensation for the shortness of their existence. Their spirits mount
+upon the sunbeam above the eagle; and they have more enjoyment in
+their one summer than the elephant in his century.
+
+_Brooke._ Are not also the little and lowly in our species the most
+happy?
+
+_Sidney._ I would not willingly try nor over-curiously examine it. We,
+Greville, are happy in these parks and forests: we were happy in my
+close winter-walk of box and laurustine. In our earlier days did we
+not emboss our bosoms with the daffodils, and shake them almost unto
+shedding with our transport? Ay, my friend, there is a greater
+difference, both in the stages of life and in the seasons of the year,
+than in the conditions of men: yet the healthy pass through the
+seasons, from the clement to the inclement, not only unreluctantly
+but rejoicingly, knowing that the worst will soon finish, and the best
+begin anew; and we are desirous of pushing forward into every stage of
+life, excepting that alone which ought reasonably to allure us most,
+as opening to us the _Via Sacra_, along which we move in triumph to
+our eternal country. We may in some measure frame our minds for the
+reception of happiness, for more or for less; we should, however, well
+consider to what port we are steering in search of it, and that even
+in the richest its quantity is but too exhaustible. There is a
+sickliness in the firmest of us, which induceth us to change our side,
+though reposing ever so softly: yet, wittingly or unwittingly, we turn
+again soon into our old position.
+
+God hath granted unto both of us hearts easily contented, hearts
+fitted for every station, because fitted for every duty. What appears
+the dullest may contribute most to our genius; what is most gloomy may
+soften the seeds and relax the fibres of gaiety. We enjoy the
+solemnity of the spreading oak above us: perhaps we owe to it in part
+the mood of our minds at this instant; perhaps an inanimate thing
+supplies me, while I am speaking, with whatever I possess of
+animation. Do you imagine that any contest of shepherds can afford
+them the same pleasure as I receive from the description of it; or
+that even in their loves, however innocent and faithful, they are so
+free from anxiety as I am while I celebrate them? The exertion of
+intellectual power, of fancy and imagination, keeps from us greatly
+more than their wretchedness, and affords us greatly more than their
+enjoyment. We are motes in the midst of generations: we have our
+sunbeams to circuit and climb. Look at the summits of the trees around
+us, how they move, and the loftiest the most: nothing is at rest
+within the compass of our view, except the grey moss on the
+park-pales. Let it eat away the dead oak, but let it not be compared
+with the living one.
+
+Poets are in general prone to melancholy; yet the most plaintive ditty
+hath imparted a fuller joy, and of longer duration, to its composer,
+than the conquest of Persia to the Macedonian. A bottle of wine
+bringeth as much pleasure as the acquisition of a kingdom, and not
+unlike it in kind: the senses in both cases are confused and
+perverted.
+
+_Brooke._ Merciful Heaven! and for the fruition of an hour's
+drunkenness, from which they must awaken with heaviness, pain, and
+terror, men consume a whole crop of their kind at one harvest home.
+Shame upon those light ones who carol at the feast of blood! and worse
+upon those graver ones who nail upon their escutcheon the name of
+great! Ambition is but Avarice on stilts and masked. God sometimes
+sends a famine, sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the
+chastisement of mankind; none of them surely for our admiration. Only
+some cause like unto that which is now scattering the mental fog of
+the Netherlands, and is preparing them for the fruits of freedom, can
+justify us in drawing the sword abroad.
+
+_Sidney._ And only the accomplishment of our purpose can permit us
+again to sheathe it; for the aggrandizement of our neighbour is nought
+of detriment to us: on the contrary, if we are honest and industrious,
+his wealth is ours. We have nothing to dread while our laws are
+equitable and our impositions light: but children fly from mothers who
+strip and scourge them.
+
+_Brooke._ We are come to an age when we ought to read and speak
+plainly what our discretion tells us is fit: we are not to be set in a
+corner for mockery and derision, with our hands hanging down
+motionless and our pockets turned inside out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But away, away with politics: let not this city-stench infect our
+fresh country air!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[6] Censurable as that practice may appear, it belonged to the age of
+Sidney. Amusements were permitted the English on the seventh day, nor
+were they restricted until the Puritans gained the ascendancy.
+
+
+
+
+SOUTHEY AND PORSON
+
+
+_Porson._ I suspect, Mr. Southey, you are angry with me for the
+freedom with which I have spoken of your poetry and Wordsworth's.
+
+_Southey._ What could have induced you to imagine it, Mr. Professor?
+You have indeed bent your eyes upon me, since we have been together,
+with somewhat of fierceness and defiance: I presume you fancied me to
+be a commentator. You wrong me in your belief that any opinion on my
+poetical works hath molested me; but you afford me more than
+compensation in supposing me acutely sensible of injustice done to
+Wordsworth. If we must converse on these topics, we will converse on
+him. What man ever existed who spent a more inoffensive life, or
+adorned it with nobler studies?
+
+_Porson._ I believe so; and they who attack him with virulence are men
+of as little morality as reflection. I have demonstrated that one of
+them, he who wrote the _Pursuits of Literature_, could not construe a
+Greek sentence or scan a verse; and I have fallen on the very _Index_
+from which he drew out his forlorn hope on the parade. This is
+incomparably the most impudent fellow I have met with in the course of
+my reading, which has lain, you know, in a province where impudence is
+no rarity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had visited a friend in _King's Road_ when he entered.
+
+'Have you seen the _Review_?' cried he. 'Worse than ever! I am
+resolved to insert a paragraph in the papers, declaring that I had no
+concern in the last number.'
+
+'Is it so very bad?' said I, quietly.
+
+'Infamous! detestable!' exclaimed he.
+
+'Sit down, then: nobody will believe you,' was my answer.
+
+Since that morning he has discovered that I drink harder than usual,
+that my faculties are wearing fast away, that once, indeed, I had some
+Greek in my head, but--he then claps the forefinger to the side of his
+nose, turns his eye slowly upward, and looks compassionately and
+calmly.
+
+_Southey._ Come, Mr. Porson, grant him his merits: no critic is better
+contrived to make any work a monthly one, no writer more dexterous in
+giving a finishing touch.
+
+_Porson._ The plagiary has a greater latitude of choice than we; and
+if he brings home a parsnip or turnip-top, when he could as easily
+have pocketed a nectarine or a pineapple, he must be a blockhead. I
+never heard the name of the _Pursuer of Literature_, who has little
+more merit in having stolen than he would have had if he had never
+stolen at all; and I have forgotten that other man's, who evinced his
+fitness to be the censor of our age, by a translation of the most
+naked and impure satires of antiquity--those of Juvenal, which owe
+their preservation to the partiality of the friars. I shall entertain
+an unfavourable opinion of him if he has translated them well: pray,
+has he?
+
+_Southey._ Indeed, I do not know. I read poets for their poetry, and
+to extract that nutriment of the intellect and of the heart which
+poetry should contain. I never listen to the swans of the cesspool,
+and must declare that nothing is heavier to me than rottenness and
+corruption.
+
+_Porson._ You are right, sir, perfectly right. A translator of Juvenal
+would open a public drain to look for a needle, and may miss it. My
+nose is not easily offended; but I must have something to fill my
+belly. Come, we will lay aside the scrip of the transpositor and the
+pouch of the pursuer, in reserve for the days of unleavened bread;
+and again, if you please, to the lakes and mountains. Now we are both
+in better humour, I must bring you to a confession that in your friend
+Wordsworth there is occasionally a little trash.
+
+_Southey._ A haunch of venison would be trash to a Brahmin, a bottle
+of Burgundy to the xerif of Mecca. We are guided by precept, by habit,
+by taste, by constitution. Hitherto our sentiments on poetry have been
+delivered down to us from authority; and if it can be demonstrated, as
+I think it may be, that the authority is inadequate, and that the
+dictates are often inapplicable and often misinterpreted, you will
+allow me to remove the cause out of court. Every man can see what is
+very bad in a poem; almost every one can see what is very good: but
+you, Mr. Porson, who have turned over all the volumes of all the
+commentators, will inform me whether I am right or wrong in asserting
+that no critic hath yet appeared who hath been able to fix or to
+discern the exact degrees of excellence above a certain point.
+
+_Porson._ None.
+
+_Southey._ The reason is, because the eyes of no one have been upon a
+level with it. Supposing, for the sake of argument, the contest of
+Hesiod and Homer to have taken place: the judges who decided in favour
+of the worse, and he, indeed, in poetry has little merit, may have
+been elegant, wise, and conscientious men. Their decision was in
+favour of that to the species of which they had been the most
+accustomed. Corinna was preferred to Pindar no fewer than five times,
+and the best judges in Greece gave her the preference; yet whatever
+were her powers, and beyond a question they were extraordinary, we may
+assure ourselves that she stood many degrees below Pindar. Nothing is
+more absurd than the report that the judges were prepossessed by her
+beauty. Plutarch tells us that she was much older than her competitor,
+who consulted her judgment in his earlier odes. Now, granting their
+first competition to have been when Pindar was twenty years old, and
+that the others were in the years succeeding, her beauty must have
+been somewhat on the decline; for in Greece there are few women who
+retain the graces, none who retain the bloom of youth, beyond the
+twenty-third year. Her countenance, I doubt not, was expressive: but
+expression, although it gives beauty to men, makes women pay dearly
+for its stamp, and pay soon. Nature seems, in protection to their
+loveliness, to have ordered that they who are our superiors in
+quickness and sensibility should be little disposed to laborious
+thought, or to long excursions in the labyrinths of fancy. We may be
+convinced that the verdict of the judges was biased by nothing else
+than the habitudes of thinking; we may be convinced, too, that living
+in an age when poetry was cultivated highly, and selected from the
+most acute and the most dispassionate, they were subject to no greater
+errors of opinion than are the learned messmates of our English
+colleges.
+
+_Porson._ You are more liberal in your largesses to the fair Greeks
+than a friend of mine was, who resided in Athens to acquire the
+language. He assured me that beauty there was in bud at thirteen, in
+full blossom at fifteen, losing a leaf or two every day at seventeen,
+trembling on the thorn at nineteen, and under the tree at twenty.
+
+_Southey._ Mr. Porson, it does not appear to me that anything more is
+necessary, in the first instance, than to interrogate our hearts in
+what manner they have been affected. If the ear is satisfied; if at
+one moment a tumult is aroused in the breast, and tranquillized at
+another, with a perfect consciousness of equal power exerted in both
+cases; if we rise up from the perusal of the work with a strong
+excitement to thought, to imagination, to sensibility; above all, if
+we sat down with some propensities toward evil, and walk away with
+much stronger toward good, in the midst of a world which we never had
+entered and of which we never had dreamed before--shall we perversely
+put on again the _old man_ of criticism, and dissemble that we have
+been conducted by a most beneficent and most potent genius? Nothing
+proves to me so manifestly in what a pestiferous condition are its
+lazarettos, as when I observe how little hath been objected against
+those who have substituted words for things, and how much against
+those who have reinstated things for words.
+
+Let Wordsworth prove to the world that there may be animation without
+blood and broken bones, and tenderness remote from the stews. Some
+will doubt it; for even things the most evident are often but little
+perceived and strangely estimated. Swift ridiculed the music of Handel
+and the generalship of Marlborough; Pope the perspicacity and the
+scholarship of Bentley; Gray the abilities of Shaftesbury and the
+eloquence of Rousseau. Shakespeare hardly found those who would
+collect his tragedies; Milton was read from godliness; Virgil was
+antiquated and rustic; Cicero, Asiatic. What a rabble has persecuted
+my friend! An elephant is born to be consumed by ants in the midst of
+his unapproachable solitudes: Wordsworth is the prey of Jeffrey. Why
+repine? Let us rather amuse ourselves with allegories, and recollect
+that God in the creation left His noblest creature at the mercy of a
+serpent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Porson._ Wordsworth goes out of his way to be attacked; he picks up a
+piece of dirt, throws it on the carpet in the midst of the company,
+and cries, _This is a better man than any of you!_ He does indeed
+mould the base material into what form he chooses; but why not rather
+invite us to contemplate it than challenge us to condemn it? Here
+surely is false taste.
+
+_Southey._ The principal and the most general accusation against him
+is, that the vehicle of his thoughts is unequal to them. Now did ever
+the judges at the Olympic games say: 'We would have awarded to you the
+meed of victory, if your chariot had been equal to your horses: it is
+true they have won; but the people are displeased at a car neither new
+nor richly gilt, and without a gryphon or sphinx engraved on the
+axle'? You admire simplicity in Euripides; you censure it in
+Wordsworth: believe me, sir, it arises in neither from penury of
+thought--which seldom has produced it--but from the strength of
+temperance, and at the suggestion of principle.
+
+Take up a poem of Wordsworth's and read it--I would rather say, read
+them all; and, knowing that a mind like yours must grasp closely what
+comes within it, I will then appeal to you whether any poet of our
+country, since Milton, hath exerted greater powers with less of strain
+and less of ostentation. I would, however, by his permission, lay
+before you for this purpose a poem which is yet unpublished and
+incomplete.
+
+_Porson._ Pity, with such abilities, he does not imitate the ancients
+somewhat more.
+
+_Southey._ Whom did they imitate? If his genius is equal to theirs he
+has no need of a guide. He also will be an ancient; and the very
+counterparts of those who now decry him will extol him a thousand
+years hence in malignity to the moderns.
+
+
+
+
+THE ABBE DELILLE AND WALTER LANDOR
+
+
+The Abbe Delille was the happiest of creatures, when he could weep
+over the charms of innocence and the country in some crowded and
+fashionable circle at Paris. We embraced most pathetically on our
+first meeting there, as if the one were condemned to quit the earth,
+the other to live upon it.
+
+_Delille._ You are reported to have said that descriptive poetry has
+all the merits of a handkerchief that smells of roses?
+
+_Landor._ This, if I said it, is among the things which are neither
+false enough nor true enough to be displeasing. But the Abbe Delille
+has merits of his own. To translate Milton well is more laudable than
+originality in trifling matters; just as to transport an obelisk from
+Egypt, and to erect it in one of the squares, must be considered a
+greater labour than to build a new chandler's shop.
+
+_Delille._ Milton is indeed extremely difficult to translate; for,
+however noble and majestic, he is sometimes heavy, and often rough and
+unequal.
+
+_Landor._ Dear Abbe, porphyry is heavy, gold is heavier; Ossa and
+Olympus are rough and unequal; the steppes of Tartary, though high,
+are of uniform elevation: there is not a rock, nor a birch, nor a
+cytisus, nor an arbutus upon them great enough to shelter a
+new-dropped lamb. Level the Alps one with another, and where is their
+sublimity? Raise up the vale of Tempe to the downs above, and where
+are those sylvan creeks and harbours in which the imagination watches
+while the soul reposes; those recesses in which the gods partook the
+weaknesses of mortals, and mortals the enjoyments of the gods?
+
+You have treated our poet with courtesy and distinction; in your
+trimmed and measured dress, he might be taken for a Frenchman. Do not
+think me flattering. You have conducted Eve from Paradise to Paris,
+and she really looks prettier and smarter than before she tripped.
+With what elegance she rises from a most awful dream! You represent
+her (I repeat your expression) as springing up _en sursaut_, as if
+you had caught her asleep and tickled the young creature on that sofa.
+
+Homer and Virgil have been excelled in sublimity by Shakespeare and
+Milton, as the Caucasus and Atlas of the old world by the Andes and
+Teneriffe of the new; but you would embellish them all.
+
+_Delille._ I owe to Voltaire my first sentiment of admiration for
+Milton and Shakespeare.
+
+_Landor._ He stuck to them as a woodpecker to an old forest-tree, only
+for the purpose of picking out what was rotten: he has made the holes
+deeper than he found them, and, after all his cries and chatter, has
+brought home but scanty sustenance to his starveling nest.
+
+_Delille._ You must acknowledge that there are fine verses in his
+tragedies.
+
+_Landor._ Whenever such is the first observation, be assured, M.
+l'Abbe, that the poem, if heroic or dramatic, is bad. Should a work of
+this kind be excellent, we say, 'How admirably the characters are
+sustained! What delicacy of discrimination! There is nothing to be
+taken away or altered without an injury to the part or to the whole.'
+We may afterward descend on the versification. In poetry, there is a
+greater difference between the good and the excellent than there is
+between the bad and the good. Poetry has no golden mean; mediocrity
+here is of another metal, which Voltaire, however, had skill enough to
+encrust and polish. In the least wretched of his tragedies, whatever
+is tolerable is Shakespeare's; but, gracious Heaven! how deteriorated!
+When he pretends to extol a poet he chooses some defective part, and
+renders it more so whenever he translates it. I will repeat a few
+verses from Metastasio in support of my assertion. Metastasio was both
+a better critic and a better poet, although of the second order in
+each quality; his tyrants are less philosophical, and his chambermaids
+less dogmatic. Voltaire was, however, a man of abilities, and author
+of many passable epigrams, beside those which are contained in his
+tragedies and heroics; yet it must be confessed that, like your
+Parisian lackeys, they are usually the smartest when out of place.
+
+_Delille._ What you call epigram gives life and spirit to grave works,
+and seems principally wanted to relieve a long poem. I do not see why
+what pleases us in a star should not please us in a constellation.
+
+
+
+
+DIOGENES AND PLATO
+
+
+_Diogenes._ Stop! stop! come hither! Why lookest thou so scornfully
+and askance upon me?
+
+_Plato._ Let me go! loose me! I am resolved to pass.
+
+_Diogenes._ Nay, then, by Jupiter and this tub! thou leavest three
+good ells of Milesian cloth behind thee. Whither wouldst thou amble?
+
+_Plato._ I am not obliged in courtesy to tell you.
+
+_Diogenes._ Upon whose errand? Answer me directly.
+
+_Plato._ Upon my own.
+
+_Diogenes._ Oh, then, I will hold thee yet awhile. If it were upon
+another's, it might be a hardship to a good citizen, though not to a
+good philosopher.
+
+_Plato._ That can be no impediment to my release: you do not think me
+one.
+
+_Diogenes._ No, by my Father Jove!
+
+_Plato._ Your father!
+
+_Diogenes._ Why not? Thou shouldst be the last man to doubt it. Hast
+not thou declared it irrational to refuse our belief to those who
+assert that they are begotten by the gods, though the assertion (these
+are thy words) be unfounded on reason or probability? In me there is a
+chance of it: whereas in the generation of such people as thou art
+fondest of frequenting, who claim it loudly, there are always too many
+competitors to leave it probable.
+
+_Plato._ Those who speak against the great do not usually speak from
+morality, but from envy.
+
+_Diogenes._ Thou hast a glimpse of the truth in this place, but as
+thou hast already shown thy ignorance in attempting to prove to me
+what a _man_ is, ill can I expect to learn from thee what is a _great
+man_.
+
+_Plato._ No doubt your experience and intercourse will afford me the
+information.
+
+_Diogenes._ Attend, and take it. The great man is he who hath nothing
+to fear and nothing to hope from another. It is he who, while he
+demonstrates the iniquity of the laws, and is able to correct them,
+obeys them peaceably. It is he who looks on the ambitious both as weak
+and fraudulent. It is he who hath no disposition or occasion for any
+kind of deceit, no reason for being or for appearing different from
+what he is. It is he who can call together the most select company
+when it pleases him.
+
+_Plato._ Excuse my interruption. In the beginning of your definition I
+fancied that you were designating your own person, as most people do
+in describing what is admirable; now I find that you have some other
+in contemplation.
+
+_Diogenes._ I thank thee for allowing me what perhaps I _do_ possess,
+but what I was not then thinking of; as is often the case with rich
+possessors: in fact, the latter part of the description suits me as
+well as any portion of the former.
+
+_Plato._ You may call together the best company, by using your hands
+in the call, as you did with me; otherwise I am not sure that you
+would succeed in it.
+
+_Diogenes._ My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together,
+select them, detain them, dismiss them. Imbecile and vicious men
+cannot do any of these things. Their thoughts are scattered, vague,
+uncertain, cumbersome: and the worst stick to them the longest; many
+indeed by choice, the greater part by necessity, and accompanied, some
+by weak wishes, others by vain remorse.
+
+_Plato._ Is there nothing of greatness, O Diogenes! in exhibiting how
+cities and communities may be governed best, how morals may be kept
+the purest, and power become the most stable?
+
+_Diogenes._ _Something_ of greatness does not constitute the great
+man. Let me, however, see him who hath done what thou sayest: he must
+be the most universal and the most indefatigable traveller, he must
+also be the oldest creature, upon earth.
+
+_Plato._ How so?
+
+_Diogenes._ Because he must know perfectly the climate, the soil, the
+situation, the peculiarities, of the races, of their allies, of their
+enemies; he must have sounded their harbours, he must have measured
+the quantity of their arable land and pasture, of their woods and
+mountains; he must have ascertained whether there are fisheries on
+their coasts, and even what winds are prevalent. On these causes, with
+some others, depend the bodily strength, the numbers, the wealth, the
+wants, the capacities of the people.
+
+_Plato._ Such are low thoughts.
+
+_Diogenes._ The bird of wisdom flies low, and seeks her food under
+hedges: the eagle himself would be starved if he always soared aloft
+and against the sun. The sweetest fruit grows near the ground, and the
+plants that bear it require ventilation and lopping. Were this not to
+be done in thy garden, every walk and alley, every plot and border,
+would be covered with runners and roots, with boughs and suckers. We
+want no poets or logicians or metaphysicians to govern us: we want
+practical men, honest men, continent men, unambitious men, fearful to
+solicit a trust, slow to accept, and resolute never to betray one.
+Experimentalists may be the best philosophers: they are always the
+worst politicians. Teach people their duties, and they will know their
+interests. Change as little as possible, and correct as much.
+
+Philosophers are absurd from many causes, but principally from laying
+out unthriftily their distinctions. They set up four virtues:
+fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice. Now a man may be a very
+bad one, and yet possess three out of the four. Every cut-throat must,
+if he has been a cut-throat on many occasions, have more fortitude and
+more prudence than the greater part of those whom we consider as the
+best men. And what cruel wretches, both executioners and judges, have
+been strictly just! how little have they cared what gentleness, what
+generosity, what genius, their sentence hath removed from the earth!
+Temperance and beneficence contain all other virtues. Take them home,
+Plato; split them, expound them; do what thou wilt with them, if thou
+but use them.
+
+Before I gave thee this lesson, which is a better than thou ever
+gavest any one, and easier to remember, thou wert accusing me of
+invidiousness and malice against those whom thou callest the great,
+meaning to say the powerful. Thy imagination, I am well aware, had
+taken its flight toward Sicily, where thou seekest thy great man, as
+earnestly and undoubtingly as Ceres sought her Persephone. Faith!
+honest Plato, I have no reason to envy thy worthy friend Dionysius.
+Look at my nose! A lad seven or eight years old threw an apple at me
+yesterday, while I was gazing at the clouds, and gave me nose enough
+for two moderate men. Instead of such a godsend, what should I have
+thought of my fortune, if, after living all my lifetime among golden
+vases, rougher than my hand with their emeralds and rubies, their
+engravings and embossments; among Parian caryatides and porphyry
+sphinxes; among philosophers with rings upon their fingers and linen
+next their skin; and among singing-boys and dancing-girls, to whom
+alone thou speakest intelligibly--I ask thee again, what should I in
+reason have thought of my fortune, if, after these facilities and
+superfluities, I had at last been pelted out of my house, not by one
+young rogue, but by thousands of all ages, and not with an apple (I
+wish I could say a rotten one), but with pebbles and broken pots; and,
+to crown my deserts, had been compelled to become the teacher of so
+promising a generation? Great men, forsooth! thou knowest at last who
+they are.
+
+_Plato._ There are great men of various kinds.
+
+_Diogenes._ No, by my beard, are there not!
+
+_Plato._ What! are there not great captains, great geometricians,
+great dialectitians?
+
+_Diogenes._ Who denied it? A great man was the postulate. Try thy hand
+now at the powerful one.
+
+_Plato._ On seeing the exercise of power, a child cannot doubt who is
+powerful, more or less; for power is relative. All men are weak, not
+only if compared to the Demiurgos, but if compared to the sea or the
+earth, or certain things upon each of them, such as elephants and
+whales. So placid and tranquil is the scene around us, we can hardly
+bring to mind the images of strength and force, the precipices, the
+abysses----
+
+_Diogenes._ Prithee hold thy loose tongue, twinkling and glittering
+like a serpent's in the midst of luxuriance and rankness! Did never
+this reflection of thine warn thee that, in human life, the precipices
+and abysses would be much farther from our admiration if we were less
+inconsiderate, selfish, and vile? I will not however stop thee long,
+for thou wert going on quite consistently. As thy great men are
+fighters and wranglers, so thy mighty things upon the earth and sea
+are troublesome and intractable encumbrances. Thou perceivedst not
+what was greater in the former case, neither art thou aware what is
+greater in this. Didst thou feel the gentle air that passed us?
+
+_Plato._ I did not, just then.
+
+_Diogenes._ That air, so gentle, so imperceptible to thee, is more
+powerful not only than all the creatures that breathe and live by it;
+not only than all the oaks of the forest, which it rears in an age and
+shatters in a moment; not only than all the monsters of the sea, but
+than the sea itself, which it tosses up into foam, and breaks against
+every rock in its vast circumference; for it carries in its bosom,
+with perfect calm and composure, the incontrollable ocean and the
+peopled earth, like an atom of a feather.
+
+To the world's turmoils and pageantries is attracted, not only the
+admiration of the populace, but the zeal of the orator, the enthusiasm
+of the poet, the investigation of the historian, and the contemplation
+of the philosopher: yet how silent and invisible are they in the
+depths of air! Do I say in those depths and deserts? No; I say in the
+distance of a swallow's flight--at the distance she rises above us,
+ere a sentence brief as this could be uttered.
+
+What are its mines and mountains? Fragments welded up and dislocated
+by the expansion of water from below; the most part reduced to mud,
+the rest to splinters. Afterwards sprang up fire in many places, and
+again tore and mangled the mutilated carcass, and still growls over
+it.
+
+What are its cities and ramparts, and moles and monuments? Segments of
+a fragment, which one man puts together and another throws down. Here
+we stumble upon thy great ones at their work. Show me now, if thou
+canst, in history, three great warriors, or three great statesmen, who
+have acted otherwise than spiteful children.
+
+_Plato._ I will begin to look for them in history when I have
+discovered the same number in the philosophers or the poets. A prudent
+man searches in his own garden after the plant he wants, before he
+casts his eyes over the stalls in Kenkrea or Keramicos.
+
+Returning to your observation on the potency of the air, I am not
+ignorant or unmindful of it. May I venture to express my opinion to
+you, Diogenes, that the earlier discoverers and distributors of wisdom
+(which wisdom lies among us in ruins and remnants, partly distorted
+and partly concealed by theological allegory) meant by Jupiter the air
+in its agitated state; by Juno the air in its quiescent. These are the
+great agents, and therefore called the king and queen of the gods.
+Jupiter is denominated by Homer the _compeller of clouds_: Juno
+receives them, and remits them in showers to plants and animals.
+
+I may trust you, I hope, O Diogenes?
+
+_Diogenes._ Thou mayest lower the gods in my presence, as safely as
+men in the presence of Timon.
+
+_Plato._ I would not lower them: I would exalt them.
+
+_Diogenes._ More foolish and presumptuous still!
+
+_Plato._ Fair words, O Sinopean! I protest to you my aim is truth.
+
+_Diogenes._ I cannot lead thee where of a certainty thou mayest always
+find it; but I will tell thee what it is. Truth is a point; the
+subtilest and finest; harder than adamant; never to be broken, worn
+away, or blunted. Its only bad quality is, that it is sure to hurt
+those who touch it; and likely to draw blood, perhaps the life-blood,
+of those who press earnestly upon it. Let us away from this narrow
+lane skirted with hemlock, and pursue our road again through the wind
+and dust toward the _great_ man and the _powerful_. Him I would call
+the powerful one who controls the storms of his mind, and turns to
+good account the worst accidents of his fortune. The great man, I was
+going on to demonstrate, is somewhat more. He must be able to do this,
+and he must have an intellect which puts into motion the intellect of
+others.
+
+_Plato._ Socrates, then, was your great man.
+
+_Diogenes._ He was indeed; nor can all thou hast attributed to him
+ever make me think the contrary. I wish he could have kept a little
+more at home, and have thought it as well worth his while to converse
+with his own children as with others.
+
+_Plato._ He knew himself born for the benefit of the human race.
+
+_Diogenes._ Those who are born for the benefit of the human race go
+but little into it: those who are born for its curse are crowded.
+
+_Plato._ It was requisite to dispel the mists of ignorance and error.
+
+_Diogenes._ Has he done it? What doubt has he elucidated, or what fact
+has he established? Although I was but twelve years old and resident
+in another city when he died, I have taken some pains in my inquiries
+about him from persons of less vanity and less perverseness than his
+disciples. He did not leave behind him any true philosopher among
+them; any who followed his mode of argumentation, his subjects of
+disquisition, or his course of life; any who would subdue the
+malignant passions or coerce the looser; any who would abstain from
+calumny or from cavil; any who would devote his days to the glory of
+his country, or, what is easier and perhaps wiser, to his own
+well-founded contentment and well-merited repose. Xenophon, the best
+of them, offered up sacrifices, believed in oracles, consulted
+soothsayers, turned pale at a jay, and was dysenteric at a magpie.
+
+_Plato._ He had courage at least.
+
+_Diogenes._ His courage was of so strange a quality, that he was
+ready, if jay or magpie did not cross him, to fight for Spartan or
+Persian. Plato, whom thou esteemest much, and knowest somewhat less,
+careth as little for portent and omen as doth Diogenes. What he would
+have done for a Persian I cannot say; certain I am that he would have
+no more fought for a Spartan than he would for his own father: yet he
+mortally hates the man who hath a kinder muse or a better milliner, or
+a seat nearer the minion of a king. So much for the two disciples of
+Socrates who have acquired the greatest celebrity!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Plato._ Diogenes! if you must argue or discourse with me, I will
+endure your asperity for the sake of your acuteness; but it appears to
+me a more philosophical thing to avoid what is insulting and
+vexatious, than to breast and brave it.
+
+_Diogenes._ Thou hast spoken well.
+
+_Plato._ It belongs to the vulgar, not to us, to fly from a man's
+opinions to his actions, and to stab him in his own house for having
+received no wound in the school. One merit you will allow me: I always
+keep my temper; which you seldom do.
+
+_Diogenes._ Is mine a good or a bad one?
+
+_Plato._ Now, must I speak sincerely?
+
+_Diogenes._ Dost thou, a philosopher, ask such a question of me, a
+philosopher? Ay, sincerely or not at all.
+
+_Plato._ Sincerely as you could wish, I must declare, then, your
+temper is the worst in the world.
+
+_Diogenes._ I am much in the right, therefore, not to keep it. Embrace
+me: I have spoken now in thy own manner. Because thou sayest the most
+malicious things the most placidly, thou thinkest or pretendest thou
+art sincere.
+
+_Plato._ Certainly those who are most the masters of their resentments
+are likely to speak less erroneously than the passionate and morose.
+
+_Diogenes._ If they would, they might; but the moderate are not
+usually the most sincere, for the same circumspection which makes them
+moderate makes them likewise retentive of what could give offence:
+they are also timid in regard to fortune and favour, and hazard
+little. There is no mass of sincerity in any place. What there is must
+be picked up patiently, a grain or two at a time; and the season for
+it is after a storm, after the overflowing of banks, and bursting of
+mounds, and sweeping away of landmarks. Men will always hold something
+back; they must be shaken and loosened a little, to make them let go
+what is deepest in them, and weightiest and purest.
+
+_Plato._ Shaking and loosening as much about you as was requisite for
+the occasion, it became you to demonstrate where and in what manner I
+had made Socrates appear less sagacious and less eloquent than he was;
+it became you likewise to consider the great difficulty of finding new
+thoughts and new expressions for those who had more of them than any
+other men, and to represent them in all the brilliancy of their wit
+and in all the majesty of their genius. I do not assert that I have
+done it; but if I have not, what man has? what man has come so nigh to
+it? He who could bring Socrates, or Solon, or Diogenes through a
+dialogue, without disparagement, is much nearer in his intellectual
+powers to them, than any other is near to him.
+
+_Diogenes._ Let Diogenes alone, and Socrates, and Solon. None of the
+three ever occupied his hours in tingeing and curling the tarnished
+plumes of prostitute Philosophy, or deemed anything worth his
+attention, care, or notice, that did not make men brave and
+independent. As thou callest on me to show thee where and in what
+manner thou hast misrepresented thy teacher, and as thou seemest to
+set an equal value on eloquence and on reasoning, I shall attend to
+thee awhile on each of these matters, first inquiring of thee whether
+the axiom is Socratic, that it is never becoming to get drunk,
+_unless_ in the solemnities of Bacchus?
+
+_Plato._ This god was the discoverer of the vine and of its uses.
+
+_Diogenes._ Is drunkenness one of its uses, or the discovery of a god?
+If Pallas or Jupiter hath given us reason, we should sacrifice our
+reason with more propriety to Jupiter or Pallas. To Bacchus is due a
+libation of wine; the same being his gift, as thou preachest.
+
+Another and a graver question.
+
+Did Socrates teach thee that 'slaves are to be scourged, and by no
+means admonished as though they were the children of the master'?
+
+_Plato._ He did not argue upon government.
+
+_Diogenes._ He argued upon humanity, whereon all government is
+founded: whatever is beside it is usurpation.
+
+_Plato._ Are slaves then never to be scourged, whatever be their
+transgressions and enormities?
+
+_Diogenes._ Whatever they be, they are less than his who reduced them
+to this condition.
+
+_Plato._ What! though they murder his whole family?
+
+_Diogenes._ Ay, and poison the public fountain of the city.
+
+What am I saying? and to whom? Horrible as is this crime, and next in
+atrocity to parricide, thou deemest it a lighter one than stealing a
+fig or grape. The stealer of these is scourged by thee; the sentence
+on the poisoner is to cleanse out the receptacle. There is, however, a
+kind of poisoning which, to do thee justice, comes before thee with
+all its horrors, and which thou wouldst punish capitally, even in such
+a sacred personage as an aruspex or diviner: I mean the poisoning by
+incantation. I, and my whole family, my whole race, my whole city, may
+bite the dust in agony from a truss of henbane in the well; and little
+harm done forsooth! Let an idle fool set an image of me in wax before
+the fire, and whistle and caper to it, and purr and pray, and chant a
+hymn to Hecate while it melts, entreating and imploring her that I may
+melt as easily--and thou wouldst, in thy equity and holiness, strangle
+him at the first stave of his psalmody.
+
+_Plato._ If this is an absurdity, can you find another?
+
+_Diogenes._ Truly, in reading thy book, I doubted at first, and for a
+long continuance, whether thou couldst have been serious; and whether
+it were not rather a satire on those busy-bodies who are incessantly
+intermeddling in other people's affairs. It was only on the
+protestation of thy intimate friends that I believed thee to have
+written it in earnest. As for thy question, it is idle to stoop and
+pick out absurdities from a mass of inconsistency and injustice; but
+another and another I could throw in, and another and another
+afterward, from any page in the volume. Two bare, staring falsehoods
+lift their beaks one upon the other, like spring frogs. Thou sayest
+that no punishment decreed by the laws tendeth to evil. What! not if
+immoderate? not if partial? Why then repeal any penal statute while
+the subject of its animadversion exists? In prisons the less criminal
+are placed among the more criminal, the inexperienced in vice together
+with the hardened in it. This is part of the punishment, though it
+precedes the sentence; nay, it is often inflicted on those whom the
+judges acquit: the law, by allowing it, does it.
+
+The next is, that he who is punished by the laws is the better for it,
+however the less depraved. What! if anteriorly to the sentence he
+lives and converses with worse men, some of whom console him by
+deadening the sense of shame, others by removing the apprehension of
+punishment? Many laws as certainly make men bad, as bad men make many
+laws; yet under thy regimen they take us from the bosom of the nurse,
+turn the meat about upon the platter, pull the bed-clothes off, make
+us sleep when we would wake, and wake when we would sleep, and never
+cease to rummage and twitch us, until they see us safe landed at the
+grave. We can do nothing (but be poisoned) with impunity. What is
+worst of all, we must marry certain relatives and connexions, be they
+distorted, blear-eyed, toothless, carbuncled, with hair (if any)
+eclipsing the reddest torch of Hymen, and with a hide outrivalling in
+colour and plaits his trimmest saffron robe. At the mention of this
+indeed, friend Plato, even thou, although resolved to stand out of
+harm's way, beginnest to make a wry mouth, and findest it difficult to
+pucker and purse it up again, without an astringent store of moral
+sentences. Hymen is truly no acquaintance of thine. We know the
+delicacies of love which thou wouldst reserve for the gluttony of
+heroes and the fastidiousness of philosophers. Heroes, like gods, must
+have their own way; but against thee and thy confraternity of elders I
+would turn the closet-key, and your mouths might water over, but your
+tongues should never enter those little pots of comfiture. Seriously,
+you who wear embroidered slippers ought to be very cautious of
+treading in the mire. Philosophers should not only live the simplest
+lives, but should also use the plainest language. Poets, in employing
+magnificent and sonorous words, teach philosophy the better by thus
+disarming suspicion that the finest poetry contains and conveys the
+finest philosophy. You will never let any man hold his right station:
+you would rank Solon with Homer for poetry. This is absurd. The only
+resemblance is in both being eminently wise. Pindar, too, makes even
+the cadences of his dithyrambics keep time to the flute of Reason. My
+tub, which holds fifty-fold thy wisdom, would crack at the
+reverberation of thy voice.
+
+_Plato._ Farewell.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Diogenes._ I mean that every one of thy whimsies hath been picked up
+somewhere by thee in thy travels; and each of them hath been rendered
+more weak and puny by its place of concealment in thy closet. What
+thou hast written on the immortality of the soul goes rather to prove
+the immortality of the body; and applies as well to the body of a
+weasel or an eel as to the fairer one of Agathon or of Aster. Why not
+at once introduce a new religion, since religions keep and are
+relished in proportion as they are salted with absurdity, inside and
+out? and all of them must have one great crystal of it for the centre;
+but Philosophy pines and dies unless she drinks limpid water. When
+Pherecydes and Pythagoras felt in themselves the majesty of
+contemplation, they spurned the idea that flesh and bones and arteries
+should confer it: and that what comprehends the past and the future
+should sink in a moment and be annihilated for ever. 'No,' cried they,
+'the power of thinking is no more in the brain than in the hair,
+although the brain may be the instrument on which it plays. It is not
+corporeal, it is not of this world; its existence is eternity, its
+residence is infinity.' I forbear to discuss the rationality of their
+belief, and pass on straightway to thine; if, indeed, I am to consider
+as one, belief and doctrine.
+
+_Plato._ As you will.
+
+_Diogenes._ I should rather, then, regard these things as mere
+ornaments; just as many decorate their apartments with lyres and
+harps, which they themselves look at from the couch, supinely
+complacent, and leave for visitors to admire and play on.
+
+_Plato._ I foresee not how you can disprove my argument on the
+immortality of the soul, which, being contained in the best of my
+dialogues, and being often asked for among my friends, I carry with
+me.
+
+_Diogenes._ At this time?
+
+_Plato._ Even so.
+
+_Diogenes._ Give me then a certain part of it for my perusal.
+
+_Plato._ Willingly.
+
+_Diogenes._ Hermes and Pallas! I wanted but a cubit of it, or at most
+a fathom, and thou art pulling it out by the plethron.
+
+_Plato._ This is the place in question.
+
+_Diogenes._ Read it.
+
+_Plato._ [_Reads._] 'Sayest thou not that death is the opposite of
+life, and that they spring the one from the other?' '_Yes._' 'What
+springs then from the living?' '_The dead._' 'And what from the dead?'
+'_The living._' 'Then all things alive spring from the dead.'
+
+_Diogenes._ Why the repetition? but go on.
+
+_Plato._ [_Reads._] 'Souls therefore exist after death in the infernal
+regions.'
+
+_Diogenes._ Where is the _therefore_? where is it even as to
+_existence_? As to the _infernal regions_, there is nothing that
+points toward a proof, or promises an indication. Death neither
+springs from life, nor life from death. Although death is the
+inevitable consequence of life, if the observation and experience of
+ages go for anything, yet nothing shows us, or ever hath signified,
+that life comes from death. Thou mightest as well say that a
+barley-corn dies before the germ of another barley-corn grows up from
+it, than which nothing is more untrue; for it is only the protecting
+part of the germ that perishes, when its protection is no longer
+necessary. The consequence, that souls exist after death, cannot be
+drawn from the corruption of the body, even if it were demonstrable
+that out of this corruption a live one could rise up. Thou hast not
+said that the soul is among those dead things which living things must
+spring from; thou hast not said that a living soul produces a dead
+soul, or that a dead soul produces a living one.
+
+_Plato._ No, indeed.
+
+_Diogenes._ On my faith, thou hast said, however, things no less
+inconsiderate, no less inconsequent, no less unwise; and this very
+thing must be said and proved, to make thy argument of any value. Do
+dead men beget children?
+
+_Plato._ I have not said it.
+
+_Diogenes._ Thy argument implies it.
+
+_Plato._ These are high mysteries, and to be approached with
+reverence.
+
+_Diogenes._ Whatever we cannot account for is in the same predicament.
+We may be gainers by being ignorant if we can be thought mysterious.
+It is better to shake our heads and to let nothing out of them, than
+to be plain and explicit in matters of difficulty. I do not mean in
+confessing our ignorance or our imperfect knowledge of them, but in
+clearing them up perspicuously: for, if we answer with ease, we may
+haply be thought good-natured, quick, communicative; never deep,
+never sagacious; not very defective possibly in our intellectual
+faculties, yet unequal and chinky, and liable to the probation of
+every clown's knuckle.
+
+_Plato._ The brightest of stars appear the most unsteady and tremulous
+in their light; not from any quality inherent in themselves, but from
+the vapours that float below, and from the imperfection of vision in
+the surveyor.
+
+_Diogenes._ Draw thy robe round thee; let the folds fall gracefully,
+and look majestic. That sentence is an admirable one; but not for me.
+I want sense, not stars. What then? Do no vapours float below the
+others? and is there no imperfection in the vision of those who look
+at _them_, if they are the same men, and look the next moment? We must
+move on: I shall follow the dead bodies, and the benighted driver of
+their fantastic bier, close and keen as any hyena.
+
+_Plato._ Certainly, O Diogenes, you excel me in elucidations and
+similes: mine was less obvious.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Diogenes._ I know the respect thou bearest to the dogly character,
+and can attribute to nothing else the complacency with which thou hast
+listened to me since I released thy cloak. If ever the Athenians, in
+their inconstancy, should issue a decree to deprive me of the
+appellation they have conferred on me, rise up, I pray thee, in my
+defence, and protest that I have not merited so severe a mulct.
+Something I do deserve at thy hands; having supplied thee, first with
+a store of patience, when thou wert going without any about thee,
+although it is the readiest viaticum and the heartiest sustenance of
+human life; and then with weapons from this tub, wherewith to drive
+the importunate cock before thee out of doors again.
+
+
+
+
+ALFIERI AND SALOMON THE FLORENTINE JEW
+
+
+_Alfieri._ Let us walk to the window, Signor Salomon. And now, instead
+of the silly, simpering compliments repeated at introductions, let me
+assure you that you are the only man in Florence with whom I would
+willingly exchange a salutation.
+
+_Salomon._ I must think myself highly flattered, Signor Conte, having
+always heard that you are not only the greatest democrat, but also the
+greatest aristocrat, in Europe.
+
+_Alfieri._ These two things, however opposite, which your smile would
+indicate, are not so irreconcilable as you imagine. Let us first
+understand the words, and then talk about them. The democrat is he who
+wishes the people to have a due share in the government, and this
+share if you please shall be the principal one. The aristocrat of our
+days is contented with no actual share in it; but if a man of family
+is conscious of his dignity, and resentful that another has invaded
+it, he may be, and is universally, called an aristocrat. The principal
+difference is, that one carries outward what the other carries inward.
+I am thought an aristocrat by the Florentines for conversing with few
+people, and for changing my shirt and shaving my beard on other days
+than festivals; which the most aristocratical of them never do,
+considering it, no doubt, as an excess. I am, however, from my soul a
+republican, if prudence and modesty will authorize any man to call
+himself so; and this, I trust, I have demonstrated in the most
+valuable of my works, the _Treatise on Tyranny_ and the _Dialogue_
+with my friends at Siena. The aristocratical part of me, if part of me
+it must be called, hangs loose and keeps off insects. I see no
+aristocracy in the children of sharpers from behind the counter, nor,
+placing the matter in the most favourable point of view, in the
+descendants of free citizens who accepted from any vile
+enslaver--French, Spanish, German, or priest, or monk (represented
+with a piece of buffoonery, like a beehive on his head and a picklock
+key at his girdle)--the titles of counts and marquises. In Piedmont
+the matter is different: we must either have been the rabble or the
+lords; we were military, and we retain over the populace the same rank
+and spirit as our ancestors held over the soldiery.
+
+_Salomon._ Signor Conte, I have heard of levellers, but I have never
+seen one: all are disposed to level down, but nobody to level up. As
+for nobility, there is none in Europe beside the Venetian. Nobility
+must be self-constituted and independent: the free alone are noble;
+slavery, like death, levels all. The English come nearest to the
+Venetian: they are independent, but want the main characteristic, the
+_self-constituted_. You have been in England, Signor Conte, and can
+judge of them better than I can.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Alfieri._ It is among those who stand between the peerage and the
+people that there exists a greater mass of virtue and of wisdom than
+in the rest of Europe. Much of their dignified simplicity may be
+attributed to the plainness of their religion, and, what will always
+be imitated, to the decorous life of their king: for whatever may be
+the defects of either, if we compare them with others round us, they
+are excellent.
+
+_Salomon._ A young religion jumps upon the shoulders of an older one,
+and soon becomes like her, by mockery of her tricks, her cant, and her
+decrepitude. Meanwhile the old one shakes with indignation, and swears
+there is neither relationship nor likeness. Was there ever a religion
+in the world that was not the true religion, or was there ever a king
+that was not the best of kings?
+
+_Alfieri._ In the latter case we must have arrived nigh perfection;
+since it is evident from the authority of the gravest men--theologians,
+presidents, judges, corporations, universities, senates--that every
+prince is better than his father, 'of blessed memory, now with God'. If
+they continue to rise thus transcendently, earth in a little time will
+be incapable of holding them, and higher heavens must be raised upon
+the highest heavens for their reception. The lumber of our Italian
+courts, the most crazy part of which is that which rests upon a red
+cushion in a gilt chair, with stars and sheep and crosses dangling from
+it, must be approached as Artaxerxes and Domitian. These automatons, we
+are told nevertheless, are very condescending. Poor fools who tell us
+it! ignorant that where on one side is condescension, on the other side
+must be baseness. The rascals have ruined my physiognomy. I wear an
+habitual sneer upon my face, God confound them for it! even when I
+whisper a word of love in the prone ear of my donna.
+
+_Salomon._ This temper or constitution of mind I am afraid may do
+injury to your works.
+
+_Alfieri._ Surely not to all: my satire at least must be the better
+for it.
+
+_Salomon._ I think differently. No satire can be excellent where
+displeasure is expressed with acrimony and vehemence. When satire
+ceases to smile, it should be momentarily, and for the purpose of
+inculcating a moral. Juvenal is hardly more a satirist than Lucan: he
+is indeed a vigorous and bold declaimer, but he stamps too often, and
+splashes up too much filth. We Italians have no delicacy in wit: we
+have indeed no conception of it; we fancy we must be weak if we are
+not offensive. The scream of Pulcinello is imitated more easily than
+the masterly strokes of Plautus, or the sly insinuations of Catullus
+and of Flaccus.
+
+_Alfieri._ We are the least witty of men because we are the most
+trifling.
+
+_Salomon._ You would persuade me then that to be witty one must be
+grave: this is surely a contradiction.
+
+_Alfieri._ I would persuade you only that banter, pun, and quibble are
+the properties of light men and shallow capacities; that genuine
+humour and true wit require a sound and capacious mind, which is
+always a grave one. Contemptuousness is not incompatible with them:
+worthless is that man who feels no contempt for the worthless, and
+weak who treats their emptiness as a thing of weight. At first it may
+seem a paradox, but it is perfectly true, that the gravest nations
+have been the wittiest; and in those nations some of the gravest men.
+In England, Swift and Addison; in Spain, Cervantes. Rabelais and La
+Fontaine are recorded by their countrymen to have been _reveurs_. Few
+men have been graver than Pascal; few have been wittier.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That Shakespeare was gay and pleasurable in conversation I can easily
+admit; for there never was a mind at once so plastic and so pliant:
+but without much gravity, could there have been that potency and
+comprehensiveness of thought, that depth of feeling, that creation of
+imperishable ideas, that sojourn in the souls of other men? He was
+amused in his workshop: such was society. But when he left it, he
+meditated intensely upon those limbs and muscles on which he was about
+to bestow new action, grace, and majesty; and so great an intensity of
+meditation must have strongly impressed his whole character.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Salomon._ Certainly no race of men upon earth ever was so unwarlike,
+so indifferent to national dignity and to personal honour, as the
+Florentines are now: yet in former days a certain pride, arising from
+a resemblance in their government to that of Athens, excited a
+vivifying desire of approximation where no danger or loss accompanied
+it; and Genius was no less confident of his security than of his
+power. Look from the window. That cottage on the declivity was
+Dante's: that square and large mansion, with a circular garden before
+it elevated artificially, was the first scene of Boccaccio's
+_Decameron_. A boy might stand at an equal distance between them, and
+break the windows of each with his sling. What idle fabricators of
+crazy systems will tell me that climate is the creator of genius? The
+climate of Austria is more regular and more temperate than ours, which
+I am inclined to believe is the most variable in the whole universe,
+subject, as you have perceived, to heavy fogs for two months in
+winter, and to a stifling heat, concentrated within the hills, for
+five more. Yet a single man of genius hath never appeared in the whole
+extent of Austria, an extent of several thousand times greater than
+our city; and this very street has given birth to fifty.
+
+_Alfieri._ Since the destruction of the republic, Florence has
+produced only one great man, Galileo, and abandoned him to every
+indignity that fanaticism and despotism could invent. Extraordinary
+men, like the stones that are formed in the higher regions of the air,
+fall upon the earth only to be broken and cast into the furnace. The
+precursor of Newton lived in the deserts of the moral world, drank
+water, and ate locusts and wild honey. It was fortunate that his head
+also was not lopped off: had a singer asked it, instead of a dancer,
+it would have been.
+
+_Salomon._ In fact it was; for the fruits of it were shaken down and
+thrown away: he was forbidden to publish the most important of his
+discoveries, and the better part of his manuscripts was burned after
+his death.
+
+_Alfieri._ Yes, Signor Salomon, those things may rather be called our
+heads than this knob above the shoulder, of which (as matters stand)
+we are rather the porters than the proprietors, and which is really
+the joint concern of barber and dentist.
+
+_Salomon._ Our thoughts, if they may not rest at home, may wander
+freely. Delighting in the remoter glories of my native city, I forget
+at times its humiliation and ignominy. A town so little that the voice
+of a cabbage-girl in the midst of it may be heard at the extremities,
+reared within three centuries a greater number of citizens illustrious
+for their genius than all the remainder of the Continent (excepting
+her sister Athens) in six thousand years. My ignorance of the Greek
+forbids me to compare our Dante with Homer. The propriety and force of
+language and the harmony of verse in the glorious Grecian are quite
+lost to me. Dante had not only to compose a poem, but in great part a
+language. Fantastical as the plan of his poem is, and, I will add,
+uninteresting and uninviting; unimportant, mean, contemptible, as are
+nine-tenths of his characters and his details, and wearisome as is the
+scheme of his versification--there are more thoughts highly poetical,
+there is more reflection, and the nobler properties of mind and
+intellect are brought into more intense action, not only than in the
+whole course of French poetry, but also in the whole of continental;
+nor do I think (I must here also speak with hesitation) that any one
+drama of Shakespeare contains so many. Smile as you will, Signor
+Conte, what must I think of a city where Michel Angelo, Frate
+Bartolomeo, Ghiberti (who formed them), Guicciardini, and Machiavelli
+were secondary men? And certainly such were they, if we compare them
+with Galileo and Boccaccio and Dante.
+
+_Alfieri._ I smiled from pure delight, which I rarely do; for I take
+an interest deep and vital in such men, and in those who appreciate
+them rightly and praise them unreservedly. These are my
+fellow-citizens: I acknowledge no other; we are of the same tribe, of
+the same household; I bow to them as being older than myself, and I
+love them as being better.
+
+_Salomon._ Let us hope that our Italy is not yet effete. Filangieri
+died but lately: what think you of him?
+
+_Alfieri._ If it were possible that I could ever see his statue in a
+square at Constantinople, though I should be scourged for an idolater,
+I would kiss the pedestal. As this, however, is less likely than that
+I should suffer for writing satirically, and as criticism is less
+likely to mislead me than speculation, I will revert to our former
+subject.
+
+Indignation and contempt may be expressed in other poems than such as
+are usually called satires. Filicaia, in his celebrated address to
+Italy, steers a middle course.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A perfect piece of criticism must exhibit _where_ a work is good or
+bad; _why_ it is good or bad; in what degree it is good or bad; must
+also demonstrate in what manner, and to what extent, the same ideas or
+reflections have come to others, and, if they be clothed in poetry,
+why by an apparently slight variation, what in one author is
+mediocrity, in another is excellence. I have never seen a critic of
+Florence, or Pisa, or Milan, or Bologna, who did not commend and
+admire the sonnet of Cassiani on the rape of Proserpine, without a
+suspicion of its manifold and grave defects.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Does not this describe the devils of our carnival, rather than the
+majestic brother of Jupiter, at whose side upon asphodel and amaranth
+the sweet Persephone sits pensively contented, in that deep motionless
+quiet which mortals pity and which the gods enjoy; rather than him
+who, under the umbrage of Elysium, gazes at once upon all the beauties
+that on earth were separated--Helena and Eriphyle, Polyxena and
+Hermione, Deidamia and Deianira, Leda and Omphale, Atalanta and
+Cydippe, Laodamia, with her arm round the neck of a fond youth whom
+she still seems afraid of losing, and, apart, the daughters of Niobe
+clinging to their parent?
+
+_Salomon._ These images are better than satires; but continue, in
+preference to other thoughts or pursuits, the noble career you have
+entered. Be contented, Signor Conte, with the glory of our first great
+dramatist, and neglect altogether any inferior one. Why vex and
+torment yourself about the French? They buzz and are troublesome while
+they are swarming; but the master will soon hive them. Is the whole
+nation worth the worst of your tragedies? All the present race of
+them, all the creatures in the world which excite your indignation,
+will lie in the grave, while young and old are clapping their hands or
+beating their bosoms at your _Bruto Primo_. Consider also that kings
+and emperors should in your estimation be but as grasshoppers and
+beetles: let them consume a few blades of your clover without
+molesting them, without bringing them to crawl on you and claw you.
+The difference between them and men of genius is almost as great as
+between men of genius and those higher intelligences who act in
+immediate subordination to the Almighty. Yes, I assert it, without
+flattery and without fear, the angels are not higher above mortals
+than you are above the proudest that trample on them.
+
+_Alfieri._ I believe, sir, you were the first in commending my
+tragedies.
+
+_Salomon._ He who first praises a good book becomingly is next in
+merit to the author.
+
+_Alfieri._ As a writer and as a man I know my station: if I found in
+the world five equal to myself, I would walk out of it, not to be
+jostled.
+
+I must now, Signor Salomon, take my leave of you; for his Eminence my
+coachman and their Excellencies my horses are waiting.
+
+
+
+
+ROUSSEAU AND MALESHERBES
+
+
+_Rousseau._ I am ashamed, sir, of my countrymen: let my humiliation
+expiate their offence. I wish it had not been a minister of the Gospel
+who received you with such inhospitality.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Nothing can be more ardent and more cordial than the
+expressions with which you greet me, M. Rousseau, on my return from
+your lakes and mountains.
+
+_Rousseau._ If the pastor took you for a courtier, I reverence him for
+his contemptuousness.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Why so? Indeed you are in the wrong, my friend. No
+person has a right to treat another with contemptuousness unless he
+knows him to deserve it. When a courtier enters the house of a pastor
+in preference to the next, the pastor should partake in the sentiment
+that induced him, or at least not to be offended to be preferred. A
+courtier is such at court: in the house of a clergyman he is not a
+courtier, but a guest. If to be a courtier is offensive, remember that
+we punish offences where they are committed, where they can be
+examined, where pleadings can be heard for and against the accused,
+and where nothing is admitted extraneous from the indictment,
+excepting what may be adduced in his behalf by witnesses to the
+general tenor of his character.
+
+_Rousseau._ Is it really true that the man told you to mount the
+hayloft if you wished a night's lodging?
+
+_Malesherbes._ He did: a certain proof that he no more took me to be a
+courtier than I took him to be. I accepted his offer, and never slept
+so soundly. Moderate fatigue, the Alpine air, the blaze of a good fire
+(for I was admitted to it some moments), and a profusion of
+odoriferous hay, below which a cow was sleeping, subdued my senses,
+and protracted my slumbers beyond the usual hour.
+
+_Rousseau._ You have no right, sir, to be the patron and remunerator
+of inhospitality. Three or four such men as you would corrupt all
+Switzerland, and prepare it for the fangs of France and Austria.
+Kings, like hyenas, will always fall upon dead carcasses, although
+their bellies are full, and although they are conscious that in the
+end they will tear one another to pieces over them. Why should you
+prepare their prey? Were your fire and effulgence given you for this?
+Why, in short, did you thank this churl? Why did you recommend him to
+his superiors for preferment on the next vacancy?
+
+_Malesherbes._ I must adopt your opinion of his behaviour in order to
+answer you satisfactorily. You suppose him inhospitable: what milder
+or more effectual mode of reproving him, than to make every dish at
+his table admonish him? If he did evil, have I no authority before me
+which commands me to render him good for it? Believe me, M. Rousseau,
+the execution of this command is always accompanied by the heart's
+applause, and opportunities of obedience are more frequent here than
+anywhere. Would not you exchange resentment for the contrary feeling,
+even if religion or duty said nothing about the matter? I am afraid
+the most philosophical of us are sometimes a little perverse, and will
+not be so happy as they might be, because the path is pointed out to
+them, and because he who points it out is wise and powerful. Obstinacy
+and jealousy, the worst parts of childhood and of manhood, have range
+enough for their ill humours without the heavens.
+
+_Rousseau._ Sir, I perceive you are among my enemies. I did not think
+it; for, whatever may be my faults, I am totally free from suspicion.
+
+_Malesherbes._ And do not think it now, I entreat you, my good friend.
+
+_Rousseau._ Courts and society have corrupted the best heart in
+France, and have perverted the best intellect.
+
+_Malesherbes._ They have done much evil then.
+
+_Rousseau._ Answer me, and your own conscience: how could you choose
+to live among the perfidies of Paris and Versailles?
+
+_Malesherbes._ Lawyers, and advocates in particular, must live there;
+philosophers need not. If every honest man thought it requisite to
+leave those cities, would the inhabitants be the better?
+
+_Rousseau._ You have entered into intimacies with the members of
+various administrations, opposite in plans and sentiments, but alike
+hostile to you, and all of whom, if they could have kept your talents
+down, would have done it. Finding the thing impossible, they ceased to
+persecute, and would gladly tempt you under the semblance of
+friendship and esteem to supplicate for some office, that they might
+indicate to the world your unworthiness by refusing you: a proof, as
+you know, quite sufficient and self-evident.
+
+_Malesherbes._ They will never tempt me to supplicate for anything but
+justice, and that in behalf of others. I know nothing of parties. If I
+am acquainted with two persons of opposite sides in politics, I
+consider them as you consider a watchmaker and a cabinet-maker: one
+desires to rise by one way, the other by another. Administrations and
+systems of government would be quite indifferent to those very
+functionaries and their opponents, who appear the most zealous
+partisans, if their fortunes and consequence were not affixed to them.
+Several of these men seem consistent, and indeed are; the reason is,
+versatility would loosen and detach from them the public esteem and
+confidence----
+
+_Rousseau._ By which their girandoles are lighted, their dinners
+served, their lackeys liveried, and their opera-girls vie in
+benefit-nights. There is no State in Europe where the least wise have
+not governed the most wise. We find the light and foolish keeping up
+with the machinery of government easily and leisurely, just as we see
+butterflies keep up with carriages at full speed. This is owing in
+both cases to their levity and their position: the stronger and the
+more active are left behind. I am resolved to prove that
+farmers-general are the main causes of the defects in our music.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Prove it, or anything else, provided that the
+discussion does not irritate and torment you.
+
+_Rousseau._ Truth is the object of philosophy.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Not of philosophers: the display of ingenuity, for the
+most part, is and always has been it. I must here offer you an opinion
+of my own, which, if you think well of me, you will pardon, though you
+should disbelieve its solidity. My opinion then is, that truth is not
+reasonably the main and ultimate object of philosophy; but that
+philosophy should seek truth merely as the means of acquiring and of
+propagating happiness. Truths are simple; wisdom, which is formed by
+their apposition and application, is concrete: out of this, in its
+vast varieties, open to our wants and wishes, comes happiness. But the
+knowledge of all the truths ever yet discovered does not lead
+immediately to it, nor indeed will ever reach it, unless you make the
+more important of them bear upon your heart and intellect, and form,
+as it were, the blood that moves and nurtures them.
+
+_Rousseau._ I never until now entertained a doubt that truth is the
+ultimate aim and object of philosophy: no writer has denied it, I
+think.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Designedly none may: but when it is agreed that
+happiness is the chief good, it must also be agreed that the chief
+wisdom will pursue it; and I have already said, what your own
+experience cannot but have pointed out to you, that no truth, or
+series of truths, hypothetically, can communicate or attain it. Come,
+M. Rousseau, tell me candidly, do you derive no pleasure from a sense
+of superiority in genius and independence?
+
+_Rousseau._ The highest, sir, from a consciousness of independence.
+
+_Malesherbes._ _Ingenuous_ is the epithet we affix to modesty, but
+modesty often makes men act otherwise than ingenuously: you, for
+example, now. You are angry at the servility of people, and disgusted
+at their obtuseness and indifference, on matters of most import to
+their welfare. If they were equal to you, this anger would cease; but
+the fire would break out somewhere else, on ground which appears at
+present sound and level. Voltaire, for instance, is less eloquent than
+you: but Voltaire is wittier than any man living. This quality----
+
+_Rousseau._ Is the quality of a buffoon and a courtier. But the
+buffoon should have most of it, to support his higher dignity.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Voltaire's is Attic.
+
+_Rousseau_. If malignity is Attic. Petulance is not wit, although a
+few grains of wit may be found in petulance: quartz is not gold,
+although a few grains of gold may be found in quartz. Voltaire is a
+monkey in mischief, and a spaniel in obsequiousness. He declaims
+against the cruel and tyrannical; and he kisses the hands of
+adulteresses who murder their husbands, and of robbers who decimate
+their gang.
+
+_Malesherbes._ I will not discuss with you the character of the man,
+and only that part of the author's on which I spoke. There may be
+malignity in wit, there cannot be violence. You may irritate and
+disquiet with it; but it must be by means of a flower or a feather.
+Wit and humour stand on one side, irony and sarcasm on the other.
+
+_Rousseau._ They are in near neighbourhood.
+
+_Malesherbes._ So are the Elysian fields and Tartarus.
+
+_Rousseau._ Pray, go on: teach me to stand quiet in my stall, while my
+masters and managers pass by.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Well then--Pascal argues as closely and methodically;
+Bossuet is as scientific in the structure of his sentences;
+Demosthenes, many think, has equal fire, vigour, dexterity: equal
+selection of topics and equal temperance in treating them,
+immeasurably as he falls short of you in appeals to the sensibility,
+and in everything which by way of excellence we usually call genius.
+
+_Rousseau._ Sir, I see no resemblance between a pleader at the bar, or
+a haranguer of the populace, and me.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Certainly his questions are occasional: but one great
+question hangs in the centre, and high above the rest; and this is,
+whether the Mother of liberty and civilization shall exist, or whether
+she shall be extinguished in the bosom of her family. As we often
+apply to Eloquence and her parts the terms we apply to Architecture
+and hers, let me do it also, and remark that nothing can be more
+simple, solid, and symmetrical, nothing more frugal in decoration or
+more appropriate in distribution, than the apartments of Demosthenes.
+Yours excel them in space and altitude; your ornaments are equally
+chaste and beautiful, with more variety and invention, more airiness
+and light. But why, among the Loves and Graces, does Apollo flay
+Marsyas?--and why may not the tiara still cover the ears of Midas?
+Cannot you, who detest kings and courtiers, keep away from them? If I
+must be with them, let me be in good humour and good spirits. If I
+will tread upon a Persian carpet, let it at least be in clean shoes.
+
+As the raciest wine makes the sharpest vinegar, so the richest fancies
+turn the most readily to acrimony. Keep yours, my dear M. Rousseau,
+from the exposure and heats that generate it. Be contented; enjoy your
+fine imagination; and do not throw your salad out of window, nor shove
+your cat off your knee, on hearing it said that Shakespeare has a
+finer, or that a minister is of opinion that you know more of music
+than of state. My friend! the quarrels of ingenious men are generally
+far less reasonable and just, less placable and moderate, than those
+of the stupid and ignorant. We ought to blush at this: and we should
+blush yet more deeply if we bring them in as parties to our
+differences. Let us conquer by kindness; which we cannot do easily or
+well without communication.
+
+_Rousseau._ The minister would expel me from his antechamber, and
+order his valets to buffet me, if I offered him any proposal for the
+advantage of mankind.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Call to him, then, from this room, where the valets are
+civiler. Nature has given you a speaking-trumpet, which neither storm
+can drown nor enemy can silence. If you esteem him, instruct him; if
+you despise him, do the same. Surely, you who have much benevolence
+would not despise any one willingly or unnecessarily. Contempt is for
+the incorrigible: now, where upon earth is he whom your genius, if
+rightly and temperately exerted, would not influence and correct?
+
+I never was more flattered or honoured than by your patience in
+listening to me. Consider me as an old woman who sits by the bedside
+in your infirmity, who brings you no savoury viand, no exotic fruit,
+but a basin of whey or a basket of strawberries from your native
+hills; assures you that what oppressed you was a dream, occasioned by
+the wrong position in which you lay; opens the window, gives you fresh
+air, and entreats you to recollect the features of Nature, and to
+observe (which no man ever did so accurately) their beauty. In your
+politics you cut down a forest to make a toothpick, and cannot make
+even that out of it! Do not let us in jurisprudence be like critics in
+the classics, and change whatever can be changed, right or wrong. No
+statesman will take your advice. Supposing that any one is liberal in
+his sentiments and clear-sighted in his views, nevertheless love of
+power is jealous, and he would rejoice to see you fleeing from
+persecution or turning to meet it. The very men whom you would benefit
+will treat you worse. As the ministers of kings wish their masters to
+possess absolute power that the exercise of it may be delegated to
+them, which it naturally is from the violence and sloth alternate with
+despots as with wild beasts, and that they may apprehend no check or
+control from those who discover their misdemeanours, in like manner
+the people places more trust in favour than in fortune, and hopes to
+obtain by subserviency what it never might by election or by chance.
+Else in free governments, so some are called (for names once given are
+the last things lost), all minor offices and employments would be
+assigned by ballot. Each province or canton would present a list
+annually of such persons in it as are worthy to occupy the local
+administrations.
+
+To avoid any allusion to the country in which we live, let us take
+England for example. Is it not absurd, iniquitous, and revolting, that
+the minister of a church in Yorkshire should be appointed by a lawyer
+in London, who never knew him, never saw him, never heard from a
+single one of the parishioners a recommendation of any kind? Is it not
+more reasonable that a justice of the peace should be chosen by those
+who have always been witnesses of his integrity?
+
+_Rousseau._ The king should appoint his ministers, and should invest
+them with power and splendour; but those ministers should not appoint
+to any civil or religious place of trust or profit which the community
+could manifestly fill better. The greater part of offices and
+dignities should be conferred for a short and stated time, that all
+might hope to attain and strive to deserve them. Embassies in
+particular should never exceed one year in Europe, nor consulates two.
+To the latter office I assign this duration as the more difficult to
+fulfil properly, from requiring a knowledge of trade, although a
+slight one, and because those who possess any such knowledge are
+inclined for the greater part to turn it to their own account, which a
+consul ought by no means to do. Frequent election of representatives
+and of civil officers in the subordinate employments would remove most
+causes of discontent in the people, and of instability in kingly
+power. Here is a lottery in which every one is sure of a prize, if not
+for himself, at least for somebody in his family or among his friends;
+and the ticket would be fairly paid for out of the taxes.
+
+_Malesherbes._ So it appears to me. What other system can present so
+obviously to the great mass of the people the two principal piers and
+buttresses of government, tangible interest and reasonable hope? No
+danger of any kind can arise from it, no antipathies, no divisions, no
+imposture of demagogues, no caprice of despots. On the contrary, many
+and great advantages in places which at the first survey do not appear
+to border on it. At present, the best of the English juridical
+institutions, that of justices of the peace, is viewed with diffidence
+and distrust. Elected as they would be, and increased in number, the
+whole judicature, civil and criminal, might be confided to them, and
+their labours be not only not aggravated but diminished. Suppose them
+in four divisions to meet at four places in every county once in
+twenty days, and to possess the power of imposing a fine not exceeding
+two hundred francs on every cause implying oppression, and one not
+exceeding fifty on such as they should unanimously declare frivolous.
+
+_Rousseau._ Few would become attorneys, and those from among the
+indigent.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Almost the greatest evil that exists in the world,
+moral or physical, would be removed. A second appeal might be made in
+the following session; a third could only come before Parliament, and
+this alone by means of attorneys, the number of whom altogether would
+not exceed the number of coroners; for in England there are as many
+who cut their own throats as who would cut their own purses.
+
+_Rousseau._ The famous _trial by jury_ would cease: this would disgust
+the English.
+
+_Malesherbes._ The number of justices would be much augmented: nearly
+all those who now are jurymen would enjoy this rank and dignity, and
+would be flattered by sitting on the same bench with the first
+gentlemen of the land.
+
+_Rousseau._ What number would sit?
+
+_Malesherbes._ Three or five in the first instance; five or seven in
+the second--as the number of causes should permit.
+
+_Rousseau._ The laws of England are extremely intricate and perplexed:
+such men would be puzzled.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Such men having no interest in the perplexity, but on
+the contrary an interest in unravelling it, would see such laws
+corrected. Intricate as they are, questions on those which are the
+most so are usually referred by the judges themselves to private
+arbitration; of which my plan, I conceive, has all the advantages,
+united to those of open and free discussion among men of unperverted
+sense, and unbiased by professional hopes and interests. The different
+courts of law in England cost about seventy millions of francs
+annually. On my system, the justices or judges would receive
+five-and-twenty francs daily; as the _special jurymen_ do now, without
+any sense of shame or impropriety, however rich they may be: such
+being the established practice.
+
+_Rousseau._ Seventy millions! seventy millions!
+
+_Malesherbes._ There are attorneys and conveyancers in London who gain
+one hundred thousand francs a year, and advocates more. The
+chancellor----
+
+_Rousseau._ The Celeno of these harpies----
+
+_Malesherbes._ Nets above one million, and is greatly more than an
+archbishop in the Church, scattering preferment in Cumberland and
+Cornwall from his bench at Westminster.
+
+_Rousseau._ Absurdities and enormities are great in proportion to
+custom or insuetude. If we had lived from childhood with a boa
+constrictor, we should think it no more a monster than a canary-bird.
+The sum you mentioned, of seventy millions, is incredible.
+
+_Malesherbes._ In this estimate the expense of letters by the post,
+and of journeys made by the parties, is not and cannot be included.
+
+_Rousseau._ The whole machine of government, civil and religious,
+ought never to bear upon the people with a weight so oppressive. I do
+not add the national defence, which being principally naval is more
+costly, nor institutions for the promotion of the arts, which in a
+country like England ought to be liberal. But such an expenditure
+should nearly suffice for these also, in time of peace. Religion and
+law indeed should cost nothing: at present the one hangs property, the
+other quarters it. I am confounded at the profusion. I doubt whether
+the Romans expended so much in that year's war which dissolved the
+Carthaginian empire, and left them masters of the universe. What is
+certain, and what is better, it did not cost a tenth of it to colonize
+Pennsylvania, in whose forests the cradle of freedom is suspended, and
+where the eye of philanthropy, tired with tears and vigils, may wander
+and may rest. Your system, or rather your arrangement of one already
+established, pleases me. Ministers would only lose thereby that
+portion of their possessions which they give away to needy relatives,
+unworthy dependants, or the requisite supporters of their authority
+and power.
+
+_Malesherbes._ On this plan, no such supporters would be necessary, no
+such dependants could exist, and no such relatives could be
+disappointed. Beside, the conflicts of their opponents must be
+periodical, weak, and irregular.
+
+_Rousseau._ The craving for the rich carrion would be less keen; the
+zeal of opposition, as usual, would be measured by the stomach,
+whereon hope and overlooking have always a strong influence.
+
+_Malesherbes._ My excellent friend, do not be offended with me for an
+ingenuous and frank confession: promise me your pardon.
+
+_Rousseau._ You need none.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Promise it, nevertheless.
+
+_Rousseau._ You have said nothing, done nothing, which could in any
+way displease me.
+
+_Malesherbes._ You grant me, then, a bill of indemnity for what I may
+have undertaken with a good intention since we have been together?
+
+_Rousseau._ Willingly.
+
+_Malesherbes._ I fell into your views, I walked along with you side by
+side, merely to occupy your mind, which I perceived was agitated.
+
+In compliance with your humour, to engage your fancy, to divert it
+awhile from Switzerland, by which you appear and partly on my account
+to be offended, I began with reflections upon England: I raised up
+another cloud in the region of them, light enough to be fantastic and
+diaphanous, and to catch some little irradiation from its western
+sun. Do not run after it farther; it has vanished already. Consider:
+the three great nations----
+
+_Rousseau._ Pray, which are those?
+
+_Malesherbes._ I cannot in conscience give the palm to the Hottentots,
+the Greenlanders, or the Hurons: I meant to designate those who united
+to empire the most social virtue and civil freedom. Athens, Rome, and
+England have received on the subject of government elaborate treatises
+from their greatest men. You have reasoned more dispassionately and
+profoundly on it than Plato has done, or probably than Cicero, led
+away as he often is by the authority of those who are inferior to
+himself: but do you excel Aristoteles in calm and patient
+investigation? Or, think you, are your reading and range of thought
+more extensive than Harrington's and Milton's? Yet what effect have
+the political works of these marvellous men produced upon the
+world?--what effect upon any one state, any one city, any one hamlet?
+A clerk in office, an accountant, a gauger of small beer, a songwriter
+for a tavern dinner, produces more. He thrusts his rags into the hole
+whence the wind comes, and sleeps soundly. While you and I are talking
+about elevations and proportions, pillars and pilasters, architraves
+and friezes, the buildings we should repair are falling to the earth,
+and the materials for their restoration are in the quarry.
+
+_Rousseau._ I could answer you: but my mind has certain moments of
+repose, or rather of oscillation, which I would not for the world
+disturb. Music, eloquence, friendship, bring and prolong them.
+
+_Malesherbes._ Enjoy them, my dear friend, and convert them if
+possible to months and years. It is as much at your arbitration on
+what theme you shall meditate, as in what meadow you shall botanize;
+and you have as much at your option the choice of your thoughts, as of
+the keys in your harpsichord.
+
+_Rousseau._ If this were true, who could be unhappy?
+
+_Malesherbes._ Those of whom it is not true. Those who from want of
+practice cannot manage their thoughts, who have few to select from,
+and who, because of their sloth or of their weakness, do not roll away
+the heaviest from before them.
+
+
+
+
+LUCULLUS AND CAESAR
+
+
+_Caesar._ Lucius Lucullus, I come to you privately and unattended for
+reasons which you will know; confiding, I dare not say in your
+friendship, since no service of mine toward you hath deserved it, but
+in your generous and disinterested love of peace. Hear me on. Cneius
+Pompeius, according to the report of my connexions in the city, had,
+on the instant of my leaving it for the province, begun to solicit his
+dependants to strip me ignominiously of authority. Neither vows nor
+affinity can bind him. He would degrade the father of his wife; he
+would humiliate his own children, the unoffending, the unborn; he
+would poison his own nascent love--at the suggestion of Ambition.
+Matters are now brought so far, that either he or I must submit to a
+reverse of fortune; since no concession can assuage his malice, divert
+his envy, or gratify his cupidity. No sooner could I raise myself up,
+from the consternation and stupefaction into which the certainty of
+these reports had thrown me, than I began to consider in what manner
+my own private afflictions might become the least noxious to the
+republic. Into whose arms, then, could I throw myself more naturally
+and more securely, to whose bosom could I commit and consign more
+sacredly the hopes and destinies of our beloved country, than his who
+laid down power in the midst of its enjoyments, in the vigour of
+youth, in the pride of triumph, when Dignity solicited, when
+Friendship urged, entreated, supplicated, and when Liberty herself
+invited and beckoned to him from the senatorial order and from the
+curule chair? Betrayed and abandoned by those we had confided in, our
+next friendship, if ever our hearts receive any, or if any will
+venture in those places of desolation, flies forward instinctively to
+what is most contrary and dissimilar. Caesar is hence the visitant of
+Lucullus.
+
+_Lucullus._ I had always thought Pompeius more moderate and more
+reserved than you represent him, Caius Julius; and yet I am considered
+in general, and surely you also will consider me, but little liable to
+be prepossessed by him.
+
+_Caesar._ Unless he may have ingratiated himself with you recently,
+by the administration of that worthy whom last winter his partisans
+dragged before the Senate, and forced to assert publicly that you and
+Cato had instigated a party to circumvent and murder him; and whose
+carcass, a few days afterward, when it had been announced that he had
+died by a natural death, was found covered with bruises, stabs, and
+dislocations.
+
+_Lucullus._ You bring much to my memory which had quite slipped out of
+it, and I wonder that it could make such an impression on yours. A
+proof to me that the interest you take in my behalf began earlier than
+your delicacy will permit you to acknowledge. You are fatigued, which
+I ought to have perceived before.
+
+_Caesar._ Not at all; the fresh air has given me life and alertness: I
+feel it upon my cheek even in the room.
+
+_Lucullus._ After our dinner and sleep, we will spend the remainder of
+the day on the subject of your visit.
+
+_Caesar._ Those Ethiopian slaves of yours shiver with cold upon the
+mountain here; and truly I myself was not insensible to the change of
+climate, in the way from Mutina.
+
+What white bread! I never found such even at Naples or Capua. This
+Formian wine (which I prefer to the Chian), how exquisite!
+
+_Lucullus._ Such is the urbanity of Caesar, even while he bites his
+lip with displeasure. How! surely it bleeds! Permit me to examine the
+cup.
+
+_Caesar._ I believe a jewel has fallen out of the rim in the carriage:
+the gold is rough there.
+
+_Lucullus._ Marcipor, let me never see that cup again! No answer, I
+desire. My guest pardons heavier faults. Mind that dinner be prepared
+for us shortly.
+
+_Caesar._ In the meantime, Lucullus, if your health permits it, shall
+we walk a few paces round the villa? for I have not seen anything of
+the kind before.
+
+_Lucullus._ The walls are double; the space between them two feet: the
+materials for the most part earth and straw. Two hundred slaves, and
+about as many mules and oxen, brought the beams and rafters up the
+mountain; my architects fixed them at once in their places: every part
+was ready, even the wooden nails. The roof is thatched, you see.
+
+_Caesar._ Is there no danger that so light a material should be
+carried off by the winds, on such an eminence?
+
+_Lucullus._ None resists them equally well.
+
+_Caesar._ On this immensely high mountain, I should be apprehensive of
+the lightning, which the poets, and I think the philosophers too, have
+told us strikes the highest.
+
+_Lucullus._ The poets are right; for whatever is received as truth is
+truth in poetry; and a fable may illustrate like a fact. But the
+philosophers are wrong, as they generally are, even in the commonest
+things; because they seldom look beyond their own tenets, unless
+through captiousness, and because they argue more than they meditate,
+and display more than they examine. Archimedes and Euclid are, in my
+opinion, after our Epicurus, the worthiest of the name, having kept
+apart to the demonstrable, the practical, and the useful. Many of the
+rest are good writers and good disputants; but unfaithful suitors of
+simple science, boasters of their acquaintance with gods and
+goddesses, plagiarists and impostors. I had forgotten my roof,
+although it is composed of much the same materials as the
+philosophers'. Let the lightning fall: one handful of silver, or less,
+repairs the damage.
+
+_Caesar._ Impossible! nor indeed one thousand, nor twenty, if those
+tapestries and pictures are consumed.
+
+_Lucullus._ True; but only the thatch would burn. For, before the
+baths were tessellated, I filled the area with alum and water, and
+soaked the timbers and laths for many months, and covered them
+afterward with alum in powder, by means of liquid glue. Mithridates
+taught me this. Having in vain attacked with combustibles a wooden
+tower, I took it by stratagem, and found within it a mass of alum,
+which, if a great hurry had not been observed by us among the enemy in
+the attempt to conceal it, would have escaped our notice. I never
+scrupled to extort the truth from my prisoners; but my instruments
+were purple robes and plate, and the only wheel in my armoury destined
+to such purposes was the wheel of Fortune.
+
+_Caesar._ I wish, in my campaigns, I could have equalled your clemency
+and humanity; but the Gauls are more uncertain, fierce, and perfidious
+than the wildest tribes of Caucasus; and our policy cannot be carried
+with us, it must be formed upon the spot. They love you, not for
+abstaining from hurting them, but for ceasing; and they embrace you
+only at two seasons--when stripes are fresh, or when stripes are
+imminent. Elsewhere, I hope to become the rival of Lucullus in this
+admirable part of virtue.
+
+I shall never build villas, because--but what are your proportions?
+Surely the edifice is extremely low.
+
+_Lucullus._ There is only one floor; the height of the apartments is
+twenty feet to the cornice, five above it; the breadth is twenty-five,
+the length forty. The building, as you perceive, is quadrangular:
+three sides contain four rooms each; the other has many partitions and
+two stories, for domestics and offices. Here is my salt-bath.
+
+_Caesar._ A bath, indeed, for all the Nereids named by Hesiod, with
+room enough for the Tritons and their herds and horses.
+
+_Lucullus._ Here stand my two cows. Their milk is brought to me with
+its warmth and froth; for it loses its salubrity both by repose and by
+motion. Pardon me, Caesar: I shall appear to you to have forgotten
+that I am not conducting Marcus Varro.
+
+_Caesar._ You would convert him into Cacus: he would drive them off.
+What beautiful beasts! how sleek and white and cleanly! I never saw
+any like them, excepting when we sacrifice to Jupiter the stately
+leader from the pastures of the Clitumnus.
+
+_Lucullus._ Often do I make a visit to these quiet creatures, and with
+no less pleasure than in former days to my horses. Nor indeed can I
+much wonder that whole nations have been consentaneous in treating
+them as objects of devotion: the only thing wonderful is that
+gratitude seems to have acted as powerfully and extensively as fear;
+indeed, more extensively, for no object of worship whatever has
+attracted so many worshippers. Where Jupiter has one, the cow has ten:
+she was venerated before he was born, and will be when even the
+carvers have forgotten him.
+
+_Caesar._ Unwillingly should I see it; for the character of our gods
+hath formed the character of our nation. Serapis and Isis have stolen
+in among them within our memory, and others will follow, until at last
+Saturn will not be the only one emasculated by his successor. What can
+be more august than our rites? The first dignitaries of the republic
+are emulous to administer them: nothing of low or venal has any place
+in them; nothing pusillanimous, nothing unsocial and austere. I speak
+of them as they were; before Superstition woke up again from her
+slumber, and caught to her bosom with maternal love the alluvial
+monsters of the Nile. Philosophy, never fit for the people, had
+entered the best houses, and the image of Epicurus had taken the place
+of the Lemures. But men cannot bear to be deprived long together of
+anything they are used to, not even of their fears; and, by a reaction
+of the mind appertaining to our nature, new stimulants were looked
+for, not on the side of pleasure, where nothing new could be expected
+or imagined, but on the opposite. Irreligion is followed by
+fanaticism, and fanaticism by irreligion, alternately and perpetually.
+
+_Lucullus._ The religion of our country, as you observe, is well
+adapted to its inhabitants. Our progenitor, Mars, hath Venus recumbent
+on his breast and looking up to him, teaching us that pleasure is to
+be sought in the bosom of valour and by the means of war. No great
+alteration, I think, will ever be made in our rites and
+ceremonies--the best and most imposing that could be collected from
+all nations, and uniting them to us by our complacence in adopting
+them. The gods themselves may change names, to flatter new power: and,
+indeed, as we degenerate, Religion will accommodate herself to our
+propensities and desires. Our heaven is now popular: it will become
+monarchal; not without a crowded court, as befits it, of apparitors
+and satellites and minions of both sexes, paid and caressed for
+carrying to their stern, dark-bearded master prayers and
+supplications. Altars must be strown with broken minds, and incense
+rise amid abject aspirations. Gods will be found unfit for their
+places; and it is not impossible that, in the ruin imminent from our
+contentions for power, and in the necessary extinction both of ancient
+families and of generous sentiments, our consular fasces may become
+the water-sprinklers of some upstart priesthood, and that my son may
+apply for lustration to the son of my groom. The interest of such men
+requires that the spirit of arms and of arts be extinguished. They
+will predicate peace, that the people may be tractable to them; but a
+religion altogether pacific is the fomenter of wars and the nurse of
+crimes, alluring Sloth from within and Violence from afar. If ever it
+should prevail among the Romans, it must prevail alone: for nations
+more vigorous and energetic will invade them, close upon them, trample
+them under foot; and the name of Roman, which is now the most
+glorious, will become the most opprobrious upon earth.
+
+_Caesar._ The time, I hope, may be distant; for next to my own name I
+hold my country's.
+
+_Lucullus._ Mine, not coming from Troy or Ida, is lower in my
+estimation: I place my country's first.
+
+You are surveying the little lake beside us. It contains no fish,
+birds never alight on it, the water is extremely pure and cold; the
+walk round is pleasant, not only because there is always a gentle
+breeze from it, but because the turf is fine and the surface of the
+mountain on this summit is perfectly on a level to a great extent in
+length--not a trifling advantage to me, who walk often and am weak. I
+have no alley, no garden, no enclosure; the park is in the vale below,
+where a brook supplies the ponds, and where my servants are lodged;
+for here I have only twelve in attendance.
+
+_Caesar._ What is that so white, towards the Adriatic?
+
+_Lucullus._ The Adriatic itself. Turn round and you may descry the
+Tuscan Sea. Our situation is reported to be among the highest of the
+Apennines. Marcipor has made the sign to me that dinner is ready. Pass
+this way.
+
+_Caesar._ What a library is here! Ah, Marcus Tullius! I salute thy
+image. Why frownest thou upon me--collecting the consular robe and
+uplifting the right arm, as when Rome stood firm again, and Catiline
+fled before thee?
+
+_Lucullus._ Just so; such was the action the statuary chose, as adding
+a new endearment to the memory of my absent friend.
+
+_Caesar._ Sylla, who honoured you above all men, is not here.
+
+_Lucullus._ I have his _Commentaries_: he inscribed them, as you know,
+to me. Something even of our benefactors may be forgotten, and
+gratitude be unreproved.
+
+_Caesar._ The impression on that couch, and the two fresh honeysuckles
+in the leaves of those two books, would show, even to a stranger, that
+this room is peculiarly the master's. Are they sacred?
+
+_Lucullus._ To me and Caesar.
+
+_Caesar._ I would have asked permission----
+
+_Lucullus._ Caius Julius, you have nothing to ask of Polybius and
+Thucydides; nor of Xenophon, the next to them on the table.
+
+_Caesar._ Thucydides! the most generous, the most unprejudiced, the
+most sagacious, of historians. Now, Lucullus, you whose judgment in
+style is more accurate than any other Roman's, do tell me whether a
+commander, desirous of writing his _Commentaries_, could take to
+himself a more perfect model than Thucydides?
+
+_Lucullus._ Nothing is more perfect, nor ever will be: the scholar of
+Pericles, the master of Demosthenes, the equal of the one in military
+science, and of the other not the inferior in civil and forensic; the
+calm dispassionate judge of the general by whom he was defeated, his
+defender, his encomiast. To talk of such men is conducive not only to
+virtue but to health.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This other is my dining-room. You expect the dishes.
+
+_Caesar._ I misunderstood--I fancied----
+
+_Lucullus._ Repose yourself, and touch with the ebony wand, beside
+you, the sphinx on either of those obelisks, right or left.
+
+_Caesar._ Let me look at them first.
+
+_Lucullus._ The contrivance was intended for one person, or two at
+most, desirous of privacy and quiet. The blocks of jasper in my pair,
+and of porphyry in yours, easily yield in their grooves, each forming
+one partition. There are four, containing four platforms. The lower
+holds four dishes, such as sucking forest-boars, venison, hares,
+tunnies, sturgeons, which you will find within; the upper three, eight
+each, but diminutive. The confectionery is brought separately, for the
+steam would spoil it, if any should escape. The melons are in the
+snow, thirty feet under us: they came early this morning from a place
+in the vicinity of Luni, travelling by night.
+
+_Caesar._ I wonder not at anything of refined elegance in Lucullus;
+but really here Antiochia and Alexandria seem to have cooked for us,
+and magicians to be our attendants.
+
+_Lucullus._ The absence of slaves from our repast is the luxury, for
+Marcipor alone enters, and he only when I press a spring with my foot
+or wand. When you desire his appearance, touch that chalcedony just
+before you.
+
+_Caesar._ I eat quick and rather plentifully; yet the valetudinarian
+(excuse my rusticity, for I rejoice at seeing it) appears to equal the
+traveller in appetite, and to be contented with one dish.
+
+_Lucullus._ It is milk: such, with strawberries, which ripen on the
+Apennines many months in continuance, and some other berries of sharp
+and grateful flavour, has been my only diet since my first residence
+here. The state of my health requires it; and the habitude of nearly
+three months renders this food not only more commodious to my studies
+and more conducive to my sleep, but also more agreeable to my palate
+than any other.
+
+_Caesar._ Returning to Rome or Baiae, you must domesticate and tame
+them. The cherries you introduced from Pontus are now growing in
+Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul; and the largest and best in the
+world, perhaps, are upon the more sterile side of Lake Larius.
+
+_Lucullus._ There are some fruits, and some virtues, which require a
+harsh soil and bleak exposure for their perfection.
+
+_Caesar._ In such a profusion of viands, and so savoury, I perceive no
+odour.
+
+_Lucullus._ A flue conducts heat through the compartments of the
+obelisks; and, if you look up, you may observe that those gilt roses,
+between the astragals in the cornice, are prominent from it half a
+span. Here is an aperture in the wall, between which and the outer is
+a perpetual current of air. We are now in the dog-days; and I have
+never felt in the whole summer more heat than at Rome in many days of
+March.
+
+_Caesar._ Usually you are attended by troops of domestics and of
+dinner-friends, not to mention the learned and scientific, nor your
+own family, your attachment to which, from youth upward, is one of the
+higher graces in your character. Your brother was seldom absent from
+you.
+
+_Lucullus._ Marcus was coming; but the vehement heats along the Arno,
+in which valley he has a property he never saw before, inflamed his
+blood, and he now is resting for a few days at Faesulae, a little town
+destroyed by Sylla within our memory, who left it only air and water,
+the best in Tuscany. The health of Marcus, like mine, has been
+declining for several months: we are running our last race against
+each other, and never was I, in youth along the Tiber, so anxious of
+first reaching the goal. I would not outlive him: I should reflect too
+painfully on earlier days, and look forward too despondently on
+future. As for friends, lampreys and turbots beget them, and they
+spawn not amid the solitude of the Apennines. To dine in company with
+more than two is a Gaulish and German thing. I can hardly bring myself
+to believe that I have eaten in concert with twenty; so barbarous and
+herdlike a practice does not now appeal to me--such an incentive to
+drink much and talk loosely; not to add, such a necessity to speak
+loud, which is clownish and odious in the extreme. On this mountain
+summit I hear no noises, no voices, not even of salutation; we have no
+flies about us, and scarcely an insect or reptile.
+
+_Caesar._ Your amiable son is probably with his uncle: is he well?
+
+_Lucullus._ Perfectly. He was indeed with my brother in his intended
+visit to me; but Marcus, unable to accompany him hither, or
+superintend his studies in the present state of his health, sent him
+directly to his Uncle Cato at Tusculum--a man fitter than either of us
+to direct his education, and preferable to any, excepting yourself and
+Marcus Tullius, in eloquence and urbanity.
+
+_Caesar._ Cato is so great, that whoever is greater must be the
+happiest and first of men.
+
+_Lucullus._ That any such be still existing, O Julius, ought to excite
+no groan from the breast of a Roman citizen. But perhaps I wrong you;
+perhaps your mind was forced reluctantly back again, on your past
+animosities and contests in the Senate.
+
+_Caesar._ I revere him, but cannot love him.
+
+_Lucullus._ Then, Caius Julius, you groaned with reason; and I would
+pity rather than reprove you.
+
+On the ceiling at which you are looking, there is no gilding, and
+little painting--a mere trellis of vines bearing grapes, and the
+heads, shoulders, and arms rising from the cornice only, of boys and
+girls climbing up to steal them, and scrambling for them: nothing
+overhead; no giants tumbling down, no Jupiter thundering, no Mars and
+Venus caught at mid-day, no river-gods pouring out their urns upon us;
+for, as I think nothing so insipid as a flat ceiling, I think nothing
+so absurd as a storied one. Before I was aware, and without my
+participation, the painter had adorned that of my bedchamber with a
+golden shower, bursting from varied and irradiated clouds. On my
+expostulation, his excuse was that he knew the Danae of Scopas, in a
+recumbent posture, was to occupy the centre of the room. The walls,
+behind the tapestry and pictures, are quite rough. In forty-three days
+the whole fabric was put together and habitable.
+
+The wine has probably lost its freshness: will you try some other?
+
+_Caesar._ Its temperature is exact; its flavour exquisite. Latterly I
+have never sat long after dinner, and am curious to pass through the
+other apartments, if you will trust me.
+
+_Lucullus._ I attend you.
+
+_Caesar._ Lucullus, who is here? What figure is that on the poop of
+the vessel? Can it be----
+
+_Lucullus._ The subject was dictated by myself; you gave it.
+
+_Caesar._ Oh, how beautifully is the water painted! How vividly the
+sun strikes against the snows on Taurus! The grey temples and pierhead
+of Tarsus catch it differently, and the monumental mound on the left
+is half in shade. In the countenance of those pirates I did not
+observe such diversity, nor that any boy pulled his father back: I did
+not indeed mark them or notice them at all.
+
+_Lucullus._ The painter in this fresco, the last work finished, had
+dissatisfied me in one particular. 'That beautiful young face,' said
+I, 'appears not to threaten death.'
+
+'Lucius,' he replied, 'if one muscle were moved it were not Caesar's:
+beside, he said it jokingly, though resolved.'
+
+'I am contented with your apology, Antipho; but what are you doing
+now? for you never lay down or suspend your pencil, let who will talk
+and argue. The lines of that smaller face in the distance are the
+same.'
+
+'Not the same,' replied he, 'nor very different: it smiles, as surely
+the goddess must have done at the first heroic act of her descendant.'
+
+_Caesar._ In her exultation and impatience to press forward she seems
+to forget that she is standing at the extremity of the shell, which
+rises up behind out of the water; and she takes no notice of the
+terror on the countenance of this Cupid who would detain her, nor of
+this who is flying off and looking back. The reflection of the shell
+has given a warmer hue below the knee; a long streak of yellow light
+in the horizon is on the level of her bosom, some of her hair is
+almost lost in it; above her head on every side is the pure azure of
+the heavens.
+
+Oh! and you would not have shown me this? You, among whose primary
+studies is the most perfect satisfaction of your guests!
+
+_Lucullus._ In the next apartment are seven or eight other pictures
+from our history.
+
+There are no more: what do you look for?
+
+_Caesar._ I find not among the rest any descriptive of your own
+exploits. Ah, Lucullus! there is no surer way of making them
+remembered.
+
+This, I presume by the harps in the two corners, is the music-room.
+
+_Lucullus._ No, indeed; nor can I be said to have one here; for I love
+best the music of a single instrument, and listen to it willingly at
+all times, but most willingly while I am reading. At such seasons a
+voice or even a whisper disturbs me; but music refreshes my brain when
+I have read long, and strengthen it from the beginning. I find also
+that if I write anything in poetry (a youthful propensity still
+remaining), it gives rapidity and variety and brightness to my ideas.
+On ceasing, I command a fresh measure and instrument, or another
+voice; which is to the mind like a change of posture, or of air to the
+body. My heal this benefited by the gentle play thus opened to the
+most delicate of the fibres.
+
+_Caesar._ Let me augur that a disorder so tractable may be soon
+removed. What is it thought to be?
+
+_Lucullus._ I am inclined to think, and my physician did not long
+attempt to persuade me of the contrary, that the ancient realms of
+Aeaetes have supplied me with some other plants than the cherry, and
+such as I should be sorry to see domesticated here in Italy.
+
+_Caesar._ The gods forbid! Anticipate better things! The reason of
+Lucullus is stronger than the medicaments of Mithridates; but why not
+use them too? Let nothing be neglected. You may reasonably hope for
+many years of life: your mother still enjoys it.
+
+_Lucullus._ To stand upon one's guard against Death exasperates her
+malice and protracts our sufferings.
+
+_Caesar._ Rightly and gravely said: but your country at this time
+cannot do well without you.
+
+_Lucullus._ The bowl of milk, which to-day is presented to me, will
+shortly be presented to my Manes.
+
+_Caesar._ Do you suspect the hand?
+
+_Lucullus._ I will not suspect a Roman: let us converse no more about
+it.
+
+_Caesar._ It is the only subject on which I am resolved never to
+think, as relates to myself. Life may concern us, death not; for in
+death we neither can act nor reason, we neither can persuade nor
+command; and our statues are worth more than we are, let them be but
+wax.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Lucullus._ From being for ever in action, for ever in contention, and
+from excelling in them all other mortals, what advantage derive we? I
+would not ask what satisfaction, what glory? The insects have more
+activity than ourselves, the beasts more strength, even inert matter
+more firmness and stability; the gods alone more goodness. To the
+exercise of this every country lies open; and neither I eastward nor
+you westward have found any exhausted by contests for it.
+
+Must we give men blows because they will not look at us? or chain them
+to make them hold the balance evener?
+
+Do not expect to be acknowledged for what you are, much less for what
+you would be; since no one can well measure a great man but upon the
+bier. There was a time when the most ardent friend to Alexander of
+Macedon would have embraced the partisan for his enthusiasm, who
+should have compared him with Alexander of Pherae. It must have been
+at a splendid feast, and late at it, when Scipio should have been
+raised to an equality with Romulus, or Cato with Curius. It has been
+whispered in my ear, after a speech of Cicero, 'If he goes on so, he
+will tread down the sandal of Marcus Antonius in the long run, and
+perhaps leave Hortensius behind.' Officers of mine, speaking about
+you, have exclaimed with admiration: 'He fights like Cinna.' Think,
+Caius Julius (for you have been instructed to think both as a poet and
+as a philosopher), that among the hundred hands of Ambition, to whom
+we may attribute them more properly than to Briareus, there is not one
+which holds anything firmly. In the precipitancy of her course, what
+appears great is small, and what appears small is great. Our estimate
+of men is apt to be as inaccurate and inexact as that of things, or
+more. Wishing to have all on our side, we often leave those we should
+keep by us, run after those we should avoid, and call importunately on
+others who sit quiet and will not come. We cannot at once catch the
+applause of the vulgar and expect the approbation of the wise. What
+are parties? Do men really great ever enter into them? Are they not
+ball-courts, where ragged adventurers strip and strive, and where
+dissolute youths abuse one another, and challenge and game and wager?
+If you and I cannot quite divest ourselves of infirmities and
+passions, let us think, however, that there is enough in us to be
+divided into two portions, and let us keep the upper undisturbed and
+pure. A part of Olympus itself lies in dreariness and in clouds,
+variable and stormy; but it is not the highest: there the gods govern.
+Your soul is large enough to embrace your country: all other affection
+is for less objects, and less men are capable of it. Abandon, O
+Caesar! such thoughts and wishes as now agitate and propel you: leave
+them to mere men of the marsh, to fat hearts and miry intellects.
+Fortunate may we call ourselves to have been born in an age so
+productive of eloquence, so rich in erudition. Neither of us would be
+excluded, or hooted at, on canvassing for these honours. He who can
+think dispassionately and deeply as I do, is great as I am; none
+other. But his opinions are at freedom to diverge from mine, as mine
+are from his; and indeed, on recollection, I never loved those most
+who thought with me, but those rather who deemed my sentiments worth
+discussion, and who corrected me with frankness and affability.
+
+_Caesar._ Lucullus, you perhaps have taken the wiser and better part,
+certainly the pleasanter. I cannot argue with you: I would gladly hear
+one who could, but you again more gladly. I should think unworthily of
+you if I thought you capable of yielding or receding. I do not even
+ask you to keep our conversation long a secret, so greatly does it
+preponderate in your favour; so much more of gentleness, of eloquence,
+and of argument. I came hither with one soldier, avoiding the cities,
+and sleeping at the villa of a confidential friend. To-night I sleep
+in yours, and, if your dinner does not disturb me, shall sleep
+soundly. You go early to rest I know.
+
+_Lucullus._ Not, however, by daylight. Be assured, Caius Julius, that
+greatly as your discourse afflicts me, no part of it shall escape my
+lips. If you approach the city with arms, with arms I meet you; then
+your denouncer and enemy, at present your host and confidant.
+
+_Caesar._ I shall conquer you.
+
+_Lucullus._ That smile would cease upon it: you sigh already.
+
+_Caesar._ Yes, Lucullus, if I am oppressed I shall overcome my
+oppressor: I know my army and myself. A sigh escaped me, and many more
+will follow; but one transport will rise amid them, when, vanquisher
+of my enemies and avenger of my dignity, I press again the hand of
+Lucullus, mindful of this day.
+
+
+
+
+EPICURUS, LEONTION, AND TERNISSA
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Ternissa._ The broad and billowy summits of yon monstrous trees, one
+would imagine, were made for the storms to rest upon when they are
+tired of raving. And what bark! It occurs to me, Epicurus, that I have
+rarely seen climbing plants attach themselves to these trees, as they
+do to the oak, the maple, the beech, and others.
+
+_Leontion._ If your remark be true, perhaps the resinous are not
+embraced by them so frequently because they dislike the odour of the
+resin, or some other property of the juices; for they, too, have their
+affections and antipathies no less than countries and their climes.
+
+_Ternissa._ For shame! what would you with me?
+
+_Epicurus._ I would not interrupt you while you were speaking, nor
+while Leontion was replying; this is against my rules and practice.
+Having now ended, kiss me, Ternissa!
+
+_Ternissa._ Impudent man! in the name of Pallas, why should I kiss
+you?
+
+_Epicurus._ Because you expressed hatred.
+
+_Ternissa._ Do we kiss when we hate?
+
+_Epicurus._ There is no better end of hating. The sentiment should not
+exist one moment; and if the hater gives a kiss on being ordered to do
+it, even to a tree or a stone, that tree or stone becomes the monument
+of a fault extinct.
+
+_Ternissa._ I promise you I never will hate a tree again.
+
+_Epicurus._ I told you so.
+
+_Leontion._ Nevertheless, I suspect, my Ternissa, you will often be
+surprised into it. I was very near saying, 'I hate these rude square
+stones!' Why did you leave them here, Epicurus?
+
+_Epicurus._ It is true, they are the greater part square, and seem to
+have been cut out in ancient times for plinths and columns; they are
+also rude. Removing the smaller, that I might plant violets and
+cyclamens and convolvuluses and strawberries, and such other herbs as
+grow willingly in dry places, I left a few of these for seats, a few
+for tables and for couches.
+
+_Leontion._ Delectable couches!
+
+_Epicurus._ Laugh as you may, they will become so when they are
+covered with moss and ivy, and those other two sweet plants whose
+names I do not remember to have found in any ancient treatise, but
+which I fancy I have heard Theophrastus call 'Leontion' and
+'Ternissa'.
+
+_Ternissa._ The bold, insidious, false creature!
+
+_Epicurus._ What is that volume, may I venture to ask, Leontion? Why
+do you blush?
+
+_Leontion._ I do not blush about it.
+
+_Epicurus._ You are offended, then, my dear girl.
+
+_Leontion._ No, nor offended. I will tell you presently what it
+contains. Account to me first for your choice of so strange a place to
+walk in: a broad ridge, the summit and one side barren, the other a
+wood of rose-laurels impossible to penetrate. The worst of all is, we
+can see nothing of the city or the Parthenon, unless from the very
+top.
+
+_Epicurus._ The place commands, in my opinion, a most perfect view.
+
+_Leontion._ Of what, pray?
+
+_Epicurus._ Of itself; seeming to indicate that we, Leontion, who
+philosophize, should do the same.
+
+_Leontion._ Go on, go on! say what you please: I will not hate
+anything yet. Why have you torn up by the root all these little
+mountain ash-trees? This is the season of their beauty: come,
+Ternissa, let us make ourselves necklaces and armlets, such as may
+captivate old Sylvanus and Pan; you shall have your choice. But why
+have you torn them up?
+
+_Epicurus._ On the contrary, they were brought hither this morning.
+Sosimenes is spending large sums of money on an olive-ground, and has
+uprooted some hundreds of them, of all ages and sizes. I shall cover
+the rougher part of the hill with them, setting the clematis and vine
+and honeysuckle against them, to unite them.
+
+_Ternissa._ Oh, what a pleasant thing it is to walk in the green light
+of the vine trees, and to breathe the sweet odour of their invisible
+flowers!
+
+_Epicurus._ The scent of them is so delicate that it requires a sigh
+to inhale it; and this, being accompanied and followed by enjoyment,
+renders the fragrance so exquisite. Ternissa, it is this, my sweet
+friend, that made you remember the green light of the foliage, and
+think of the invisible flowers as you would of some blessing from
+heaven.
+
+_Ternissa._ I see feathers flying at certain distances just above the
+middle of the promontory: what can they mean?
+
+_Epicurus._ Cannot you imagine them to be the feathers from the wings
+of Zethes and Calaeis, who came hither out of Thrace to behold the
+favourite haunts of their mother Oreithyia? From the precipice that
+hangs over the sea a few paces from the pinasters she is reported to
+have been carried off by Boreas; and these remains of the primeval
+forest have always been held sacred on that belief.
+
+_Leontion._ The story is an idle one.
+
+_Ternissa._ Oh no, Leontion! the story is very true.
+
+_Leontion._ Indeed!
+
+_Ternissa._ I have heard not only odes, but sacred and most ancient
+hymns upon it; and the voice of Boreas is often audible here, and the
+screams of Oreithyia.
+
+_Leontion._ The feathers, then, really may belong to Calaeis and
+Zethes.
+
+_Ternissa._ I don't believe it; the winds would have carried them
+away.
+
+_Leontion._ The gods, to manifest their power, as they often do by
+miracles, could as easily fix a feather eternally on the most
+tempestuous promontory, as the mark of their feet upon the flint.
+
+_Ternissa._ They could indeed; but we know the one to a certainty, and
+have no such authority for the other. I have seen these pinasters from
+the extremity of the Piraeus, and have heard mention of the altar
+raised to Boreas: where is it?
+
+_Epicurus._ As it stands in the centre of the platform, we cannot see
+it from hence; there is the only piece of level ground in the place.
+
+_Leontion._ Ternissa intends the altar to prove the truth of the
+story.
+
+_Epicurus._ Ternissa is slow to admit that even the young can deceive,
+much less the old; the gay, much less the serious.
+
+_Leontion._ It is as wise to moderate our belief as our desires.
+
+_Epicurus._ Some minds require much belief, some thrive on little.
+Rather an exuberance of it is feminine and beautiful. It acts
+differently on different hearts; it troubles some, it consoles others;
+in the generous it is the nurse of tenderness and kindness, of heroism
+and self-devotion; in the ungenerous it fosters pride, impatience of
+contradiction and appeal, and, like some waters, what it finds a dry
+stick or hollow straw, it leaves a stone.
+
+_Ternissa._ We want it chiefly to make the way of death an easy one.
+
+_Epicurus._ There is no easy path leading out of life, and few are the
+easy ones that lie within it. I would adorn and smoothen the
+declivity, and make my residence as commodious as its situation and
+dimensions may allow; but principally I would cast under-foot the
+empty fear of death.
+
+_Ternissa._ Oh, how can you?
+
+_Epicurus._ By many arguments already laid down: then by thinking that
+some perhaps, in almost every age, have been timid and delicate as
+Ternissa; and yet have slept soundly, have felt no parent's or
+friend's tear upon their faces, no throb against their breasts: in
+short, have been in the calmest of all possible conditions, while
+those around were in the most deplorable and desperate.
+
+_Ternissa._ It would pain me to die, if it were only at the idea that
+any one I love would grieve too much for me.
+
+_Epicurus._ Let the loss of our friends be our only grief, and the
+apprehension of displeasing them our only fear.
+
+_Leontion._ No apostrophes! no interjections! Your argument was
+unsound; your means futile.
+
+_Epicurus._ Tell me, then, whether the horse of a rider on the road
+should not be spurred forward if he started at a shadow.
+
+_Leontion._ Yes.
+
+_Epicurus._ I thought so: it would, however, be better to guide him
+quietly up to it, and to show him that it was one. Death is less than
+a shadow: it represents nothing, even imperfectly.
+
+_Leontion._ Then at the best what is it? why care about it, think
+about it, or remind us that it must befall us? Would you take the same
+trouble, when you see my hair entwined with ivy, to make me remember
+that, although the leaves are green and pliable, the stem is fragile
+and rough, and that before I go to bed I shall have many knots and
+entanglements to extricate? Let me have them; but let me not hear of
+them until the time is come.
+
+_Epicurus._ I would never think of death as an embarrassment, but as a
+blessing.
+
+_Ternissa._ How? a blessing?
+
+_Epicurus._ What, if it makes our enemies cease to hate us? what, if
+it makes our friends love us the more?
+
+_Leontion._ Us? According to your doctrine we shall not exist at all.
+
+_Epicurus._ I spoke of that which is consolatory while we are here,
+and of that which in plain reason ought to render us contented to stay
+no longer. You, Leontion, would make others better; and better they
+certainly will be, when their hostilities languish in an empty field,
+and their rancour is tired with treading upon dust. The generous
+affections stir about us at the dreary hour of death, as the blossoms
+of the Median apple swell and diffuse their fragrance in the cold.
+
+_Ternissa._ I cannot bear to think of passing the Styx, lest Charon
+should touch me; he is so old and wilful, so cross and ugly.
+
+_Epicurus._ Ternissa! Ternissa! I would accompany you thither, and
+stand between. Would you not too, Leontion?
+
+_Leontion._ I don't know.
+
+_Ternissa._ Oh, that we could go together!
+
+_Leontion._ Indeed!
+
+_Ternissa._ All three, I mean--I said--or was going to say it. How
+ill-natured you are, Leontion, to misinterpret me; I could almost cry.
+
+_Leontion._ Do not, do not, Ternissa! Should that tear drop from your
+eyelash you would look less beautiful.
+
+_Epicurus._ If it is well to conquer a world, it is better to conquer
+two.
+
+_Ternissa._ That is what Alexander of Macedon wept because he could
+not accomplish.
+
+_Epicurus._ Ternissa! we three can accomplish it; or any one of us.
+
+_Ternissa._ How? pray!
+
+_Epicurus._ We can conquer this world and the next; for you will have
+another, and nothing should be refused you.
+
+_Ternissa._ The next by piety: but this, in what manner?
+
+_Epicurus._ By indifference to all who are indifferent to us; by
+taking joyfully the benefit that comes spontaneously; by wishing no
+more intensely for what is a hair's-breadth beyond our reach than for
+a draught of water from the Ganges; and by fearing nothing in another
+life.
+
+_Ternissa._ This, O Epicurus! is the grand impossibility.
+
+_Epicurus._ Do you believe the gods to be as benevolent and good as
+you are? or do you not?
+
+_Ternissa._ Much kinder, much better in every way.
+
+_Epicurus._ Would you kill or hurt the sparrow that you keep in your
+little dressing-room with a string around the leg, because he hath
+flown where you did not wish him to fly?
+
+_Ternissa._ No! it would be cruel; the string about the leg of so
+little and weak a creature is enough.
+
+_Epicurus._ You think so; I think so; God thinks so. This I may say
+confidently; for whenever there is a sentiment in which strict justice
+and pure benevolence unite, it must be His.
+
+_Ternissa._ O Epicurus! when you speak thus--
+
+_Leontion._ Well, Ternissa, what then?
+
+_Ternissa._ When Epicurus teaches us such sentiments as these, I am
+grieved that he has not so great an authority with the Athenians as
+some others have.
+
+_Leontion._ You will grieve more, I suspect, my Ternissa, when he
+possesses that authority.
+
+_Ternissa._ What will he do?
+
+_Leontion._ Why turn pale? I am not about to answer that he will
+forget or leave you. No; but the voice comes deepest from the
+sepulchre, and a great name hath its root in the dead body. If you
+invited a company to a feast, you might as well place round the table
+live sheep and oxen and vases of fish and cages of quails, as you
+would invite a company of friendly hearers to the philosopher who is
+yet living. One would imagine that the iris of our intellectual eye
+were lessened by the glory of his presence, and that, like eastern
+kings, he could be looked at near only when his limbs are stiff, by
+waxlight, in close curtains.
+
+_Epicurus._ One of whom we know little leaves us a ring or other token
+of remembrance, and we express a sense of pleasure and of gratitude;
+one of whom we know nothing writes a book, the contents of which might
+(if we would let them) have done us more good and might have given us
+more pleasure, and we revile him for it. The book may do what the
+legacy cannot; it may be pleasurable and serviceable to others as well
+as ourselves: we would hinder this too. In fact, all other love is
+extinguished by self-love: beneficence, humanity, justice, philosophy,
+sink under it. While we insist that we are looking for Truth, we
+commit a falsehood. It never was the first object with any one, and
+with few the second.
+
+Feed unto replenishment your quieter fancies, my sweetest little
+Ternissa! and let the gods, both youthful and aged, both gentle and
+boisterous, administer to them hourly on these sunny downs: what can
+they do better?
+
+_Leontion._ But those feathers, Ternissa, what god's may they be?
+since you will not pick them up, nor restore them to Calaeis nor to
+Zethes.
+
+_Ternissa._ I do not think they belong to any god whatever; and shall
+never be persuaded of it unless Epicurus says it is so.
+
+_Leontion._ O unbelieving creature! do you reason against the
+immortals?
+
+_Ternissa._ It was yourself who doubted, or appeared to doubt, the
+flight of Oreithyia. By admitting too much we endanger our religion.
+Beside, I think I discern some upright stakes at equal distances, and
+am pretty sure the feathers are tied to them by long strings.
+
+_Epicurus._ You have guessed the truth.
+
+_Ternissa._ Of what use are they there?
+
+_Epicurus._ If you have ever seen the foot of a statue broken off just
+below the ankle, you have then, Leontion and Ternissa, seen the form
+of the ground about us. The lower extremities of it are divided into
+small ridges, as you will perceive if you look around; and these are
+covered with corn, olives, and vines. At the upper part, where
+cultivation ceases, and where those sheep and goats are grazing,
+begins my purchase. The ground rises gradually unto near the summit,
+where it grows somewhat steep, and terminates in a precipice. Across
+the middle I have traced a line, denoted by those feathers, from one
+dingle to the other; the two terminations of my intended garden. The
+distance is nearly a thousand paces, and the path, perfectly on a
+level, will be two paces broad, so that I may walk between you; but
+another could not join us conveniently. From this there will be
+several circuitous and spiral, leading by the easiest ascent to the
+summit; and several more, to the road along the cultivation
+underneath: here will, however, be but one entrance. Among the
+projecting fragments and the massive stones yet standing of the
+boundary-wall, which old pomegranates imperfectly defend, and which my
+neighbour has guarded more effectively against invasion, there are
+hillocks of crumbling mould, covered in some places with a variety of
+moss; in others are elevated tufts, or dim labyrinths of eglantine.
+
+_Ternissa._ Where will you place the statues? for undoubtedly you must
+have some.
+
+_Epicurus._ I will have some models for statues. Pygmalion prayed the
+gods to give life to the image he adored: I will not pray them to give
+marble to mine. Never may I lay my wet cheek upon the foot under which
+is inscribed the name of Leontion or Ternissa!
+
+_Leontion._ Do not make us melancholy; never let us think that the
+time can come when we shall lose our friends. Glory, literature,
+philosophy have this advantage over friendship: remove one object from
+them, and others fill the void; remove one from friendship, one only,
+and not the earth nor the universality of worlds, no, nor the
+intellect that soars above and comprehends them, can replace it!
+
+_Epicurus._ Dear Leontion! always amiable, always graceful! How lovely
+do you now appear to me! what beauteous action accompanied your words!
+
+_Leontion._ I used none whatever.
+
+_Epicurus._ That white arm was then, as it is now, over the shoulder
+of Ternissa; and her breath imparted a fresh bloom to your cheek, a
+new music to your voice. No friendship is so cordial or so delicious
+as that of girl for girl; no hatred so intense and immovable as that
+of woman for woman. In youth you love one above the others of your
+sex; in riper age you hate all, more or less, in proportion to
+similarity of accomplishments and pursuits--which sometimes (I wish it
+were oftener) are bonds of union to man. In us you more easily pardon
+faults than excellences in each other. _Your_ tempers are such, my
+beloved scholars, that even this truth does not ruffle them; and such
+is your affection, that I look with confidence to its unabated ardour
+at twenty.
+
+_Leontion._ Oh, then I am to love Ternissa almost fifteen months!
+
+_Ternissa._ And I am destined to survive the loss of it three months
+above four years!
+
+_Epicurus._ Incomparable creatures! may it be eternal! In loving ye
+shall follow no example; ye shall step securely over the iron rule
+laid down for others by the Destinies, and _you_ for ever be Leontion,
+and _you_ Ternissa.
+
+_Leontion._ Then indeed we should not want statues.
+
+_Ternissa._ But men, who are vainer creatures, would be good for
+nothing without them: they must be flattered even by the stones.
+
+_Epicurus._ Very true. Neither the higher arts nor the civic virtues
+can flourish extensively without the statues of illustrious men. But
+gardens are not the places for them. Sparrows, wooing on the general's
+truncheon (unless he be such a general as one of ours in the last
+war), and snails besliming the emblems of the poet, do not remind us
+worthily of their characters. Porticos are their proper situations,
+and those the most frequented. Even there they may lose all honour and
+distinction, whether from the thoughtlessness of magistrates or from
+the malignity of rivals. Our own city, the least exposed of any to the
+effects of either, presents us a disheartening example. When the
+Thebans in their jealousy condemned Pindar to the payment of a fine
+for having praised the Athenians too highly, our citizens erected a
+statue of bronze to him.
+
+_Leontion._ Jealousy of Athens made the Thebans fine him; and jealousy
+of Thebes made the Athenians thus record it.
+
+_Epicurus._ And jealousy of Pindar, I suspect, made some poet persuade
+the archons to render the distinction a vile and worthless one, by
+placing his effigy near a king's--one Evagoras of Cyprus.
+
+_Ternissa._ Evagoras, I think I remember to have read in the
+inscription, was rewarded in this manner for his reception of Conon,
+defeated by the Lacedemonians.
+
+_Epicurus._ Gratitude was due to him, and some such memorial to record
+it. External reverence should be paid unsparingly to the higher
+magistrates of every country who perform their offices exemplarily;
+yet they are not on this account to be placed in the same degree with
+men of primary genius. They never exalt the human race, and rarely
+benefit it; and their benefits are local and transitory, while those
+of a great writer are universal and eternal.
+
+If the gods did indeed bestow on us a portion of their fire, they seem
+to have lighted it in sport and left it; the harder task and the
+nobler is performed by that genius who raises it clear and glowing
+from its embers, and makes it applicable to the purposes that dignify
+or delight our nature. I have ever said, 'Reverence the rulers.' Let,
+then, his image stand; but stand apart from Pindar's. Pallas and Jove!
+defend me from being carried down the stream of time among a shoal of
+royalets, and the rootless weeds they are hatched on!
+
+_Ternissa._ So much piety would deserve the exemption, even though
+your writings did not hold out the decree.
+
+_Leontion._ Child, the compliment is ill turned: if you are ironical,
+as you must be on the piety of Epicurus, Atticism requires that you
+should continue to be so, at least to the end of the sentence.
+
+_Ternissa._ Irony is my abhorrence. Epicurus may appear less pious
+than some others, but I am certain he is more; otherwise the gods
+would never have given him----
+
+_Leontion._ What? what? let us hear!
+
+_Ternissa._ Leontion!
+
+_Leontion._ Silly girl! Were there any hibiscus or broom growing near
+at hand, I would send him away and whip you.
+
+_Epicurus._ There is fern, which is better.
+
+_Leontion._ I was not speaking to you: but now you shall have
+something to answer for yourself. Although you admit no statues in the
+country, you might at least, methinks, have discovered a retirement
+with a fountain in it: here I see not even a spring.
+
+_Epicurus._ Fountain I can hardly say there is; but on the left there
+is a long crevice or chasm, which we have never yet visited, and which
+we cannot discern until we reach it. This is full of soft mould, very
+moist, and many high reeds and canes are growing there; and the rock
+itself too drips with humidity along it, and is covered with more
+tufted moss and more variegated lichens. This crevice, with its
+windings and sinuosities, is about four hundred paces long, and in
+many parts eleven, twelve, thirteen feet wide, but generally six or
+seven. I shall plant it wholly with lilies of the valley, leaving the
+irises which occupy the sides as well as the clefts, and also those
+other flowers of paler purple, from the autumnal cups of which we
+collect the saffron; and forming a narrow path of such turf as I can
+find there, or rather following it as it creeps among the bays and
+hazels and sweet-brier, which had fallen at different times from the
+summit and are now grown old, with an infinity of primroses at the
+roots. There are nowhere twenty steps without a projection and a turn,
+nor in any ten together is the chasm of the same width or figure.
+Hence the ascent in its windings is easy and imperceptible quite to
+the termination, where the rocks are somewhat high and precipitous; at
+the entrance they lose themselves in privet and elder, and you must
+make your way between them through the canes. Do not you remember
+where I carried you both across the muddy hollow in the footpath?
+
+_Ternissa._ Leontion does.
+
+_Epicurus._ That place is always wet; not only in this month of
+Puanepsion,[7] which we are beginning to-day, but in midsummer. The
+water that causes it comes out a little way above it, but originates
+from the crevice, which I will cover at top with rose-laurel and
+mountain-ash, with clematis and vine; and I will intercept the little
+rill in its wandering, draw it from its concealment, and place it like
+Bacchus under the protection of the nymphs, who will smile upon it in
+its marble cradle, which at present I keep at home.
+
+_Ternissa._ Leontion, why do you turn away your face? have the nymphs
+smiled upon you in it?
+
+_Leontion._ I bathed in it once, if you must know, Ternissa! Why now,
+Ternissa, why do you turn away yours? have the nymphs frowned upon you
+for invading their secrets?
+
+_Ternissa._ Epicurus, you are in the right to bring it away from
+Athens, from under the eye of Pallas: she might be angry.
+
+_Epicurus._ You approve of its removal then, my lovely friend?
+
+_Ternissa._ Mightily. [_Aside._] I wish it may break in pieces on the
+road.
+
+_Epicurus._ What did you say?
+
+_Ternissa._ I wish it were now on the road, that I might try whether
+it would hold me--I mean with my clothes on.
+
+_Epicurus._ It would hold you, and one a span longer. I have another
+in the house; but it is not decorated with fauns and satyrs and
+foliage, like this.
+
+_Leontion._ I remember putting my hand upon the frightful satyr's
+head, to leap in: it seems made for the purpose. But the sculptor
+needed not to place the naiad quite so near--he must have been a very
+impudent man; it is impossible to look for a moment at such a piece of
+workmanship.
+
+_Ternissa._ For shame! Leontion!--why, what was it? I do not desire to
+know.
+
+_Epicurus._ I don't remember it.
+
+_Leontion._ Nor I neither; only the head.
+
+_Epicurus._ I shall place the satyr toward the rock, that you may
+never see him, Ternissa.
+
+_Ternissa._ Very right; he cannot turn round.
+
+_Leontion._ The poor naiad had done it, in vain.
+
+_Ternissa._ All these labourers will soon finish the plantation, if
+you superintend them, and are not appointed to some magistrature.
+
+_Epicurus._ Those who govern us are pleased at seeing a philosopher
+out of the city, and more still at finding in a season of scarcity
+forty poor citizens, who might become seditious, made happy and quiet
+by such employment.
+
+Two evils, of almost equal weight, may befall the man of erudition:
+never to be listened to, and to be listened to always. Aware of
+these, I devote a large portion of my time and labours to the
+cultivation of such minds as flourish best in cities, where my garden
+at the gate, although smaller than this, we find sufficiently
+capacious. There I secure my listeners; here my thoughts and
+imaginations have their free natural current, and tarry or wander as
+the will invites: may it ever be among those dearest to me!--those
+whose hearts possess the rarest and divinest faculty, of retaining or
+forgetting at option what ought to be forgotten or retained.
+
+_Leontion._ The whole ground then will be covered with trees and
+shrubs?
+
+_Epicurus._ There are some protuberances in various parts of the
+eminence, which you do not perceive till you are upon them or above
+them. They are almost level at the top, and overgrown with fine grass;
+for they catch the better soil brought down in small quantities by the
+rains. These are to be left unplanted: so is the platform under the
+pinasters, whence there is a prospect of the city, the harbour, the
+isle of Salamis, and the territory of Megara. 'What then!' cried
+Sosimenes, 'you would hide from your view my young olives, and the
+whole length of the new wall I have been building at my own expense
+between us! and, when you might see at once the whole of Attica, you
+will hardly see more of it than I could buy.'
+
+_Leontion._ I do not perceive the new wall, for which Sosimenes, no
+doubt, thinks himself another Pericles.
+
+_Epicurus._ Those old junipers quite conceal it.
+
+_Ternissa._ They look warm and sheltering; but I like the rose-laurels
+much better: and what a thicket of them here is!
+
+_Epicurus._ Leaving all the larger, I shall remove many thousands of
+them; enough to border the greater part of the walk, intermixed with
+roses.
+
+There is an infinity of other plants and flowers, or weeds as
+Sosimenes calls them, of which he has cleared his oliveyard, and which
+I shall adopt. Twenty of his slaves came in yesterday, laden with
+hyacinths and narcissi, anemones and jonquils. 'The curses of our
+vineyards,' cried he, 'and good neither for man nor beast. I have
+another estate infested with lilies of the valley: I should not wonder
+if you accepted these too.'
+
+'And with thanks,' answered I.
+
+The whole of his remark I could not collect: he turned aside, and (I
+believe) prayed. I only heard 'Pallas'--'Father'--'sound
+mind'--'inoffensive man'--'good neighbour'. As we walked together I
+perceived him looking grave, and I could not resist my inclination to
+smile as I turned my eyes toward him. He observed it, at first with
+unconcern, but by degrees some doubts arose within him, and he said,
+'Epicurus, you have been throwing away no less than half a talent on
+this sorry piece of mountain, and I fear you are about to waste as
+much in labour: for nothing was ever so terrible as the price we are
+obliged to pay the workman, since the conquest of Persia and the
+increase of luxury in our city. Under three obols none will do his
+day's work. But what, in the name of all the deities, could induce you
+to plant those roots, which other people dig up and throw away?'
+
+'I have been doing,' said I, 'the same thing my whole life through,
+Sosimenes!'
+
+'How!' cried he; 'I never knew that.'
+
+'Those very doctrines,' added I, 'which others hate and extirpate, I
+inculcate and cherish. They bring no riches, and therefore are thought
+to bring no advantage; to me, they appear the more advantageous for
+that reason. They give us immediately what we solicit through the
+means of wealth. We toil for the wealth first; and then it remains to
+be proved whether we can purchase with it what we look for. Now, to
+carry our money to the market, and not to find in the market our
+money's worth, is great vexation; yet much greater has already
+preceded, in running up and down for it among so many competitors, and
+through so many thieves.'
+
+After a while he rejoined, 'You really, then, have not overreached
+me?'
+
+'In what, my friend?' said I.
+
+'These roots,' he answered, 'may perhaps be good and saleable for some
+purpose. Shall you send them into Persia? or whither?'
+
+'Sosimenes, I shall make love-potions of the flowers.'
+
+_Leontion._ O Epicurus! should it ever be known in Athens that they
+are good for this, you will not have, with all your fences of prunes
+and pomegranates, and precipices with brier upon them, a single root
+left under ground after the month of Elaphebolion.[8]
+
+_Epicurus._ It is not every one that knows the preparation.
+
+_Leontion._ Everybody will try it.
+
+_Epicurus._ And you, too, Ternissa?
+
+_Ternissa._ Will you teach me?
+
+_Epicurus._ This, and anything else I know. We must walk together when
+they are in flower.
+
+_Ternissa._ And can you teach me, then?
+
+_Epicurus._ I teach by degrees.
+
+_Leontion._ By very slow ones, Epicurus! I have no patience with you;
+tell us directly.
+
+_Epicurus._ It is very material what kind of recipient you bring with
+you. Enchantresses use a brazen one; silver and gold are employed in
+other arts.
+
+_Leontion._ I will bring any.
+
+_Ternissa._ My mother has a fine golden one. She will lend it me; she
+allows me everything.
+
+_Epicurus._ Leontion and Ternissa, those eyes of yours brighten at
+inquiry, as if they carried a light within them for a guidance.
+
+_Leontion._ No flattery!
+
+_Ternissa._ No flattery! Come, teach us!
+
+_Epicurus._ Will you hear me through in silence?
+
+_Leontion._ We promise.
+
+_Epicurus._ Sweet girls! the calm pleasures, such as I hope you will
+ever find in your walks among these gardens, will improve your beauty,
+animate your discourse, and correct the little that may hereafter rise
+up for correction in your dispositions. The smiling ideas left in our
+bosoms from our infancy, that many plants are the favourites of the
+gods, and that others were even the objects of their love--having once
+been invested with the human form, beautiful and lively and happy as
+yourselves--give them an interest beyond the vision; yes, and a
+station--let me say it--on the vestibule of our affections. Resign
+your ingenuous hearts to simple pleasures; and there is none in man,
+where men are Attic, that will not follow and outstrip their
+movements.
+
+_Ternissa._ O Epicurus!
+
+_Epicurus._ What said Ternissa?
+
+_Leontion._ Some of those anemones, I do think, must be still in
+blossom. Ternissa's golden cup is at home; but she has brought with
+her a little vase for the filter--and has filled it to the brim. Do
+not hide your head behind my shoulder, Ternissa; no, nor in my lap.
+
+_Epicurus._ Yes, there let it lie--the lovelier for that tendril of
+sunny brown hair upon it. How it falls and rises! Which is the hair?
+which the shadow?
+
+_Leontion._ Let the hair rest.
+
+_Epicurus._ I must not, perhaps, clasp the shadow!
+
+_Leontion._ You philosophers are fond of such unsubstantial things.
+Oh, you have taken my volume! This is deceit.
+
+You live so little in public, and entertain such a contempt for
+opinion, as to be both indifferent and ignorant what it is that people
+blame you for.
+
+_Epicurus._ I know what it is I should blame myself for, if I attended
+to them. Prove them to be wiser and more disinterested in their wisdom
+than I am, and I will then go down to them and listen to them. When I
+have well considered a thing, I deliver it--regardless of what those
+think who neither take the time nor possess the faculty of considering
+anything well, and who have always lived far remote from the scope of
+our speculations.
+
+_Leontion._ In the volume you snatched away from me so slyly, I have
+defended a position of yours which many philosophers turn into
+ridicule--namely, that politeness is among the virtues. I wish you
+yourself had spoken more at large upon the subject.
+
+_Epicurus._ It is one upon which a lady is likely to display more
+ingenuity and discernment. If philosophers have ridiculed my
+sentiment, the reason is, it is among those virtues which in general
+they find most difficult to assume or counterfeit.
+
+_Leontion._ Surely life runs on the smoother for this equability and
+polish; and the gratification it affords is more extensive than is
+afforded even by the highest virtue. Courage, on nearly all occasions,
+inflicts as much of evil as it imparts of good. It may be exerted in
+defence of our country, in defence of those who love us, in defence of
+the harmless and the helpless; but those against whom it is thus
+exerted may possess an equal share of it. If they succeed, then
+manifestly the ill it produces is greater than the benefit; if they
+succumb, it is nearly as great. For many of their adversaries are
+first killed and maimed, and many of their own kindred are left to
+lament the consequences of the aggression.
+
+_Epicurus._ You have spoken first of courage, as that virtue which
+attracts your sex principally.
+
+_Ternissa._ Not me; I am always afraid of it. I love those best who
+can tell me the most things I never knew before, and who have patience
+with me, and look kindly while they teach me, and almost as if they
+were waiting for fresh questions. Now let me hear directly what you
+were about to say to Leontion.
+
+_Epicurus._ I was proceeding to remark that temperance comes next; and
+temperance has then its highest merit when it is the support of
+civility and politeness. So that I think I am right and equitable in
+attributing to politeness a distinguished rank, not among the
+ornaments of life, but among the virtues. And you, Leontion and
+Ternissa, will have leaned the more propensely toward this opinion, if
+you considered, as I am sure you did, that the peace and concord of
+families, friends, and cities are preserved by it; in other terms, the
+harmony of the world.
+
+_Ternissa._ Leontion spoke of courage, you of temperance; the next
+great virtue, in the division made by the philosophers, is justice.
+
+_Epicurus._ Temperance includes it; for temperance is imperfect if it
+is only an abstinence from too much food, too much wine, too much
+conviviality or other luxury. It indicates every kind of forbearance.
+Justice is forbearance from what belongs to another. Giving to this
+one rightly what that one would hold wrongfully in magistrature not in
+the abstract, and is only a part of its office. The perfectly
+temperate man is also the perfectly just man; but the perfectly just
+man (as philosophers now define him) may not be the perfectly
+temperate one. I include the less in the greater.
+
+_Leontion._ We hear of judges, and upright ones too, being immoderate
+eaters and drinkers.
+
+_Epicurus._ The Lacedemonians are temperate in food and courageous in
+battle; but men like these, if they existed in sufficient numbers,
+would devastate the universe. We alone, we Athenians, with less
+military skill perhaps, and certainly less rigid abstinence from
+voluptuousness and luxury, have set before it the only grand example
+of social government and of polished life. From us the seed is
+scattered; from us flow the streams that irrigate it; and ours are the
+hands, O Leontion, that collect it, cleanse it, deposit it, and convey
+and distribute it sound and weighty through every race and age.
+Exhausted as we are by war, we can do nothing better than lie down and
+doze while the weather is fine overhead, and dream (if we can) that we
+are affluent and free.
+
+O sweet sea air! how bland art thou and refreshing! Breathe upon
+Leontion! breathe upon Ternissa! bring them health and spirits and
+serenity, many springs and many summers, and when the vine-leaves have
+reddened and rustle under their feet!
+
+These, my beloved girls, are the children of Eternity: they played
+around Theseus and the beauteous Amazon; they gave to Pallas the bloom
+of Venus, and to Venus the animation of Pallas. Is it not better to
+enjoy by the hour their soft, salubrious influence, than to catch by
+fits the rancid breath of demagogues; than to swell and move under it
+without or against our will; than to acquire the semblance of
+eloquence by the bitterness of passion, the tone of philosophy by
+disappointment, or the credit of prudence by distrust? Can fortune,
+can industry, can desert itself, bestow on us anything we have not
+here?
+
+_Leontion._ And when shall those three meet? The gods have never
+united them, knowing that men would put them asunder at the first
+appearance.
+
+_Epicurus._ I am glad to leave the city as often as possible, full as
+it is of high and glorious reminiscences, and am inclined much rather
+to indulge in quieter scenes, whither the Graces and Friendship lead
+me. I would not contend even with men able to contend with me. You,
+Leontion, I see, think differently, and have composed at last your
+long-meditated work against the philosophy of Theophrastus.
+
+_Leontion._ Why not? he has been praised above his merits.
+
+_Epicurus._ My Leontion! you have inadvertently given me the reason
+and origin of all controversial writings. They flow not from a love of
+truth or a regard for science, but from envy and ill-will. Setting
+aside the evil of malignity--always hurtful to ourselves, not always
+to others--there is weakness in the argument you have adduced. When a
+writer is praised above his merits in his own times, he is certain of
+being estimated below them in the times succeeding. Paradox is dear to
+most people: it bears the appearance of originality, but is usually
+the talent of the superficial, the perverse, and the obstinate.
+
+Nothing is more gratifying than the attention you are bestowing on me,
+which you always apportion to the seriousness of my observations.
+
+_Leontion._ I dislike Theophrastus for his affected contempt of your
+doctrines.
+
+_Epicurus._ Unreasonably, for the contempt of them; reasonably, if
+affected. Good men may differ widely from me, and wiser ones
+misunderstand me; for, their wisdom having raised up to them schools
+of their own, they have not found leisure to converse with me; and
+from others they have received a partial and inexact report. My
+opinion is, that certain things are indifferent and unworthy of
+pursuit or attention, as lying beyond our research and almost our
+conjecture; which things the generality of philosophers (for the
+generality are speculative) deem of the first importance. Questions
+relating to them I answer evasively, or altogether decline. Again,
+there are modes of living which are suitable to some and unsuitable to
+others. What I myself follow and embrace, what I recommend to the
+studious, to the irritable, to the weak in health, would ill agree
+with the commonality of citizens. Yet my adversaries cry out: 'Such is
+the opinion and practice of Epicurus!' For instance, I have never
+taken a wife, and never will take one; but he from among the mass, who
+should avow his imitation of my example, would act as wisely and more
+religiously in saying that he chose celibacy because Pallas had done
+the same.
+
+_Leontion._ If Pallas had many such votaries she would soon have few
+citizens to supply them.
+
+_Epicurus._ And extremely bad ones, if all followed me in retiring
+from the offices of magistracy and of war. Having seen that the most
+sensible men are the most unhappy, I could not but examine the causes
+of it; and, finding that the same sensibility to which they are
+indebted for the activity of their intellect is also the restless
+mover of their jealousy and ambition, I would lead them aside from
+whatever operates upon these, and throw under their feet the terrors
+their imagination has created. My philosophy is not for the populace
+nor for the proud: the ferocious will never attain it; the gentle will
+embrace it, but will not call it mine. I do not desire that they
+should: let them rest their heads upon that part of the pillow which
+they find the softest, and enjoy their own dreams unbroken.
+
+_Leontion._ The old are all against you, Epicurus, the name of
+pleasure is an affront to them: they know no other kind of it than
+that which has flowered and seeded, and of which the withered stems
+have indeed a rueful look.
+
+_Epicurus._ Unhappily the aged are retentive of long-acquired maxims,
+and insensible to new impressions, whether from fancy or from truth:
+in fact, their eyes blend the two together. Well might the poet tell
+us:
+
+      Fewer the gifts that gnarled Age presents
+      To elegantly-handed Infancy,
+      Than elegantly-handed Infancy
+      Presents to gnarled Age. From both they drop;
+      The middle course of life receives them all,
+      Save the light few that laughing Youth runs off with,
+      Unvalued as a mistress or a flower.
+
+_Leontion._ Since, in obedience to your institutions, O Epicurus, I
+must not say I am angry, I am offended at least with Theophrastus for
+having so misrepresented your opinions, on the necessity of keeping
+the mind composed and tranquil, and remote from every object and every
+sentiment by which a painful sympathy may be excited. In order to
+display his elegance of language, he runs wherever he can lay a
+censure on you, whether he believes in its equity or not.
+
+_Epicurus._ This is the case with all eloquent men, and all
+disputants. Truth neither warms nor elevates them, neither obtains for
+them profit nor applause.
+
+_Ternissa._ I have heard wise remarks very often and very warmly
+praised.
+
+_Epicurus._ Not for the truth in them, but for the grace, or because
+they touched the spring of some preconception or some passion. Man is
+a hater of truth, a lover of fiction.
+
+Theophrastus is a writer of many acquirements and some shrewdness,
+usually judicious, often somewhat witty, always elegant; his thoughts
+are never confused, his sentences are never incomprehensible. If
+Aristoteles thought more highly of him than his due, surely you ought
+not to censure Theophrastus with severity on the supposition of his
+rating me below mine; unless you argue that a slight error in a short
+sum is less pardonable than in a longer. Had Aristoteles been living,
+and had he given the same opinion of me, your friendship and perhaps
+my self-love might have been wounded; for, if on one occasion he spoke
+too favourably, he never spoke unfavourably but with justice. This is
+among the indications of orderly and elevated minds; and here stands
+the barrier that separates them from the common and the waste. Is a
+man to be angry because an infant is fretful? Is a philosopher to
+unpack and throw away his philosophy, because an idiot has tried to
+overturn it on the road, and has pursued it with gibes and ribaldry?
+
+_Leontion._ Theophrastus would persuade us that, according to your
+system, we not only should decline the succour of the wretched, but
+avoid the sympathies that poets and historians would awaken in us.
+Probably for the sake of introducing some idle verses, written by a
+friend of his, he says that, following the guidance of Epicurus, we
+should altogether shun the theatre; and not only when Prometheus and
+Oedipus and Philoctetes are introduced, but even when generous and
+kindly sentiments are predominant, if they partake of that tenderness
+which belongs to pity. I know not what Thracian lord recovers his
+daughter from her ravisher; such are among the words they exchange:
+
+_Father._
+
+      Insects that dwell in rotten reeds, inert
+      Upon the surface of a stream or pool,
+      Then rush into the air on meshy vans,
+      Are not so different in their varying lives
+      As we are.--Oh! what father on this earth,
+      Holding his child's cool cheek within his palms
+      And kissing his fair front, would wish him man?--
+      Inheritor of wants and jealousies,
+      Of labour, of ambition, of distress,
+      And, cruellest of all the passions, lust.
+      Who that behold me, persecuted, scorned,
+      A wanderer, e'er could think what friends were mine,
+      How numerous, how devoted? with what glee
+      Smiled my old house, with what acclaim my courts
+      Rang from without whene'er my war-horse neighed?
+
+_Daughter._
+
+      Thy fortieth birthday is not shouted yet
+      By the young peasantry, with rural gifts
+      And nightly fires along the pointed hills,
+      Yet do thy temples glitter with grey hair
+      Scattered not thinly: ah, what sudden change!
+      Only thy voice and heart remain the same:
+      No! that voice trembles, and that heart (I feel),
+      While it would comfort and console me, breaks.
+
+_Epicurus._ I would never close my bosom against the feelings of
+humanity; but I would calmly and well consider by what conduct of life
+they may enter it with the least importunity and violence. A
+consciousness that we have promoted the happiness of others, to the
+uttermost of our power, is certain not only to meet them at the
+threshold, but to bring them along with us, and to render them
+accurate and faithful prompters, when we bend perplexedly over the
+problem of evil figured by the tragedians. If there were more of pain
+than of pleasure in the exhibitions of the dramatist, no man in his
+senses would attend them twice. All the imitative arts have delight
+for the principal object: the first of these is poetry; the highest of
+poetry is tragic.
+
+_Leontion._ The epic has been called so.
+
+_Epicurus._ Improperly; for the epic has much more in it of what is
+prosaic. Its magnitude is no argument. An Egyptian pyramid contains
+more materials than an Ionic temple, but requires less contrivance,
+and exhibits less beauty of design. My simile is yet a defective one;
+for a tragedy must be carried on with an unbroken interest, and,
+undecorated by loose foliage or fantastic branches, it must rise,
+like the palm-tree, with a lofty unity. On these matters I am unable
+to argue at large, or perhaps correctly; on those, however, which I
+have studied and treated, my terms are so explicit and clear, that
+Theophrastus can never have misunderstood them. Let me recall to your
+attention but two axioms.
+
+Abstinence from low pleasures is the only means of meriting or of
+obtaining the higher.
+
+Kindness in ourselves is the honey that blunts the sting of unkindness
+in another.
+
+_Leontion._ Explain to me, then, O Epicurus, why we suffer so much
+from ingratitude.
+
+_Epicurus._ We fancy we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we
+suffer from self-love. Passion weeps while she says, 'I did not
+deserve this from him'; Reason, while she says it, smoothens her brow
+at the clear fountain of the heart. Permit me also, like Theophrastus,
+to borrow a few words from a poet.
+
+_Ternissa._ Borrow as many such as any one will entrust to you, and
+may Hermes prosper your commerce! Leontion may go to the theatre then;
+for she loves it.
+
+_Epicurus._ Girls! be the bosom friends of Antigone and Ismene; and
+you shall enter the wood of the Eumenides without shuddering, and
+leave it without the trace of a tear. Never did you appear so graceful
+to me, O Ternissa--no, not even after this walk do you--as when I saw
+you blow a fly from the forehead of Philoctetes in the propylea. The
+wing, with which Sophocles and the statuary represent him, to drive
+away the summer insects in his agony, had wearied his flaccid arm,
+hanging down beside him.
+
+_Ternissa._ Do you imagine, then, I thought him a living man?
+
+_Epicurus._ The sentiment was both more delicate and more august from
+being indistinct. You would have done it, even if he _had_ been a
+living man; even if he could have clasped you in his arms, imploring
+the deities to resemble you in gentleness, you would have done it.
+
+_Ternissa._ He looked so abandoned by all, and so heroic, yet so
+feeble and so helpless! I did not think of turning around to see if
+any one was near me; or else, perhaps----
+
+_Epicurus._ If you could have thought of looking around, you would no
+longer have been Ternissa. The gods would have transformed you for it
+into some tree.
+
+_Leontion._ And Epicurus had been walking under it this day, perhaps.
+
+_Epicurus._ With Leontion, the partner of his sentiments. But the walk
+would have been earlier or later than the present hour; since the
+middle of the day, like the middle of certain fruits, is good for
+nothing.
+
+_Leontion._ For dinner, surely?
+
+_Epicurus._ Dinner is a less gratification to me than to many: I dine
+alone.
+
+_Ternissa._ Why?
+
+_Epicurus._ To avoid the noise, the heat, and the intermixture both of
+odours and of occupations. I cannot bear the indecency of speaking
+with a mouth in which there is food. I careen my body (since it is
+always in want of repair) in as unobstructed a space as I can, and I
+lie down and sleep awhile when the work is over.
+
+_Leontion._ Epicurus! although it would be very interesting, no doubt,
+to hear more of what you do after dinner--[_Aside to him._] now don't
+smile: I shall never forgive you if you say a single word--yet I would
+rather hear a little about the theatre, and whether you think at last
+that women should frequent it; for you have often said the contrary.
+
+_Epicurus._ I think they should visit it rarely; not because it
+excites their affections, but because it deadens them. To me nothing
+is so odious as to be at once among the rabble and among the heroes,
+and, while I am receiving into my heart the most exquisite of human
+sensations, to feel upon my shoulder the hand of some inattentive and
+insensible young officer.
+
+_Leontion._ Oh, very bad indeed! horrible!
+
+_Ternissa._ You quite fire at the idea.
+
+_Leontion._ Not I: I don't care about it.
+
+_Ternissa._ Not about what is very bad indeed? quite horrible?
+
+_Leontion._ I seldom go thither.
+
+_Epicurus._ The theatre is delightful when we erect it in our own
+house or arbour, and when there is but one spectator.
+
+_Leontion._ You must lose the illusion in great part, if you only read
+the tragedy, which I fancy to be your meaning.
+
+_Epicurus._ I lose the less of it. Do not imagine that the illusion
+is, or can be, or ought to be, complete. If it were possible, no
+Phalaris or Perillus could devise a crueller torture. Here are two
+imitations: first, the poet's of the sufferer; secondly, the actor's
+of both: poetry is superinduced. No man in pain ever uttered the
+better part of the language used by Sophocles. We admit it, and
+willingly, and are at least as much illuded by it as by anything else
+we hear or see upon the stage. Poets and statuaries and painters give
+us an adorned imitation of the object, so skilfully treated that we
+receive it for a correct one. This is the only illusion they aim at:
+this is the perfection of their arts.
+
+_Leontion._ Do you derive no pleasure from the representation of a
+consummate actor?
+
+_Epicurus._ High pleasure; but liable to be overturned in an instant:
+pleasure at the mercy of any one who sits beside me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Leontion._ In my treatise I have only defended your tenets against
+Theophrastus.
+
+_Epicurus._ I am certain you have done it with spirit and eloquence,
+dear Leontion; and there are but two words in it I would wish you to
+erase.
+
+_Leontion._ Which are they?
+
+_Epicurus._ Theophrastus and Epicurus. If you love me, you will do
+nothing that may make you uneasy when you grow older; nothing that may
+allow my adversary to say, 'Leontion soon forgot her Epicurus.' My
+maxim is, never to defend my systems or paradoxes; if you undertake
+it, the Athenians will insist that I impelled you secretly, or that my
+philosophy and my friendship were ineffectual on you.
+
+_Leontion._ They shall never say that.
+
+_Epicurus._ I am not unmoved by the kindness of your intentions. Most
+people, and philosophers, too, among the rest, when their own conduct
+or opinions are questioned, are admirably prompt and dexterous in the
+science of defence; but when another's are assailed, they parry with
+as ill a grace and faltering a hand as if they never had taken a
+lesson in it at home. Seldom will they see what they profess to look
+for; and, finding it, they pick up with it a thorn under the nail.
+They canter over the solid turf, and complain that there is no corn
+upon it; they canter over the corn, and curse the ridges and furrows.
+All schools of philosophy, and almost all authors, are rather to be
+frequented for exercise than for freight; but this exercise ought to
+acquire us health and strength, spirits and good-humour. There is none
+of them that does not supply some truth useful to every man, and some
+untruth equally so to the few that are able to wrestle with it. If
+there were no falsehood in the world, there would be no doubt; if
+there were no doubt, there would be no inquiry; if no inquiry, no
+wisdom, no knowledge, no genius: and Fancy herself would lie muffled
+up in her robe, inactive, pale, and bloated. I wish we could
+demonstrate the existence of utility in some other evils as easily as
+in this.
+
+_Leontion._ My remarks on the conduct and on the style of Theophrastus
+are not confined to him solely. I have taken at last a general view of
+our literature, and traced as far as I am able its deviation and
+decline. In ancient works we sometimes see the mark of the chisel; in
+modern we might almost suppose that no chisel was employed at all, and
+that everything was done by grinding and rubbing. There is an
+ordinariness, an indistinctness, a generalization, not even to be
+found in a flock of sheep. As most reduce what is sand into dust, the
+few that avoid it run to a contrary extreme, and would force us to
+believe that what is original must be unpolished and uncouth.
+
+_Epicurus._ There have been in all ages, and in all there will be,
+sharp and slender heads made purposely and peculiarly for creeping
+into the crevices of our nature. While we contemplate the magnificence
+of the universe, and mensurate the fitness and adaptation of one part
+to another, the small philosopher hangs upon a hair or creeps within a
+wrinkle, and cries out shrilly from his elevation that we are blind
+and superficial. He discovers a wart, he pries into a pore; and he
+calls it knowledge of man. Poetry and criticism, and all the fine
+arts, have generated such living things, which not only will be
+co-existent with them but will (I fear) survive them. Hence history
+takes alternately the form of reproval and of panegyric; and science
+in its pulverized state, in its shapeless and colourless atoms,
+assumes the name of metaphysics. We find no longer the rich succulence
+of Herodotus, no longer the strong filament of Thucydides, but
+thoughts fit only for the slave, and language for the rustic and the
+robber. These writings can never reach posterity, nor serve better
+authors near us; for who would receive as documents the perversions of
+venality and party? Alexander we know was intemperate, and Philip both
+intemperate and perfidious: we require not a volume of dissertation on
+the thread of history, to demonstrate that one or other left a
+tailor's bill unpaid, and the immorality of doing so; nor a supplement
+to ascertain on the best authorities which of the two it was. History
+should explain to us how nations rose and fell, what nurtured them in
+their growth, what sustained them in their maturity; not which orator
+ran swiftest through the crowd from the right hand to the left, which
+assassin was too strong for manacles, or which felon too opulent for
+crucifixion.
+
+_Leontion._ It is better, I own it, that such writers should amuse our
+idleness than excite our spleen.
+
+_Ternissa._ What is spleen?
+
+_Epicurus._ Do not ask her; she cannot tell you. The spleen, Ternissa,
+is to the heart what Arimanes is to Oromazes.
+
+_Ternissa._ I am little the wiser yet. Does he ever use such hard
+words with you?
+
+_Leontion._ He means the evil Genius and the good Genius, in the
+theogony of the Persians: and would perhaps tell you, as he hath told
+me, that the heart in itself is free from evil, but very capable of
+receiving and too tenacious of holding it.
+
+_Epicurus._ In our moral system, the spleen hangs about the heart and
+renders it sad and sorrowful, unless we continually keep it in
+exercise by kind offices, or in its proper place by serious
+investigation and solitary questionings. Otherwise, it is apt to
+adhere and to accumulate, until it deadens the principles of sound
+action, and obscures the sight.
+
+_Ternissa._ It must make us very ugly when we grow old.
+
+_Leontion._ In youth it makes us uglier, as not appertaining to it: a
+little more or less ugliness in decrepitude is hardly worth
+considering, there being quite enough of it from other quarters: I
+would stop it here, however.
+
+_Ternissa._ Oh, what a thing is age!
+
+_Leontion._ Death without death's quiet.
+
+_Ternissa._ Leontion said that even bad writers may amuse our idle
+hours: alas! even good ones do not much amuse mine, unless they record
+an action of love or generosity. As for the graver, why cannot they
+come among us and teach us, just as you do?
+
+_Epicurus._ Would you wish it?
+
+_Ternissa._ No, no! I do not want them: only I was imagining how
+pleasant it is to converse as we are doing, and how sorry I should be
+to pore over a book instead of it. Books always make me sigh, and
+think about other things. Why do you laugh, Leontion?
+
+_Epicurus._ She was mistaken in saying bad authors may amuse our
+idleness. Leontion knows not then how sweet and sacred idleness is.
+
+_Leontion._ To render it sweet and sacred, the heart must have a
+little garden of its own, with its umbrage and fountains and
+perennial flowers--a careless company! Sleep is called sacred as well
+as sweet by Homer; and idleness is but a step from it. The idleness of
+the wise and virtuous should be both, it being the repose and
+refreshment necessary for past exertions and for future; it punishes
+the bad man, it rewards the good; the deities enjoy it, and Epicurus
+praises it. I was indeed wrong in my remark; for we should never seek
+amusement in the foibles of another, never in coarse language, never
+in low thoughts. When the mind loses its feeling for elegance, it
+grows corrupt and grovelling, and seeks in the crowd what ought to be
+found at home.
+
+_Epicurus._ Aspasia believed so, and bequeathed to Leontion, with
+every other gift that Nature had bestowed upon her, the power of
+delivering her oracles from diviner lips.
+
+_Leontion._ Fie! Epicurus! It is well you hide my face for me with
+your hand. Now take it away; we cannot walk in this manner.
+
+_Epicurus._ No word could ever fall from you without its weight; no
+breath from you ought to lose itself in the common air.
+
+_Leontion._ For shame! What would you have?
+
+_Ternissa._ He knows not what he would have nor what he would say. I
+must sit down again. I declare I scarcely understand a single
+syllable. Well, he is very good, to tease you no longer. Epicurus has
+an excellent heart; he would give pain to no one; least of all to you.
+
+_Leontion,_ I have pained him by this foolish book, and he would only
+assure me that he does not for a moment bear me malice. Take the
+volume; take it, Epicurus! tear it in pieces.
+
+_Epicurus._ No, Leontion! I shall often look with pleasure on this
+trophy of brave humanity; let me kiss the hand that raises it!
+
+_Ternissa._ I am tired of sitting: I am quite stiff: when shall we
+walk homeward?
+
+_Epicurus._ Take my arm, Ternissa!
+
+_Ternissa._ Oh! I had forgotten that I proposed to myself a trip as
+far up as the pinasters, to look at the precipice of Oreithyia. Come
+along! come along! how alert does the sea air make us! I seem to feel
+growing at my feet and shoulders the wings of Zethes or Calaeis.
+
+_Epicurus._ Leontion walks the nimblest to-day.
+
+_Ternissa._ To display her activity and strength, she runs before us.
+Sweet Leontion, how good she is! but she should have stayed for us: it
+would be in vain to try to overtake her.
+
+No, Epicurus! Mind! take care! you are crushing these little
+oleanders--and now the strawberry plants--the whole heap. Not I,
+indeed. What would my mother say, if she knew it? And Leontion! she
+will certainly look back.
+
+_Epicurus._ The fairest of the Eudaimones never look back: such are
+the Hours and Love, Opportunity and Leontion.
+
+_Ternissa._ How could you dare to treat me in this manner? I did not
+say again I hated anything.
+
+_Epicurus._ Forgive me!
+
+_Ternissa._ Violent creature!
+
+_Epicurus._ If tenderness is violence. Forgive me; and say you love
+me.
+
+_Ternissa._ All at once? could you endure such boldness?
+
+_Epicurus._ Pronounce it! whisper it.
+
+_Ternissa._ Go, go. Would it be proper?
+
+_Epicurus._ Is that sweet voice asking its heart or me? let the
+worthier give the answer.
+
+_Ternissa._ O Epicurus! you are very, very dear to me; and are the
+last in the world that would ever tell you were called so.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] The Attic month of Puanepsion had its commencement in the latter
+days of October; its name is derived from +puana+, the legumes
+which were offered in sacrifice to Apollo at that season.
+
+[8] The thirteenth of Elaphebolion was the tenth of April.
+
+
+
+
+DANTE AND BEATRICE
+
+
+_Dante._ When you saw me profoundly pierced with love, and reddening
+and trembling, did it become you, did it become you, you whom I have
+always called _the most gentle Bice_, to join in the heartless
+laughter of those girls around you? Answer me. Reply unhesitatingly.
+Requires it so long a space for dissimulation and duplicity? Pardon!
+pardon! pardon! My senses have left me; my heart being gone, they
+follow.
+
+_Beatrice._ Childish man! pursuing the impossible.
+
+_Dante._ And was it this you laughed at? We cannot touch the hem of
+God's garment; yet we fall at His feet and weep.
+
+_Beatrice._ But weep not, gentle Dante! fall not before the weakest of
+His creatures, willing to comfort, unable to relieve you. Consider a
+little. Is laughter at all times the signal or the precursor of
+derision? I smiled, let me avow it, from the pride I felt in your
+preference of me; and if I laughed, it was to conceal my sentiments.
+Did you never cover sweet fruit with worthless leaves? Come, do not
+drop again so soon so faint a smile. I will not have you grave, nor
+very serious. I pity you; I must not love you: if I might, I would.
+
+_Dante._ Yet how much love is due to me, O Bice, who have loved you,
+as you well remember, even from your tenth year. But it is reported,
+and your words confirm it, that you are going to be married.
+
+_Beatrice._ If so, and if I could have laughed at that, and if my
+laughter could have estranged you from me, would you blame me?
+
+_Dante._ Tell me the truth.
+
+_Beatrice._ The report is general.
+
+_Dante._ The truth! the truth! Tell me, Bice.
+
+_Beatrice._ Marriages, it is said, are made in heaven.
+
+_Dante._ Is heaven then under the paternal roof?
+
+_Beatrice._ It has been to me hitherto.
+
+_Dante._ And now you seek it elsewhere.
+
+_Beatrice._ I seek it not. The wiser choose for the weaker. Nay, do
+not sigh so. What would you have, my grave pensive Dante? What can I
+do?
+
+_Dante._ Love me.
+
+_Beatrice._ I always did.
+
+_Dante._ Love me? O bliss of heaven!
+
+_Beatrice._ No, no, no! Forbear! Men's kisses are always mischievous
+and hurtful; everybody says it. If you truly loved me, you would never
+think of doing so.
+
+_Dante._ Nor even this!
+
+_Beatrice._ You forget that you are no longer a boy; and that it is
+not thought proper at your time of life to continue the arm at all
+about the waist. Beside, I think you would better not put your head
+against my bosom; it beats too much to be pleasant to you. Why do you
+wish it? why fancy it can do you any good? It grows no cooler; it
+seems to grow even hotter. Oh, how it burns! Go, go; it hurts me too:
+it struggles, it aches, it sobs. Thank you, my gentle friend, for
+removing your brow away; your hair is very thick and long; and it
+began to heat me more than you can imagine. While it was there, I
+could not see your face so well, nor talk with you so quietly.
+
+_Dante._ Oh, when shall we talk quietly in future?
+
+_Beatrice._ When I am married. I shall often come to visit my father.
+He has always been solitary since my mother's death, which happened in
+my infancy, long before you knew me.
+
+_Dante._ How can he endure the solitude of his house when you have
+left it?
+
+_Beatrice._ The very question I asked him.
+
+_Dante._ You did not then wish to ... to ... go away?
+
+_Beatrice._ Ah no! It is sad to be an outcast at fifteen.
+
+_Dante._ An outcast?
+
+_Beatrice._ Forced to leave a home.
+
+_Dante._ For another?
+
+_Beatrice._ Childhood can never have a second.
+
+_Dante._ But childhood is now over.
+
+_Beatrice._ I wonder who was so malicious as to tell my father that?
+He wanted me to be married a whole year ago.
+
+_Dante._ And, Bice, you hesitated?
+
+_Beatrice._ No; I only wept. He is a dear good father. I never
+disobeyed him but in those wicked tears; and they ran the faster the
+more he reprehended them.
+
+_Dante._ Say, who is the happy youth?
+
+_Beatrice._ I know not who ought to be happy if you are not.
+
+_Dante._ I?
+
+_Beatrice._ Surely you deserve all happiness.
+
+_Dante._ Happiness! any happiness is denied me. Ah, hours of
+childhood! bright hours! what fragrant blossoms ye unfold! what bitter
+fruits to ripen!
+
+_Beatrice._ Now cannot you continue to sit under that old fig-tree at
+the corner of the garden? It is always delightful to me to think of
+it.
+
+_Dante._ Again you smile: I wish I could smile too.
+
+_Beatrice._ You were usually more grave than I, although very often,
+two years ago, you told me I was the graver. Perhaps I _was_ then
+indeed; and perhaps I ought to be now: but really I must smile at the
+recollection, and make you smile with me.
+
+_Dante._ Recollection of what in particular?
+
+_Beatrice._ Of your ignorance that a fig-tree is the brittlest of
+trees, especially when it is in leaf; and moreover of your tumble,
+when your head was just above the wall, and your hand (with the verses
+in it) on the very coping-stone. Nobody suspected that I went every
+day to the bottom of our garden, to hear you repeat your poetry on the
+other side; nobody but yourself; you soon found me out. But on that
+occasion I thought you might have been hurt; and I clambered up our
+high peach-tree in the grass plot nearest the place; and thence I saw
+Messer Dante, with his white sleeve reddened by the fig-juice, and the
+seeds sticking to it pertinaciously, and Messer blushing, and trying
+to conceal his calamity, and still holding the verses. They were all
+about me.
+
+_Dante._ Never shall any verse of mine be uttered from my lips, or
+from the lips of others, without the memorial of Bice.
+
+_Beatrice._ Sweet Dante! in the purity of your soul shall Bice live;
+as (we are told by the goatherds and foresters) poor creatures have
+been found preserved in the serene and lofty regions of the Alps, many
+years after the breath of life had left them. Already you rival Guido
+Cavalcante and Cino da Pistoja: you must attempt, nor perhaps shall it
+be vainly, to surpass them in celebrity.
+
+_Dante._ If ever I am above them ... and I must be ... I know already
+what angel's hand will have helped me up the ladder. Beatrice, I vow
+to heaven, shall stand higher than Selvaggia, high and glorious and
+immortal as that name will be. You have given me joy and sorrow; for
+the worst of these (I will not say the least) I will confer on you all
+the generations of our Italy, all the ages of our world. But first
+(alas, from me you must not have it!) may happiness, long happiness,
+attend you!
+
+_Beatrice._ Ah, those words rend your bosom! why should they?
+
+_Dante._ I could go away contented, or almost contented, were I sure
+of it. Hope is nearly as strong as despair, and greatly more
+pertinacious and enduring. You have made me see clearly that you never
+can be mine in this world: but at the same time, O Beatrice, you have
+made me see quite as clearly that you may and must be mine in another!
+I am older than you: precedency is given to age, and not to
+worthiness; I will pray for you when I am nearer to God, and purified
+from the stains of earth and mortality. He will permit me to behold
+you, lovely as when I left you. Angels in vain should call me onward.
+
+_Beatrice._ Hush, sweetest Dante! hush!
+
+_Dante._ It is there where I shall have caught the first glimpse of
+you again, that I wish all my portion of Paradise to be assigned me;
+and there, if far below you, yet within the sight of you, to establish
+my perdurable abode.
+
+_Beatrice._ Is this piety? Is this wisdom? O Dante! And may not I be
+called away first?
+
+_Dante._ Alas, alas, how many small feet have swept off the early dew
+of life, leaving the path black behind them! But to think that you
+should go before me! It almost sends me forward on my way, to receive
+and welcome you. If indeed, O Beatrice, such should be God's immutable
+will, sometimes look down on me when the song to Him is suspended.
+Oh! look often on me with prayer and pity; for there all prayers are
+accepted, and all pity is devoid of pain! Why are you silent?
+
+_Beatrice._ It is very sinful not to love all creatures in the world.
+But it is true, O Dante! that we always love those the most who make
+us the most unhappy?
+
+_Dante._ The remark, I fear, is just.
+
+_Beatrice._ Then, unless the Virgin be pleased to change my
+inclinations, I shall begin at last to love my betrothed; for already
+the very idea of him renders me sad, wearisome, and comfortless.
+Yesterday he sent me a bunch of violets. When I took them up,
+delighted as I felt at that sweetest of odours, which you and I once
+inhaled together....
+
+_Dante._ And only once.
+
+_Beatrice._ You know why. Be quiet now, and hear me. I dropped the
+posy; for around it, hidden by various kinds of foliage, was twined
+the bridal necklace of pearls. O Dante, how worthless are the finest
+of them (and there are many fine ones) in comparison with those little
+pebbles, some of which (for perhaps I may not have gathered up all)
+may be still lying under the peach-tree, and some (do I blush to say
+it?) under the fig! Tell me not who threw these, nor for what. But you
+know you were always thoughtful, and sometimes reading, sometimes
+writing, and sometimes forgetting me, while I waited to see the
+crimson cap, and the two bay-leaves I fastened in it, rise above the
+garden-wall. How silently you are listening, if you do listen!
+
+_Dante._ Oh, could my thoughts incessantly and eternally dwell among
+these recollections, undisturbed by any other voice ... undistracted
+by any other presence! Soon must they abide with me alone, and be
+repeated by none but me ... repeated in the accents of anguish and
+despair! Why could you not have held in the sad home of your heart
+that necklace and those violets?
+
+_Beatrice._ My Dante! we must all obey ... I my father, you your God.
+He will never abandon you.
+
+_Dante._ I have ever sung, and will for ever sing, the most glorious
+of His works: and yet, O Bice! He abandons me, He casts me off; and He
+uses your hand for this infliction.
+
+_Beatrice._ Men travel far and wide, and see many on whom to fix or
+transfer their affections; but we maidens have neither the power nor
+the will. Casting our eyes on the ground, we walk along the straight
+and narrow road prescribed for us; and, doing this, we avoid in great
+measure the thorns and entanglements of life. We know we are
+performing our duty; and the fruit of this knowledge is contentment.
+Season after season, day after day, you have made me serious, pensive,
+meditative, and almost wise. Being so little a girl, I was proud that
+you, so much taller, should lean on my shoulder to overlook my work.
+And greatly more proud was I when in time you taught me several Latin
+words, and then whole sentences, both in prose and verse, pasting a
+strip of paper over, or obscuring with impenetrable ink, those
+passages in the poets which were beyond my comprehension, and might
+perplex me. But proudest of all was I when you began to reason with
+me. What will now be my pride if you are convinced by the first
+arguments I ever have opposed to you; or if you only take them up and
+try if they are applicable. Certainly do I know (indeed, indeed I do)
+that even the patience to consider them will make you happier. Will it
+not then make me so? I entertain no other wish. Is not this true love?
+
+_Dante._ Ah, yes! the truest, the purest, the least perishable, but
+not the sweetest. Here are the rue and hyssop; but where the rose?
+
+_Beatrice._ Wicked must be whatever torments you: and will you let
+love do it? Love is the gentlest and kindest breath of God. Are you
+willing that the tempter should intercept it, and respire it polluted
+into your ear? Do not make me hesitate to pray to the Virgin for you,
+nor tremble lest she look down on you with a reproachful pity. To her
+alone, O Dante, dare I confide all my thoughts! Lessen not my
+confidence in my only refuge.
+
+_Dante._ God annihilate a power so criminal! Oh, could my love flow
+into your breast with hers! It should flow with equal purity.
+
+_Beatrice._ You have stored my little mind with many thoughts; dear
+because they are yours, and because they are virtuous. May I not, O my
+Dante! bring some of them back again to your bosom; as the _contadina_
+lets down the string from the cottage-beam in winter, and culls a few
+bunches of the soundest for the master of the vineyard? You have not
+given me glory that the world should shudder at its eclipse. To prove
+that I am worthy of the smallest part of it, I must obey God; and,
+under God, my father. Surely the voice of Heaven comes to us audibly
+from a parent's lips. You will be great, and, what is above, all
+greatness, good.
+
+_Dante._ Rightly and wisely, my sweet Beatrice, have you spoken in
+this estimate. Greatness is to goodness what gravel is to porphyry:
+the one is a movable accumulation, swept along the surface of the
+earth; the other stands fixed and solid and alone, above the violence
+of war and of the tempest; above all that is residuous of a wasted
+world. Little men build up great ones; but the snow colossus soon
+melts: the good stand under the eye of God; and therefore stand.
+
+_Beatrice._ Now you are calm and reasonable, listen to me, Bice. You
+must marry.
+
+_Dante._ Marry?
+
+_Beatrice._ Unless you do, how can we meet again unreservedly? Worse,
+worse than ever! I cannot bear to see those large heavy tears
+following one another, heavy and slow as nuns at the funeral of a
+sister. Come, I will kiss off one, if you will promise me faithfully
+to shed no more. Be tranquil, be tranquil; only hear reason. There are
+many who know you; and all who know you must love you. Don't you hear
+me? Why turn aside? and why go farther off? I will have that hand. It
+twists about as if it hated its confinement. Perverse and peevish
+creature! you have no more reason to be sorry than I have; and you
+have many to the contrary which I have not. Being a man, you are at
+liberty to admire a variety, and to make a choice. Is that no comfort
+to you?
+
+_Dante._
+
+      Bid this bosom cease to grieve?
+        Bid these eyes fresh objects see?
+      Where's the comfort to believe
+        None might once have rivall'd me?
+      What! my freedom to receive?
+        Broken hearts, are they the free?
+      For another can I live
+        When I may not live for thee?
+
+_Beatrice._ I will never be fond of you again if you are so violent.
+We have been together too long, and we may be noticed.
+
+_Dante._ Is this our last meeting? If it is ... and that it is, my
+heart has told me ... you will not, surely you will not refuse....
+
+_Beatrice._ Dante! Dante! they make the heart sad after: do not wish
+it. But prayers ... oh, how much better are they, how much quieter and
+lighter they render it! They carry it up to heaven with them; and
+those we love are left behind no longer.
+
+
+
+
+FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND POPE EUGENIUS THE FOURTH
+
+
+_Eugenius._ Filippo! I am informed by my son Cosimo de' Medici of many
+things relating to thy life and actions, and among the rest, of thy
+throwing off the habit of a friar. Speak to me as to a friend. Was
+that well done?
+
+_Filippo._ Holy Father! it was done most unadvisedly.
+
+_Eugenius._ Continue to treat me with the same confidence and
+ingenuousness; and, beside the remuneration I intend to bestow on thee
+for the paintings wherewith thou hast adorned my palace, I will remove
+with my own hand the heavy accumulation of thy sins, and ward off the
+peril of fresh ones, placing within thy reach every worldly solace and
+contentment.
+
+_Filippo._ Infinite thanks, Holy Father! from the innermost heart of
+your unworthy servant, whose duty and wishes bind him alike and
+equally to a strict compliance with your paternal commands.
+
+_Eugenius._ Was it a love of the world and its vanities that induced
+thee to throw aside the frock?
+
+_Filippo._ It was indeed, Holy Father! I never had the courage to
+mention it in confession among my manifold offences.
+
+_Eugenius._ Bad! bad! Repentance is of little use to the sinner,
+unless he pour it from a full and overflowing heart into the capacious
+ear of the confessor. Ye must not go straightforward and bluntly up to
+your Maker, startling Him with the horrors of your guilty conscience.
+Order, decency, time, place, opportunity, must be observed.
+
+_Filippo._ I have observed the greater part of them: time, place, and
+opportunity.
+
+_Eugenius._ That is much. In consideration of it, I hereby absolve
+thee.
+
+_Filippo._ I feel quite easy, quite new-born.
+
+_Eugenius._ I am desirous of hearing what sort of feelings thou
+experiencest, when thou givest loose to thy intractable and unruly
+wishes. Now, this love of the world, what can it mean? A love of
+music, of dancing, of riding? What in short is it in thee?
+
+_Filippo._ Holy Father! I was ever of a hot and amorous constitution.
+
+_Eugenius._ Well, well! I can guess, within a trifle, what that leads
+unto. I very much disapprove of it, whatever it may be. And then? and
+then? Prithee go on: I am inflamed with a miraculous zeal to cleanse
+thee.
+
+_Filippo._ I have committed many follies, and some sins.
+
+_Eugenius._ Let me hear the sins; I do not trouble my head about the
+follies; the Church has no business with them. The State is founded on
+follies, the Church on sins. Come then, unsack them.
+
+_Filippo._ Concupiscence is both a folly and a sin. I felt more and
+more of it when I ceased to be a monk, not having (for a time) so
+ready means of allaying it.
+
+_Eugenius._ No doubt. Thou shouldst have thought again and again
+before thou strippedst off the cowl.
+
+_Filippo._ Ah! Holy Father! I am sore at heart. I thought indeed how
+often it had held two heads together under it, and that stripping it
+off was double decapitation. But compensation and contentment came,
+and we were warm enough without it.
+
+_Eugenius._ I am minded to reprove thee gravely. No wonder it pleased
+the Virgin, and the saints about her, to permit that the enemy of our
+faith should lead thee captive into Barbary.
+
+_Filippo._ The pleasure was all on their side.
+
+_Eugenius._ I have heard a great many stories both of males and
+females who were taken by Tunisians and Algerines: and although there
+is a sameness in certain parts of them, my especial benevolence toward
+thee, worthy Filippo, would induce me to lend a vacant ear to thy
+report. And now, good Filippo, I could sip a small glass of Muscatel
+or Orvieto, and turn over a few bleached almonds, or essay a smart
+dried apricot at intervals, and listen while thou relatest to me the
+manners and customs of that country, and particularly as touching thy
+own adversities. First, how wast thou taken?
+
+_Filippo._ I was visiting at Pesaro my worshipful friend the canonico
+Andrea Paccone, who delighted in the guitar, played it skilfully, and
+was always fond of hearing it well accompanied by the voice. My own
+instrument I had brought with me, together with many gay Florentine
+songs, some of which were of such a turn and tendency, that the
+canonico thought they would sound better on water, and rather far from
+shore, than within the walls of the canonicate. He proposed then, one
+evening when there was little wind stirring, to exercise three young
+abbates[9] on their several parts, a little way out of hearing from
+the water's edge.
+
+_Eugenius._ I disapprove of exercising young abbates in that manner.
+
+_Filippo._ Inadvertently, O Holy Father! I have made the affair seem
+worse than it really was. In fact, there were only two genuine
+abbates; the third was Donna Lisetta, the good canonico's pretty
+niece, who looks so archly at your Holiness when you bend your knees
+before her at bedtime.
+
+_Eugenius._ How? Where?
+
+_Filippo._ She is the angel on the right-hand side of the Holy Family,
+with a tip of amethyst-coloured wing over a basket of figs and
+pomegranates. I painted her from memory: she was then only fifteen,
+and worthy to be the niece of an archbishop. Alas! she never will be:
+she plays and sings among the infidels, and perhaps would eat a
+landrail on a Friday as unreluctantly as she would a roach.
+
+_Eugenius._ Poor soul! So this is the angel with the amethyst-coloured
+wing? I thought she looked wanton: we must pray for her release ...
+from the bondage of sin. What followed in your excursion?
+
+_Filippo._ Singing, playing, fresh air, and plashing water, stimulated
+our appetites. We had brought no eatable with us but fruit and thin
+_marzopane_, of which the sugar and rose-water were inadequate to ward
+off hunger; and the sight of a fishing-vessel between us and Ancona,
+raised our host immoderately. 'Yonder smack,' said he, 'is sailing at
+this moment just over the best sole-bank in the Adriatic. If she
+continues her course and we run toward her, we may be supplied, I
+trust in God, with the finest fish in Christendom. Methinks I see
+already the bellies of those magnificent sole bestar the deck, and
+emulate the glories of the orient sky.' He gave his orders with such a
+majestic air, that he looked rather like an admiral than a priest.
+
+_Eugenius._ How now, rogue! Why should not the churchman look
+majestically and courageously? I myself have found occasion for it,
+and exerted it.
+
+_Filippo._ The world knows the prowess of your Holiness.
+
+_Eugenius._ Not mine, not mine, Filippo! but His who gave me the sword
+and the keys, and the will and the discretion to use them. I trust the
+canonico did not misapply his station and power, by taking the fish at
+any unreasonably low price; and that he gave his blessing to the
+remainder, and to the poor fishermen and to their nets.
+
+_Filippo._ He was angry at observing that the vessel, while he thought
+it was within hail, stood out again to sea.
+
+_Eugenius._ He ought to have borne more manfully so slight a vexation.
+
+_Filippo._ On the contrary, he swore bitterly he would have the
+master's ear between his thumb and forefinger in another half-hour,
+and regretted that he had cut his nails in the morning lest they
+should grate on his guitar. 'They may fish well,' cried he, 'but they
+can neither sail nor row; and, when I am in the middle of that tub of
+theirs, I will teach them more than they look for.' Sure enough he was
+in the middle of it at the time he fixed: but it was by aid of a rope
+about his arms and the end of another laid lustily on his back and
+shoulders. 'Mount, lazy long-chined turnspit, as thou valuest thy
+life,' cried Abdul the corsair, 'and away for Tunis.' If silence is
+consent, he had it. The captain, in the Sicilian dialect, told us we
+might talk freely, for he had taken his siesta. 'Whose guitars are
+those?' said he. As the canonico raised his eyes to heaven and
+answered nothing, I replied, 'Sir, one is mine: the other is my worthy
+friend's there.' Next he asked the canonico to what market he was
+taking those young slaves, pointing to the abbates. The canonico
+sobbed and could not utter one word. I related the whole story; at
+which he laughed. He then took up the music, and commanded my reverend
+guest to sing an air peculiarly tender, invoking the compassion of a
+nymph, and calling her cold as ice. Never did so many or such profound
+sighs accompany it. When it ended, he sang one himself in his own
+language, on a lady whose eyes were exactly like the scimitars of
+Damascus, and whose eyebrows met in the middle like the cudgels of
+prize-fighters. On the whole she resembled both sun and moon, with the
+simple difference that she never allowed herself to be seen, lest all
+the nations of the earth should go to war for her, and not a man to be
+left to breathe out his soul before her. This poem had obtained the
+prize at the University of Fez, had been translated into the Arabic,
+the Persian, and the Turkish languages, and was the favourite lay of
+the corsair. He invited me lastly to try my talent. I played the same
+air on the guitar, and apologized for omitting the words, from my
+utter ignorance of the Moorish. Abdul was much pleased, and took the
+trouble to convince me that the poetry they conveyed, which he
+translated literally, was incomparably better than ours. 'Cold as
+ice!' he repeated, scoffing: 'anybody might say that who had seen
+Atlas: but a genuine poet would rather say, "Cold as a lizard or a
+lobster."' There is no controverting a critic who has twenty stout
+rowers, and twenty well-knotted rope-ends. Added to which, he seemed
+to know as much of the matter as the generality of those who talked
+about it. He was gratified by my attention and edification, and thus
+continued: 'I have remarked in the songs I have heard, that these wild
+woodland creatures of the west, these nymphs, are a strange
+fantastical race. But are your poets not ashamed to complain of their
+inconstancy? whose fault is that? If ever it should be my fortune to
+take one, I would try whether I could not bring her down to the level
+of her sex; and if her inconstancy caused any complaints, by Allah!
+they should be louder and shriller than ever rose from the throat of
+Abdul.' I still thought it better to be a disciple than a commentator.
+
+_Eugenius._ If we could convert this barbarian and detain him awhile
+at Rome, he would learn that women and nymphs (and inconstancy also)
+are one and the same. These cruel men have no lenity, no suavity. They
+who do not as they would be done by, are done by very much as they do.
+Women will glide away from them like water; they can better bear two
+masters than half one; and a new metal must be discovered before any
+bars are strong enough to confine them. But proceed with your
+narrative.
+
+_Filippo._ Night had now closed upon us. Abdul placed the younger of
+the company apart, and after giving them some boiled rice, sent them
+down into his own cabin. The sailors, observing the consideration and
+distinction with which their master had treated me, were civil and
+obliging. Permission was granted me, at my request, to sleep on deck.
+
+_Eugenius._ What became of your canonico?
+
+_Filippo._ The crew called him a conger, a priest, and a porpoise.
+
+_Eugenius._ Foul-mouthed knaves! could not one of these terms content
+them? On thy leaving Barbary was he left behind?
+
+_Filippo._ Your Holiness consecrated him, the other day, Bishop of
+Macerata.
+
+_Eugenius._ True, true; I remember the name, Saccone. How did he
+contrive to get off?
+
+_Filippo._ He was worth little at any work; and such men are the
+quickest both to get off and to get on. Abdul told me he had received
+three thousand crowns for his ransom.
+
+_Eugenius._ He was worth more to him than to me. I received but two
+first-fruits, and such other things as of right belong to me by
+inheritance. The bishopric is passably rich: he may serve thee.
+
+_Filippo._ While he was a canonico he was a jolly fellow; not very
+generous; for jolly fellows are seldom that; but he would give a
+friend a dinner, a flask of wine or two in preference, and a piece of
+advice as readily as either. I waited on monsignor at Macerata, soon
+after his elevation.
+
+_Eugenius._ He must have been heartily glad to embrace his companion
+in captivity, and the more especially as he himself was the cause of
+so grievous a misfortune.
+
+_Filippo._ He sent me word he was so unwell he could not see me.
+'What!' said I to his valet, 'is monsignor's complaint in his eyes?'
+The fellow shrugged up his shoulders and walked away. Not believing
+that the message was a refusal to admit me, I went straight upstairs,
+and finding the door of an antechamber half open, and a chaplain
+milling an egg-posset over the fire, I accosted him. The air of
+familiarity and satisfaction he observed in me left no doubt in his
+mind that I had been invited by his patron. 'Will the man never come?'
+cried his lordship. 'Yes, monsignor!' exclaimed I, running in and
+embracing him; 'behold him here!' He started back, and then I first
+discovered the wide difference between an old friend and an
+egg-posset.
+
+_Eugenius._ Son Filippo! thou hast seen but little of the world, and
+art but just come from Barbary. Go on.
+
+_Filippo._ 'Fra Filippo!' said he gravely, 'I am glad to see you. I
+did not expect you just at present: I am not very well: I had ordered
+a medicine and was impatient to take it. If you will favour me with
+the name of your inn, I will send for you when I am in a condition to
+receive you; perhaps within a day or two.' 'Monsignor!' said I, 'a
+change of residence often gives a man a cold, and oftener a change of
+fortune. Whether you caught yours upon deck (where we last saw each
+other), from being more exposed than usual, or whether the mitre holds
+wind, is no question for me, and no concern of mine.'
+
+_Eugenius._ A just reproof, if an archbishop had made it. On uttering
+it, I hope thou kneeledst and kissedst his hand.
+
+_Filippo._ I did not indeed.
+
+_Eugenius._ Oh, there wert thou greatly in the wrong! Having, it is
+reported, a good thousand crowns yearly of patrimony, and a canonicate
+worth six hundred more, he might have attempted to relieve thee from
+slavery, by assisting thy relatives in thy redemption.
+
+_Filippo._ The three thousand crowns were the uttermost he could
+raise, he declared to Abdul, and he asserted that a part of the money
+was contributed by the inhabitants of Pesaro. 'Do they act out of pure
+mercy?' said he. 'Ay, they must, for what else could move them in
+behalf of such a lazy, unserviceable street-fed cur?' In the morning,
+at sunrise, he was sent aboard. And now, the vessel being under weigh,
+'I have a letter from my lord Abdul,' said the master, 'which, being
+in thy language, two fellow slaves shall read unto thee publicly.'
+They came forward and began the reading. 'Yesterday I purchased these
+two slaves from a cruel, unrelenting master, under whose lash they
+have laboured for nearly thirty years. I hereby give orders that five
+ounces of my own gold be weighed out to them.' Here one of the slaves
+fell on his face; the other lifted up his hands, praised God, and
+blessed his benefactor.
+
+_Eugenius._ The pirate? the unconverted pirate?
+
+_Filippo._ Even so. 'Here is another slip of paper for thyself to read
+immediately in my presence,' said the master. The words it contained
+were, 'Do thou the same, or there enters thy lips neither food nor
+water until thou landest in Italy. I permit thee to carry away more
+than double the sum: I am no sutler: I do not contract for thy
+sustenance.' The canonico asked of the master whether he knew the
+contents of the letter; he replied no. 'Tell your master, lord Abdul,
+that I shall take them into consideration.' 'My lord expected a much
+plainer answer, and commanded me, in case of any such as thou hast
+delivered, to break this seal.' He pressed it to his forehead and then
+broke it. Having perused the characters reverentially, 'Christian!
+dost thou consent?' The canonico fell on his knees, and overthrew the
+two poor wretches who, saying their prayers, had remained in the same
+posture before him quite unnoticed. 'Open thy trunk and take out thy
+money-bag, or I will make room for it in thy bladder.' The canonico
+was prompt in the execution of the command. The master drew out his
+scales, and desired the canonico to weigh with his own hand five
+ounces. He groaned and trembled: the balance was unsteady. 'Throw in
+another piece: it will not vitiate the agreement,' cried the master.
+It was done. Fear and grief are among the thirsty passions, but add
+little to the appetite. It seemed, however, as if every sigh had left
+a vacancy in the stomach of the canonico. At dinner the cook brought
+him a salted bonito, half an ell in length; and in five minutes his
+reverence was drawing his middle finger along the white backbone, out
+of sheer idleness, until were placed before him some as fine dried
+locusts as ever provisioned the tents of Africa, together with olives
+the size of eggs and colour of bruises, shining in oil and brine. He
+found them savoury and pulpy, and, as the last love supersedes the
+foregoing, he gave them the preference, even over the delicate
+locusts. When he had finished them, he modestly requested a can of
+water. A sailor brought a large flask, and poured forth a plentiful
+supply. The canonico engulfed the whole, and instantly threw himself
+back in convulsive agony. 'How is this?' cried the sailor. The master
+ran up and, smelling the water, began to buffet him, exclaiming, as he
+turned round to all the crew, 'How came this flask here?' All were
+innocent. It appeared, however, that it was a flask of mineral water,
+strongly sulphureous, taken out of a Neapolitan vessel, laden with a
+great abundance of it for some hospital in the Levant. It had taken
+the captor by surprise in the same manner as the canonico. He himself
+brought out instantly a capacious stone jar covered with dew, and
+invited the sufferer into the cabin. Here he drew forth two richly-cut
+wineglasses, and, on filling one of them, the outside of it turned
+suddenly pale, with a myriad of indivisible drops, and the senses were
+refreshed with the most delicious fragrance. He held up the glass
+between himself and his guest, and looking at it attentively, said,
+'Here is no appearance of wine; all I can see is water. Nothing is
+wickeder than too much curiosity: we must take what Allah sends us,
+and render thanks for it, although it fall far short of our
+expectations. Besides, our Prophet would rather we should even drink
+wine than poison.' The canonico had not tasted wine for two months: a
+longer abstinence than ever canonico endured before. He drooped: but
+the master looked still more disconsolate. 'I would give whatever I
+possess on earth rather than die of thirst,' cried the canonico. 'Who
+would not?' rejoined the captain, sighing and clasping his fingers.
+'If it were not contrary to my commands, I could touch at some cove or
+inlet.' 'Do, for the love of Christ!' exclaimed the canonico. 'Or even
+sail back,' continued the captain. 'O Santa Vergine!' cried in anguish
+the canonico. 'Despondency,' said the captain, with calm solemnity,
+'has left many a man to be thrown overboard: it even renders the
+plague, and many other disorders, more fatal. Thirst too has a
+powerful effect in exasperating them. Overcome such weaknesses, or I
+must do my duty. The health of the ship's company is placed under my
+care; and our lord Abdul, if he suspected the pest, would throw a Jew,
+or a Christian, or even a bale of silk, into the sea: such is the
+disinterestedness and magnanimity of my lord Abdul.' 'He believes in
+fate; does he not?' said the canonico. 'Doubtless: but he says it is
+as much fated that he should throw into the sea a fellow who is
+infected, as that the fellow should have ever been so.' 'Save me, oh,
+save me!' cried the canonico, moist as if the spray had pelted him.
+'Willingly, if possible,' answered calmly the master. 'At present I
+can discover no certain symptoms; for sweat, unless followed by
+general prostration, both of muscular strength and animal spirits, may
+be cured without a hook at the heel.' 'Giesu-Maria!' ejaculated the
+canonico.
+
+_Eugenius._ And the monster could withstand that appeal?
+
+_Filippo._ It seems so. The renegade who related to me, on my return,
+these events as they happened, was very circumstantial. He is a
+Corsican, and had killed many men in battle, and more out; but is (he
+gave me his word for it) on the whole an honest man.
+
+_Eugenius._ How so? honest? and a renegade?
+
+_Filippo._ He declared to me that, although the Mahomedan is the best
+religion to live in, the Christian is the best to die in; and that,
+when he has made his fortune, he will make his confession, and lie
+snugly in the bosom of the Church.
+
+_Eugenius._ See here the triumphs of our holy faith! The lost sheep
+will be found again.
+
+_Filippo._ Having played the butcher first.
+
+_Eugenius._ Return we to that bad man, the master or captain, who
+evinced no such dispositions.
+
+_Filippo._ He added, 'The other captives, though older men, have
+stouter hearts than mine.' 'Alas! they are longer used to hardships,'
+answered he. 'Dost thou believe, in thy conscience,' said the captain,
+'that the water we have aboard would be harmless to them? for we have
+no other; and wine is costly; and our quantity might be insufficient
+for those who can afford to pay for it.' 'I will answer for their
+lives,' replied the canonico. 'With thy own?' interrogated sharply the
+Tunisian. 'I must not tempt God,' said, in tears, the religious man.
+'Let us be plain,' said the master. 'Thou knowest thy money is safe; I
+myself counted it before thee when I brought it from the scrivener's;
+thou hast sixty broad gold pieces; wilt thou be answerable, to the
+whole amount of them, for the lives of thy two countrymen if they
+drink this water?' 'O sir!' said the canonico, 'I will give it, if,
+only for these few days of voyage, you vouchsafe me one bottle daily
+of that restorative wine of Bordeaux. The other two are less liable to
+the plague: they do not sorrow and sweat as I do. They are spare men.
+There is enough of me to infect a fleet with it; and I cannot bear to
+think of being in any wise the cause of evil to my fellow-creatures.'
+'The wine is my patron's,' cried the Tunisian; 'he leaves everything
+at my discretion: should I deceive him?' 'If he leaves everything at
+your discretion,' observed the logician of Pesaro, 'there is no deceit
+in disposing of it.' The master appeared to be satisfied with the
+argument. 'Thou shalt not find me exacting,' said he; 'give me the
+sixty pieces, and the wine shall be thine.' At a signal, when the
+contract was agreed to, the two slaves entered, bringing a hamper of
+jars. 'Read the contract before thou signest,' cried the master. He
+read. 'How is this? how is this? _Sixty golden ducats to the brothers
+Antonio and Bernabo Panini, for wine received from them?_' The aged
+men tottered under the stroke of joy; and Bernabo, who would have
+embraced his brother, fainted.
+
+On the morrow there was a calm, and the weather was extremely sultry.
+The canonico sat in his shirt on deck, and was surprised to see, I
+forget which of the brothers, drink from a goblet a prodigious draught
+of water. 'Hold!' cried he angrily; 'you may eat instead; but putrid
+or sulphureous water, you have heard, may produce the plague, and
+honest men be the sufferers by your folly and intemperance.' They
+assured him the water was tasteless, and very excellent, and had been
+kept cool in the same kind of earthern jars as the wine. He tasted it,
+and lost his patience. It was better, he protested, than any wine in
+the world. They begged his acceptance of the jar containing it. But
+the master, who had witnessed at a distance the whole proceeding, now
+advanced, and, placing his hand against it, said sternly, 'Let him
+have his own.' Usually, when he had emptied the second bottle, a
+desire of converting the Mohammedans came over him: and they showed
+themselves much less obstinate and refractory than they are generally
+thought. He selected those for edification who swore the oftenest and
+the loudest by the Prophet; and he boasted in his heart of having
+overcome, by precept and example, the stiffest tenet of their
+abominable creed. Certainly they drank wine, and somewhat freely. The
+canonico clapped his hands, and declared that even some of the
+apostles had been more pertinacious recusants of the faith.
+
+_Eugenius._ Did he so? Cappari! I would not have made him a bishop for
+twice the money if I had known it earlier. Could not he have left them
+alone? Suppose one or other of them did doubt and persecute, was he
+the man to blab it out among the heathen?
+
+_Filippo._ A judgment, it appears, fell on him for so doing. A very
+quiet sailor, who had always declined his invitations, and had always
+heard his arguments at a distance and in silence, being pressed and
+urged by him, and reproved somewhat arrogantly and loudly, as less
+docile than his messmates, at last lifted up his leg behind him,
+pulled off his right slipper, and counted deliberately and distinctly
+thirty-nine sound strokes of the same, on the canonico's broadest
+tablet, which (please your Holiness) might be called, not inaptly,
+from that day the tablet of memory. In vain he cried out. Some of the
+mariners made their moves at chess and waved their left hands as if
+desirous of no interruption; others went backward and forward about
+their business, and took no more notice than if their messmate was
+occupied in caulking a seam or notching a flint. The master himself,
+who saw the operation, heard the complaint in the evening, and lifted
+up his shoulders and eyebrows, as if the whole were quite unknown to
+him. Then, acting as judge-advocate, he called the young man before
+him and repeated the accusation. To this the defence was purely
+interrogative. 'Why would he convert me? I never converted him.'
+Turning to his spiritual guide, he said, 'I quite forgive thee: nay, I
+am ready to appear in thy favour, and to declare that, in general,
+thou hast been more decorous than people of thy faith and profession
+usually are, and hast not scattered on deck that inflammatory language
+which I, habited in the dress of a Greek, heard last Easter. I went
+into three churches; and the preachers in all three denounced the
+curse of Allah on every soul that differed from them a tittle. They
+were children of perdition, children of darkness, children of the
+devil, one and all. It seemed a matter of wonder to me, that, in such
+numerous families and of such indifferent parentage, so many slippers
+were kept under the heel. Mine, in an evil hour, escaped me: but I
+quite forgive thee. After this free pardon I will indulge thee with a
+short specimen of my preaching. I will call none of you a generation
+of vipers, as ye call one another; for vipers neither bite nor eat
+during many months of the year: I will call none of you wolves in
+sheep's clothing; for if ye are, it must be acknowledged that the
+clothing is very clumsily put on. You priests, however, take people's
+souls aboard whether they will or not, just as we do your bodies: and
+you make them pay much more for keeping these in slavery than we make
+you pay for setting you free body and soul together. You declare that
+the precious souls, to the especial care of which Allah has called and
+appointed you, frequently grow corrupt, and stink in His nostrils.
+Now, I invoke thy own testimony to the fact that thy soul, gross as I
+imagine it to be from the greasy wallet that holds it, had no carnal
+thoughts whatsoever, and that thy carcass did not even receive a
+fly-blow, while it was under my custody. Thy guardian angel (I speak
+it in humility) could not ventilate thee better. Nevertheless, I
+should scorn to demand a single maravedi for my labour and skill, or
+for the wear and tear of my pantoufle. My reward will be in Paradise,
+where a houri is standing in the shade, above a vase of gold and
+silver fish, with a kiss on her lip, and an unbroken pair of green
+slippers in her hand for me.' Saying which, he took off his foot
+again, the one he had been using, and showed the sole of it, first to
+the master, then to all the crew, and declared it had become (as they
+might see) so smooth and oily by the application, that it was
+dangerous to walk on deck in it.
+
+_Eugenius._ See! what notions these creatures have, both of their
+fool's paradise and of our holy faith! The seven Sacraments, I warrant
+you, go for nothing! Purgatory, purgatory itself, goes for nothing!
+
+_Filippo._ Holy Father! we must stop thee. _That_ does not go for
+nothing, however.
+
+_Eugenius._ Filippo! God forbid I should suspect thee of any heretical
+taint; but this smells very like it. If thou hast it now, tell me
+honestly. I mean, hold thy tongue. Florentines are rather lax. Even
+Son Cosimo might be stricter: so they say: perhaps his enemies. The
+great always have them abundantly, beside those by whom they are
+served, and those also whom they serve. Now would I give a silver
+rose with my benediction on it, to know of a certainty what became of
+those poor creatures the abbates. The initiatory rite of Mohammedanism
+is most diabolically malicious. According to the canons of our
+Catholic Church, it disqualifies the neophyte for holy orders, without
+going so far as adapting him to the choir of the pontifical chapel.
+They limp; they halt.
+
+_Filippo._ Beatitude! which of them?
+
+_Eugenius._ The unbelievers: they surely are found wanting.
+
+_Filippo._ The unbelievers too?
+
+_Eugenius._ Ay, ay, thou half renegade! Couldst not thou go over with
+a purse of silver, and try whether the souls of these captives be
+recoverable? Even if they should have submitted to such unholy rites,
+I venture to say they have repented.
+
+_Filippo._ The devil is in them if they have not.
+
+_Eugenius._ They may become again as good Christians as before.
+
+_Filippo._ Easily, methinks.
+
+_Eugenius._ Not so easily; but by aid of Holy Church in the
+administration of indulgences.
+
+_Filippo._ They never wanted those, whatever they want.
+
+_Eugenius._ The corsair then is not one of those ferocious creatures
+which appear to connect our species with the lion and panther.
+
+_Filippo._ By no means, Holy Father! He is an honest man; so are many
+of his countrymen, bating the Sacrament.
+
+_Eugenius._ Bating! poor beguiled Filippo! Being unbaptized, they are
+only as the beasts that perish: nay worse: for the soul being
+imperishable, it must stick to their bodies at the last day, whether
+they will or no, and must sink with it into the fire and brimstone.
+
+_Filippo._ Unbaptized! why, they baptize every morning.
+
+_Eugenius._ Worse and worse! I thought they only missed the stirrup;
+I find they overleap the saddle. Obstinate blind reprobates! of whom
+it is written ... of whom it is written ... of whom, I say, it is
+written ... as shall be manifest before men and angels in the day of
+wrath.
+
+_Filippo._ More is the pity! for they are hospitable, frank, and
+courteous. It is delightful to see their gardens, when one has not the
+weeding and irrigation of them. What fruit! what foliage! what
+trellises! what alcoves! what a contest of rose and jessamine for
+supremacy in odour! of lute and nightingale for victory in song! And
+how the little bright ripples of the docile brooks, the fresher for
+their races, leap up against one another, to look on! and how they
+chirrup and applaud, as if they too had a voice of some importance in
+these parties of pleasure that are loath to separate.
+
+_Eugenius._ Parties of pleasure! birds, fruits, shallow-running
+waters, lute-players, and wantons! Parties of pleasure! and composed
+of these! Tell me now, Filippo, tell me truly, what complexion in
+general have the discreeter females of that hapless country.
+
+_Filippo._ The colour of an orange-flower, on which an overladen bee
+has left a slight suffusion of her purest honey.
+
+_Eugenius._ We must open their eyes.
+
+_Filippo._ Knowing what excellent hides the slippers of this people
+are made of, I never once ventured on their less perfect theology,
+fearing to find it written that I should be abed on my face the next
+fortnight. My master had expressed his astonishment that a religion so
+admirable as ours was represented should be the only one in the world
+the precepts of which are disregarded by all conditions of men. 'Our
+Prophet,' said he, 'our Prophet ordered us to go forth and conquer; we
+did it: yours ordered you to sit quiet and forbear; and, after
+spitting in His face, you threw the order back into it, and fought
+like devils.'
+
+_Eugenius._ The barbarians talk of our Holy Scriptures as if they
+understood them perfectly. The impostor they follow has nothing but
+fustian and rodomontade in his impudent lying book from beginning to
+end. I know it, Filippo, from those who have contrasted it, page by
+page, paragraph by paragraph, and have given the knave his due.
+
+_Filippo._ Abdul is by no means deficient in a good opinion of his own
+capacity and his Prophet's all-sufficiency, but he never took me to
+task about my faith or his own.
+
+_Eugenius._ How wert thou mainly occupied?
+
+_Filippo._ I will give your Holiness a sample both of my employments
+and of his character. He was going one evening to a country-house,
+about fifteen miles from Tunis; and he ordered me to accompany him. I
+found there a spacious garden, overrun with wild flowers and most
+luxuriant grass, in irregular tufts, according to the dryness or the
+humidity of the spot. The clematis overtopped the lemon and
+orange-trees; and the perennial pea sent forth here a pink blossom,
+here a purple, here a white one, and after holding (as it were) a
+short conversation with the humbler plants, sprang up about an old
+cypress, played among its branches, and mitigated its gloom. White
+pigeons, and others in colour like the dawn of day, looked down on us
+and ceased to coo, until some of their companions, in whom they had
+more confidence, encouraged them loudly from remoter boughs, or
+alighted on the shoulders of Abdul, at whose side I was standing. A
+few of them examined me in every position their inquisitive eyes could
+take; displaying all the advantages of their versatile necks, and
+pretending querulous fear in the midst of petulant approaches.
+
+_Eugenius._ Is it of pigeons thou art talking, O Filippo? I hope it
+may be.
+
+_Filippo._ Of Abdul's pigeons. He was fond of taming all creatures;
+men, horses, pigeons, equally: but he tamed them all by kindness. In
+this wilderness is an edifice not unlike our Italian chapter-houses
+built by the Lombards, with long narrow windows, high above the
+ground. The centre is now a bath, the waters of which, in another part
+of the enclosure, had supplied a fountain, at present in ruins, and
+covered by tufted canes, and by every variety of aquatic plants. The
+structure has no remains of roof: and, of six windows, one alone is
+unconcealed by ivy. This had been walled up long ago, and the cement
+in the inside of it was hard and polished. 'Lippi!' said Abdul to me,
+after I had long admired the place in silence, 'I leave to thy
+superintendence this bath and garden. Be sparing of the leaves and
+branches: make paths only wide enough for me. Let me see no mark of
+hatchet or pruning-hook, and tell the labourers that whoever takes a
+nest or an egg shall be impaled.'
+
+_Eugenius._ Monster! so then he would really have impaled a poor
+wretch for eating a bird's egg? How disproportionate is the punishment
+to the offence!
+
+_Filippo._ He efficiently checked in his slaves the desire of
+transgressing his command. To spare them as much as possible, I
+ordered them merely to open a few spaces, and to remove the weaker
+trees from the stronger. Meanwhile I drew on the smooth blank window
+the figure of Abdul and of a beautiful girl.
+
+_Eugenius._ Rather say handmaiden: choicer expression; more decorous.
+
+_Filippo._ Holy Father! I have been lately so much out of practice, I
+take the first that comes in my way. Handmaiden I will use in
+preference for the future.
+
+_Eugenius._ On then! and God speed thee!
+
+_Filippo._ I drew Abdul with a blooming handmaiden. One of his feet
+is resting on her lap, and she is drying the ankle with a saffron
+robe, of which the greater part is fallen in doing it. That she is a
+bondmaid is discernible, not only by her occupation, but by her
+humility and patience, by her loose and flowing brown hair, and by her
+eyes expressing the timidity at once of servitude and of fondness. The
+countenance was taken from fancy, and was the loveliest I could
+imagine: of the figure I had some idea, having seen it to advantage in
+Tunis. After seven days Abdul returned. He was delighted with the
+improvement made in the garden. I requested him to visit the bath. 'We
+can do nothing to that,' answered he impatiently. 'There is no
+sudatory, no dormitory, no dressing-room, no couch. Sometimes I sit an
+hour there in the summer, because I never found a fly in it--the
+principal curse of hot countries, and against which plague there is
+neither prayer nor amulet, nor indeed any human defence.' He went away
+into the house. At dinner he sent me from his table some quails and
+ortolans, and tomatoes and honey and rice, beside a basket of fruit
+covered with moss and bay-leaves, under which I found a verdino fig,
+deliciously ripe, and bearing the impression of several small teeth,
+but certainly no reptile's.
+
+_Eugenius._ There might have been poison in them, for all that.
+
+_Filippo._ About two hours had passed, when I heard a whir and a crash
+in the windows of the bath (where I had dined and was about to sleep),
+occasioned by the settling and again the flight of some pheasants.
+Abdul entered. 'Beard of the Prophet! what hast thou been doing? That
+is myself! No, no, Lippi! thou never canst have seen her: the face
+proves it: but those limbs! thou hast divined them aright: thou hast
+had sweet dreams then! Dreams are large possessions: in them the
+possessor may cease to possess his own. To the slave, O Allah! to the
+slave is permitted what is not his!... I burn with anguish to think
+how much ... yea, at that very hour. I would not another should, even
+in a dream.... But, Lippi! thou never canst have seen above the
+sandal?' To which I answered, 'I never have allowed my eyes to look
+even on that. But if any one of my lord Abdul's fair slaves resembles,
+as they surely must all do, in duty and docility, the figure I have
+represented, let it express to him my congratulation on his
+happiness.' 'I believe,' said he, 'such representations are forbidden
+by the Koran; but as I do not remember it, I do not sin. There it
+shall stay, unless the angel Gabriel comes to forbid it.' He smiled in
+saying so.
+
+_Eugenius._ There is hope of this Abdul. His faith hangs about him
+more like oil than pitch.
+
+_Filippo._ He inquired of me whether I often thought of those I loved
+in Italy, and whether I could bring them before my eyes at will. To
+remove all suspicion from him, I declared I always could, and that one
+beautiful object occupied all the cells of my brain by night and day.
+He paused and pondered, and then said, 'Thou dost not love deeply.' I
+thought I had given the true signs. 'No, Lippi! we who love ardently,
+we, with all our wishes, all the efforts of our souls, cannot bring
+before us the features which, while they were present, we thought it
+impossible we ever could forget. Alas! when we most love the absent,
+when we most desire to see her, we try in vain to bring her image back
+to us. The troubled heart shakes and confounds it, even as ruffled
+waters do with shadows. Hateful things are more hateful when they
+haunt our sleep: the lovely flee away, or are changed into less
+lovely.'
+
+_Eugenius._ What figures now have these unbelievers?
+
+_Filippo._ Various in their combinations as the letters or the
+numerals; but they all, like these, signify something. Almeida (did I
+not inform your Holiness?) has large hazel eyes....
+
+_Eugenius._ Has she? thou never toldest me that. Well, well! and what
+else has she? Mind! be cautious! use decent terms.
+
+_Filippo._ Somewhat pouting lips.
+
+_Eugenius._ Ha! ha! What did they pout at?
+
+_Filippo._ And she is rather plump than otherwise.
+
+_Eugenius._ No harm in that.
+
+_Filippo._ And moreover is cool, smooth, and firm as a nectarine
+gathered before sunrise.
+
+_Eugenius._ Ha! ha! do not remind me of nectarines. I am very fond of
+them; and this is not the season! Such females as thou describest are
+said to be among the likeliest to give reasonable cause for suspicion.
+I would not judge harshly, I would not think uncharitably; but,
+unhappily, being at so great a distance from spiritual aid,
+peradventure a desire, a suggestion, an inkling ... ay? If she, the
+lost Almeida, came before thee when her master was absent ... which I
+trust she never did.... But those flowers and shrubs and odours and
+alleys and long grass and alcoves, might strangely hold, perplex, and
+entangle, two incautious young persons ... ay?
+
+_Filippo._ I confessed all I had to confess in this matter the evening
+I landed.
+
+_Eugenius._ Ho! I am no candidate for a seat at the rehearsal of
+confessions: but perhaps my absolution might be somewhat more pleasing
+and unconditional. Well! well! since I am unworthy of such confidence,
+go about thy business ... paint! paint!
+
+_Filippo._ Am I so unfortunate as to have offended your Beatitude?
+
+_Eugenius._ Offend _me_, man! who offends _me_? I took an interest in
+thy adventures, and was concerned lest thou mightest have sinned; for
+by my soul! Filippo! those are the women that the devil hath set his
+mark on.
+
+_Filippo._ It would do your Holiness's heart good to rub it out again,
+wherever he may have had the cunning to make it.
+
+_Eugenius._ Deep! deep!
+
+_Filippo._ Yet it may be got at; she being a Biscayan by birth, as she
+told me, and not only baptized, but going by sea along the coast for
+confirmation, when she was captured.
+
+_Eugenius._ Alas! to what an imposition of hands was this tender young
+thing devoted! Poor soul!
+
+_Filippo._ I sigh for her myself when I think of her.
+
+_Eugenius._ Beware lest the sigh be mundane, and lest the thought
+recur too often. I wish it were presently in my power to examine her
+myself on her condition. What thinkest thou? Speak.
+
+_Filippo._ Holy Father! she would laugh in your face.
+
+_Eugenius._ So lost!
+
+_Filippo._ She declared to me she thought she should have died, from
+the instant she was captured until she was comforted by Abdul: but
+that she was quite sure she should if she were ransomed.
+
+_Eugenius._ Has the wretch then shaken her faith?
+
+_Filippo._ The very last thing he would think of doing. Never did I
+see the virtue of resignation in higher perfection than in the
+laughing, light-hearted Almeida.
+
+_Eugenius._ Lamentable! Poor lost creature! lost in this world and in
+the next.
+
+_Filippo._ What could she do? how could she help herself?
+
+_Eugenius._ She might have torn his eyes out, and have died a martyr.
+
+_Filippo._ Or have been bastinadoed, whipped, and given up to the
+cooks and scullions for it.
+
+_Eugenius._ Martyrdom is the more glorious the greater the indignities
+it endures.
+
+_Filippo._ Almeida seems unambitious. There are many in our Tuscany
+who would jump at the crown over those sloughs and briers, rather than
+perish without them: she never sighs after the like.
+
+_Eugenius._ Nevertheless, what must she witness! what abominations!
+what superstitions!
+
+_Filippo._ Abdul neither practises nor exacts any other superstition
+than ablutions.
+
+_Eugenius._ Detestable rites! without our authority. I venture to
+affirm that, in the whole of Italy and Spain, no convent of monks or
+nuns contains a bath; and that the worst inmate of either would
+shudder at the idea of observing such a practice in common with the
+unbeliever. For the washing of the feet indeed we have the authority
+of the earlier Christians; and it may be done; but solemnly and
+sparingly. Thy residence among the Mahomedans, I am afraid, hath
+rendered thee more favourable to them than beseems a Catholic, and thy
+mind, I do suspect, sometimes goes back into Barbary unreluctantly.
+
+_Filippo._ While I continued in that country, although I was well
+treated, I often wished myself away, thinking of my friends in
+Florence, of music, of painting, of our villeggiatura at the
+vintage-time; whether in the green and narrow glades of Pratolino,
+with lofty trees above us, and little rills unseen, and little bells
+about the necks of sheep and goats, tinkling together ambiguously; or
+amid the grey quarries, or under the majestic walls of modern Fiesole;
+or down in the woods of the Doccia, where the cypresses are of such a
+girth that, when a youth stands against one of them, and a maiden
+stands opposite, and they clasp it, their hands at the time do little
+more than meet. Beautiful scenes, on which heaven smiles eternally,
+how often has my heart ached for you! He who hath lived in this
+country can enjoy no distant one. He breathes here another air; he
+lives more life; a brighter sun invigorates his studies, and serener
+stars influence his repose. Barbary hath also the blessing of climate;
+and although I do not desire to be there again, I feel sometimes a
+kind of regret at leaving it. A bell warbles the more mellifluously in
+the air when the sound of the stroke is over, and when another swims
+out from underneath it, and pants upon the element that gave it birth.
+In like manner the recollection of a thing is frequently more pleasing
+than the actuality; what is harsh is dropped in the space between.
+There is in Abdul a nobility of soul on which I often have reflected
+with admiration. I have seen many of the highest rank and
+distinction, in whom I could find nothing of the great man, excepting
+a fondness for low company, and an aptitude to shy and start at every
+spark of genius or virtue that sprang up above or before them. Abdul
+was solitary, but affable: he was proud, but patient and complacent. I
+ventured once to ask him how the master of so rich a house in the
+city, of so many slaves, of so many horses and mules, of such
+cornfields, of such pastures, of such gardens, woods, and fountains,
+should experience any delight or satisfaction in infesting the open
+sea, the high-road of nations. Instead of answering my question, he
+asked me in return whether I would not respect any relative of mine
+who avenged his country, enriched himself by his bravery, and endeared
+to him his friends and relatives by his bounty. On my reply in the
+affirmative, he said that his family had been deprived of possessions
+in Spain much more valuable than all the ships and cargoes he could
+ever hope to capture, and that the remains of his nation were
+threatened with ruin and expulsion. 'I do not fight,' said he,
+'whenever it suits the convenience, or gratifies the malignity, or the
+caprice of two silly, quarrelsome princes, drawing my sword in
+perfectly good humour, and sheathing it again at word of command, just
+when I begin to get into a passion. No; I fight on my own account; not
+as a hired assassin, or still baser journeyman.'
+
+_Eugenius._ It appears then really that the Infidels have some
+semblances of magnanimity and generosity?
+
+_Filippo._ I thought so when I turned over the many changes of fine
+linen; and I was little short of conviction when I found at the bottom
+of my chest two hundred Venetian zecchins.
+
+_Eugenius._ Corpo di Bacco! Better things, far better things, I would
+fain do for thee, not exactly of this description; it would excite
+many heart-burnings. Information has been laid before me, Filippo,
+that thou art attached to a certain young person, by name Lucrezia,
+daughter of Francesco Buti, a citizen of Prato.
+
+_Filippo._ I acknowledge my attachment: it continues.
+
+_Eugenius._ Furthermore, that thou hast offspring by her.
+
+_Filippo._ Alas! 'tis undeniable.
+
+_Eugenius._ I will not only legitimatize the said offspring by _motu
+proprio_ and rescript to consistory and chancery....
+
+_Filippo._ Holy Father! Holy Father! For the love of the Virgin, not a
+word to consistory or chancery of the two hundred zecchins. As I hope
+for salvation, I have but forty left, and thirty-nine would not serve
+them.
+
+_Eugenius._ Fear nothing. Not only will I perform what I have
+promised, not only will I give the strictest order that no money be
+demanded by any officer of my courts, but, under the seal of Saint
+Peter, I will declare thee and Lucrezia Buti man and wife.
+
+_Filippo._ Man and wife!
+
+_Eugenius._ Moderate thy transport.
+
+_Filippo._ O Holy Father! may I speak?
+
+_Eugenius._ Surely she is not the wife of another?
+
+_Filippo._ No, indeed.
+
+_Eugenius._ Nor within the degrees of consanguinity and affinity?
+
+_Filippo._ No, no, no. But ... man and wife! Consistory and chancery
+are nothing to this fulmination.
+
+_Eugenius._ How so?
+
+_Filippo._ It is man and wife the first fortnight, but wife and man
+ever after. The two figures change places: the unit is the decimal and
+the decimal is the unit.
+
+_Eugenius._ What, then, can I do for thee?
+
+_Filippo._ I love Lucrezia; let me love her; let her love me. I can
+make her at any time what she is not; I could never make her again
+what she is.
+
+_Eugenius._ The only thing I can do then is to promise I will forget
+that I have heard anything about the matter. But, to forget it, I must
+hear it first.
+
+_Filippo._ In the beautiful little town of Prato, reposing in its
+idleness against the hill that protects it from the north, and looking
+over fertile meadows, southward to Poggio Cajano, westward to Pistoja,
+there is the convent of Santa Margarita. I was invited by the sisters
+to paint an altar-piece for the chapel. A novice of fifteen, my own
+sweet Lucrezia, came one day alone to see me work at my Madonna. Her
+blessed countenance had already looked down on every beholder lower by
+the knees. I myself who made her could almost have worshipped her.
+
+_Eugenius._ Not while incomplete; no half-virgin will do.
+
+_Filippo._ But there knelt Lucrezia! there she knelt! first looking
+with devotion at the Madonna, then with admiring wonder and grateful
+delight at the artist. Could so little a heart be divided? 'Twere a
+pity! There was enough for me; there is never enough for the Madonna.
+Resolving on a sudden that the object of my love should be the object
+of adoration to thousands, born and unborn, I swept my brush across
+the maternal face, and left a blank in heaven. The little girl
+screamed; I pressed her to my bosom.
+
+_Eugenius._ In the chapel?
+
+_Filippo._ I knew not where I was; I thought I was in Paradise.
+
+_Eugenius._ If it was not in the chapel, the sin is venial. But a
+brush against a Madonna's mouth is worse than a beard against her
+votary's.
+
+_Filippo._ I thought so too, Holy Father!
+
+_Eugenius._ Thou sayest thou hast forty zecchins; I will try in due
+season to add forty more. The fisherman must not venture to measure
+forces with the pirate. Farewell! I pray God my son Filippo, to have
+thee alway in His holy keeping.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[9] Little boys, wearing clerical habits, are often called _abbati_.
+
+
+
+
+TASSO AND CORNELIA
+
+
+_Tasso._ She is dead, Cornelia! she is dead!
+
+_Cornelia._ Torquato! my Torquato! after so many years of separation
+do I bend once more your beloved head to my embrace?
+
+_Tasso._ She is dead!
+
+_Cornelia._ Tenderest of brothers! bravest and best and most
+unfortunate of men! What, in the name of heaven, so bewilders you?
+
+_Tasso._ Sister! sister! sister! I could not save her.
+
+_Cornelia._ Certainly it was a sad event; and they who are out of
+spirits may be ready to take it for an evil omen. At this season of
+the year the vintagers are joyous and negligent.
+
+_Tasso._ How! What is this?
+
+_Cornelia._ The little girl was crushed, they say, by a wheel of the
+car laden with grapes, as she held out a handful of vine-leaves to one
+of the oxen. And did you happen to be there at the moment?
+
+_Tasso._ So then the little too can suffer! the ignorant, the
+indigent, the unaspiring! Poor child! She was kind-hearted, else never
+would calamity have befallen her.
+
+_Cornelia._ I wish you had not seen the accident.
+
+_Tasso._ I see it? I? I saw it not. No other is crushed where I am.
+The little girl died for her kindness! Natural death!
+
+_Cornelia._ Be calm, be composed, my brother!
+
+_Tasso._ You would not require me to be composed or calm if you
+comprehended a thousandth part of my sufferings.
+
+_Cornelia._ Peace! peace! we know them all.
+
+_Tasso._ Who has dared to name them? Imprisonment, derision, madness.
+
+_Cornelia._ Hush! sweet Torquato! If ever these existed, they are
+past.
+
+_Tasso._ You do think they are sufferings? ay?
+
+_Cornelia._ Too surely.
+
+_Tasso._ No, not too surely: I will not have that answer. They would
+have been; but Leonora was then living. Unmanly as I am! did I
+complain of them? and while she was left me?
+
+_Cornelia._ My own Torquato! is there no comfort in a sister's love?
+Is there no happiness but under the passions? Think, O my brother, how
+many courts there are in Italy: are the princes more fortunate than
+you? Which among them all loves truly, deeply, and virtuously? Among
+them all is there any one, for his genius, for his generosity, for his
+gentleness, ay, for his mere humanity, worthy to be beloved?
+
+_Tasso._ Princes! talk to me of princes! How much cross-grained wood a
+little gypsum covers! a little carmine quite beautifies! Wet your
+forefinger with your spittle; stick a broken gold-leaf on the
+sinciput; clip off a beggar's beard to make it tresses; kiss it; fall
+down before it; worship it. Are you not irradiated by the light of its
+countenance? Princes! princes! Italian princes! Estes! What matters
+that costly carrion? Who thinks about it? [_After a pause._] She is
+dead! She is dead!
+
+_Cornelia._ We have not heard it here.
+
+_Tasso._ At Sorrento you hear nothing but the light surges of the sea,
+and the sweet sprinkles of the guitar.
+
+_Cornelia._ Suppose the worst to be true.
+
+_Tasso._ Always, always.
+
+_Cornelia._ If she ceases, as then perhaps she must, to love and to
+lament you, think gratefully, contentedly, devoutly, that her arms had
+clasped your neck before they were crossed upon her bosom, in that
+long sleep which you have rendered placid, and from which your
+harmonious voice shall once more awaken her. Yes, Torquato! her bosom
+had throbbed to yours, often and often, before the organ peal shook
+the fringes round the catafalque. Is not this much, from one so high,
+so beautiful?
+
+_Tasso._ Much? yes; for abject me. But I did so love her! so love her!
+
+_Cornelia._ Ah! let the tears flow: she sends you that balm from
+heaven.
+
+_Tasso._ So love her did poor Tasso! Else, O Cornelia, it had indeed
+been much. I thought, in the simplicity of my heart, that God was as
+great as an emperor, and could bestow and had bestowed on me as much
+as the German had conferred or could confer on his vassal. No part of
+my insanity was ever held in such ridicule as this. And yet the idea
+cleaves to me strangely, and is liable to stick to my shroud.
+
+_Cornelia._ Woe betide the woman who bids you to forget that woman who
+has loved you: she sins against her sex. Leonora was unblameable.
+Never think ill of her for what you have suffered.
+
+_Tasso._ Think ill of her? I? I? I? No; those we love, we love for
+everything; even for the pain they have given us. But she gave me
+none; it was where she was not that pain was.
+
+_Cornelia._ Surely, if love and sorrow are destined for companionship,
+there is no reason why the last comer of the two should supersede the
+first.
+
+_Tasso._ Argue with me, and you drive me into darkness. I am easily
+persuaded and led on while no reasons are thrown before me. With these
+you have made my temples throb again. Just heaven! dost thou grant us
+fairer fields, and wider, for the whirlwind to lay waste? Dost thou
+build us up habitations above the street, above the palace, above the
+citadel, for the plague to enter and carouse in? Has not my youth paid
+its dues, paid its penalties? Cannot our griefs come first, while we
+have strength to bear them? The fool! the fool! who thinks it a
+misfortune that his love is unrequited. Happier young man! look at the
+violets until thou drop asleep on them. Ah! but thou must awake!
+
+_Cornelia._ O heavens! what must you have suffered! for a man's heart
+is sensitive in proportion to its greatness.
+
+_Tasso._ And a woman's?
+
+_Cornelia._ Alas! I know not; but I think it can be no other. Comfort
+thee, comfort thee, dear Torquato!
+
+_Tasso._ Then do not rest thy face upon my arm; it so reminds me of
+her. And thy tears too! they melt me into her grave.
+
+_Cornelia._ Hear you not her voice as it appeals to you, saying to
+you, as the priests around have been saying to _her_, Blessed soul!
+rest in peace?
+
+_Tasso._ I heard it not; and yet I am sure she said it. A thousand
+times has she repeated it, laying her head on my heart to quiet it,
+simple girl! She told it to rest in peace ... and she went from me!
+Insatiable love! ever self-torturer, never self-destroyer! the world,
+with all its weight of miseries, cannot crush thee, cannot keep thee
+down. Generally men's tears, like the droppings of certain springs,
+only harden and petrify what they fall on; but mine sank deep into a
+tender heart, and were its very blood. Never will I believe she has
+left me utterly. Oftentimes, and long before her departure, I fancied
+we were in heaven together. I fancied it in the fields, in the
+gardens, in the palace, in the prison. I fancied it in the broad
+daylight, when my eyes were open, when blessed spirits drew around me
+that golden circle which one only of earth's inhabitants could enter.
+Oftentimes in my sleep also I fancied it; and sometimes in the
+intermediate state, in that serenity which breathes about the
+transported soul, enjoying its pure and perfect rest, a span below the
+feet of the Immortal.
+
+_Cornelia._ She has not left you; do not disturb her peace by these
+repinings.
+
+_Tasso._ She will bear with them. Thou knowest not what she was,
+Cornelia; for I wrote to thee about her while she seemed but human. In
+my hours of sadness, not only her beautiful form, but her very voice
+bent over me. How girlish in the gracefulness of her lofty form! how
+pliable in her majesty! what composure at my petulance and reproaches!
+what pity in her reproofs! Like the air that angels breathe in the
+metropolitan temple of the Christian world, her soul at every season
+preserved one temperature. But it was when she could and did love me!
+Unchanged must ever be the blessed one who has leaned in fond security
+on the unchangeable. The purifying flame shoots upward, and is the
+glory that encircles their brows when they meet above.
+
+_Cornelia._ Indulge in these delightful thoughts, my Torquato! and
+believe that your love is and ought to be imperishable as your glory.
+Generations of men move forward in endless procession to consecrate
+and commemorate both. Colour-grinders and gilders, year after year,
+are bargained with to refresh the crumbling monuments and tarnished
+decorations of rude, unregarded royalty, and to fasten the nails that
+cramp the crown upon its head. Meanwhile, in the laurels of my
+Torquato there will always be one leaf above man's reach, above time's
+wrath and injury, inscribed with the name of Leonora.
+
+_Tasso._ O Jerusalem! I have not then sung in vain the Holy Sepulchre.
+
+_Cornelia._ After such devotion of your genius, you have undergone too
+many misfortunes.
+
+_Tasso._ Congratulate the man who has had many, and may have more. I
+have had, I have, I can have, one only.
+
+_Cornelia._ Life runs not smoothly at all seasons, even with the
+happiest; but after a long course, the rocks subside, the views widen,
+and it flows on more equably at the end.
+
+_Tasso._ Have the stars smooth surfaces? No, no; but how they shine!
+
+_Cornelia._ Capable of thoughts so exalted, so far above the earth we
+dwell on, why suffer any to depress and anguish you?
+
+_Tasso._ Cornelia, Cornelia! the mind has within its temples and
+porticoes and palaces and towers: the mind has under it, ready for the
+course, steeds brighter than the sun and stronger than the storm; and
+beside them stand winged chariots, more in number than the Psalmist
+hath attributed to the Almighty. The mind, I tell thee again, hath its
+hundred gates, compared whereto the Theban are but willow wickets; and
+all those hundred gates can genius throw open. But there are some that
+groan heavily on their hinges, and the hand of God alone can close
+them.
+
+_Cornelia._ Torquato has thrown open those of His holy temple;
+Torquato hath stood, another angel, at His tomb; and am I the sister
+of Torquato? Kiss me, my brother, and let my tears run only from my
+pride and joy! Princes have bestowed knighthood on the worthy and
+unworthy; thou hast called forth those princes from their ranks,
+pushing back the arrogant and presumptuous of them like intrusive
+varlets, and conferring on the bettermost crowns and robes,
+imperishable and unfading.
+
+_Tasso._ I seem to live back into those days. I feel the helmet on my
+head; I wave the standard over it: brave men smile upon me; beautiful
+maidens pull them gently back by the scarf, and will not let them
+break my slumber, nor undraw the curtain. Corneliolina!...
+
+_Cornelia._ Well, my dear brother! why do you stop so suddenly in the
+midst of them? They are the pleasantest and best company, and they
+make you look quite happy and joyous.
+
+_Tasso._ Corneliolina, dost thou remember Bergamo? What city was ever
+so celebrated for honest and valiant men, in all classes, or for
+beautiful girls! There is but one class of those: Beauty is above all
+ranks; the true Madonna, the patroness and bestower of felicity, the
+queen of heaven.
+
+_Cornelia._ Hush, Torquato, hush! talk not so.
+
+_Tasso._ What rivers, how sunshiny and revelling, are the Brembo and
+the Serio! What a country the Valtellina! I went back to our father's
+house, thinking to find thee again, my little sister; thinking to kick
+away thy ball of yellow silk as thou wast stooping for it, to make
+thee run after me and beat me. I woke early in the morning; thou wert
+grown up and gone. Away to Sorrento: I knew the road: a few strides
+brought me back: here I am. To-morrow, my Cornelia, we will walk
+together, as we used to do, into the cool and quiet caves on the
+shore; and we will catch the little breezes as they come in and go out
+again on the backs of the jocund waves.
+
+_Cornelia._ We will indeed to-morrow; but before we set out we must
+take a few hours' rest, that we may enjoy our ramble the better.
+
+_Tasso._ Our Sorrentines, I see, are grown rich and avaricious. They
+have uprooted the old pomegranate hedges, and have built high walls to
+prohibit the wayfarer from their vineyards.
+
+_Cornelia._ I have a basket of grapes for you in the book-room that
+overlooks our garden.
+
+_Tasso._ Does the old twisted sage-tree grow still against the window?
+
+_Cornelia._ It harboured too many insects at last, and there was
+always a nest of scorpions in the crevice.
+
+_Tasso._ Oh! what a prince of a sage-tree! And the well, too, with its
+bucket of shining metal, large enough for the largest cocomero to cool
+in it for dinner.
+
+_Cornelia._ The well, I assure you, is as cool as ever.
+
+_Tasso._ Delicious! delicious! And the stone-work round it, bearing no
+other marks of waste than my pruning-hook and dagger left behind?
+
+_Cornelia._ None whatever.
+
+_Tasso._ White in that place no longer; there has been time enough for
+it to become all of one colour: grey, mossy, half-decayed.
+
+_Cornelia._ No, no; not even the rope has wanted repair.
+
+_Tasso._ Who sings yonder?
+
+_Cornelia._ Enchanter! No sooner did you say the word cocomero than
+here comes a boy carrying one upon his head.
+
+_Tasso._ Listen! listen! I have read in some book or other those
+verses long ago. They are not unlike my _Aminta_. The very words!
+
+_Cornelia._ Purifier of love, and humanizer of ferocity, how many, my
+Torquato, will your gentle thoughts make happy!
+
+_Tasso._ At this moment I almost think I am one among them.[10]
+
+_Cornelia._ Be quite persuaded of it. Come, brother, come with me. You
+shall bathe your heated brow and weary limbs in the chamber of your
+childhood. It is there we are always the most certain of repose. The
+boy shall sing to you those sweet verses; and we will reward him with
+a slice of his own fruit.
+
+_Tasso._ He deserves it; cut it thick.
+
+_Cornelia._ Come then, my truant! Come along, my sweet smiling
+Torquato!
+
+_Tasso._ The passage is darker than ever. Is this the way to the
+little court? Surely those are not the steps that lead down toward the
+bath? Oh yes! we are right; I smell the lemon-blossoms. Beware of the
+old wilding that bears them; it may catch your veil; it may scratch
+your fingers! Pray, take care: it has many thorns about it. And now,
+Leonora! you shall hear my last verses! Lean your ear a little toward
+me; for I must repeat them softly under this low archway, else others
+may hear them too. Ah! you press my hand once more. Drop it, drop it!
+or the verses will sink into my breast again, and lie there silent!
+Good girl!
+
+      Many, well I know, there are
+      Ready in your joys to share,
+      And (I never blame it) you
+      Are almost as ready too.
+      But when comes the darker day,
+      And those friends have dropt away,
+      Which is there among them all
+      You should, if you could, recall?
+      One who wisely loves and well
+      Hears and shares the griefs you tell;
+      Him you ever call apart
+      When the springs o'erflow the heart;
+      For you know that he alone
+      Wishes they were _but_ his own.
+      Give, while these he may divide,
+      Smiles to all the world beside.
+
+_Cornelia._ We are now in the full light of the chamber; cannot you
+remember it, having looked so intently all around?
+
+_Tasso._ O sister! I could have slept another hour. You thought I
+wanted rest: why did you waken me so early? I could have slept another
+hour or longer. What a dream! But I am calm and happy.
+
+_Cornelia._ May you never more be otherwise! Indeed, he cannot be
+whose last verses are such as those.
+
+_Tasso._ Have you written any since that morning?
+
+_Cornelia._ What morning?
+
+_Tasso._ When you caught the swallow in my curtains, and trod upon my
+knees in catching it, luckily with naked feet. The little girl of
+thirteen laughed at the outcry of her brother Torquatino, and sang
+without a blush her earliest lay.
+
+_Cornelia._ I do not recollect it.
+
+_Tasso._ I do.
+
+      Rondinello! rondinello!
+      Tu sei nero, ma sei bello.
+      Cosa fa se tu sei nero?
+      Rondinello! sei il primiero
+      De' volanti, palpitanti,
+      (E vi sono quanti quanti!)
+      Mai tenuto a questo petto,
+      E percio sei il mio diletto.[11]
+
+_Cornelia._ Here is the cocomero; it cannot be more insipid. Try it.
+
+_Tasso._ Where is the boy who brought it? where is the boy who sang my
+_Aminta_? Serve him first; give him largely. Cut deeper; the knife is
+too short: deeper; mia brava Corneliolina! quite through all the red,
+and into the middle of the seeds. Well done!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[10] The miseries of Tasso arose not only from the imagination and the
+heart. In the metropolis of the Christian world, with many admirers
+and many patrons, bishops, cardinals, princes, he was left destitute,
+and almost famished. These are his own words: '_Appena_ in questo
+stato ho comprato _due meloni_: e benche io sia stato _quasi sempre
+infermo_, molte volte mi sono contentato del manzo: e la ministra di
+latte o di zucca, _quando ho potuto averne_, mi e stata in vece di
+delizie.' In another part he says that he was unable to pay the
+carriage of a parcel. No wonder; if he had not wherewithal to buy
+enough of zucca for a meal. Even had he been in health and appetite,
+he might have satisfied his hunger with it for about five farthings,
+and have left half for supper. And now a word on his insanity. Having
+been so imprudent not only as to make it too evident in his poetry
+that he was the lover of Leonora, but also to signify (not very
+obscurely) that his love was returned, he much perplexed the Duke of
+Ferrara, who, with great discretion, suggested to him the necessity of
+feigning madness. The lady's honour required it from a brother; and a
+true lover, to convince the world, would embrace the project with
+alacrity. But there was no reason why the seclusion should be in a
+dungeon, or why exercise and air should be interdicted. This cruelty,
+and perhaps his uncertainty of Leonora's compassion, may well be
+imagined to have produced at last the malady he had feigned. But did
+Leonora love Tasso as a man would be loved? If we wish to do her
+honour, let us hope it: for what greater glory can there be, than to
+have estimated at the full value so exalted a genius, so affectionate
+and so generous a heart!
+
+[11] The author wrote the verses first in English, but he found it
+easy to write them better in Italian: they stood in the text as below:
+they only do for a girl of thirteen:
+
+      'Swallow! swallow! though so jetty
+      Are your pinions, you are pretty:
+      And what matter were it though
+      You were blacker than a crow?
+      Of the many birds that fly
+      (And how many pass me by!)
+      You 're the first I ever prest,
+      Of the many, to my breast:
+      Therefore it is very right
+      You should be my own delight.'
+
+
+
+
+LA FONTAINE AND DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT
+
+
+_La Fontaine._ I am truly sensible of the honour I receive, M. de la
+Rochefoucault, in a visit from a personage so distinguished by his
+birth and by his genius. Pardon my ambition, if I confess to you that
+I have long and ardently wished for the good fortune, which I never
+could promise myself, of knowing you personally.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ My dear M. de la Fontaine!
+
+_La Fontaine._ Not '_de_ la', not '_de_ la'. I am _La_ Fontaine,
+purely and simply.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ The whole; not derivative. You appear, in the midst
+of your purity, to have been educated at court, in the lap of the
+ladies. What was the last day (pardon!) I had the misfortune to miss
+you there?
+
+_La Fontaine._ I never go to court. They say one cannot go without
+silk stockings; and I have only thread: plenty of them indeed, thank
+God! Yet, would you believe it? Nanon, in putting a _solette_ to the
+bottom of one, last week, sewed it so carelessly, she made a kind of
+cord across: and I verily believe it will lame me for life; for I
+walked the whole morning upon it.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ She ought to be whipped.
+
+_La Fontaine._ I thought so too, and grew the warmer at being unable
+to find a wisp of osier or a roll of packthread in the house. Barely
+had I begun with my garter, when in came the Bishop of Grasse, my old
+friend Godeau, and another lord, whose name he mentioned, and they
+both interceded for her so long and so touchingly, that at last I was
+fain to let her rise up and go. I never saw men look down on the
+erring and afflicted more compassionately. The bishop was quite
+concerned for me also. But the other, although he professed to feel
+even more, and said that it must surely be the pain of purgatory to
+me, took a pinch of snuff, opened his waistcoat, drew down his
+ruffles, and seemed rather more indifferent.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Providentially, in such moving scenes, the worst is
+soon over. But Godeau's friend was not too sensitive.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Sensitive! no more than if he had been educated at the
+butcher's or the Sorbonne.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I am afraid there are as many hard hearts under satin
+waistcoats as there are ugly visages under the same material in
+miniature cases.
+
+_La Fontaine._ My lord, I could show you a miniature case which
+contains your humble servant, in which the painter has done what no
+tailor in his senses would do; he has given me credit for a coat of
+violet silk, with silver frogs as large as tortoises. But I am loath
+to get up for it while the generous heart of this dog (if I mentioned
+his name he would jump up) places such confidence on my knee.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Pray do not move on any account; above all, lest you
+should disturb that amiable grey cat, fast asleep in his innocence on
+your shoulder.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Ah, rogue! art thou there? Why! thou hast not licked my
+face this half-hour.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ And more, too, I should imagine. I do not judge from
+his somnolency, which, if he were President of the Parliament, could
+not be graver, but from his natural sagacity. Cats weigh
+practicabilities. What sort of tongue has he?
+
+_La Fontaine._ He has the roughest tongue and the tenderest heart of
+any cat in Paris. If you observe the colour of his coat, it is rather
+blue than grey; a certain indication of goodness in these
+contemplative creatures.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ We were talking of his tongue alone; by which cats,
+like men, are flatterers.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Ah! you gentlemen of the court are much mistaken in
+thinking that vices have so extensive a range. There are some of our
+vices, like some of our diseases, from which the quadrupeds are
+exempt; and those, both diseases and vices, are the most
+discreditable.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I do not bear patiently any evil spoken of the court:
+for it must be acknowledged, by the most malicious, that the court is
+the purifier of the whole nation.
+
+_La Fontaine._ I know little of the court, and less of the whole
+nation; but how can this be?
+
+_Rochefoucault._ It collects all ramblers and gamblers; all the
+market-men and market-women who deal in articles which God has thrown
+into their baskets, without any trouble on their part; all the
+seducers and all who wish to be seduced; all the duellists who erase
+their crimes with their swords, and sweat out their cowardice with
+daily practice; all the nobles whose patents of nobility lie in gold
+snuff-boxes, or have worn Mechlin ruffles, or are deposited within the
+archives of knee-deep waistcoats; all stock-jobbers and
+church-jobbers, the black-legged and the red-legged game, the flower
+of the _justaucorps_, the _robe_, and the _soutane_. If these were
+spread over the surface of France, instead of close compressure in the
+court or cabinet, they would corrupt the whole country in two years.
+As matters now stand, it will require a quarter of a century to effect
+it.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Am I not right then in preferring my beasts to yours?
+But if yours were loose, mine (as you prove to me) would be the last
+to suffer by it, poor dear creatures! Speaking of cats, I would have
+avoided all personality that might be offensive to them: I would not
+exactly have said, in so many words, that, by their tongues, they are
+flatterers, like men. Language may take a turn advantageously in
+favour of our friends. True, we resemble all animals in something. I
+am quite ashamed and mortified that your lordship, or anybody, should
+have had the start of me in this reflection. When a cat flatters with
+his tongue he is not insincere: you may safely take it for a real
+kindness. He is loyal, M. de la Rochefoucault! my word for him, he is
+loyal. Observe too, if you please, no cat ever licks you when he wants
+anything from you; so that there is nothing of baseness in such an act
+of adulation, if we must call it so. For my part, I am slow to
+designate by so foul a name, that (be it what it may) which is
+subsequent to a kindness. Cats ask plainly for what they want.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ And, if they cannot get it by protocols they get it
+by invasion and assault.
+
+_La Fontaine._ No! no! usually they go elsewhere, and fondle those
+from whom they obtain it. In this I see no resemblance to invaders and
+conquerors. I draw no parallels: I would excite no heart-burnings
+between us and them. Let all have their due.
+
+I do not like to lift this creature off, for it would waken him, else
+I could find out, by some subsequent action, the reason why he has not
+been on the alert to lick my cheek for so long a time.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Cats are wary and provident. He would not enter into
+any contest with you, however friendly. He only licks your face, I
+presume, while your beard is but a match for his tongue.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Ha! you remind me. Indeed I did begin to think my beard
+was rather of the roughest; for yesterday Madame de Rambouillet sent
+me a plate of strawberries, the first of the season, and raised (would
+you believe it?) under glass. One of these strawberries was dropping
+from my lips, and I attempted to stop it. When I thought it had fallen
+to the ground, 'Look for it, Nanon; pick it up and eat it,' said I.
+
+'Master!' cried the wench, 'your beard has skewered and spitted it.'
+'Honest girl,' I answered, 'come, cull it from the bed of its
+adoption.'
+
+I had resolved to shave myself this morning: but our wisest and best
+resolutions too often come to nothing, poor mortals!
+
+_Rochefoucault._ We often do very well everything but the only thing
+we hope to do best of all; and our projects often drop from us by
+their weight. A little while ago your friend Moliere exhibited a
+remarkable proof of it.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Ah, poor Moliere! the best man in the world; but
+flighty, negligent, thoughtless. He throws himself into other men, and
+does not remember where. The sight of an eagle, M. de la
+Rochefoucault, but the memory of a fly.
+
+_Rochefoucault_. I will give you an example: but perhaps it is already
+known to you.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Likely enough. We have each so many friends, neither of
+us can trip but the other is invited to the laugh. Well; I am sure he
+has no malice, and I hope I have none: but who can see his own faults?
+
+_Rochefoucault._ He had brought out a new edition of his comedies.
+
+_La Fontaine._ There will be fifty; there will be a hundred: nothing
+in our language, or in any, is so delightful, so graceful; I will add,
+so clear at once and so profound.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ You are among the few who, seeing well his other
+qualities, see that Moliere is also profound. In order to present the
+new edition to the dauphin, he had put on a sky-blue velvet coat,
+powdered with fleurs-de-lis. He laid the volume on his library table;
+and, resolving that none of the courtiers should have an opportunity
+of ridiculing him for anything like absence of mind, he returned to
+his bedroom, which, as may often be the case in the economy of poets,
+is also his dressing-room. Here he surveyed himself in his mirror, as
+well as the creeks and lagoons in it would permit.
+
+_La Fontaine._ I do assure you, from my own observation, M. de la
+Rochefoucault, that his mirror is a splendid one. I should take it to
+be nearly three feet high, reckoning the frame, with the Cupid above
+and the elephant under. I suspected it was the present of some great
+lady; and indeed I have since heard as much.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Perhaps then the whole story may be quite as fabulous
+as the part of it which I have been relating.
+
+_La Fontaine._ In that case, I may be able to set you right again.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ He found his peruke a model of perfection; tight, yet
+easy; not an inch more on one side than on the other. The black patch
+on the forehead....
+
+_La Fontaine._ Black patch too! I would have given a fifteen-sous
+piece to have caught him with that black patch.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ He found it lovely, marvellous, irresistible. Those
+on each cheek....
+
+_La Fontaine._ Do you tell me he had one on each cheek?
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Symmetrically. The cravat was of its proper descent,
+and with its appropriate charge of the best Strasburg snuff upon it.
+The waistcoat, for a moment, puzzled and perplexed him. He was not
+quite sure whether the right number of buttons were in their holes;
+nor how many above, nor how many below, it was the fashion of the week
+to leave without occupation. Such a piece of ignorance is enough to
+disgrace any courtier on earth. He was in the act of striking his
+forehead with desperation; but he thought of the patch, fell on his
+knees, and thanked Heaven for the intervention.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Just like him! just like him! good soul!
+
+_Rochefoucault._ The breeches ... ah! those require attention: all
+proper: everything in its place. Magnificent. The stockings rolled up,
+neither too loosely nor too negligently. A picture! The buckles in the
+shoes ... all but one ... soon set to rights ... well thought of! And
+now the sword ... ah, that cursed sword! it will bring at least one
+man to the ground if it has its own way much longer ... up with it! up
+with it higher.... _Allons!_ we are out of danger.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Delightful! I have him before my eyes. What simplicity!
+aye, what simplicity!
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Now for hat. Feather in? Five at least. Bravo!
+
+He took up hat and plumage, extended his arm to the full length,
+raised it a foot above his head, lowered it thereon, opened his
+fingers, and let them fall again at his side.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Something of the comedian in that; aye, M. de la
+Rochefoucault? But, on the stage or off, all is natural in Moliere.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Away he went: he reached the palace, stood before the
+dauphin.... O consternation! O despair! 'Morbleu! bete que je suis,'
+exclaimed the hapless man, 'le livre, ou donc est-il?' You are
+forcibly struck, I perceive, by this adventure of your friend.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Strange coincidence! quite unaccountable! There are
+agents at work in our dreams, M. de la Rochefoucault, which we shall
+never see out of them, on this side the grave. [_To himself._]
+Sky-blue? no. Fleurs-de-lis? bah! bah! Patches? I never wore one in my
+life.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ It well becomes your character for generosity, M. La
+Fontaine, to look grave, and ponder, and ejaculate, on a friend's
+untoward accident, instead of laughing, as those who little know you,
+might expect. I beg your pardon for relating the occurrence.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Right or wrong, I cannot help laughing any longer.
+Comical, by my faith! above the tiptop of comedy. Excuse my flashes
+and dashes and rushes of merriment. Incontrollable! incontrollable!
+Indeed the laughter is immoderate. And you all the while are sitting
+as grave as a judge; I mean a criminal one; who has nothing to do but
+to keep up his popularity by sending his rogues to the gallows. The
+civil indeed have much weighty matter on their minds: they must
+displease one party: and sometimes a doubt arises whether the fairer
+hand or the fuller shall turn the balance.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I congratulate you on the return of your gravity and
+composure.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Seriously now: all my lifetime I have been the
+plaything of dreams. Sometimes they have taken such possession of me,
+that nobody could persuade me afterward they were other than real
+events. Some are very oppressive, very painful, M. de la
+Rochefoucault! I have never been able, altogether, to disembarrass my
+head of the most wonderful vision that ever took possession of any
+man's. There are some truly important differences, but in many
+respects this laughable adventure of my innocent, honest friend
+Moliere seemed to have befallen myself. I can only account for it by
+having heard the tale when I was half asleep.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Nothing more probable.
+
+_La Fontaine._ You absolutely have relieved me from an incubus.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I do not yet see how.
+
+_La Fontaine._ No longer ago than when you entered this chamber, I
+would have sworn that I myself had gone to the Louvre, that I myself
+had been commanded to attend the dauphin, that I myself had come into
+his presence, had fallen on my knee, and cried, 'Peste! ou est donc le
+livre?' Ah, M. de la Rochefoucault, permit me to embrace you: this is
+really to find a friend at court.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ My visit is even more auspicious than I could have
+ventured to expect: it was chiefly for the purpose of asking your
+permission to make another at my return to Paris.... I am forced to go
+into the country on some family affairs: but hearing that you have
+spoken favourably of my _Maxims_, I presume to express my satisfaction
+and delight at your good opinion.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Pray, M. de la Rochefoucault, do me the favour to
+continue here a few minutes. I would gladly reason with you on some of
+your doctrines.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ For the pleasure of hearing your sentiments on the
+topics I have treated, I will, although it is late, steal a few
+minutes from the court, of which I must take my leave on parting for
+the province.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Are you quite certain that all your _Maxims_ are true,
+or, what is of greater consequence, that they are all original? I have
+lately read a treatise written by an Englishman, Mr. Hobbes; so loyal
+a man that, while others tell you kings are appointed by God, he tells
+you God is appointed by kings.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Ah! such are precisely the men we want. If he
+establishes this verity, the rest will follow.
+
+_La Fontaine._ He does not seem to care so much about the rest. In his
+treatise I find the ground-plan of your chief positions.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I have indeed looked over his publication; and we
+agree on the natural depravity of man.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Reconsider your expression. It appears to me that what
+is natural is not depraved: that depravity is deflection from nature.
+Let it pass: I cannot, however, concede to you that the generality of
+men are bad. Badness is accidental, like disease. We find more
+tempers good than bad, where proper care is taken in proper time.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Care is not nature.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Nature is soon inoperative without it; so soon indeed
+as to allow no opportunity for experiment or hypothesis. Life itself
+requires care, and more continually than tempers and morals do. The
+strongest body ceases to be a body in a few days without a supply of
+food. When we speak of men being naturally bad or good, we mean
+susceptible and retentive and communicative of them. In this case (and
+there can be no other true or ostensible one) I believe that the more
+are good; and nearly in the same proportion as there are animals and
+plants produced healthy and vigorous than wayward and weakly. Strange
+is the opinion of Mr. Hobbes, that, when God hath poured so abundantly
+His benefits on other creatures, the only one capable of great good
+should be uniformly disposed to greater evil.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Yet Holy Writ, to which Hobbes would reluctantly
+appeal, countenances the supposition.
+
+_La Fontaine._ The Jews, above all nations, were morose and splenetic.
+Nothing is holy to me that lessens in my view the beneficence of my
+Creator. If you could show Him ungentle and unkind in a single
+instance, you would render myriads of men so, throughout the whole
+course of their lives, and those too among the most religious. The
+less that people talk about God the better. He has left us a design to
+fill up: He has placed the canvas, the colours, and the pencils,
+within reach; His directing hand is over ours incessantly; it is our
+business to follow it, and neither to turn round and argue with our
+Master, nor to kiss and fondle Him. We must mind our lesson, and not
+neglect our time: for the room is closed early, and the lights are
+suspended in another, where no one works. If every man would do all
+the good he might within an hour's walk from his house, he would live
+the happier and the longer: for nothing is so conducive to longevity
+as the union of activity and content. But, like children, we deviate
+from the road, however well we know it, and run into mire and puddles
+in despite of frown and ferule.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Go on, M. La Fontaine! pray go on. We are walking in
+the same labyrinth, always within call, always within sight of each
+other. We set out at its two extremities, and shall meet at last.
+
+_La Fontaine._ I doubt it. From deficiency of care proceed many
+vices, both in men and children, and more still from care taken
+improperly. Mr. Hobbes attributes not only the order and peace of
+society, but equity and moderation and every other virtue, to the
+coercion and restriction of the laws. The laws, as now constituted, do
+a great deal of good; they also do a great deal of mischief. They
+transfer more property from the right owner in six months than all the
+thieves of the kingdom do in twelve. What the thieves take they soon
+disseminate abroad again; what the laws take they hoard. The thief
+takes a part of your property: he who prosecutes the thief for you
+takes another part: he who condemns the thief goes to the tax-gatherer
+and takes the third. Power has been hitherto occupied in no employment
+but in keeping down Wisdom. Perhaps the time may come when Wisdom
+shall exert her energy in repressing the sallies of Power.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I think it more probable that they will agree; that
+they will call together their servants of all liveries, to collect
+what they can lay their hands upon; and that meanwhile they will sit
+together like good housewives, making nets from our purses to cover
+the coop for us. If you would be plump and in feather, pick up your
+millet and be quiet in your darkness. Speculate on nothing here below,
+and I promise you a nosegay in Paradise.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Believe me, I shall be most happy to receive it there
+at your hands, my lord duke.
+
+The greater number of men, I am inclined to think, with all the
+defects of education, all the frauds committed on their credulity, all
+the advantages taken of their ignorance and supineness, are disposed,
+on most occasions, rather to virtue than to vice, rather to the kindly
+affections than the unkindly, rather to the social than the selfish.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Here we differ: and were my opinion the same as
+yours, my book would be little read and less commended.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Why think so?
+
+_Rochefoucault._ For this reason. Every man likes to hear evil of all
+men: every man is delighted to take the air of the common, though not
+a soul will consent to stand within his own allotment. No enclosure
+act! no finger-posts! You may call every creature under heaven fool
+and rogue, and your auditor will join with you heartily: hint to him
+the slightest of his own defects or foibles, and he draws the rapier.
+You and he are the judges of the world, but not its denizens.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Mr. Hobbes has taken advantage of these weaknesses. In
+his dissertation he betrays the timidity and malice of his character.
+It must be granted he reasons well, according to the view he has taken
+of things; but he has given no proof whatever that his view is a
+correct one. I will believe that it is, when I am persuaded that
+sickness is the natural state of the body, and health the unnatural.
+If you call him a sound philosopher, you may call a mummy a sound man.
+Its darkness, its hardness, its forced uprightness, and the place in
+which you find it, may commend it to you; give me rather some weakness
+and peccability, with vital warmth and human sympathies. A shrewd
+reasoner in one thing, a sound philosopher is another. I admire your
+power and precision. Monks will admonish us how little the author of
+the _Maxims_ knows of the world; and heads of colleges will cry out 'a
+libel on human nature!' but when they hear your titles, and, above
+all, your credit at court, they will cast back cowl, and peruke, and
+lick your boots. You start with great advantages. Throwing off from a
+dukedom, you are sure of enjoying, if not the tongue of these
+puzzlers, the full cry of the more animating, and will certainly be as
+long-lived as the imperfection of our language will allow. I consider
+your _Maxims_ as a broken ridge of hills, on the shady side of which
+you are fondest of taking your exercise: but the same ridge hath also
+a sunny one. You attribute (let me say it again) all actions to
+self-interest. Now, a sentiment of interest must be preceded by
+calculation, long or brief, right or erroneous. Tell me then in what
+region lies the origin of that pleasure which a family in the country
+feels on the arrival of an unexpected friend. I say a family in the
+country; because the sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon
+canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of
+delight. If I may judge from the few examples I have been in a
+position to see, no earthly one can be greater. There are pleasures
+which lie near the surface, and which are blocked up by artificial
+ones, or are diverted by some mechanical scheme, or are confined by
+some stiff evergreen vista of low advantage. But these pleasures do
+occasionally burst forth in all their brightness; and, if ever you
+shall by chance find one of them, you will sit by it, I hope,
+complacently and cheerfully, and turn toward it the kindliest aspect
+of your meditations.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Many, indeed most people, will differ from me.
+Nothing is quite the same to the intellect of any two men, much less
+of all. When one says to another, 'I am entirely of your opinion,' he
+uses in general an easy and indifferent phrase, believing in its
+accuracy, without examination, without thought. The nearest
+resemblance in opinions, if we could trace every line of it, would be
+found greatly more divergent than the nearest in the human form or
+countenance, and in the same proportion as the varieties of mental
+qualities are more numerous and fine than of the bodily. Hence I do
+not expect nor wish that my opinions should in all cases be similar to
+those of others: but in many I shall be gratified if, by just degrees
+and after a long survey, those of others approximate to mine. Nor does
+this my sentiment spring from a love of power, as in many good men
+quite unconsciously, when they would make proselytes, since I shall
+see few and converse with fewer of them, and profit in no way by their
+adherence and favour; but it springs from a natural and a cultivated
+love of all truths whatever, and from a certainty that these delivered
+by me are conducive to the happiness and dignity of man. You shake
+your head.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Make it out.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I have pointed out to him at what passes he hath
+deviated from his true interest, and where he hath mistaken
+selfishness for generosity, coldness for judgment, contraction of
+heart for policy, rank for merit, pomp for dignity; of all mistakes,
+the commonest and the greatest. I am accused of paradox and
+distortion. On paradox I shall only say, that every new moral truth
+has been called so. Inexperienced and negligent observers see no
+difference in the operations of ravelling and unravelling: they never
+come close enough: they despise plain work.
+
+_La Fontaine._ The more we simplify things, the better we descry their
+substances and qualities. A good writer will not coil them up and
+press them into the narrowest possible space, nor macerate them into
+such particles that nothing shall be remaining of their natural
+contexture. You are accused of this too, by such as have forgotten
+your title-page, and who look for treatises where maxims only have
+been promised. Some of them perhaps are spinning out sermons and
+dissertations from the poorest paragraph in the volume.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Let them copy and write as they please; against or
+for, modestly or impudently. I have hitherto had no assailant who is
+not of too slender a make to be detained an hour in the stocks he had
+unwarily put his foot into. If you hear of any, do not tell of them.
+On the subjects of my remarks, had others thought as I do, my labour
+would have been spared me. I am ready to point out the road where I
+know it, to whosoever wants it; but I walk side by side with few or
+none.
+
+_La Fontaine._ We usually like those roads which show us the fronts of
+our friends' houses and the pleasure-grounds about them, and the
+smooth garden-walks, and the trim espaliers, and look at them with
+more satisfaction than at the docks and nettles that are thrown in
+heaps behind. The _Offices_ of Cicero are imperfect; yet who would not
+rather guide his children by them than by the line and compass of
+harder-handed guides; such as Hobbes for instance?
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Imperfect as some gentlemen in hoods may call the
+_Offices_, no founder of a philosophical or of a religious sect has
+been able to add to them anything important.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Pity! that Cicero carried with him no better
+authorities than reason and humanity. He neither could work miracles,
+nor damn you for disbelieving them. Had he lived fourscore years
+later, who knows but he might have been another Simon Peter, and have
+talked Hebrew as fluently as Latin, all at once! Who knows but we
+might have heard of his patrimony! who knows but our venerable popes
+might have claimed dominion from him, as descendant from the kings of
+Rome!
+
+_Rochefoucault._ The hint, some centuries ago, would have made your
+fortune, and that saintly cat there would have kittened in a mitre.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Alas! the hint could have done nothing: Cicero could
+not have lived later.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I warrant him. Nothing is easier to correct than
+chronology. There is not a lady in Paris, nor a jockey in Normandy,
+that is not eligible to a professor's chair in it. I have seen a man's
+ancestor, whom nobody ever saw before, spring back over twenty
+generations. Our Vatican Jupiters have as little respect for old
+Chronos as the Cretan had: they mutilate him when and where they think
+necessary, limp as he may by the operation.
+
+_La Fontaine._ When I think, as you make me do, how ambitious men are,
+even those whose teeth are too loose (one would fancy) for a bite at
+so hard an apple as the devil of ambition offers them, I am inclined
+to believe that we are actuated not so much by selfishness as you
+represent it, but under another form, the love of power. Not to speak
+of territorial dominion or political office, and such other things as
+we usually class under its appurtenances, do we not desire an
+exclusive control over what is beautiful and lovely? the possession
+of pleasant fields, of well-situated houses, of cabinets, of images,
+of pictures, and indeed of many things pleasant to see but useless to
+possess; even of rocks, of streams, and of fountains? These things,
+you will tell me, have their utility. True, but not to the wisher, nor
+does the idea of it enter his mind. Do not we wish that the object of
+our love should be devoted to us only; and that our children should
+love us better than their brothers and sisters, or even than the
+mother who bore them? Love would be arrayed in the purple robe of
+sovereignty, mildly as he may resolve to exercise his power.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Many things which appear to be incontrovertible are
+such for their age only, and must yield to others which, in their age,
+are equally so. There are only a few points that are always above the
+waves. Plain truths, like plain dishes, are commended by everybody,
+and everybody leaves them whole. If it were not even more impertinent
+and presumptuous to praise a great writer in his presence than to
+censure him in his absence, I would venture to say that your prose,
+from the few specimens you have given of it, is equal to your verse.
+Yet, even were I the possessor of such a style as yours, I would never
+employ it to support my _Maxims_. You would think a writer very
+impudent and self-sufficient who should quote his own works: to defend
+them is doing more. We are the worst auxiliaries in the world to the
+opinions we have brought into the field. Our business is, to measure
+the ground, and to calculate the forces; then let them try their
+strength. If the weak assails me, he thinks me weak; if the strong, he
+thinks me strong. He is more likely to compute ill his own vigour than
+mine. At all events, I love inquiry, even when I myself sit down. And
+I am not offended in my walks if my visitor asks me whither does that
+alley lead. It proves that he is ready to go on with me; that he sees
+some space before him; and that he believes there may be something
+worth looking after.
+
+_La Fontaine._ You have been standing a long time, my lord duke: I
+must entreat you to be seated.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Excuse me, my dear M. la Fontaine; I would much
+rather stand.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Mercy on us! have you been upon your legs ever since
+you rose to leave me?
+
+_Rochefoucault._ A change of position is agreeable: a friend always
+permits it.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Sad doings! sad oversight! The other two chairs were
+sent yesterday evening to be scoured and mended. But that dog is the
+best tempered dog! an angel of a dog, I do assure you; he would have
+gone down in a moment, at a word. I am quite ashamed of myself for
+such inattention. With your sentiments of friendship for me, why could
+you not have taken the liberty to shove him gently off, rather than
+give me this uneasiness?
+
+_Rochefoucault._ My true and kind friend! we authors are too
+sedentary; we are heartily glad of standing to converse, whenever we
+can do it without any restraint on our acquaintance.
+
+_La Fontaine._ I must reprove that animal when he uncurls his body. He
+seems to be dreaming of Paradise and houris. Ay, twitch thy ear, my
+child! I wish at my heart there were as troublesome a fly about the
+other: God forgive me! The rogue covers all my clean linen! shirt and
+cravat! what cares he!
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Dogs are not very modest.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Never say that, M. de la Rochefoucault! The most modest
+people upon earth! Look at a dog's eyes, and he half closes them, or
+gently turns them away, with a motion of the lips, which he licks
+languidly, and of the tail, which he stirs tremulously, begging your
+forbearance. I am neither blind nor indifferent to the defects of
+these good and generous creatures. They are subject to many such as
+men are subject to: among the rest, they disturb the neighbourhood in
+the discussion of their private causes; they quarrel and fight on
+small motives, such as a little bad food, or a little vainglory, or
+the sex. But it must be something present or near that excites them;
+and they calculate not the extent of evil they may do or suffer.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Certainly not: how should dogs calculate?
+
+_La Fontaine._ I know nothing of the process. I am unable to inform
+you how they leap over hedges and brooks, with exertion just
+sufficient, and no more. In regard to honour and a sense of dignity,
+let me tell you, a dog accepts the subsidies of his friends, but never
+claims them: a dog would not take the field to obtain power for a son,
+but would leave the son to obtain it by his own activity and prowess.
+He conducts his visitor or inmate out a-hunting, and makes a present
+of the game to him as freely as an emperor to an elector. Fond as he
+is of slumber, which is indeed one of the pleasantest and best things
+in the universe, particularly after dinner, he shakes it off as
+willingly as he would a gadfly, in order to defend his master from
+theft or violence. Let the robber or assailant speak as courteously
+as he may, he waives your diplomatical terms, gives his reasons in
+plain language, and makes war. I could say many other things to his
+advantage; but I never was malicious, and would rather let both
+parties plead for themselves; give me the dog, however.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Faith! I will give you both, and never boast of my
+largess in so doing.
+
+_La Fontaine._ I trust I have removed from you the suspicion of
+selfishness in my client, and I feel it quite as easy to make a
+properer disposal of another ill attribute, namely cruelty, which we
+vainly try to shuffle off our own shoulders upon others, by employing
+the offensive and most unjust term, brutality. But to convince you of
+my impartiality, now I have defended the dog from the first obloquy, I
+will defend the man from the last, hoping to make you think better of
+each. What you attribute to cruelty, both while we are children and
+afterward, may be assigned, for the greater part, to curiosity.
+Cruelty tends to the extinction of life, the dissolution of matter,
+the imprisonment and sepulture of truth; and if it were our ruling and
+chief propensity, the human race would have been extinguished in a few
+centuries after its appearance. Curiosity, in its primary sense,
+implies care and consideration.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Words often deflect from their primary sense. We find
+the most curious men the most idle and silly, the least observant and
+conservative.
+
+_La Fontaine._ So we think; because we see every hour the idly
+curious, and not the strenuously; we see only the persons of the one
+set, and only the works of the other.
+
+More is heard of cruelty than of curiosity, because while curiosity is
+silent both in itself and about its object, cruelty on most occasions
+is like the wind, boisterous in itself, and exciting a murmur and
+bustle in all the things it moves among. Added to which, many of the
+higher topics whereto our curiosity would turn, are intercepted from
+it by the policy of our guides and rulers; while the principal ones on
+which cruelty is most active, are pointed to by the sceptre and the
+truncheon, and wealth and dignity are the rewards of their attainment.
+What perversion! He who brings a bullock into a city for its
+sustenance is called a butcher, and nobody has the civility to take
+off the hat to him, although knowing him as perfectly as I know
+Matthieu le Mince, who served me with those fine kidneys you must have
+remarked in passing through the kitchen: on the contrary, he who
+reduces the same city to famine is styled M. le General or M. le
+Marechal, and gentlemen like you, unprejudiced (as one would think)
+and upright, make room for him in the antechamber.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ He obeys orders without the degrading influence of
+any passion.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Then he commits a baseness the more, a cruelty the
+greater. He goes off at another man's setting, as ingloriously as a
+rat-trap: he produces the worst effects of fury, and feels none: a
+Cain unirritated by a brother's incense.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ I would hide from you this little rapier, which, like
+the barber's pole, I have often thought too obtrusive in the streets.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Never shall I think my countrymen half civilized while
+on the dress of a courtier is hung the instrument of a cut-throat. How
+deplorably feeble must be that honour which requires defending at
+every hour of the day!
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Ingenious as you are, M. La Fontaine, I do not
+believe that, on this subject, you could add anything to what you have
+spoken already; but really, I do think one of the most instructive
+things in the world would be a dissertation on dress by you.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Nothing can be devised more commodious than the dress
+in fashion. Perukes have fallen among us by the peculiar dispensation
+of Providence. As in all the regions of the globe the indigenous have
+given way to stronger creatures, so have they (partly at least) on the
+human head. At present the wren and the squirrel are dominant there.
+Whenever I have a mind for a filbert, I have only to shake my foretop.
+Improvement does not end in that quarter. I might forget to take my
+pinch of snuff when it would do me good, unless I saw a store of it on
+another's cravat. Furthermore, the slit in the coat behind tells in a
+moment what it was made for: a thing of which, in regard to ourselves,
+the best preachers have to remind us all our lives: then the central
+part of our habiliment has either its loop-hole or its portcullis in
+the opposite direction, still more demonstrative. All these are for
+very mundane purposes: but Religion and Humanity have whispered some
+later utilities. We pray the more commodiously, and of course the more
+frequently, for rolling up a royal ell of stocking round about our
+knees: and our high-heeled shoes must surely have been worn by some
+angel, to save those insects which the flat-footed would have crushed
+to death.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Ah! the good dog has awakened: he saw me and my
+rapier, and ran away. Of what breed is he? for I know nothing of dogs.
+
+_La Fontaine._ And write so well!
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Is he a truffler?
+
+_La Fontaine._ No, not he; but quite as innocent.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Something of the shepherd-dog, I suspect.
+
+_La Fontaine._ Nor that neither; although he fain would make you
+believe it. Indeed he is very like one: pointed nose, pointed ears,
+apparently stiff, but readily yielding; long hair, particularly about
+the neck; noble tail over his back, three curls deep, exceedingly
+pleasant to stroke down again; straw-colour all above, white all
+below. He might take it ill if you looked for it; but so it is, upon
+my word: an ermeline might envy it.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ What are his pursuits?
+
+_La Fontaine._ As to pursuit and occupation, he is good for nothing.
+In fact, I like those dogs best ... and those men too.
+
+_Rochefoucault._ Send Nanon then for a pair of silk stockings, and
+mount my carriage with me: it stops at the Louvre.
+
+
+
+
+LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS
+
+
+_Timotheus._ I am delighted, my Cousin Lucian, to observe how popular
+are become your _Dialogues of the Dead_. Nothing can be so gratifying
+and satisfactory to a rightly disposed mind, as the subversion of
+imposture by the force of ridicule. It hath scattered the crowd of
+heathen gods as if a thunderbolt had fallen in the midst of them. Now,
+I am confident you never would have assailed the false religion,
+unless you were prepared for the reception of the true. For it hath
+always been an indication of rashness and precipitancy, to throw down
+an edifice before you have collected materials for reconstruction.
+
+_Lucian._ Of all metaphors and remarks, I believe this of yours, my
+good cousin Timotheus, is the most trite, and pardon me if I add, the
+most untrue. Surely we ought to remove an error the instant we detect
+it, although it may be out of our competence to state and establish
+what is right. A lie should be exposed as soon as born: we are not to
+wait until a healthier child is begotten. Whatever is evil in any way
+should be abolished. The husbandman never hesitates to eradicate
+weeds, or to burn them up, because he may not happen at the time to
+carry a sack on his shoulder with wheat or barley in it. Even if no
+wheat or barley is to be sown in future, the weeding and burning are
+in themselves beneficial, and something better will spring up.
+
+_Timotheus._ That is not so certain.
+
+_Lucian._ Doubt it as you may, at least you will allow that the
+temporary absence of evil is an advantage.
+
+_Timotheus._ I think, O Lucian, you would reason much better if you
+would come over to our belief.
+
+_Lucian._ I was unaware that belief is an encourager and guide to
+reason.
+
+_Timotheus._ Depend upon it, there can be no stability of truth, no
+elevation of genius, without an unwavering faith in our holy
+mysteries. Babes and sucklings who are blest with it, stand higher,
+intellectually as well as morally, than stiff unbelievers and proud
+sceptics.
+
+_Lucian._ I do not wonder that so many are firm holders of this novel
+doctrine. It is pleasant to grow wise and virtuous at so small an
+expenditure of thought or time. This saying of yours is exactly what I
+heard spoken with angry gravity not long ago.
+
+_Timotheus._ Angry! no wonder! for it is impossible to keep our
+patience when truths so incontrovertible are assailed. What was your
+answer?
+
+_Lucian._ My answer was: If you talk in this manner, my honest friend,
+you will excite a spirit of ridicule in the gravest and most saturnine
+of men, who never had let a laugh out of their breasts before. Lie to
+_me_, and welcome; but beware lest your own heart take you to task for
+it, reminding you that both anger and falsehood are reprehended by all
+religions, yours included.
+
+_Timotheus._ Lucian! Lucian! you have always been called profane.
+
+_Lucian._ For what? for having turned into ridicule the gods whom you
+have turned out of house and home, and are reducing to dust?
+
+_Timotheus._ Well; but you are equally ready to turn into ridicule the
+true and holy.
+
+_Lucian._ In other words, to turn myself into a fool. He who brings
+ridicule to bear against Truth, finds in his hand a blade without a
+hilt. The most sparkling and pointed flame of wit flickers and
+expires against the incombustible walls of her sanctuary.
+
+_Timotheus._ Fine talking! Do you know, you have really been called an
+atheist?
+
+_Lucian._ Yes, yes; I know it well. But, in fact, I believe there are
+almost as few atheists in the world as there are Christians.
+
+_Timotheus._ How! as few? Most of Europe, most of Asia, most of
+Africa, is Christian.
+
+_Lucian._ Show me five men in each who obey the commands of Christ,
+and I will show you five hundred in this very city who observe the
+dictates of Pythagoras. Every Pythagorean obeys his defunct
+philosopher; and almost every Christian disobeys his living God. Where
+is there one who practises the most important and the easiest of His
+commands, to abstain from strife? Men easily and perpetually find
+something new to quarrel about; but the objects of affection are
+limited in number, and grow up scantily and slowly. Even a small house
+is often too spacious for them, and there is a vacant seat at the
+table. Religious men themselves, when the Deity has bestowed on them
+everything they prayed for, discover, as a peculiar gift of
+Providence, some fault in the actions or opinions of a neighbour, and
+run it down, crying and shouting after it, with more alacrity and more
+clamour than boys would a leveret or a squirrel in the playground. Are
+our years and our intellects, and the word of God itself, given us for
+this, O Timotheus?
+
+_Timotheus._ A certain latitude, a liberal construction....
+
+_Lucian._ Ay, ay! These 'liberal constructions' let loose all the
+worst passions into those 'certain latitudes'. The priests themselves,
+who ought to be the poorest, are the richest; who ought to be the most
+obedient, are the most refractory and rebellious. All trouble and all
+piety are vicarious. They send missionaries, at the cost of others,
+into foreign lands, to teach observances which they supersede at home.
+I have ridiculed the puppets of all features, all colours, all sizes,
+by which an impudent and audacious set of impostors have been gaining
+an easy livelihood these two thousand years.
+
+_Timotheus._ Gently! gently! Ours have not been at it yet two hundred.
+We abolish all idolatry. We know that Jupiter was not the father of
+gods and men: we know that Mars was not the Lord of Hosts: we know who
+is: we are quite at ease upon that question.
+
+_Lucian._ Are you so fanatical, my good Timotheus, as to imagine that
+the Creator of the world cares a fig by what appellation you adore
+Him? whether you call Him on one occasion Jupiter, on another Apollo?
+I will not add Mars or Lord of Hosts; for, wanting as I may be in
+piety, I am not, and never was, so impious as to call the Maker the
+Destroyer; to call Him Lord of Hosts who, according to your holiest of
+books, declared so lately and so plainly that He permits no hosts at
+all; much less will He take the command of one against another. Would
+any man in his senses go down into the cellar, and seize first an
+amphora from the right, and then an amphora from the left, for the
+pleasure of breaking them in pieces, and of letting out the wine he
+had taken the trouble to put in? We are not contented with attributing
+to the gods our own infirmities; we make them even more wayward, even
+more passionate, even more exigent and more malignant: and then some
+of us try to coax and cajole them, and others run away from them
+outright.
+
+_Timotheus._ No wonder: but only in regard to yours: and even those
+are types.
+
+_Lucian._ There are honest men who occupy their lives in discovering
+types for all things.
+
+_Timotheus._ Truly and rationally thou speakest now. Honest men and
+wise men above their fellows are they, and the greatest of all
+discoverers. There are many types above thy reach, O Lucian!
+
+_Lucian._ And one which my mind, and perhaps yours also, can
+comprehend. There is in Italy, I hear, on the border of a quiet and
+beautiful lake, a temple dedicated to Diana; the priests of which
+temple have murdered each his predecessor for unrecorded ages.
+
+_Timotheus._ What of that? They were idolaters.
+
+_Lucian._ They made the type, however: take it home with you, and hang
+it up in your temple.
+
+_Timotheus._ Why! you seem to have forgotten on a sudden that I am a
+Christian: you are talking of the heathens.
+
+_Lucian._ True! true! I am near upon eighty years of age, and to my
+poor eyesight one thing looks very like another.
+
+_Timotheus._ You are too indifferent.
+
+_Lucian._ No indeed. I love those best who quarrel least, and who
+bring into public use the most civility and good humour.
+
+_Timotheus._ Our holy religion inculcates this duty especially.
+
+_Lucian._ Such being the case, a pleasant story will not be thrown
+away upon you. Xenophanes, my townsman of Samosata, was resolved to
+buy a new horse: he had tried him, and liked him well enough. I asked
+him why he wished to dispose of his old one, knowing how sure-footed
+he was, how easy in his paces, and how quiet in his pasture. 'Very
+true, O Lucian,' said he; 'the horse is a clever horse; noble eye,
+beautiful figure, stately step; rather too fond of neighing and of
+shuffling a little in the vicinity of a mare; but tractable and good
+tempered.' 'I would not have parted with him then,' said I. 'The fact
+is,' replied he, 'my grandfather, whom I am about to visit, likes no
+horses but what are _Saturnized_. To-morrow I begin my journey: come
+and see me set out.' I went at the hour appointed. The new purchase
+looked quiet and demure; but _he_ also pricked up his ears, and gave
+sundry other tokens of equinity, when the more interesting part of his
+fellow-creatures came near him. As the morning oats began to operate,
+he grew more and more unruly, and snapped at one friend of Xenophanes,
+and sidled against another, and gave a kick at a third. 'All in play!
+all in play!' said Xenophanes; 'his nature is more of a lamb's than a
+horse's.' However, these mute salutations being over, away went
+Xenophanes. In the evening, when my lamp had just been replenished for
+the commencement of my studies, my friend came in striding as if he
+were still across the saddle. 'I am apprehensive, O Xenophanes,' said
+I, 'your new acquaintance has disappointed you.' 'Not in the least,'
+answered he. 'I do assure you, O Lucian! he is the very horse I was
+looking out for.' On my requesting him to be seated, he no more
+thought of doing so than if it had been in the presence of the Persian
+king. I then handed my lamp to him, telling him (as was true) it
+contained all the oil I had in the house, and protesting I should be
+happier to finish my Dialogue in the morning. He took the lamp into my
+bedroom, and appeared to be much refreshed on his return.
+Nevertheless, he treated his chair with great delicacy and
+circumspection, and evidently was afraid of breaking it by too sudden
+a descent. I did not revert to the horse: but he went on of his own
+accord. 'I declare to you, O Lucian! it is impossible for me to be
+mistaken in a palfrey. My new one is the only one in Samosata that
+could carry me at one stretch to my grandfather's.' 'But _has_ he?'
+said I, timidly. 'No; he has not yet,' answered my friend. 'To-morrow,
+then, I am afraid, we really must lose you.' 'No,' said he; 'the horse
+does trot hard: but he is the better for that: I shall soon get used
+to him.' In fine, my worthy friend deferred his visit to his
+grandfather: his rides were neither long nor frequent: he was ashamed
+to part with his purchase, boasted of him everywhere, and, humane as
+he is by nature, could almost have broken on the cross the quiet
+contented owner of old Bucephalus.
+
+_Timotheus._ Am I to understand by this, O Cousin Lucian, that I ought
+to be contented with the impurities of paganism?
+
+_Lucian._ Unless you are very unreasonable. A moderate man finds
+plenty in it.
+
+_Timotheus._ We abominate the Deities who patronize them, and we hurl
+down the images of the monsters.
+
+_Lucian._ Sweet cousin! be tenderer to my feelings. In such a tempest
+as this, my spark of piety may be blown out. Hold your hand cautiously
+before it, until I can find my way. Believe me, no Deities (out of
+their own houses) patronize immorality; none patronize unruly
+passions, least of all the fierce and ferocious. In my opinion, you
+are wrong in throwing down the images of those among them who look on
+you benignly: the others I give up to your discretion. But I think it
+impossible to stand habitually in the presence of a sweet and open
+countenance, graven or depicted, without in some degree partaking of
+the character it expresses. Never tell any man that he can derive no
+good, in his devotions, from this or from that: abolish neither hope
+nor gratitude.
+
+_Timotheus._ God is offended at vain efforts to represent Him.
+
+_Lucian._ No such thing, my dear Timotheus. If you knew Him at all,
+you would not talk of Him so irreverently. He is pleased, I am
+convinced, at every effort to resemble Him, at every wish to remind
+both ourselves and others of His benefits. You cannot think so often
+of Him without an effigy.
+
+_Timotheus._ What likeness is there in the perishable to the
+Unperishable?
+
+_Lucian._ I see no reason why there may not be a similitude. All that
+the senses can comprehend may be represented by any material; clay or
+fig-tree, bronze or ivory, porphyry or gold. Indeed I have a faint
+remembrance that, according to your sacred volumes, man was made by
+God after His own image. If so, man's intellectual powers are worthily
+exercised in attempting to collect all that is beautiful, serene, and
+dignified, and to bring Him back to earth again by showing Him the
+noblest of His gifts, the work most like His own. Surely He cannot
+hate or abandon those who thus cherish His memory, and thus implore
+His regard. Perishable and imperfect is everything human: but in these
+very qualities I find the best reason for striving to attain what is
+least so. Would not any father be gratified by seeing his child
+attempt to delineate his features? And would not the gratification be
+rather increased than diminished by his incapacity? How long shall the
+narrow mind of man stand between goodness and omnipotence? Perhaps the
+effigy of your ancestor Isknos is unlike him; whether it is or no, you
+cannot tell; but you keep it in your hall, and would be angry if
+anybody broke it to pieces or defaced it. Be quite sure there are many
+who think as much of their gods as you think of your ancestor Isknos,
+and who see in their images as good a likeness. Let men have their own
+way, especially their way to the temples. It is easier to drive them
+out of one road than into another. Our judicious and good-humoured
+Trajan has found it necessary on many occasions to chastise the
+law-breakers of your sect, indifferent as he is what gods are
+worshipped, so long as their followers are orderly and decorous. The
+fiercest of the Dacians never knocked off Jupiter's beard, or broke an
+arm off Venus; and the emperor will hardly tolerate in those who have
+received a liberal education what he would punish in barbarians. Do
+not wear out his patience: try rather to imitate his equity, his
+equanimity, and forbearance.
+
+_Timotheus._ I have been listening to you with much attention, O
+Lucian! for I seldom have heard you speak with such gravity. And yet,
+O Cousin Lucian! I really do find in you a sad deficiency of that
+wisdom which alone is of any value. You talk of Trajan! what is
+Trajan?
+
+_Lucian._ A beneficent citizen, an impartial judge, a sagacious ruler;
+the comrade of every brave soldier, the friend and associate of every
+man eminent in genius, throughout his empire, the empire of the world.
+All arts, all sciences, all philosophies, all religions, are protected
+by him. Wherefore his name will flourish, when the proudest of these
+have perished in the land of Egypt. Philosophies and religions will
+strive, struggle, and suffocate one another. Priesthoods, I know not
+how many, are quarrelling and scuffling in the street at this instant,
+all calling on Trajan to come and knock an antagonist on the head; and
+the most peaceful of them, as it wishes to be thought, proclaiming him
+an infidel for turning a deaf ear to its imprecations. Mankind was
+never so happy as under his guidance; and he has nothing now to do but
+to put down the battles of the gods. If they must fight it out, he
+will insist on our neutrality.
+
+_Timotheus._ He has no authority and no influence over us in matters
+of faith. A wise and upright man, whose serious thoughts lead him
+forward to religion, will never be turned aside from it by any worldly
+consideration or any human force.
+
+_Lucian._ True: but mankind is composed not entirely of the upright
+and the wise. I suspect that we may find some, here and there, who are
+rather too fond of novelties in the furniture of temples; and I have
+observed that new sects are apt to warp, crack, and split, under the
+heat they generate. Our homely old religion has run into fewer
+quarrels, ever since the Centaurs and Lapiths (whose controversy was
+on a subject quite comprehensible), than yours has engendered in
+twenty years.
+
+_Timotheus._ We shall obviate that inconvenience by electing a supreme
+Pontiff to decide all differences. It has been seriously thought about
+long ago: and latterly we have been making out an ideal series down to
+the present day, in order that our successors in the ministry may have
+stepping-stones up to the fountain-head. At first the disseminators of
+our doctrines were equal in their commission; we do not approve of
+this any longer, for reasons of our own.
+
+_Lucian._ You may shut, one after another, all our other temples, but,
+I plainly see, you will never shut the temple of Janus. The Roman
+Empire will never lose its pugnacious character while your sect
+exists. The only danger is, lest the fever rage internally and consume
+the vitals. If you sincerely wish your religion to be long-lived,
+maintain in it the spirit of its constitution, and keep it patient,
+humble, abstemious, domestic, and zealous only in the services of
+humanity. Whenever the higher of your priesthood shall attain the
+riches they are aiming at, the people will envy their possessions and
+revolt from their impostures. Do not let them seize upon the palace,
+and shove their God again into the manger.
+
+_Timotheus._ Lucian! Lucian! I call this impiety.
+
+_Lucian._ So do I, and shudder at its consequences. Caverns which at
+first look inviting, the roof at the aperture green with overhanging
+ferns and clinging mosses, then glittering with native gems and with
+water as sparkling and pellucid, freshening the air all around; these
+caverns grow darker and closer, until you find yourself among animals
+that shun the daylight, adhering to the walls, hissing along the
+bottom, flapping, screeching, gaping, glaring, making you shrink at
+the sounds, and sicken at the smells, and afraid to advance or
+retreat.
+
+_Timotheus._ To what can this refer? Our caverns open on verdure, and
+terminate in veins of gold.
+
+_Lucian._ Veins of gold, my good Timotheus, such as your excavations
+have opened and are opening, in the spirit of avarice and ambition,
+will be washed (or as you would say, _purified_) in streams of blood.
+Arrogance, intolerance, resistance to authority and contempt of law,
+distinguish your aspiring sectarians from the other subjects of the
+empire.
+
+_Timotheus._ Blindness hath often a calm and composed countenance;
+but, my Cousin Lucian! it usually hath also the advantage of a
+cautious and a measured step. It hath pleased God to blind you, like
+all the other adversaries of our faith; but He has given you no staff
+to lean upon. You object against us the very vices from which we are
+peculiarly exempt.
+
+_Lucian._ Then it is all a story, a fable, a fabrication, about one of
+your earlier leaders cutting off with his sword a servant's ear? If
+the accusation is true, the offence is heavy. For not only was the
+wounded man innocent of any provocation, but he is represented as
+being in the service of the high priest at Jerusalem. Moreover, from
+the direction and violence of the blow, it is evident that his life
+was aimed at. According to law, you know, my dear cousin, all the
+party might have been condemned to death, as accessories to an attempt
+at murder. I am unwilling to think so unfavourably of your sect; nor
+indeed do I see the possibility that, in such an outrage, the
+principal could be pardoned. For any man but a soldier to go about
+armed is against the Roman law, which, on that head, as on many
+others, is borrowed from the Athenian; and it is incredible that in
+any civilized country so barbarous a practice can be tolerated.
+Travellers do indeed relate that, in certain parts of India, there are
+princes at whose courts even civilians are armed. But _traveller_ has
+occasionally the same signification as _liar_, and _India_ as _fable_.
+However, if the practice really does exist in that remote and rarely
+visited country, it must be in some region of it very far beyond the
+Indus or the Ganges: for the nations situated between those rivers
+are, and were in the reign of Alexander, and some thousand years
+before his birth, as civilized as the Europeans; nay, incomparably
+more courteous, more industrious, and more pacific; the three grand
+criterions.
+
+But answer my question: is there any foundation for so mischievous a
+report?
+
+_Timotheus._ There was indeed, so to say, an ear, or something of the
+kind, abscinded; probably by mistake. But high priests' servants are
+propense to follow the swaggering gait of their masters, and to carry
+things with a high hand, in such wise as to excite the choler of the
+most quiet. If you knew the character of the eminently holy man who
+punished the atrocious insolence of that bloody-minded wretch, you
+would be sparing of your animadversions. We take him for our model.
+
+_Lucian._ I see you do.
+
+_Timotheus._ We proclaim him Prince of the Apostles.
+
+_Lucian._ I am the last in the world to question his princely
+qualifications; but, if I might advise you, it should be to follow in
+preference Him whom you acknowledge to be an unerring guide; who
+delivered to you His ordinances with His own hand, equitable, plain,
+explicit, compendious, and complete; who committed no violence, who
+countenanced no injustice, whose compassion was without weakness,
+whose love was without frailty, whose life was led in humility, in
+purity, in beneficence, and, at the end, laid down in obedience to His
+Father's will.
+
+_Timotheus._ Ah, Lucian! what strangely imperfect notions! all that is
+little.
+
+_Lucian._ Enough to follow.
+
+_Timotheus._ Not enough to compel others. I did indeed hope, O Lucian!
+that you would again come forward with the irresistible arrows of your
+wit, and unite with us against our adversaries. By what you have just
+spoken, I doubt no longer that you approve of the doctrines inculcated
+by the blessed Founder of our religion.
+
+_Lucian._ To the best of my understanding.
+
+_Timotheus._ So ardent is my desire for the salvation of your precious
+soul, O my cousin! that I would devote many hours of every day to
+disputation with you on the principal points of our Christian
+controversy.
+
+_Lucian._ Many thanks, my kind Timotheus! But I think the blessed
+Founder of your religion very strictly forbade that there should be
+_any_ points of controversy. Not only has He prohibited them on the
+doctrines He delivered, but on everything else. Some of the most
+obstinate might never have doubted of His Divinity, if the conduct of
+His followers had not repelled them from the belief of it. How can
+they imagine you sincere when they see you disobedient? It is in vain
+for you to protest that you worship the God of Peace, when you are
+found daily in the courts and market-places with clenched fists and
+bloody noses. I acknowledge the full value of your offer; but really I
+am as anxious for the salvation of your precious time as you appear to
+be for the salvation of my precious soul, particularly since I am
+come to the conclusion that souls cannot be lost, and that time can.
+
+_Timotheus._ We mean by _salvation_ exemption from eternal torments.
+
+_Lucian._ Among all my old gods and their children, morose as some of
+the senior are, and mischievous as are some of the junior, I have
+never represented the worst of them as capable of inflicting such
+atrocity. Passionate and capricious and unjust are several of them;
+but a skin stripped off the shoulder, and a liver tossed to a vulture,
+are among the worst of their inflictions.
+
+_Timotheus._ This is scoffing.
+
+_Lucian._ Nobody but an honest man has a right to scoff at anything.
+
+_Timotheus._ And yet people of a very different cast are usually those
+who scoff the most.
+
+_Lucian._ We are apt to push forward at that which we are without: the
+low-born at titles and distinctions, the silly at wit, the knave at
+the semblance of probity. But I was about to remark, that an honest
+man may fairly scoff at all philosophies and religions which are
+proud, ambitious, intemperate, and contradictory. The thing most
+adverse to the spirit and essence of them all is falsehood. It is the
+business of the philosophical to seek truth: it is the office of the
+religious to worship her; under what name is unimportant. The
+falsehood that the tongue commits is slight in comparison with what is
+conceived by the heart, and executed by the whole man, throughout
+life. If, professing love and charity to the human race at large, I
+quarrel day after day with my next neighbour; if, professing that the
+rich can never see God, I spend in the luxuries of my household a
+talent monthly; if, professing to place so much confidence in His
+word, that, in regard to wordly weal, I need take no care for
+to-morrow, I accumulate stores even beyond what would be necessary,
+though I quite distrusted both His providence and His veracity; if,
+professing that 'he who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord', I
+question the Lord's security, and haggle with Him about the amount of
+the loan; if, professing that I am their steward, I keep ninety-nine
+parts in the hundred as the emolument of my stewardship; how, when God
+hates liars and punishes defrauders, shall I, and other such thieves
+and hypocrites, fare hereafter?
+
+_Timotheus._ Let us hope there are few of them.
+
+_Lucian._ We cannot hope against what is: we may, however, hope that
+in future these will be fewer; but never while the overseers of a
+priesthood look for offices out of it, taking the lead in politics, in
+debate, and strife. Such men bring to ruin all religion, but their own
+first, and raise unbelievers not only in Divine Providence, but in
+human faith.
+
+_Timotheus._ If they leave the altar for the market-place, the
+sanctuary for the senate-house, and agitate party questions instead of
+Christian verities, everlasting punishments await them.
+
+_Lucian._ Everlasting?
+
+_Timotheus._ Certainly: at the very least. I rank it next to heresy in
+the catalogue of sins; and the Church supports my opinion.
+
+_Lucian._ I have no measure for ascertaining the distance between the
+opinions and practices of men; I only know that they stand widely
+apart in all countries on the most important occasions; but this
+newly-hatched word _heresy_, alighting on my ear, makes me rub it. A
+beneficent God descends on earth in the human form, to redeem us from
+the slavery of sin, from the penalty of our passions: can you imagine
+He will punish an error in opinion, or even an obstinacy in unbelief,
+with everlasting torments? Supposing it highly criminal to refuse to
+weigh a string of arguments, or to cross-question a herd of witnesses,
+on a subject which no experience has warranted and no sagacity can
+comprehend; supposing it highly criminal to be contented with the
+religion which our parents taught us, which they bequeathed to us as
+the most precious of possessions, and which it would have broken their
+hearts if they had foreseen we should cast aside; yet are eternal
+pains the just retribution of what at worst is but indifference and
+supineness?
+
+_Timotheus._ Our religion has clearly this advantage over yours: it
+teaches us to regulate our passions.
+
+_Lucian._ Rather say it _tells_ us. I believe all religions do the
+same; some indeed more emphatically and primarily than others; but
+_that_ indeed would be incontestably of Divine origin, and
+acknowledged at once by the most sceptical, which should thoroughly
+teach it. Now, my friend Timotheus, I think you are about seventy-five
+years of age.
+
+_Timotheus._ Nigh upon it.
+
+_Lucian._ Seventy-five years, according to my calculation, are
+equivalent to seventy-five gods and goddesses in regulating our
+passions for us, if we speak of the amatory, which are always thought
+in every stage of life the least to be pardoned.
+
+_Timotheus._ Execrable!
+
+_Lucian._ I am afraid the sourest hang longest on the tree. Mimnermus
+says:
+
+      In early youth we often sigh
+      Because our pulses beat so high;
+      All this we conquer, and at last
+      We sigh that we are grown so chaste.
+
+_Timotheus._ Swine!
+
+_Lucian._ No animal sighs oftener or louder. But, my dear cousin, the
+quiet swine is less troublesome and less odious than the grumbling and
+growling and fierce hyena, which will not let the dead rest in their
+graves. We may be merry with the follies and even the vices of men,
+without doing or wishing them harm; punishment should come from the
+magistrate, not from us. If we are to give pain to any one because he
+thinks differently from us, we ought to begin by inflicting a few
+smart stripes on ourselves; for both upon light and upon grave
+occasions, if we have thought much and often, our opinions must have
+varied. We are always fond of seizing and managing what appertains to
+others. In the savage state all belongs to all. Our neighbours the
+Arabs, who stand between barbarism and civilization, waylay
+travellers, and plunder their equipage and their gold. The wilier
+marauders in Alexandria start up from under the shadow of temples,
+force us to change our habiliments for theirs, and strangle us with
+fingers dipped in holy water if we say they sit uneasily.
+
+_Timotheus._ This is not the right view of things.
+
+_Lucian._ That is never the right view which lets in too much light.
+About two centuries have elapsed since your religion was founded. Show
+me the pride it has humbled; show me the cruelty it has mitigated;
+show me the lust it has extinguished or repressed. I have now been
+living ten years in Alexandria; and you never will accuse me, I think,
+of any undue partiality for the system in which I was educated; yet,
+from all my observation, I find no priest or elder, in your community,
+wise, tranquil, firm, and sedate as Epicurus, and Carneades, and Zeno,
+and Epictetus; or indeed in the same degree as some who were often
+called forth into political and military life; Epaminondas, for
+instance, and Phocion.
+
+_Timotheus._ I pity them from my soul: they were ignorant of the
+truth: they are lost, my cousin! take my word for it, they are lost
+men.
+
+_Lucian._ Unhappily, they are. I wish we had them back again; or
+that, since we have lost them, we could at least find among us the
+virtues they left for our example.
+
+_Timotheus._ Alas, my poor cousin! you too are blind; you do not
+understand the plainest words, nor comprehend those verities which are
+the most evident and palpable. Virtues! if the poor wretches had any,
+they were false ones.
+
+_Lucian._ Scarcely ever has there been a politician, in any free
+state, without much falsehood and duplicity. I have named the most
+illustrious exceptions. Slender and irregular lines of a darker colour
+run along the bright blade that decides the fate of nations, and may
+indeed be necessary to the perfection of its temper. The great warrior
+has usually his darker lines of character, necessary (it may be) to
+constitute his greatness. No two men possess the same quantity of the
+same virtues, if they have many or much. We want some which do not far
+outstep us, and which we may follow with the hope of reaching; we want
+others to elevate, and others to defend us. The order of things would
+be less beautiful without this variety. Without the ebb and flow of
+our passions, but guided and moderated by a beneficent light above,
+the ocean of life would stagnate; and zeal, devotion, eloquence, would
+become dead carcasses, collapsing and wasting on unprofitable sands.
+The vices of some men cause the virtues of others, as corruption is
+the parent of fertility.
+
+_Timotheus._ O my cousin! this doctrine is diabolical.
+
+_Lucian._ What is it?
+
+_Timotheus._ Diabolical; a strong expression in daily use among us. We
+turn it a little from its origin.
+
+_Lucian._ Timotheus, I love to sit by the side of a clear water,
+although there is nothing in it but naked stones. Do not take the
+trouble to muddy the stream of language for my benefit; I am not about
+to fish in it.
+
+_Timotheus._ Well, we will speak about things which come nearer to
+your apprehension. I only wish you were somewhat less indifferent in
+your choice between the true and the false.
+
+_Lucian._ We take it for granted that what is not true must be false.
+
+_Timotheus._ Surely we do.
+
+_Lucian._ This is erroneous.
+
+_Timotheus._ Are you grown captious? Pray explain.
+
+_Lucian._ What is not true, I need not say, must be untrue; but that
+alone is false which is intended to deceive. A witness may be
+mistaken, yet would not you call him a false witness unless he
+asserted what he knew to be false.
+
+_Timotheus._ Quibbles upon words!
+
+_Lucian._ On words, on quibbles, if you please to call distinctions
+so, rests the axis of the intellectual world. A winged word hath stuck
+ineradicably in a million hearts, and envenomed every hour throughout
+their hard pulsation. On a winged word hath hung the destiny of
+nations. On a winged word hath human wisdom been willing to cast the
+immortal soul, and to leave it dependent for all its future happiness.
+It is because a word is unsusceptible of explanation, or because they
+who employed it were impatient of any, that enormous evils have
+prevailed, not only against our common sense, but against our common
+humanity. Hence the most pernicious of absurdities, far exceeding in
+folly and mischief the worship of threescore gods; namely, that an
+implicit faith in what outrages our reason, which we know is God's
+gift, and bestowed on us for our guidance, that this weak, blind,
+stupid faith is surer of His favour than the constant practice of
+every human virtue. They at whose hands one prodigious lie, such as
+this, hath been accepted, may reckon on their influence in the
+dissemination of many smaller, and may turn them easily to their own
+account. Be sure they will do it sooner or later. The fly floats on
+the surface for a while, but up springs the fish at last and swallows
+it.
+
+_Timotheus._ Was ever man so unjust as you are? The abominable old
+priesthoods are avaricious and luxurious: ours is willing to stand or
+fall by maintaining its ordinances of fellowship and frugality. Point
+out to me a priest of our religion whom you could, by any temptation
+or entreaty, so far mislead, that he shall reserve for his own
+consumption one loaf, one plate of lentils, while another poor
+Christian hungers. In the meanwhile the priests of Isis are proud and
+wealthy, and admit none of the indigent to their tables. And now, to
+tell you the whole truth, my Cousin Lucian, I come to you this morning
+to propose that we should lay our heads together and compose a merry
+dialogue on these said priests of Isis. What say you?
+
+_Lucian._ These said priests of Isis have already been with me,
+several times, on a similar business in regard to yours.
+
+_Timotheus._ Malicious wretches!
+
+_Lucian._ Beside, they have attempted to persuade me that your
+religion is borrowed from theirs, altering a name a little and laying
+the scene of action in a corner, in the midst of obscurity and ruins.
+
+_Timotheus._ The wicked dogs! the hellish liars! We have nothing in
+common with such vile impostors. Are they not ashamed of taking such
+unfair means of lowering us in the estimation of our fellow-citizens?
+And so, they artfully came to you, craving any spare jibe to throw
+against us! They lie open to these weapons; we do not: we stand above
+the malignity, above the strength, of man. You would do justly in
+turning their own devices against them: it would be amusing to see how
+they would look. If you refuse me, I am resolved to write a Dialogue
+of the Dead, myself, and to introduce these hypocrites in it.
+
+_Lucian._ Consider well first, my good Timotheus, whether you can do
+any such thing with propriety; I mean to say judiciously in regard to
+composition.
+
+_Timotheus._ I always thought you generous and open-hearted, and quite
+inaccessible to jealousy.
+
+_Lucian._ Let nobody ever profess himself so much as that: for,
+although he may be insensible of the disease, it lurks within him, and
+only waits its season to break out. But really, my cousin, at present
+I feel no symptoms: and, to prove that I am ingenuous and sincere with
+you, these are my reasons for dissuasion. We believers in the Homeric
+family of gods and goddesses, believe also in the locality of Tartarus
+and Elysium. We entertain no doubt whatever that the passions of men
+and demigods and gods are nearly the same above ground and below; and
+that Achilles would dispatch his spear through the body of any shade
+who would lead Briseis too far among the myrtles, or attempt to throw
+the halter over the ears of any chariot horse belonging to him in the
+meads of asphodel. We admit no doubt of these verities, delivered down
+to us from the ages when Theseus and Hercules had descended into Hades
+itself. Instead of a few stadions in a cavern, with a bank and a bower
+at the end of it, under a very small portion of our diminutive Hellas,
+you Christians possess the whole cavity of the earth for punishment,
+and the whole convex of the sky for felicity.
+
+_Timotheus._ Our passions are burnt out amid the fires of
+purification, and our intellects are elevated to the enjoyment of
+perfect intelligence.
+
+_Lucian._ How silly then and incongruous would it be, not to say how
+impious, to represent your people as no better and no wiser than they
+were before, and discoursing on subjects which no longer can or ought
+to concern them. Christians must think your Dialogue of the Dead no
+less irreligious than their opponents think mine, and infinitely more
+absurd. If indeed you are resolved on this form of composition, there
+is no topic which may not, with equal facility, be discussed on
+earth; and you may intersperse as much ridicule as you please, without
+any fear of censure for inconsistency or irreverence. Hitherto such
+writers have confined their view mostly to speculative points,
+sophistic reasonings, and sarcastic interpellations.
+
+_Timotheus._ Ha! you are always fond of throwing a little pebble at
+the lofty Plato, whom we, on the contrary, are ready to receive (in a
+manner) as one of ourselves.
+
+_Lucian._ To throw pebbles is a very uncertain way of showing where
+lie defects. Whenever I have mentioned him seriously, I have brought
+forward, not accusations, but passages from his writings, such as no
+philosopher or scholar or moralist can defend.
+
+_Timotheus._ His doctrines are too abstruse and too sublime for you.
+
+_Lucian._ Solon, Anaxagoras, and Epicurus, are more sublime, if truth
+is sublimity.
+
+_Timotheus._ Truth is, indeed; for God is truth.
+
+_Lucian._ We are upon earth to learn what can be learnt upon earth,
+and not to speculate on what never can be. This you, O Timotheus, may
+call philosophy: to me it appears the idlest of curiosity; for every
+other kind may teach us something, and may lead to more beyond. Let
+men learn what benefits men; above all things, to contract their
+wishes, to calm their passions, and, more especially, to dispel their
+fears. Now these are to be dispelled, not by collecting clouds, but by
+piercing and scattering them. In the dark we may imagine depths and
+heights immeasurable, which, if a torch be carried right before us, we
+find it easy to leap across. Much of what we call sublime is only the
+residue of infancy, and the worst of it.
+
+The philosophers I quoted are too capacious for schools and systems.
+Without noise, without ostentation, without mystery, not quarrelsome,
+not captious, not frivolous, their lives were commentaries on their
+doctrine. Never evaporating into mist, never stagnating into mire,
+their limpid and broad morality runs parallel with the lofty summits
+of their genius.
+
+_Timotheus._ Genius! was ever genius like Plato's?
+
+_Lucian._ The most admired of his Dialogues, his _Banquet_, is beset
+with such puerilities, deformed with such pedantry, and disgraced with
+such impurity, that none but the thickest beards, and chiefly of the
+philosophers and the satyrs, should bend over it. On a former occasion
+he has given us a specimen of history, than which nothing in our
+language is worse: here he gives us one of poetry, in honour of Love,
+for which the god has taken ample vengeance on him, by perverting his
+taste and feelings. The grossest of all the absurdities in this
+dialogue is, attributing to Aristophanes, so much of a scoffer and so
+little of a visionary, the silly notion of male and female having been
+originally complete in one person, and walking circuitously. He may be
+joking: who knows?
+
+_Timotheus._ Forbear! forbear! do not call this notion a silly one:
+he took it from our Holy Scriptures, but perverted it somewhat. Woman
+was made from man's rib, and did not require to be cut asunder all
+the way down: this is no proof of bad reasoning, but merely of
+misinterpretation.
+
+_Lucian._ If you would rather have bad reasoning, I will adduce a
+little of it. Farther on, he wishes to extol the wisdom of Agathon by
+attributing to him such a sentence as this:
+
+'It is evident that Love is the most beautiful of the gods, _because_
+he is the youngest of them.'
+
+Now, even on earth, the youngest is not always the most beautiful; how
+infinitely less cogent, then, is the argument when we come to speak of
+the Immortals, with whom age can have no concern! There was a time
+when Vulcan was the youngest of the gods: was he, also, at that time,
+and for that reason, the most beautiful? Your philosopher tells us,
+moreover, that 'Love is of all deities the most _liquid_; else he
+never could fold himself about everything, and flow into and out of
+men's souls.'
+
+The three last sentences of Agathon's rhapsody are very harmonious,
+and exhibit the finest specimen of Plato's style; but we, accustomed
+as we are to hear him lauded for his poetical diction, should hold
+that poem a very indifferent one which left on the mind so superficial
+an impression. The garden of Academus is flowery without fragrance,
+and dazzling without warmth: I am ready to dream away an hour in it
+after dinner, but I think it insalutary for a night's repose. So
+satisfied was Plato with his _Banquet_, that he says of himself, in
+the person of Socrates, 'How can I or any one but find it difficult to
+speak after a discourse so eloquent? It would have been wonderful if
+the brilliancy of the sentences at the end of it, and the choice of
+expression throughout, had not astonished all the auditors. I, who can
+never say anything nearly so beautiful, would if possible have made my
+escape, and have fairly run off for shame.' He had indeed much better
+run off before he made so wretched a pun on the name of Gorgias. 'I
+dreaded,' says he, 'lest Agathon, _measuring my discourse by the head
+of the eloquent Gorgias, should turn me to stone_ for inability of
+utterance.'
+
+Was there ever joke more frigid? What painful twisting of unelastic
+stuff! If Socrates was the wisest man in the world, it would require
+another oracle to persuade us, after this, that he was the wittiest.
+But surely a small share of common sense would have made him abstain
+from hazarding such failures. He falls on his face in very flat and
+very dry ground; and, when he gets up again, his quibbles are
+well-nigh as tedious as his witticisms. However, he has the presence
+of mind to throw them on the shoulders of Diotima, whom he calls a
+prophetess, and who, ten years before the plague broke out in Athens,
+obtained from the gods (he tells us) that delay. Ah! the gods were
+doubly mischievous: they sent her first. Read her words, my cousin, as
+delivered by Socrates; and if they have another plague in store for
+us, you may avert it by such an act of expiation.
+
+_Timotheus._ The world will have ended before ten years are over.
+
+_Lucian._ Indeed!
+
+_Timotheus._ It has been pronounced.
+
+_Lucian._ How the threads of belief and unbelief run woven close
+together in the whole web of human life! Come, come; take courage; you
+will have time for your Dialogue. Enlarge the circle; enrich it with a
+variety of matter, enliven it with a multitude of characters, occupy
+the intellect of the thoughtful, the imagination of the lively; spread
+the board with solid viands, delicate rarities, and sparkling wines;
+and throw, along the whole extent of it, geniality and festal crowns.
+
+_Timotheus._ What writer of dialogues hath ever done this, or
+undertaken, or conceived, or hoped it?
+
+_Lucian._ None whatever; yet surely you yourself may, when even your
+babes and sucklings are endowed with abilities incomparably greater
+than our niggardly old gods have bestowed on the very best of us.
+
+_Timotheus._ I wish, my dear Lucian, you would let our babes and
+sucklings lie quiet, and say no more about them: as for your gods, I
+leave them at your mercy. Do not impose on me the performance of a
+task in which Plato himself, if he had attempted it, would have
+failed.
+
+_Lucian._ No man ever detected false reasoning with more quickness;
+but unluckily he called in Wit at the exposure; and Wit, I am sorry to
+say, held the lowest place in his household. He sadly mistook the
+qualities of his mind in attempting the facetious; or, rather, he
+fancied he possessed one quality more than belonged to him. But, if he
+himself had not been a worse quibbler than any whose writings are come
+down to us, we might have been gratified by the exposure of wonderful
+acuteness wretchedly applied. It is no small service to the community
+to turn into ridicule the grave impostors, who are contending which of
+them shall guide and govern us, whether in politics or religion. There
+are always a few who will take the trouble to walk down among the
+seaweeds and slippery stones, for the sake of showing their credulous
+fellow-citizens that skins filled with sand, and set upright at the
+forecastle, are neither men nor merchandise.
+
+_Timotheus._ I can bring to mind, O Lucian, no writer possessing so
+great a variety of wit as you.
+
+_Lucian._ No man ever possessed any variety of this gift; and the
+holder is not allowed to exchange the quality for another. Banter (and
+such is Plato's) never grows large, never sheds its bristles, and
+never do they soften into the humorous or the facetious.
+
+_Timotheus._ I agree with you that banter is the worst species of wit.
+We have indeed no correct idea what persons those really were whom
+Plato drags by the ears, to undergo slow torture under Socrates. One
+sophist, I must allow, is precisely like another: no discrimination of
+character, none of manner, none of language.
+
+_Lucian._ He wanted the fancy and fertility of Aristophanes.
+
+_Timotheus._ Otherwise, his mind was more elevated and more poetical.
+
+_Lucian._ Pardon me if I venture to express my dissent in both
+particulars. Knowledge of the human heart, and discrimination of
+character, are requisites of the poet. Few ever have possessed them in
+an equal degree with Aristophanes: Plato has given no indication of
+either.
+
+_Timotheus._ But consider his imagination.
+
+_Lucian._ On what does it rest? He is nowhere so imaginative as in his
+_Polity_. Nor is there any state in the world that is, or would be,
+governed by it. One day you may find him at his counter in the midst
+of old-fashioned toys, which crack and crumble under his fingers while
+he exhibits and recommends them; another day, while he is sitting on a
+goat's bladder, I may discover his bald head surmounting an enormous
+mass of loose chaff and uncleanly feathers, which he would persuade
+you is the pleasantest and healthiest of beds, and that dreams descend
+on it from the gods.
+
+      'Open your mouth, and shut your eyes, and see what Zeus shall
+          send you,'
+
+says Aristophanes in his favourite metre. In this helpless condition
+of closed optics and hanging jaw, we find the followers of Plato. It
+is by shutting their eyes that they see, and by opening their mouths
+that they apprehend. Like certain broad-muzzled dogs, all stand
+equally stiff and staunch, although few scent the game, and their lips
+wag, and water, at whatever distance from the net. We must leave them
+with their hands hanging down before them, confident that they are
+wiser than we are, were it only for this attitude of humility. It is
+amusing to see them in it before the tall, well-robed Athenian, while
+he mis-spells the charms, and plays clumsily the tricks, he acquired
+from the conjurors here in Egypt. I wish you better success with the
+same materials. But in my opinion all philosophers should speak
+clearly. The highest things are the purest and brightest; and the best
+writers are those who render them the most intelligible to the world
+below. In the arts and sciences, and particularly in music and
+metaphysics, this is difficult: but the subjects not being such as lie
+within the range of the community, I lay little stress upon them, and
+wish authors to deal with them as they best may, only beseeching that
+they recompense us, by bringing within our comprehension the other
+things with which they are entrusted for us. The followers of Plato
+fly off indignantly from any such proposal. If I ask them the meaning
+of some obscure passage, they answer that I am unprepared and unfitted
+for it, and that his mind is so far above mine, I cannot grasp it. I
+look up into the faces of these worthy men, who mingle so much
+commiseration with so much calmness, and wonder at seeing them look no
+less vacant than my own.
+
+_Timotheus._ You have acknowledged his eloquence, while you derided
+his philosophy and repudiated his morals.
+
+_Lucian._ Certainly there was never so much eloquence with so little
+animation. When he has heated his oven, he forgets to put the bread
+into it; instead of which, he throws in another bundle of faggots. His
+words and sentences are often too large for the place they occupy. If
+a water-melon is not to be placed in an oyster-shell, neither is a
+grain of millet in a golden salver. At high festivals a full band may
+enter: ordinary conversation goes on better without it.
+
+_Timotheus._ There is something so spiritual about him, that many of
+us Christians are firmly of opinion he must have been partially
+enlightened from above.
+
+_Lucian._ I hope and believe we all are. His entire works are in our
+library. Do me the favour to point out to me a few of those passages
+where in poetry he approaches the spirit of Aristophanes, or where in
+morals he comes up to Epictetus.
+
+_Timotheus._ It is useless to attempt it if you carry your prejudices
+with you. Beside, my dear cousin, I would not offend you, but really
+your mind has no point about it which could be brought to contact or
+affinity with Plato's.
+
+_Lucian._ In the universality of his genius there must surely be some
+atom coincident with another in mine. You acknowledge, as everybody
+must do, that his wit is the heaviest and lowest: pray, is the
+specimen he has given us of history at all better?
+
+_Timotheus._ I would rather look to the loftiness of his mind, and the
+genius that sustains him.
+
+_Lucian._ So would I. Magnificent words, and the pomp and procession
+of stately sentences, may accompany genius, but are not always nor
+frequently called out by it. The voice ought not to be perpetually nor
+much elevated in the ethic and didactic, nor to roll sonorously, as if
+it issued from a mask in the theatre. The horses in the plain under
+Troy are not always kicking and neighing; nor is the dust always
+raised in whirlwinds on the banks of Simois and Scamander; nor are the
+rampires always in a blaze. Hector has lowered his helmet to the
+infant of Andromache, and Achilles to the embraces of Briseis. I do
+not blame the prose-writer who opens his bosom occasionally to a
+breath of poetry; neither, on the contrary, can I praise the gait of
+that pedestrian who lifts up his legs as high on a bare heath as in a
+cornfield. Be authority as old and obstinate as it may, never let it
+persuade you that a man is the stronger for being unable to keep
+himself on the ground, or the weaker for breathing quietly and softly
+on ordinary occasions. Tell me, over and over, that you find every
+great quality in Plato: let me only once ask you in return, whether he
+ever is ardent and energetic, whether he wins the affections, whether
+he agitates the heart. Finding him deficient in every one of these
+faculties, I think his disciples have extolled him too highly. Where
+power is absent, we may find the robes of genius, but we miss the
+throne. He would acquit a slave who killed another in self-defence,
+but if he killed any free man, even in self-defence; he was not only
+to be punished with death, but to undergo the cruel death of a
+parricide. This effeminate philosopher was more severe than the manly
+Demosthenes, who quotes a law against the striking of a slave: and
+Diogenes, when one ran away from him, remarked that it would be
+horrible if Diogenes could not do without a slave, when a slave could
+do without Diogenes.
+
+_Timotheus._ Surely the allegories of Plato are evidences of his
+genius.
+
+_Lucian._ A great poet in the hours of his idleness may indulge in
+allegory: but the highest poetical character will never rest on so
+unsubstantial a foundation. The poet must take man from God's hands,
+must look into every fibre of his heart and brain, must be able to
+take the magnificent work to pieces, and to reconstruct it. When this
+labour is completed, let him throw himself composedly on the earth,
+and care little how many of its ephemeral insects creep over him. In
+regard to these allegories of Plato, about which I have heard so much,
+pray what and where are they? You hesitate, my fair cousin Timotheus!
+Employ one morning in transcribing them, and another in noting all the
+passages which are of practical utility in the commerce of social
+life, or purify our affections at home, or excite and elevate our
+enthusiasm in the prosperity and glory of our country. Useful books,
+moral books, instructive books are easily composed: and surely so
+great a writer should present them to us without blot or blemish: I
+find among his many volumes no copy of a similar composition. My
+enthusiasm is not easily raised indeed; yet such a whirlwind of a poet
+must carry it away with him; nevertheless, here I stand, calm and
+collected, not a hair of my beard in commotion. Declamation will find
+its echo in vacant places: it beats ineffectually on the
+well-furnished mind. Give me proof; bring the work; show the passages;
+convince, confound, overwhelm me.
+
+_Timotheus._ I may do that another time with Plato. And yet, what
+effect can I hope to produce on an unhappy man who doubts even that
+the world is on the point of extinction?
+
+_Lucian._ Are there many of your association who believe that this
+catastrophe is so near at hand?
+
+_Timotheus._ We all believe it; or rather, we all are certain of it.
+
+_Lucian._ How so? Have you observed any fracture in the disk of the
+sun? Are any of the stars loosened in their orbits? Has the beautiful
+light of Venus ceased to pant in the heavens, or has the belt of Orion
+lost its gems?
+
+_Timotheus._ Oh, for shame!
+
+_Lucian._ Rather should I be ashamed of indifference on so important
+an occasion.
+
+_Timotheus._ We know the fact by surer signs.
+
+_Lucian._ These, if you could vouch for them, would be sure enough for
+me. The least of them would make me sweat as profusely as if I stood
+up to the neck in the hot preparation of a mummy. Surely no wise or
+benevolent philosopher could ever have uttered what he knew or
+believed might be distorted into any such interpretation. For if men
+are persuaded that they and their works are so soon about to perish,
+what provident care are they likely to take in the education and
+welfare of their families? What sciences will they improve, what
+learning will they cultivate, what monuments of past ages will they be
+studious to preserve, who are certain that there can be no future
+ones? Poetry will be censured as rank profaneness, eloquence will be
+converted into howls and execrations, statuary will exhibit only
+Midases and Ixions, and all the colours of painting will be mixed
+together to produce one grand conflagration: _flammantia moenia
+mundi_.
+
+_Timotheus._ Do not quote an atheist; especially in Latin. I hate the
+language; the Romans are beginning to differ from us already.
+
+_Lucian._ Ah! you will soon split into smaller fractions. But pardon
+me my unusual fault of quoting. Before I let fall a quotation I must
+be taken by surprise. I seldom do it in conversation, seldomer in
+composition; for it mars the beauty and unity of style, especially
+when it invades it from a foreign tongue. A quoter is either
+ostentatious of his acquirements or doubtful of his cause. And
+moreover, he never walks gracefully who leans upon the shoulder of
+another, however gracefully that other may walk. Herodotus, Plato,
+Aristoteles, Demosthenes, are no quoters. Thucydides, twice or thrice,
+inserts a few sentences of Pericles: but Thucydides is an emanation of
+Pericles, somewhat less clear indeed, being lower, although at no
+great distance from that purest and most pellucid source. The best of
+the Romans, I agree with you, are remote from such originals, if not
+in power of mind, or in acuteness of remark, or in sobriety of
+judgment, yet in the graces of composition. While I admired, with a
+species of awe such as not Homer himself ever impressed me with, the
+majesty and sanctimony of Livy, I have been informed by learned Romans
+that in the structure of his sentences he is often inharmonious, and
+sometimes uncouth. I can imagine such uncouthness in the goddess of
+battles, confident of power and victory, when part of her hair is
+waving round the helmet, loosened by the rapidity of her descent or
+the vibration of her spear. Composition may be too adorned even for
+beauty. In painting it is often requisite to cover a bright colour
+with one less bright; and, in language, to relieve the ear from the
+tension of high notes, even at the cost of a discord. There are urns
+of which the borders are too prominent and too decorated for use, and
+which appear to be brought out chiefly for state, at grand carousals.
+The author who imitates the artificers of these, shall never have my
+custom.
+
+_Timotheus._ I think you judge rightly: but I do not understand
+languages: I only understand religion.
+
+_Lucian._ He must be a most accomplished, a most extraordinary man,
+who comprehends them both together. We do not even talk clearly when
+we are walking in the dark.
+
+_Timotheus._ Thou art not merely walking in the dark, but fast asleep.
+
+_Lucian._ And thou, my cousin, wouldst kindly awaken me with a red-hot
+poker. I have but a few paces to go along the corridor of life:
+prithee let me turn into my bed again and lie quiet. Never was any man
+less an enemy to religion than I am, whatever may be said to the
+contrary: and you shall judge of me by the soundness of my advice. If
+your leaders are in earnest, as many think, do persuade them to
+abstain from quarrelsomeness and contention, and not to declare it
+necessary that there should perpetually be a religious as well as a
+political war between east and west. No honest and considerate man
+will believe in their doctrines, who, inculcating peace and good-will,
+continue all the time to assail their fellow-citizens with the utmost
+rancour at every divergency of opinion, and, forbidding the indulgence
+of the kindlier affections, exercise at full stretch the fiercer. This
+is certain: if they obey any commander, they will never sound a charge
+when his order is to sound a retreat: if they acknowledge any
+magistrate, they will never tear down the tablet of his edicts.
+
+_Timotheus._ We have what is all-sufficient.
+
+_Lucian._ I see you have.
+
+_Timotheus._ You have ridiculed all religion and all philosophy.
+
+_Lucian._ I have found but little of either. I have cracked many a
+nut, and have come only to dust or maggots.
+
+_Timotheus._ To say nothing of the saints, are all philosophers fools
+or impostors? And, because you cannot rise to the ethereal heights of
+Plato, nor comprehend the real magnitude of a man so much above you,
+must he be a dwarf?
+
+_Lucian._ The best sight is not that which sees best in the dark or
+the twilight; for no objects are then visible in their true colours,
+and just proportions; but it is that which presents to us things as
+they are, and indicates what is within our reach and what is beyond
+it. Never were any three writers, of high celebrity, so little
+understood in the main character, as Plato, Diogenes, and Epicurus.
+Plato is a perfect master of logic and rhetoric; and whenever he errs
+in either, as I have proved to you he does occasionally, he errs
+through perverseness, not through unwariness. His language often
+settles into clear and most beautiful prose, often takes an imperfect
+and incoherent shape of poetry, and often, cloud against cloud, bursts
+with a vehement detonation in the air. Diogenes was hated both by the
+vulgar and the philosophers. By the philosophers, because he exposed
+their ignorance, ridiculed their jealousies, and rebuked their pride:
+by the vulgar, because they never can endure a man apparently of their
+own class who avoids their society and partakes in none of their
+humours, prejudices, and animosities. What right has he to be greater
+or better than they are? he who wears older clothes, who eats staler
+fish, and possesses no vote to imprison or banish anybody. I am now
+ashamed that I mingled in the rabble, and that I could not resist the
+childish mischief of smoking him in his tub. He was the wisest man of
+his time, not excepting Aristoteles; for he knew that he was greater
+than Philip or Alexander. Aristoteles did not know that he himself
+was, or knowing it, did not act up to his knowledge; and here is a
+deficiency of wisdom.
+
+_Timotheus._ Whether you did or did not strike the cask, Diogenes
+would have closed his eyes equally. He would never have come forth and
+seen the truth, had it shone upon the world in that day. But,
+intractable as was this recluse, Epicurus, I fear, is quite as
+lamentable. What horrible doctrines!
+
+_Lucian._ Enjoy, said he, the pleasant walks where you are: repose and
+eat gratefully the fruit that falls into your bosom: do not weary your
+feet with an excursion, at the end whereof you will find no
+resting-place: reject not the odour of roses for the fumes of pitch
+and sulphur. What horrible doctrines!
+
+_Timotheus._ Speak seriously. He was much too bad for ridicule.
+
+_Lucian._ I will then speak as you desire me, seriously. His smile
+was so unaffected and so graceful, that I should have thought it very
+injudicious to set my laugh against it. No philosopher ever lived with
+such uniform purity, such abstinence from censoriousness, from
+controversy, from jealousy, and from arrogance.
+
+_Timotheus._ Ah, poor mortal! I pity him, as far as may be; he is in
+hell: it would be wicked to wish him out: we are not to murmur against
+the all-wise dispensations.
+
+_Lucian._ I am sure he would not; and it is therefore I hope he is
+more comfortable than you believe.
+
+_Timotheus._ Never have I defiled my fingers, and never will I defile
+them, by turning over his writings. But in regard to Plato, I can have
+no objection to take your advice.
+
+_Lucian._ He will reward your assiduity: but he will assist you very
+little if you consult him principally (and eloquence for this should
+principally be consulted) to strengthen your humanity. Grandiloquent
+and sonorous, his lungs seem to play the better for the absence of the
+heart. His imagination is the most conspicuous, buoyed up by swelling
+billows over unsounded depths. There are his mild thunders, there are
+his glowing clouds, his traversing coruscations, and his shooting
+stars. More of true wisdom, more of trustworthy manliness, more of
+promptitude and power to keep you steady and straightforward on the
+perilous road of life, may be found in the little manual of Epictetus,
+which I could write in the palm of my left hand, than there is in all
+the rolling and redundant volumes of this mighty rhetorician, which
+you may begin to transcribe on the summit of the Great Pyramid, carry
+down over the Sphinx at the bottom, and continue on the sands half-way
+to Memphis. And indeed the materials are appropriate; one part being
+far above our sight, and the other on what, by the most befitting
+epithet, Homer calls the _no-corn-bearing_.
+
+_Timotheus._ There are many who will stand against you on this ground.
+
+_Lucian._ With what perfect ease and fluency do some of the dullest
+men in existence toss over and discuss the most elaborate of all
+works! How many myriads of such creatures would be insufficient to
+furnish intellect enough for any single paragraph in them! Yet '_we
+think this_', '_we advise that_', are expressions now become so
+customary, that it would be difficult to turn them into ridicule. We
+must pull the creatures out while they are in the very act, and show
+who and what they are. One of these fellows said to Caius Fuscus in my
+hearing, that there was a time when it was permitted him to doubt
+occasionally on particular points of criticism, but that the time was
+now over.
+
+_Timotheus._ And what did you think of such arrogance? What did you
+reply to such impertinence?
+
+_Lucian._ Let me answer one question at a time. First: I thought him a
+legitimate fool, of the purest breed. Secondly: I promised him I would
+always be contented with the judgment he had rejected, leaving him and
+his friends in the enjoyment of the rest.
+
+_Timotheus._ And what said he?
+
+_Lucian._ I forget. He seemed pleased at my acknowledgment of his
+discrimination, at my deference and delicacy. He wished, however, I
+had studied Plato, Xenophon, and Cicero, more attentively; without
+which preparatory discipline, no two persons could be introduced
+advantageously into a dialogue. I agreed with him on this position,
+remarking that we ourselves were at that very time giving our sentence
+on the fact. He suggested a slight mistake on my side, and expressed a
+wish that he were conversing with a writer able to sustain the
+opposite part. With his experience and skill in rhetoric, his long
+habitude of composition, his knowledge of life, of morals, and of
+character, he should be less verbose than Cicero, less gorgeous than
+Plato, and less trimly attired than Xenophon.
+
+_Timotheus._ If he spoke in that manner, he might indeed be ridiculed
+for conceitedness and presumption, but his language is not altogether
+a fool's.
+
+_Lucian._ I deliver his sentiments, not his words: for who would read,
+or who would listen to me, if such fell from me as from him? Poetry
+has its probabilities, so has prose: when people cry out against the
+representation of a dullard, _Could he have spoken all that?_
+'Certainly no,' is the reply: neither did Priam implore, in harmonious
+verse, the pity of Achilles. We say only what might be said, when
+great postulates are conceded.
+
+_Timotheus._ We will pretermit these absurd and silly men: but, Cousin
+Lucian! Cousin Lucian! the name of Plato will be durable as that of
+Sesostris.
+
+_Lucian._ So will the pebbles and bricks which gangs of slaves erected
+into a pyramid. I do not hold Sesostris in much higher estimation than
+those quieter lumps of matter. They, O Timotheus, who survive the
+wreck of ages, are by no means, as a body, the worthiest of our
+admiration. It is in these wrecks, as in those at sea, the best things
+are not always saved. Hen-coops and empty barrels bob upon the
+surface, under a serene and smiling sky, when the graven or depicted
+images of the gods are scattered on invisible rocks, and when those
+who most resemble them in knowledge and beneficence are devoured by
+cold monsters below.
+
+_Timotheus._ You now talk reasonably, seriously, almost religiously.
+Do you ever pray?
+
+_Lucian._ I do. It was no longer than five years ago that I was
+deprived by death of my dog Melanops. He had uniformly led an innocent
+life; for I never would let him walk out with me, lest he should bring
+home in his mouth the remnant of some god or other, and at last get
+bitten or stung by one. I reminded Anubis of this: and moreover I told
+him, what he ought to be aware of, that Melanops did honour to his
+relationship.
+
+_Timotheus._ I cannot ever call it piety to pray for dumb and dead
+beasts.
+
+_Lucian._ Timotheus! Timotheus! have you no heart? have you no dog? do
+you always pray only for yourself?
+
+_Timotheus._ We do not believe that dogs can live again.
+
+_Lucian._ More shame for you! If they enjoy and suffer, if they hope
+and fear, if calamities and wrongs befall them, such as agitate their
+hearts and excite their apprehensions; if they possess the option of
+being grateful or malicious, and choose the worthier; if they exercise
+the same sound judgment on many other occasions, some for their own
+benefit and some for the benefit of their masters, they have as good a
+chance of a future life, and a better chance of a happy one, than half
+the priests of all the religions in the world. Wherever there is the
+choice of doing well or ill, and that choice (often against a first
+impulse) decides for well, there must not only be a soul of the same
+nature as man's, although of less compass and comprehension, but,
+being of the same nature, the same immortality must appertain to it;
+for spirit, like body, may change, but cannot be annihilated.
+
+It was among the prejudices of former times that pigs are uncleanly
+animals, and fond of wallowing in the mire for mire's sake. Philosophy
+has now discovered that when they roll in mud and ordure, it is only
+from an excessive love of cleanliness, and a vehement desire to rid
+themselves of scabs and vermin. Unfortunately, doubts keep pace with
+discoveries. They are like warts, of which the blood that springs from
+a great one extirpated, makes twenty little ones.
+
+_Timotheus._ The Hydra would be a more noble simile.
+
+_Lucian._ I was indeed about to illustrate my position by the old
+Hydra, so ready at hand and so tractable; but I will never take hold
+of a hydra, when a wart will serve my turn.
+
+_Timotheus._ Continue then.
+
+_Lucian._ Even children are now taught, in despite of Aesop, that
+animals never spoke. The uttermost that can be advanced with any show
+of confidence is, that if they spoke at all, they spoke in unknown
+tongues. Supposing the fact, is this a reason why they should not be
+respected? Quite the contrary. If the tongues were unknown, it tends
+to demonstrate _our_ ignorance, not _theirs_. If we could not
+understand them, while they possessed the gift, here is no proof that
+they did not speak to the purpose, but only that it was not to _our_
+purpose; which may likewise be said with equal certainty of the wisest
+men that ever existed. How little have we learned from them, for the
+conduct of life or the avoidance of calamity! Unknown tongues, indeed!
+yes, so are all tongues to the vulgar and the negligent.
+
+_Timotheus._ It comforts me to hear you talk in this manner, without a
+glance at our gifts and privileges.
+
+_Lucian._ I am less incredulous than you suppose, my cousin! Indeed I
+have been giving you what ought to be a sufficient proof of it.
+
+_Timotheus._ You have spoken with becoming gravity, I must confess.
+
+_Lucian._ Let me then submit to your judgment some fragments of
+history which have lately fallen into my hands. There is among them a
+_hymn_, of which the metre is so incondite, and the phraseology so
+ancient, that the grammarians have attributed it to Linus. But the
+hymn will interest you less, and is less to our purpose, than the
+tradition; by which it appears that certain priests of high antiquity
+were of the brute creation.
+
+_Timotheus._ No better, any of them.
+
+_Lucian._ Now you have polished the palms of your hands, I will
+commence my narrative from the manuscript.
+
+_Timotheus._ Pray do.
+
+_Lucian._ There existed in the city of Nephosis a fraternity of
+priests, reverenced by the appellation of _Gasteres_. It is reported
+that they were not always of their present form, but were birds
+aquatic and migratory, a species of cormorant. The poet Linus, who
+lived nearer the transformation (if there indeed was any), sings thus,
+in his Hymn to Zeus:
+
+'Thy power is manifest, O Zeus! in the Gasteres. Wild birds were they,
+strong of talon, clanging of wing, and clamorous of gullet. Wild
+birds, O Zeus! wild birds; now cropping the tender grass by the river
+of Adonis, and breaking the nascent reed at the root, and depasturing
+the sweet nymphaea; now again picking up serpents and other creeping
+things on each hand of old Aegyptos, whose head is hidden in the
+clouds.
+
+'Oh that Mnemosyne would command the staidest of her three daughters
+to stand and sing before me! to sing clearly and strongly. How before
+thy throne, Saturnian! sharp voices arose, even the voices of Here and
+of thy children. How they cried out that innumerable mortal men,
+various-tongued, kid-roasters in tent and tabernacle, devising in
+their many-turning hearts and thoughtful minds how to fabricate
+well-rounded spits of beech-tree, how such men having been changed
+into brute animals, it behoved thee to trim the balance, and in thy
+wisdom to change sundry brute animals into men; in order that they
+might pour out flame-coloured wine unto thee, and sprinkle the white
+flower of the sea upon the thighs of many bulls, to pleasure thee.
+Then didst thou, O storm-driver! overshadow far lands with thy dark
+eyebrows, looking down on them, to accomplish thy will. And then didst
+thou behold the Gasteres, fat, tall, prominent-crested, purple-legged,
+daedal-plumed, white and black, changeable in colour as Iris. And lo!
+thou didst will it, and they were men.'
+
+_Timotheus._ No doubt whatever can be entertained of this hymn's
+antiquity. But what farther says the historian?
+
+_Lucian._ I will read on, to gratify you.
+
+'It is recorded that this ancient order of a most lordly priesthood
+went through many changes of customs and ceremonies, which indeed they
+were always ready to accommodate to the maintenance of their authority
+and the enjoyment of their riches. It is recorded that, in the
+beginning, they kept various tame animals, and some wild ones, within
+the precincts of the temple: nevertheless, after a time, they applied
+to their own uses everything they could lay their hands on, whatever
+might have been the vow of those who came forward with the offering.
+And when it was expected of them to make sacrifices, they not only
+would make none, but declared it an act of impiety to expect it. Some
+of the people, who feared the Immortals, were dismayed and indignant
+at this backwardness; and the discontent at last grew universal.
+Whereupon, the two chief priests held a long conference together, and
+agreed that something must be done to pacify the multitude. But it was
+not until the greater of them, acknowledging his despondency, called
+on the gods to answer for him that his grief was only because he never
+could abide bad precedents: and the other, on his side, protested that
+he was overruled by his superior, and moreover had a serious
+objection (founded on principle) to be knocked on the head. Meanwhile
+the elder was looking down on the folds of his robe, in deep
+melancholy. After long consideration, he sprang upon his feet, pushing
+his chair behind him, and said, "Well, it is grown old, and was always
+too long for me: I am resolved to cut off a finger's breadth."
+
+'"Having, in your wisdom and piety, well contemplated the bad
+precedent," said the other, with much consternation in his countenance
+at seeing so elastic a spring in a heel by no means bearing any
+resemblance to a stag's.... "I have, I have," replied the other,
+interrupting him; "say no more; I am sick at heart; you must do the
+same."
+
+'"A cursed dog has torn a hole in mine," answered the other, "and, if
+I cut anywhere about it, I only make bad worse. In regard to its
+length, I wish it were as long again." "Brother! brother! never be
+worldly-minded," said the senior. "Follow my example: snip off it not
+a finger's breadth, half a finger's breadth."
+
+'"But," expostulated the other, "will that satisfy the gods?" "Who
+talked about them?" placidly said the senior. "It is very unbecoming
+to have them always in our mouths: surely there are appointed times
+for them. Let us be contented with laying the snippings on the altar,
+and thus showing the people our piety and condescension. They, and the
+gods also, will be just as well satisfied, as if we offered up a
+buttock of beef, with a bushel of salt and the same quantity of
+wheaten flour on it."
+
+'"Well, if that will do ... and you know best," replied the other, "so
+be it." Saying which words, he carefully and considerately snipped off
+as much in proportion (for he was shorter by an inch) as the elder had
+done, yet leaving on his shoulders quite enough of materials to make
+handsome cloaks for seven or eight stout-built generals. Away they
+both went, arm-in-arm, and then holding up their skirts a great deal
+higher than was necessary, told the gods what they two had been doing
+for them and their glory. About the court of the temple the sacred
+swine were lying in indolent composure: seeing which, the brotherly
+twain began to commune with themselves afresh: and the senior said
+repentantly, "What fools we have been! The populace will laugh
+outright at the curtailment of our vestures, but would gladly have
+seen these animals eat daily a quarter less of the lentils." The words
+were spoken so earnestly and emphatically that they were overheard by
+the quadrupeds. Suddenly there was a rising of all the principal ones
+in the sacred enclosure: and many that were in the streets took up,
+each according to his temperament and condition, the gravest or
+shrillest tone of reprobation. The thinner and therefore the more
+desperate of the creatures, pushing their snouts under the curtailed
+habiliments of the high priests, assailed them with ridicule and
+reproach. For it had pleased the gods to work a miracle in their
+behoof, and they became as loquacious as those who governed them, and
+who were appointed to speak in the high places. "Let the worst come to
+the worst, we at least have our tails to our hams," said they. "For
+how long?" whined others, piteously: others incessantly ejaculated
+tremendous imprecations: others, more serious and sedate, groaned
+inwardly; and, although under their hearts there lay a huge mass of
+indigestible sourness ready to rise up against the chief priests, they
+ventured no farther than expostulation. "We shall lose our voices,"
+said they, "if we lose our complement of lentils; and then, most
+reverend lords, what will ye do for choristers?" Finally, one of grand
+dimensions, who seemed almost half-human, imposed silence on every
+debater. He lay stretched out apart from his brethren, covering with
+his side the greater portion of a noble dunghill, and all its verdure
+native and imported. He crushed a few measures of peascods to cool his
+tusks; then turned his pleasurable longitudinal eyes far toward the
+outer extremities of their sockets, and leered fixedly and
+sarcastically at the high priests, showing every tooth in each jaw.
+Other men might have feared them; the high priests envied them, seeing
+what order they were in, and what exploits they were capable of. A
+great painter, who flourished many olympiads ago, has, in his volume
+entitled the _Canon_, defined the line of beauty. It was here in its
+perfection: it followed with winning obsequiousness every member, but
+delighted more especially to swim along that placid and pliant
+curvature on which Nature had ranged the implements of mastication.
+Pawing with his cloven hoof, he suddenly changed his countenance from
+the contemplative to the wrathful. At one effort he rose up to his
+whole length, breadth, and height: and they who had never seen him in
+earnest, nor separate from the common swine of the enclosure, with
+which he was in the habit of husking what was thrown to him, could
+form no idea what a prodigious beast he was. Terrible were the
+expressions of choler and comminations which burst forth from his
+fulminating tusks. Erimanthus would have hidden his puny offspring
+before them; and Hercules would have paused at the encounter. Thrice
+he called aloud to the high priests: thrice he swore in their own
+sacred language that they were a couple of thieves and impostors:
+thrice he imprecated the worst maledictions on his own head if they
+had not violated the holiest of their vows, and were not ready even to
+sell their gods. A tremor ran throughout the whole body of the united
+swine; so awful was the adjuration! Even the Gasteres themselves in
+some sort shuddered, not perhaps altogether at the solemn tone of its
+impiety; for they had much experience in these matters. But among them
+was a Gaster who was calmer than the swearer, and more prudent and
+conciliating than those he swore against. Hearing this objurgation, he
+went blandly up to the sacred porker, and, lifting the flap of his
+right ear between forefinger and thumb with all delicacy and
+gentleness, thus whispered into it: "You do not in your heart believe
+that any of us are such fools as to sell our gods, at least while we
+have such a reserve to fall back upon."
+
+'"Are we to be devoured?" cried the noble porker, twitching his ear
+indignantly from under the hand of the monitor. "Hush!" said he,
+laying it again, most soothingly, rather farther from the tusks:
+"hush! sweet friend! Devoured? Oh, certainly not: that is to say, not
+_all_: or, if all, not all at once. Indeed the holy men my brethren
+may perhaps be contented with taking a little blood from each of you,
+entirely for the advantage of your health and activity, and merely to
+compose a few slender black-puddings for the inferior monsters of the
+temple, who latterly are grown very exacting, and either are, or
+pretend to be, hungry after they have eaten a whole handful of acorns,
+swallowing I am ashamed to say what a quantity of water to wash them
+down. We do not grudge them it, as they well know: but they appear to
+have forgotten how recently no inconsiderable portion of this bounty
+has been conferred. If we, as they object to us, eat more, they ought
+to be aware that it is by no means for our gratification, since we
+have abjured it before the gods, but to maintain the dignity of the
+priesthood, and to exhibit the beauty and utility of subordination."
+
+'The noble porker had beaten time with his muscular tail at many of
+these periods; but again his heart panted visibly, and he could bear
+no more.
+
+'"All this for our good! for our activity! for our health! Let us
+alone: we have health enough; we want no activity. Let us alone, I say
+again, or by the Immortals!..." "Peace, my son! Your breath is
+valuable: evidently you have but little to spare: and what mortal
+knows how soon the gods may demand the last of it?"
+
+'At the beginning of this exhortation, the worthy high priest had
+somewhat repressed the ebullient choler of his refractory and
+pertinacious disciple, by applying his flat soft palm to the
+signet-formed extremity of the snout.
+
+'"We are ready to hear complaints at all times," added he, "and to
+redress any grievance at our own. But beyond a doubt, if you continue
+to raise your abominable outcries, some of the people are likely to
+hit upon two discoveries: first that your lentils would be sufficient
+to make daily for every poor family a good wholesome porridge; and
+secondly, that your flesh, properly cured, might hang up nicely
+against the forthcoming bean-season." Pondering these mighty words,
+the noble porker kept his eyes fixed upon him for some instants, then
+leaned forward dejectedly, then tucked one foot under him, then
+another, cautious to descend with dignity. At last he grunted (it must
+for ever be ambiguous whether with despondency or with resignation),
+pushed his wedgy snout far within the straw subjacent, and sank into
+that repose which is granted to the just.'
+
+_Timotheus._ Cousin! there are glimmerings of truth and wisdom in
+sundry parts of this discourse, not unlike little broken shells
+entangled in dark masses of seaweed. But I would rather you had
+continued to adduce fresh arguments to demonstrate the beneficence of
+the Deity, proving (if you could) that our horses and dogs, faithful
+servants and companions to us, and often treated cruelly, may
+recognize us hereafter, and we them. We have no authority for any such
+belief.
+
+_Lucian._ We have authority for thinking and doing whatever is humane.
+Speaking of humanity, it now occurs to me, I have heard a report that
+some well-intentioned men of your religion so interpret the words or
+wishes of its Founder, they would abolish slavery throughout the
+empire.
+
+_Timotheus._ Such deductions have been drawn indeed from our Master's
+doctrine: but the saner part of us receive it metaphorically, and
+would only set men free from the bonds of sin. For if domestic slaves
+were manumitted, we should neither have a dinner dressed nor a bed
+made, unless by our own children: and as to labour in the fields, who
+would cultivate them in this hot climate? We must import slaves from
+Ethiopia and elsewhere, wheresoever they can be procured: but the
+hardship lies not on them; it lies on us, and bears heavily; for we
+must first buy them with our money, and then feed them; and not only
+must we maintain them while they are hale and hearty and can serve us,
+but likewise in sickness and (unless we can sell them for a trifle) in
+decrepitude. Do not imagine, my cousin, that we are no better than
+enthusiasts, visionaries, subverters of order, and ready to roll
+society down into one flat surface.
+
+_Lucian._ I thought you were maligned: I said so.
+
+_Timotheus._ When the subject was discussed in our congregation, the
+meaner part of the people were much in favour of the abolition: but
+the chief priests and ministers absented themselves, and gave no vote
+at all, deeming it secular, and saying that in such matters the laws
+and customs of the country ought to be observed.
+
+_Lucian._ Several of these chief priests and ministers are robed in
+purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day.
+
+_Timotheus._ I have hopes of you now.
+
+_Lucian._ Why so suddenly?
+
+_Timotheus._ Because you have repeated those blessed words, which are
+only to be found in our Scriptures.
+
+_Lucian._ There indeed I found them. But I also found in the same
+volume words of the same speaker, declaring that the rich shall never
+see His face in heaven.
+
+_Timotheus._ He does not always mean what you think He does.
+
+_Lucian._ How is this? Did He then direct His discourses to none but
+men more intelligent than I am?
+
+_Timotheus._ Unless He gave you understanding for the occasion, they
+might mislead you.
+
+_Lucian._ Indeed!
+
+_Timotheus._ Unquestionably. For instance, He tells us to take no heed
+of to-morrow: He tells us to share equally all our worldly goods: but
+we know that we cannot be respected unless we bestow due care on our
+possessions, and that not only the vulgar but the well-educated esteem
+us in proportion to the gifts of fortune.
+
+_Lucian._ The eclectic philosophy is most flourishing among you
+Christians. You take whatever suits your appetites, and reject the
+rest.
+
+_Timotheus._ We are not half so rich as the priests of Isis. Give us
+their possessions; and we will not sit idle as they do, but be able
+and ready to do incalculable good to our fellow-creatures.
+
+_Lucian._ I have never seen great possessions excite to great
+alacrity. Usually they enfeeble the sympathies, and often overlie and
+smother them.
+
+_Timotheus._ Our religion is founded less on sympathies than on
+miracles. Cousin! you smile most when you ought to be most serious.
+
+_Lucian._ I was smiling at the thought of one whom I would recommend
+to your especial notice, as soon as you disinherit the priests of
+Isis. He may perhaps be refractory; for he pretends (the knave!) to
+work miracles.
+
+_Timotheus._ Impostor! who is he?
+
+_Lucian._ Aulus of Pelusium. Idle and dissolute, he never gained
+anything honestly but a scourging, if indeed he ever made, what he
+long merited, this acquisition. Unable to run into debt where he was
+known, he came over to Alexandria.
+
+_Timotheus._ I know him: I know him well. Here, of his own accord, he
+has betaken himself to a new and regular life.
+
+_Lucian._ He will presently wear it out, or make it sit easier on his
+shoulders. My metaphor brings me to my story. Having nothing to carry
+with him beside an empty valise, he resolved on filling it with
+something, however worthless, lest, seeing his utter destitution, and
+hopeless of payment, a receiver of lodgers should refuse to admit him
+into the hostelry. Accordingly, he went to a tailor's, and began to
+joke about his poverty. Nothing is more apt to bring people into good
+humour; for, if they are poor themselves, they enjoy the pleasure of
+discovering that others are no better off; and, if not poor, there is
+the consciousness of superiority.
+
+'The favour I am about to ask of a man so wealthy and so liberal as
+you are,' said Aulus, 'is extremely small: you can materially serve
+me, without the slightest loss, hazard, or inconvenience. In few
+words, my valise is empty: and to some ears an empty valise is louder
+and more discordant than a bagpipe: I cannot say I like the sound of
+it myself. Give me all the shreds and snippings you can spare me. They
+will feel like clothes; not exactly so to me and my person, but to
+those who are inquisitive, and who may be importunate.'
+
+The tailor laughed, and distended both arms of Aulus with his
+munificence. Soon was the valise well filled and rammed down. Plenty
+of boys were in readiness to carry it to the boat. Aulus waved them
+off, looking at some angrily, at others suspiciously. Boarding the
+skiff, he lowered his treasure with care and caution, staggering a
+little at the weight, and shaking it gently on deck, with his ear
+against it: and then, finding all safe and compact, he sat on it; but
+as tenderly as a pullet on her first eggs. When he was landed, his
+care was even greater, and whoever came near him was warned off with
+loud vociferations. Anxiously as the other passengers were invited by
+the innkeepers to give their houses the preference, Aulus was
+importuned most: the others were only beset; he was borne off in
+triumphant captivity. He ordered a bedroom, and carried his valise
+with him; he ordered a bath, and carried with him his valise. He
+started up from the company at dinner, struck his forehead, and cried
+out, 'Where is my valise?' 'We are honest men here,' replied the host.
+'You have left it, sir, in your chamber: where else indeed should you
+leave it?'
+
+'Honesty is seated on your brow,' exclaimed Aulus; 'but there are few
+to be trusted in the world we live in. I now believe I can eat.' And
+he gave a sure token of the belief that was in him, not without a
+start now and then and a finger at his ear, as if he heard somebody
+walking in the direction of his bedchamber. Now began his first
+miracle: for now he contrived to pick up, from time to time, a little
+money. In the presence of his host and fellow-lodgers, he threw a few
+obols, negligently and indifferently, among the beggars. 'These poor
+creatures,' said he, 'know a new-comer as well as the gnats do: in one
+half-hour I am half ruined by them; and this daily.'
+
+Nearly a month had elapsed since his arrival, and no account of board
+and lodging had been delivered or called for. Suspicion at length
+arose in the host whether he really was rich. When another man's
+honesty is doubted, the doubter's is sometimes in jeopardy. The host
+was tempted to unsew the valise. To his amazement and horror he found
+only shreds within it. However, he was determined to be cautious, and
+to consult his wife, who, although a Christian like Aulus, and much
+edified by his discourses, might dissent from him in regard to a
+community of goods, at least in her own household, and might defy him
+to prove by any authority that the doctrine was meant for innkeepers.
+Aulus, on his return in the evening, found out that his valise had
+been opened. He hurried back, threw its contents into the canal, and,
+borrowing an old cloak, he tucked it up under his dress, and returned.
+Nobody had seen him enter or come back again, nor was it immediately
+that his host or hostess were willing to appear. But, after he had
+called them loudly for some time, they entered his apartment: and he
+thus addressed the woman:
+
+'O Eucharis! no words are requisite to convince you (firm as you are
+in the faith) of eternal verities, however mysterious. But your
+unhappy husband has betrayed his incredulity in regard to the most
+awful. If my prayers, offered up in our holy temples all day long,
+have been heard, and that they have been heard I feel within me the
+blessed certainty, something miraculous has been vouchsafed for the
+conversion of this miserable sinner. Until the present hour, the
+valise before you was filled with precious relics from the apparel of
+saints and martyrs, fresh as when on them.' 'True, by Jove!' said the
+husband to himself. 'Within the present hour,' continued Aulus, 'they
+are united into one raiment, signifying our own union, our own
+restoration.'
+
+He drew forth the cloak, and fell on his face. Eucharis fell also, and
+kissed the saintly head prostrate before her. The host's eyes were
+opened, and he bewailed his hardness of heart. Aulus is now occupied
+in strengthening his faith, not without an occasional support to the
+wife's: all three live together in unity.
+
+_Timotheus._ And do you make a joke even of this? Will you never cease
+from the habitude?
+
+_Lucian._ Too soon. The farther we descend into the vale of years, the
+fewer illusions accompany us: we have little inclination, little time,
+for jocularity and laughter. Light things are easily detached from us,
+and we shake off heavier as we can. Instead of levity, we are liable
+to moroseness: for always near the grave there are more briers than
+flowers, unless we plant them ourselves, or our friends supply them.
+
+_Timotheus._ Thinking thus, do you continue to dissemble or to distort
+the truth? The shreds are become a cable for the faithful. That they
+were miraculously turned into one entire garment who shall gainsay?
+How many hath it already clothed with righteousness? Happy men,
+casting their doubts away before it! Who knows, O Cousin Lucian, but
+on some future day you yourself will invoke the merciful interposition
+of Aulus!
+
+_Lucian._ Possibly: for if ever I fall among thieves, nobody is
+likelier to be at the head of them.
+
+_Timotheus._ Uncharitable man! how suspicious! how ungenerous! how
+hardened in unbelief! Reason is a bladder on which you may paddle like
+a child as you swim in summer waters: but, when the winds rise and the
+waves roughen, it slips from under you, and you sink; yes, O Lucian,
+you sink into a gulf whence you never can emerge.
+
+_Lucian._ I deem those the wisest who exert the soonest their own
+manly strength, now with the stream and now against it, enjoying the
+exercise in fine weather, venturing out in foul, if need be, yet
+avoiding not only rocks and whirlpools, but also shallows. In such a
+light, my cousin, I look on your dispensations. I shut them out as we
+shut out winds blowing from the desert; hot, debilitating, oppressive,
+laden with impalpable sands and pungent salts, and inflicting an
+incurable blindness.
+
+_Timotheus._ Well, Cousin Lucian! I can bear all you say while you are
+not witty. Let me bid you farewell in this happy interval.
+
+_Lucian._ Is it not serious and sad, O my cousin, that what the Deity
+hath willed to lie incomprehensible in His mysteries, we should fall
+upon with tooth and nail, and ferociously growl over, or ignorantly
+dissect?
+
+_Timotheus._ Ho! now you come to be serious and sad, there are hopes
+of you. Truth always begins or ends so.
+
+_Lucian._ Undoubtedly. But I think it more reverential to abstain from
+that which, with whatever effort, I should never understand.
+
+_Timotheus._ You are lukewarm, my cousin, you are lukewarm. A most
+dangerous state.
+
+_Lucian._ For milk to continue in, not for men. I would not fain be
+frozen or scalded.
+
+_Timotheus._ Alas! you are blind, my sweet cousin!
+
+_Lucian._ Well; do not open my eyes with pincers, nor compose for them
+a collyrium of spurge.
+
+May not men eat and drink and talk together, and perform in relation
+one to another all the duties of social life, whose opinions are
+different on things immediately under their eyes? If they can and do,
+surely they may as easily on things equally above the comprehension of
+each party. The wisest and most virtuous man in the whole extent of
+the Roman Empire is Plutarch of Cheronaea: yet Plutarch holds a firm
+belief in the existence of I know not how many gods, every one of whom
+has committed notorious misdemeanours. The nearest to the Cheronaean
+in virtue and wisdom is Trajan, who holds all the gods dog-cheap.
+These two men are friends. If either of them were influenced by your
+religion, as inculcated and practised by the priesthood, he would be
+the enemy of the other, and wisdom and virtue would plead for the
+delinquent in vain. When your religion had existed, as you tell us,
+about a century, Caius Caecilius, of Novum Comum, was proconsul in
+Bithynia. Trajan, the mildest and most equitable of mankind, desirous
+to remove from them, as far as might be, the hatred and invectives of
+those whose old religion was assailed by them, applied to Caecilius
+for information on their behaviour as good citizens. The reply of
+Caecilius was favourable. Had Trajan applied to the most eminent and
+authoritative of the sect, they would certainly have brought into
+jeopardy all who differed in one tittle from any point of their
+doctrine or discipline. For the thorny and bitter aloe of dissension
+required less than a century to flower on the steps of your temple.
+
+_Timotheus._ You are already half a Christian, in exposing to the
+world the vanities both of philosophy and of power.
+
+_Lucian._ I have done no such thing: I have exposed the vanities of
+the philosophizing and the powerful. Philosophy is admirable; and
+Power may be glorious: the one conduces to truth, the other has nearly
+all the means of conferring peace and happiness, but it usually, and
+indeed almost always, takes a contrary direction. I have ridiculed the
+futility of speculative minds, only when they would pave the clouds
+instead of the streets. To see distant things better than near is a
+certain proof of a defective sight. The people I have held in derision
+never turn their eyes to what they can see, but direct them
+continually where nothing is to be seen. And this, by their disciples,
+is called the sublimity of speculation! There is little merit
+acquired, or force exhibited, in blowing off a feather that would
+settle on my nose: and this is all I have done in regard to the
+philosophers: but I claim for myself the approbation of humanity, in
+having shown the true dimensions of the great. The highest of them are
+no higher than my tunic; but they are high enough to trample on the
+necks of those wretches who throw themselves on the ground before
+them.
+
+_Timotheus._ Was Alexander of Macedon no higher?
+
+_Lucian._ What region of the earth, what city, what theatre, what
+library, what private study, hath he enlightened? If you are silent, I
+may well be. It is neither my philosophy nor your religion which casts
+the blood and bones of men in their faces, and insists on the most
+reverence for those who have made the most unhappy. If the Romans
+scourged by the hands of children the schoolmaster who would have
+betrayed them, how greatly more deserving of flagellation, from the
+same quarter, are those hundreds of pedagogues who deliver up the
+intellects of youth to such immoral revellers and mad murderers! They
+would punish a thirsty child for purloining a bunch of grapes from a
+vineyard, and the same men on the same day would insist on his
+reverence for the subverter of Tyre, the plunderer of Babylon, and the
+incendiary of Persepolis. And are these men teachers? are these men
+philosophers? are these men priests? Of all the curses that ever
+afflicted the earth, I think Alexander was the worst. Never was he in
+so little mischief as when he was murdering his friends.
+
+_Timotheus._ Yet he built this very city; a noble and opulent one when
+Rome was of hurdles and rushes.
+
+_Lucian._ He built it! I wish, O Timotheus! he had been as well
+employed as the stone-cutters or the plasterers. No, no: the wisest of
+architects planned the most beautiful and commodious of cities, by
+which, under a rational government and equitable laws, Africa might
+have been civilized to the centre, and the palm have extended her
+conquests through the remotest desert. Instead of which, a dozen of
+Macedonian thieves rifled a dying drunkard and murdered his children.
+In process of time, another drunkard reeled hitherward from Rome, made
+an easy mistake in mistaking a palace for a brothel, permitted a
+stripling boy to beat him soundly, and a serpent to receive the last
+caresses of his paramour.
+
+Shame upon historians and pedagogues for exciting the worst passions
+of youth by the display of such false glories! If your religion hath
+any truth or influence, her professors will extinguish the promontory
+lights, which only allure to breakers. They will be assiduous in
+teaching the young and ardent that great abilities do not constitute
+great men, without the right and unremitting application of them; and
+that, in the sight of Humanity and Wisdom, it is better to erect one
+cottage than to demolish a hundred cities. Down to the present day we
+have been taught little else than falsehood. We have been told to do
+this thing and that: we have been told we shall be punished unless we
+do: but at the same time we are shown by the finger that prosperity
+and glory, and the esteem of all about us, rest upon other and very
+different foundations. Now, do the ears or the eyes seduce the most
+easily and lead the most directly to the heart? But both eyes and ears
+are won over, and alike are persuaded to corrupt us.
+
+_Timotheus._ Cousin Lucian, I was leaving you with the strangest of
+all notions in my head. I began to think for a moment that you doubted
+my sincerity in the religion I profess; and that a man of your
+admirable good sense, and at your advanced age, could reject that only
+sustenance which supports us through the grave into eternal life.
+
+_Lucian._ I am the most docile and practicable of men, and never
+reject what people set before me: for if it is bread, it is good for
+my own use; if bone or bran, it will do for my dog or mule. But,
+although you know my weakness and facility, it is unfair to expect I
+should have admitted at once what the followers and personal friends
+of your Master for a long time hesitated to receive. I remember to
+have read in one of the early commentators, that His disciples
+themselves could not swallow the miracle of the loaves; and one who
+wrote more recently says, that even His brethren did not believe in
+Him.
+
+_Timotheus._ Yet, finally, when they have looked over each other's
+accounts, they cast them up, and make them all tally in the main sum;
+and if one omits an article, the next supplies its place with a
+commodity of the same value. What would you have? But it is of little
+use to argue on religion with a man who, professing his readiness to
+believe, and even his credulity, yet disbelieves in miracles.
+
+_Lucian._ I should be obstinate and perverse if I disbelieved in the
+existence of a thing for no better reason than because I never saw it,
+and cannot understand its operations. Do you believe, O Timotheus,
+that Perictione, the mother of Plato, became his mother by the sole
+agency of Apollo's divine spirit, under the phantasm of that god?
+
+_Timotheus._ I indeed believe such absurdities?
+
+_Lucian._ You touch me on a vital part if you call an absurdity the
+religion or philosophy in which I was educated. Anaxalides, and
+Clearagus, and Speusippus, his own nephew, assert it. Who should know
+better than they?
+
+_Timotheus._ Where are their proofs?
+
+_Lucian._ I would not be so indelicate as to require them on such an
+occasion. A short time ago I conversed with an old centurion, who was
+in service by the side of Vespasian, when Titus, and many officers and
+soldiers of the army, and many captives, were present, and who saw one
+Eleazar put a ring to the nostril of a demoniac (as the patient was
+called) and draw the demon out of it.
+
+_Timotheus._ And do you pretend to believe this nonsense?
+
+_Lucian._ I only believe that Vespasian and Titus had nothing to gain
+or accomplish by the miracle; and that Eleazar, if he had been
+detected in a trick by two acute men and several thousand enemies, had
+nothing to look forward to but a cross--the only piece of upholstery
+for which Judea seems to have either wood or workmen, and which are
+as common in that country as direction-posts are in any other.
+
+_Timotheus._ The Jews are a stiff-necked people.
+
+_Lucian._ On such occasions, no doubt.
+
+_Timotheus._ Would you, O Lucian, be classed among the atheists, like
+Epicurus?
+
+_Lucian._ It lies not at my discretion what name shall be given me at
+present or hereafter, any more than it did at my birth. But I wonder
+at the ignorance and precipitancy of those who call Epicurus an
+atheist. He saw on the same earth with himself a great variety of
+inferior creatures, some possessing more sensibility and more
+thoughtfulness than others. Analogy would lead so contemplative a
+reasoner to the conclusion that if many were inferior and in sight,
+others might be superior and out of sight. He never disbelieved in the
+existence of the gods; he only disbelieved that they troubled their
+heads with our concerns. Have they none of their own? If they are
+happy, does their happiness depend on us, comparatively so imbecile
+and vile? He believed, as nearly all nations do, in different ranks
+and orders of superhuman beings; and perhaps he thought (but I never
+was in his confidence or counsels) that the higher were rather in
+communication with the next to them in intellectual faculties, than
+with the most remote. To me the suggestion appears by no means
+irrational, that if we are managed or cared for at all by beings wiser
+than ourselves (which in truth would be no sign of any great wisdom in
+them), it can only be by such as are very far from perfection, and who
+indulge us in the commission of innumerable faults and follies, for
+their own speculation or amusement.
+
+_Timotheus._ There is only one such; and he is the devil.
+
+_Lucian._ If he delights in our wickedness, which you believe, he must
+be incomparably the happiest of beings, which you do not believe. No
+god of Epicurus rests his elbow on his armchair with less energetic
+exertion or discomposure.
+
+_Timotheus._ We lead holier and purer lives than such ignorant mortals
+as are not living under Grace.
+
+_Lucian._ I also live under Grace, O Timotheus! and I venerate her for
+the pleasures I have received at her hands. I do not believe she has
+quite deserted me. If my grey hairs are unattractive to her, and if
+the trace of her fingers is lost in the wrinkles of my forehead, still
+I sometimes am told it is discernible even on the latest and coldest
+of my writings.
+
+_Timotheus._ You are wilful in misapprehension. The Grace of which I
+speak is adverse to pleasure and impurity.
+
+_Lucian._ Rightly do you separate impurity and pleasure, which indeed
+soon fly asunder when the improvident would unite them. But never
+believe that tenderness of heart signifies corruption of morals, if
+you happen to find it (which indeed is unlikely) in the direction you
+have taken; on the contrary, no two qualities are oftener found
+together, on mind as on matter, than hardness and lubricity.
+
+Believe me, Cousin Timotheus, when we come to eighty years of age we
+are all Essenes. In our kingdom of heaven there is no marrying or
+giving in marriage; and austerity in ourselves, when Nature holds over
+us the sharp instrument with which Jupiter operated on Saturn, makes
+us austere to others. But how happens it that you, both old and young,
+break every bond which connected you anciently with the Essenes? Not
+only do you marry (a height of wisdom to which I never have attained,
+although in others I commend it), but you never share your substance
+with the poorest of your community, as they did, nor live simply and
+frugally, nor purchase nor employ slaves, nor refuse rank and offices
+in the State, nor abstain from litigation, nor abominate and execrate
+the wounds and cruelties of war. The Essenes did all this, and greatly
+more, if Josephus and Philo, whose political and religious tenets are
+opposite to theirs, are credible and trustworthy.
+
+_Timotheus._ Doubtless you would also wish us to retire into the
+desert, and eschew the conversation of mankind.
+
+_Lucian._ No, indeed; but I would wish the greater part of your people
+to eschew mine, for they bring all the worst of the desert with them
+whenever they enter; its smothering heats, its blinding sands, its
+sweeping suffocation. Return to the pure spirit of the Essenes,
+without their asceticism; cease from controversy, and drop party
+designations. If you will not do this, do less, and be merely what you
+profess to be, which is quite enough for an honest, a virtuous, and a
+religious man.
+
+_Timotheus._ Cousin Lucian, I did not come hither to receive a lecture
+from you.
+
+_Lucian._ I have often given a dinner to a friend who did not come to
+dine with me.
+
+_Timotheus._ Then, I trust, you gave him something better for dinner
+than bay-salt and dandelions. If you will not assist us in nettling
+our enemies a little for their absurdities and impositions, let me
+entreat you, however, to let us alone, and to make no remarks on us.
+I myself run into no extravagances, like the Essenes, washing and
+fasting, and retiring into solitude. I am not called to them; when I
+am, I go.
+
+_Lucian._ I am apprehensive the Lord may afflict you with deafness in
+that ear.
+
+_Timotheus._ Nevertheless, I am indifferent to the world, and all
+things in it. This, I trust, you will acknowledge to be true religion
+and true philosophy.
+
+_Lucian._ That is not philosophy which betrays an indifference to
+those for whose benefit philosophy was designed; and those are the
+whole human race. But I hold it to be the most unphilosophical thing
+in the world to call away men from useful occupations and mutual help,
+to profitless speculations and acrid controversies. Censurable enough,
+and contemptible, too, is that supercilious philosopher, sneeringly
+sedate, who narrates in full and flowing periods the persecutions and
+tortures of a fellow-man, led astray by his credulity, and ready to
+die in the assertion of what in his soul he believes to be the truth.
+But hardly less censurable, hardly less contemptible, is the
+tranquilly arrogant sectarian, who denies that wisdom or honesty can
+exist beyond the limits of his own ill-lighted chamber.
+
+_Timotheus._ What! is he sanguinary?
+
+_Lucian._ Whenever he can be, he is; and he always has it in his power
+to be even worse than that, for he refuses his custom to the
+industrious and honest shopkeeper who has been taught to think
+differently from himself in matters which he has had no leisure to
+study, and by which, if he had enjoyed that leisure, he would have
+been a less industrious and a less expert artificer.
+
+_Timotheus._ We cannot countenance those hard-hearted men who refuse
+to hear the word of the Lord.
+
+_Lucian._ The hard-hearted knowing this of the tender-hearted, and
+receiving the declaration from their own lips, will refuse to hear the
+word of the Lord all their lives.
+
+_Timotheus._ Well, well; it cannot be helped. I see, cousin, my hopes
+of obtaining a little of your assistance in your own pleasant way are
+disappointed; but it is something to have conceived a better hope of
+saving your soul, from your readiness to acknowledge your belief in
+miracles.
+
+_Lucian._ Miracles have existed in all ages and in all religions.
+Witnesses to some of them have been numerous; to others of them fewer.
+Occasionally, the witnesses have been disinterested in the result.
+
+_Timotheus._ Now indeed you speak truly and wisely.
+
+_Lucian._ But sometimes the most honest and the most quiescent have
+either been unable or unwilling to push themselves so forward as to
+see clearly and distinctly the whole of the operation; and have
+listened to some knave who felt a pleasure in deluding their
+credulity, or some other who himself was either an enthusiast or a
+dupe. It also may have happened in the ancient religions, of Egypt for
+instance, or of India, or even of Greece, that narratives have been
+attributed to authors who never heard of them; and have been
+circulated by honest men who firmly believed them; by half-honest, who
+indulged their vanity in becoming members of a novel and bustling
+society; and by utterly dishonest, who, having no other means of
+rising above the shoulders of the vulgar, threw dust into their eyes
+and made them stoop.
+
+_Timotheus._ Ha! the rogues! It is nearly all over with them.
+
+_Lucian._ Let us hope so. Parthenius and the Roman poet Ovidius Naso,
+have related the transformations of sundry men, women, and gods.
+
+_Timotheus._ Idleness! Idleness! I never read such lying authors.
+
+_Lucian._ I myself have seen enough to incline me toward a belief in
+them.
+
+_Timotheus._ You? Why! you have always been thought an utter infidel;
+and now you are running, hot and heedless as any mad dog, to the
+opposite extreme!
+
+_Lucian._ I have lived to see, not indeed one man, but certainly one
+animal turned into another; nay, great numbers. I have seen sheep with
+the most placid faces in the morning, one nibbling the tender herb
+with all its dew upon it; another, negligent of its own sustenance,
+and giving it copiously to the tottering lamb aside it.
+
+_Timotheus._ How pretty! half poetical!
+
+_Lucian._ In the heat of the day I saw the very same sheep tearing off
+each other's fleeces with long teeth and longer claws, and imitating
+so admirably the howl of wolves, that at last the wolves came down on
+them in a body, and lent their best assistance at the general
+devouring. What is more remarkable, the people of the villages seemed
+to enjoy the sport; and, instead of attacking the wolves, waited until
+they had filled their stomachs, ate the little that was left, said
+piously and from the bottom of their hearts what you call _grace_, and
+went home singing and piping.
+
+
+
+
+BISHOP SHIPLEY AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
+
+
+_Shipley._ There are very few men, even in the bushes and the
+wilderness, who delight in the commission of cruelty; but nearly all,
+throughout the earth, are censurable for the admission. When we see a
+blow struck, we go on and think no more about it: yet every blow aimed
+at the most distant of our fellow-creatures, is sure to come back,
+some time or other, to our families and descendants. He who lights a
+fire in one quarter is ignorant to what other the winds may carry it,
+and whether what is kindled in the wood may not break out again in the
+cornfield.
+
+_Franklin._ If we could restrain but one generation from deeds of
+violence, the foundation for a new and a more graceful edifice of
+society would not only have been laid, but would have been
+consolidated.
+
+_Shipley._ We already are horrified at the bare mention of religious
+wars; we should then be horrified at the mention of political. Why
+should they who, when they are affronted or offended, abstain from
+inflicting blows, some from a sense of decorousness and others from a
+sense of religion, be forward to instigate the infliction of ten
+thousand, all irremediable, all murderous? Every chief magistrate
+should be arbitrator and umpire in all differences between any two,
+forbidding war. Much would be added to the dignity of the most
+powerful king by rendering him an efficient member of such a grand
+Amphictyonic council. Unhappily they are persuaded in childhood that a
+reign is made glorious by a successful war. What schoolmaster ever
+taught a boy to question it? or indeed any point of political
+morality, or any incredible thing in history? Caesar and Alexander are
+uniformly clement: Themistocles died by a draught of bull's blood:
+Portia by swallowing red-hot pieces of charcoal.
+
+_Franklin._ Certainly no woman or man could perform either of these
+feats. In my opinion it lies beyond a doubt that Portia suffocated
+herself by the fumes of charcoal; and that the Athenian, whose stomach
+must have been formed on the model of other stomachs, and must
+therefore have rejected a much less quantity of blood than would have
+poisoned him, died by some chemical preparation, of which a bull's
+blood might, or might not, have been part. Schoolmasters who thus
+betray their trust, ought to be scourged by their scholars, like him
+of their profession who underwent the just indignation of the Roman
+Consul. You shut up those who are infected with the plague; why do you
+lay no coercion on those who are incurably possessed by the legion
+devil of carnage? When a creature is of intellect so perverted that he
+can discern no difference between a review and a battle, between the
+animating bugle and the dying groan, it were expedient to remove him,
+as quietly as may be, from his devastation of God's earth and his
+usurpation of God's authority. Compassion points out the cell for him
+at the bottom of the hospital, and listens to hear the key turned in
+the ward: until then the house is insecure.
+
+_Shipley._ God grant our rulers wisdom, and our brethren peace!
+
+_Franklin._ Here are but indifferent specimens and tokens. Those
+fellows throw stones pretty well: if they practise much longer, they
+will hit us: let me entreat you, my lord, to leave me here. So long as
+the good people were contented with hooting and shouting at us, no
+great harm was either done or apprehended: but now they are beginning
+to throw stones, perhaps they may prove themselves more dexterous in
+action than their rulers have done latterly in council.
+
+_Shipley._ Take care, Doctor Franklin! _That_ was very near being the
+philosopher's stone.
+
+_Franklin._ Let me pick it up, then, and send it to London by the
+diligence. But I am afraid your ministers, and the nation at large,
+are as little in the way of wealth as of wisdom, in the experiment
+they are making.
+
+_Shipley._ While I was attending to you, William had started. Look! he
+has reached them: they are listening to him. Believe me, he has all
+the courage of an Englishman and of a Christian; and, if the stoutest
+of them force him to throw off his new black coat, the blusterer would
+soon think it better to have listened to less polemical doctrine.
+
+_Franklin._ Meantime a few of the town boys are come nearer, and begin
+to grow troublesome. I am sorry to requite your hospitality with such
+hard fare.
+
+_Shipley._ True, these young bakers make their bread very gritty, but
+we must partake of it together so long as you are with us.
+
+_Franklin._ Be pleased, my lord, to give us grace; our repast is over;
+this is my boat.
+
+_Shipley._ We will accompany you as far as to the ship. Thank God! we
+are now upon the water, and all safe. Give me your hand, my good
+Doctor Franklin! and although you have failed in the object of your
+mission, yet the intention will authorize me to say, in the holy words
+of our Divine Redeemer, Blessed are the peacemakers!
+
+_Franklin._ My dear lord! if God ever blessed a man at the
+intercession of another, I may reasonably and confidently hope in such
+a benediction. Never did one arise from a warmer, a tenderer, or a
+purer heart.
+
+_Shipley._ Infatuation! that England should sacrifice to her king so
+many thousands of her bravest men, and ruin so many thousands of her
+most industrious, in a vain attempt to destroy the very principles on
+which her strength and her glory are founded! The weakest prince that
+ever sat upon a throne, and the most needy and sordid Parliament that
+ever pandered to distempered power, are thrusting our blindfold nation
+from the pinnacle of prosperity.
+
+_Franklin._ I believe _your_ king (from this moment it is permitted me
+to call him _ours_ no longer) to be as honest and as wise a man as any
+of those about him: but unhappily he can see no difference between a
+review and a battle. Such are the optics of most kings and rulers. His
+Parliament, in both Houses, acts upon calculation. There is hardly a
+family, in either, that does not anticipate the clear profit of
+several thousands a year, to itself and its connexions. Appointments
+to regiments and frigates raise the price of papers; and forfeited
+estates fly confusedly about, and darken the air from the Thames to
+the Atlantic.
+
+_Shipley._ It is lamentable to think that war, bringing with it every
+species of human misery, should become a commercial speculation. Bad
+enough when it arises from revenge; another word for honour.
+
+_Franklin._ A strange one indeed! but not more strange than fifty
+others that come under the same title. Wherever there is nothing of
+religion, nothing of reason, nothing of truth, we come at once to
+honour; and here we draw the sword, dispense with what little of
+civilization we ever pretended to, and murder or get murdered, as may
+happen. But these ceremonials both begin and end with an appeal to
+God, who, before we appealed to Him, plainly told us we should do no
+such thing, and that He would punish us most severely if we did. And
+yet, my lord, even the gentlemen upon your bench turn a deaf ear to
+Him on these occasions: nay, they go further; they pray to Him for
+success in that which He has forbidden so strictly, and when they have
+broken His commandment, thank Him. Upon seeing these mockeries and
+impieties age after age repeated, I have asked myself whether the
+depositaries and expounders of religion have really any whatever of
+their own; or rather, like the lawyers, whether they do not defend
+professionally a cause that otherwise does not interest them in the
+least. Surely, if these holy men really believed in a just retributive
+God, they would never dare to utter the word _war_, without horror and
+deprecation.
+
+_Shipley._ Let us attribute to infirmity what we must else attribute
+to wickedness.
+
+_Franklin._ Willingly would I: but children are whipped severely for
+inobservance of things less evident, for disobedience of commands less
+audible and less awful. I am loath to attribute cruelty to your order:
+men so entirely at their ease have seldom any. Certain I am that
+several of the bishops would not have patted Cain upon the back while
+he was about to kill Abel; and my wonder is that the very same holy
+men encourage their brothers in England to kill their brothers in
+America; not one, not two nor three, but thousands, many thousands.
+
+_Shipley._ I am grieved at the blindness with which God has afflicted
+us for our sins. These unhappy men are little aware what combustibles
+they are storing under the Church, and how soon they may explode. Even
+the wisest do not reflect on the most important and the most certain
+of things; which is, that every act of inhumanity and injustice goes
+far beyond what is apparent at the time of its commission; that these,
+and all other things, have their consequences; and that the
+consequences are infinite and eternal. If this one truth alone could
+be deeply impressed upon the hearts of men, it would regenerate the
+whole human race.
+
+_Franklin._ In regard to politics, I am not quite certain whether a
+politician may not be too far-sighted: but I am quite certain that, if
+it be a fault, it is one into which few have fallen. The policy of the
+Romans in the time of the republic, seems to have been prospective.
+Some of the Dutch also, and of the Venetians, used the telescope. But
+in monarchies the prince, not the people, is consulted by the minister
+of the day; and what pleases the weakest supersedes what is approved
+by the wisest.
+
+_Shipley._ We have had great statesmen: Burleigh, Cromwell,
+Marlborough, Somers: and whatever may have been in the eyes of a
+moralist the vices of Walpole, none ever understood more perfectly, or
+pursued more steadily, the direct and palpable interests of the
+country. Since his administration, our affairs have never been managed
+by men of business; and it was more than could have been expected
+that, in our war against the French in Canada, the appointment fell on
+an able commander.
+
+_Franklin._ Such an anomaly is unlikely to recur. You have in the
+English Parliament (I speak of both Houses) only two great men; only
+two considerate and clear-sighted politicians; Chatham and Burke.
+Three or four can say clever things; several have sonorous voices;
+many vibrate sharp comminations from the embrasures of portentously
+slit sleeves; and there are those to be found who deliver their
+oracles out of wigs as worshipful as the curls of Jupiter, however
+they may be grumbled at by the flour-mills they have laid under such
+heavy contribution; yet nearly all of all parties want alike the
+sagacity to discover that in striking America you shake Europe; that
+kings will come out of the war either to be victims or to be despots;
+and that within a quarter of a century they will be hunted down like
+vermin by the most servile nations, or slain in their palaces by their
+own courtiers. In a peace of twenty years you might have paid off the
+greater part of your National Debt, indeed as much of it as it would
+be expedient to discharge, and you would have left your old enemy
+France labouring and writhing under the intolerable and increasing
+weight of hers. This is the only way in which you can ever quite
+subdue her; and in this you subdue her without a blow, without a
+menace, and without a wrong. As matters now stand, you are calling her
+from attending to the corruptions of her court, and inviting her from
+bankruptcy to glory.
+
+_Shipley._ I see not how bankruptcy can be averted by the expenditure
+of war.
+
+_Franklin._ It cannot. But war and glory are the same thing to France,
+and she sings as shrilly and as gaily after a beating as before. With
+a subsidy to a less amount than she has lately been accustomed to
+squander in six weeks, and with no more troops than would garrison a
+single fortress, she will enable us to set you at defiance, and to do
+you a heavier injury in two campaigns than she has been able to do in
+two centuries, although your king was in her pay against you. She will
+instantly be our ally, and soon our scholar. Afterward she will sell
+her crown jewels and her church jewels, which cover the whole kingdom,
+and will derive unnatural strength from her vices and her profligacy.
+You ought to have conciliated us as your ally, and to have had no
+other, excepting Holland and Denmark. England could never have, unless
+by her own folly, more than one enemy. Only one is near enough to
+strike her; and that one is down. All her wars for six hundred years
+have not done this; and the first trumpet will untrance her. You leave
+your house open to incendiaries while you are running after a
+refractory child. Had you laid down the rod, the child would have come
+back. And because he runs away from the rod, you take up the poker.
+Seriously, what means do you possess of enforcing your unjust claims
+and insolent authority? Never since the Norman Conquest had you an
+army so utterly inefficient, or generals so notoriously unskilful: no,
+not even in the reign of that venal traitor, that French stipendiary,
+the second Charles. Those were yet living who had fought bravely for
+his father, and those also who had vanquished him: and Victory still
+hovered over the mast that had borne the banners of our Commonwealth:
+_ours_, _ours_, my lord! the word is the right word here.
+
+_Shipley._ I am depressed in spirit, and can sympathize but little in
+your exultation. All the crimes of Nero and Caligula are less
+afflicting to humanity, and consequently we may suppose will bring
+down on the offenders a less severe retribution, than an unnecessary
+and unjust war. And yet the authors and abettors of this most grievous
+among our earthly calamities, the enactors and applauders (on how vast
+a theatre!) of the first and greatest crime committed upon earth, are
+quiet complacent creatures, jovial at dinner, hearty at breakfast, and
+refreshed with sleep! Nay, the prime movers in it are called most
+religious and most gracious; and the hand that signs in cold blood the
+death-warrant of nations, is kissed by the kind-hearted, and confers
+distinction upon the brave! The prolongation of a life that shortens
+so many others, is prayed for by the conscientious and the pious!
+Learning is inquisitive in the research of phrases to celebrate him
+who has conferred such blessings, and the eagle of genius holds the
+thunderbolt by his throne! Philosophy, O my friend, has hitherto done
+little for the social state; and Religion has nearly all her work to
+do! She too hath but recently washed her hands from blood, and stands
+neutrally by, yes, worse than neutrally, while others shed it. I am
+convinced that no day of my life will be so censured by my own
+clergy, as this, the day on which the last hopes of peace have
+abandoned us, and the only true minister of it is pelted from our
+shores. Farewell, until better times! may the next generation be
+wiser! and wiser it surely will be, for the lessons of Calamity are
+far more impressive than those which repudiated Wisdom would have
+taught.
+
+_Franklin._ Folly hath often the same results as Wisdom: but Wisdom
+would not engage in her schoolroom so expensive an assistant as
+Calamity. There are, however, some noisy and unruly children whom she
+alone has the method of rendering tame and tractable: perhaps it may
+be by setting them to their tasks both sore and supperless. The ship
+is getting under weigh. Adieu once more, my most reverend and noble
+friend! Before me in imagination do I see America, beautiful as Leda
+in her infant smiles, when her father Jove first raised her from the
+earth; and behind me I leave England, hollow, unsubstantial, and
+broken, as the shell she burst from.
+
+_Shipley._ O worst of miseries, when it is impiety to pray that our
+country may be successful. Farewell! may every good attend you! with
+as little of evil to endure or to inflict, as national sins can expect
+from the Almighty.
+
+
+
+
+SOUTHEY AND LANDOR
+
+
+_Southey._ Of all the beautiful scenery round King's Weston the view
+from this terrace, and especially from this sundial, is the
+pleasantest.
+
+_Landor._ The last time I ever walked hither in company (which, unless
+with ladies, I rarely have done anywhere) was with a just, a valiant,
+and a memorable man, Admiral Nichols, who usually spent his summer
+months at the village of Shirehampton, just below us. There, whether
+in the morning or evening, it was seldom I found him otherwise engaged
+than in cultivating his flowers.
+
+_Southey._ I never had the same dislike to company in my walks and
+rambles as you profess to have, but of which I perceived no sign
+whatever when I visited you, first at Llanthony Abbey and afterward
+on the Lake of Como. Well do I remember our long conversations in the
+silent and solitary church of Sant' Abondio (surely the coolest spot
+in Italy), and how often I turned back my head toward the open door,
+fearing lest some pious passer-by, or some more distant one in the
+wood above, pursuing the pathway that leads to the tower of Luitprand,
+should hear the roof echo with your laughter, at the stories you had
+collected about the brotherhood and sisterhood of the place.
+
+_Landor._ I have forgotten most of them, and nearly all: but I have
+not forgotten how we speculated on the possibility that Milton might
+once have been sitting on the very bench we then occupied, although we
+do not hear of his having visited that part of the country. Presently
+we discoursed on his poetry; as we propose to do again this morning.
+
+_Southey._ In that case, it seems we must continue to be seated on the
+turf.
+
+_Landor._ Why so?
+
+_Southey._ Because you do not like to walk in company: it might
+disturb and discompose you: and we never lose our temper without
+losing at the same time many of our thoughts, which are loath to come
+forward without it.
+
+_Landor._ From my earliest days I have avoided society as much as I
+could decorously, for I received more pleasure in the cultivation and
+improvement of my own thoughts than in walking up and down among the
+thoughts of others. Yet, as you know, I never have avoided the
+intercourse of men distinguished by virtue and genius; of genius,
+because it warmed and invigorated me by my trying to keep pace with
+it; of virtue, that if I had any of my own it might be called forth by
+such vicinity. Among all men elevated in station who have made a noise
+in the world (admirable old expression!) I never saw any in whose
+presence I felt inferiority, excepting Kosciusco. But how many in the
+lower paths of life have exerted both virtues and abilities which I
+never exerted, and never possessed! what strength and courage and
+perseverance in some, in others what endurance and forbearance! At the
+very moment when most, beside yourself, catching up half my words,
+would call and employ against me in its ordinary signification what
+ought to convey the most honorific, the term _self-sufficiency_, I bow
+my head before the humble, with greatly more than their humiliation.
+You are better tempered than I am, and are readier to converse. There
+are half-hours when, although in good humour and good spirits, I
+would, not be disturbed by the necessity of talking, to be the
+possessor of all the rich marshes we see yonder. In this interval
+there is neither storm nor sunshine of the mind, but calm and (as the
+farmer would call it) _growing_ weather, in which the blades of
+thought spring up and dilate insensibly. Whatever I do, I must do in
+the open air, or in the silence of night: either is sufficient: but I
+prefer the hours of exercise, or, what is next to exercise, of
+field-repose. Did you happen to know the admiral?
+
+_Southey._ Not personally: but I believe the terms you have applied to
+him are well merited. After some experience, he contended that public
+men, public women, and the public press, may be all designated by one
+and the same trisyllable. He is reported to have been a strict
+disciplinarian. In the mutiny at the Nore he was seized by his crew,
+and summarily condemned by them to be hanged. Many taunting questions
+were asked him, to which he made no reply. When the rope was fastened
+round his neck, the ringleader cried, 'Answer this one thing, however,
+before you go, sir! What would you do with any of us, if we were in
+your power as you are now in ours?' The admiral, then captain, looked
+sternly and contemptuously, and replied, 'Hang you, by God!' Enraged
+at this answer, the mutineer tugged at the rope: but another on the
+instant rushed forward, exclaiming, 'No, captain!' (for thus he called
+the fellow) 'he has been cruel to us, flogging here and flogging
+there, but before so brave a man is hanged like a dog, you heave me
+overboard.' Others among the most violent now interceded: and an old
+seaman, not saying a single word, came forward with his knife in his
+hand, and cut the noose asunder. Nichols did not thank him, nor notice
+him, nor speak: but, looking round at the other ships, in which there
+was the like insubordination, he went toward his cabin slow and
+silent. Finding it locked, he called to a midshipman: 'Tell that man
+with a knife to come down and open the door.' After a pause of a few
+minutes, it was done: but he was confined below until the quelling of
+the mutiny.
+
+_Landor._ His conduct as Controller of the Navy was no less
+magnanimous and decisive. In this office he presided at the trial of
+Lord Melville. His lordship was guilty, we know, of all the charges
+brought against him; but, having more patronage than ever minister had
+before, he refused to answer the questions which (to repeat his own
+expression) might incriminate him. And his refusal was given with a
+smile of indifference, a consciousness of security. In those days, as
+indeed in most others, the main use of power was promotion and
+protection: and _honest man_ was never in any age among the titles of
+nobility, and has always been the appellation used toward the feeble
+and inferior by the prosperous. Nichols said on the present occasion,
+'If this man is permitted to skulk away under such pretences, trial is
+here a mockery.' Finding no support, he threw up his office as
+Controller of the Navy, and never afterward entered the House of
+Commons. Such a person, it appears to me, leads us aptly and
+becomingly to that steadfast patriot on whose writings you promised me
+your opinion; not incidentally, as before, but turning page after
+page. It would ill beseem us to treat Milton with generalities.
+Radishes and salt are the picnic quota of slim spruce reviewers: let
+us hope to find somewhat more solid and of better taste. Desirous to
+be a listener and a learner when you discourse on his poetry, I have
+been more occupied of late in examining the prose.
+
+_Southey._ Do you retain your high opinion of it?
+
+_Landor._ Experience makes us more sensible of faults than of
+beauties. Milton is more correct than Addison, but less correct than
+Hooker, whom I wish he had been contented to receive as a model in
+style, rather than authors who wrote in another and a poorer language;
+such, I think, you are ready to acknowledge is the Latin.
+
+_Southey._ This was always my opinion.
+
+_Landor._ However, I do not complain that in oratory and history his
+diction is sometimes poetical.
+
+_Southey._ Little do I approve of it in prose on any subject.
+Demosthenes and Aeschines, Lisias and Isaeus, and finally Cicero,
+avoided it.
+
+_Landor._ They did: but Chatham and Burke and Grattan did not; nor
+indeed the graver and greater Pericles; of whom the most memorable
+sentence on record is pure poetry. On the fall of the young Athenians
+in the field of battle, he said, 'The year hath lost its spring.' But
+how little are these men, even Pericles himself, if you compare them
+as men of genius with Livy! In Livy, as in Milton, there are bursts of
+passion which cannot by the nature of things be other than poetical,
+nor (being so) come forth in other language. If Milton had executed
+his design of writing a history of England, it would probably have
+abounded in such diction, especially in the more turbulent scenes and
+in the darker ages.
+
+_Southey._ There are quiet hours and places in which a taper may be
+carried steadily, and show the way along the ground; but you must
+stand a-tiptoe and raise a blazing torch above your head, if you would
+bring to our vision the obscure and time-worn figures depicted on the
+lofty vaults of antiquity. The philosopher shows everything in one
+clear light; the historian loves strong reflections and deep shadows,
+but, above all, prominent and moving characters. We are little pleased
+with the man who disenchants us: but whoever can make us wonder, must
+himself (we think) be wonderful, and deserve our admiration.
+
+_Landor._ Believing no longer in magic and its charms, we still
+shudder at the story told by Tacitus, of those which were discovered
+in the mournful house of Germanicus.
+
+_Southey._ Tacitus was also a great poet, and would have been a
+greater, had he been more contented with the external and ordinary
+appearances of things. Instead of which, he looked at a part of his
+pictures through a prism, and at another part through a _camera
+obscura_. If the historian were as profuse of moral as of political
+axioms, we should tolerate him less: for in the political we fancy a
+writer is but meditating; in the moral we regard him as declaiming. In
+history we desire to be conversant with only the great, according to
+our notions of greatness: we take it as an affront, on such an
+invitation, to be conducted into the lecture-room, or to be desired to
+amuse ourselves in the study.
+
+_Landor._ Pray go on. I am desirous of hearing more.
+
+_Southey._ Being now alone, with the whole day before us, and having
+carried, as we agreed at breakfast, each his Milton in his pocket, let
+us collect all the graver faults we can lay our hands upon, without a
+too minute and troublesome research; not in the spirit of Johnson, but
+in our own.
+
+_Landor._ That is, abasing our eyes in reverence to so great a man,
+but without closing them. The beauties of his poetry we may omit to
+notice, if we can: but where the crowd claps the hands, it will be
+difficult for us always to refrain. Johnson, I think, has been charged
+unjustly with expressing too freely and inconsiderately the blemishes
+of Milton. There are many more of them than he has noticed.
+
+_Southey._ If we add any to the number, and the literary world hears
+of it, we shall raise an outcry from hundreds who never could see
+either his excellences or his defects, and from several who never have
+perused the noblest of his writings.
+
+_Landor._ It may be boyish and mischievous, but I acknowledge I have
+sometimes felt a pleasure in irritating, by the cast of a pebble,
+those who stretch forward to the full extent of the chain their open
+and frothy mouths against me. I shall seize upon this conjecture of
+yours, and say everything that comes into my head on the subject.
+Beside which, if any collateral thoughts should spring up, I may throw
+them in also; as you perceive I have frequently done in my _Imaginary
+Conversations_, and as we always do in real ones.
+
+_Southey._ When we adhere to one point, whatever the form, it should
+rather be called a disquisition than a conversation. Most writers of
+dialogue take but a single stride into questions the most abstruse,
+and collect a heap of arguments to be blown away by the bloated whiffs
+of some rhetorical charlatan, tricked out in a multiplicity of ribbons
+for the occasion.
+
+Before we open the volume of poetry, let me confess to you I admire
+his prose less than you do.
+
+_Landor._ Probably because you dissent more widely from the opinions
+it conveys: for those who are displeased with anything are unable to
+confine the displeasure to one spot. We dislike everything a little
+when we dislike anything much. It must indeed be admitted that his
+prose is often too latinized and stiff. But I prefer his heavy cut
+velvet, with its ill-placed Roman fibula, to the spangled gauze and
+gummed-on flowers and puffy flounces of our present street-walking
+literature. So do you, I am certain.
+
+_Southey._ Incomparably. But let those who have gone astray, keep
+astray, rather than bring Milton into disrepute by pushing themselves
+into his company and imitating his manner. Milton is none of these:
+and his language is never a patchwork. We find daily, in almost every
+book we open, expressions which are not English, never were, and never
+will be: for the writers are by no means of sufficiently high rank to
+be masters of the mint. To arrive at this distinction, it is not
+enough to scatter in all directions bold, hazardous, undisciplined
+thoughts: there must be lordly and commanding ones, with a full
+establishment of well-appointed expressions adequate to their
+maintenance.
+
+Occasionally I have been dissatisfied with Milton, because in my
+opinion that is ill said in prose which can be said more plainly. Not
+so in poetry: if it were, much of Pindar and Aeschylus, and no little
+of Dante, would be censurable.
+
+_Landor._ Acknowledge that he whose poetry I am holding in my hand is
+free from every false ornament in his prose, unless a few bosses of
+latinity may be called so; and I am ready to admit the full claims of
+your favourite South. Acknowledge that, heading all the forces of our
+language, he was the great antagonist of every great monster which
+infested our country; and he disdained to trim his lion-skin with
+lace. No other English writer has equalled Raleigh, Hooker, and
+Milton, in the loftier parts of their works.
+
+_Southey._ But Hooker and Milton, you allow, are sometimes pedantic.
+In Hooker there is nothing so elevated as there is in Raleigh.
+
+_Landor._ Neither he, however, nor any modern, nor any ancient, has
+attained to that summit on which the sacred ark of Milton strikes and
+rests. Reflections, such as we indulged in on the borders of the
+Larius, come over me here again. Perhaps from the very sod where you
+are sitting, the poet in his youth sate looking at the Sabrina he was
+soon to celebrate. There is pleasure in the sight of a glebe which
+never has been broken; but it delights me particularly in those places
+where great men have been before. I do not mean warriors: for
+extremely few among the most remarkable of them will a considerate man
+call great: but poets and philosophers and philanthropists, the
+ornaments of society, the charmers of solitude, the warders of
+civilization, the watchmen at the gate which Tyranny would batter
+down, and the healers of those wounds which she left festering in the
+field. And now, to reduce this demon into its proper toad-shape again,
+and to lose sight of it, open your _Paradise Lost_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE EMPEROR OF CHINA AND TSING-TI
+
+
+On the morrow I was received at the folding-doors by Pru-Tsi, and
+ushered by him into the presence of his majesty the Emperor, who was
+graciously pleased to inform me that he had rendered thanks to
+Almighty God for enlightening his mind, and for placing his empire far
+beyond the influence of the persecutor and fanatic. 'But,' continued
+his majesty, 'this story of the sorcerer's man quite confounds me.
+Little as the progress is which the Europeans seem to have made in the
+path of humanity, yet the English, we know, are less cruel than their
+neighbours, and more given to reflection and meditation. How then is
+it possible they should allow any portion of their fellow-citizens to
+be hoodwinked, gagged, and carried away into darkness, by such
+conspirators and assassins? Why didst thou not question the man
+thyself?'
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ I did, O Emperor! and his reply was, 'We can bury such
+only as were in the household of the faith. It would be a mockery to
+bid those spirits go in peace which we know are condemned to
+everlasting fire.'
+
+_Emperor._ Amazing! have they that? Who invented it? Everlasting fire!
+It surely might be applied to better purposes. And have those rogues
+authority to throw people into it? In what part of the kingdom is it?
+If natural, it ought to have been marked more plainly in the maps. The
+English, no doubt, are ashamed of letting it be known abroad that they
+have any such places in their country. If artificial, it is no wonder
+they keep such a secret to themselves. Tsing-Ti, I commend thy
+prudence in asking no questions about it; for I see we are equally at
+a loss on this curiosity.
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ The sorcerer has a secret for diluting it. Oysters and the
+white of eggs, applied on lucky days, enter into the composition; but
+certain charms in a strange language must also be employed, and must
+be repeated a certain number of times. There are stones likewise, and
+wood cut into particular forms, good against this eternal fire, as
+they believe. The sorcerer has the power, they pretend, of giving the
+faculty of hearing and seeing to these stones and pieces of wood; and
+when he has given them the faculties, they become so sensible and
+grateful, they do whatever he orders. Some roll their eyes, some
+sweat, some bleed; and the people beat their breasts before them,
+calling themselves miserable sinners.
+
+_Emperor._ _Sinners_ is not the name I should have given them,
+although no doubt they are in the right.
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ Sometimes, if they will not bleed freely, nor sweat, nor
+roll their eyes, the devouter break their heads with clubs, and look
+out for others who will.
+
+_Emperor._ Take heed, Tsing-Ti! Take heed! I do believe thou art
+talking all the while of idols. Thou must be respectful; remember I am
+head of all the religions in the empire. We have something in our own
+country not very unlike them, only the people do not worship them;
+they merely fall down before them as representatives of a higher
+power. So they say.
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ I do not imagine they go much farther in Europe, excepting
+the introduction of this club-law into their adoration.
+
+_Emperor._ And difference enough, in all conscience. Our people is
+less ferocious and less childish. If any man break an idol here for
+not sweating, he himself would justly be condemned to sweat, showing
+him how inconvenient a thing it is when the sweater is not disposed.
+As for rolling the eyes, surely they know best whom they should ogle;
+as for bleeding, that must be regulated by the season of the year. Let
+every man choose his idol as freely as he chooses his wife; let him be
+constant if he can; if he cannot, let him at least be civil. Whoever
+dares to scratch the face of any one in my empire, shall be condemned
+to varnish it afresh, and moreover to keep it in repair all his
+lifetime.
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ In Europe such an offence would be punished with the
+extremities of torture.
+
+_Emperor._ Perhaps their idols cost more, and are newer. Is there no
+chance, in all their changes, that we may be called upon to supply
+them with a few?
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ They have plenty for the present, and they dig up fresh
+occasionally.
+
+_Emperor._ In regard to the worship of idols, they have not a great
+deal to learn from us; and what is deficient will come by degrees as
+they grow humaner. But how little care can any ruler have for the
+happiness and improvement of his people, who permits such ferocity in
+the priesthood. If its members are employed by the government to
+preside at burials, as according to thy discourse I suppose, a
+virtuous prince would order a twelvemonth's imprisonment, and spare
+diet, to whichever of them should refuse to perform the last office of
+humanity toward a fellow-creature. What separation of citizen from
+citizen, and necessarily what diminution of national strength, must be
+the consequence of such a system! A single act of it ought to be
+punished more severely than any single act of sedition, not only as
+being a greater distractor of civic union, but, in its cruel
+sequestration of the best affections, a fouler violator of domestic
+peace. I always had fancied, from the books in my library, that the
+Christian religion was founded on brotherly love and pure equality. I
+may calculate ill; but, in my hasty estimate, damnation and dog-burial
+stand many removes from these.
+
+'Wait a little,' the Emperor continued: 'I wish to read in my library
+the two names that my father said are considered the two greatest in
+the West, and may vie nearly with the highest of our own country.'
+
+Whereupon did his majesty walk forth into his library; and my eyes
+followed his glorious figure as he passed through the doorway,
+traversing the _gallery of the peacocks_, so called because fifteen of
+those beautiful birds unite their tails in the centre of the ceiling,
+painted so naturally as to deceive the beholder, each carrying in his
+beak a different flower, the most beautiful in China, and bending his
+neck in such a manner as to present it to the passer below. Traversing
+this gallery, his majesty with his own hand drew aside the curtain of
+the library door. His majesty then entered; and, after some delay, he
+appeared with two long scrolls, and shook them gently over the
+fish-pond, in this dormitory of the sages. Suddenly there were so many
+splashes and plunges that I was aware of the gratification the fishes
+had received from the grubs in them, and the disappointment in the
+atoms of dust. His majesty, with his own right hand, drew the two
+scrolls trailing on the marble pavement, and pointing to them with his
+left, said:
+
+'Here they are; Nhu-Tong: Pa-Kong. Suppose they had died where the
+sorcerer's men held firm footing, would the priests have refused them
+burial?'
+
+I bowed my head at the question; for a single tinge of red, whether
+arising from such ultra-bestial cruelty in those who have the
+impudence to accuse the cannibals of theirs, or whether from abhorrent
+shame at the corroding disease of intractable superstition, hereditary
+in the European nations for fifteen centuries, a tinge of red came
+over the countenance of the emperor. When I raised up again my
+forehead, after such time as I thought would have removed all traces
+of it, still fixing my eyes on the ground, I answered:
+
+'O Emperor! the most zealous would have done worse. They would have
+prepared these great men for burial, and then have left them
+unburied.'
+
+_Emperor._ So! so! they would have embalmed them, in their reverence
+for meditation and genius, although their religion prohibits the
+ceremony of interring them.
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ Alas, sire, my meaning is far different. They would have
+dislocated their limbs with pulleys, broken them with hammers, and
+then have burnt the flesh off the bones. This is called an _act of
+faith_.
+
+_Emperor._ _Faith_, didst thou say? Tsing-Ti, thou speakest bad
+Chinese: thy native tongue is strangely occidentalized.
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ So they call it.
+
+_Emperor._ God hath not given unto all men the use of speech. Thou
+meanest to designate the ancient inhabitants of the country, not those
+who have lived there within the last three centuries.
+
+_Tsing-Ti._ The Spaniards and Italians (such are the names of the
+nations who are most under the influence of the spells) were never so
+barbarous and cruel as during the first of the last three centuries.
+The milder of them would have refused two cubits of earth to the two
+philosophers; and not only would have rejected them from the cemetery
+of the common citizens, but from the side of the common hangman; the
+most ignorant priest thinking himself much wiser, and the most
+enlightened prince not daring to act openly as one who could think
+otherwise. The Italians had formerly two illustrious men among them;
+the earlier was a poet, the later a philosopher; one was exiled, the
+other was imprisoned, and both were within a span of being burnt
+alive.
+
+_Emperor._ We have in Asia some odd religions and some barbarous
+princes, but neither are like the Europeans. In the name of God! do
+the fools think of their Christianity as our neighbours in Tartary
+(with better reason) think of their milk; that it will keep the longer
+for turning sour? or that it must be wholesome because it is heady?
+Swill it out, swill it out, say I, and char the tub.
+
+
+
+
+LOUIS XVIII AND TALLEYRAND
+
+
+_Louis._ M. Talleyrand! in common with all my family, all France, all
+Europe, I entertain the highest opinion of your abilities and
+integrity. You have convinced me that your heart, throughout the
+storms of the revolution, leaned constantly toward royalty; and that
+you permitted and even encouraged the caresses of the usurper, merely
+that you might strangle the more certainly and the more easily his
+new-born empire. After this, it is impossible to withhold my
+confidence from you.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Conscious of the ridicule his arrogance and presumption
+would incur, the usurper attempted to silence and stifle it with
+other and far different emotions. Half his cruelties were perpetrated
+that his vanity might not be wounded: for scorn is superseded by
+horror. Whenever he committed an action or uttered a sentiment which
+would render him an object of derision, he instantly gave vent to
+another which paralysed by its enormous wickedness. He would extirpate
+a nation to extinguish a smile. No man alive could deceive your
+majesty: the extremely few who would wish to do it, lie under that
+vigilant and piercing eye, which discerned in perspective from the
+gardens of Hartwell those of the Tuileries and Versailles. As joy
+arises from calamity, so spring arises from the bosom of winter,
+purely to receive your majesty, inviting the august descendant of
+their glorious founder to adorn and animate them again with his
+beneficent and gracious presence. The waters murmur, in voices
+half-suppressed, the reverential hymn of peace restored: the woods bow
+their heads....
+
+_Louis._ Talking of woods, I am apprehensive all the game has been
+woefully killed up in my forests.
+
+_Talleyrand._ A single year will replenish them.
+
+_Louis._ Meanwhile! M. Talleyrand! meanwhile!
+
+_Talleyrand._ Honest and active and watchful gamekeepers, in
+sufficient number, must be sought; and immediately.
+
+_Louis._ Alas! if the children of my nobility had been educated like
+the children of the English, I might have promoted some hundreds of
+them in this department. But their talents lie totally within the
+binding of their breviaries. Those of them who shoot, can shoot only
+with pistols; which accomplishment they acquired in England, that they
+might challenge any of the islanders who should happen to look with
+surprise or displeasure in their faces, expecting to be noticed by
+them in Paris, for the little hospitalities the proud young gentlemen,
+and their prouder fathers, were permitted to offer them in London and
+at their country-seats. What we call _reconnaissance_, they call
+_gratitude_, treating a recollector like a debtor. This is a want of
+courtesy, a defect in civilization, which it behoves us to supply. Our
+memories are as tenacious as theirs, and rather more eclectic.
+
+Since my return to my kingdom I have undergone great indignities from
+this unreflecting people. One Canova, a sculptor at Rome, visited
+Paris in the name of the Pope, and in quality of his envoy, and
+insisted on the cession of those statues and pictures which were
+brought into France by the French armies. He began to remove them out
+of the gallery: I told him I would never give my consent: he replied,
+he thought it sufficient that he had Wellington's. Therefore, the next
+time Wellington presented himself at the Tuileries, I turned my back
+upon him before the whole court. Let the English and their allies be
+aware, that I owe my restoration not to them, but partly to God and
+partly to Saint Louis. They and their armies are only brute
+instruments in the hands of my progenitor and intercessor.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Fortunate, that the conqueror of France bears no
+resemblance to the conqueror of Spain. Peterborough (I shudder at the
+idea) would have ordered a file of soldiers to seat your Majesty in
+your travelling carriage, and would have reinstalled you at Hartwell.
+The English people are so barbarous, that he would have done it not
+only with impunity, but with applause.
+
+_Louis._ But the sovereign of his country ... would the sovereign
+suffer it?
+
+_Talleyrand._ Alas! sire! Confronted with such men, what are
+sovereigns, when the people are the judges? Wellington can drill
+armies: Peterborough could marshal nations.
+
+_Louis._ Thank God! we have no longer any such pests on earth. The
+most consummate general of our days (such is Wellington) sees nothing
+one single inch beyond the field of battle; and he is so observant of
+discipline, that if I ordered him to be flogged in the presence of the
+allied armies, he would not utter a complaint nor shrug a shoulder; he
+would only write a dispatch.
+
+_Talleyrand._ But his soldiers would execute the Duke of Brunswick's
+manifesto, and Paris would sink into her catacombs. No man so little
+beloved was ever so well obeyed: and there is not a man in England, of
+either party, citizen or soldier, who would not rather die than see
+him disgraced. His firmness, his moderation, his probity, place him
+more opposite to Napoleon than he stood in the field of Waterloo.
+These are his lofty lines of Torres Vedras, which no enemy dares
+assail throughout their whole extent.
+
+_Louis._ M. Talleyrand! is it quite right to extol an enemy and an
+Englishman in this manner?
+
+_Talleyrand._ Pardon! Sire! I stand corrected. Forgive me a momentary
+fit of enthusiasm, in favour of those qualities by which, although an
+Englishman's, I am placed again in your majesty's service.
+
+_Louis._ We will now then go seriously to business. Wellington and the
+allied armies have interrupted and occupied us. I will instantly
+write, with my own hand, to the Marquis of Buckingham, desiring him to
+send me five hundred pheasants' eggs. I am restored to my throne, M.
+Talleyrand! but in what a condition! Not a pheasant on the table! I
+must throw myself on the mercy of foreigners, even for a pheasant!
+When I have written my letter, I shall be ready to converse with you
+on the business on which I desired your presence. [_Writes._] Here;
+read it. Give me your opinion: is not the note a model?
+
+_Talleyrand._ If the charms of language could be copied, it would be.
+But what is intended for delight may terminate in despair: and there
+are words which, unapproachable by distance and sublimity, may wither
+the laurels on the most exalted of literary brows.
+
+_Louis._ There is grace in that expression of yours, M. Talleyrand!
+there is really no inconsiderable grace in it. Seal my letter: direct
+it to the Marquis of Buckingham at Stowe. Wait: open it again: no, no:
+write another in your own name: instruct him how sure you are it will
+be agreeable to me, if he sends at the same time fifty or a hundred
+brace of the birds as well as the eggs. At present I am desolate. My
+heart is torn, M. Talleyrand! it is almost plucked out of my bosom. I
+have no other care, no other thought, day or night, but the happiness
+of my people. The allies, who have most shamefully overlooked the
+destitution of my kitchen, seem resolved to turn a deaf ear to its
+cries evermore; nay, even to render them shriller and shriller. The
+allies, I suspect, are resolved to execute the design of the
+mischievous Pitt.
+
+_Talleyrand._ May it please your majesty to inform me _which_ of them;
+for he formed a thousand, all mischievous, but greatly more
+mischievous to England than to France. Resolved to seize the sword, in
+his drunkenness, he seized it by the edge, and struck at us with the
+hilt, until he broke it off and until he himself was exhausted by loss
+of breath and of blood. We owe alike to him the energy of our armies,
+the bloody scaffolds of public safety, the Reign of Terror, the empire
+of usurpation, and finally, as the calm is successor to the tempest,
+and sweet fruit to bitter kernel, the blessing of your majesty's
+restoration. Excepting in this one event, he was mischievous to our
+country; but in all events, and in all undertakings, he was pernicious
+to his own. No man ever brought into the world such enduring evil; few
+men such extensive.
+
+_Louis._ His king ordered it. George III loved battles and blood.
+
+_Talleyrand._ But he was prudent in his appetite for them.
+
+_Louis._ He talked of peppering his people as I would talk of
+peppering a capon.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Having split it. His subjects cut up by his subjects
+were only capers to his leg of mutton. From none of his palaces and
+parks was there any view so rural, so composing to his spirits, as the
+shambles. When these were not fresh, the gibbet would do.
+
+I wish better luck to the pheasants' eggs than befell Mr. Pitt's
+designs. Not one brought forth anything.
+
+_Louis._ No: but he declared in the face of his Parliament, and of
+Europe, that he would insist on indemnity for the past and security
+for the future. These were his words. Now, all the money and other
+wealth the French armies levied in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and
+everywhere else, would scarcely be sufficient for this indemnity.
+
+_Talleyrand._ England shall never receive from us a tithe of that
+amount.
+
+_Louis._ A tithe of it! She may demand a quarter or a third, and leave
+us wondering at her moderation and forbearance.
+
+_Talleyrand._ The matter must be arranged immediately, before she has
+time for calculation or reflection. A new peace maddens England to the
+same paroxysm as a new war maddens France. She hath sent over hither
+her minister ... or rather her prime minister himself is come to
+transact all the business ... the most ignorant and most shortsighted
+man to be found in any station of any public office throughout the
+whole of Europe. He must be treated as her arbiter: we must talk to
+him of restoring her, of regenerating her, of preserving her, of
+guiding her, which (we must protest with our hands within our frills)
+he alone is capable of doing. We must enlarge on his generosity (and
+generous he indeed is), and there is nothing he will not concede.
+
+_Louis._ But if they do not come over in a week, we shall lose the
+season. I ought to be eating a pheasant-poult by the middle of July.
+Oh, but you were talking to me about the other matter, and perhaps the
+weightier of the two; ay, certainly. If this indemnity is paid to
+England, what becomes of our civil list, the dignity of my family and
+household?
+
+_Talleyrand._ I do assure your majesty, England shall never receive ...
+did I say a tithe?... I say she shall never receive a fiftieth of what
+she expended in the war against us. It would be out of all reason, and
+out of all custom in her to expect it. Indeed it would place her in
+almost as good a condition as ourselves. Even if she were beaten she
+could hardly hope _that_: she never in the last three centuries has
+demanded it when she was victorious. Of all the sufferers by the war,
+we shall be the best off.
+
+_Louis._ The English are calculators and traders.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Wild speculators, gamblers in trade, who hazard more
+ventures than their books can register. It will take England some
+years to cast up the amount of her losses.
+
+_Louis._ But she, in common with her allies, will insist on our ceding
+those provinces which my predecessor Louis XIV annexed to his kingdom.
+Be quite certain that nothing short of Alsace, Lorraine, and Franc
+Comte, will satisfy the German princes. They must restore the German
+language in those provinces: for languages are the only true
+boundaries of nations, and there will always be dissension where there
+is difference of tongue. We must likewise be prepared to surrender the
+remainder of the Netherlands; not indeed to England, who refused them
+in the reign of Elizabeth: she wants only Dunkirk, and Dunkirk she
+will have.
+
+_Talleyrand._ This seems reasonable: for which reason it must never
+be. Diplomacy, when she yields to such simple arguments as plain
+reason urges against her, loses her office, her efficacy, and her
+name.
+
+_Louis._ I would not surrender our conquests in Germany, if I could
+help it.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Nothing more easy. The Emperor Alexander may be
+persuaded that Germany united and entire, as she would then become,
+must be a dangerous rival to Russia.
+
+_Louis._ It appears to me that Poland will be more so, with her free
+institutions.
+
+_Talleyrand._ There is only one statesman in the whole number of those
+assembled at Paris, who believes that her institutions will continue
+free; and he would rather they did not; but he stipulates for it, to
+gratify and mystify the people of England.
+
+_Louis._ I see this clearly. I have a great mind to send Blacas over
+to Stowe. I can trust to him to look to the crates and coops, and to
+see that the pheasants have enough of air and water, and that the
+Governor of Calais finds a commodious place for them to roost in,
+forbidding the drums to beat and disturb them, evening or morning. The
+next night, according to my calculation, they repose at Montreuil. I
+must look at them before they are let loose. I cannot well imagine why
+the public men employed by England are usually, indeed constantly so
+inferior in abilities to those of France, Prussia, Austria, and
+Russia. What say you, M. Talleyrand? I do not mean about the
+pheasants; I mean about the envoys.
+
+_Talleyrand._ It can only be that I have considered the subject more
+frequently and attentively than suited the avocations of your majesty,
+that the reason comes out before me clearly and distinctly. The prime
+ministers, in all these countries, are independent, and uncontrolled
+in the choice of agents. A prime minister in France may perhaps be
+willing to promote the interests of his own family; and hence he may
+appoint from it one unworthy of the place. In regard to other
+families, he cares little or nothing about them, knowing that his
+power lies in the palace, and not in the club-room. Whereas in England
+he must conciliate the great families, the hereditary dependants of
+his faction, Whig or Tory. Hence even the highest commands have been
+conferred on such ignorant and worthless men as the Duke of York and
+the Earl of Chatham, although the minister was fully aware that the
+honour of his nation was tarnished, and that its safety was in
+jeopardy, by such appointments. Meanwhile he kept his seat however,
+and fed from it his tame creatures in the cub.
+
+_Louis._ Do you apprehend any danger (talking of cubs) that my
+pheasants will be bruised against the wooden bars, or suffer by
+sea-sickness? I would not command my bishops to offer up public
+prayers against such contingencies: for people must never have
+positive evidence that the prayers of the Church can possibly be
+ineffectual: and we cannot pray for pheasants as we pray for fine
+weather, by the barometer. We must drop it. Now go on with the others,
+if you have done with England.
+
+_Talleyrand._ A succession of intelligent men rules Prussia, Russia,
+and Austria; because these three are economical, and must get their
+bread by creeping, day after day, through the hedges next to them, and
+by filching a sheaf or two, early and late, from cottager or small
+farmer; that is to say, from free states and petty princes. Prussia,
+like a mongrel, would fly at the legs of Austria and Russia, catching
+them with the sack upon their shoulders, unless they untied it and
+tossed a morsel to her. These great powers take especial care to
+impose a protective duty on intellect; to let none enter the country,
+and none leave it, without a passport. Their diplomatists are as
+clever and conciliatory as those of England are ignorant and
+repulsive, who, while they offer an uncounted sum of secret-service
+money with the left hand, give a sounding slap on the face with the
+right.
+
+_Louis._ We, by adopting a contrary policy, gain more information,
+raise more respect, inspire more awe, and exercise more authority. The
+weightiest of our disbursements are smiles and flatteries, with a
+ribbon and a cross at the end of them.
+
+But, between the Duke of York and the Earl of Chatham, I must confess,
+I find very little difference.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Some, however. The one was only drunk all the evening
+and all the night; the other was only asleep all the day. The
+accumulated fogs of Walcheren seemed to concentrate in his brain,
+puffing out at intervals just sufficient to affect with typhus and
+blindness four thousand soldiers. A cake of powder rusted their
+musket-pans, which they were too weak to open and wipe. Turning round
+upon their scanty and mouldy straw, they beheld their bayonets piled
+together against the green dripping wall of the chamber, which neither
+bayonet nor soldier was ever to leave again.
+
+_Louis._ We suffer by the presence of the allied armies in our
+capital: but we shall soon be avenged: for the English minister in
+another fortnight will return and remain at home.
+
+_Talleyrand._ England was once so infatuated as to give up Malta to
+us, although fifty Gibraltars would be of inferior value to her.
+Napoleon laughed at her: she was angry: she began to suspect she had
+been duped and befooled: and she broke her faith.
+
+_Louis._ For the first time, M. Talleyrand, and with a man who never
+had any.
+
+_Talleyrand._ We shall now induce her to evacuate Sicily, in violation
+of her promises to the people of that island. Faith, having lost her
+virginity, braves public opinion, and never blushes more.
+
+_Louis._ Sicily is the key to India, Egypt is the lock.
+
+_Talleyrand._ What, if I induce the minister to restore to us
+Pondicherry?
+
+_Louis._ M. Talleyrand! you have done great things, and without
+boasting. Whenever you do boast, let it be that you will perform only
+the thing which is possible. The English know well enough what it is
+to allow us a near standing-place anywhere. If they permit a Frenchman
+to plant one foot in India, it will upset all Asia before the other
+touches the ground. It behoves them to prohibit a single one of us
+from ever landing on those shores. Improbable as it is that a man
+uniting to the same degree as Hyder-Ali did political and military
+genius, will appear in the world again for centuries; most of the
+princes are politic, some are brave, and perhaps no few are credulous.
+While England is confiding in our loyalty, we might expatiate on her
+perfidy, and our tears fall copiously on the broken sceptre in the
+dust of Delhi. Ignorant and stupid as the king's ministers may be, the
+East India Company is well-informed on its interests, and alert in
+maintaining them. I wonder that a republic so wealthy and so wise
+should be supported on the bosom of royalty. Believe me, her merchants
+will take alarm, and arouse the nation.
+
+_Talleyrand._ We must do all we have to do, while the nation is
+feasting and unsober. It will awaken with sore eyes and stiff limbs.
+
+_Louis._ Profuse as the English are, they will never cut the bottom of
+their purses.
+
+_Talleyrand._ They have already done it. Whenever I look toward the
+shores of England, I fancy I descry the Danaids there, toiling at the
+replenishment of their perforated vases, and all the Nereids leering
+and laughing at them in the mischievous fullness of their hearts.
+
+_Louis._ Certainly she can do me little harm at present, and for
+several years to come: but we must always have an eye upon her, and be
+ready to assert our superiority.
+
+_Talleyrand._ We feel it. In fifty years, by abstaining from war, we
+may discharge our debt and replenish our arsenals. England will never
+shake off the heavy old man from her shoulders. Overladen and morose,
+she will be palsied in the hand she unremittingly holds up against
+Ireland. Proud and perverse, she runs into domestic warfare as blindly
+as France runs into foreign: and she refuses to her subject what she
+surrenders to her enemy.
+
+_Louis._ Her whole policy tends to my security.
+
+_Talleyrand._ We must now consider how your majesty may enjoy it at
+home, all the remainder of your reign.
+
+_Louis._ Indeed you must, M. Talleyrand! Between you and me be it
+spoken, I trust but little my loyal people; their loyalty being so
+ebullient, that it often overflows the vessel which should contain it,
+and is a perquisite of scouts and scullions. I do not wish to offend
+you.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Really I can see no other sure method of containing and
+controlling them, than by bastions and redoubts, the whole circuit of
+the city.
+
+_Louis._ M. Talleyrand! I will not doubt your sincerity: I am
+confident you have reserved the whole of it for my service; and there
+are large arrears. But M. Talleyrand! such an attempt would be
+resisted by any people which had ever heard of liberty, and much more
+by a people which had ever dreamt of enjoying it.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Forts are built in all directions above Genoa.
+
+_Louis._ Yes; by her conqueror, not by her king.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Your majesty comes with both titles, and rules, like
+your great progenitor,
+
+      Et par droit de conquete et par droit de naissance.
+
+_Louis._ True; my arms have subdued the rebellious; but not without
+great firmness and great valour on my part, and some assistance
+(however tardy) on the part of my allies. Conquerors must conciliate:
+fatherly kings must offer digestible spoon-meat to their
+ill-conditioned children. There would be sad screaming and kicking
+were I to swaddle mine in stone-work. No, M. Talleyrand; if ever Paris
+is surrounded by fortifications to coerce the populace, it must be the
+work of some democrat, some aspirant to supreme power, who resolves to
+maintain it, exercising a domination too hazardous for legitimacy. I
+will only scrape from the chambers the effervescence of superficial
+letters and corrosive law.
+
+_Talleyrand._ Sire! under all their governments the good people of
+Paris have submitted to the _octroi_. Now, all complaints, physical or
+political, arise from the stomach. Were it decorous in a subject to
+ask a question (however humbly) of his king, I would beg permission to
+inquire of your majesty, in your wisdom, whether a bar across the
+shoulders is less endurable than a bar across the palate. Sire! the
+French can bear anything now they have the honour of bowing before
+your majesty.
+
+_Louis._ The compliment is in a slight degree (a _very_ slight degree)
+ambiguous, and (accept in good part my criticism, M. Talleyrand) not
+turned with your usual grace.
+
+Announce it as my will and pleasure that the Duc de Blacas do
+superintend the debarkation of the pheasants; and I pray God, M. de
+Talleyrand, to have you in His holy keeping.
+
+
+
+
+OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL
+
+
+_Sir Oliver._ How many saints and Sions dost carry under thy cloak,
+lad? Ay, what dost groan at? What art about to be delivered of? Troth,
+it must be a vast and oddly-shapen piece of roguery which findeth no
+issue at such capacious quarters. I never thought to see thy face
+again. Prithee what, in God's name, hath brought thee to Ramsey, fair
+Master Oliver?
+
+_Oliver._ In His name verily I come, and upon His errand; and the love
+and duty I bear unto my godfather and uncle have added wings, in a
+sort, unto my zeal.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Take 'em off thy zeal and dust thy conscience with 'em.
+I have heard an account of a saint, one Phil Neri, who in the midst of
+his devotions was lifted up several yards from the ground. Now I do
+suspect, Nol, thou wilt finish by being a saint of his order; and
+nobody will promise or wish thee the luck to come down on thy feet
+again, as he did. So! because a rabble of fanatics at Huntingdon have
+equipped thee as their representative in Parliament, thou art free of
+all men's houses, forsooth! I would have thee to understand, sirrah,
+that thou art fitter for the House they have chaired thee unto than
+for mine. Yet I do not question but thou wilt be as troublesome and
+unruly there as here. Did I not turn thee out of Hinchinbrook when
+thou wert scarcely half the rogue thou art latterly grown up to? And
+yet wert thou immeasurably too big a one for it to hold.
+
+_Oliver._ It repenteth me, O mine uncle! that in my boyhood and youth
+the Lord had not touched me.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Touch thee! thou wast too dirty a dog by half.
+
+_Oliver._ Yes, sorely doth it vex and harrow me that I was then of ill
+conditions, and that my name ... even your godson's ... stank in your
+nostrils.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Ha! polecat! it was not thy name, although bad enough,
+that stank first; in my house, at least. But perhaps there are worse
+maggots in stauncher mummeries.
+
+_Oliver._ Whereas in the bowels of your charity you then vouchsafed me
+forgiveness, so the more confidently may I crave it now in this my
+urgency.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ More confidently! What! hast got more confidence? Where
+didst find it? I never thought the wide circle of the world had within
+it another jot for thee. Well, Nol, I see no reason why shouldst stand
+before me with thy hat off, in the courtyard and in the sun, counting
+the stones in the pavement. Thou hast some knavery in thy head, I
+warrant thee. Come, put on thy beaver.
+
+_Oliver._ Uncle Sir Oliver! I know my duty too well to stand covered
+in the presence of so worshipful a kinsman, who, moreover, hath
+answered at baptism for my good behaviour.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ God forgive me for playing the fool before Him so
+presumptuously and unprofitably! Nobody shall ever take me in again to
+do such an absurd and wicked thing. But thou hast some left-handed
+business in the neighbourhood, no doubt, or thou wouldst never more
+have come under my archway.
+
+_Oliver._ These are hard times for them that seek peace. We are clay
+in the hands of the potter.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ I wish your potters sought nothing costlier, and dug in
+their own grounds for it. Most of us, as thou sayest, have been upon
+the wheel of these artificers; and little was left but rags when we
+got off. Sanctified folks are the cleverest skinners in all
+Christendom, and their Jordan tans and constringes us to the
+avoirdupois of mummies.
+
+_Oliver._ The Lord hath chosen His own vessels.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ I wish heartily He would pack them off, and send them
+anywhere on ass-back or cart (cart preferably), to rid our country of
+'em. But now again to the point: for if we fall among the potsherds we
+shall hobble on but lamely. Since thou art raised unto a high command
+in the army, and hast a dragoon to hold thy solid and stately piece of
+horse-flesh, I cannot but take it into my fancy that thou hast some
+commission of array or disarray to execute hereabout.
+
+_Oliver._ With a sad sinking of spirit, to the pitch well-nigh of
+swounding, and with a sight of bitter tears, which will not be put
+back nor stayed in any wise, as you bear testimony unto me, Uncle
+Oliver!
+
+_Sir Oliver._ No tears, Master Nol, I beseech thee! Wet days, among
+those of thy kidney, portend the letting of blood. What dost whimper
+at?
+
+_Oliver._ That I, that I, of all men living, should be put upon this
+work!
+
+_Sir Oliver._ What work, prithee?
+
+_Oliver._ I am sent hither by them who (the Lord in His loving
+kindness having pity, and mercy upon these poor realms) do, under His
+right hand, administer unto our necessities, and righteously command
+us, _by the aforesaid as aforesaid_ (thus runs the commission), hither
+am I deputed (woe is me!) to levy certain fines in this county, or
+shire, on such as the Parliament in its wisdom doth style malignants.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ If there is anything left about the house, never be
+over-nice: dismiss thy modesty and lay hands upon it. In this county
+or shire, we let go the civet-bag to save the weazon.
+
+_Oliver._ O mine uncle and godfather! be witness for me.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Witness for thee! not I indeed. But I would rather be
+witness than surety, lad, where thou art docketed.
+
+_Oliver._ From the most despised doth the Lord ever choose His
+servants.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Then, faith! thou art His first butler.
+
+_Oliver._ Serving Him with humility, I may peradventure be found
+worthy of advancement.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Ha! now if any devil speaks from within thee, it is thy
+own: he does not snuffle: to my ears he speaks plain English. Worthy
+or unworthy of advancement, thou wilt attain it. Come in; at least for
+an hour's rest. Formerly thou knewest the means of setting the
+heaviest heart afloat, let it be sticking in what mud-bank it might:
+and my wet dock at Ramsey is pretty near as commodious as that over
+yonder at Hinchinbrook was erewhile. Times are changed, and places
+too! yet the cellar holds good.
+
+_Oliver._ Many and great thanks! But there are certain men on the
+other side of the gate, who might take it ill if I turn away and
+neglect them.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Let them enter also, or eat their victuals where they
+are.
+
+_Oliver._ They have proud stomachs: they are recusants.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Recusants of what? of beef and ale? We have claret, I
+trust, for the squeamish, if they are above the condition of
+tradespeople. But of course you leave no person of higher quality in
+the outer court.
+
+_Oliver._ Vain are they and worldly, although such wickedness is the
+most abominable in their cases. Idle folks are fond of sitting in the
+sun: I would not forbid them this indulgence.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ But who are they?
+
+_Oliver._ The Lord knows. Maybe priests, deacons, and such-like.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Then, sir, they are gentlemen. And the commission you
+bear from the parliamentary thieves, to sack and pillage my
+mansion-house, is far less vexatious and insulting to me, than your
+behaviour in keeping them so long at my stable-door. With your
+permission, or without it, I shall take the liberty to invite them to
+partake of my poor hospitality.
+
+_Oliver._ But, Uncle Sir Oliver! there are rules and ordinances
+whereby it must be manifested that they lie under displeasure ... not
+mine ... not mine ... but my milk must not flow for them.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ You may enter the house or remain where you are, at your
+option; I make my visit to these gentlemen immediately, for I am tired
+of standing. If thou ever reachest my age,[12] Oliver! (but God will
+not surely let this be) thou wilt know that the legs become at last of
+doubtful fidelity in the service of the body.
+
+_Oliver._ Uncle Sir Oliver! now that, as it seemeth, you have been
+taking a survey of the courtyard and its contents, am I indiscreet in
+asking your worship whether I acted not prudently in keeping the
+_men-at-belly_ under the custody of the _men-at-arms_? This
+pestilence, like unto one I remember to have read about in some poetry
+of Master Chapman's,[13] began with the dogs and mules, and afterwards
+crope up into the breasts of men.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ I call such treatment barbarous; their troopers will not
+let the gentlemen come with me into the house, but insist on sitting
+down to dinner with them. And yet, having brought them out of their
+colleges, these brutal half-soldiers must know that they are fellows.
+
+_Oliver._ Yea, of a truth are they, and fellows well met. Out of their
+superfluities they give nothing to the Lord or His saints; no, not
+even stirrup or girth, wherewith we may mount our horses and go forth
+against those who thirst for our blood. Their eyes are fat, and they
+raise not up their voices to cry for our deliverance.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Art mad? What stirrups and girths are hung up in
+college halls and libraries? For what are these gentlemen brought
+hither?
+
+_Oliver._ They have elected me, with somewhat short of unanimity, not
+indeed to be one of themselves, for of that distinction I acknowledge
+and deplore my unworthiness, nor indeed to be a poor scholar, to
+which, unless it be a very poor one, I have almost as small
+pretension, but simply to undertake a while the heavier office of
+bursar for them; to cast up their accounts; to overlook the scouring
+of their plate; and to lay a list thereof, with a few specimens,
+before those who fight the fight of the Lord, that His saints, seeing
+the abasement of the proud and the chastisement of worldly-mindedness,
+may rejoice.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ I am grown accustomed to such saints and such
+rejoicings. But, little could I have thought, threescore years ago,
+that the hearty and jovial people of England would ever join in so
+filching and stabbing a jocularity. Even the petticoated torchbearers
+from rotten Rome, who lighted the faggots in Smithfield some years
+before, if more blustering and cocksy, were less bitter and vulturine.
+They were all intolerant, but they were not all hypocritical; they had
+not always '_the Lord_' in their mouth.
+
+_Oliver._ According to their own notions, they might have had, at an
+outlay of a farthing.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Art facetious, Nol? for it is as hard to find that out
+as anything else in thee, only it makes thee look, at times, a little
+the grimmer and sourer.
+
+But, regarding these gentlemen from Cambridge. Not being such as, by
+their habits and professions, could have opposed you in the field, I
+hold it unmilitary and unmanly to put them under any restraint, and to
+lead them away from their peaceful and useful occupations.
+
+_Oliver._ I always bow submissively before the judgment of mine
+elders; and the more reverentially when I know them to be endowed with
+greater wisdom, and guided by surer experience than myself. Alas!
+these collegians not only are strong men, as you may readily see if
+you measure them round the waistband, but boisterous and pertinacious
+challengers. When we, who live in the fear of God, exhorted them
+earnestly unto peace and brotherly love, they held us in derision.
+Thus far indeed it might be an advantage to us, teaching us
+forbearance and self-seeking, but we cannot countenance the evil
+spirit moving them thereunto. Their occupations, as you remark most
+wisely, might have been useful and peaceful, and had formerly been
+so. Why then did they gird the sword of strife about their loins
+against the children of Israel? By their own declaration, not only are
+they our enemies, but enemies the most spiteful and untractable. When
+I came quietly, lawfully, and in the name of the Lord, for their
+plate, what did they? Instead of surrendering it like honest and
+conscientious men, they attacked me and my people on horseback, with
+syllogisms and enthymemes, and the Lord knows with what other such
+gimcracks; such venomous and rankling old weapons as those who have
+the fear of God before their eyes are fain to lay aside. Learning
+should not make folks mockers ... should not make folks malignants ...
+should not harden their hearts. We came with bowels for them.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ That ye did! and bowels which would have stowed within
+them all the plate on board of a galleon. If tankards and
+wassail-bowls had stuck between your teeth, you would not have felt
+them.
+
+_Oliver._ We did feel them; some at least: perhaps we missed too many.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ How can these learned societies raise the money you
+exact from them, beside plate? dost think they can create and coin it?
+
+_Oliver._ In Cambridge, Uncle Sir Oliver, and more especially in that
+college named in honour (as they profanely call it) of the Blessed
+Trinity, there are great conjurors or chemists. Now the said conjurors
+or chemists not only do possess the faculty of making the precious
+metals out of old books and parchments, but out of the skulls of young
+lordlings and gentlefolks, which verily promise less. And this they
+bring about by certain gold wires fastened at the top of certain caps.
+Of said metals, thus devilishly converted, do they make a vain and
+sumptuous use; so that, finally, they are afraid of cutting their lips
+with glass. But indeed it is high time to call them.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ Well ... at last thou hast some mercy.
+
+_Oliver._ [_Aloud._] Cuffsatan Ramsbottom! Sadsoul Kiteclaw! advance!
+Let every gown, together with the belly that is therein, mount up
+behind you and your comrades in good fellowship. And forasmuch as you
+at the country places look to bit and bridle, it seemeth fair and
+equitable that ye should leave unto them, in full propriety, the
+mancipular office of discharging the account. If there be any spare
+beds at the inns, allow the doctors and dons to occupy the same ...
+they being used to lie softly; and be not urgent that more than three
+lie in each ... they being mostly corpulent. Let pass quietly and
+unreproved any light bubble of pride or impetuosity, seeing that they
+have not always been accustomed to the service of guards and ushers.
+The Lord be with ye!... Slow trot! And now, Uncle Sir Oliver, I can
+resist no longer your loving kindness. I kiss you, my godfather, in
+heart's and soul's duty; and most humbly and gratefully do I accept of
+your invitation to dine and lodge with you, albeit the least worthy of
+your family and kinsfolk. After the refreshment of needful food, more
+needful prayer, and that sleep which descendeth on the innocent like
+the dew of Hermon, to-morrow at daybreak I proceed on my journey
+Londonward.
+
+_Sir Oliver._ [_Aloud._] Ho, there! [_To a servant._] Let dinner be
+prepared in the great dining-room; let every servant be in waiting,
+each in full livery; let every delicacy the house affords be placed
+upon the table in due courses; arrange all the plate upon the
+sideboard: a gentleman by descent ... a stranger ... has claimed my
+hospitality. [_Servant goes._]
+
+Sir! you are now master. Grant me dispensation, I entreat you, from a
+further attendance on you.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[12] Sir Oliver, who died in 1655, aged ninety-three, might, by
+possibility, have seen all the men of great genius, excepting Chaucer
+and Roger Bacon, whom England had produced from its first discovery
+down to our own times, Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, and
+the prodigious shoal that attended these leviathans through the
+intellectual deep. Newton was but in his thirteenth year at Sir
+Oliver's death. Raleigh, Spenser, Hooker, Eliot, Selden, Taylor,
+Hobbes, Sidney, Shaftesbury, and Locke, were existing in his lifetime;
+and several more, who may be compared with the smaller of these.
+
+[13] Chapman's _Homer_, first book.
+
+
+
+
+THE COUNT GLEICHEM: THE COUNTESS: THEIR CHILDREN, AND ZAIDA.
+
+
+_Countess._ Ludolph! my beloved Ludolph! do we meet again? Ah! I am
+jealous of these little ones, and of the embraces you are giving them.
+
+Why sigh, my sweet husband?
+
+Come back again, Wilhelm! Come back again, Annabella! How could you
+run away? Do you think you can see better out of the corner?
+
+_Annabella._ Is this indeed our papa? What, in the name of mercy, can
+have given him so dark a colour? I hope I shall never be like that;
+and yet everybody tells me I am very like papa.
+
+_Wilhelm._ Do not let her plague you, papa; but take me between your
+knees (I am too old to sit upon them), and tell me all about the
+Turks, and how you ran away from them.
+
+_Countess._ Wilhelm! if your father had run away from the enemy, we
+should not have been deprived of him two whole years.
+
+_Wilhelm._ I am hardly such a child as to suppose that a Christian
+knight would run away from a rebel Turk in battle. But even Christians
+are taken, somehow, by their tricks and contrivances, and their dog
+Mahomet. Beside, you know you yourself told me, with tear after tear,
+and scolding me for mine, that papa was taken by them.
+
+_Annabella._ Neither am I, who am only one year younger, so foolish as
+to believe there is any dog Mahomet. And, if there were, we have dogs
+that are better and faithfuller and stronger.
+
+_Wilhelm._ [_To his father._] I can hardly help laughing to think what
+curious fancies girls have about Mahomet. We know that Mahomet is a
+dog-spirit with three horsetails.
+
+_Annabella._ Papa! I am glad to see you smile at Wilhelm. I do assure
+you he is not half so bad a boy as he was, although he did point at
+me, and did tell you some mischief.
+
+_Count._ I ought to be indeed most happy at seeing you all again.
+
+_Annabella._ And so you are. Don't pretend to look grave now. I very
+easily find you out. I often look grave when I am the happiest. But
+forth it bursts at last: there is no room for it in tongue, or eyes,
+or anywhere.
+
+_Count._ And so, my little angel, you begin to recollect me.
+
+_Annabella._ At first I used to dream of papa, but at last I forgot
+how to dream of him: and then I cried, but at last I left off crying.
+And then, papa, who could come to me in my sleep, seldom came again.
+
+_Count._ Why do you now draw back from me, Annabella?
+
+_Annabella._ Because you really are so very very brown: just like
+those ugly Turks who sawed the pines in the saw-pit under the wood,
+and who refused to drink wine in the heat of summer, when Wilhelm and
+I brought it to them. Do not be angry; we did it only once.
+
+_Wilhelm._ Because one of them stamped and frightened her when the
+other seemed to bless us.
+
+_Count._ Are they still living?
+
+_Countess._ One of them is.
+
+_Wilhelm._ The fierce one.
+
+_Count._ We will set him free, and wish it were the other.
+
+_Annabella._ Papa! I am glad you are come back without your spurs.
+
+_Countess._ Hush, child, hush.
+
+_Annabella._ Why, mamma? Do not you remember how they tore my frock
+when I clung to him at parting? Now I begin to think of him again: I
+lose everything between that day and this.
+
+_Countess._ The girl's idle prattle about the spurs has pained you:
+always too sensitive; always soon hurt, though never soon offended.
+
+_Count._ O God! O my children! O my wife! it is not the loss of spurs
+I now must blush for.
+
+_Annabella._ Indeed, papa, you never can blush at all, until you cut
+that horrid beard off.
+
+_Countess._ Well may you say, my own Ludolph, as you do; for most
+gallant was your bearing in the battle.
+
+_Count._ Ah! why was it ever fought?
+
+_Countess._ Why were most battles? But they may lead to glory even
+through slavery.
+
+_Count._ And to shame and sorrow.
+
+_Countess._ Have I lost the little beauty I possessed, that you hold
+my hand so languidly, and turn away your eyes when they meet mine? It
+was not so formerly ... unless when first we loved.
+
+That one kiss restores to me all my lost happiness.
+
+Come; the table is ready: there are your old wines upon it: you must
+want that refreshment.
+
+_Count._ Go, my sweet children! you must eat your supper before I do.
+
+_Countess._ Run into your own room for it.
+
+_Annabella._ I will not go until papa has patted me again on the
+shoulder, now I begin to remember it. I do not much mind the beard: I
+grow used to it already: but indeed I liked better to stroke and pat
+the smooth laughing cheek, with my arm across the neck behind. It is
+very pleasant even so. Am I not grown? I can put the whole length of
+my finger between your lips.
+
+_Count._ And now, will not _you_ come, Wilhelm?
+
+_Wilhelm._ I am too tall and too heavy: she is but a child.
+[_Whispers._] Yet I think, papa, I am hardly so much of a man but you
+may kiss me over again ... if you will not let her see it.
+
+_Countess._ My dears! why do not you go to your supper?
+
+_Annabella._ Because he has come to show us what Turks are like.
+
+_Wilhelm._ Do not be angry with her. Do not look down, papa!
+
+_Count._ Blessings on you both, sweet children!
+
+_Wilhelm._ We may go now.
+
+_Countess._ And now, Ludolph, come to the table, and tell me all your
+sufferings.
+
+_Count._ The worst begin here.
+
+_Countess._ Ungrateful Ludolph!
+
+_Count._ I am he: that is my name in full.
+
+_Countess._ You have then ceased to love me?
+
+_Count._ Worse; if worse can be: I have ceased to deserve your love.
+
+_Countess._ No: Ludolph hath spoken falsely for once; but Ludolph is
+not false.
+
+_Count._ I have forfeited all I ever could boast of, your affection
+and my own esteem. Away with caresses! Repulse me, abjure me; hate,
+and never pardon me. Let the abject heart lie untorn by one remorse.
+Forgiveness would split and shiver what slavery but abased.
+
+_Countess._ Again you embrace me; and yet tell me never to pardon you!
+O inconsiderate man! O idle deviser of impossible things!
+
+But you have not introduced to me those who purchased your freedom, or
+who achieved it by their valour.
+
+_Count._ Mercy! O God!
+
+_Countess._ Are they dead? Was the plague abroad.
+
+_Count._ I will not dissemble ... such was never my intention ... that
+my deliverance was brought about by means of----
+
+_Countess._ Say it at once ... a lady.
+
+_Count._ It was.
+
+_Countess._ She fled with you.
+
+_Count._ She did.
+
+_Countess._ And have you left her, sir?
+
+_Count._ Alas! alas! I have not; and never can.
+
+_Countess._ Now come to my arms, brave, honourable Ludolph! Did I not
+say thou couldst not be ungrateful? Where, where is she who has given
+me back my husband?
+
+_Count._ Dare I utter it! in this house.
+
+_Countess._ Call the children.
+
+_Count._ No; they must not affront her: they must not even stare at
+her: other eyes, not theirs, must stab me to the heart.
+
+_Countess._ They shall bless her; we will all. Bring her in.
+
+[_Zaida is led in by the Count._]
+
+_Countess._ We three have stood silent long enough: and much there
+may be on which we will for ever keep silence. But, sweet young
+creature! can I refuse my protection, or my love, to the preserver of
+my husband? Can I think it a crime, or even a folly, to have pitied
+the brave and the unfortunate? to have pressed (but alas! that it ever
+should have been so here!) a generous heart to a tender one?
+
+Why do you begin to weep?
+
+_Zaida._ Under your kindness, O lady, lie the sources of these tears.
+
+But why has he left us? He might help me to say many things which I
+want to say.
+
+_Countess._ Did he never tell you he was married?
+
+_Zaida._ He did indeed.
+
+_Countess._ That he had children?
+
+_Zaida._ It comforted me a little to hear it.
+
+_Countess._ Why? prithee why?
+
+_Zaida._ When I was in grief at the certainty of holding but the
+second place in his bosom, I thought I could at least go and play with
+them, and win perhaps their love.
+
+_Countess._ According to our religion, a man must have only one wife.
+
+_Zaida._ That troubled me again. But the dispenser of your religion,
+who binds and unbinds, does for sequins or services what our Prophet
+does purely through kindness.
+
+_Countess._ We can love but one.
+
+_Zaida._ We indeed can love only one: but men have large hearts.
+
+_Countess._ Unhappy girl!
+
+_Zaida._ The very happiest in the world.
+
+_Countess._ Ah! inexperienced creature!
+
+_Zaida._ The happier for that perhaps.
+
+_Countess._ But the sin!
+
+_Zaida._ Where sin is, there must be sorrow: and I, my sweet sister,
+feel none whatever. Even when tears fall from my eyes, they fall only
+to cool my breast: I would not have one the fewer: they all are for
+him: whatever he does, whatever he causes, is dear to me.
+
+_Countess._ [_Aside._] This is too much. I could hardly endure to have
+him so beloved by another, even at the extremity of the earth. [_To
+Zaida._] You would not lead him into perdition?
+
+_Zaida._ I have led him (Allah be praised!) to his wife and children.
+It was for those I left my father. He whom we love might have stayed
+with me at home: but there he would have been only half happy, even
+had he been free. I could not often let him see me through the
+lattice; I was too afraid; and I dared only once let fall the
+water-melon; it made such a noise in dropping and rolling on the
+terrace: but, another day, when I had pared it nicely, and had swathed
+it up well among vine-leaves, dipped in sugar and sherbet, I was quite
+happy. I leaped and danced to have been so ingenious. I wonder what
+creature could have found and eaten it. I wish he were here, that I
+might ask him if he knew.
+
+_Countess._ He quite forgot home then!
+
+_Zaida._ When we could speak together at all, he spoke perpetually of
+those whom the calamity of war had separated from him.
+
+_Countess._ It appears that you could comfort him in his distress, and
+did it willingly.
+
+_Zaida._ It is delightful to kiss the eye-lashes of the beloved: is it
+not? but never so delightful as when fresh tears are on them.
+
+_Countess._ And even this too? you did this?
+
+_Zaida._ Fifty times.
+
+_Countess._ Insupportable!
+
+He often then spoke about me?
+
+_Zaida._ As sure as ever we met: for he knew I loved him the better
+when I heard him speak so fondly.
+
+_Countess._ [_To herself._] Is this possible? It may be ... of the
+absent, the unknown, the unfeared, the unsuspected.
+
+_Zaida._ We shall now be so happy, all three.
+
+_Countess._ How can we all live together?
+
+_Zaida._ Now he is here, is there no bond of union?
+
+_Countess._ Of union? of union? [_Aside_.] Slavery is a frightful
+thing! slavery for life, too! And she released him from it. What then?
+Impossible! impossible! [_To Zaida._] We are rich....
+
+_Zaida._ I am glad to hear it. Nothing anywhere goes on well without
+riches.
+
+_Countess._ We can provide for you amply....
+
+_Zaida._ Our husband....
+
+_Countess._ _Our!... husband!..._
+
+_Zaida._ Yes, yes; I know he is yours too; and you, being the elder
+and having children, are lady above all. He can tell you how little I
+want: a bath, a slave, a dish of pilau, one jonquil every morning, as
+usual; nothing more. But he must swear that he has kissed it first.
+No, he need not swear it; I may always see him do it, now.
+
+_Countess._ [_Aside._] She agonizes me. [_To Zaida._] Will you never
+be induced to return to your own country? Could not Ludolph persuade
+you?
+
+_Zaida._ He who could once persuade me anything, may now command me
+everything: when he says I must go, I go. But he knows what awaits me.
+
+_Countess._ No, child! he never shall say it.
+
+_Zaida._ Thanks, lady! eternal thanks! The breaking of his word would
+break my heart; and better _that_ break first. Let the command come
+from you, and not from him.
+
+_Countess._ [_Calling aloud._] Ludolph! Ludolph! hither! Kiss the hand
+I present to you, and never forget it is the hand of a preserver.
+
+
+
+
+THE PENTAMERON;
+
+OR,
+
+INTERVIEWS OF MESSER GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
+AND MESSER FRANCESCO PETRARCA
+
+WHEN
+
+SAID MESSER GIOVANNI LAY INFIRM AT HIS VILLETTA
+HARD BY CERTALDO;
+
+AFTER WHICH THEY SAW NOT EACH OTHER ON OUR SIDE
+OF PARADISE.
+
+
+
+
+FIRST DAY'S INTERVIEW
+
+
+_Boccaccio._ Who is he that entered, and now steps so silently and
+softly, yet with a foot so heavy it shakes my curtains?
+
+Frate Biagio! can it possibly be you?
+
+No more physic for me, nor masses neither, at present.
+
+Assunta! Assuntina! who is it?
+
+_Assunta._ I cannot say, Signor Padrone! he puts his finger in the
+dimple of his chin, and smiles to make me hold my tongue.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Fra Biagio! are you come from Samminiato for this? You
+need not put your finger there. We want no secrets. The girl knows her
+duty and does her business. I have slept well, and wake better.
+[_Raising himself up a little._]
+
+Why? who are you? It makes my eyes ache to look aslant over the
+sheets; and I cannot get to sit quite upright so conveniently; and I
+must not have the window-shutters opened, they tell me.
+
+_Petrarca._ Dear Giovanni! have you then been very unwell?
+
+_Boccaccio._ O that sweet voice! and this fat friendly hand of thine,
+Francesco!
+
+Thou hast distilled all the pleasantest flowers, and all the
+wholesomest herbs of spring, into my breast already.
+
+What showers we have had this April, ay! How could you come along such
+roads? If the devil were my labourer, I would make him work upon these
+of Certaldo. He would have little time and little itch for mischief
+ere he had finished them, but would gladly fan himself with an
+Agnus-castus, and go to sleep all through the carnival.
+
+_Petrarca._ Let us cease to talk both of the labour and the labourer.
+You have then been dangerously ill?
+
+_Boccaccio._ I do not know: they told me I was: and truly a man might
+be unwell enough, who has twenty masses said for him, and fain sigh
+when he thinks what he has paid for them. As I hope to be saved, they
+cost me a lira each. Assunta is a good market-girl in eggs, and
+mutton, and cow-heel; but I would not allow her to argue and haggle
+about the masses. Indeed she knows best whether they were not fairly
+worth all that was asked for them, although I could have bought a
+winter cloak for less money. However, we do not want both at the same
+time. I did not want the cloak: I wanted _them_, it seems. And yet I
+begin to think God would have had mercy on me, if I had begged it of
+him myself in my own house. What think you?
+
+_Petrarca._ I think he might.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Particularly if I offered him the sacrifice on which I
+wrote to you.
+
+_Petrarca._ That letter has brought me hither.
+
+_Boccaccio._ You do then insist on my fulfilling my promise, the
+moment I can leave my bed. I am ready and willing.
+
+_Petrarca._ Promise! none was made. You only told me that, if it
+pleased God to restore you to your health again, you are ready to
+acknowledge His mercy by the holocaust of your _Decameron_. What proof
+have you that God would exact it? If you could destroy the _Inferno_
+of Dante, would you?
+
+_Boccaccio._ Not I, upon my life! I would not promise to burn a copy
+of it on the condition of a recovery for twenty years.
+
+_Petrarca._ You are the only author who would not rather demolish
+another's work than his own; especially if he thought it better: a
+thought which seldom goes beyond suspicion.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I am not jealous of any one: I think admiration
+pleasanter. Moreover, Dante and I did not come forward at the same
+time, nor take the same walks. His flames are too fierce for you and
+me: we had trouble enough with milder. I never felt any high
+gratification in hearing of people being damned; and much less would I
+toss them into the fire myself. I might indeed have put a nettle under
+the nose of the learned judge in Florence, when he banished you and
+your family; but I hardly think I could have voted for more than a
+scourging to the foulest and fiercest of the party.
+
+_Petrarca._ Be as compassionate, be as amiably irresolute, toward your
+own _Novelle_, which have injured no friend of yours, and deserve more
+affection.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Francesco! no character I ever knew, ever heard of, or
+ever feigned, deserves the same affection as you do; the tenderest
+lover, the truest friend, the firmest patriot, and, rarest of glories!
+the poet who cherishes another's fame as dearly as his own.
+
+_Petrarca._ If aught of this is true, let it be recorded of me that my
+exhortations and entreaties have been successful, in preserving the
+works of the most imaginative and creative genius that our Italy, or
+indeed our world, hath in any age beheld.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I would not destroy his poems, as I told you, or think I
+told you. Even the worst of the Florentines, who in general keep only
+one of God's commandments, keep it rigidly in regard to Dante--
+
+      Love them who curse you.
+
+He called them all scoundrels, with somewhat less courtesy than
+cordiality, and less afraid of censure for veracity than adulation: he
+sent their fathers to hell, with no inclination to separate the child
+and parent: and now they are hugging him for it in his shroud! Would
+you ever have suspected them of being such lovers of justice?
+
+You must have mistaken my meaning; the thought never entered my head:
+the idea of destroying a single copy of Dante! And what effect would
+that produce? There must be fifty, or near it, in various parts of
+Italy.
+
+_Petrarca._ I spoke of you.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Of me! My poetry is vile; I have already thrown into the
+fire all of it within my reach.
+
+_Petrarca._ Poetry was not the question. We neither of us are such
+poets as we thought ourselves when we were younger, and as younger men
+think us still. I meant your _Decameron_; in which there is more
+character, more nature, more invention, than either modern or ancient
+Italy, or than Greece, from whom she derived her whole inheritance,
+ever claimed or ever knew. Would you consume a beautiful meadow
+because there are reptiles in it; or because a few grubs hereafter may
+be generated by the succulence of the grass?
+
+_Boccaccio._ You amaze me: you utterly confound me.
+
+_Petrarca._ If you would eradicate twelve or thirteen of the
+_Novelle_, and insert the same number of better, which you could
+easily do within as many weeks, I should be heartily glad to see it
+done. Little more than a tenth of the _Decameron_ is bad: less than a
+twentieth of the _Divina Commedia_ is good.
+
+_Boccaccio._ So little?
+
+_Petrarca._ Let me never seem irreverent to our master.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Speak plainly and fearlessly, Francesco! Malice and
+detraction are strangers to you.
+
+_Petrarca._ Well then: at least sixteen parts in twenty of the
+_Inferno_ and _Purgatorio_ are detestable, both in poetry and
+principle: the higher parts are excellent indeed.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I have been reading the _Paradiso_ more recently. Here it
+is, under the pillow. It brings me happier dreams than the others, and
+takes no more time in bringing them. Preparation for my lectures made
+me remember a great deal of the poem. I did not request my auditors to
+admire the beauty of the metrical version:
+
+      Osanna sanctus deus Sabbaoth,
+      Super-illustrans charitate tua
+      Felices ignes horum Malahoth,
+
+nor these, with a slip of Italian between two pales of Latin:
+
+      Modicum,[14] et non videbitis me,
+      Et iterum, sorelle mie dilette,
+      Modicum, et vos videbitis me.
+
+I dare not repeat all I recollect of
+
+      Pepe Setan, Pepe Setan, aleppe,
+
+as there is no holy-water-sprinkler in the room: and you are aware
+that other dangers awaited me, had I been so imprudent as to show the
+Florentines the allusion of our poet. His _gergo_ is perpetually in
+play, and sometimes plays very roughly.
+
+_Petrarca._ We will talk again of him presently. I must now rejoice
+with you over the recovery and safety of your prodigal son, the
+_Decameron_.
+
+_Boccaccio._ So then, you would preserve at any rate my favourite
+volume from the threatened conflagration.
+
+_Petrarca._ Had I lived at the time of Dante, I would have given him
+the same advice in the same circumstances. Yet how different is the
+tendency of the two productions! Yours is somewhat too licentious; and
+young men, in whose nature, or rather in whose education and habits,
+there is usually this failing, will read you with more pleasure than
+is commendable or innocent. Yet the very time they occupy with you,
+would perhaps be spent in the midst of those excesses or
+irregularities, to which the moralist, in his utmost severity, will
+argue that your pen directs them. Now there are many who are fond of
+standing on the brink of precipices, and who nevertheless are as
+cautious as any of falling in. And there are minds desirous of being
+warmed by description, which without this warmth might seek excitement
+among the things described.
+
+I would not tell you in health what I tell you in convalescence, nor
+urge you to compose what I dissuade you from cancelling. After this
+avowal, I do declare to you, Giovanni, that in my opinion, the very
+idlest of your tales will do the world as much good as evil; not
+reckoning the pleasure of reading, nor the exercise and recreation of
+the mind, which in themselves are good. What I reprove you for, is the
+indecorous and uncleanly; and these, I trust, you will abolish. Even
+these, however, may repel from vice the ingenuous and graceful spirit,
+and can never lead any such toward them. Never have you taken an
+inhuman pleasure in blunting and fusing the affections at the furnace
+of the passions; never, in hardening by sour sagacity and ungenial
+strictures, that delicacy which is more productive of innocence and
+happiness, more estranged from every track and tendency of their
+opposites, than what in cold, crude systems hath holden the place and
+dignity of the highest virtue. May you live, O my friend, in the
+enjoyment of health, to substitute the facetious for the licentious,
+the simple for the extravagant, the true and characteristic for the
+indefinite and diffuse.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Boccaccio._ And after all this, can you bear to think what I am?
+
+_Petrarca._ Complacently and joyfully; venturing, nevertheless, to
+offer you a friend's advice.
+
+Enter into the mind and heart of your own creatures: think of them
+long, entirely, solely: never of style, never of self, never of
+critics, cracked or sound. Like the miles of an open country, and of
+an ignorant population, when they are correctly measured they become
+smaller. In the loftiest rooms and richest entablatures are suspended
+the most spider-webs; and the quarry out of which palaces are erected
+is the nursery of nettle and bramble.
+
+_Boccaccio._ It is better to keep always in view such writers as
+Cicero, than to run after those idlers who throw stones that can never
+reach us.
+
+_Petrarca._ If you copied him to perfection, and on no occasion lost
+sight of him, you would be an indifferent, not to say a bad writer.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I begin to think you are in the right. Well then,
+retrenching some of my licentious tales, I must endeavour to fill up
+the vacancy with some serious and some pathetic.
+
+_Petrarca._ I am heartily glad to hear of this decision; for,
+admirable as you are in the jocose, you descend from your natural
+position when you come to the convivial and the festive. You were
+placed among the Affections, to move and master them, and gifted with
+the rod that sweetens the fount of tears. My nature leads me also to
+the pathetic; in which, however, an imbecile writer may obtain
+celebrity. Even the hard-hearted are fond of such reading, when they
+are fond of any; and nothing is easier in the world than to find and
+accumulate its sufferings. Yet this very profusion and luxuriance of
+misery is the reason why few have excelled in describing it. The eye
+wanders over the mass without noticing the peculiarities. To mark them
+distinctly is the work of genius; a work so rarely performed, that, if
+time and space may be compared, specimens of it stand at wider
+distances than the trophies of Sesostris. Here we return again to the
+_Inferno_ of Dante, who overcame the difficulty. In this vast desert
+are its greater and its less oasis; Ugolino and Francesca di Rimini.
+The peopled region is peopled chiefly with monsters and moschitoes:
+the rest for the most part is sand and suffocation.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Ah! had Dante remained through life the pure solitary
+lover of Bice, his soul had been gentler, tranquiller, and more
+generous. He scarcely hath described half the curses he went through,
+nor the roads he took on the journey: theology, politics, and that
+barbican of the _Inferno_, marriage, surrounded with its
+
+      Selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte.
+
+Admirable is indeed the description of Ugolino, to whoever can endure
+the sight of an old soldier gnawing at the scalp of an old archbishop.
+
+_Petrarca._ The thirty lines from
+
+      Ed io sentii,
+
+are unequalled by any other continuous thirty in the whole dominions
+of poetry.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Give me rather the six on Francesca: for if in the former
+I find the simple, vigorous, clear narration, I find also what I would
+not wish, the features of Ugolino reflected full in Dante. The two
+characters are similar in themselves; hard, cruel, inflexible,
+malignant, but, whenever moved, moved powerfully. In Francesca, with
+the faculty of divine spirits, he leaves his own nature (not indeed
+the exact representative of theirs) and converts all his strength into
+tenderness. The great poet, like the original man of the Platonists,
+is double, possessing the further advantage of being able to drop one
+half at his option, and to resume it. Some of the tenderest on paper
+have no sympathies beyond; and some of the austerest in their
+intercourse with their fellow-creatures have deluged the world with
+tears. It is not from the rose that the bee gathers her honey, but
+often from the most acrid and the most bitter leaves and petals:
+
+      Quando leggemmo il disiato viso
+        Esser baciato di cotanto amante,
+      Questi, chi mai da me non sia diviso!
+        La bocca mi bacio tutto tremante ...
+      _Galeotto_ fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse ...
+        Quel giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante.
+
+In the midst of her punishment, Francesca, when she comes to the
+tenderest part of her story, tells it with complacency and delight;
+and, instead of naming Paolo, which indeed she never has done from the
+beginning, she now designates him as
+
+      Questi chi mai da me non sia diviso!
+
+Are we not impelled to join in her prayer, wishing them happier in
+their union?
+
+_Petrarca._ If there be no sin in it.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Ay, and even if there be ... God help us!
+
+What a sweet aspiration in each cesura of the verse! three love-sighs
+fixed and incorporate! Then, when she hath said
+
+      La bocca mi bacio, tutto tremante,
+
+she stops: she would avert the eyes of Dante from her: he looks for
+the sequel: she thinks he looks severely: she says: '_Galeotto_ is the
+name of the book,' fancying by this timorous little flight she has
+drawn him far enough from the nest of her young loves. No, the eagle
+beak of Dante and his piercing eyes are yet over her.
+
+'_Galeotto_ is the name of the book.'
+
+'What matters that?'
+
+'And of the writer.'
+
+'Or that either?'
+
+At last she disarms him: but how?
+
+'_That_ day we read no more.'
+
+Such a depth of intuitive judgment, such a delicacy of perception,
+exists not in any other work of human genius; and from an author who,
+on almost all occasions, in this part of the work, betrays a
+deplorable want of it.
+
+_Petrarca._ Perfection of poetry! The greater is my wonder at
+discovering nothing else of the same order or cast in this whole
+section of the poem. He who fainted at the recital of Francesca,
+
+      And he who fell as a dead body falls,
+
+would exterminate all the inhabitants of every town in Italy! What
+execrations against Florence, Pistoia, Siena, Pisa, Genoa! what hatred
+against the whole human race! what exultation and merriment at eternal
+and immitigable sufferings! Seeing this, I cannot but consider the
+_Inferno_ as the most immoral and impious book that ever was written.
+Yet, hopeless that our country shall ever see again such poetry, and
+certain that without it our future poets would be more feebly urged
+forward to excellence, I would have dissuaded Dante from cancelling
+it, if this had been his intention. Much however as I admire his
+vigour and severity of style in the description of Ugolino, I
+acknowledge with you that I do not discover so much imagination, so
+much creative power, as in the Francesca. I find indeed a minute
+detail of probable events: but this is not all I want in a poet: it is
+not even all I want most in a scene of horror. Tribunals of justice,
+dens of murderers, wards of hospitals, schools of anatomy, will afford
+us nearly the same sensations, if we hear them from an accurate
+observer, a clear reporter, a skilful surgeon, or an attentive nurse.
+There is nothing of sublimity in the horrific of Dante, which there
+always is in Aeschylus and Homer. If you, Giovanni, had described so
+nakedly the reception of Guiscardo's heart by Gismonda, or Lorenzo's
+head by Lisabetta, we could hardly have endured it.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Prithee, dear Francesco, do not place me over Dante: I
+stagger at the idea of approaching him.
+
+_Petrarca._ Never think I am placing you blindly or indiscriminately.
+I have faults to find with you, and even here. Lisabetta should by no
+means have been represented cutting off the head of her lover, '_as
+well as she could_,' with a clasp-knife. This is shocking and
+improbable. She might have found it already cut off by her brothers,
+in order to bury the corpse more commodiously and expeditiously. Nor
+indeed is it likely that she should have entrusted it to her
+waiting-maid, who carried home in her bosom a treasure so dear to her,
+and found so unexpectedly and so lately.
+
+_Boccaccio._ That is true: I will correct the oversight. Why do we
+never hear of our faults until everybody knows them, and until they
+stand in record against us?
+
+_Petrarca._ Because our ears are closed to truth and friendship for
+some time after the triumphal course of composition. We are too
+sensitive for the gentlest touch; and when we really have the most
+infirmity, we are angry to be told that we have any.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Ah, Francesco! thou art poet from scalp to heel: but what
+other would open his breast as thou hast done! They show
+ostentatiously far worse weaknesses; but the most honest of the tribe
+would forswear himself on this. Again, I acknowledge it, you have
+reason to complain of Lisabetta and Gismonda.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Petrarca._ In my delight to listen to you after so long an absence, I
+have been too unwary; and you have been speaking too much for one
+infirm. Greatly am I to blame, not to have moderated my pleasure and
+your vivacity. You must rest now: to-morrow we will renew our
+conversation.
+
+_Boccaccio._ God bless thee, Francesco! I shall be talking with thee
+all night in my slumbers. Never have I seen thee with such pleasure as
+to-day, excepting when I was deemed worthy by our fellow-citizens of
+bearing to thee, and of placing within this dear hand of thine, the
+sentence of recall from banishment, and when my tears streamed over
+the ordinance as I read it, whereby thy paternal lands were redeemed
+from the public treasury.
+
+Again God bless thee! Those tears were not quite exhausted: take the
+last of them.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[14] It may puzzle an Englishman to read the lines beginning with
+'Modicum', so as to give the metre. The secret is, to draw out _et_
+into a disyllable, et-te, as the Italians do, who pronounce Latin
+verse, if possible, worse than we, adding a syllable to such as end
+with a consonant.
+
+
+THIRD DAY'S INTERVIEW
+
+It being now the Lord's day, Messer Francesco thought it meet that he
+should rise early in the morning and bestir himself, to hear mass in
+the parish church at Certaldo. Whereupon he went on tiptoe, if so
+weighty a man could indeed go in such a fashion, and lifted softly the
+latch of Ser Giovanni's chamber door, that he might salute him ere he
+departed, and occasion no wonder at the step he was about to take. He
+found Ser Giovanni fast asleep, with the missal wide open across his
+nose, and a pleasant smile on his genial, joyous mouth. Ser Francesco
+leaned over the couch, closed his hands together, and looking with
+even more than his usual benignity, said in a low voice:
+
+'God bless thee, gentle soul! the mother of purity and innocence
+protect thee!'
+
+He then went into the kitchen, where he found the girl Assunta, and
+mentioned his resolution. She informed him that the horse had eaten
+his two beans,[15] and was as strong as a lion and as ready as a
+lover. Ser Francesco patted her on the cheek, and called her
+_semplicetta_! She was overjoyed at this honour from so great a man,
+the bosom friend of her good master, whom she had always thought the
+greatest man in the world, not excepting Monsignore, until he told her
+he was only a dog confronted with Ser Francesco. She tripped alertly
+across the paved court into the stable, and took down the saddle and
+bridle from the farther end of the rack. But Ser Francesco, with his
+natural politeness, would not allow her to equip his palfrey.
+
+'This is not the work for maidens,' said he; 'return to the house,
+good girl!'
+
+She lingered a moment, then went away; but, mistrusting the dexterity
+of Ser Francesco, she stopped and turned back again, and peeped
+through the half-closed door, and heard sundry sobs and wheezes round
+about the girth. Ser Francesco's wind ill seconded his intention; and,
+although he had thrown the saddle valiantly and stoutly in its
+station, yet the girths brought him into extremity. She entered again,
+and dissembling the reason, asked him whether he would not take a
+small beaker of the sweet white wine before he set out, and offered to
+girdle the horse while his Reverence bitted and bridled him. Before
+any answer could be returned, she had begun. And having now
+satisfactorily executed her undertaking, she felt irrepressible
+delight and glee at being able to do what Ser Francesco had failed in.
+He was scarcely more successful with his allotment of the labour;
+found unlooked-for intricacies and complications in the machinery,
+wondered that human wit could not simplify it, and declared that the
+animal had never exhibited such restiveness before. In fact, he never
+had experienced the same grooming. At this conjuncture, a green cap
+made its appearance, bound with straw-coloured ribbon, and surmounted
+with two bushy sprigs of hawthorn, of which the globular buds were
+swelling, and some bursting, but fewer yet open. It was young
+Simplizio Nardi, who sometimes came on the Sunday morning to sweep the
+courtyard for Assunta.
+
+'Oh! this time you are come just when you were wanted,' said the girl.
+
+'Bridle, directly, Ser Francesco's horse, and then go away about your
+business.'
+
+The youth blushed, and kissed Ser Francesco's hand, begging his
+permission. It was soon done. He then held the stirrup; and Ser
+Francesco, with scarcely three efforts, was seated and erect on the
+saddle. The horse, however, had somewhat more inclination for the
+stable than for the expedition; and, as Assunta was handing to the
+rider his long ebony staff, bearing an ivory caduceus, the quadruped
+turned suddenly round. Simplizio called him _bestiaccia_! and then,
+softening it, _poco garbato_! and proposed to Ser Francesco that he
+should leave the bastone behind, and take the crab-switch he presented
+to him, giving at the same time a sample of its efficacy, which
+covered the long grizzle hair of the worthy quadruped with a profusion
+of pink blossoms, like embroidery. The offer was declined; but Assunta
+told Simplizio to carry it himself, and to walk by the side of Ser
+Canonico quite up to the church porch, having seen what a sad,
+dangerous beast his reverence had under him.
+
+With perfect good will, partly in the pride of obedience to Assunta,
+and partly to enjoy the renown of accompanying a canon of Holy Church,
+Simplizio did as she enjoined.
+
+And now the sound of village bells, in many hamlets and convents and
+churches out of sight, was indistinctly heard, and lost again; and at
+last the five of Certaldo seemed to crow over the faintness of them
+all. The freshness of the morning was enough of itself to excite the
+spirits of youth; a portion of which never fails to descend on years
+that are far removed from it, if the mind has partaken in innocent
+mirth while it was its season and its duty to enjoy it. Parties of
+young and old passed the canonico and his attendant with mute respect,
+bowing and bare-headed; for that ebony staff threw its spell over the
+tongue, which the frank and hearty salutation of the bearer was
+inadequate to break. Simplizio, once or twice, attempted to call back
+an intimate of the same age with himself; but the utmost he could
+obtain was a _riveritissimo_! and a genuflexion to the rider. It is
+reported that a heart-burning rose up from it in the breast of a
+cousin, some days after, too distinctly apparent in the long-drawn
+appellation of _Gnor_[16] Simplizio.
+
+Ser Francesco moved gradually forward, his steed picking his way along
+the lane, and looking fixedly on the stones with all the sobriety of a
+mineralogist. He himself was well satisfied with the pace, and told
+Simplizio to be sparing of the switch, unless in case of a hornet or a
+gadfly. Simplizio smiled, toward the hedge, and wondered at the
+condescension of so great a theologian and astrologer, in joking with
+him about the gadflies and hornets in the beginning of April. 'Ah!
+there are men in the world who can make wit out of anything!' said he
+to himself.
+
+As they approached the walls of the town, the whole country was
+pervaded by a stirring and diversified air of gladness. Laughter and
+songs and flutes and viols, inviting voices and complying responses,
+mingled with merry bells and with processional hymns, along the
+woodland paths and along the yellow meadows. It was really the _Lord's
+Day_, for He made His creatures happy in it, and their hearts were
+thankful. Even the cruel had ceased from cruelty; and the rich man
+alone exacted from the animal his daily labour. Ser Francesco made
+this remark, and told his youthful guide that he had never been before
+where he could not walk to church on a Sunday; and that nothing should
+persuade him to urge the speed of his beast, on the seventh day,
+beyond his natural and willing foot's-pace. He reached the gates of
+Certaldo more than half an hour before the time of service, and he
+found laurels suspended over them, and being suspended; and many
+pleasant and beautiful faces were protruded between the ranks of
+gentry and clergy who awaited him. Little did he expect such an
+attendance; but Fra Biagio of San Vivaldo, who himself had offered no
+obsequiousness or respect, had scattered the secret of his visit
+throughout the whole country. A young poet, the most celebrated in the
+town, approached the canonico with a long scroll of verses, which fell
+below the knee, beginning:
+
+      How shall we welcome our illustrious guest?
+
+To which Ser Francesco immediately replied: 'Take your favourite
+maiden, lead the dance with her, and bid all your friends follow; you
+have a good half-hour for it.'
+
+Universal applauses succeeded, the music struck up, couples were
+instantly formed. The gentry on this occasion led out the
+cittadinanza, as they usually do in the villeggiatura, rarely in the
+carnival, and never at other times. The elder of the priests stood
+round in their sacred vestments, and looked with cordiality and
+approbation on the youths, whose hands and arms could indeed do much,
+and did it, but whose active eyes could rarely move upward the
+modester of their partners.
+
+While the elder of the clergy were thus gathering the fruits of their
+liberal cares and paternal exhortations, some of the younger looked on
+with a tenderer sentiment, not unmingled with regret. Suddenly the
+bells ceased; the figure of the dance was broken; all hastened into
+the church; and many hands that joined on the green, met together at
+the font, and touched the brow reciprocally with its lustral waters,
+in soul-devotion.
+
+After the service, and after a sermon a good church-hour in length to
+gratify him, enriched with compliments from all authors, Christian and
+Pagan, informing him at the conclusion that, although he had been
+crowned in the Capitol, he must die, being born mortal, Ser Francesco
+rode homeward. The sermon seemed to have sunk deeply into him, and
+even into the horse under him, for both of them nodded, both snorted,
+and one stumbled. Simplizio was twice fain to cry:
+
+'Ser Canonico! Riverenza! in this country if we sleep before dinner it
+does us harm. There are stones in the road, Ser Canonico, loose as
+eggs in a nest, and pretty nigh as thick together, huge as mountains.'
+
+'Good lad!' said Ser Francesco, rubbing his eyes, 'toss the biggest of
+them out of the way, and never mind the rest.'
+
+The horse, although he walked, shuffled almost into an amble as he
+approached the stable, and his master looked up at it with nearly the
+same contentment. Assunta had been ordered to wait for his return, and
+cried:
+
+'O Ser Francesco! you are looking at our long apricot, that runs the
+whole length of the stable and barn, covered with blossoms as the old
+white hen is with feathers. You must come in the summer, and eat this
+fine fruit with Signor Padrone. You cannot think how ruddy and golden
+and sweet and mellow it is. There are peaches in all the fields, and
+plums, and pears, and apples, but there is not another apricot for
+miles and miles. Ser Giovanni brought the stone from Naples before I
+was born: a lady gave it to him when she had eaten only half the fruit
+off it: but perhaps you may have seen her, for you have ridden as far
+as Rome, or beyond. Padrone looks often at the fruit, and eats it
+willingly; and I have seen him turn over the stones in his plate, and
+choose one out from the rest, and put it into his pocket, but never
+plant it.'
+
+'Where is the youth?' inquired Ser Francesco.
+
+'Gone away,' answered the maiden.
+
+'I wanted to thank him,' said the Canonico.
+
+'May I tell him so?' asked she.
+
+'And give him ...' continued he, holding a piece of silver.
+
+'I will give him something of my own, if he goes on and behaves well,'
+said she; 'but Signor Padrone would drive him away for ever, I am
+sure, if he were tempted in an evil hour to accept a quattrino for any
+service he could render the friends of the house.'
+
+Ser Francesco was delighted with the graceful animation of this
+ingenuous girl, and asked her, with a little curiosity, how she could
+afford to make him a present.
+
+'I do not intend to make him a present,' she replied: 'but it is
+better he should be rewarded by me,' she blushed and hesitated, 'or by
+Signor Padrone,' she added, 'than by your reverence. He has not done
+half his duty yet; not half. I will teach him: he is quite a child;
+four months younger than me.'
+
+Ser Francesco went into the house, saying to himself at the doorway:
+
+'Truth, innocence, and gentle manners have not yet left the earth.
+There are sermons that never make the ears weary. I have heard but few
+of them, and come from church for this.'
+
+Whether Simplizio had obeyed some private signal from Assunta, or
+whether his own delicacy had prompted him to disappear, he was now
+again in the stable, and the manger was replenished with hay. A bucket
+was soon after heard ascending from the well; and then two words:
+'Thanks, Simplizio.'
+
+When Petrarca entered the chamber, he found Boccaccio with his
+breviary in his hand, not looking into it indeed, but repeating a
+thanksgiving in an audible and impassioned tone of voice. Seeing Ser
+Francesco, he laid the book down beside him, and welcomed him.
+
+'I hope you have an appetite after your ride,' said he, 'for you have
+sent home a good dinner before you.'
+
+Ser Francesco did not comprehend him, and expressed it not in words
+but in looks.
+
+'I am afraid you will dine sadly late to-day: noon has struck this
+half-hour, and you must wait another, I doubt. However, by good luck,
+I had a couple of citrons in the house, intended to assuage my thirst
+if the fever had continued. This being over, by God's mercy, I will
+try (please God!) whether we two greyhounds cannot be a match for a
+leveret.'
+
+'How is this?' said Ser Francesco.
+
+'Young Marc-Antonio Grilli, the cleverest lad in the parish at noosing
+any wild animal, is our patron of the feast. He has wanted for many a
+day to say something in the ear of Matilda Vercelli. Bringing up the
+leveret to my bedside, and opening the lips, and cracking the
+knuckles, and turning the foot round to show the quality and quantity
+of the hair upon it, and to prove that it really and truly was a
+leveret, and might be eaten without offence to my teeth, he informed
+me that he had left his mother in the yard, ready to dress it for me;
+she having been cook to the prior. He protested he owed the _crowned
+martyr_ a forest of leverets, boars, deers, and everything else within
+them, for having commanded the most backward girls to dance directly.
+Whereupon he darted forth at Matilda, saying, "The _crowned martyr_
+orders it," seizing both her hands, and swinging her round before she
+knew what she was about. He soon had an opportunity of applying a
+word, no doubt as dexterously as hand or foot; and she said
+submissively, but seriously, and almost sadly, "Marc-Antonio, now all
+the people have seen it, they will think it."
+
+'And after a pause:
+
+'"I am quite ashamed: and so should you be: are not you now?"
+
+'The others had run into the church. Matilda, who scarcely had noticed
+it, cried suddenly:
+
+'"O Santissima! we are quite alone."
+
+'"Will you be mine?" cried he, enthusiastically.
+
+'"Oh! they will hear you in the church," replied she.
+
+'"They shall, they shall," cried he again, as loudly.
+
+'"If you will only go away."
+
+'"And then?"
+
+'"Yes, yes, indeed."
+
+'"The Virgin hears you: fifty saints are witnesses."
+
+'"Ah! they know you made me: they will look kindly on us."
+
+'He released her hand: she ran into the church, doubling her veil (I
+will answer for her) at the door, and kneeling as near it as she could
+find a place.
+
+'"By St. Peter," said Marc-Antonio, "if there is a leveret in the
+wood, the _crowned martyr_ shall dine upon it this blessed day." And
+he bounded off, and set about his occupation. I inquired what induced
+him to designate you by such a title. He answered, that everybody knew
+you had received the crown of martyrdom at Rome, between the pope and
+antipope, and had performed many miracles, for which they had
+canonized you, and that you wanted only to die to become a saint.'
+
+The leveret was now served up, cut into small pieces, and covered with
+a rich tenacious sauce, composed of sugar, citron, and various spices.
+The appetite of Ser Francesco was contagious. Never was dinner more
+enjoyed by two companions, and never so much by a greater number. One
+glass of a fragrant wine, the colour of honey, and unmixed with water,
+crowned the repast. Ser Francesco then went into his own chamber, and
+found, on his ample mattress, a cool, refreshing sleep, quite
+sufficient to remove all the fatigues of the morning; and Ser Giovanni
+lowered the pillow against which he had seated himself, and fell into
+his usual repose. Their separation was not of long continuance: and,
+the religious duties of the Sabbath having been performed, a few
+reflections on literature were no longer interdicted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Petrarca._ The land, O Giovanni, of your early youth, the land of my
+only love, fascinates us no longer. Italy is our country; and not ours
+only, but every man's, wherever may have been his wanderings, wherever
+may have been his birth, who watches with anxiety the recovery of the
+Arts, and acknowledges the supremacy of Genius. Besides, it is in
+Italy at last that all our few friends are resident. Yours were left
+behind you at Paris in your adolescence, if indeed any friendship can
+exist between a Florentine and a Frenchman: mine at Avignon were
+Italians, and older for the most part than myself. Here we know that
+we are beloved by some, and esteemed by many. It indeed gave me
+pleasure the first morning as I lay in bed, to overhear the fondness
+and earnestness which a worthy priest was expressing in your behalf.
+
+_Boccaccio._ In mine?
+
+_Petrarca._ Yes indeed: what wonder?
+
+_Boccaccio._ A worthy priest?
+
+_Petrarca._ None else, certainly.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Heard in bed! dreaming, dreaming; ay?
+
+_Petrarca._ No indeed: my eyes and ears were wide open.
+
+_Boccaccio._ The little parlour opens into your room. But what priest
+could that be? Canonico Casini? He only comes when we have a roast of
+thrushes, or some such small matter, at table: and this is not the
+season; they are pairing. Plover eggs might tempt him hitherward. If
+he heard a plover he would not be easy, and would fain make her drop
+her oblation before she had settled her nest.
+
+_Petrarca._ It is right and proper that you should be informed who the
+clergyman was, to whom you are under an obligation.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Tell me something about it, for truly I am at a loss to
+conjecture.
+
+_Petrarca._ He must unquestionably have been expressing a kind and
+ardent solicitude for your eternal welfare. The first words I heard on
+awakening were these:
+
+'Ser Giovanni, although the best of masters ...'
+
+_Boccaccio._ Those were Assuntina's.
+
+_Petrarca._ '... may hardly be quite so holy (not being priest or
+friar) as your Reverence.'
+
+She was interrupted by the question: 'What conversation holdeth he?'
+
+She answered:
+
+'He never talks of loving our neighbour with all our heart, all our
+soul, and all our strength, although he often gives away the last loaf
+in the pantry.'
+
+_Boccaccio._ It was she! Why did she say that? the slut!
+
+_Petrarca._ 'He doth well,' replied the confessor. 'Of the Church, of
+the brotherhood, that is, of me, what discourses holdeth he?'
+
+I thought the question an indiscreet one; but confessors vary in their
+advances to the seat of truth.
+
+She proceeded to answer:
+
+'He never said anything about the power of the Church to absolve us,
+if we should happen to go astray a little in good company, like your
+Reverence.'
+
+Here, it is easy to perceive, is some slight ambiguity. Evidently she
+meant to say, by the seduction of 'bad' company, and to express that
+his Reverence had asserted his power of absolution; which is
+undeniable.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I have my version.
+
+_Petrarca._ What may yours be?
+
+_Boccaccio._ Frate Biagio; broad as daylight; the whole frock round!
+
+I would wager a flask of oil against a turnip, that he laid another
+trap for a penance. Let us see how he went on. I warrant, as he
+warmed, he left off limping in his paces, and bore hard upon the
+bridle.
+
+_Petrarca._ 'Much do I fear,' continued the expositor, 'he never spoke
+to thee, child, about another world.'
+
+There was a silence of some continuance.
+
+'Speak!' said the confessor.
+
+'No indeed he never did, poor Padrone!' was the slow and evidently
+reluctant avowal of the maiden; for, in the midst of the
+acknowledgment her sighs came through the crevices of the door: then,
+without any farther interrogation, and with little delay, she added:
+
+'But he often makes this look like it.'
+
+_Boccaccio._ And now, if he had carried a holy scourge, it would not
+have been on his shoulders that he would have laid it.
+
+_Petrarca._ Zeal carries men often too far afloat; and confessors in
+general wish to have the sole steerage of the conscience. When she
+told him that your benignity made this world another heaven, he warmly
+and sharply answered:
+
+'It is only we who ought to do that.'
+
+'Hush,' said the maiden; and I verily believe she at that moment set
+her back against the door, to prevent the sounds from coming through
+the crevices, for the rest of them seemed to be just over my
+night-cap. 'Hush,' said she, in the whole length of that softest of
+all articulations. 'There is Ser Francesco in the next room: he sleeps
+long into the morning, but he is so clever a clerk, he may understand
+you just the same. I doubt whether he thinks Ser Giovanni in the wrong
+for making so many people quite happy; and if he should, it would
+grieve me very much to think he blamed Ser Giovanni.'
+
+'Who is Ser Francesco?' he asked, in a low voice.
+
+'Ser Canonico,' she answered.
+
+'Of what Duomo?' continued he.
+
+'Who knows?' was the reply; 'but he is Padrone's heart's friend, for
+certain.'
+
+'Cospetto di Bacco! It can then be no other than Petrarca. He makes
+rhymes and love like the devil. Don't listen to him, or you are
+undone. Does he love you too, as well as Padrone?' he asked, still
+lowering his voice.
+
+'I cannot tell that matter,' she answered, somewhat impatiently; 'but
+I love him.'
+
+'To my face!' cried he, smartly.
+
+'To the Santissima!' replied she, instantaneously; 'for have not I
+told your Reverence he is Padrone's true heart's friend! And are not
+you my confessor, when you come on purpose?'
+
+'True, true!' answered he; 'but there are occasions when we are
+shocked by the confession, and wish it made less daringly.'
+
+'I was bold; but who can help loving him who loves my good Padrone?'
+said she, much more submissively.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Brave girl, for that!
+
+Dog of a Frate! They are all of a kidney; all of a kennel. I would
+dilute their meal well and keep them low. They should not waddle and
+wallop in every hollow lane, nor loll out their watery tongues at
+every wash-pool in the parish. We shall hear, I trust, no more about
+Fra Biagio in the house while you are with us. Ah! were it then for
+life.
+
+_Petrarca._ The man's prudence may be reasonably doubted, but it were
+uncharitable to question his sincerity. Could a neighbour, a religious
+one in particular, be indifferent to the welfare of Boccaccio, or any
+belonging to him?
+
+_Boccaccio._ I do not complain of his indifference. Indifferent! no,
+not he. He might as well be, though. My villetta here is my castle: it
+was my father's; it was his father's. Cowls did not hang to dry upon
+the same cord with caps in their podere; they shall not in mine. The
+girl is an honest girl, Francesco, though I say it. Neither she nor
+any other shall be befooled and bamboozled under my roof. Methinks
+Holy Church might contrive some improvement upon confession.
+
+_Petrarca._ Hush! Giovanni! But, it being a matter of discipline, who
+knows but she might.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Discipline! ay, ay, ay! faith and troth there are some
+who want it.
+
+_Petrarca._ You really terrify me. These are sad surmises.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Sad enough: but I am keeper of my handmaiden's probity.
+
+_Petrarca._ It could not be kept safer.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I wonder what the Frate would be putting into her head?
+
+_Petrarca._ Nothing, nothing: be assured.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Why did he ask her all those questions?
+
+_Petrarca._ Confessors do occasionally take circuitous ways to arrive
+at the secrets of the human heart.
+
+_Boccaccio._ And sometimes they drive at it, me thinks, a whit too
+directly. He had no business to make remarks about me.
+
+_Petrarca._ Anxiety.
+
+_Boccaccio._ 'Fore God, Francesco, he shall have more of that; for I
+will shut him out the moment I am again up and stirring, though he
+stand but a nose's length off. I have no fear about the girl; no
+suspicion of her. He might whistle to the moon on a frosty night, and
+expect as reasonably her descending. Never was a man so entirely at
+his ease as I am about that; never, never. She is adamant; a bright
+sword now first unscabbarded; no breath can hang about it. A seal of
+beryl, of chrysolite, of ruby; to make impressions (all in good time
+and proper place though) and receive none: incapable, just as they
+are, of splitting, or cracking, or flawing, or harbouring dirt. Let
+him mind that. Such, I assure you, is that poor little wench,
+Assuntina.
+
+_Petrarca._ I am convinced that so well-behaved a young creature as
+Assunta----
+
+_Boccaccio._ Right! Assunta is her name by baptism; we usually call
+her Assuntina, because she is slender, and scarcely yet full-grown,
+perhaps: but who can tell?
+
+As for those friars, I never was a friend to impudence: I hate loose
+suggestions. In girls' minds you will find little dust but what is
+carried there by gusts from without. They seldom want sweeping; when
+they do, the broom should be taken from behind the house door, and the
+master should be the sacristan.
+
+... Scarcely were these words uttered when Assunta was heard running
+up the stairs; and the next moment she rapped. Being ordered to come
+in, she entered with a willow twig in her hand, from the middle of
+which willow twig (for she held the two ends together) hung a fish,
+shining with green and gold.
+
+'What hast there, young maiden?' said Ser Francesco.
+
+'A fish, Riverenza!' answered she. 'In Tuscany we call it _tinca_.'
+
+_Petrarca._ I too am a little of a Tuscan.
+
+_Assunta._ Indeed! well, you really speak very like one, but only more
+sweetly and slowly. I wonder how you can keep up with Signor
+Padrone--he talks fast when he is in health; and you have made him so.
+Why did not you come before? Your Reverence has surely been at
+Certaldo in time past.
+
+_Petrarca._ Yes, before thou wert born.
+
+_Assunta._ Ah, sir! it must have been long ago then.
+
+_Petrarca._ Thou hast just entered upon life.
+
+_Assunta._ I am no child.
+
+_Petrarca._ What then art thou?
+
+_Assunta._ I know not: I have lost both father and mother; there is a
+name for such as I am.
+
+_Petrarca._ And a place in heaven.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Who brought us that fish, Assunta? hast paid for it?
+there must be seven pounds: I never saw the like.
+
+_Assunta._ I could hardly lift up my apron to my eyes with it in my
+hand. Luca, who brought it all the way from the Padule, could scarcely
+be entreated to eat a morsel of bread or sit down.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Give him a flask or two of our wine; he will like it
+better than the sour puddle of the plain.
+
+_Assunta._ He is gone back.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Gone! who is he, pray?
+
+_Assunta._ Luca, to be sure.
+
+_Boccaccio._ What Luca?
+
+_Assunta._ Dominedio! O Riverenza! how sadly must Ser Giovanni, my
+poor Padrone, have lost his memory in this cruel long illness! he
+cannot recollect young Luca of the Bientola, who married Maria.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I never heard of either, to the best of my knowledge.
+
+_Assunta._ Be pleased to mention this in your prayers to-night, Ser
+Canonico! May Our Lady soon give him back his memory! and everything
+else she has been pleased (only in play, I hope) to take away from
+him! Ser Francesco, you must have heard all over the world how Maria
+Gargarelli, who lived in the service of our paroco, somehow was
+outwitted by Satanasso. Monsignore thought the paroco had not done all
+he might have done against his wiles and craftiness, and sent his
+Reverence over to the monastery in the mountains, Laverna yonder, to
+make him look sharp; and there he is yet.
+
+And now does Signor Padrone recollect?
+
+_Boccaccio._ Rather more distinctly.
+
+_Assunta._ Ah me! Rather more distinctly! have patience, Signor
+Padrone! I am too venturous, God help me! But, Riverenza, when Maria
+was the scorn or the abhorrence of everybody else, excepting poor Luca
+Sabbatini, who had always cherished her, and excepting Signor Padrone,
+who had never seen her in his lifetime ... for paroco Snello said he
+desired no visits from any who took liberties with Holy Church ... as
+if Padrone did! Luca one day came to me out of breath, with money in
+his hand for our duck. Now it so happened that the duck, stuffed with
+noble chestnuts, was going to table at that instant. I told Signor
+Padrone....
+
+_Boccaccio._ Assunta, I never heard thee repeat so long and tiresome a
+story before, nor put thyself out of breath so. Come, we have had
+enough of it.
+
+_Petrarca._ She is mortified: pray let her proceed.
+
+_Boccaccio._ As you will.
+
+_Assunta._ I told Signor Padrone how Luca was lamenting that Maria was
+seized with an _imagination_.
+
+_Petrarca._ No wonder then she fell into misfortune, and her
+neighbours and friends avoided her.
+
+_Assunta._ Riverenza! how can you smile? Signor Padrone! and you too?
+You shook your head and sighed at it when it happened. The Demonio,
+who had caused all the first mischief, was not contented until he had
+given her the _imagination_.
+
+_Petrarca._ He could not have finished his work more effectually.
+
+_Assunta._ He was balked, however. Luca said:
+
+'She shall not die under her wrongs, please God!'
+
+I repeated the words to Signor Padrone.... He seems to listen,
+Riverenza! and will remember presently ... and Signor Padrone cut away
+one leg for himself, clean forgetting all the chestnuts inside, and
+said sharply, 'Give the bird to Luca; and, hark ye, bring back the
+minestra.'
+
+Maria loved Luca with all her heart, and Luca loved Maria with all
+his: but they both hated paroco Snello for such neglect about the evil
+one. And even Monsignore, who sent for Luca on purpose, had some
+difficulty in persuading him to forbear from choler and discourse. For
+Luca, who never swears, swore bitterly that the devil should play no
+such tricks again, nor alight on girls napping in the parsonage.
+Monsignore thought he intended to take violent possession, and to keep
+watch there himself without consent of the incumbent. 'I will have no
+scandal,' said Monsignore; so there was none. Maria, though she did
+indeed, as I told your Reverence, love her Luca dearly, yet she long
+refused to marry him, and cried very much at last on the wedding day,
+and said, as she entered the porch:
+
+'Luca! it is not yet too late to leave me.'
+
+He would have kissed her, but her face was upon his shoulder.
+
+Pievano Locatelli married them, and gave them his blessing: and going
+down from the altar, he said before the people, as he stood on the
+last step: 'Be comforted, child! be comforted! God above knows that
+thy husband is honest, and that thou art innocent.' Pievano's voice
+trembled, for he was an aged and holy man, and had walked two miles on
+the occasion. Pulcheria, his governante, eighty years old, carried an
+apronful of lilies to bestrew the altar; and partly from the lilies,
+and partly from the blessed angels who (although invisible) were
+present, the church was filled with fragrance. Many who heretofore had
+been frightened at hearing the mention of Maria's name, ventured now
+to walk up toward her; and some gave her needles, and some offered
+skeins of thread, and some ran home again for pots of honey.
+
+_Boccaccio._ And why didst not thou take her some trifle?
+
+_Assunta._ I had none.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Surely there are always such about the premises.
+
+_Assunta._ Not mine to give away.
+
+_Boccaccio._ So then at thy hands, Assunta, she went off not
+overladen. Ne'er a bone-bodkin out of thy bravery, ay?
+
+_Assunta._ I ran out knitting, with the woodbine and syringa in the
+basket for the parlour. I made the basket ... I and ... but myself
+chiefly, for boys are loiterers.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Well, well: why not bestow the basket, together with its
+rich contents?
+
+_Assunta._ I am ashamed to say it ... I covered my half-stocking with
+them as quickly as I could, and ran after her, and presented it. Not
+knowing what was under the flowers, and never minding the liberty I
+had taken, being a stranger to her, she accepted it as graciously as
+possible, and bade me be happy.
+
+_Petrarca._ I hope you have always kept her command.
+
+_Assunta._ Nobody is ever unhappy here, except Fra Biagio, who frets
+sometimes: but that may be the walk; or he may fancy Ser Giovanni to
+be worse than he really is.
+
+... Having now performed her mission and concluded her narrative, she
+bowed, and said:
+
+'Excuse me, Riverenza! excuse me, Signor Padrone! my arm aches with
+this great fish.'
+
+Then, bowing again, and moving her eyes modestly toward each, she
+added, 'with permission!' and left the chamber.
+
+'About the sposina,' after a pause began Ser Francesco: 'about the
+sposina, I do not see the matter clearly.'
+
+'You have studied too much for seeing all things clearly,' answered
+Ser Giovanni; 'you see only the greatest. In fine, the devil, on this
+count, is acquitted by acclamation; and the paroco Snello eats lettuce
+and chicory up yonder at Laverna. He has mendicant friars for his
+society every day; and snails, as pure as water can wash and boil
+them, for his repast on festivals. Under this discipline, if they keep
+it up, surely one devil out of legion will depart from him.'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[15] Literally, _due fave_, the expression on such occasions to
+signify a small quantity.
+
+[16] Contraction of _signor_, customary in Tuscany.
+
+
+FOURTH DAY'S INTERVIEW
+
+_Petrarca._ Giovanni, you are unsuspicious, and would scarcely see a
+monster in a minotaur. It is well, however, to draw good out of evil,
+and it is the peculiar gift of an elevated mind. Nevertheless, you
+must have observed, although with greater curiosity than concern, the
+slipperiness and tortuousness of your detractors.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Whatever they detract from me, they leave more than they
+can carry away. Beside, they always are detected.
+
+_Petrarca._ When they are detected, they raise themselves up fiercely,
+as if their nature were erect and they could reach your height.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Envy would conceal herself under the shadow and shelter
+of contemptuousness, but she swells too huge for the den she creeps
+into. Let her lie there and crack, and think no more about her. The
+people you have been talking of can find no greater and no other
+faults in my writings than I myself am willing to show them, and still
+more willing to correct. There are many things, as you have just now
+told me, very unworthy of their company.
+
+_Petrarca._ He who has much gold is none the poorer for having much
+silver too. When a king of old displayed his wealth and magnificence
+before a philosopher, the philosopher's exclamation was:
+
+'How many things are here which I do not want!'
+
+Does not the same reflection come upon us, when we have laid aside our
+compositions for a time, and look into them again more leisurely? Do
+we not wonder at our own profusion, and say like the philosopher:
+
+'How many things are here which I do not want!'
+
+It may happen that we pull up flowers with weeds; but better this than
+rankness. We must bear to see our first-born dispatched before our
+eyes, and give them up quietly.
+
+_Boccaccio._ The younger will be the most reluctant. There are poets
+among us who mistake in themselves the freckles of the hay-fever for
+beauty-spots. In another half-century their volumes will be inquired
+after; but only for the sake of cutting out an illuminated letter from
+the title-page, or of transplanting the willow at the end, that hangs
+so prettily over the tomb of Amaryllis. If they wish to be healthy and
+vigorous, let them open their bosoms to the breezes of Sunium; for the
+air of Latium is heavy and overcharged. Above all, they must remember
+two admonitions; first, that sweet things hurt digestion; secondly,
+that great sails are ill adapted to small vessels. What is there
+lovely in poetry unless there be moderation and composure? Are they
+not better than the hot, uncontrollable harlotry of a flaunting,
+dishevelled enthusiasm? Whoever has the power of creating, has
+likewise the inferior power of keeping his creation in order. The best
+poets are the most impressive, because their steps are regular; for
+without regularity there is neither strength nor state. Look at
+Sophocles, look at Aeschylus, look at Homer.
+
+_Petrarca._ I agree with you entirely to the whole extent of your
+observations; and, if you will continue, I am ready to lay aside my
+Dante for the present.
+
+_Boccaccio._ No, no; we must have him again between us: there is no
+danger that he will sour our tempers.
+
+_Petrarca._ In comparing his and yours, since you forbid me to declare
+all I think of your genius, you will at least allow me to congratulate
+you as being the happier of the two.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Frequently, where there is great power in poetry, the
+imagination makes encroachments on the heart, and uses it as her own.
+I have shed tears on writings which never cost the writer a sigh, but
+which occasioned him to rub the palms of his hands together, until
+they were ready to strike fire, with satisfaction at having overcome
+the difficulty of being tender.
+
+_Petrarca._ Giovanni! are you not grown satirical?
+
+_Boccaccio._ Not in this. It is a truth as broad and glaring as the
+eye of the Cyclops. To make you amends for your shuddering, I will
+express my doubt, on the other hand, whether Dante felt all the
+indignation he threw into his poetry. We are immoderately fond of
+warming ourselves; and we do not think, or care, what the fire is
+composed of. Be sure it is not always of cedar, like Circe's. Our
+Alighieri had slipped into the habit of vituperation; and he thought
+it fitted him; so he never left it off.
+
+_Petrarca._ Serener colours are pleasanter to our eyes and more
+becoming to our character. The chief desire in every man of genius is
+to be thought one; and no fear or apprehension lessens it. Alighieri,
+who had certainly studied the gospel, must have been conscious that he
+not only was inhumane, but that he betrayed a more vindictive spirit
+than any pope or prelate who is enshrined within the fretwork of his
+golden grating.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Unhappily, his strong talon had grown into him, and it
+would have pained him to suffer amputation. This eagle, unlike
+Jupiter's, never loosened the thunderbolt from it under the influence
+of harmony.
+
+_Petrarca._ The only good thing we can expect in such minds and
+tempers is good poetry: let us at least get that; and, having it, let
+us keep and value it. If you had never written some wanton stories,
+you would never have been able to show the world how much wiser and
+better you grew afterward.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Alas! if I live, I hope to show it. You have raised my
+spirits: and now, dear Francesco! do say a couple of prayers for me,
+while I lay together the materials of a tale; a right merry one, I
+promise you. Faith! it shall amuse you, and pay decently for the
+prayers; a good honest litany-worth. I hardly know whether I ought to
+have a nun in it: do you think I may?
+
+_Petrarca._ Cannot you do without one?
+
+_Boccaccio._ No; a nun I must have: say nothing against her; I can
+more easily let the abbess alone. Yet Frate Biagio ... that Frate
+Biagio, who never came to visit me but when he thought I was at
+extremities or asleep.... Assuntina! are you there?
+
+_Petrarca._ No; do you want her?
+
+_Boccaccio._ Not a bit. That Frate Biagio has heightened my pulse when
+I could not lower it again. The very devil is that Frate for
+heightening pulses. And with him I shall now make merry ... God
+willing ... in God's good time ... should it be His divine will to
+restore me! which I think He has begun to do miraculously. I seem to
+be within a frog's leap of well again; and we will presently have some
+rare fun in my _Tale of the Frate_.
+
+_Petrarca._ Do not openly name him.
+
+_Boccaccio._ He shall recognize himself by one single expression. He
+said to me, when I was at the worst:
+
+'Ser Giovanni! it would not be much amiss (with permission!) if you
+begin to think (at any spare time), just a morsel, of eternity.'
+
+'Ah! Fra Biagio!' answered I, contritely, 'I never heard a sermon of
+yours but I thought of it seriously and uneasily, long before the
+discourse was over.'
+
+'So must all,' replied he, 'and yet few have the grace to own it.'
+
+Now mind, Francesco! if it should please the Lord to call me unto Him,
+I say, _The Nun and Fra Biagio_ will be found, after my decease, in
+the closet cut out of the wall, behind yon Saint Zacharias in blue and
+yellow.
+
+Well done! well done! Francesco. I never heard any man repeat his
+prayers so fast and fluently. Why! how many (at a guess) have you
+repeated? Such is the power of friendship, and such the habit of
+religion! They have done me good: I feel myself stronger already.
+To-morrow I think I shall be able, by leaning on that stout maple
+stick in the corner, to walk half over my podere.
+
+Have you done? have you done?
+
+_Petrarca._ Be quiet: you may talk too much.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I cannot be quiet for another hour; so, if you have any
+more prayers to get over, stick the spur into the other side of them:
+they must verily speed, if they beat the last.
+
+_Petrarca._ Be more serious, dear Giovanni.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Never bid a convalescent be more serious: no, nor a sick
+man neither. To health it may give that composure which it takes away
+from sickness. Every man will have his hours of seriousness; but, like
+the hours of rest, they often are ill-chosen and unwholesome. Be
+assured, our heavenly Father is as well pleased to see His children in
+the playground as in the schoolroom. He has provided both for us, and
+has given us intimations when each should occupy us.
+
+_Petrarca._ You are right, Giovanni! but we know which bell is heard
+the most distinctly. We fold our arms at the one, try the cooler part
+of the pillow, and turn again to slumber; at the first stroke of the
+other, we are beyond our monitors. As for you, hardly Dante himself
+could make you grave.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I do not remember how it happened that we slipped away
+from his side. One of us must have found him tedious.
+
+_Petrarca._ If you were really and substantially at his side, he would
+have no mercy on you.
+
+_Boccaccio._ In sooth, our good Alighieri seems to have had the
+appetite of a dogfish or shark, and to have bitten the harder the
+warmer he was. I would not voluntarily be under his manifold rows of
+dentals. He has an incisor to every saint in the calendar. I should
+fare, methinks, like Brutus and the archbishop. He is forced to
+stretch himself, out of sheer listlessness, in so idle a place as
+Purgatory: he loses half his strength in Paradise: Hell alone makes
+him alert and lively: there he moves about and threatens as
+tremendously as the serpent that opposed the legions on their march
+in Africa. He would not have been contented in Tuscany itself, even
+had his enemies left him unmolested. Were I to write on his model a
+tripartite poem, I think it should be entitled, _Earth, Italy, and
+Heaven_.
+
+_Petrarca._ You will never give yourself the trouble.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I should not succeed.
+
+_Petrarca._ Perhaps not: but you have done very much, and may be able
+to do very much more.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Wonderful is it to me, when I consider that an infirm and
+helpless creature, as I am, should be capable of laying thoughts up in
+their cabinets of words, which Time, as he rushes by, with the
+revolutions of stormy and destructive years, can never move from their
+places. On this coarse mattress, one among the homeliest in the fair
+at Impruneta, is stretched an old burgess of Certaldo, of whom perhaps
+more will be known hereafter than we know of the Ptolemies and the
+Pharaohs; while popes and princes are lying as unregarded as the fleas
+that are shaken out of the window. Upon my life, Francesco! to think
+of this is enough to make a man presumptuous.
+
+_Petrarca._ No, Giovanni! not when the man thinks justly of it, as
+such a man ought to do, and must. For so mighty a power over Time, who
+casts all other mortals under his, comes down to us from a greater;
+and it is only if we abuse the victory that it were better we had
+encountered a defeat. Unremitting care must be taken that nothing soil
+the monuments we are raising: sure enough we are that nothing can
+subvert, and nothing but our negligence, or worse than negligence,
+efface them. Under the glorious lamp entrusted to your vigilance, one
+among the lights of the world, which the ministering angels of our God
+have suspended for His service, let there stand, with unclosing eyes,
+Integrity, Compassion, Self-denial.
+
+_Boccaccio._ These are holier and cheerfuller images than Dante has
+been setting up before us. I hope every thesis in dispute among his
+theologians will be settled ere I set foot among them. I like Tuscany
+well enough: it answers all my purposes for the present: and I am
+without the benefit of those preliminary studies which might render me
+a worthy auditor of incomprehensible wisdom.
+
+_Petrarca._ I do not wonder you are attached to Tuscany. Many as have
+been your visits and adventures in other parts, you have rendered it
+pleasanter and more interesting than any: and indeed we can scarcely
+walk in any quarter from the gates of Florence without the
+recollection of some witty or affecting story related by you. Every
+street, every farm, is peopled by your genius: and this population
+cannot change with seasons or with ages, with factions or with
+incursions. Ghibellines and Guelphs will have been contested for only
+by the worms, long before the _Decameron_ has ceased to be recited on
+our banks of blue lilies and under our arching vines. Another plague
+may come amidst us; and something of a solace in so terrible a
+visitation would be found in your pages, by those to whom letters are
+a refuge and relief.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I do indeed think my little bevy from Santa Maria Novella
+would be better company on such an occasion, than a devil with three
+heads, who diverts the pain his claws inflicted, by sticking his fangs
+in another place.
+
+_Petrarca._ This is atrocious, not terrific nor grand. Alighieri is
+grand by his lights, not by his shadows; by his human affections, not
+by his infernal. As the minutest sands are the labours of some
+profound sea, or the spoils of some vast mountain, in like manner his
+horrid wastes and wearying minutenesses are the chafings of a
+turbulent spirit, grasping the loftiest things and penetrating the
+deepest, and moving and moaning on the earth in loneliness and
+sadness.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Among men he is what among waters is
+
+      The strange, mysterious, solitary Nile.
+
+_Petrarca._ Is that his verse? I do not remember it.
+
+_Boccaccio._ No, it is mine for the present: how long it may continue
+mine I cannot tell. I never run after those who steal my apples: it
+would only tire me: and they are hardly worth recovering when they are
+bruised and bitten, as they are usually. I would not stand upon my
+verses: it is a perilous boy's trick, which we ought to leave off when
+we put on square shoes. Let our prose show what we are, and our poetry
+what we have been.
+
+_Petrarca._ You would never have given this advice to Alighieri.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I would never plough porphyry; there is ground fitter for
+grain. Alighieri is the parent of his system, like the sun, about whom
+all the worlds are but particles thrown forth from him. We may write
+little things well, and accumulate one upon another; but never will
+any be justly called a great poet unless he has treated a great
+subject worthily. He may be the poet of the lover and of the idler, he
+may be the poet of green fields or gay society; but whoever is this
+can be no more. A throne is not built of birds'-nests, nor do a
+thousand reeds make a trumpet.
+
+_Petrarca._ I wish Alighieri had blown his on nobler occasions.
+
+_Boccaccio._ We may rightly wish it: but, in regretting what he
+wanted, let us acknowledge what he had: and never forget (which we
+omitted to mention) that he borrowed less from his predecessors than
+any of the Roman poets from theirs. Reasonably may it be expected that
+almost all who follow will be greatly more indebted to antiquity, to
+whose stores we, every year, are making some addition.
+
+_Petrarca._ It can be held no flaw in the title-deeds of genius, if
+the same thoughts reappear as have been exhibited long ago. The
+indisputable sign of defect should be looked for in the proportion
+they bear to the unquestionably original. There are ideas which
+necessarily must occur to minds of the like magnitude and materials,
+aspect and temperature. When two ages are in the same phasis, they
+will excite the same humours, and produce the same coincidences and
+combinations. In addition to which, a great poet may really borrow: he
+may even condescend to an obligation at the hand of an equal or
+inferior: but he forfeits his title if he borrows more than the amount
+of his own possessions. The nightingale himself takes somewhat of his
+song from birds less glorified: and the lark, having beaten with her
+wing the very gates of heaven, cools her breast among the grass. The
+lowlier of intellect may lay out a table in their field, at which
+table the highest one shall sometimes be disposed to partake: want
+does not compel him. Imitation, as we call it, is often weakness, but
+it likewise is often sympathy.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Our poet was seldom accessible in this quarter. Invective
+picks up the first stone on the wayside, and wants leisure to consult
+a forerunner.
+
+_Petrarca._ Dante (original enough everywhere) is coarse and clumsy in
+this career. Vengeance has nothing to do with comedy, nor properly
+with satire. The satirist who told us that Indignation made his verses
+for him, might have been told in return that she excluded him thereby
+from the first class, and thrust him among the rhetoricians and
+declaimers. Lucretius, in his vituperation, is graver and more
+dignified than Alighieri. Painful; to see how tolerant is the atheist,
+how intolerant the Catholic: how anxiously the one removes from among
+the sufferings of Mortality, her last and heaviest, the fear of a
+vindictive Fury pursuing her shadow across rivers of fire and tears;
+how laboriously the other brings down Anguish and Despair, even when
+Death has done his work. How grateful the one is to that beneficent
+philosopher who made him at peace with himself, and tolerant and
+kindly toward his fellow-creatures! how importunate the other that God
+should forgo His divine mercy, and hurl everlasting torments both upon
+the dead and the living!
+
+_Boccaccio._ I have always heard that Ser Dante was a very good man
+and sound Catholic: but Christ forgive me if my heart is oftener on
+the side of Lucretius![17] Observe, I say, my heart; nothing more. I
+devoutly hold to the sacraments and the mysteries: yet somehow I would
+rather see men tranquillized than frightened out of their senses, and
+rather fast asleep than burning. Sometimes I have been ready to
+believe, as far as our holy faith will allow me, that it were better
+our Lord were nowhere, than torturing in His inscrutable wisdom, to
+all eternity, so many myriads of us poor devils, the creatures of His
+hands. Do not cross thyself so thickly, Francesco! nor hang down thy
+nether lip so loosely, languidly, and helplessly; for I would be a
+good Catholic, alive or dead. But, upon my conscience, it goes hard
+with me to think it of Him, when I hear that woodlark yonder, gushing
+with joyousness, or when I see the beautiful clouds, resting so softly
+one upon another, dissolving ... and not damned for it. Above all, I
+am slow to apprehend it, when I remember His great goodness vouchsafed
+to me, and reflect on my sinful life heretofore, chiefly in summer
+time, and in cities, or their vicinity. But I was tempted beyond my
+strength; and I fell as any man might do. However, this last illness,
+by God's grace, has well-nigh brought me to my right mind again in all
+such matters: and if I get stout in the present month, and can hold
+out the next without sliding, I do verily think I am safe, or nearly
+so, until the season of beccaficoes.
+
+_Petrarca._ Be not too confident!
+
+_Boccaccio._ Well, I will not be.
+
+_Petrarca._ But be firm.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Assuntina! what! are you come in again?
+
+_Assunta._ Did you or my master call me, Riverenza?
+
+_Petrarca._ No, child!
+
+_Boccaccio._ Oh! get you gone! Get you gone! you little rogue you!
+
+Francesco, I feel quite well. Your kindness to my playful creatures in
+the _Decameron_ has revived me, and has put me into good humour with
+the greater part of them. Are you quite certain the Madonna will not
+expect me to keep my promise? You said you were: I need not ask you
+again. I will accept the whole of your assurances, and half your
+praises.
+
+_Petrarca._ To represent so vast a variety of personages so
+characteristically as you have done, to give the wise all their
+wisdom, the witty all their wit, and (what is harder to do
+advantageously) the simple all their simplicity, requires a genius
+such as you alone possess. Those who doubt it are the least dangerous
+of your rivals.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[17] Qy. How much of Lucretius (or Petronius or Catullus, before
+cited) was then known?
+
+
+FIFTH DAY'S INTERVIEW
+
+It being now the last morning that Petrarca could remain with his
+friend, he resolved to pass early into his bedchamber. Boccaccio had
+risen and was standing at the open window, with his arms against it.
+Renovated health sparkled in the eyes of the one; surprise and delight
+and thankfulness to Heaven filled the other's with sudden tears. He
+clasped Giovanni, kissed his flaccid and sallow cheek, and falling on
+his knees, adored the Giver of life, the source of health to body and
+soul. Giovanni was not unmoved: he bent one knee as he leaned on the
+shoulder of Francesco, looking down into his face, repeating his
+words, and adding:
+
+'Blessed be Thou, O Lord! who sendest me health again! and blessings
+on Thy messenger who brought it.'
+
+He had slept soundly; for ere he closed his eyes he had unburdened his
+mind of its freight, not only by employing the prayers appointed by
+Holy Church, but likewise by ejaculating; as sundry of the fathers did
+of old. He acknowledged his contrition for many transgressions, and
+chiefly for uncharitable thoughts of Fra Biagio: on which occasion he
+turned fairly round on his couch, and leaning his brow against the
+wall, and his body being in a becomingly curved position, and proper
+for the purpose, he thus ejaculated:
+
+'Thou knowest, O most Holy Virgin! that never have I spoken to
+handmaiden at this villetta, or within my mansion at Certaldo,
+wantonly or indiscreetly, but have always been, inasmuch as may be,
+the guardian of innocence; deeming it better, when irregular thoughts
+assailed me, to ventilate them abroad than to poison the house with
+them. And if, sinner as I am, I have thought uncharitably of others,
+and more especially of Fra Biagio, pardon me, out of thy exceeding
+great mercies! And let it not be imputed to me, if I have kept, and
+may keep hereafter, an eye over him, in wariness and watchfulness; not
+otherwise. For thou knowest, O Madonna! that many who have a perfect
+and unwavering faith in thee, yet do cover up their cheese from the
+nibblings of vermin.'
+
+Whereupon, he turned round again, threw himself on his back at full
+length, and feeling the sheets cool, smooth, and refreshing, folded
+his arms, and slept instantaneously. The consequence of his wholesome
+slumber was a calm alacrity: and the idea that his visitor would be
+happy at seeing him on his feet again, made him attempt to get up: at
+which he succeeded, to his own wonder. And it was increased by the
+manifestation of his strength in opening the casement, stiff from
+being closed, and swelled by the continuance of the rains. The morning
+was warm and sunny: and it is known that on this occasion he composed
+the verses below:
+
+      My old familiar cottage-green!
+      I see once more thy pleasant sheen;
+      The gossamer suspended over
+      Smart celandine by lusty clover;
+      And the last blossom of the plum
+      Inviting her first leaves to come;
+      Which hang a little back, but show
+      'Tis not their nature to say no.
+      I scarcely am in voice to sing
+      How graceful are the steps of Spring;
+      And ah! it makes me sigh to look
+      How leaps along my merry brook,
+      The very same to-day as when
+      He chirrupt first to maids and men.
+
+_Petrarca._ I can rejoice at the freshness of your feelings: but the
+sight of the green turf reminds me rather of its ultimate use and
+destination.
+
+      For many serves the parish pall,
+      The turf in common serves for all.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Very true; and, such being the case, let us carefully
+fold it up, and lay it by until we call for it.
+
+Francesco, you made me quite light-headed yesterday. I am rather too
+old to dance either with Spring, as I have been saying, or with
+Vanity: and yet I accepted her at your hand as a partner. In future,
+no more of comparisons for me! You not only can do me no good, but you
+can leave me no pleasure: for here I shall remain the few days I have
+to live, and shall see nobody who will be disposed to remind me of
+your praises. Beside, you yourself will get hated for them. We neither
+can deserve praise nor receive it with impunity.
+
+_Petrarca._ Have you never remarked that it is into quiet water that
+children throw pebbles to disturb it? and that it is into deep caverns
+that the idle drop sticks and dirt? We must expect such treatment.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Your admonition shall have its wholesome influence over
+me, when the fever your praises have excited has grown moderate.
+
+... After the conversation on this topic and various others had
+continued some time, it was interrupted by a visitor. The clergy and
+monkery at Certaldo had never been cordial with Messer Giovanni, it
+being suspected that certain of his _Novelle_ were modelled on
+originals in their orders. Hence, although they indeed both professed
+and felt esteem for Canonico Petrarca, they abstained from expressing
+it at the villetta. But Frate Biagio of San Vivaldo was (by his own
+appointment) the friend of the house; and, being considered as very
+expert in pharmacy, had, day after day, brought over no indifferent
+store of simples, in ptisans, and other refections, during the
+continuance of Ser Giovanni's ailment. Something now moved him to cast
+about in his mind whether it might not appear dutiful to make another
+visit. Perhaps he thought it possible that, among those who
+peradventure had seen him lately on the road, one or other might
+expect from him a solution of the questions, What sort of person was
+the _crowned martyr_? whether he carried a palm in his hand? whether a
+seam was visible across the throat? whether he wore a ring over his
+glove, with a chrysolite in it, like the bishops, but representing the
+city of Jerusalem and the judgment-seat of Pontius Pilate? Such were
+the reports; but the inhabitants of San Vivaldo could not believe the
+Certaldese, who, inhabiting the next township to them, were naturally
+their enemies. Yet they might believe Frate Biagio, and certainly
+would interrogate him accordingly. He formed his determination, put
+his frock and hood on, and gave a curvature to his shoe, to evince his
+knowledge of the world, by pushing the extremity of it with his
+breast-bone against the corner of his cell. Studious of his figure and
+of his attire, he walked as much as possible on his heels, to keep up
+the reformation he had wrought in the workmanship of the cordwainer.
+On former occasions he had borrowed a horse, as being wanted to hear
+confession or to carry medicines, which might otherwise be too late.
+But, having put on an entirely new habiliment, and it being the season
+when horses are beginning to do the same, he deemed it prudent to
+travel on foot. Approaching the villetta, his first intention was to
+walk directly into his patient's room: but he found it impossible to
+resist the impulses of pride, in showing Assunta his rigid and stately
+frock, and shoes rather of the equestrian order than the monastic. So
+he went into the kitchen where the girl was at work, having just taken
+away the remains of the breakfast.
+
+'Frate Biagio!' cried she, 'is this you? Have you been sleeping at
+Conte Jeronimo's?'
+
+'Not I,' replied he.
+
+'Why!' said she, 'those are surely his shoes! Santa Maria! you must
+have put them on in the dusk of the morning, to say your prayers in!
+Here! here! take these old ones of Signor Padrone, for the love of
+God! I hope your Reverence met nobody.'
+
+_Frate._ What dost smile at?
+
+_Assunta._ Smile at! I could find in my heart to laugh outright, if I
+only were certain that nobody had seen your Reverence in such a funny
+trim. Riverenza! put on these.
+
+_Frate._ Not I indeed.
+
+_Assunta._ Allow me then?
+
+_Frate._ No, nor you.
+
+_Assunta._ Then let me stand upon yours, to push down the points.
+
+... Frate Biagio now began to relent a little, when Assunta, who had
+made one step toward the project, bethought herself suddenly, and
+said:
+
+'No; I might miss my footing. But, mercy upon us! what made you cramp
+your Reverence with those ox-yoke shoes? and strangle your Reverence
+with that hangdog collar?'
+
+'If you must know,' answered the Frate, reddening, 'it was because I
+am making a visit to the Canonico of Parma. I should like to know
+something about him: perhaps you could tell me?'
+
+_Assunta._ Ever so much.
+
+_Frate._ I thought no less: indeed I knew it. Which goes to bed first?
+
+_Assunta._ Both together.
+
+_Frate._ Demonio! what dost mean?
+
+_Assunta._ He tells me never to sit up waiting, but to say my prayers
+and dream of the Virgin.
+
+_Frate._ As if it was any business of his! Does he put out his lamp
+himself?
+
+_Assunta._ To be sure he does: why should not he? what should he be
+afraid of? It is not winter: and beside, there is a mat upon the
+floor, all round the bed, excepting the top and bottom.
+
+_Frate._ I am quite convinced he never said anything to make you
+blush. Why are you silent?
+
+_Assunta._ I have a right.
+
+_Frate._ He did then? ay? Do not nod your head: that will never do.
+Discreet girls speak plainly.
+
+_Assunta._ What would you have?
+
+_Frate._ The truth; the truth; again, I say, the truth.
+
+_Assunta._ He _did_ then.
+
+_Frate._ I knew it! The most dangerous man living!
+
+_Assunta._ Ah! indeed he is! Signor Padrone said so.
+
+_Frate._ He knows him of old: he warned you, it seems.
+
+_Assunta._ Me! He never said it was I who was in danger.
+
+_Frate._ He might: it was his duty.
+
+_Assunta._ Am I so fat? Lord! you may feel every rib. Girls who run
+about as I do, slip away from apoplexy.
+
+_Frate._ Ho! ho! that is all, is it?
+
+_Assunta._ And bad enough too! that such good-natured men should ever
+grow so bulky; and stand in danger, as Padrone said they both do, of
+such a seizure?
+
+_Frate._ What? and art ready to cry about it? Old folks cannot die
+easier: and there are always plenty of younger to run quick enough for
+a confessor. But I must not trifle in this manner. It is my duty to
+set your feet in the right way: it is my bounden duty to report to Ser
+Giovanni all irregularities I know of, committed in his domicile. I
+could indeed, and would, remit a trifle, on hearing the worst. Tell me
+now, Assunta! tell me, you little angel! did you ... we all may, the
+very best of us may, and do ... sin, my sweet?
+
+_Assunta._ You may be sure I did not: for whenever I sin I run into
+church directly, although it snows or thunders: else I never could see
+again Padrone's face, or any one's.
+
+_Frate._ You do not come to me.
+
+_Assunta._ You live at San Vivaldo.
+
+_Frate._ But when there is sin so pressing I am always ready to be
+found. You perplex, you puzzle me. Tell me at once how he made you
+blush.
+
+_Assunta._ Well then!
+
+_Frate._ Well then! you did not hang back so before him. I lose all
+patience.
+
+_Assunta._ So famous a man!...
+
+_Frate._ No excuse in that.
+
+_Assunta._ So dear to Padrone....
+
+_Frate._ The more shame for him!
+
+_Assunta._ Called me....
+
+_Frate._ And _called_ you, did he! the traitorous swine!
+
+_Assunta._ Called me ... _good girl_.
+
+_Frate._ Psha! the wenches, I think, are all mad: but few of them in
+this manner.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+... Without saying another word, Fra Biagio went forward and opened
+the bedchamber door, saying briskly:
+
+'Servant! Ser Giovanni! Ser Canonico! most devoted! most obsequious! I
+venture to incommode you. Thanks to God, Ser Canonico, you are looking
+well for your years. They tell me you were formerly (who would believe
+it?) the handsomest man in Christendom, and worked your way glibly,
+yonder at Avignon.
+
+'Capperi! Ser Giovanni! I never observed that you were sitting
+bolt-upright in that long-backed armchair, instead of lying abed.
+Quite in the right. I am rejoiced at such a change for the better. Who
+advised it?'
+
+_Boccaccio._ So many thanks to Fra Biagio! I not only am sitting up,
+but have taken a draught of fresh air at the window, and every leaf
+had a little present of sunshine for me.
+
+There is one pleasure, Fra Biagio, which I fancy you never have
+experienced, and I hardly know whether I ought to wish it you; the
+first sensation of health after a long confinement.
+
+_Frate._ Thanks! infinite! I would take any man's word for that,
+without a wish to try it. Everybody tells me I am exactly what I was a
+dozen years ago; while, for my part, I see everybody changed: those
+who ought to be much about my age, even those.... Per Bacco! I told
+them my thoughts when they had told me theirs; and they were not so
+agreeable as they used to be in former days.
+
+_Boccaccio._ How people hate sincerity!
+
+Cospetto! why, Frate! what hast got upon thy toes? Hast killed some
+Tartar and tucked his bow into one, and torn the crescent from the
+vizier's tent to make the other match it? Hadst thou fallen in thy
+mettlesome expedition (and it is a mercy and a miracle thou didst
+not) those sacrilegious shoes would have impaled thee.
+
+_Frate._ It was a mistake in the shoemaker. But no pain or incommodity
+whatsoever could detain me from paying my duty to Ser Canonico, the
+first moment I heard of his auspicious arrival, or from offering my
+congratulations to Ser Giovanni, on the annunciation that he was
+recovered and looking out of the window. All Tuscany was standing on
+the watch for it, and the news flew like lightning. By this time it is
+upon the Danube.
+
+And pray, Ser Canonico, how does Madonna Laura do?
+
+_Petrarca._ Peace to her gentle spirit! she is departed.
+
+_Frate._ Ay, true. I had quite forgotten: that is to say, I recollect
+it. You told us as much, I think, in a poem on her death. Well, and do
+you know! our friend Giovanni here is a bit of an author in his way.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Frate! you confuse my modesty.
+
+_Frate._ Murder will out. It is a fact, on my conscience. Have you
+never heard anything about it, Canonico! Ha! we poets are sly fellows:
+we can keep a secret.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Are you quite sure you can?
+
+_Frate._ Try, and trust me with any. I am a confessional on legs:
+there is no more a whisper in me than in a woolsack.
+
+I am in feather again, as you see; and in tune, as you shall hear.
+
+April is not the month for moping. Sing it lustily.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Let it be your business to sing it, being a Frate; I can
+only recite it.
+
+_Frate._ Pray do, then.
+
+_Boccaccio._
+
+      Frate Biagio! sempre quando
+      Qua tu vieni cavalcando,
+      Pensi che le buone strade
+      Per il mondo sien ben rade;
+      E, di quante sono brutte,
+      La piu brutta e tua di tutte.
+      Badi, non cascare sulle
+      Graziosissime fanciulle,
+      Che con capo dritto, alzato,
+      Uova portano al mercato.
+      Pessima mi pare l'opra
+      Rovesciarle sottosopra.
+      Deh! scansando le erte e sassi,
+      Sempre con premura passi.
+      Caro amico! Frate Biagio!
+      Passi pur, ma passi adagio.
+
+_Frate._ Well now really, Canonico, for one not exactly one of us,
+that canzone of Ser Giovanni has merit; has not it? I did not ride,
+however, to-day; as you may see by the lining of my frock. But _plus
+non vitiat_; ay, Canonico! About the roads he is right enough; they
+are the devil's own roads; that must be said for them.
+
+Ser Giovanni! with permission; your mention of eggs in the canzone has
+induced me to fancy I could eat a pair of them. The hens lay well now:
+that white one of yours is worth more than the goose that laid the
+golden: and you have a store of others, her equals or betters: we have
+none like them at poor St. Vivaldo. _A riverderci, Ser Giovanni!
+Schiavo! Ser Canonico! mi commandino._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+... Fra Biagio went back into the kitchen, helped himself to a quarter
+of a loaf, ordered a flask of wine, and, trying several eggs against
+his lips, selected seven, which he himself fried in oil, although the
+maid offered her services. He never had been so little disposed to
+enter into conversation with her; and on her asking him how he found
+her master, he replied, that in bodily health Ser Giovanni, by his
+prayers and ptisans, had much improved, but that his faculties were
+wearing out apace. 'He may now run in the same couples with the
+Canonico: they cannot catch the mange one of the other: the one could
+say nothing to the purpose, and the other nothing at all. The whole
+conversation was entirely at my charge,' added he. 'And now, Assunta,
+since you press it, I will accept the service of your master's shoes.
+How I shall ever get home I don't know.' He took the shoes off the
+handles of the bellows, where Assunta had placed them out of her way,
+and tucking one of his own under each arm, limped toward St. Vivaldo.
+
+The unwonted attention to smartness of apparel, in the only article
+wherein it could be displayed, was suggested to Frate Biagio by
+hearing that Ser Francesco, accustomed to courtly habits and elegant
+society, and having not only small hands, but small feet, usually wore
+red slippers in the morning. Fra Biagio had scarcely left the outer
+door, than he cordially cursed Ser Francesco for making such a fool of
+him, and wearing slippers of black list. 'These canonicoes,' said he,
+'not only lie themselves, but teach everybody else to do the same. He
+has lamed me for life: I burn as if I had been shod at the
+blacksmith's forge.'
+
+The two friends said nothing about him, but continued the discourse
+which his visit had interrupted.
+
+_Petrarca._ Turn again, I entreat you, to the serious; and do not
+imagine that because by nature you are inclined to playfulness, you
+must therefore write ludicrous things better. Many of your stories
+would make the gravest men laugh, and yet there is little wit in them.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I think so myself; though authors, little disposed as
+they are to doubt their possession of any quality they would bring
+into play, are least of all suspicious on the side of wit. You have
+convinced me. I am glad to have been tender, and to have written
+tenderly: for I am certain it is this alone that has made you love me
+with such affection.
+
+_Petrarca._ Not this alone, Giovanni! but this principally. I have
+always found you kind and compassionate, liberal and sincere, and when
+Fortune does not stand very close to such a man, she leaves only the
+more room for Friendship.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Let her stand off then, now and for ever! To my heart, to
+my heart, Francesco! preserver of my health, my peace of mind, and
+(since you tell me I may claim it) my glory.
+
+_Petrarca._ Recovering your strength you must pursue your studies to
+complete it. What can you have been doing with your books? I have
+searched in vain this morning for the treasury. Where are they kept?
+Formerly they were always open. I found only a short manuscript, which
+I suspect is poetry, but I ventured not on looking into it, until I
+had brought it with me and laid it before you.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Well guessed! They are verses written by a gentleman who
+resided long in this country, and who much regretted the necessity of
+leaving it. He took great delight in composing both Latin and Italian,
+but never kept a copy of them latterly, so that these are the only
+ones I could obtain from him. Read: for your voice will improve them:
+
+
+TO MY CHILD CARLINO
+
+      Carlino! what art thou about, my boy?
+      Often I ask that question, though in vain,
+      For we are far apart: ah! therefore 'tis
+      I often ask it; not in such a tone
+      As wiser fathers do, who know too well.
+      Were we not children, you and I together?
+      Stole we not glances from each other's eyes?
+      Swore we not secrecy in such misdeeds?
+      Well could we trust each other. Tell me then
+      What thou art doing. Carving out thy name,
+      Or haply mine, upon my favourite seat,
+      With the new knife I sent thee over sea?
+      Or hast thou broken it, and hid the hilt
+      Among the myrtles, starr'd with flowers, behind?
+      Or under that high throne whence fifty lilies
+      (With sworded tuberoses dense around)
+      Lift up their heads at once, not without fear
+      That they were looking at thee all the while.
+
+        Does Cincirillo follow thee about?
+      Inverting one swart foot suspensively,
+      And wagging his dread jaw at every chirp
+      Of bird above him on the olive-branch?
+      Frighten him then away! 'twas he who slew
+      Our pigeons, our white pigeons peacock-tailed,
+      That fear'd not you and me ... alas, nor him!
+      I flattened his striped sides along my knee,
+      And reasoned with him on his bloody mind,
+      Till he looked blandly, and half-closed his eyes
+      To ponder on my lecture in the shade.
+      I doubt his memory much, his heart a little,
+      And in some minor matters (may I say it?)
+      Could wish him rather sager. But from thee
+      God hold back wisdom yet for many years!
+      Whether in early season or in late
+      It always comes high-priced. For thy pure breast
+      I have no lesson; it for me has many.
+      Come throw it open then! What sports, what cares
+      (Since there are none too young for these) engage
+      Thy busy thoughts? Are you again at work,
+      Walter and you, with those sly labourers,
+      Geppo, Giovanni, Cecco, and Poeta,
+      To build more solidly your broken dam
+      Among the poplars, whence the nightingale
+      Inquisitively watch'd you all day long?
+      I was not of your council in the scheme,
+      Or might have saved you silver without end,
+      And sighs too without number. Art thou gone
+      Below the mulberry, where that cold pool
+      Urged to devise a warmer, and more fit
+      For mighty swimmers, swimming three abreast?
+      Or art thou panting in this summer noon
+      Upon the lowest step before the hall,
+      Drawing a slice of water-melon, long
+      As Cupid's bow, athwart thy wetted lips
+      (Like one who plays Pan's pipe) and letting drop
+      The sable seeds from all their separate cells,
+      And leaving bays profound and rocks abrupt,
+      Redder than coral round Calypso's cave?
+
+_Petrarca._ There have been those anciently who would have been
+pleased with such poetry, and perhaps there may be again. I am not
+sorry to see the Muses by the side of childhood, and forming a part of
+the family. But now tell me about the books.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Resolving to lay aside the more valuable of those I had
+collected or transcribed, and to place them under the guardianship of
+richer men, I locked them up together in the higher story of my tower
+at Certaldo. You remember the old tower?
+
+_Petrarca._ Well do I remember the hearty laugh we had together (which
+stopped us upon the staircase) at the calculation we made, how much
+longer you and I, if we continued to thrive as we had thriven
+latterly, should be able to pass within its narrow circle. Although I
+like this little villa much better, I would gladly see the place
+again, and enjoy with you, as we did before, the vast expanse of
+woodlands and mountains and maremma; frowning fortresses inexpugnable;
+and others more prodigious for their ruins; then below them, lordly
+abbeys, overcanopied with stately trees and girded with rich
+luxuriance; and towns that seem approaching them to do them honour,
+and villages nestling close at their sides for sustenance and
+protection.
+
+_Boccaccio._ My disorder, if it should keep its promise of leaving me
+at last, will have been preparing me for the accomplishment of such a
+project. Should I get thinner and thinner at this rate, I shall soon
+be able to mount not only a turret or a belfry, but a tube of
+macarone, while a Neapolitan is suspending it for deglutition.
+
+What I am about to mention will show you how little you can rely on
+me! I have preserved the books, as you desired, but quite contrary to
+my resolution: and, no less contrary to it, by your desire I shall now
+preserve the _Decameron_. In vain had I determined not only to mend in
+future, but to correct the past; in vain had I prayed most fervently
+for grace to accomplish it, with a final aspiration to Fiametta that
+she would unite with your beloved Laura, and that, gentle and
+beatified spirits as they are, they would breathe together their purer
+prayers on mine. See what follows.
+
+_Petrarca._ Sigh not at it. Before we can see all that follows from
+their intercession, we must join them again. But let me hear anything
+in which they are concerned.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I prayed; and my breast, after some few tears, grew
+calmer. Yet sleep did not ensue until the break of morning, when the
+dropping of soft rain on the leaves of the fig-tree at the window, and
+the chirping of a little bird, to tell another there was shelter under
+them, brought me repose and slumber. Scarcely had I closed my eyes, if
+indeed time can be reckoned any more in sleep than in heaven, when my
+Fiametta seemed to have led me into the meadow. You will see it below
+you: turn away that branch: gently! gently! do not break it; for the
+little bird sat there.
+
+_Petrarca._ I think, Giovanni, I can divine the place. Although this
+fig-tree, growing out of the wall between the cellar and us, is
+fantastic enough in its branches, yet that other which I see yonder,
+bent down and forced to crawl along the grass by the prepotency of the
+young shapely walnut-tree, is much more so. It forms a seat, about a
+cubit above the ground, level and long enough for several.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Ha! you fancy it must be a favourite spot with me,
+because of the two strong forked stakes wherewith it is propped and
+supported!
+
+_Petrarca._ Poets know the haunts of poets at first sight; and he who
+loved Laura.... O Laura! did I say he who _loved_ thee? ... hath
+whisperings where those feet would wander which have been restless
+after Fiametta.
+
+_Boccaccio._ It is true, my imagination has often conducted her
+thither; but there in this chamber she appeared to me more visibly in
+a dream.
+
+'Thy prayers have been heard, O Giovanni,' said she.
+
+I sprang to embrace her.
+
+'Do not spill the water! Ah! you have spilt a part of it.'
+
+I then observed in her hand a crystal vase. A few drops were sparkling
+on the sides and running down the rim: a few were trickling from the
+base and from the hand that held it.
+
+'I must go down to the brook,' said she, 'and fill it again as it was
+filled before.'
+
+What a moment of agony was this to me! Could I be certain how long
+might be her absence? She went: I was following: she made a sign for
+me to turn back: I disobeyed her only an instant: yet my sense of
+disobedience, increasing my feebleness and confusion, made me lose
+sight of her. In the next moment she was again at my side, with the
+cup quite full. I stood motionless: I feared my breath might shake the
+water over. I looked her in the face for her commands ... and to see
+it ... to see it so calm, so beneficent, so beautiful. I was
+forgetting what I had prayed for, when she lowered her head, tasted of
+the cup, and gave it me. I drank; and suddenly sprang forth before me
+many groves and palaces and gardens, and their statues and their
+avenues, and their labyrinths of alaternus and bay, and alcoves of
+citron, and watchful loopholes in the retirements of impenetrable
+pomegranate. Farther off, just below where the fountain slipped away
+from its marble hall and guardian gods, arose, from their beds of moss
+and drosera and darkest grass, the sisterhood of oleanders, fond of
+tantalizing with their bosomed flowers and their moist and pouting
+blossoms the little shy rivulet, and of covering its face with all the
+colours of the dawn. My dream expanded and moved forward. I trod again
+the dust of Posilipo, soft as the feathers in the wings of Sleep. I
+emerged on Baia; I crossed her innumerable arches; I loitered in the
+breezy sunshine of her mole; I trusted the faithful seclusion of her
+caverns, the keepers of so many secrets; and I reposed on the buoyancy
+of her tepid sea. Then Naples, and her theatres and her churches, and
+grottoes and dells and forts and promontories, rushed forward in
+confusion, now among soft whispers, now among sweetest sounds, and
+subsided, and sank, and disappeared. Yet a memory seemed to come fresh
+from every one: each had time enough for its tale, for its pleasure,
+for its reflection, for its pang. As I mounted with silent steps the
+narrow staircase of the old palace, how distinctly did I feel against
+the palm of my hand the coldness of that smooth stone-work, and the
+greater of the cramps of iron in it!
+
+'Ah me! is this forgetting?' cried I anxiously to Fiametta.
+
+'We must recall these scenes before us,' she replied: 'such is the
+punishment of them. Let us hope and believe that the apparition, and
+the compunction which must follow it, will be accepted as the full
+penalty, and that both will pass away almost together.'
+
+I feared to lose anything attendant on her presence: I feared to
+approach her forehead with my lips: I feared to touch the lily on its
+long wavy leaf in her hair, which filled my whole heart with
+fragrance. Venerating, adoring, I bowed my head at last to kiss her
+snow-white robe, and trembled at my presumption. And yet the
+effulgence of her countenance vivified while it chastened me. I loved
+her ... I must not say _more_ than ever ... _better_ than ever; it was
+Fiametta who had inhabited the skies. As my hand opened toward her:
+
+'Beware!' said she, faintly smiling; 'beware, Giovanni! Take only the
+crystal; take it, and drink again.'
+
+'Must all be then forgotten?' said I sorrowfully.
+
+'Remember your prayer and mine, Giovanni. Shall both have been
+granted ... oh, how much worse than in vain?'
+
+I drank instantly; I drank largely. How cool my bosom grew; how could
+it grow so cool before her! But it was not to remain in its
+quiescency; its trials were not yet over. I will not, Francesco! no, I
+may not commemorate the incidents she related to me, nor which of us
+said, 'I blush for having loved _first_;' nor which of us replied,
+'Say _least_, say _least_, and blush again.'
+
+The charm of the words (for I felt not the encumbrance of the body nor
+the acuteness of the spirit) seemed to possess me wholly. Although the
+water gave me strength and comfort, and somewhat of celestial
+pleasure, many tears fell around the border of the vase as she held it
+up before me, exhorting me to take courage, and inviting me with more
+than exhortation to accomplish my deliverance. She came nearer, more
+tenderly, more earnestly; she held the dewy globe with both hands,
+leaning forward, and sighed and shook her head, drooping at my
+pusillanimity. It was only when a ringlet had touched the rim, and
+perhaps the water (for a sunbeam on the surface could never have given
+it such a golden hue), that I took courage, clasped it, and exhausted
+it. Sweet as was the water, sweet as was the serenity it gave me ...
+alas! that also which it moved away from me was sweet!
+
+'This time you can trust me alone,' said she, and parted my hair, and
+kissed my brow. Again she went toward the brook: again my agitation,
+my weakness, my doubt, came over me: nor could I see her while she
+raised the water, nor knew I whence she drew it. When she returned,
+she was close to me at once: she smiled: her smile pierced me to the
+bones: it seemed an angel's. She sprinkled the pure water on me; she
+looked most fondly; she took my hand; she suffered me to press hers to
+my bosom; but, whether by design I cannot tell, she let fall a few
+drops of the chilly element between.
+
+'And now, O my beloved!' said she, 'we have consigned to the bosom of
+God our earthly joys and sorrows. The joys cannot return, let not the
+sorrows. These alone would trouble my repose among the blessed.'
+
+'Trouble thy repose! Fiametta! Give me the chalice!' cried I ... 'not
+a drop will I leave in it, not a drop.'
+
+'Take it!' said that soft voice. 'O now most dear Giovanni! I know
+thou hast strength enough; and there is but little ... at the bottom
+lies our first kiss.'
+
+'Mine! didst thou say, beloved one? and is that left thee still?'
+
+'_Mine_,' said she, pensively; and as she abased her head, the broad
+leaf of the lily hid her brow and her eyes; the light of heaven shone
+through the flower.
+
+'O Fiametta! Fiametta!' cried I in agony, 'God is the God of mercy,
+God is the God of love ... can I, can I ever?' I struck the chalice
+against my head, unmindful that I held it; the water covered my face
+and my feet. I started up, not yet awake, and I heard the name of
+Fiametta in the curtains.
+
+_Petrarca._ Love, O Giovanni, and life itself, are but dreams at best.
+I do think
+
+      Never so gloriously was Sleep attended
+      As with the pageant of that heavenly maid.
+
+But to dwell on such subjects is sinful. The recollection of them,
+with all their vanities, brings tears into my eyes.
+
+_Boccaccio._ And into mine too ... they were so very charming.
+
+_Petrarca._ Alas, alas! the time always comes when we must regret the
+enjoyments of our youth.
+
+_Boccaccio._ If we have let them pass us.
+
+_Petrarca._ I mean our indulgence in them.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Francesco! I think you must remember Raffaellino degli
+Alfani.
+
+_Petrarca._ Was it Raffaellino who lived near San Michele in Orto?
+
+_Boccaccio._ The same. He was an innocent soul, and fond of fish. But
+whenever his friend Sabbatelli sent him a trout from Pratolino, he
+always kept it until next day or the day after, just long enough to
+render it unpalatable. He then turned it over in the platter, smelt at
+it closer, although the news of its condition came undeniably from a
+distance, touched it with his forefinger, solicited a testimony from
+the gills which the eyes had contradicted, sighed over it, and sent it
+for a present to somebody else. Were I a lover of trout as Raffaellino
+was, I think I should have taken an opportunity of enjoying it while
+the pink and crimson were glittering on it.
+
+_Petrarca._ Trout, yes.
+
+_Boccaccio._ And all other fish I could encompass.
+
+_Petrarca._ O thou grave mocker! I did not suspect such slyness in
+thee: proof enough I had almost forgotten thee.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Listen! listen! I fancied I caught a footstep in the
+passage. Come nearer; bend your head lower, that I may whisper a word
+in your ear. Never let Assunta hear you sigh. She is mischievous: she
+may have been standing at the door: not that I believe she would be
+guilty of any such impropriety: but who knows what girls are capable
+of! She has no malice, only in laughing; and a sigh sets her windmill
+at work, van over van, incessantly.
+
+_Petrarca._ I should soon check her. I have no notion....
+
+_Boccaccio._ After all, she is a good girl ... a trifle of the wilful.
+She must have it that many things are hurtful to me ... reading in
+particular ... it makes people so odd. Tina is a small matter of the
+madcap ... in her own particular way ... but exceedingly discreet, I
+do assure you, if they will only leave her alone.
+
+I find I was mistaken, there was nobody.
+
+_Petrarca._ A cat, perhaps.
+
+_Boccaccio._ No such thing. I order him over to Certaldo while the
+birds are laying and sitting: and he knows by experience, favourite as
+he is, that it is of no use to come back before he is sent for. Since
+the first impetuosities of youth, he has rarely been refractory or
+disobliging. We have lived together now these five years, unless I
+miscalculate; and he seems to have learnt something of my manners,
+wherein violence and enterprise by no means predominate. I have
+watched him looking at a large green lizard; and, their eyes being
+opposite and near, he has doubted whether it might be pleasing to me
+if he began the attack; and their tails on a sudden have touched one
+another at the decision.
+
+_Petrarca._ Seldom have adverse parties felt the same desire of peace
+at the same moment, and none ever carried it more simultaneously and
+promptly into execution.
+
+_Boccaccio._ He enjoys his _otium cum dignitate_ at Certaldo: there he
+is my castellan, and his chase is unlimited in those domains. After
+the doom of relegation is expired, he comes hither at midsummer. And
+then if you could see his joy! His eyes are as deep as a well, and as
+clear as a fountain: he jerks his tail into the air like a royal
+sceptre, and waves it like the wand of a magician. You would fancy
+that, as Horace with his head, he was about to smite the stars with
+it. There is ne'er such another cat in the parish; and he knows it, a
+rogue! We have rare repasts together in the bean-and-bacon time,
+although in regard to the bean he sides with the philosopher of Samos;
+but after due examination. In cleanliness he is a very nun; albeit in
+that quality which lies between cleanliness and godliness, there is a
+smack of Fra Biagio about him. What is that book in your hand?
+
+_Petrarca._ My breviary.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Well, give me mine too ... there, on the little table in
+the corner, under the glass of primroses. We can do nothing better.
+
+_Petrarca._ What prayer were you looking for? let me find it.
+
+_Boccaccio._ I don't know how it is: I am scarcely at present in a
+frame of mind for it. We are of one faith: the prayers of the one will
+do for the other: and I am sure, if you omitted my name, you would say
+them all over afresh. I wish you could recollect in any book as dreamy
+a thing to entertain me as I have been just repeating. We have had
+enough of Dante: I believe few of his beauties have escaped us: and
+small faults, which we readily pass by, are fitter for small folks, as
+grubs are the proper bait for gudgeons.
+
+_Petrarca._ I have had as many dreams as most men. We are all made up
+of them, as the webs of the spider are particles of her own vitality.
+But how infinitely less do we profit by them! I will relate to you,
+before we separate, one among the multitude of mine, as coming the
+nearest to the poetry of yours, and as having been not totally useless
+to me. Often have I reflected on it; sometimes with pensiveness, with
+sadness never.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Then, Francesco, if you had with you as copious a choice
+of dreams as clustered on the elm-trees where the Sibyl led Aeneas,
+this, in preference to the whole swarm of them, is the queen dream for
+me.
+
+_Petrarca._ When I was younger I was fond of wandering in solitary
+places, and never was afraid of slumbering in woods and grottoes.
+Among the chief pleasures of my life, and among the commonest of my
+occupations, was the bringing before me such heroes and heroines of
+antiquity, such poets and sages, such of the prosperous and the
+unfortunate, as most interested me by their courage, their wisdom,
+their eloquence, or their adventures. Engaging them in the
+conversation best suited to their characters, I knew perfectly their
+manners, their steps, their voices: and often did I moisten with my
+tears the models I had been forming of the less happy.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Great is the privilege of entering into the studies of
+the intellectual; great is that of conversing with the guides of
+nations, the movers of the mass, the regulators of the unruly will,
+stiff, in its impurity and rust, against the finger of the Almighty
+Power that formed it: but give me, Francesco, give me rather the
+creature to sympathize with; apportion me the sufferings to assuage.
+Ah, gentle soul! thou wilt never send them over to another; they have
+better hopes from thee.
+
+_Petrarca._ We both alike feel the sorrows of those around us. He who
+suppresses or allays them in another, breaks many thorns off his own;
+and future years will never harden fresh ones.
+
+My occupation was not always in making the politician talk politics,
+the orator toss his torch among the populace, the philosopher run down
+from philosophy to cover the retreat or the advances of his sect; but
+sometimes in devising how such characters must act and discourse, on
+subjects far remote from the beaten track of their career. In like
+manner the philologist, and again the dialectician, were not indulged
+in the review and parade of their trained bands, but, at times,
+brought forward to show in what manner and in what degree external
+habits had influenced the conformation of the internal man. It was far
+from unprofitable to set passing events before past actors, and to
+record the decisions of those whose interests and passions are
+unconcerned in them.
+
+_Boccaccio._ This is surely no easy matter. The thoughts are in fact
+your own, however you distribute them.
+
+_Petrarca._ All cannot be my own; if you mean by _thoughts_ the
+opinions and principles I should be the most desirous to inculcate.
+Some favourite ones perhaps may obtrude too prominently, but otherwise
+no misbehaviour is permitted them: reprehension and rebuke are always
+ready, and the offence is punished on the spot.
+
+_Boccaccio._ Certainly you thus throw open, to its full extent, the
+range of poetry and invention; which cannot but be very limited and
+sterile, unless where we find displayed much diversity of character as
+disseminated by nature, much peculiarity of sentiment as arising from
+position, marked with unerring skill through every shade and
+gradation; and finally and chiefly, much intertexture and intensity of
+passion. You thus convey to us more largely and expeditiously the
+stores of your understanding and imagination, than you ever could by
+sonnets or canzonets, or sinewless and sapless allegories.
+
+But weightier works are less captivating. If you had published any
+such as you mention, you must have waited for their acceptance. Not
+only the fame of Marcellus, but every other,
+
+      Crescit occulto velut arbor aevo;
+
+and that which makes the greatest vernal shoot is apt to make the
+least autumnal. Authors in general who have met celebrity at starting,
+have already had their reward; always their utmost due, and often much
+beyond it. We cannot hope for both celebrity and fame: supremely
+fortunate are the few who are allowed the liberty of choice between
+them. We two prefer the strength that springs from exercise and toil,
+acquiring it gradually and slowly: we leave to others the earlier
+blessing of that sleep which follows enjoyment. How many at first
+sight are enthusiastic in their favour! Of these how large a portion
+come away empty-handed and discontented! like idlers who visit the
+seacoast, fill their pockets with pebbles bright from the passing
+wave, and carry them off with rapture. After a short examination at
+home, every streak seems faint and dull, and the whole contexture
+coarse, uneven, and gritty: first one is thrown away, then another;
+and before the week's end the store is gone, of things so shining and
+wonderful.
+
+_Petrarca._ Allegory, which you named with sonnets and canzonets, had
+few attractions for me, believing it to be the delight in general of
+idle, frivolous, inexcursive minds, in whose mansions there is neither
+hall nor portal to receive the loftier of the Passions. A stranger to
+the Affections, she holds a low station among the handmaidens of
+Poetry, being fit for little but an apparition in a mask. I had
+reflected for some time on this subject, when, wearied with the length
+of my walk over the mountains, and finding a soft old molehill,
+covered with grey grass, by the wayside, I laid my head upon it and
+slept. I cannot tell how long it was before a species of dream or
+vision came over me.
+
+Two beautiful youths appeared beside me; each was winged; but the
+wings were hanging down, and seemed ill adapted to flight. One of
+them, whose voice was the softest I ever heard, looking at me
+frequently, said to the other:
+
+'He is under my guardianship for the present: do not awaken him with
+that feather.'
+
+Methought, hearing the whisper, I saw something like the feather on an
+arrow; and then the arrow itself; the whole of it, even to the point;
+although he carried it in such a manner that it was difficult at first
+to discover more than a palm's length of it: the rest of the shaft,
+and the whole of the barb, was behind his ankles.
+
+'This feather never awakens any one,' replied he, rather petulantly;
+'but it brings more of confident security, and more of cherished
+dreams, than you without me are capable of imparting.'
+
+'Be it so!' answered the gentler ... 'none is less inclined to quarrel
+or dispute than I am. Many whom you have wounded grievously, call upon
+me for succour. But so little am I disposed to thwart you, it is
+seldom I venture to do more for them than to whisper a few words of
+comfort in passing. How many reproaches on these occasions have been
+cast upon me for indifference and infidelity! Nearly as many, and
+nearly in the same terms, as upon you!'
+
+'Odd enough that we, O Sleep! should be thought so alike,' said Love,
+contemptuously. 'Yonder is he who bears a nearer resemblance to you:
+the dullest have observed it.' I fancied I turned my eyes to where he
+was pointing, and saw at a distance the figure he designated.
+Meanwhile the contention went on uninterruptedly. Sleep was slow in
+asserting his power or his benefits. Love recapitulated them; but only
+that he might assert his own above them. Suddenly he called on me to
+decide, and to choose my patron. Under the influence, first of the
+one, then of the other, I sprang from repose to rapture, I alighted
+from rapture on repose ... and knew not which was sweetest. Love was
+very angry with me, and declared he would cross me throughout the
+whole of my existence. Whatever I might on other occasions have
+thought of his veracity, I now felt too surely the conviction that he
+would keep his word. At last, before the close of the altercation, the
+third Genius had advanced, and stood near us. I cannot tell how I knew
+him, but I knew him to be the Genius of Death. Breathless as I was at
+beholding him, I soon became familiar with his features. First they
+seemed only calm; presently they grew contemplative; and lastly
+beautiful: those of the Graces themselves are less regular, less
+harmonious, less composed. Love glanced at him unsteadily, with a
+countenance in which there was somewhat of anxiety, somewhat of
+disdain; and cried: 'Go away! go away! nothing that thou touchest,
+lives.'
+
+'Say rather, child!' replied the advancing form, and advancing grew
+loftier and statelier, 'say rather that nothing of beautiful or of
+glorious lives its own true life until my wing hath passed over it.'
+
+Love pouted, and rumpled and bent down with his forefinger the stiff
+short feathers on his arrow-head; but replied not. Although he frowned
+worse than ever, and at me, I dreaded him less and less, and scarcely
+looked toward him. The milder and calmer Genius, the third, in
+proportion as I took courage to contemplate him, regarded me with more
+and more complacency. He held neither flower nor arrow, as the others
+did; but, throwing back the clusters of dark curls that overshadowed
+his countenance, he presented to me his hand, openly and benignly. I
+shrank on looking at him so near, and yet I sighed to love him. He
+smiled, not without an expression of pity, at perceiving my
+diffidence, my timidity: for I remembered how soft was the hand of
+Sleep, how warm and entrancing was Love's. By degrees, I became
+ashamed of my ingratitude; and turning my face away, I held out my
+arms, and felt my neck within his. Composure strewed and allayed all
+the throbbings of my bosom; the coolness of freshest morning breathed
+around: the heavens seemed to open above me; while the beautiful cheek
+of my deliverer rested on my head. I would now have looked for those
+others; but knowing my intention by my gesture, he said,
+consolatorily:
+
+'Sleep is on his way to the Earth, where many are calling him; but it
+is not to these he hastens; for every call only makes him fly farther
+off. Sedately and gravely as he looks, he is nearly as capricious and
+volatile as the more arrogant and ferocious one.'
+
+'And Love!' said I, 'whither is he departed? If not too late, I would
+propitiate and appease him.'
+
+'He who cannot follow me, he who cannot overtake and pass me,' said
+the Genius, 'is unworthy of the name, the most glorious in earth or
+heaven. Look up! Love is yonder, and ready to receive thee.'
+
+I looked: the earth was under me: I saw only the clear blue sky, and
+something brighter above it.
+
+
+
+
+POEMS
+
+
+I
+
+      She I love (alas in vain!)
+        Floats before my slumbering eyes:
+      When she comes she lulls my pain,
+        When she goes what pangs arise!
+      Thou whom love, whom memory flies,
+        Gentle Sleep! prolong thy reign!
+      If even thus she soothe my sighs,
+        Never let me wake again!
+
+
+II
+
+      Pleasure! why thus desert the heart
+          In its spring-tide?
+      I could have seen her, I could part,
+          And but have sigh'd!
+
+      O'er every youthful charm to stray,
+          To gaze, to touch....
+      Pleasure! why take so much away,
+          Or give so much?
+
+
+III
+
+      Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives,
+        Alcestis rises from the shades;
+      Verse calls them forth; 'tis verse that gives
+        Immortal youth to mortal maids.
+
+      Soon shall Oblivion's deepening veil
+        Hide all the peopled hills you see,
+      The gay, the proud, while lovers hail
+        These many summers you and me.
+
+
+IV
+
+      Ianthe! you are call'd to cross the sea!
+            A path forbidden _me_!
+      Remember, while the Sun his blessing sheds
+            Upon the mountain-heads,
+      How often we have watcht him laying down
+            His brow, and dropt our own
+      Against each other's, and how faint and short
+            And sliding the support!
+      What will succeed it now? Mine is unblest,
+            Ianthe! nor will rest
+      But on the very thought that swells with pain.
+            O bid me hope again!
+      O give me back what Earth, what (without you)
+            Not Heaven itself can do,
+      One of the golden days that we have past;
+            And let it be my last!
+      Or else the gift would be, however sweet,
+            Fragile and incomplete.
+
+
+V
+
+      The gates of fame and of the grave
+      Stand under the same architrave.
+
+
+VI
+
+      Twenty years hence my eyes may grow
+      If not quite dim, yet rather so,
+      Still yours from others they shall know
+                             Twenty years hence.
+      Twenty years hence tho' it may hap
+      That I be call'd to take a nap
+      In a cool cell where thunder-clap
+                             Was never heard,
+      There breathe but o'er my arch of grass
+      A not too sadly sigh'd _Alas_,
+      And I shall catch, ere you can pass,
+                             That winged word.
+
+
+VII
+
+      Here, ever since you went abroad,
+        If there be change, no change I see,
+      I only walk our wonted road,
+        The road is only walkt by me.
+
+      Yes; I forgot; a change there is;
+        Was it of _that_ you bade me tell?
+      I catch at times, at times I miss
+        The sight, the tone, I know so well.
+
+      Only two months since you stood here!
+        Two shortest months! then tell me why
+      Voices are harsher than they were,
+        And tears are longer ere they dry.
+
+
+VIII
+
+      Tell me not things past all belief;
+        One truth in you I prove;
+      The flame of anger, bright and brief,
+        Sharpens the barb of Love.
+
+
+IX
+
+      Proud word you never spoke, but you will speak
+        Four not exempt from pride some future day.
+      Resting on one white hand a warm wet cheek
+        Over my open volume you will say,
+      'This man loved _me_!' then rise and trip away.
+
+
+X
+
+FIESOLE IDYL
+
+      Here, where precipitate Spring, with one light bound
+      Into hot Summer's lusty arms, expires,
+      And where go forth at morn, at eve, at night,
+      Soft airs that want the lute to play with 'em,
+      And softer sighs that know not what they want,
+      Aside a wall, beneath an orange-tree,
+      Whose tallest flowers could tell the lowlier ones
+      Of sights in Fiesole right up above,
+      While I was gazing a few paces off
+      At what they seem'd to show me with their nods,
+      Their frequent whispers and their pointing shoots,
+      A gentle maid came down the garden-steps
+      And gathered the pure treasure in her lap.
+      I heard the branches rustle, and stept forth
+      To drive the ox away, or mule, or goat,
+      Such I believed it must be. How could I
+      Let beast o'erpower them? When hath wind or rain
+      Borne hard upon weak plant that wanted me,
+      And I (however they might bluster round)
+      Walkt off? 'Twere most ungrateful: for sweet scents
+      Are the swift vehicles of still sweeter thoughts,
+      And nurse and pillow the dull memory
+      That would let drop without them her best stores.
+      They bring me tales of youth and tones of love,
+      And 'tis and ever was my wish and way
+      To let all flowers live freely, and all die
+      (Whene'er their Genius bids their souls depart)
+      Among their kindred in their native place.
+      I never pluck the rose; the violet's head
+      Hath shaken with my breath upon its bank
+      And not reproacht me; the ever-sacred cup
+      Of the pure lily hath between my hands
+      Felt safe, unsoil'd, nor lost one grain of gold.
+      I saw the light that made the glossy leaves
+      More glossy; the fair arm, the fairer cheek
+      Warmed by the eye intent on its pursuit;
+      I saw the foot that, although half-erect
+      From its grey slipper, could not lift her up
+      To what she wanted: I held down a branch
+      And gather'd her some blossoms; since their hour
+      Was come, and bees had wounded them, and flies
+      Of harder wing were working their way thro'
+      And scattering them in fragments under-foot.
+      So crisp were some, they rattled unevolved,
+      Others, ere broken off, fell into shells,
+      For such appear the petals when detacht,
+      Unbending, brittle, lucid, white like snow,
+      And like snow not seen thro', by eye or sun:
+      Yet every one her gown received from me
+      Was fairer than the first. I thought not so,
+      But so she praised them to reward my care.
+      I said, 'You find the largest.'
+                                    'This indeed,'
+      Cried she, 'is large and sweet.' She held one forth,
+      Whether for me to look at or to stake
+      She knew not, nor did I; but taking it
+      Would best have solved (and this she felt) her doubt.
+      I dared not touch it; for it seemed a part
+      Of her own self; fresh, full, the most mature
+      Of blossoms, yet a blossom; with a touch
+      To fall, and yet unfallen. She drew back
+      The boon she tender'd, and then, finding not
+      The ribbon at her waist to fix it in,
+      Dropt it, as loath to drop it, on the rest.
+
+
+XI
+
+      Ah what avails the sceptred race,
+        Ah what the form divine!
+      What every virtue, every grace!
+        Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
+      Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
+        May weep, but never see,
+      A night of memories and of sighs
+        I consecrate to thee.
+
+
+XII
+
+      With rosy hand a little girl prest down
+      A boss of fresh-cull'd cowslips in a rill:
+      Often as they sprang up again, a frown
+      Show'd she disliked resistance to her will:
+      But when they droopt their heads and shone much less,
+      She shook them to and fro, and threw them by,
+      And tript away. 'Ye loathe the heaviness
+      Ye love to cause, my little girls!' thought I,
+      'And what had shone for you, by you must die.'
+
+
+XIII
+
+            Ternissa! you are fled!
+            I say not to the dead,
+      But to the happy ones who rest below:
+            For, surely, surely, where
+            Your voice and graces are,
+      Nothing of death can any feel or know.
+            Girls who delight to dwell
+            Where grows most asphodel,
+      Gather to their calm breasts each word you speak:
+            The mild Persephone
+            Places you on her knee,
+      And your cool palm smooths down stern Pluto's cheek.
+
+
+XIV
+
+      Various the roads of life; in one
+        All terminate, one lonely way
+      We go; and 'Is he gone?'
+        Is all our best friends say.
+
+
+XV
+
+      Yes; I write verses now and then,
+      But blunt and flaccid is my pen,
+      No longer talkt of by young men
+                            As rather clever:
+
+      In the last quarter are my eyes,
+      You see it by their form and size;
+      Is it not time then to be wise?
+                            Or now or never.
+
+      Fairest that ever sprang from Eve!
+      While Time allows the short reprieve,
+      Just look at me! would you believe
+                            'Twas once a lover?
+
+      I cannot clear the five-bar gate,
+      But, trying first its timber's state,
+      Climb stiffly up, take breath, and wait
+                            To trundle over.
+
+      Thro' gallopade I cannot swing
+      The entangling blooms of Beauty's spring:
+      I cannot say the tender thing,
+                            Be 't true or false,
+
+      And am beginning to opine
+      Those girls are only half-divine
+      Whose waists yon wicked boys entwine
+                            In giddy waltz.
+
+      I fear that arm above that shoulder,
+      I wish them wiser, graver, older,
+      Sedater, and no harm if colder
+                            And panting less.
+
+      Ah! people were not half so wild
+      In former days, when, starchly mild,
+      Upon her high-heel'd Essex smiled
+                            The brave Queen Bess.
+
+
+XVI
+
+ON SEEING A HAIR OF LUCRETIA BORGIA
+
+      Borgia, thou once wert almost too august
+      And high for adoration; now thou'rt dust.
+      All that remains of thee these plaits unfold,
+      Calm hair, meandering in pellucid gold.
+
+
+XVII
+
+      Once, and once only, have I seen thy face,
+      Elia! once only has thy tripping tongue
+      Run o'er my breast, yet never has been left
+      Impression on it stronger or more sweet.
+      Cordial old man! what youth was in thy years,
+      What wisdom in thy levity, what truth
+      In every utterance of that purest soul!
+      Few are the spirits of the glorified
+      I'd spring to earlier at the gate of Heaven.
+
+
+XVIII
+
+TO WORDSWORTH
+
+      Those who have laid the harp aside
+        And turn'd to idler things,
+      From very restlessness have tried
+        The loose and dusty strings.
+      And, catching back some favourite strain,
+      Run with it o'er the chords again.
+
+      But Memory is not a Muse,
+        O Wordsworth! though 'tis said
+      They all descend from her, and use
+        To haunt her fountain-head:
+      That other men should work for me
+      In the rich mines of Poesie,
+      Pleases me better than the toil
+        Of smoothing under hardened hand,
+      With Attic emery and oil,
+        The shining point for Wisdom's wand,
+      Like those thou temperest 'mid the rills
+      Descending from thy native hills.
+
+      Without his governance, in vain
+        Manhood is strong, and Youth is bold
+      If oftentimes the o'er-piled strain
+        Clogs in the furnace, and grows cold
+      Beneath his pinions deep and frore,
+      And swells and melts and flows no more,
+      That is because the heat beneath
+        Pants in its cavern poorly fed.
+      Life springs not from the couch of Death,
+        Nor Muse nor Grace can raise the dead;
+      Unturn'd then let the mass remain,
+      Intractable to sun or rain.
+
+      A marsh, where only flat leaves lie,
+      And showing but the broken sky,
+      Too surely is the sweetest lay
+      That wins the ear and wastes the day,
+      Where youthful Fancy pouts alone
+      And lets not Wisdom touch her zone.
+
+      He who would build his fame up high,
+      The rule and plummet must apply,
+      Nor say, 'I'll do what I have plann'd,'
+      Before he try if loam or sand
+      Be still remaining in the place
+      Delved for each polisht pillar's base.
+      With skilful eye and fit device
+      Thou raisest every edifice,
+      Whether in sheltered vale it stand
+      Or overlook the Dardan strand,
+      Amid the cypresses that mourn
+      Laodameia's love forlorn.
+
+      We both have run o'er half the space
+      Listed for mortal's earthly race;
+      We both have crost life's fervid line,
+      And other stars before us shine:
+      May they be bright and prosperous
+      As those that have been stars for us!
+      Our course by Milton's light was sped,
+      And Shakespeare shining overhead:
+      Chatting on deck was Dryden too,
+      The Bacon of the rhyming crew;
+      None ever crost our mystic sea
+      More richly stored with thought than he;
+      Tho' never tender nor sublime,
+      He wrestles with and conquers Time.
+      To learn my lore on Chaucer's knee,
+      I left much prouder company;
+      Thee gentle Spenser fondly led,
+      But me he mostly sent to bed.
+
+      I wish them every joy above
+      That highly blessed spirits prove,
+      Save one: and that too shall be theirs,
+      But after many rolling years,
+      When 'mid their light thy light appears.
+
+
+XIX
+
+TO CHARLES DICKENS
+
+      Go then to Italy; but mind
+      To leave the pale low France behind;
+      Pass through that country, nor ascend
+      The Rhine, nor over Tyrol wend:
+      Thus all at once shall rise more grand
+      The glories of the ancient land.
+        Dickens! how often, when the air
+      Breath'd genially, I've thought me there,
+      And rais'd to heaven my thankful eyes
+      To see three spans of deep blue skies.
+        In Genoa now I hear a stir,
+      A shout ... _Here comes the Minister!_
+      Yes, thou art he, although not sent
+      By cabinet or parliament:
+      Yes, thou art he. Since Milton's youth
+      Bloom'd in the Eden of the South,
+      Spirit so pure and lofty none
+      Hath heavenly Genius from his throne
+      Deputed on the banks of Thames
+      To speak his voice and urge his claims.
+      Let every nation know from thee
+      How less than lovely Italy
+      Is the whole world beside; let all
+      Into their grateful breasts recall
+      How Prospero and Miranda dwelt
+      In Italy: the griefs that melt
+      The stoniest heart, each sacred tear
+      One lacrymatory gathered here;
+      All Desdemona's, all that fell
+      In playful Juliet's bridal cell.
+        Ah! could my steps in life's decline
+      Accompany or follow thine!
+      But my own vines are not for me
+      To prune, or from afar to see.
+      I miss the tales I used to tell
+      With cordial Hare and joyous Gell,
+      And that good old Archbishop whose
+      Cool library, at evening's close
+      (Soon as from Ischia swept the gale
+      And heav'd and left the dark'ning sail),
+      Its lofty portal open'd wide
+      To me, and very few beside:
+      Yet large his kindness. Still the poor
+      Flock round Taranto's palace door,
+      And find no other to replace
+      The noblest of a noble race.
+      Amid our converse you would see
+      Each with white cat upon his knee,
+      And flattering that grand company:
+      For Persian kings might proudly own
+      Such glorious cats to share the throne.
+        Write me few letters: I'm content
+      With what for all the world is meant;
+      Write then for all: but, since my breast
+      Is far more faithful than the rest,
+      Never shall any other share
+      With little Nelly nestling there.
+
+
+XX
+
+TO BARRY CORNWALL
+
+      Barry! your spirit long ago
+      Has haunted me; at last I know
+      The heart it sprung from: one more sound
+      Ne'er rested on poetic ground.
+      But, Barry Cornwall! by what right
+      Wring you my breast and dim my sight,
+      And make me wish at every touch
+      My poor old hand could do as much?
+      No other in these later times
+      Has bound me in so potent rhymes.
+      I have observed the curious dress
+      And jewelry of brave Queen Bess,
+      But always found some o'ercharged thing,
+      Some flaw in even the brightest ring,
+      Admiring in her men of war,
+      A rich but too argute guitar.
+      Our foremost now are more prolix,
+      And scrape with three-fell fiddlesticks,
+      And, whether bound for griefs or smiles,
+      Are slow to turn as crocodiles.
+      Once, every court and country bevy
+      Chose the gallant of loins less heavy,
+      And would have laid upon the shelf
+      Him who could talk but of himself.
+      Reason is stout, but even Reason
+      May walk too long in Rhyme's hot season.
+      I have heard many folks aver
+      They have caught horrid colds with her.
+      Imagination's paper kite,
+      Unless the string is held in tight,
+      Whatever fits and starts it takes,
+      Soon bounces on the ground, and breaks.
+      You, placed afar from each extreme,
+      Nor dully drowse nor wildly dream,
+      But, ever flowing with good-humour,
+      Are bright as spring and warm as summer.
+      Mid your Penates not a word
+      Of scorn or ill-report is heard;
+      Nor is there any need to pull
+      A sheaf or truss from cart too full,
+      Lest it o'erload the horse, no doubt,
+      Or clog the road by falling out.
+      We, who surround a common table,
+      And imitate the fashionable,
+      Wear each two eyeglasses: _this_ lens
+      Shows us our faults, _that_ other men's.
+      We do not care how dim may be
+      _This_ by whose aid our own we see,
+      But, ever anxiously alert
+      That all may have their whole desert,
+      We would melt down the stars and sun
+      In our heart's furnace, to make one
+      Thro' which the enlighten'd world might spy
+      A mote upon a brother's eye.
+
+
+XXI
+
+TO ROBERT BROWNING
+
+      There is delight in singing, tho' none hear
+      Beside the singer: and there is delight
+      In praising, tho' the praiser sit alone
+      And see the prais'd far off him, far above.
+      Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's,
+      Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee,
+      Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
+      No man hath walkt along our roads with step
+      So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
+      So varied in discourse. But warmer climes
+      Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze
+      Of Alpine highths thou playest with, borne on
+      Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where
+      The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.
+
+
+XXII
+
+AGE
+
+      Death, tho' I see him not, is near
+      And grudges me my eightieth year.
+      Now, I would give him all these last
+      For one that fifty have run past.
+      Ah! he strikes all things, all alike,
+      But bargains: those he will not strike.
+
+
+XXIII
+
+      Leaf after leaf drops off, flower after flower,
+      Some in the chill, some in the warmer hour:
+      Alike they flourish and alike they fall,
+      And Earth who nourisht them receives them all.
+      Should we, her wiser sons, be less content
+      To sink into her lap when life is spent?
+
+
+XXIV
+
+      Well I remember how you smiled
+        To see me write your name upon
+      The soft sea-sand--'_O! what a child!_
+        _You think you're writing upon stone!_'
+      I have since written what no tide
+        Shall ever wash away, what men
+      Unborn shall read o'er ocean wide
+        And find Ianthe's name again.
+
+
+XXV
+
+      I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
+      Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art;
+      I warmed both hands before the fire of Life;
+      It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
+
+
+XXVI
+
+      Death stands above me, whispering low
+        I know not what into my ear:
+      Of his strange language all I know
+        Is, there is not a word of fear.
+
+
+XXVII
+
+A PASTORAL
+
+      Damon was sitting in the grove
+      With Phyllis, and protesting love;
+      And she was listening; but no word
+      Of all he loudly swore she heard.
+      How! was she deaf then? no, not she,
+      Phyllis was quite the contrary.
+      Tapping his elbow, she said, 'Hush!
+      O what a darling of a thrush!
+      I think he never sang so well
+      As now, below us, in the dell.'
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+THE LOVER
+
+      Now thou art gone, tho' not gone far,
+        It seems that there are worlds between us;
+      Shine here again, thou wandering star!
+        Earth's planet! and return with Venus.
+
+      At times thou broughtest me thy light
+        When restless sleep had gone away;
+      At other times more blessed night
+        Stole over, and prolonged thy stay.
+
+
+XXIX
+
+THE POET WHO SLEEPS
+
+      One day, when I was young, I read
+      About a poet, long since dead,
+      Who fell asleep, as poets do
+      In writing--and make others too.
+      But herein lies the story's gist,
+      How a gay queen came up and kist
+      The sleeper.
+                    'Capital!' thought I.
+      'A like good fortune let me try.'
+      Many the things we poets feign.
+      I feign'd to sleep, but tried in vain.
+      I tost and turn'd from side to side,
+      With open mouth and nostrils wide.
+      At last there came a pretty maid,
+      And gazed; then to myself I said,
+      'Now for it!' She, instead of kiss,
+      Cried, 'What a lazy lout is this!'
+
+
+XXX
+
+DANIEL DEFOE
+
+      Few will acknowledge what they owe
+      To persecuted, brave Defoe.
+      Achilles, in Homeric song,
+      May, or he may not, live so long
+      As Crusoe; few their strength had tried
+      Without so staunch and safe a guide.
+      What boy is there who never laid
+      Under his pillow, half afraid,
+      That precious volume, lest the morrow
+      For unlearnt lessons might bring sorrow?
+      But nobler lessons he has taught
+      Wide-awake scholars who fear'd naught:
+      A Rodney and a Nelson may
+      Without him not have won the day.
+
+
+XXXI
+
+IDLE WORDS
+
+      They say that every idle word
+      Is numbered by the Omniscient Lord.
+      O Parliament! 'tis well that He
+      Endureth for Eternity,
+      And that a thousand Angels wait
+      To write them at thy inner gate.
+
+
+XXXII
+
+TO THE RIVER AVON
+
+      Avon! why runnest thou away so fast?
+      Rest thee before that Chancel where repose
+      The bones of him whose spirit moves the world.
+      I have beheld thy birthplace, I have seen
+      Thy tiny ripples where they play amid
+      The golden cups and ever-waving blades.
+      I have seen mighty rivers, I have seen
+      Padus, recovered from his fiery wound,
+      And Tiber, prouder than them all to bear
+      Upon his tawny bosom men who crusht
+      The world they trod on, heeding not the cries
+      Of culprit kings and nations many-tongued.
+      What are to me these rivers, once adorn'd
+      With crowns they would not wear but swept away?
+      Worthier art thou of worship, and I bend
+      My knees upon thy bank, and call thy name,
+      And hear, or think I hear, thy voice reply.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+Minor errors (missing or transposed letters, omitted punctuation, etc.)
+have been corrected without note. The author used a lot of archaic
+spelling, which remains unchanged.
+
+The single Greek word in this work has been transliterated, and is
+surrounded by plus signs +like this+.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Imaginary Conversations and Poems, by
+Walter Savage Landor
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