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LANDOR'S 
 
 IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS. 
 
The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924064981024 
 
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IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS ^ 
 BY WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 WITH BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND EX= 
 PLANATORY NOTES BY CHARLES 
 G. CRUMP 
 
 IN SIX VOLUMES 
 
 Ijkti^dSjjiiejj^ffl 
 
 FOURTH VOLUME 
 
 LONDON: PRINTED FOR J. M. DENT & CO.. 
 AND PUBLISHED BY THEM AT 29 AND 30 
 BEDFORD STREET, COVE NT GARDEN. 
 
 MCMIX. ^^fj 
 
P9. 
 
 i7rj^ Edition, 1 89 1 
 Reprintea 18953 1901, 1909 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 DIALOGUES OF LITERARY MEN. 
 
 IX. David Hume and John Home . . pp. 9-19 
 X. Alfieri and Salomon the Florentine 
 
 Jew 19-35 
 
 XI. Rousseau and Malesherbes . . 35" 51 
 
 XII. Joseph ScALiGER AND Montaigne . . 5 '-56 
 
 • *XIII. Boccaccio AND Petrarca . . . 56-66 
 
 XIV. Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca . 66-108 
 
 XV. Barrow and Newton. . . . 108-159 
 
 t ■* XVI. Walton, Cotton, and Oldways . . 159-174 
 
 XVII. Machiavelli and Michel-Angelo 
 
 Buonarroti ..... 174-193 
 
 XVIII. SoUTHEY AND LaNDOR . . . . I93-246 
 
 Southey and Landor {^second conversation) 246-302 
 
 XIX. Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker . 302-352 
 
 * XX. Steele and Addison .... 352-355 
 
 XXI. La Fontaine and De la Rochefoucault 356-373 
 
 * XXII. Melancthon and Calvin . . . 374-384 
 **XXIir. Galileo, Milton, and a Dominican . 384-393 
 , , XXIV. Essex and Spenser .... 393-400 
 
 • XXV. Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor 401-432 
 
DIALOGUES OF LITERARY MEN. 
 
 IX. DAVID HUME AND JOHN HOME.i 
 
 Hume. We Scotchmen, sir, are somewhat proud of our families 
 and relationships ; this is however a nationality which perhaps I 
 should not have detected in myself, if I had not been favored 
 with the flattering present of your tragedy. Our names, as often 
 happens, are spelled differently ; but I yielded with no reluctance 
 to the persuasion that we are, and not very distantly, of the same 
 stock. 
 
 Home. I hope, sir, our mountains will detain you among them 
 sTOe time, and I presume to promise you that you will find in 
 Edinburgh a society as polished and literate as in Paris. 
 
 Hume. As literate I can easily believe, my cousin, and per- 
 
 [ * The date of this Conversation must have been about the summer of 
 1766, when Hume went to live in Edinburgh after his return from France. 
 The Conversation reads as though Landor had supposed that Hume and 
 Home had not met before. But in fact they had been for some time 
 acquainted. Hume dedicated the 1758 edition of his "Essays and 
 Treatises " to Home. Both men considered themselves as belonging 
 to the same " name," and in his will Hume pleasantly alludes to the 
 difference of spelling, as one of the two points on which alone the friends 
 differed ; the other was the precedence in merit of port or claret, see p. 
 10 of the " Biography of Hume," which Dr Birkbeck Hill has concealed 
 in his notes to "The Letters of David Hume " CClarendon Press, 1888). 
 The discussion in the Conversation on the borderland between Religion 
 and Morality is a theme often referred to in Hume's essays. The particu- 
 lar instance of a brother and sister innocently wedded may have been de- 
 rived from the essay entitled " A Dialogue ; " the other instance may 
 have been taken from a similar discussion in Boswell's " Johnson," iii. p. 
 347-8 (Clarendon Press, 1887). (Imag. Convers., ii., 1824. ii., i8i6. 
 Works, i., 1846. Works, iv., 1876.)! 
 
lo Imaginary Conversations, 
 
 haps as polished, if you reason upon the ingredients of polish ; but 
 there is certainly much more amenity and urbanity at Paris than any- 
 where else in the world, and people there are less likely to give and 
 take offence. All topics may be discussed without arrogance and 
 superciliousness : an atheist would see you worship a stool or light 
 a candle at noon without a sneer at you ; and a bishop, if you 
 were well-dressed and perfumed, would argue with you calmly 
 and serenely, though you doubted the whole Athanasian creed. 
 
 Home. So much the worse : God forbid we should ever ex- 
 perience this lukewarmness in Scotland ! 
 
 Hume. God, it appears, has forbidden it ; for which reason, 
 to show ray obedience and submission, I live as much as possible 
 in France, where at present God has forbidden no such tlung. 
 
 Home. Religion, my dear sir, can alone make men happy and 
 keep them so. 
 
 Hume. Nothing is better calculated to make men happy than 
 religion, if you will allow them to manage it according to their 
 minds ; in which case the strong men hunt down others until they 
 can fold them, entrap them, or noose them. Here, however, let 
 the discussion terminate. Both of us have been in a cherry orchard, 
 and have observed the advantages of the jacket, hat, and rattle. 
 
 Home. Our reformed religion does not authorize any line of 
 conduct diverging from right reason : we are commanded by it to 
 speak the truth to all men. 
 
 Hume. Are you likewise commanded to hear it from all 
 men? 
 
 Home. Yes, let it only be proved to be truth. 
 
 Hume. I doubt the observance : you will not even let the fact 
 be proved ; you resist the attempt ; you blockade the preliminaries. 
 Religion, as you practise it in Scotland, in some cases is opposite 
 to reason and subversive of happiness. 
 
 Home. In what instance ? 
 
 Hume. If you had a brother whose wife was unfaithful to 
 him without his suspicion ; if he lived with her happily ; if he 
 had children by her ; if others of which he was fond could be 
 proved by you, and you only, not to be his, — ^what would you 
 do? 
 
 Home. Oh the harlot ! we have none such here, excepting the 
 wife indeed (as we hear she is) of a little lame blear-eyed lieutenant, 
 
David Hume and John Home. 1 1 
 
 brought with him from Sicily, and bearing an Etna of her own 
 about her, and truly no quiescent or intermittent one, which 
 Mungo Murray (the apprentice of Hector Abercrombie) tells me 
 has engulfed half the dissolutes in the parish. Of ^ the married 
 men who visited her, there was never one whose boot did not 
 pinch him soon after, or the weather was no weather for corns 
 and rheumatisms, or he must e'en go to Glasgow to look after a 
 bad debt, the times being too ticklish to bear losses. I run into 
 this discourse, not fearing that another philosopher will, like Em- 
 pedocles, precipitate himself into the crater, but merely to warn 
 you against the husband, whose intrepidity on entering the houses 
 of strangers has caught many acute and wary folks. After the 
 first compliments, he will lament to you that elegant and solid 
 literature is more neglected in our days than it ever was. He 
 will entreat you to recommend him to your bookseller ; his own 
 having been too much enriched by him had grown insolent. It is 
 desirable that it should be one who could advance three or four 
 guineas : not that he cares about the money, but that it is always 
 best to have a check upon these people. You smile : he has pro- 
 bably joined you in the street already, and found his way into 
 your study, and requested of you by the bye a trifling loan, as 
 lieing the only person in the world with whom he could take such" 
 a liberty. 
 
 Hume. You seem to forget that I am but just arrived, and 
 never knew him. 
 
 Home. That is no impediment : on the contrary, it is a rea- 
 son the more. A new face is as inviting to him as to the mos- 
 quitoes in America. If you lend him a guinea to be rid of him, 
 he will declare the next day that he borrowed it at your own 
 request, and that he returned it the same evening. 
 
 Hume. Such men perhaps may have their reasons, for being 
 here ; but the woman must be, as people say, like a fish out of 
 water. Again ^ to the question. Come now, if you had a 
 brother, I was supposing, whose wife — 
 
 [' From " Of " to " rheumatisms " (3 lines) added in 2iid ed. From 
 « or " to " losses " (2 lines) added in 3rd ed. From " I " to " water " (15 
 lines) added in 2nd ed.] 
 
 p First ed. reads : " parish. But if you had such a one. Home,'^ &c.] 
 
12 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Home. Out upon her ! should my brother cohabit with her ? 
 Should my nephews be defrauded of their patrimony by bastards ? 
 
 Hume. You would then destroy his happiness, and his child- 
 ren's ; for, supposing that you preserved to them a scanty portion 
 more of fortune (which you could not do), still the shame they 
 would feel from their mother's infamy would much outweigh it. 
 
 Home. I do not see clearly that this is a question of religion. 
 
 Hume. All the momentous actions of religious men are refer- 
 able to their religion, more or less nearly ; all the social duties, 
 and surely these are implicated here, are connected with it. Sup- 
 pose again that you knew a brother and sister, who, bom in 
 different countries, met at last, ignorant of their aiEnity, and 
 married. 
 
 Home. Poor, blind, sinful creatures ! God be mercifiil to 
 them! 
 
 Hume. I join you heartily in the prayer, and would only add 
 to it, Man be merciful to them also ! Imagine them to have lived 
 together ten years, to have a numerous and happy family, to come 
 and reside in your parish, and the attestation of their prior relation- 
 ship to be made indubitable to you by some document which alone 
 could establish and record it : what would you do ? 
 
 Home. I would snap asunder the chain that the devil had en- 
 snared them in, even if he stood before me ; I would implore God 
 to pardon them, and to survey with an eye of mercy their ur\- 
 offending bairns. 
 
 Hume. And would not you be disposed to behold them with 
 an eye of the same materials ? 
 
 Home. Could I leave them in mortal sin, a prey to the en- 
 snarer of souls ? No, I would rush between them as with a 
 flaming sword ; I would rescue them by God's help from per- 
 dition. 
 
 Hume. What misery and consternation would this rescue 
 bring with it ! 
 
 Home. They would call upon the hills to cover them, to 
 crush and extinguish their shame. 
 
 Hume. Those who had lived together in love and innocence 
 and felicity? A word spoken to them by their pastor brings 
 them into irremediable guilt and anguish. And you would do 
 this? 
 
David Hume and John Home. 13 
 
 Home. The laws of God are above all other laws : his ways 
 are inscrutable : thick darkness covers his throne. 
 
 Hume. My cousin, you who have written so elegant and 
 patheUc a tragedy cannot but have read the best-contrived one in 
 existence, the (Edipus of Sophocles. 
 
 Home. It has wrung my heart ; it has deluged my eyes with 
 weeping. 
 
 Hume. Which would you rather do, — cause and excite those 
 sufferings, or assuage and quell them ? 
 
 Home. Am I a Scotchman or an islander of the Red Sea, 
 that a question like this should be asked me ? 
 
 Hume, you would not then have given to CEdipus that in- 
 formation which drove him and Jocasta to despair ? 
 
 Home.* As a Christian and a minister of the gospel, I am 
 commanded to defy the devil, and to burst asunder the bonds of 
 sin. 
 
 Hume. I am certain you would be greatly pained in doing it. 
 
 Home. I should never overcome the grief and anxiety so 
 severe a duty would cause me. 
 
 Hume. You have now proved, better than I could have done 
 in twenty Essays, that, if morality is not religion, neither is 
 religion morality. Either of them, to be good (and the one must 
 be and the other should be so), will produce good effects from 
 the beginning to the end, and be followed by no remorse or 
 repentance. 
 
 It 5 would be presumptuous in me to quote the Bible to you, 
 who are so much more conversant in it ; yet I cannot refrain 
 from repeating, for my own satisfaction, the beautiful sentence 
 on holiness : that " all her ways are pleasantness, and all her 
 paths are peace." It says, not one or two paths, but all : for 
 vice hath one or two passably pleasant in the season, if we could 
 forget that, when we would return, the road is difficult to find, 
 and must be picked out in the dark. Imagine anything in the 
 semblance of a duty attended by regret and sorrow, and be 
 assured that holiness has no concern in it. Admonition, it is 
 true, is sometimes of such a nature, from that of the irregularity it 
 would correct, as to occasion a sigh or a blush to him who gives 
 
 [* First ed. reads: " Bomi. To him no. As," &c.] 
 P From " It " to " effect " (19 lines) added in ind ed.] 
 
14 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 it : in this case, the sensation so manifested adds weight to the 
 reproof and indemnifies the reprover. He is happy to have done 
 what from generosity and tenderness of heart he was sorry and 
 slow to do ; and the person in whose behalf he acted must 
 be degraded beneath the dignity of manhood, if he feels less for 
 himself than another has felt for him. The regret is not at the 
 performance of his duty, but at the failure of its effect. 
 
 To produce as much happiness as we can, and to prevent as 
 much misery, is the proper aim and end of true morality and 
 true religion. Only give things their right direction : ^ do but 
 place and train them well, and there is room to move easily and 
 pleasantly in the midst of them. 
 
 Home. What ! in the midst of vice and wickedness ? And 
 must we place and train those ? 
 
 Hume. There was a time when what is wine was not wine, 
 when what is vinegar was not vinegar, when what is corruption 
 was not corruption. That which would turn into vice may 
 not only not turn into it, but may, by discreet and attentive 
 management, become the ground-work of virtue. A little watch- 
 fulness over ourselves will save us a great deal of watchfiilness 
 over others, and will permit the kindliest of religions to drop her 
 inconvenient and unseemly talk of enmity and strife, cuirasses and 
 breastplates, battles and exterminations. 
 
 Home. These carnal terms are frequent in the books of the 
 Old Testament. 
 
 Hume. Because the books of the Old Testament were written 
 when the world was much more barbarous and ferocious than it 
 is at present ; and legislators must accommodate their language to 
 the customs and manners of the country. 
 
 Home. Apparently you would rather abolish the forcible 
 expressions of our pious reformers, than the abominations at 
 which their souls revolted. I am afraid you would hesitate 
 as little to demolish kirks as convents, to drive out ministers 
 as monks. 
 
 Hume. I would let ministers and their kirks alone. I would 
 abolish monasteries, but gradually and humanely ; and not until 
 I had discovered how and where the studious and pious could 
 
 [6 First ed. reads : " direction ; there is room. Do but train and place 
 them wfell. Home. What wickedness. Hume." &c."' 
 
David Hume and John Home. 1 5 
 
 spend their time better. I hold religion in the light of a medal 
 which has contracted rust from ages. This rust seems to have 
 been its preserver for many centuries, but after some few more 
 wUl certainly be its consumer, and leave no vestige of effigy or 
 superscription behind: it should be detached carefully and patiently, 
 not ignorantly and rudely scoured off. Happiness may be taken 
 away from many with the design of communicating it to more : 
 but that which is a gratefiil and refreshing odor in a limited 
 space would be none whatever in a larger ; that which is com- 
 fortable warmth to the domestic circle would not awaken the 
 chirping of a cricket, or stimulate the flight of a butterfly, in 
 the forest ; that which satisfies a hundred poor monks would, if 
 thrown open to society at large, contribute not an atom to its 
 benefit and emolument. Placid tempers, regulated habitudes, 
 consolatory visitations, are suppressed and destroyed, and nothing 
 rises from their ruins. Better let the cell be standing, than level 
 it only for the thorn and nettle. 
 
 Home. What good do these idlers with their cords and 
 wallets, or, if you please, with their regularities ? 
 
 Hume. These have their value, at least to the possessor and 
 the few about him. Ask rather, what is the worth of his abode 
 to the prince or to the public ? Who is the wiser for his cowl, 
 the warmer for his frock, the more contented for his cloister, 
 when they are taken from him ? Monks, it is true, are only as 
 stars that shine upon the desert ; but tell me, I beseech you, who 
 caused such a desert in the moral world, and who rendered so 
 fdnt a light, in some of its periods, a blessing ? Ignorant rulers, 
 must be the answer, and inhuman laws. They should cease to 
 exist some time before their antidotes, however ill-compounded, 
 are cast away. 
 
 If we had lived seven or eight centuries ago, John Home 
 would probably have been sajdng Mass at the altar, and David 
 Hume, fatter and lazier, would have been pursuing his theological 
 studies in the convent. We are so much the creatures of times 
 and seasons, so modified and fashioned by them, that the very 
 plants upon the wall, if they were as sensible as some suppose 
 them to be, would laugh at us. 
 
 Home. Fantastic forms and ceremonies are rather what the 
 philosopher will reprehend. Strip away these, reduce things 
 
1 6 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 to their primitive state of purity and holiness, and nothing 
 can alter or shake us, clinging, as we should, to the anchor 
 of faith. 
 
 Hume. People clung to it long ago ; but many lost their 
 grasp, benumbed by holding too tightly. The Church of Scot- 
 land brings close together the objects of veneration and abhor- 
 rence. The evil principle, or devil, was, in my opinion, hardly 
 worth the expense of his voyage from Persia ; but, since you 
 have him, you seem resolved to treat him nobly, hating him, 
 defying him, and fearing him nevertheless. I would not, how- 
 ever, place him so very near the Creator, let his pretensions, 
 from custom and precedent, be what they may. 
 
 Home. He is always marring the fair works of our Heavenly 
 Father ^ in this labor is his only proximity. 
 
 Hume. You represent him as spurring men on to wicked- 
 ness, from no other motive than the pleasure, he experiences in 
 rendering them miserable. 
 
 Home. He has no other, excepting his inveterate spite and 
 malice against God ; from which indeed, to speak more properly, 
 this desire originates. 
 
 Hume. Has he lost his wits, as well as his station, that 
 he fancies he can render God unhappy by being spitefiil and 
 malicious ? You wrong him greatly ; but you wrong God more. 
 For in all Satan's attempts to seduce men into wickedness, he 
 leaves every one his free will either to resist or yield ; but the 
 Heavenly Father, as you would represent him, predestines the 
 greater part of mankind to everlasting pains and torments, ante- 
 cedently to corruption or temptation. There is no impiety in 
 asking you which is the worst : for impiety most certainly 
 does not consist in setting men right on what is demonstrable 
 in their religion, nor in proving to them that God is greater 
 and better than, with all their zeal for him, they have ever 
 thought him. 
 
 Home, This is to confound religion with philosophy, the 
 source of nearly ^ every evil in conduct and of every error in ethics. 
 Hume. Religion is the eldest sister of Philosophy : on what- 
 ever subjects they may differ, it is unbecoming in either to quarrel, 
 and most so about their inheritance. 
 
 [' First ed. reads ; " of every evil and of every error.'] 
 
David Hume and John Home. 1 7 
 
 Home. And have you nothing, sir, to say against the pomps 
 and vanities of other worships, that you should assail the 
 institutions of your native country ? To fear God, I must 
 suppose, then, is less meritorious than to build steeples, and 
 embroider surplices, and compose chants, and blow the bellows 
 of organs. 
 
 Hume. My dear sir, it is not because God is delighted with 
 hymns and instruments of music, or prefers bass to tenor or 
 tenor to bass, or Handel to Giles Halloway, that nations throng 
 to celebrate in their churches his power and his beneficence ; 
 it is not that Inigo Jones or Christopher Wren could erect to 
 him a habitation more worthy of his presence than the humblest 
 cottage on the loneliest moor : it is that the best feelings, the 
 highest faculties, the greatest wealth, should be displayed and 
 exercised in the patrimonial palace of every family united. For 
 such are churches both to the rich and poor. 
 
 Home Your hand, David ! Pardon me, sir : the sentiment 
 carried me beyond custom ; for it recalled to me the moments of 
 blissfiil enthusiasm when I was writing my tragedy, and charmed 
 me the more as coming from you. 
 
 Hume. I explain the causes of things, and leave them. 
 
 Home. Go on, sir, pray go on ; for here we can walk 
 together. Suppose that God never heard us, never cared for us : 
 do those care for you or hear you whose exploits you celebrate 
 at public dinners, — our Wallaces and Bruces ? Yet are not we 
 thence the braver, the more generous, the more grateful ? 
 
 Hume. I do not see clearly how the more gratefid ; but I 
 would not analyze by reducing to a cinder a lofty sentiment. 
 
 Home. Surely * we are grateful for the benefits our illustrious 
 patriots have conferred on us ; and every act of gratitude is 
 rewarded by reproduction. Justice is often pale and melancholy; 
 but Gratitude, her daughter, is constantly in the flow of spirits 
 and the bloom of loveliness. You call out to her when you 
 fancy she is passing ; you want her for your dependants, your 
 domestics, your friends, your children. The ancients, as you 
 know, habitually asked their gods and goddesses by which of 
 their names it was most agreeable to them to be invoked : now 
 let Gratitude be, what for the play of our fancy we have just 
 [8 From " Surely " to " us " [z lines) added in 3rd ed.] 
 IV. B 
 
1 8 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 imagined her, a sentient living power; I cannot think of any 
 name more likely to be pleasing to her than Religion. The 
 simplest breast often holds more reason in it than it knows of, 
 and more than Philosophy looks for or suspects. We almost as 
 frequently despise what is not despicable as we admire and rever- 
 ence what is. No nation in the world was ever so enlightened, 
 and in all parts and qualities so civilized, as the Scotch. Why 
 would you shake or unsettle or disturb those principles which 
 have rendered us peaceable and contented ? 
 
 Hume. I would not by any means. 
 
 Home. Many of your writings have evidently such a 
 tendency. 
 
 Hume. Those of my writings to which you refer will be 
 read by no nation : a few speculative men will take them ; but 
 none will be rendered more gloomy, more dissatisfied, or more 
 unsocial by them. Rarely will you find one who, five minutes 
 together, can fix his mind even on the surface : some new tune, 
 some idle project, some light thought, some impracticable wish, 
 will generally run, like the dazzling haze of summer on the dry 
 heath, betwixt them and the reader. A bagpipe will swallow 
 them up, a strathspey will dissipate them, or Romance with the 
 death-rattle in her throat will drive them away into dark staircases 
 and charnel-houses. 
 
 You and I, in the course of our conversation, have been at 
 variance, as much as discreet and honest men ought to be : each 
 knows that the other thinks differently from him, yet each 
 esteems the other. I cannot but smile when I reflect that a few 
 paces, a glass of wine, a cup of tea, conciliate those whom 
 Wisdom would keep asunder. 
 
 Home. No wonder you scoff emphatically, as you pronounce 
 the word ivisdom. 
 
 Hume. If men would permit their minds like their children 
 to associate freely together, if they would agree to meet one 
 another with smiles and frankness, instead of suspicion and 
 defiance, the common stock of intelligence and of happiness 
 would be centupled. Probably those two men who hate each 
 other most, and whose best husbandry is to sow burs and thistles 
 in each other's path, would, if they had ever met and conversed 
 familiarly, have been ardent and inseparable friends. The 
 
Alfieri and Salomon. 19 
 
 minister who may order my book to be burned to-morrow by the 
 hangman, if I, by any accident, had been seated yesterday by his 
 side at dinner, might perhaps in another fortnight recommend me 
 to his master, for a man of such gravity and understanding as to 
 be worthy of being a privy councillor, and might conduct me to 
 the ti-easury-bench. 
 
 X. ALFIERI AND SALOMON THE FLORENTINE 
 
 JEW.i 
 
 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 2 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 diiference is, 
 that one carries outward what the other carries inward. I am 
 thought an aristocrat by the Florentines for conversing with few 
 
 [1 1 have failed to discover who Salomon was, or whether there was any 
 such person. There is no mention of him in Alfieri's autobiography. 
 For Alfieri, see the Conversation between Alfieri and Metastasio, where 
 Landor has given a rather more detailed picture of a poet and aristocrat 
 whose life suggests the name of Byron irresistibly. It is worth noting 
 that in the autobiography Alfieri speaks of the sonnet of Cassiani quoted 
 on p. 33 as a beautiful sonnet, and that he wrote a companion sonnet on 
 the carrying away of Ganymede in imitation of it. (Imag. Convers., ii., 
 1824. ii., 1826. Works, ii., 1846. Works, iv., 1876.)] 
 
 [2 From " Let " to " Siena " (16 lines) added in znd ed.] 
 
20 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 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 friend 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 favour- 
 able 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) — ^die titles 
 of counts and marquises. In Piedmont the matter is different : 
 we must either have been the rabble or their lords ; we were 
 military, and we retain over the populace the same rank and 
 spirit as our ancestors held over the soldiery. But * we are 
 as prone to slavery as they were averse and reluctant. 
 
 Under the best of princes we are children all our lives. Under 
 the worse, we are infinitely more degraded than the wretches 
 who are reduced to their servitude by war, or even by crimes ; 
 begging our master to take away from us the advantages of our 
 education, and of our strength in mind and body. Is this picture 
 overcharged ? 
 
 Salomon. Not with bright colors certainly. 
 
 AlfUri. What think you then if we are threatened with hell 
 by those who take away earth from us, and scourge and imprison 
 and torture us ? 
 
 Salomon. Hell is a very indifferent hospital for those who 
 are thrust into it with broken bones. It is hard indeed, if they 
 who lame you will not let you limp. Indeed I do hear, signor 
 Conte, that the churchmen call you an atheist and a leveller. 
 
 ^Ifieri. So, during the plague at Milan, if a man walked 
 upright in the midst of it, and without a sore about him, he 
 was a devil or an anointer : it was a crime and a curse not to be 
 
 P First ed. reads : « monk, with a honeycomb on his head and a key," 
 &c. Second ed. reads : " with a hive on his head and a key," &c.] 
 I* From " But " to " smoother " (22 lines) added in 3rd ed.] 
 
Alfieri and Salomon. 2 1 
 
 infected. But, signer Salomon, a poet never can be an atheist, 
 nor can a gentleman be a leveller. For my part, I would rather 
 walk alone in a rugged path than with the many in a smoother. 
 
 Salomon. Signor Conte, I have heard of levellers, but I 
 have never seen one : all are disposed to level down, but no- 
 body 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 comes 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. England, as you know, is governed by Pitt, the 
 most insidious of her demagogues, and the most hostile to aris- 
 tocracy. Jealous of power, and distrustful of the people that 
 raised him to it, he enriches and attaches to him the commercial 
 part of the nation by the most wasteful prodigality both in finance 
 and war, and he loosens from the landed the chief proprietors by 
 raising them to the peerage. Nearly a third of the lords have 
 been created by him, and prove themselves devotedly his creatures.^ 
 This Erapusa puts his ass's foot on the French, and his iron one 
 on the English. He possesses not the advantage possessed by 
 insects, which, if they see but one inch before them, see that 
 inch distinctly. He ^ knows not that the machine which runs 
 on so briskly will fall to pieces the moment it stops. He will 
 indeed carry his point in debasing the aristocracy ; but he will 
 equally debase the people. Undivided power he will continue to 
 enjoy ; but, after his death, none will be able to say from any 
 visible proof or appearance, Hotu glorious a people did he govern ! 
 He will have changed its character in all ranks and conditions. 
 After this it is little to say that he will have exalted its rival, 
 who, without his interposition, would have sunk under distress 
 
 [5 Note in ist and znd eds. reads: "All this refers to a state of things 
 belonging to history, but past away from us ; it being evident that no- 
 thing can be more respectable than the present English ministry. Alfieri 
 spoke scornfully and disdainfully : because he was generally ill received 
 in England ; for although he was at that time the greatest man in 
 Europe, he was not acknowledged or known to be so." From "this" 
 to " English " (z lines) added in 2nd ed.] 
 
 [« From " He " to " stops " (2 lines) added in 2nd ed.] 
 
22 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 and crime. But interposition was necessary to his aggrandize- 
 ment, enabling him to distribute in twenty years, if he should 
 |ive so long, more wealth among his friends and partisans, than 
 has been squandered by the uncontrolled profusion of French 
 monarchs, from the first Louis to the last. 
 
 Salomon. How happens it that England, richer and more 
 powerful than other States, should still contain fewer nobles ? 
 
 Alfieri. The greater part of the English nobility has neither 
 power nor title. Even those who are noble by right of pos- 
 session, the hereditary lords of manors with large estates attached 
 to them, claim no titles at home or abroad. Hence in all foreign 
 countries the English gentleman is placed below his rank, which 
 naturally and necessarily is far higher than that of your slipshod 
 counts and lottery-office marquises, whose gamekeepers, with 
 their high plumes, cocked hats, and hilts of rapiers have no other 
 occupation than to stand behind the carriage, if the rotten plank 
 will bear them ; whose game is the wren and redbreast, and 
 whose beat is across the market. 
 
 Menestrier, who both as a Frenchman and as a Jesuit speaks 
 contemptuously of English nobility, admits the gentlemen to 
 this dignity. Their property, their information, their political 
 influence, and their moral character place them beyond measure 
 above the titularies of our country, be the rank what it may ; and 
 it is a remarkable proof of moderation in some, and of contempt- 
 uousness in others, that they do not openly claim from their king, 
 or assume without such intervention, the titles arising from landed 
 wealth, which conciliate the attention and civility of every class, 
 and indeed of every individual abroad. 
 
 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 what- 
 ever 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 
 
Alfieri and Salomon. 23 
 
 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 per- 
 fection ; 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 tran- 
 scendently, 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 condescend- 
 ing. 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 ! 
 
 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 trilling. 
 
 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 
 
24 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 quibble are the properties of light men and shallow capacities ; 
 that genuine humor 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 
 rhieurs. Few ^ men have been graver than Pascal ; few have 
 been wittier. 
 
 Salomon. It is indeed a remarkable thing that such should be 
 the case among the moderns : it does not appear to have been so 
 among the ancients. 
 
 Alfier'u I differ from you, M. Salomon. When we turn 
 toward the Athenians, we find many comic writers, but few 
 facetious. Menander, if we may judge from his fragments, 
 had less humor than Socrates.^ Quintilian says of Demos- 
 thenes, "non displicuisse illi jocos sed non contigisse." In 
 this he was less fortunate than Phocion and Cicero. Facility 
 in making men smile gives a natural air to a great orator, and 
 adds thereby much effect to what he says, provided it come 
 discreetly. It is in him somewhat like afFabOity in a prince ; 
 excellent if used with caution. Every one must have perceived 
 how frequently those are brought over by a touch of humor who 
 have resisted the force of argument and entreaty. Cicero thought 
 in this manner on wit. Writing to his brother, he mentions 
 a letter from him, " Aristophanico modo, valde mehercule et 
 suavem et gravem." Among the Romans, the gravest nation 
 after the English, I think Cicero and Catullus were the wittiest. 
 Cicero from his habits of life and studies must have been grave ; 
 Catullus we may believe to have been so, from his being tender 
 and impassioned in the more serious part of his poetry. 
 
 Salomon. This is to me no proof ; for the most tender and 
 impassioned of all poets is Shakspeare, who certainly was him- 
 
 17 From " Few " to " wittier " added in 2nd ed.] 
 p First ed. reads : " Socrates, and Aristophanes himself than Phocion. 
 From " Quintilian " to " entreaty " appears as a note in ist ed.] 
 
Alfieri and Salomon. a5 
 
 self far removed from gravity, however much of it he imparted to 
 some personages of his drama. 
 
 Alfier't. That Shakspeare was gay and pleasurable in con- 
 versation 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 charactA. 
 
 Salomon. You will, however, allow that we have no proof of 
 gravity in Horace or Plautus. 
 
 Ayieri. On the contrary, I think we have many. Horace, 
 like all the pusillanimous, was malignant: like all courtiers, 
 he yielded to the temper of his masters. His lighter touches 
 were agreeable less to his own nature than to the nature of 
 Augustus and Mecxnas, both of them fond of trifling ; but 
 in his Odes and his Discourses there is more of gravity than of 
 gayety. That he was libidinous is no proof that he was playful ; 
 for often such men are even melancholic. 
 
 Plautus,^ rich in language, rich in reflection, rich in character, 
 is oftener graver than could have suited the inclinations of a 
 coarse and tumultuous populace. What but the stong bent of his 
 nature could have moved him to it ? The English display an 
 equal share of facetiousness and of humor (as they call it) in their 
 comedies. 
 
 Salomon. I do not understand the distinction. 
 
 Alfieri. Nor indeed is it well understood by many of their 
 best authors. It is no uncommon thing to hear, " He has humor 
 rather than wit." Here the expression can only mean pleas- 
 antry : for whoever has humor has wit, although it does not 
 follow that whoever has wit has humor. Humor is wit apper- 
 taining to character, and indulges in breadth of drollery rather 
 
 [^ First ed. reads : " Plautus, who appears to me to have been by far the 
 first of comic writers, rich," &c. Four lines below, from "The English " 
 to "generic" (i8 lines) added in 3rd ed. First and 2nd eds. lead: 
 " Salomon. The French are witty. Alfieri. This I concede," &c.] 
 
26 Imaginary Conversations, 
 
 than in play and brilliancy of point. Wit vibrates and spurts ; 
 humor springs up exuberantly, as from a fountain, and runs on. 
 In Congreve you wonder what he will say next : in Addison 
 you repose on what is said, listening with assured expectation of 
 something congenial and pertinent. The French have little 
 humor because they have little character : they excel all nations 
 in wit, because of their levity and sharpness. The personages on 
 their theatre are generic. 
 
 Scdomon. You do allow that they are facetious : from you no 
 small concession. 
 
 AlJUri. This I do concede to them ; and no person will 
 accuse me of partiality in their favor. Not only are they witty, 
 but when they discover a witty thing, they value it so highly 
 that they reserve it for the noblest purposes, such as tragedies, 
 sermons, and funeral orations. Whenever a king of theirs is 
 inaugurated at Rheims, a string of witticisms is prepared for him 
 during his whole reign, regularly as the civil list ; regularly as 
 menageries, oratories, orangeries, wife, confessor, waterworks, 
 fireworks, gardens, parks, forests, and chases. Sometimes one is 
 put into his mouth when he is too empty, sometimes when he is 
 too full ; but he always hath his due portion, take it when or how 
 he may. A decent one, somewhat less indeed than that of their 
 sovereign, is reserved for the princes of the blood ; the greater 
 part of which is usually packed up with their camp-equipage ; and 
 I have seen a label to a hon mot, on which was written, " Brillant 
 comme la reponse de Henri IV. quand," — but the occasion had 
 not been invented. 
 
 We Italians sometimes fall into what, if you will not call 
 it witticism, you may call the plasma of witticism, by mere 
 mistake, and against our genius. i" A blunder, by its very 
 stumbling, is often carried a little beyond what was aimed at, 
 and falls upon something which, if it be not wit, is invested with 
 its powers. 
 
 ["> First ed. reads : " genius. Reading in a gazette, Hier le roi a 
 travaille avec ses ministres, and knowing the man's character, a young 
 courtier cried innocently, ' What ! his most Christian majesty condescends 
 to dine with his subjects, and they joke upon it ! ' In another, Les 
 enfans de France se promenent en carosse, &c., his sister enquired of her 
 confessor how many there were of them he answered, ' Twenty-four or 
 twenty-five millions.' A blunder," &c.] 
 
Alfieri and Salomon. 27 
 
 Salomon. I have had opportunities to observe the obtuseness 
 of the Tuscans in particular on these matters. Lately I lent my 
 Moliere to a man of talents ; and when he returned the volumes, 
 I asked him how he liked them : Per Bacco, he exclaimed, 
 "the names are very comical,^Sguanarelli and those others." 
 They who have no wit of their own are ignorant of it when it 
 occurs, mistake it, and misapply it. A sailor found upon the 
 shore a piece of amber ; he carried it home, and, as he was fond 
 of fiddling, began to rub it across the strings of his violin. It 
 would not answer. He then broke some pieces off, boiled them 
 in blacking, and found to his surprise and disquiet that it gave no 
 fresh lustre to the shoe-leather. " What are you about ? " cried 
 a messmate. " Smell it, man : it is amber." " The devil take 
 it," cried the finder, " I fancied it was resin ; " and he threw it 
 into the sea. We despise what we cannot use. 
 
 Alfieri. Your observations on Italian wit are correct. Even 
 our comedies are declamatory : long speeches and inverted sen- 
 tences overlay and stifle the elasticity of humor. The great 
 Machiavelli is, whatever M. de Voltaire may assert to the 
 contrary, a coarse comedian ; hardly better than the cardinal 
 Bibiena, poisoned by the Holiness of our Lord Pope Leo foi 
 wearying him with wit.* 
 
 * If Cardinal Bibiena was poisoned by Leo, an opinion to which the 
 profligacy of the pope gave rise, and the malignity of men reception, it 
 should be recorded in justice to his Holiness that he wished to protect 
 the family. We find among the letters of Bembo a very beautiful 
 and energetic one, written in the name of Leo to Francis I., relating 
 to Bibiena. There is something not unsuspicious in the mode of ex- 
 pression, where he repeats that, although Bibiena thinks himself sure 
 of dying, there appears to be no immediate danger . . . if it should happen, 
 &c. 
 
 ' ' Cum Bernardus Bibiena cardinalis aliquot jam dies ex stomacho laboret, 
 magisque timore qwdam sua quam morbi vi urgente, brevi se existimet mori- 
 turum. . . . Quanquam enim nihildum sane video, quo quidem de 
 illius vita sit omnino magnopere timendum. Si id accidat quod ipse 
 suspicatur, tua in ilium munificentia tuumque prsEclarum munus non 
 itatim neque una cum ipsius vita extinguatur, prsesertim cum ei tam 
 breve temporis spatium illo ipso tuo munere frui licuerit, ut ante amissum 
 videri possit quam quale quantumve fuerit percipi ab illo cognoscive 
 potuerit. . Ut ipse, si moriendum ei sit," &c. 
 
 The Italians are too credulous on poison, which at one period was 
 almost a natural death among them. Englishmen were shocked at the 
 
28 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Salomon. His Holiness took afterward a stirrup-cup of the 
 same brewery, and never had committed the same offence, poor 
 man ! I ii shoiJd have thought the opinion of Voltaire less 
 erroneous on wit, although it carries no weight with it on poetry 
 or harmony. 
 
 Alfieri. It is absurd to argue with a Frenchman on any thing 
 relating to either. The Spaniards have no palate, the Italians 
 no scent, the French no ear. Garlic and grease and the most 
 nauseous of pulse are the favorite cheer of the Spaniard; the 
 
 confidence with which they asserted it of two personages, who occupied 
 in the world a ranlc and interest due to neither, and one of whom died in 
 England, the other in Elba. 
 
 The last words of the letter are ready to make us unbelievers of Leo's 
 guilt in this business. What exquisite language 1 what expressions of 
 zeal and sincerity 1 
 
 " Qus quidem omnia non tarn propterea coUigo, quod non illud unum 
 existimem apud te plurimum valiturum, amorem scilicet erga ilium 
 tuum, itemque incredibilem ipsius in te cultum, quod initio dixi, sed ut 
 mihi ipsi, qui id magnopere cupio, satisfaciam; ne perfamiliari ac 
 pernecessario meo, mihique charissimo ac suavissimo atque in omni 
 vitEE munere probatissimo, mea benevolentia meusque amor hoc extremo 
 ejus vitsE tempore, si hoc extremum erit, plane defuisse videatur." 
 
 In the tenth book of these epistles there is one addressed to the 
 Cardinal, by which the Church of Loretto is placed under his care, with 
 every rank of friendship and partiality. 
 
 "De tua enim in Divam pietate, in rem Romanam studio, in me 
 autem, cui quidem familixque mejE omnia pane usque a puero summs 
 cum integritatis et fidei, tum vero curse atque diligentix egregia atque 
 prsEclara officia prsestitisti, perveteri observantia voluntateque admonitus, 
 nihil est rerum omnium quod tibi recte manderi credique posse non 
 existimem." 
 
 It is not in human nature that a man ever capable of these feelings 
 toward any one should poison him, when no powerful interest or deep 
 revenge was to be gratified : the opinion, nevertheless, has prevailed ; 
 and it may be attributed to a writer not altogether free from malignity, 
 a scorner of popes and princes, and especially hostile to the Medicean 
 family. Paolo Giovio says that Bibiena was poisoned in a frah egg. 
 The sixteenth century was the age of poison. Bibiena was poisoned, we 
 may believe ; not, however, by Leo, who loved him as being his preceptor. 
 Leo sent him into France to persuade Francis I. to enter into a league 
 against the Turks. The object of this league was to divert both him and 
 Charles V. from Italy, and to give the preponderating power in it to the 
 family of Medici. 
 
 [" From " I " to " harmony " (3 lines) added in 3rd ed. From " Alfieri " 
 to "writers" (26 lines) added in 2nd ed.] 
 
Alfieri and Salomon. 29 
 
 olfactory nerves of the Italian endure any thing but odoriferous 
 flowers and essences ; and no sounds but soft ones offend the 
 Frenchman. 
 
 Salomon. And yet several of the French prose writers are 
 more harmonious than the best of ours. 
 
 Alfieri. In the construction of their sentences they have 
 obtained from study what sensibility has denied them. Rousseau 
 is an exception : he beside is the only musical composer that 
 ever had a tolerable ear for prose. Music is both sunshine and 
 irrigation to the mind ; but when it occupies and covers it too 
 long, it debilitates and corrupts it. Sometimes I have absorbed 
 music so totally, that nothing was left of it in its own form : my 
 ear detained none of the notes, none of the melody : they went 
 into the heart immediately, mingled with the spirit, and lost 
 themselves among the operations of the fancy, whose finest and 
 most recondite springs they put simultaneously and vigorously in 
 motion. Rousseau ^^ kept it subordinate ; which must always be 
 done with music as well as with musicians. He excels all the 
 modems in the harmony of his periods. 
 
 Salomon. I have heard it reported that you prefer Pascal. 
 
 Alfieri. Certainly, on the whole I consider him the most 
 perfect of writers. 
 
 Salomon.^^ Many other of the French theologians are said to 
 be highly eloquent ; but theology is without attraction for me, so 
 that I am ignorant of their merit. 
 
 Alfieri. How deplorable that whatever is excellent in modem 
 style should, with hardly any deduction, be displayed by fanaticism ! 
 I am little more interested by the contentions of Fenelon and 
 Bossuet than I am by the Cristo Bianco and Crista Nero of the 
 Neapolitan rabble, — two processional idols, you must know, 
 which are regularly carried home with broken heads. 
 
 Salomon. I dare not hazard a word upon these worthies. 
 
 P^ Second ed. reads : " Rousseau is the only composer of music on the 
 modern system who could write one sentence of poetry or prose worth 
 reading. He kept it ... . periods. Bossuet comes next Salomon," 
 &c.] 
 
 P' From "Sa/oOToa" to "Alfieri" (4 lines) added in 3rd ed. Second 
 ed. reads : " How deplorable .... contentions of such men as Pascal 
 and Bossuet with their opponents than I am," &c. From " How " to 
 " details " (78 lines) added in 2nd ed.] 
 
30 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 You, who had a Catholic father and whose blood is truly 
 Christian, may ridicule them with impunity : the people who 
 would laugh with you would stone me. Our incurable diarrhoea 
 of words should not always make you take the other side of the 
 road. Machiavelli is admirable for precision of style, no less 
 than for acuteness of argument and depth of thought. Guicciar- 
 dini, if his sentences were properly stopped, would be found in 
 general both fiill and concise, whatever may be asserted to the 
 contrary by the fastidious and inattentive. 
 
 Aljieri. I have often thought the same. As for Machia- 
 velli, I would rather have written his Discourses on the first 
 Decade of L'wius (in which nothing is amiss but the title) 
 than all the volumes, prose and poetry, of Voltaire. If the 
 Florentine History is not so interesting as the more general 
 one of Guicciardini, there is the same reason for it as diere is 
 that the Batrachomyomachia is not so interesting as the Iliad. 
 
 Salomon. Certainly no race of men upon earth ever was so 
 unwarlike, so indifferent to national dignity and to personal honor, 
 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 fabricator 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 several 
 thousand times greater than our city; and this very street has 
 given birth to fifty. 
 
 Jlfieri. Since the destruction of the republic, Florence has 
 produced only one great man, Galileo, and abandoned him to 
 
Alfieri and Salomon. 31 
 
 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 wUd 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. 
 
 Aljier'u 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 pro- 
 prietors, 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 re- 
 mainder 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 1* 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 
 
 \}* From " and " to " versification " added in 3rd ed. From " there " 
 to "pedestal" (19 lines) added in 2nd ed. Second ed. reads: "than in 
 the Iliad ; nor do I," &c.] 
 
32 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 (I must here also speak with hesitation) that any one drama 
 of Shakspeare contains so many. Smile as you will, signer 
 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. 
 
 Aljieri. 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 
 ray 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 ? 
 
 Aljieri. If it were possible that I could ever see his statue 
 in a square at Constantinople, though I should be scourged for an 
 dolater, 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. FUicaia, in his celebrated 
 address to Italy, steers a middle course. 
 
 Salomon. True, he is neither indignant nor contemptuous ; but 
 the verses of Michel-Angelo would serve rather for an example, 
 added to which they are much better. 
 
 Aljieri. In fact, the former part of Filicaia's is verbose and 
 confused : let us analyse them : — 
 
 " Italia, Italia, o tu cui rfiV la sorte 
 Dono infelice di bellezza, onde hai 
 Funesta dote d'infiniti guai, 
 Che in fronte ^mt^i fer gran doglia porti." 
 
 Fate gives the gift, and this gift gives the dowry, which dowry 
 consists of infinite griefs, and these griefs Italy carries written on 
 her brow, though great sorrow ! — 
 
 " Deh, fosti, tu men bella o almen piu forte ! " 
 
 [16 Second ed. for " Machiavelli " reads " Boccaccio." One line below 
 " Boccaccio " added in 3rd ed.] 
 
 [16 From " As " to " subject " (4 lines) added in 3rd ed.] 
 
Alfieri and Salomon. 33 
 
 Men and almen sound wretchedly : he might have written oppur.* 
 There are those who would persuade us that verbal criticism is 
 unfair, and that few poems can resist it. The truth of the latter 
 assertion by no means establishes the former : all good criticism 
 hath its foundation on verbal. Long dissertations are often de- 
 nominated criticisms, without one analysis ; instead of which it is 
 thought enough to say : " There is nothing finer in our language 
 — we can safely recommend — imbued with the true spirit — 
 destined to immortality," &c. 
 
 A perfect piece of criticism must exhibit where a work is 
 good or bad ; ivhy 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. Few sonnets are indeed so good ; but if we examine it 
 attentively, we shall discover its flaws and patches : — 
 
 " Die' nn alto strido, gitto i fiori, e volta 
 All' improvisa mano che la cinse, 
 Tutta in se per la tema ondefu colta 
 La Siciliana vergine si strinse." 
 
 The hand is inadequate to embrace a body ; strinse, which comes 
 after, would have done better : and the last two verses tell only 
 what the first two had told, and feebly ; nothing can be more so 
 than the tema ondefu colta. 
 
 * There is another sonnet of Filicaia to Italy, remarkable for identity oC 
 sound, in four correspondent closes : — 
 
 " Dov' e, Italia, il tuo braccio ? e a che ti servi 
 Tu dell altrui ? Non e, se io scorgo il vero, 
 Di chi ti offende il difensor men fero. 
 
 Ambi nemici sono : ambi fur servi. 
 
 Cos! dunque I'onor, cosi conjervi 
 Gli avanzi tu del glorioso impero ? 
 Cosl al valor, cosi al valor primiero 
 
 (Che a te fede giurd) la fede osservi ? " 
 
 IV. c 
 
34 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 " II nero dio la calda bocca involta 
 D' ispido pelo a ingordo bacio spinse, 
 E di stigia fuligin con la folta 
 Barba I'eburnea gola e il sen U time." 
 
 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 
 Dcianira, 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^^ cling- 
 ing 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 Prima. 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. 
 
 [1' First ed. reads : " Niobe, though now in smiles, . . . parent ; and 
 many thousands more each of whom is worth the dominions once envied 
 of both brothers. Salmon," SccJj 
 
Rousseau and Malesherbes. 35 
 
 Salomon. He who first praises a good book becomingly is 
 next in merit to the author. 
 
 Aljieri. As a writer and as a man I know my station : if I 
 found in the world five equal to myself, 1 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. 
 
 XI. ROUSSEAU AND MALESHERBES.i 
 
 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. 
 
 [1 The scene of this Conversation is the village of Motier-Travers, 
 where Rousseau lived for a short time after his sudden departure from 
 France. It was there that he put on the Armenian dress to the bewilder- 
 ment of his neighbours. With M. de Montmollin, the pastor, he was at 
 first on good terms, but if we may trust Rousseau's own account, in his 
 " Confessions," the publication of the " Lettres de ma Montague " 
 turned the friendship into persecution. It is not likely that Malesherbes 
 ever travelled so far. He was, however, a friend to Rousseau ; and 
 indeed to all the men of letters of the time. He held for some years the 
 post of censor, and used his powers to grant to literature as much irregular 
 freedom as the laws could be strained to permit, and more than was 
 consistent with his office. He lost his life in the Terror, and it is 
 said that he deeply regretted that by any act of his he had opened the 
 way to the Revolution. If he did say so, he failed for once at least in 
 clear-sightedness. Note in 1st ed. reads: "Among the four illus- 
 trious victims of the French Revolution, Malesherbes was, I think, the 
 most so. Roland, Lavoisier, Bailly, and he were four such characters as 
 the princes of Europe could not consign to the scaffold or the flames, to 
 banishment or neglect. France seems to have thought herself unable 
 to show her great men, unless the executioner held up their heads. The 
 condemnation of Malesherbes and the coronation of Buonaparte are the 
 two most detestable crimes committed by the French in the whole course 
 of their Revolution. How different the destiny of the best and worst 
 man among them ! Never has there been so deplorable a judgment as 
 that by which Malesherbes was sent in his old age, and with his 
 daughter and his grand-daughter, to the scaffold, since the time of 
 Phocion." (Imag. Convers., iii., 1828. Work, si., 1846. Works, iv., 
 1876.)] 
 
36 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Maksherles. 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 contemptaousness. 
 
 Mahsherbes. Why so ? Indeed you are in the wrong, my 
 friend. No person has a right to treat another with contempta- 
 ousness 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 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 hay-loft if you wished a night's lodging ? 
 
 Mahsherbes. 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 sleep- 
 ing, 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, wUl always fall upon 
 dead carcasses, although their bellies are full, and although they 
 are conscious that in the end they wiU tear one another to pieces 
 over them. Why should you prepare their prey ? Were youi- 
 fire and effiilgence 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 ? 
 
 Mahsherbes. I must adopt your opinion ot his behavior in 
 order to answer you satisfactorily. You suppose him imhospit- 
 
Rousseau and Malesherbes. 3^7 
 
 able : 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 tlie heart's applause, and 
 opportunities of obedience are more frequent here than anywhere. 
 Would not you exchange resentment for the contrary feeUog, 
 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 
 powerftJ. Obstinacy and jealousy, the worst parts of childhood 
 and of manhood, have range enough for their ill humors 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 
 firom 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 Ver- 
 sailles ? 
 
 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 mem- 
 bers 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 im- 
 possible, 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 unworthi- 
 nes3 by refusing you : a proof, as you know, quite sufficient and 
 self-evident. 
 
 Malesherbes. They will never tempt me to supplicate for 
 
38 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 any thing 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 function- 
 aries and their opponents, who appear the most zealous partisans, 
 if their fortunes and consequence were not alHxed 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 lacqueys 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. 
 
 Mdesherhes. Prove it, or any (hing 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 im- 
 portant 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 
 
Rousseau and Malesherbes. 39 
 
 the ultimate aim and object of philosophy : no writer has denied 
 it, 1 think. 
 
 Matesherhes, Designedly none may : but when it is agreed 
 that happiness is the chief good, it must also be agreed that the 
 chief wisdom wUl 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, hypotheticaUy, 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 in- 
 dependence. 
 
 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 de- 
 claims against the cruel and tjrrannical ; and he kisses the hands 
 of adultresses 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 
 
 [" First ed. reads : " level. You would only be the most eloquent man 
 that ever lived ; and even here you would tread upon thorns. Cicero and 
 your neighbour Voltaire are wittier. The latter is more Attic than any 
 Athenian ever was. Rmuieau. If malignity is Attic. Malesherbes. I will 
 not discuss," &c. (14 lines below.)] 
 
40 Imaginary Conversations, 
 
 feather. Wit and humor stand on one side, irony and sarcasm 
 on the other. 
 
 Rousseau. They stand very near. 
 
 Mcdesherles. So do the Elysian fields and Tartarus. 
 
 Rousseau. Pray, go on : teach me to stand quiet in ray stall, 
 while my masters and managers pass by. 
 
 Malesherhes. Well then, — Pascal argues as closely and method- 
 ically ; Bossuet is as scientific in the structure of his sentences ; 
 Demosthenes, many think, has equal fire, vigor, dexterity : equal 
 selection of topics and equal temperance in treating them, immeas- 
 urably as he falls short of you in appeals to the sensibility, and in 
 every thing 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. 
 
 Malesherhes. 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 no- 
 thing can be more simple, solid, and symmetiical, nothing more frugal 
 in decoration or more appropriate in distribution, than the apart- 
 ments 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 fi-om them ? If I must be with 
 them, let me be in good humor 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 yom- knee, on hearing 
 it said that Shakspeare 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. 
 
Rousseau and Malesherbes. 41 
 
 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 con- 
 quer by kindness ; which we cannot do easily or well without 
 communication. Our ^ antipathies ought to be against the vices 
 of men, and not against their opinions. If their opinions are 
 widely different from ours, their vices ought to render them more 
 dissimilar to us. Yet the opinions instigate us to hostility ; the 
 vices are snatched at with avidity, as rich materials to adorn our 
 triumph. 
 
 Rousseau. This is sophistry ; and at best is applicable only 
 to the malicious. At a moment when truth is penetrating 
 the castle of the powerftJ, and when freedom looks into the 
 window of the poor, there are writers who would draw them 
 back and confine them to their own libraries and theatres. 
 
 Malesherbes. Whether they proceed from the shelf or from 
 the stage, generous sentiments are prevalent among us ; and the 
 steps both of truth and freedom are not the less rapid or the less 
 firm because they advance in silence. Montesquieu has rendered 
 them greater and more lasting service, than the fiercest anabaptist 
 in Munster. 
 
 Rousseau. Many read him, some are pleased with him, few 
 are insti-ucted by him, none are guided. His Lettres Persanes 
 are light and lively. His Temple de Guide is Parisian from the 
 steps to the roof ; there is but little imagination in it, and no 
 warmth. There is more of fancy in his Esprit des Lois, of 
 which the title-page would be much correcter with only the first 
 word than with all three. He twitches me by the coat, turns me 
 round, and is gone. 
 
 Malesherbes. Concise he certainly is, but he also is acute. 
 
 Rousseau. How far does his acuteness penetrate ? A pin can 
 pierce no deeper than to its head. He would persuade men that, 
 if patriotism is the growth of republics, honor is the growth of 
 monarchies. I would say it without offence, but say it I will, 
 that honor is feeble and almost extinct in every ancient kingdom. 
 In Spain it flourished more vigorously than in any other : pray, 
 how much is left there ? And what addition was made to it when 
 the Bourbon crossed the Bidassoa ? One vile family is sufficient 
 to debase a whole nation. Voltaire, perhaps as honest and 
 P From " Our " to " them " (i2i lines) added in 2nd ed.] 
 
42 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 certainly as clear-sighted a man as any about the Tuileries, called 
 Louis XV. Titus. Is this honor ? If it be, pray show me the 
 distinction between that quality and truth. As I cannot think a 
 liar honorable, I cannot think a lie honor. Gentlemen at court 
 would rather give their lives than be called what they would 
 scarcely give a denier not to be. Readiness to display courage is 
 not honor, though it is what Montesquieu mistakes for it. 
 Surely he might have praised his country for something better 
 than this fantastic foolery, which, like hair-powder, requires a 
 mask to be worn by those who put it on. He might have said, 
 justly and proudly, that while others cling to a city, to a faction, 
 to a family, the French in all their fortunes cling to France. 
 
 Mahsherbes. Gratify me, I entreat you, by giving me your 
 idea of honor. 
 
 Rousseau. The image stands before me, substantially and 
 vigorously alive. Justice, generosity, delicacy, are the three 
 Graces that formed his mind. Propriety of speech, clearness, 
 firmness — 
 
 Mahsherbes. Repress this enthusiasm. If you are known 
 to have made me blush, you ruin me for ever in my profession. 
 
 Rousseau. Look, then, across the narrow sea. When 
 Edward the Black Prince made your king his prisoner, he 
 reverenced his age, his station, his misfortunes ; attending him, 
 serving him, consoling him, like a son. Many of your country- 
 men who were then living lived to see the tide of victory turn, 
 and the conquerors led into captivity. Talbot, whose name alone 
 held provinces back from rebellion, was betrayed and taken, and 
 loaded with indignities. 
 
 Mahsherbes. Attribute it to the times. The English were 
 as cruel to fallen valor in the person of Jeanne d'Arc. 
 
 Rousseau. There neither the genius of the nation nor the 
 spirit of the times is reproachable, but the genius and spirit of 
 fanaticism, which is violent and blind in all alike. Jeanne 
 d'Arc was believed to be a sorceress, and was condemned to 
 death for it by the ecclesiastical judges of each nation. Nothing 
 but the full belief of the English, that she was under the guidance 
 of an invisible and evil power, would have turned to flight those 
 Saxo-Normans who never yielded to the Franco-Gauls when 
 there were only three against one ; no, not once in the incessant 
 
Rousseau and Malesherbes. 43 
 
 contest during three hundred years, which ended in the utter 
 subjugation of your country. As the French acknowledged her 
 to be the inspired of God, they fancied there was no danger in 
 following her : as the English thought her instigated by the 
 Devil, they felt the insufficiency of human force in opposing her. 
 Wherever she was not, the field was covered with French bodies, 
 as before ; wherever she was, it was covered with English, as it 
 never had been until then. Had Jeanne d'Arc been born in 
 England and fought for England, the people at this hour, although 
 no longer slaves to idolatry, would almost worship her : every 
 year would her festival be kept in every village of the land. But 
 in France not a hymn is chanted to her, not a curl of incense is 
 wafted, not a taper is lighted, not a daisy, not a rush, is strewn upon 
 the ground throughout the whole kingdom she rescued. Instead 
 of which, a shirt-airer to a libidinous king, — a ribald poet, a pie- 
 bald of tragedy and comedy, a contemner alike of purity and 
 patriotism, — throws his filth against her mutilated features. 
 Meanwhile an edifice is being erected in your city to the glory of 
 Genevieve, which will exhaust the fortunes and almost the 
 maledictions of the people. 
 
 Malesherbes. We certainly are not the most grateful of 
 nations. 
 
 Rousseau. You must be, before you pretend to be the most 
 honorable. 
 
 Malesherbes. I hope our gratitude in ftiture will be excited by 
 something better than the instruments of war. The nation is 
 growing more civilized and humane : the young have never lapped 
 blood. 
 
 Rousseau. I prefer the vices of the present king to the glories 
 of his predecessor : I prefer a swine to a panther, and the outer 
 side of the stye or grating to the inner. 
 
 Malesherbes. You, being a philanthropist, must rejoice that 
 our reigning prince abstains from the field of battle. 
 
 Rousseau. Unless he did, he could not continue to give a 
 thousand louis daily for the young maidens brought to him. A 
 prodigal man is a thoughtless man ; a prodigal prince is a thought- 
 less robber. Your country endures enough without war. But 
 oppression and valor, like Voltaire's fever and quinquina, grow 
 far apart. 
 
44 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Malesherbes. What ! and are not our people brave ? 
 
 Rousseau. I call those brave, and those only, who rise up 
 amultaneously against the first indignity offered by their adminis- 
 trators, and who remove, without pause and without parley, trunk, 
 root, and branch. 
 
 Malesherbes. As we cannot change at once the whole 
 fabric of government, let us be attentive to the unsounder parts, 
 and recommend the reacUest and safest method of repairing them. 
 
 Rousseau. The minister would expel me firom his ante- 
 chamber, 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 honored 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 savory 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 
 
Rousseau and Malesherbes. 45 
 
 that they may apprehend no check or control from those who 
 discover their misdemeanors, in like manner the people places 
 more tnist in favor than in fortune, and hopes to obtain by sub- 
 serviency 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 re- 
 volting, 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 equity ? 
 
 Rousseau. The English in former days insisted more firmly 
 and urgently on improving their Constitution than they have ever 
 done since. In the reign of Edward III. they claimed the 
 nomination of the chancellor. And surely, if any nomination of 
 any functionary is left to the people, it should be this. It is 
 somewhat like the tribunitial power among the Romans, and is 
 the only one which can intercede in a conciliatory way between 
 the prince and people. Exclusively of this one office in the 
 higher posts of government, the king should appoint his ministers, 
 and should invest them with power and splendor ; but those 
 ministers shoald 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 fidfil properly, from requiring 
 a knowledge of trade although a slight one, and because those 
 who possess any such knowledge are inclined for the greater 
 
 [* First ed. reads : " kind, or <t syllable in his favour. Is it not more 
 reasonable that a collector of taxes or a justice," &c. Two lines below, 
 from " Rousieav " to " government " (9 lines) added in ind ed.] 
 
46 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 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. 
 
 Mahsherbes. 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 labors 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. 
 
 Mahsherbes. 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. 
 
 Mahsherbes. The number of justices would be much augmented : 
 nearly all those who now are jurymen would enjoy this rank and 
 
 p First ed. reads :" do. Rousseau. Frequent," &c.] 
 [' First ed. reads : " in ten days."] 
 
Rousseau and Malesherbes. 47 
 
 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 unbiassed by professional hopes 
 and interests. The diiferent 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 impro- 
 priety, 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 Cum- 
 berland 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 
 
48 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 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 con- 
 founded 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 arrange- 
 ment of one already established, pleases me. Ministers would 
 only lose thereby that portion of their possessions which they give 
 away to needy relatives, unworthy dependents, or the requisite 
 supporters of their authority and power. 
 
 Maleiherbes. On this plan, no such supporters would be 
 necessary, no such dependents 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 ingenious 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 v/e have been 
 together ? 
 
 \] First ed. reads : " Rousseau. The country would be at worst, but as 
 one Prometheus to one vulture, and there being no instruments at hand, 
 no voices under the rock, to drive him off, the craving . . . influence. 
 The meaning ot the word ambition, which few understand even now, and 
 which many have an interest in misinterpreting, must after a time be 
 sought for in the dictionary. Maleihii-bes. My excellent," &c.] 
 
Rousseau and Malesherbes. 49 
 
 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. 
 
 Rousseaufi In other words, to betray me. I had begun to 
 imagine there was one man in the universe not my enemy. 
 
 Malesherbes. There are many, my dear M. Rousseau ! yes, 
 even in France and England ; to say nothing of the remoter 
 regions on each side of the equator, discovered and undiscovered. 
 Be reasonable, be just. 
 
 Rousseau. I am the only man who is either. What would 
 you say more ? 
 
 Malesherbes. Perhaps I would even say less. You are fond 
 of discoursing on the visionary and hypothetical : I usually avoid 
 it. 
 
 Rousseau. Pray why, sir ? 
 
 Malesherbes. Because it renders us more and more dis- 
 contented with the condition in which Divine Providence hath 
 placed us. We can hope to remove but a small portion of the 
 evils that encompass us ; there being many men to whom these 
 are no evils at all, and such having the management of our 
 concerns, and keeping us under them as tightly as the old man 
 kept Sinbad. 
 
 Rousseau. I would teach them that what are evils to us are 
 evils to them likewise, and heavier and more dangerous. The 
 rash, impetuous rider, or (to adopt your allusion) the intolerably 
 heavy one, is more liable to break his bones by a fall than the 
 animal he has mounted. Sooner or later the cloud of tyranny 
 bursts ; and fortunes, piled up inordinately and immeasureably, not 
 only are scattered and lost, but first overwhelm the occupier. 
 We, like metallic blocks, are hardened by the repetition of the 
 blows that flatten us, and every part of us touching the ground, 
 we cannot fall lower : the hammerers, once fallen, are an- 
 nihilated. 
 
 Your remarks, although inapplicable to the Continent, are 
 applicable to England ; and several of them, however they may 
 
 [8 From " Rousseau ■' to " Malesherbes " (48 lines) added in 2nd ed. 
 First ed. reads : " agitated. You are fond of discoursing on these 
 matters ; I dislilte it. For compliance," &c.] 
 
50 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 be pecked, scratched, and kicked about by the pullets fattening in 
 the darkened chambers of Parliament, are worthy of being 
 weighed by the people, loath as may be ministers of state to 
 employ the scales of Justice on any such occasion. But if the 
 steadier hand reftises to perform its functions, the stronger may 
 usurp them. 
 
 Malesherles. Nothing more probable. Often the worst 
 evil of bad government is not in its action but its counteraction. 
 
 Rousseau. Is it possible to doubt at what country you now 
 are pointing ? I cannot see then why you should have treated 
 me like a driveller. 
 
 Malesherbes. How so, my friend, — how so ? 
 
 Rousseau. To say the least, why you should believe me 
 indifferent to the welfare of your country, to the dictates of 
 humanity, to the improvement of the species. 
 
 Malesherbes. In compliance with your humor, to engage your 
 fancy, to divert it awhile fiom 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 re- 
 ceived on the subject of government elaborate treatises for 
 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 pro- 
 duced upon the world ? — What effect upon any one State, any one 
 city, any one hamlet ? A clerk in office, an accountant, a ganger 
 [' First ed. reads : " Switzerland and France, I raised up," &c.] 
 
Joseph Scaliger and Montaigne. 5 1 
 
 of small-beer, a song-writer 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. 
 
 Mahsherbes. Enjoy them, my dear friend, and convert them 
 if possible to months and years. It is as much at your arbitra- 
 tion 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 ? 
 
 Mahsherbes. 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. 
 
 XII. JOSEPH SCALIGER AND MONTAIGNE.i 
 
 Montaigne. What could have brought you, M. de I'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 ex- 
 cellent 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 
 
 P Imag. Convers., iii., 1828. Works, i., 1846. Works, iv., 1 876.] 
 * « Ma mere ^tait fort eloquente en Gascon." — Scaligerana, p. 232. 
 
52 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Master Matthew to split a couple of chickens and broil them, and 
 to pepper but one. Do you like pepper, M. de I'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 every-day books. 
 
 Montaigne. Faith! I have no other. These are plenty, 
 methinks ; is not that your opinion ? 
 
 Scaliger. You have great resources within yourself, and there- 
 fore 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 puUs 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 I'Escale, 
 whether you are particular in these matters : not quite, I should 
 imagine, so great a judge in them as in others ? 
 
 P First ed. reads: " Bordeaux wine. All privileges are unjust; this 
 as bad as any novsr," &c.] 
 
Joseph Scaliger and Montaigne. 53 
 
 Scaliger. I know three things, — wine, poetry, and the 
 world.* 
 
 Montaigne. You know one too many, then. I hardly know 
 whether I know any thing 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.^ He had no wife : he was an ahbe at Tours. 
 
 Montaigne. True, true ; being an abbe he could never have 
 one, and never want one ; particularly at Tours, where the 
 women profess an especial calling and most devotional turn for 
 the religious. 
 
 Scaliger. It pleases me greatly that you like Marot. His 
 version of the Psalms is lately set to music, and added to the Netv 
 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 mUd 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 bums 
 them. 
 
 Scaliger. Calvin is a very great man, I do assure you, M. de 
 Montaigne. 
 
 Montaigne. I do not like your very 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 I'Escale ? What was 
 it he did tiie 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. 
 
 * " Je me connais en trois choses, non in aliis, in vino, foesi, et juger da 
 fertonna." — Scaligerana, p. 232. 
 
 P From « Scaliger" to " religious " (4 lines) added in 2nd ed.] 
 
54 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 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 ray 
 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 any thing 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 wUl suspend your judgment on this 
 affair, until you receive some more certain and positive informa- 
 tion. 
 
 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 i 
 
 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. 
 
Joseph Scaliger and Montaigne. 55 
 
 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 for- 
 tress. 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 ! 
 
 Montmgne. Look up ! 
 
 Scaliger. You have twenty or more flitches of bacon hanging 
 there. 
 
 Montcngne. 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 devU. 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 out- 
 right : 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 I'Escale, in some tender place 
 
56 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 of a neighbor. 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 de- 
 scended 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. 
 
 XIII. BOCCACCIO AND PETRARCA.i 
 
 Boccacccio. Remaining among us, I doubt not that you would 
 soon receive the same distinctions in your native country as others 
 
 * "Descendimus ex filia Comitis Hapsburgensis."— 5M%sr<M<z, p. 231. 
 
 [1 This and the following Conversation were preparatory studies for the 
 larger work in which Landor afterwards dealt with these two men 
 (Imag. Convers., iv., 1819. Works, i., 1846. Works, iv., 1876).] 
 
Boccaccio and Petrarca. 57 
 
 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 honorably : 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 toward Padua, where I am ex- 
 pected ; 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 further 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 some- 
 what 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 forego such powers, if in good truth I 
 possess them> 
 
58 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 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 odor of most trees and plants. 
 
 Will not that dog hurt us ? — he comes closer. 
 
 Boccaccio. Dog ! thou hast the colors of a magpie and the 
 tongue of one ; prythee 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. 
 
 Bocccaccio. 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 ex- 
 ternally 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 further 
 off": the inhabitants of it may hear us, if they should happen to 
 be in the arbor, as most people are at the present hour of day, — 
 in this villa, Messer Francesco, lives Monna Tita Monalda, who 
 tenderly loved Amadeo degli Oricellaria. She however was 
 reserved and coy ; and Father Pietro de' Pucci, an enemy to the 
 family of Amadeo, told her never more to think of him, for that, 
 f2 From « The " to " plants" (3 h"nes) added in 2nd ed.] 
 
Boccaccio and Petrarca. 59 
 
 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 belong- 
 ing 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 endeavor 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. 
 
6o Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Boccaccio. Severity is far from her nature ; but, such is her 
 purity and innocence, she shed many and bitter tears at his con- 
 fession, 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 sun-dial 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 over-head ; they flew toward 
 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 laborers 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 re- 
 build the hovel and watch the grapes." 
 
 He went into the stable, collected the old pillars of his 
 autumnal observatory, drove them into the ground, and threw the 
 matting over them. 
 
 "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 
 
Boccaccio and Petrarca, 6i 
 
 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 frank- 
 ness 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 any thing 
 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 fiinction." 
 
 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 
 
62 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 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, "T 
 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. " Oh 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 bed- 
 ridden ; 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. Humor 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 fiiar, not withdrawing his hand, but placing the other 
 on Amadeo's. " Let me, however, advise you to conceal your- 
 self; 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 
 
Boccaccio and Petrarca. 63 
 
 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-humored, 
 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 day- 
 break." 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 
 Bort refreshed. 
 
 p First ed. reads : " times told me so ; and I would have fled from them 
 for saying it. Giovanni ! they could feel it ! Boccaccio. Franceso," 
 &c.] 
 
64 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Petrarca. I pity him from my soul, 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 mis- 
 fortunes ? 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, carry- 
 ing with her three candles, each five feet long, to bum 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 pierenda.* 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 
 honors 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. 
 
 [^From " had " to " He " (6 lines added in ind ed.] 
 pFrom " which " to "merenda " added in 2nd ed.] 
 
 Meranda is luncheon, — mcridiana, — eaten by the wealthier at the 
 hour when the peasants dine. 
 
Boccaccio and Petrarca. 65 
 
 Boccaccio. O Francesco ! what inconsistent creatures are we ! 
 
 Petrarca. Tnie, 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 incredible : the truest lover 
 would have done the same, exhausted by suffering. 
 
 Boccaccio. He was truly in the arms of sleep ; 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 ami 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 ! 
 
 IV. K 
 
66 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 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 
 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. 
 
 XIV. CHAUCER, BOCCACCIO, AND PETRARCA.i 
 
 Petrarca. You have kept your promise like an English man, 
 Ser* GeofFreddo : welcome to Arezzo. This gentleman is 
 
 P It is well known that the meeting of these three poets may have 
 actually occurred. In 1372 Chaucer visited Florence on a mission from 
 the King. Petrarca was then living at Arqua near Padua. Boccaccio 
 was also near, and the three may easily have met. Landor's reason for 
 choosing Arezzo is not clear ; perhaps he had visited and liked the place. 
 Chaucer's lines in prologue to the tale of Grisildis, show his respect for 
 Petrarca, and at least suggest that he had talked with him. 
 
 I wil yow telle a tale, which that I 
 Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk 
 As proved by his ■wordes and his werk. 
 He now is dede and nayled in his chest, 
 Now God give his soule wel good rest I 
 Fraunces Petrarch, the laureat poete 
 Highte this clerk, whos rhetorique swete 
 Enluinynd al Ytail of poetrie. 
 
 The story put into Chaucer's mouth had, of course, to Landor, a local 
 application. He was a Warwickshire man and liked to make fun of the 
 Lucy family, as Shakespeare had done before him. There is a curious 
 letter from Elizabeth Landor (Life, 335), describing the Lucy of that 
 date and his little grandson. " He is old Lucy exactly. He believes the 
 whole world was made for him, and in honour of his dignity. He opens 
 his round little eyes, buttons his round little mouth, inflates his round 
 little face, and is graver than any owl, including his grandpapa." 
 (Imag. Convers., iv., 1829. Works, i., 1846. Works, iv., 1876.)] 
 
 * Ser is commonly used by Boccaccio and others for Mestcr. 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 67 
 
 Messer Giovanni Boccaccio, of whose unfinished Decameron, 
 which I opened to you in manuscript, you expressed your admira- 
 tion when we met at Florence in the spring. 
 
 Boccaccio. I was then at Certaldo, my native place, filling 
 up my stories, and have only to regret that my acquaintance 
 with one so friendly and partial to me has been foimed so late. 
 
 How did Rome answer your expectations, sir ? 
 
 Chaucer. I had passed through Pisa ; of which city the 
 Campo Santo, now nearly finished after half a century from its 
 foundation, and the noble street along the Arno;* are incompar- 
 ably more beautifiil than any thing in Rome. 
 
 Petrarca. That is true. I have heard, however, some of 
 your countrymen declare that Oxford is equal to Pisa, in the 
 solidity, extent, and costliness of its structures. 
 
 Chaucer. Oxford is the most beautiful of our cities : it would 
 be a very fine one if there were no houses in it. 
 
 Petrarca. How is that ? 
 
 Chaucer. The lath-and-plaster white-washed houses look 
 despicably mean under the colleges. 
 
 Boccaccio. Few see any thing in the same point of view. It 
 would gratify me highly, if you would tell me with all the frank- 
 ness of your character and your country, what struck you most 
 in " the capital of the iworld," as the vilest slaves in it call their 
 great open cloaca. 
 
 Chaucer. After the remains of antiquity, I know not whether 
 any thing struck me more forcibly than the superiority of our 
 English churches and monasteries. 
 
 Boccaccio. I do not wonder that yours should be richer and 
 better buUt, although I never heard before that they are ; for the 
 money that is collected in Rome or elsewhere, by the pontiffs, 
 is employed for the most part in the aggrandizement of their 
 families. Messer Francesco, although he wears the habit of a 
 churchman, speaks plainlier on these subjects than a simple secular, 
 as I am, dares to do. 
 
 Petrarca. We may, however, I trust, prefer the beauty and 
 variety of our scenery to that of most in the world. Tuscany is 
 
 * The Corso in Rome is now much finer. P. Leopold dismantled the 
 walls of Pisa, and demolished more than fifty towers and turrets. Every 
 year castellated mansions are modernized in Italy. 
 
68 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 less diversified and, excepting ^ the mountains above Camaldoli 
 and Laverna, less sublime than many other parts of Italy ; yet 
 where does Nature smile with more contented gayety than in the 
 vicinity of Florence ? Great part of our sea-coast along the 
 Mediterranean is uninteresting ; yet it is beautiful in its whole 
 extent from France to Massa. Afterward there is not a single 
 point of attraction till you arrive at Terracina. The greater part 
 of the way round the peninsula, from Terracina to Pesaro, has its 
 changes of charms : thenceforward all is flat again. 
 
 Boccaccio. We cannot travel in the most picturesque and 
 romantic regions of our Italy, from the deficiency of civilization 
 in the people. 
 
 Chaucer. Yet, Messer Giovanni, I never journeyed so far 
 through so enchanting a scenery as there is almost the whole of 
 the way from Arezzo to Rome, particularly round Terni and 
 Nami and Perugia. 
 
 Our master, Virgil, speaks ot dreams that swarm upon the 
 branches of one solitaiy elm. In this country, more than 
 dreams swarm upon every spray and leaf; and every murmur of 
 wood or water comes from and brings with it inspiration. Never 
 shall I forget the hour when my whole soul was carried away 
 from me by the cataract of Terni, and when all things existing 
 were lost to me in its stupendous waters. The majestic woods 
 that bowed their heads before it ; the sun that was veiling his 
 glory in mild translucent clouds over the furthest course of the 
 river ; the moon, that suspended her orb in the very centre of it, 
 — seemed ministering Powers, themselves in undiminished ad- 
 miration of the marvel they had been looking on through un- 
 numbered ages. What are the works of man in comparison with 
 this ? What, indeed, are the other works of Nature ? 
 
 Petrarca.^ Ser Giovanni ! this, which appears too great 
 even for Nature, was not too great for man. Our ancestors 
 achieved it. Curius Dentatus in his consulate, forbade the 
 waters of the Velinus to inundate so beautiful a valley, and threw 
 them down this precipice into the Nar. When the traces of all 
 their other victories, all their other labors, shall have disappeared, 
 this work of the earlier and the better Romans shall continue to 
 
 [2 From " excepting " to " Laverna " added in 2nd ed.] 
 
 [3 From " Petrarca " to " abroad " (24 lines) added in 2nd ed.] 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 6g 
 
 perform its office, shall produce its full effect, and shall astonish 
 the beholder as it astonished him at its first completion. 
 
 Chaucer. I was not forgetful that we heard the story from 
 our guide, but I thought him a boaster ; and now for the first 
 time I learn that any great power hath been exerted for any 
 great good. Roads were levelled for aggression, and vast 
 edifices were constructed either for pride or policy, to com- 
 memorate some victory, to reward the Gods for giving it, or to 
 keep them in the same temper. There is nothing of which men 
 appear to have been in such perpetual apprehension, as the incon- 
 stancy of the deities they worship. 
 
 Many thanks, Ser Francesco, for reminding me of what the 
 guide asserted, and for teaching me the truth. I thought the 
 fall of the Velinus not only the work of Nature, but the most 
 beautiful she had ever made on earth. My prevention, in regard 
 to the country about Rome, was almost as great and almost as 
 unjust to Nature, from what I had heard of it both at home and 
 abroad. In the approach to the eternal city, she seems to have 
 surrendered much of her wildness, and to have assumed all her 
 stateliness and sedateness, all her awfulness and severity. The 
 vast plain toward the sea abases the soul together with it ; while 
 the hills on the left, chiefly those of Tusculum and of Tiber, 
 overshadow and almost overwhelm it with obscure remembrances, 
 some of them descending from the heroic ages, others from an 
 age more miraculous than the heroic, the herculean infancy of 
 immortal Rome. Soracte comes boldly forward, and stands 
 alone. Round about, on every side, we behold an infinity of 
 baronial castles, many moated and flanked with towers and 
 bastions ; many following the direction of the precipitous hills, 
 of which they cover the whole summit. Tracts of land, where 
 formerly stood entire nations, are now the property of some rude 
 baron, descendant of a murderer too formidable for punishment, 
 or of a robber too rich for it; and the ruins of cities, which had 
 sunk in luxury when England was one wide forest, are carted oft 
 by a herd of slaves and buffialoes to patch up the crevices of a 
 fort or dungeon. 
 
 Boccaccio. Messer Francesco groans upon this and wipes his 
 brow. 
 
 Petrarca, Indeed I do. 
 
70 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Three years ago my fancy and hopes were inflamed by what 
 I believed to be the proximity of regeneration. Cola Rienzi 
 might have established good and equitable laws : even the Papacy, 
 from hatred of the barons, would have countenanced the enaction 
 of them, hoping at some future time to pervert and subjugate the 
 people as before. The vanity of this tribune, who corresponded 
 with kings and emperors, and found them pliable and ductile, was 
 not only the ruin of himself and of the government he had 
 founded, but threw down, beyond the chance of retrieving it, the 
 Roman name. 
 
 Let us converse no more about it. I did my duty ; yet our 
 failure afflicts me, and will afflict me until my death. Jubilees, 
 and other such mummeries, are deemed abundant compensation 
 for lost dignity, lost power and empire, lost freedom and in- 
 dependence. We who had any hand in raising up our country 
 from her abject state are looked on with jealousy by those 
 wretches to whom cowardice and flight alone give the titles and 
 rewards of loyalty ; with sneers and scorn by those who share 
 among themselves the emoluments of office ; and, lest consolation 
 be altogether wanting, with somewhat of well-meaning com- 
 passion, as weak misguided visionaries, by quiet good creatures 
 who would have beslavered and adored us if we had succeeded. 
 
 The nation that loses her liberty is not aware of her misfortune 
 at the time, any more than the patient is who receives a paralytic 
 stroke. He who first tells either of them what has happened is 
 repulsed as a simpleton or a churl. 
 
 Boccaccio. When Messer Francesco talks about liberty, he 
 talks loud. Let us walk away from the green,* into the cathe- 
 dral which the congregation is leaving. 
 
 Petrarca. Come, now, Giovanni, tell us some affecting story, 
 suitable to the gloominess of the place. 
 
 Boccaccio. If Ser Geoffreddo felt in honest truth any pleasure 
 at reading my Decameron, he owes me a tithe at least of the stories 
 it contains ; for I shall not be so courteous as to tell him that one 
 of his invention is worth ten of mine, until I have had all his ten 
 from him : if not now, another day. 
 
 Chaucer. Let life be spared to me, and I will carry the tithe 
 
 * The cathedral of Arezzo stands on a green, in which are pleasant 
 walks commanding an extensive view 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. ^t 
 
 in triumph through my country, much as may be shed of the 
 heavier and riper grain by the conveyance and die handling of it. 
 And I will attempt to show Englishmen what Italians are ; how 
 much deeper in thought, intenser in feeling, and richer in imagina- 
 tion, than ever formerly : and I will try whether we cannot raise 
 poetry under our fogs, and merriment among our marshes. We 
 must at first throw some litter about it, which those who come 
 after us may remove. 
 
 Petrarca. Do not threaten, Ser GeofFreddo ! Englishmen 
 act. 
 
 Boccaccio. Messer Francesco is grown melancholy at the 
 spectre of the tribune. Relate to us some amusing tale, either of 
 court or war. 
 
 Chaucer. It would ill become me, signors, to refuse what I 
 can offer ; and truly I am loath to be silent, when a fair occasion 
 is before me of adverting to those of my countrymen who fought 
 in the battle of Cressy, as did one or two or more of the persons 
 that are the subjects of my narrative. 
 
 Boccaccio. Enormous and horrible as was the slaughter of the 
 French in that fight, and hateful as is war altogether to you and 
 me, Francesco, 1 do expect from the countenance of Ser Geof- 
 freddo, that he will rather make us merry than sad. 
 
 Chaucer. I hope I may, the story not wholly nor principally 
 relating to the battle. 
 
 Sir Magnus Lucy is a knight of ample possessions and of no 
 obscure family, in the shire of Warwick, one of our inland pro- 
 vinces. He was left in his childhood under the guardianship of 
 a mother, who loved him more fondly than discreetly. Beside 
 which disadvantage, there was always wanting in his family the 
 nerve or fluid, or whatever else it may be, on which the intellectual 
 powers are nourished and put in motion. The good Lady Joan 
 would never let him enter the lists at jousts and tournaments, to 
 which indeed he showed small inclination, nor would she encourage 
 him to practise or learn any martial exercise. He was excused 
 from the wars under the plea that he was subject to epilepsy ; 
 somewhat of which fit or another had befallen him in his adoles- 
 cence, from having eaten too freely of a cold swan, after dinner. 
 To render him justice, he had given once an indication of courage. 
 A" farmer's son upon his estate, a few years younger than himself, 
 
72 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 had become a good player at quarter-staff, and was invited to 
 Charlecote, the residence of the Lucys, to exhibit his address in 
 this useful and manly sport. The lad was then about sixteen 
 years old, or rather more ; and another of the same parish, and 
 about the same standing, was appointed his antagonist. The sight 
 animated Sir Magnus ; who, seeing the game over and both com- 
 batants out of breath, called out to Peter Crosby the conqueror, 
 and declared his readiness to engage with him, on these conditions: 
 First, that he should have a helmet on his head with a cushion 
 over it, — both of which he sent for ere he made the proposal, and 
 both of which were already brought to him, the one from a buck's 
 horn in the hall, the other from his mother's chair in the parlor ; 
 secondly, that his visor should be down ; thirdly, that Peter 
 should never aim at his body or arms ; fourthly and lastly, for 
 he would not be too parriciJar, that, instead of a cudgel, he should 
 use a bulrush, enwrapped in the under-coat he had taken off", lest 
 any thing venomous should be sticking to it, as his mother said 
 there might be, from the spittle or spawn of toads, evets, water- 
 snakes, and adders. 
 
 Peter scraped back his right foot, leaned forward, and laid his 
 hooked fingers on his brow, not without scratching it, — the multi- 
 form signification of humble compliance in our country. John 
 Crosby, the father of Peter, was a merry, jocose old man, not a 
 little propense to the mischievous. He had about him a powder 
 of a sternutatory quality, whether in preparation for some trick 
 among his boon companions, or useful m the catching of chub 
 and bream, as many suspected, is indifferent to my story. This 
 powder he inserted in the head of the bulrush, wliich he pretended 
 to soften and to cleanse by rubbing, while he instnacted his lad in 
 the use and application of it. Peter learned the lesson so well, 
 and delivered it so skilfully, that at the very first blow the powder 
 went into the aperture of the visor, and not only operated on the 
 nostrils, but equally on the two spherical, horny, fish-like eyes 
 above it. Sir Magnus wailed aloud, dropped his cudgel, tore 
 with great effort (for it was well fastened) the pillow from his 
 helmet, and implored the attendants to embrace him, crying, 
 " Oh Jesu ! Jesu ! I am in the agonies of death : receive my 
 spirit ! " John Crosby kicked the ankle of the fanner who 
 sat next him on the turf, and whispered, " He must find it first." 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 73 
 
 The mischief was attributed to the light and downy particles 
 of the bulrush, detached by the unlucky blow ; and John, spring- 
 ing up when he had spoken the words, and seizing it from the 
 hand of his son, laid it lustily about his shoulders until it fell 
 in dust on every side, crjring, " Scape-grace ! scape-grace ! 
 born to break thy father's heart in splinters ! Is it thus thou 
 beginnest thy service to so brave and generous a master ? Out of 
 my sight!" 
 
 Never was the trick divulged by the friends of Peter until 
 after his death, which happened lately at the battle of Cressy. 
 While Peter was fighting for his king and country. Sir Magnus 
 resolved to display his wealth and splendor in his native land. 
 He had heard of princes and other great men travelling in dis- 
 guise, and under names not belonging to them. This is easy of 
 imitation : he resolved to try it ; although at first a qualm of 
 conscience came over him on the part of the Christian name 
 which his godfathers and godmothers had given him, but which 
 however was so distinguishing that he determined to lay it aside, 
 first asking leave of three saints, paying three groats into the alms- 
 box, saying twelve paternosters within the hour, and making the 
 priest of the parish drunk at supper. He now gave it out by 
 sound of horn that he should leave Charlecote, and travel incognito 
 through several parts of England. For this purpose he locked up 
 the liveries of his valets, and borrowed for them from his tenants 
 the dress of yeomanry. Three grooms rode forward in buff 
 habiliments, with three led horses well caparisoned. Before noon 
 he reached a small town called Henley-in-Arden, as his host at 
 the inn-door told him, adding, when the knight dismounted, that 
 there were scholars who had argued in his hearing whether the 
 name of Arden were derived from another forest so called in 
 Germany, or from a puissant family which bore it, being earls of 
 Warwick in the reign of Edward the Confessor. " It is the 
 opinion of the Abbot of Tewkesbury, and likewise of my very 
 good master, him of Evesham," said the host, " that the Saxon 
 earls brought over the name with them from their own country, 
 and gave it to the wilder part of their dominions in this of ours." 
 " No such family now," cried the knight. " We have driven 
 them out, bag and baggage, long ago, being braver men than they 
 
74 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 A thought however struck him that the vacant name might 
 cover and befit him in this expedition ; and he ordered his 
 servants to call him Sir Nigel de Arden. 
 
 Continuing his march northward, he protested that nothing 
 short of the Trent (if indeed that river were not a fabulous one) 
 should stop him ; nay, by the rood, not even the Trent itself, if 
 there were any bridge over it strong enough to bear a horse 
 caparisoned, or any ford which he could see a herd of oxen or a 
 score of sheep fit for the butcher pass across. Early on the 
 second morning he was nigh upon twenty miles from home, at a 
 hamlet we call Bromwicham, where be two or three furnaces and 
 sundry smiths, able to make a horse-shoe in time of need, allow- 
 ing them drink and leisure. He commanded his steward to dis- 
 burse unto the elder of them one penny of lawful coin, advising the 
 cunning man to look well and soberly at his steed's hoofs, and at 
 those of the other steeds in his company ; which being done, and 
 no repairs being necessary, Sir Magnus then proceeded to the vicinity 
 of another hamlet called Sutton Colefield, in which country is a well- 
 wooded and well-stocked chase, belonging to my dread master 
 the Duke of Lancaster, who often taketh his sport therein. 
 Here, unhappily for the knight, were the keepers of the said 
 chase hunting the red and fallow deer. The horse of the wor- 
 shipful knight, having a great affection for dogs, and inspirited by 
 the prancing and neighing of his fellow-creatures about him, 
 sprang forward, and relaxed not any great matter of his mettle 
 before he reached the next forest of Cannock, where the buck 
 that was pursued pierced the thickets and escaped his enemies. 
 In the village of Cannock was the knight, at his extremity, fain 
 to look for other farriery than that which is exercised by the 
 craft in Bromwicham, and upon other flesh than horseflesh, and 
 about parts less horny than hoofs, however hardened be the same 
 parts by untoward bumps and contusions. This farriery was 
 applied by a skilful and discreet leech, while Sir Magnus opened 
 his missal on his bed in the posture of devotion, and while a 
 priest, who had been called in to comfort him, was looking 
 for the penetential psalms of good king David, — the only service 
 (he assured Sir Magnus) that had any effect in the removal or 
 alleviation of such sufferings. 
 
 When the host at Cannock heard the name of his guest. 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 75 
 
 " 'Sblood ! " cried he to his son, " ride over, Emanuel, to Long- 
 croft, and inform the worshipful youths, Humphrey and Henry, 
 that one of their kinsmen is come over from the other side of 
 Warwickshire to visit them, and has lost his way in the forest 
 through a love of sport." 
 
 On his road into Rugeley, Emanuel met them together, and 
 told them his errand. They had heard the horn as they were 
 riding out, had joined the hunt, and were now returning home. 
 Indignant at first that any one should take the name of their 
 family, they went on asking more and more questions and their 
 anger abated as their curiosity increased. Having an abundance 
 of good-humor and of joviality in their nature, they agreed to 
 act courteously, and turn the adventure into glee and joyousness. 
 So they went back with Emanuel to his father's at Cannock, and 
 were received by the townspeople with much deference and 
 respect. The attendants of Sir Magnus observed it, and were 
 earnest to see in what manner the adventure would terminate. 
 
 " Go," said Humphrey, " and tell your Master Sir Nigel that 
 his kinsmen are come to pay their duty to him." The clergyman 
 who had been reading the penitential psalms, and had afterwards 
 said Mass, opened the chamber-door for them, and conducted 
 them to Sir Magnus. They began their compliments by telling 
 him that, although the house at Longcroft was unworthy of their 
 kinsman's reception, in the absence of their father, — when they 
 were interrupted by the knight, who cried aloud in a clear quaver, 
 " Young gentlemen ! I have no relative in these parts : I come 
 fi-om the very end of Warwickshire. Reverend sir priest ! I do 
 protest and vow I have no cognizance of these two young gentle- 
 men." 
 
 As he spoke the sweat hung upon his brow, the cause of which 
 neither the brothers nor the priest could interpret ; but it really 
 was lest they should have come to dine with him, and perhaps 
 have moreover some retinue in the yard. Disclaimed so uncere- 
 moniously, Humphrey de Arden opened a leathern purse, and 
 carefiJly took out his father's letter. Whereat the alarm of Sir 
 Magnus increased beyond measure, from the uncertainty of its 
 contents, and from the certainty of being discovered as the 
 usurper of a noble name. His terrors however were groundless ; 
 the letter was this : — 
 
76 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 " Son Humphrey, — I grieve that the valet who promised me 
 those three strong geldings, and took moneys thereupon, hath 
 mortally disappointed me ; for verily we have hard work here, 
 being one against seven or eight ; * and, if matters go on in this 
 guise, I must e'en fight afoot ere it be long : they have killed 
 among them my brave old Black Jack, who had often winnowed 
 them with his broken wind, which was not broken till they broke 
 it. The drunken fat rogue that now fails me would rather hunt 
 on Colefield or (if he dare come so near to you) on Cannock, 
 than lead the three good steeds in a halter up Yoxall Lane. 
 Whenever ye find him, stand within law with him and use whit- 
 leather rather than Needwood holly, which might provoke the 
 judge ; and take the three hale nags, coming hither with them 
 yourselves, and paying him forthwith three angels, due unto him 
 on the feast of Saint Barnabas and that other (St Jude, as I am 
 now reminded), if ye have so many ; if not, mortgage a meadow. 
 And let this serve as a warrant from your loving father.! tt " 
 
 " What is that to me ? " cried in agony Sir Magnus. The 
 priest took the letter and shook his head. " Sir priest ! you see 
 how it stands with us ; " said the knight. " Do deliver me from 
 the lion's den and from the young lions ! " 
 
 " Friend ! " said the priest, gravely and sternly, " I know the 
 mark of Sir Humphrey ; and the handwriting is my own brother's, 
 who, taking with him in his saddle-bag a goose-pie and twelve 
 strings of black pudding for Sir Humphrey, left his cure at Tam- 
 worth but four months ago, and joined the army in France, in 
 order to shrive the wounded. It is my duty to make known unto 
 the sheriff whatever is irregular in my parish." 
 
 "Oh, for the love of Christ, say nothing to the sheriflF! I 
 will confess all," exclaimed the knight 
 
 The attendants and many of the customers and country-folks 
 had listened at the door, which was indeed wide open ; and the 
 priest, being now confirmed in his suspicion by the knight's offer' 
 to "confess all," walked slowly through them, mounted his 
 
 * Such soon afterward was the disproportion of numbers at the battle 
 of Cressy. 
 
 t The mark of a knight, instead of his name, is not be wondered at. 
 Out of the thirty-six barons who subscribed the Magna Charta, three 
 only signed with their names. 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 77 
 
 palfrey, and rode over to the sheriff at Penkridge. The two 
 young gentlemen were delighted on seeing the consternation of 
 Sir Magnus and his company, and encouraged by the familiarity 
 of one among them, led him aside and said, " It will be well and 
 happy for you if you persuade the others of your party to return 
 home speedily. The sheriff is a shrewd severe man, and will 
 surely send every soul of you into Picardy, excepting such as he 
 may gibbet on the common for an ensample." 
 
 " Masters ! " replied the Warwickshire wag, " I will return 
 among them and frighten them into the road ; but you two brave 
 lads shall have your horses, and your father his, together with 
 such attendants as you little reckon on. Are ye for the wars ? " 
 
 " We were going," said they gayly, " whenever we could raise 
 enough moneys from our father's tenantry ; for he, much as he 
 desires to have us with him, is very loath to be badly equipped ; 
 and would peradventure see us rather slain in battle, or (what he 
 thinks worse) not in it at all, than villanously mounted." 
 
 " Will ye take me ? " cried the gallant yeoman. 
 
 « Gladly," answered they both together. 
 
 Ralph Roebuck was the name of this brave youngster ; and, 
 without another word, he ran among his fellows, and putting 
 his hand above his ear, as our hunters are wont, shouted aloud, 
 " Who's for hanging this fine morning ? " " Ralph ! " chimed 
 they together, somewhat languidly, " What dost mean ? " 
 
 " I mean," whispered he slowly and distinctly to the nearest, 
 " that the country will be up in half an hour ; that the priest is 
 gone for the sheriff; and that if he went for the devil he could 
 fetch him. I never knew a priest at a fault, whatever he winded. 
 Whosoe'er has a horse able to carry him is in luck. In my mind 
 there will be some heels without a stirrup under them before to- 
 morrow, kick as they may to find it. I must not however be 
 unfaithful to my master, for whom I have spoken a fair word and 
 worn a smiling face, in my perils and tribulations, with these stout 
 young gallants. Each to his own bit and bridle : the three led 
 chargers let no man touch, on his life. For the rest, I will be 
 spokesman, in lack of a better. May we meet again in Charlecote, 
 at least half the number we set out ! " 
 
 Away they ran, saddled their horses, and rode off. Ralph, 
 who had lately been put in the stocks by his master for drinking 
 
78 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 a cup too much and for singing a song by no means dissuasive of 
 incontinence, now for the first time began to think of it again, and 
 expected a like repose after less baiting. Presently came up a 
 swart, thin, fierce little man, with four others bearing arms. He, 
 observing Ralph, ordered him to " stand," in the king's name. 
 Ralph had been standing, and stood, with his arms before him, 
 hanging as if they were broken. 
 
 «' Varlet and villain! " cried the under-sheriff, for such was the 
 little man, " who art thou ? " 
 
 " May it please your honor," answered he submissively, " my 
 name is a real one and my own, such as it is." 
 
 "And what may it be, sirrah ! " 
 
 « Ralph Roebuck." 
 
 " Egad ! " cried the little man starting at it, " that too sounds 
 like a feigned one. Ye are all rogues and vagrants. Where 
 are thy fellows ? " 
 
 " I can answer only for myself, may it please your worship ! " 
 said Ralph. 
 
 " Where is thy leader, vagabond ! " cried the magistrate, more 
 and more indignant. 
 
 " God knows," answered Ralph, dolorously. 
 
 " Has he fled with the rest of his gang ? " 
 
 " God grant he may," ejaculated Roebuck, " rather than hang 
 upon the cursed tree." 
 
 The under-sheriff then ordered his people to hold Ralph in 
 custody, and went and saluted the two De Ardens, who requested 
 that clemency might be shown to every one implicated in an 
 offence so slight. 
 
 " We must consider of that," answered the under-sheriff. 
 " Edward a Brocton the priest of Cannock here, has given me 
 this letter, which he swears is written by his brother William, 
 priest of Tamworth, and marked by your worshipfid father." 
 The young men bowed. " Who is the rogue that defrauded 
 him," resumed the under-sheriff, " in the three horses, to our 
 lord the king's great detriment and discomfort ? " 
 
 It was not for them, they replied, to incriminate any one ; nor 
 indeed would they knowingly bring any man's blood on their 
 heads, if they could help it. 
 
 " The impostor in the house shall be examined," cried the little 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 79 
 
 man, drawing his forefinger along his lips, for they were foamy. 
 He went into the room and found the knight in a shower of tears. 
 
 " Call my varlets ! call my rogues ! " cried Sir Magnus, 
 wringing his hands and turning away his face. 
 
 " Rogues ! " said the under-sheriff. « They are gone off, 
 and in another county, or near upon it ; else would I hang them 
 all speedily, as I will thee, by God's pleasure. How many 
 horses hast thou in the stable ? " 
 
 " Sir ! good sir ! gentle sir ! patience a little ! Let me think 
 awhile ! " said the knight. 
 
 " Ay, ay, ay ! let thee think forsooth ! " scornfully and 
 canorously in well-sustained tenor hymned the son of Themis. 
 " This paper hath told me." 
 
 " Wortiiy sir ! " said the knight, " hear reason ! Hear truth 
 and righteousness and justification by faith ! Hear a sinner in 
 tribulation, in the shadow of death ! " 
 
 " Faith, sirrah ! thou art very near the substance, if there be 
 any," interposed the under-sheriff. 
 
 " Nay, nay ! hold, I beseech you ! As I have a soul to be 
 saved" — 
 
 " Pack it up then ! pack it up ! I will give it a lift when it 
 is ready." 
 
 " O sir sheriff, sir sheriff! I am disposed to swear on the 
 rood, I am not, and never was. Sir Nigel de Arden." 
 
 At these words the under-sheriff laughed bitterly, and said, 
 " Nor I neither ; " and, going out of the room, ordered a guard to 
 stand at the door. 
 
 Henry then took him by the arm and said softly, " Gildart ! 
 do not be severe with the poor young man below. It is true he 
 is in the secret, which he swears he will not betray if he dies for 
 it ; but he promises us the three horses without trial or suit or 
 trouble or delay, and hopes you will allow his master to leave 
 the kingdom in peace and safety under his conduct, promising 
 to serve the king, together with us faithfully in his wars." 
 
 " We could not do better," answered the under-sheriff, " if we 
 were certain the fellow and his gang would not waylay and 
 murder you on the road." 
 
 " Never fear ! " cried Henry. " As we shall have other 
 attendants, and are neither less strong nor (I trust) less courageous 
 than he we will venture, with your leave and permission." 
 
8o Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 This was given in writing. The under-sheriff ordered his 
 guards to bring down the culprit, who came limping and very slow. 
 
 " Pity he cannot feign and counterfeit a little better on the 
 spur of the occasion ! " said the under-sheriff. " He well answers 
 the description of fat and lazy : as for drunken, it shall not be to- 
 day on Cannock ale or Burton beer." 
 
 When the knight had descended the stairs, and saw Ralph 
 Roebuck, he shrieked aloud with surprise and gladness, " O thou 
 good and faithful servant ! enter into the joy of thy lord ! " 
 
 " God's blood ! " cried Ralph. " I must enter then into a thing 
 narrower than a weasel's or a wasp's hole. To what evil have 
 you led us ? " 
 
 " Now you can speak for me ! " said the knight. 
 
 Ralph shook his head and sighed, " It wUl not do, master ! I 
 am resolved to keep my promise, which you commanded upon 
 first setting out, though it may cost me limb or life. Master, one 
 word in your ear. 
 
 " No whisperings ! no connivances ! no plans or projects of 
 escape ! " cried the guard. They helped Sir Magnus into his 
 saddle with more than their hands and arms ; which, instead of 
 officiousness, he thought an indignity, though it might be the 
 practice of those parts. The two De Ardens mounted two of 
 the richly caparisoned steeds ; the third was led by their servant, 
 who went homeward with those also which they had ridden for 
 what was necessary, bemg ordered to rejoin them at Lichfield. 
 Ralph Roebuck sat alert on his own sorrel palfrey, a quick and 
 active one, with open transparent nostrils. He would, as became 
 him, have kept behind his master, if the knight had not called him 
 to his side, complaining that the length and roughness of the roads 
 had shaken his saddle so as to make it uneven and uneasy. Many 
 and pressing were the offers of Ralph to set it right : Sir Magnus 
 shook his head, and answered that " man is bom to suffering as 
 the sparks fly upward." 
 
 " I could wish, sir," said Ralph, « if it did not interfere with 
 higher dispensations " — 
 
 " The very word, Ralph ! the very word ! thou rememberest 
 it ! I could not bring it nicely to mind. Several Sundays have 
 passed since we heard it. Well ! what couldst thou wish ? " 
 
 « That your worship had under you at this juncture the cushion 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 8i 
 
 of our late good Lady Joan, which might serve you now some- 
 what better than it did at the battle of the bulrush. We all serve 
 best in our places." 
 
 " By our lady ! Ralph ! I never saw a man so much improved 
 by his travels as thou art. What shall we both be ere we reach 
 home again ? " 
 
 Ralph persuaded his master how much better it were that his 
 worship did not return too speedily among the cravens and re- 
 creants who had deserted him, and who probably would be pur- 
 sued ; and then what a shame and scandal it would be, if such a 
 powerful knight as Sir Magnus should see them dragged from his 
 own hall, and from under his own eyes, to prison. If by any 
 means it could be contrived to prolong the journey a few days, it 
 would be a blessing ; and the De Ardens, it might be hoped, 
 would say nothing of the matter to the sheriff. Sir Magnus felt 
 that his importance would be lowered by the seizure of his servants, 
 in his presence and under his roof ; and he had other reasons for 
 wishing to ride leisurely, in which his more active companions litde 
 participated. On their urging him to push forward, he complained 
 that his horse had been neglected, and had neither tasted oat nor 
 bean, nor even sweet meadow-hay, at Cannock. His company 
 expressed the utmost solicitude that this neglect should be promptly 
 remedied, and, grieving that the next stage was still several miles 
 distant, offered, and at the same time exerted, their best services 
 in bringing the hungry and loitering steed to a trot. Sir Magnus 
 now had his shrewd suspicions, he said, that the saddle had been 
 iQ looked to, and doubted whether a nail from behind might not 
 somehow have dropped lower. When he would have cleared up 
 his doubts by the agency of his hand, again the whip, applied to 
 his flinching steed, disturbed the elucidation ; and his knuckles, 
 instead of solving the knotty point, only added to its nodosity. 
 A.t last he cried, " Roebuck ! Roebuck ! gently, softly ! If we 
 go on at this rate, in another half-hour I shall be black and bloody 
 -IS ever rook was that dropped ill-fledged from the rookery." 
 
 « The Lord hath well speeded our flight," said Ralph relent- 
 ing : " he hath delivered us from our enemies. What miles and 
 miles have we travelled, to all appearance, in a few hours ! " 
 
 " Not many hours indeed," answered the knight, still ponder- 
 ing. " What is yon red spire ? " added he. 
 
 IV. V 
 
82 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 " The Tower of Babel," replied Ralph composedly. 
 
 " I cannot well think it," muttered Sir Magnus in suspense. 
 « They would never have dared to rebuild it, after God's anger 
 thereupon." 
 
 It was the spire of Lichfield cathedral. 
 
 When they entered the city they found there some hundreds 
 of French prisoners, taken in the late skirmishes, who were 
 chattering and laughing and boasting of their invincibility. 
 Their sun-burned faces, their meagre bodies, their loud cries, 
 and the violence our surly countrymen expressed at not being 
 understood by them, although as natives of Lichfield they spoke 
 such good English, removed in part the doubts of Sir Magnus, 
 even before he heard our host cry, " By God ! a very Babel ! " 
 Later in the evening came some Welshmen, having passed through 
 Shropshire and Cheshire with mountain sheep for the fair the 
 next morning. These two were unintelligible in their language, 
 and different from the others. They quarrelled with the French 
 for mocking them, as they thought. Sir Magnus expressed his 
 wonder that an Englishmen, which the host was, should be found 
 in such a far country, among the heathen ; albeit some of them 
 spoke English, not being able for their hearts and souls to do 
 otherwise, since all the languages in the world were spoken there 
 as a judgment on the ungodly. He confessed he had always 
 thought Babel was in another place, though he could not put his 
 finger upon it exactly. Nothing, he added, so clearly proved the 
 real fact, as that the sheep themselves were misbegotten and black- 
 faced, and several of them altogether tawny like a Moor's head 
 he had seen, he told them, in the chancel-window of Saint Mary's 
 at Warwick. " Which reminds me," said the pious knight, 
 " that the hour of Angelus must be at hand ; and, beside the 
 usual service, I have several forms of thanksgiving to run through 
 before I break bread again." 
 
 It was allowed him to go alone upstairs for his devotions, in 
 which, ye will have observed, he was very regular. Meanwhile 
 the landlord and his two daughters, two buxom wenches, 
 were admitted into the secret ; and it was agreed that at supper 
 all should speak a jargon, by degrees more and more confiised, 
 and that at last every imaginable mistake should be made in exe- 
 cuting the orders of the company. The girls entered heartily 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 83 
 
 into the device, and the rosy-faced father gave them hints and 
 directions while the supper was being cooked. Sir Magnus came 
 down, after a time, covered with sweat. He protested that the 
 heat of the climate in these counti-ies was intolerable, particularly 
 in his bedroom ; that indeed he had felt it before, in the open air, 
 but only on certain portions of the body which certain stars have 
 an influence upon, and not at all in the face. 
 
 The oven had been heated just under the knight's bed, in order 
 to supply loaves for the fanners and drovers the following day. 
 
 Supper was now served : bread however was wanting. The 
 knight desired one of the young women to give him some. She 
 looked at him in astonishment, shrank back, blushed, and hid her 
 face in her apron. The father came forward furiously, and said 
 many words, or rather uttered many sounds, which Sir Magnus could 
 not understand. He requested his attendant Ralph to explain. 
 Ralph made a few attempts at English, and, failing in it, spoke 
 very fluently another tongue. The father and his daughters 
 stared one at another, and brought a bucket of hot water, with a 
 square of soap ; then a goose's wing ; then a sack of gray peas ; 
 then a blackbird in a cage ; then a mustard pot ; then a handfiil 
 of brown paper ; then a pair of white rabbits, hanging by the ears. 
 Sir Magnus now addressed the other girl. She appeared more 
 willing to comply, and, making a sign at her father, whose back 
 was turned in his anxiety to find what was called for, as if she 
 would be kinder still when he was out of the way, laid her arm 
 across the neck of the knight, and withdrew it hesitatingly and 
 timidly. At this instant a great dog entered, allured by the 
 smell of the meat. The knight's lips quivered, and the first accents 
 he uttered audibly and distinctly were, — "Seeking whom he may 
 devour." Then falling on his knees, he cried aloud, " O Lord ! 
 thy mercies are manifold ! I am a sinner." 
 
 The girl trembled from head to foot, ready to burst with the 
 laughter she was suppressing, and kissed her father, and appeared to 
 implore his pardon. He pushed her back and cried, " Away ! I 
 saw thee ! I saw thee with these very eyes ! " clenching his fist 
 and striking his brow frantically. " I saw thy shadow upon the 
 wall. No wickedness is hidden." 
 
 "The hand- writing ! the hand- writing ! — That was upon the 
 wall, too ! perhaps upon this very one," exclaimed the conscience- 
 
84 Imaginary Conversations, 
 
 stricken and aghast Sir Magnus. He fell on his knees, and 
 praised the Lord for allowing to the host again the use of his 
 mother-tongue ; for the salvation of him a sinner ; if indeed it 
 were not the Lord himself who spake by the lips of his servant 
 in the words, " No wickedness is hidden." After a prayer, he 
 protested that, although indeed his heart was corrupt, as all hearts 
 were, the devil had failed to inflame him universally. Not one 
 knew what he said. Humphrey laughed and nodded assent; 
 Henry offered him baked apples ; Ralph brushed his doublet- 
 sleeve. 
 
 Before it was light in the morning, the horses were at the 
 door ; nobody appeared ; no money had been paid or demanded : 
 nevertheless it seemed an inn. They mounted ; they mused ; 
 they feared to meet each other's eyes : at last Ralph addressed 
 one of the De Ardens in a low voice, but so as to be heard by 
 his master. The two brothers tried each a monosyllable : Ralph 
 shook his head, and they looked despondently. Attempts were 
 renewed at intervals for several miles ; when suddenly a distant 
 bell was heard, probably from the cathedral, and Humphrey 
 cried, " Matins ! matins ! " At this moment all spoke English 
 perfectly, and the knight uttered many fervent ejaculations. 
 The others related their sufferings and visions ; and when they 
 had ended. Sir Magnus said he seemed to hear throughout the 
 night the roaring of a fiery furnace, for all the world like King 
 Nebuchadnezzar's ; only that sinful bodies, and not righteous 
 ones, were moved and shoved backward and forward in it, until 
 their bones grated like iron, and until his own teeth chattered so 
 in his head he could hear them no longer. 
 
 His conductor was careful to avoid the county of Warwick, 
 lest any one should recognise the knight, little as was the chance 
 of it ; for he never had been further from home than at Warwick, 
 and there but twice, the distance being five good miles. On 
 his way toward the coast, he wondered to find the stars so very 
 like those at Charlecote ; and some of them seemed to know him 
 and wink at him. He thought indeed here were a good many 
 more of them awake and stirring ; because he had been longer 
 out of doors than he had ever been before, at night. Slowly as 
 he would have travelled, if he had been allowed his own way, 
 on the sixth morning from his adventure at Cannock he had come 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 85 
 
 within sight of the coast. To his questions no other answer was 
 returned, than that the times were unquiet ; that the roads were 
 infested with robbers ; and that the orders of a sheriff were as a 
 king's. In the afternoon, the travellers descended the narrow 
 hoUoway that leads into the seaport town of Hastings. Ralph 
 pointed at some sailors who were stepping into a boat, and cried, 
 " Master ! what do you think of these ? " 
 
 "I think. Roebuck," answered he, after pondering some 
 moments, "that they are like unto those who go down into 
 the great waters." 
 
 The De Ardens were conveying their stores and horses 
 aboard, to lose no time, when Ralph whispered in the ear of 
 the knight, "Sir knight! do not, for the love of Christ! do 
 not venture with those two dare-devils any fuither. Let us 
 take only a small boat, just large enough to enter the Avon. 
 There is a short cut hereabout, if we could find it. For 
 six pieces of gold we may hire as many sailors to hazard their 
 liberties and lives for us, and see us safe at home again." 
 
 " Six * pieces of gold ! " repeated Sir Magnus very slowly and 
 distinctly : " six pieces of gold, in these hard times, go well-nigh 
 to purchase an acre of pasture-land." 
 
 " True," replied Roebuck, " with a hundred of sand and a 
 thousand of sea thrown in, as hoof and shank to a buttock of 
 beef." 
 
 " Indeed ! " interjected Sir Magnus. " Why, then, would 
 not it be better to look out for some such investment of 
 said moneys, and to get the indentures fairly engrossed forth- 
 with?" 
 
 " Investment ! indentures ! " cried Ralph. " Master ! it is 
 weU for those who can carry by land and sea such fine learned 
 words about with 'em, which are enough to show a man's gentility 
 all the world over." 
 
 It is uncertain whether Sir Magnus heard him, for he con- 
 tinued to utter and repeat the substance of his reflections. 
 
 " What a quantity of fishes there must be in a thousand acres 
 
 of deep salt water, being well looked to ! Rats and otters might 
 
 sneeze their hearts out before they could catch a fin, with the 
 
 brine and foam bobbing up everlastingly and bufl^eting their 
 
 [*From " Six " to " hundreds " (33 lines) added in 2nd ed.] 
 
86 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 whiskers ; and the poachers must buy lime-kilns, and forests, and 
 mines of pure poison, if they would make the fish drunk at the 
 bottom. Furthermore, there never could be a lack of sand at 
 Charlecote these twenty years to come, for kitchen or scullery or 
 walk before the hall-windows, or repairs of cow-house or dove- 
 cot ; and many a cart-load would be lying in store for sale.' 
 
 " There is great foresight and cleverness in all this," said 
 Ralph ; " and if your worship had only six gold pieces in the 
 world, no time ought to be lost in running with 'em seiward. 
 But to my foolishness, three for life and three for liberty seem 
 reasonable enough. Pirates, and even fair-fighting enemies, 
 such as those gentlemen over the way, demand for a knight's 
 ransom as many hundreds." 
 
 The knight drew back and hesitated. 
 
 " Well, ^ sir ! " said Ralph, " the business is none of mine. I 
 have been let go ere now for an old song when 1 had angered my 
 man : here I have angered nobody. I am safe anywhere, and 
 welcome in most places." 
 
 " I am fain to learn that old song of his," said the knight 
 inaudibly. 
 
 Roebuck continued : " I have no hall with antlers in it ; I 
 would rather eat a sucking-pig than a swan, and a griskin than 
 a heron ; and I can do either with good-will about noon any day 
 in seven, baiting Friday, and without mounting up three long steps 
 that run across the room, or resting my feet on a dainty mat of 
 rushes. A good blazing kitchen-fire is enough for me. * I care 
 neither for bucks nor partridges. As for spiced ale at christenings 
 and weddings, I may catch a draught of it when it passes. Sack 
 I have heard of: poor tipple, I doubt, that wants sweetening. 
 But a horn of home-brewed beer, frothing leisurely, and humming 
 lowly its contented tune, is suitable to my taste and condition ; 
 and I envy not the great and glorious who have a goose with a 
 capon in his belly on the table, or^ even a peacock, his head as 
 good as alive, and the proudest of his feathers to crown him." 
 
 The knight answered, " Somehow I do not like to part with 
 
 5 From " Well " to " rushes "(12 lines) added in ind ed.] 
 
 '"First ed. reads : " me, said Ralph. I," &c.] 
 
 "' From " or " to " him " (2 lines) added in *nd ed.] 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 87 
 
 my gold : I never saw any in coinage till last Easter ; * and it 
 seems so fresh and sunshiny and pleasant, I would keep it to look 
 at in damp weather. Pay the varlets in groats." 
 
 " Sir Knight ! " replied Ralph, " do not let them see your store 
 of groats, which are very handy, and sundry of these likewise are 
 quite new." 
 
 " Nobody would pay away new groats that could help it," 
 sighed Sir Magnus. 
 
 " The gold must go, and make room for more," said Roebuck. 
 The knight answered nothing ; but turning round, lest anybody 
 should notice his capacious and well-stored scrip, he drew forth 
 the six pieces, and, after a doubt and a trial with his thumb and 
 finger, whether by reason of their roughness two peradventure 
 might not stick together and make seven, he placed them in the 
 palm of Roebuck, who took them with equal silence and less un- 
 certainty. Great contentment was manifested by the worshipful 
 knight that the two De Ardens had left him ; and he ate a good 
 dinner, and drank a glass of Rhenish, which he said was " pure 
 sour ; " and presently was anxious to go aboard the boat, if it 
 was ready. Ralph conducted him to it, and helped him in. The 
 rowers for some time played their parts lustily, and then hoisted 
 sail. Roebuck asked the oldest of them whether the wind was 
 fair. " Passably," said he ; " but unless we look sharp we may 
 be carried into the Low Countries." 
 
 " I do not see anywhere that short cut, nor that brook which 
 runs into the Avon," said Sir Magnus. "As for the Low 
 Countries, no fear of them : the water rises before us, and we 
 mount higher and higher every moment, insomuch that I begin to 
 feel as if I were going up in a swing, like that between the elms." 
 
 Presently Old Ocean exacted from him his tribute, which the 
 powerfullest not of knights only and barons, but of princes and 
 kings, must pay him in his own dominions, bending their heads 
 and stretching out their arms and acknowledging his supremacy with 
 tears and groans. He now fancied he had been poisoned on 
 shore ; and was confirmed in his belief when Roebuck hummed 
 a tune without any words to it, prodigal and profuse as he was of 
 
 * The first gold coined in England came out rather more than a year 
 before this time, that is in 1344; the quantity was small, and probably 
 the circulation not rapid nor extensive. 
 
88 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 them on ordinary occasions ; and when neither he nor any of the 
 sailors would bring him such a trifle as water-gruel sweetened 
 with clary wine, or camomile flowers picked with the dew upon 
 them and simmered in fair spring-water and in an earthen pan, or 
 viperbroth with a spoonfiil of Venice-treacle in it, stirred with the 
 tusk of a wild-boar in the first quarter of the moon : the only 
 things he asked them for. Soon however his pains abated, yet he 
 complained that his eyesight was so affected he seemed to see 
 nothing but greenish water, like leek-porridge, albeit by his reckon- 
 ing they must now be near the brook. 
 
 " Methinks," said he, " we are running after that great white 
 ship yonder." 
 
 " Methinks so too," answered Ralph ; crying, " How is this ? " 
 with apparent anger, to the sailors. 
 
 " It cannot be otherwise," said one of them ; " the boat is the 
 brig's own daughter : what mortal can keep them asunder ! 
 You might as well hope to hold tight by your teeth a two 
 months' calf from its dam." 
 
 " Why didst not thou see to that, Ralph ? " cried the knight 
 in the bitterness of his soul. " Always rash and imprudent ! " 
 
 Roebuck attempted to console his master with the display of 
 the honors that would be shown him aboard the brig, when his 
 quality should be discovered. Then, taking advantage of a shoal 
 of porpoises, that rolled and darted in every direction round the 
 boat, he showed them to Sir Magnus, who turned pale at seeing 
 them so near him. " Never be frightened at a parcel of bots ! " 
 cried Roebuck. 
 
 " Bots ! what, those vast creatures ? " 
 
 " Ay, surely," said one of the sailors. " The sea-horses 
 avoid them by millions in a moment : you may sometimes see a 
 thousand of them sticking on a single hair of their tails." 
 
 " Do those horses come within sight then ? " said Sir Magnus, 
 tremulously 
 
 " Only when they are itchy," answered the mariner ; " and 
 then they contrive to slip between a boat and a brig, and crack a 
 couple or three at a time of those troublesome little insects." 
 
 Sir Magnus said something to himself about the wonders of 
 the great deep, and praised God for having kept hitherto such a 
 breed of bots out of his stables. He began to see clearly how 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 89 
 
 fitted everything is to the place it occupies ; and how certainly 
 these creatures were created to be killed between brigs and boats. 
 
 Meditations must have their end, though they reach to 
 heaven. 
 
 Great as had been the consternation of Sir Magnus at the 
 sight of the porpoises, and at the probability that a hair of some 
 stray marine horse, covered over with them, might lie between 
 him and the river, — greater still was it, if possible, at approaching 
 the brig, and discerning the two De Ardens. " What can they 
 want with me ? " cried he. " I am resolved not to go home with 
 them." 
 
 Roebuck raised his spirits, by swearing that nothing of the kind 
 should happen while he had a drop of blood in his veins. 
 " Hark ! Sir Knight ' " said he. " Observe how the two young 
 gentlemen are behaving.'' 
 
 Gayly indeed did they accost him, and imperiously cried they 
 to the crew, " Make way for Sir Magnus Lucy ' " 
 
 " Behold, sir, your glorious name hath already manifested itself," 
 said Ralph. 
 
 A rope-ladder was let down ; and the brothers knelt, and 
 inclined their bodies, and offered their hands to aid him in mount- 
 ing. " Here are honors paid to my master ! " said Roebuck, 
 exultingly. Sir Magnus himself was highly gratified with his 
 reception, and resolved to defer his interrogatory on the course 
 they seemed to be taking. He was startled at dinner-time when 
 the captain with strange familiarity entitled him, " Sir Mag." 
 The following words were even more offensive : for when the 
 ship rolled somewhat, though moderately, the trencher ot Sir 
 Magnus fell into his lap ; and the captain cried " Nay, nay. Sir 
 Mag ! as much into gullet as gullet will hold, but clap nothing 
 below the girdle." He protested he had no design to secrete any- 
 thing. The sailors played and punned, as low men are wont, on his 
 family name ; and, on his asking what the fellows meant by their 
 impudence, a scholar from Oxford of whom he inquired it, one 
 who liked the logic of princes better than that of pedants, told 
 him they wished to express by their words and gestures that he 
 was, in the phrase of Horace, ad unguem foetus. 
 
 " I do not approve of any phrases," answered he, somewhat 
 proudly ; " and pray, sir, tell them so," 
 
go Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 " Sir ! " said Roebuck in his ear, " although you may be some- 
 what disappointed in the measure of respect paid to you aboard, 
 you will be compensated on landing." 
 
 Sir Magnus thought hereby that his tenants would surely bring 
 him pullets and chines. As they approached the coast, " I told 
 you, sir ! " exclaimed he. Look at the bonfire on the very 
 edge of the sands ! — they could not make it nearer you." A 
 fire was blazing, and there were loud huzzas as the ship entered 
 the port. 
 
 " I would still be incog, if possible," said Sir Magnus, hollow- 
 ing his cheeks and voice, and recovering to himself a great part 
 of his own estimation. " Give the good men this money ; and 
 tell them in future not to burn a serviceable boat for me in 
 want of brushwood. I will send them a cart-load of it another 
 time, on due application." 
 
 The people were caulking a fishing-smack: they took the 
 money, hooted at Sir Magnus, and turned again to their labor. 
 
 After the service of the day, the King of England was always 
 pleased to watch the ships coming over, to observe the soldiers 
 debarking, and to learn the names of the knights and esquires who 
 successively crossed the channel. He happened to be riding at 
 no great distance ; and ordered one of his attendants to go and 
 bring him information of the ship and her passengers, particularly 
 as he had seen some stout horses put ashore. This knight was 
 an intimate friend of De Arden the father, and laughed heartily 
 at the adventure, as related by Humphrey. He repeated it to the 
 king, word for word as nearly as he could. " Marry ! " said the 
 king; "three fat horses, with a bean-field (I warrant) in each, 
 are but an inadequate price for such a name. I doubt whether 
 we have another among us that was in any degi-ee noble before 
 the Norman conquest. We ourselves might have afforded three 
 decent ones in recompense for the dominion and property of nearly 
 one wliole county, and that county the fairest in England. Let 
 the boys make the knight show his prowess, as some of his family 
 have done. I observe they ride well, and have the prudence to 
 exercise their horses on their first debarking, lest they grow stiff 
 and lose their appetite. Tell them I shall be glad to hear of 
 them, and then to see them." 
 
 Sir Magnus, the moment he set foot on shore, was wel- 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca, 91 
 
 corned to land by Roebuck. « No, no ! rogue Ralph ! " said 
 he, nodding. " I know the Avon when I see it. Here we 
 are. None of your mummery, good people," cried he, somewhat 
 angrily, when several ragged French — men, women, and children 
 — asked him for charity. " We will have no Babel here, by 
 God's blessing." 
 
 Soon came forward two young knights, and told him it was 
 the king's pleasure he should pitch his tent above Eu, on the 
 right of this same river Brete. 
 
 " Youngsters ! " cried he arrogantly, " I shall pitch nothing ; 
 neither tent (whatever it may be), nor quoit, nor bar. Know ye, 
 I am Sir Magnus Lucy, of Charlecote." 
 
 The young knights, unceremoniously as he had treated them, 
 bowed profoundly and said they bore the king's command, leaving 
 the execution of it to his discretion. 
 
 " The king's," repeated he. " What have I done ? Has that 
 skipping squirrel of an under-sheriff been at the king's ear about 
 me?" 
 
 They could not understand him ; and, telling him that it would 
 be unbecoming in them to investigate his secrets, made again their 
 obeisance, and left him. He then turned toward Ralph, the polar 
 star in every ambiguity of his courses. 
 
 " Honored master, Sir Magnus ! " answered Ralph, " let no 
 strife be between us, nor ill blood, that alway maketh ill counsels 
 boU uppermost in the pot." 
 
 " Roebuck ! " said the knight, survejdng him with silent ad- 
 miration, " now speakest thou soundly and calmly ; for thou hast 
 taken time in the delivery thereof, and communed with thyself, 
 before thou didst tmst the least trustworthy of thy members. 
 But I do surmise from thy manner, and from the thing spoken, 
 that thou haat somewhat within thee which thou wouldst utter 
 
 yet." 
 
 "Worshipful sir!" subjoined Ralph, "although I do not 
 boast of my services — as who would ? — yet, truth is truth. I 
 have saved your noble neck from the gallows : forasmuch as 
 you took a name, worshipful sir, which neither king nor 
 father ever gave you, and which belongeth to others rightfully. 
 Now if both the name and the horses had been found at once 
 upon you, a miracle only could have saved you from that bloody- 
 
92 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 minded under-sherifF. Providential was it for you, Sir Knight, 
 that those two young gentlemen, whether in mercy they counter- 
 feited the letter " — 
 
 " No, no, no ! the priest's own brother wrote it : the priest 
 deposed to the handwriting." 
 
 "Then," said Ralph, calmly, lifting up the palms of his hands 
 towards Sir Magnus, " let us praise the Lord ! " 
 
 " Hei-day ? Ralph ! why ! art even thou grown devout ? 
 Verily this is a great mercy ; a great deliverance. I doubt 
 whether the best part of it (praised be the Lord nevertheless ! ) 
 be not rather for thee, than for such a sinner as I am. For thou 
 hast lost no horse ; and yet art touched as if thou hadst lost a 
 stud : thou hast not suffered in the flesh ; and yet thy spirit is 
 very contrite." 
 
 " Master I " said Ralph, " only one thing is quite plain to 
 me ; which is, that Almighty God decrees we should render 
 our best services to our country. Your three horses followed 
 you for idle pomp : vanity prompted you to appear what you 
 are not." 
 
 " Very wrong, Ralph ! " 
 
 " And yet, Sir Magnus, if you had not committed this action, 
 which in your pious and reasonable humility you call very wrong, 
 perhaps three gallant youths (for Sir Magnus Lucy by God's 
 grace shall be the third) had remained at home in that sad idle- 
 ness which leads to an unprivileged and tongue-tied old age. 
 We are now in France " — 
 
 " Ralph ! Ralph ! " said Sir Magnus, " be serious still. Faith ! 
 I can hardly tell when thou art and when thou art not, being so 
 unsteady a creature." 
 
 " Sir Magnus, I repeat it, we are now in Normandy or 
 Picardy, I know not rightly which ; where the king also is, and 
 where it would be unseemly if any English knight were not. 
 The eyes of England and of France are fixed upon us. Here 
 we must all obey, the lofty as well as the humble." 
 
 "Obey ? ay, to be sure, Ralph ! Thou wilt obey me : thou 
 art not great enough to obey the king ; therefore set not thy 
 heart upon it." 
 
 Ralph smiled and replied, " I offered my service to the young 
 De Ardens, which they graciously accepted. As however they 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 93 
 
 have their own servants with 'em, if you, my honored master, 
 can trust me, who have more than once deceived you, but never 
 to your injury, I will with their permission continue to serve you, 
 and that right faithfully. Whatever is wanting to the dignity 
 of your appearance is readily purchased in this country, from the 
 many traffickers who follow the camp, and from the great abund- 
 ance of Normandy. So numerous too are the servants who have 
 lost their masters, you may find as many as your rank requires, 
 or your fortune can maintain. There are handier men among 
 them than I am ; and I do not ask of you any place of trust 
 above my betters. Such as I am, either take me, Sir Magnus, 
 or leave me with the two brave lads." 
 
 " Ralph ! " answered the knight, " I cannot do without 
 thee, since I am here ; as it seems I am ! " and he sighed. 
 "About those servants that have lost their masters — I wish 
 thou couldst have held thy peace. I would not fain have such 
 unlucky varlets. But some of these masters, let us hope, may be 
 found. Thou dost not mean they are dead ; that is, killed ! " 
 
 " Missing," said Ralph, consolatorily. 
 
 " I thought so : I corrected thee at the time. Now my three 
 horses, the king being here, if thou speakest truth, I can have 
 them up by certiorari at his Bench." 
 
 " They would be apt to leap it, I trow," replied Ralph, " with 
 such riders upon their backs. Master, be easy about them ! " 
 
 " Ismael is very powerfiil : he could carry me anywhere in 
 reason," said Sir Magnus. 
 
 " Do not let the story get wind," answered his counsellor, 
 " lest we never hear the end of it. I promise you, my worthy 
 master, you shall have Ismael again after the wars." 
 
 " He will have longer teeth, and fewer marks in his mouth, 
 before that time," said sorrowfully Sir Magnus. 
 
 " No bridle can hold him, whei^ he is wilful," replied Ralph ; 
 " and although perad venture he might carry your worship clean 
 through the enemy, once or twice, yet Ismael is not the horse 
 to be pricked and goaded by pikes and arrows, without rearing 
 and plunging, and kicking off helmets by the dozen, nine ells 
 from the ground. Let those Staffordshire lads break him in and 
 bring him home." 
 
 « Tell them so ! tell them so ! " said Sir Magnus, rubbing 
 
94 Imaginary Conversations, 
 
 his hands. " And find me one very strong and fleet, and very 
 tractable, and that will do anything rather than plunge and rear 
 at being pricked, if such bloody times should ever come over 
 again in the world : for, as I never yet gave any man cause to 
 mock at me, I will do my utmost to make all reverent of me, 
 now I am near the king." Thus he spoke, being at last well 
 aware that he was indeed in France ; although he was yet 
 perplexed in spirit in regard to his having been at Babel. 
 
 However, some time afterward he was likewise cured of this 
 scepticism ; as by degrees men will be on such points, if they 
 seek the truth in humility of spirit. Conversing one day with 
 Roebuck on past occurrences, he said, after a pause, " Ralph ! I 
 have confessed unto thee many things, as thou likewise hast con- 
 fessed many unto me ; the which manner of living and communing 
 was very pleasant to the gentle saints, Paul and Timothy. And 
 now I do indeed own that I have seen men in these parts beyond 
 sea, and doubt not that there be likewise such in others, who in 
 sundry matters have more of worldly knowledge than I have, — 
 knowledge, I speak of, not of understanding. In the vanity of 
 my heart, having at that time seen little, I did imagine and 
 surmise that Babel lay wider of us ; albeit I could not upon oath 
 or upon honor say where or whereabout. It pleased the Lord 
 to enlighten me by signs and tokens, and not to leave me for the 
 scorn of the heathen and the derision of the ungodly. Had I 
 minded his word somewhat more, when in my self-sufficiency 
 I thought I had minded little else and knew it off-hand, I should 
 have remembered that we pray every Sabbath for the peace of 
 Jerusalem, and of Sion, and of Israel ; meaning thereby (as the 
 priest admonishes the simpler of the congregation) our own 
 country, albeit other names have been given in these latter days 
 to divers parts thereof. By the same token I might have ap- 
 prehended that Babel lay at no vast distance." 
 
 Roebuck listened demurely, smacking his lips at intervals like 
 a carp out of pond, and looking grave and edified. Tired how- 
 ever with this geographical discursion, burred and briared and 
 braked with homilies, he reminded his master that no time was to 
 be lost in looking for a gallant steed, worthy to bear a knight of 
 distinction. " My father," said he, " made a song for himself. 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 95 
 
 in readiness at fair or market, when he had a sorry jade to 
 dispose of : — 
 
 " ' Who sells a good nag 
 On his legs may fag 
 
 Until his heart be weary. 
 Who buys a good nag, 
 And hath groats in his bag, 
 
 May ride the world over full cheery.' " 
 
 " Comfortable thoughts, both of 'em ! " said Sir Magnus. 
 " I never sold my nags : and I have groats enow, — if nobody 
 do touch the same. Not knowing well the farms about this 
 country, and the day being more windy than I could wish it, and 
 proposing still to remain for awhile incognito, and being some- 
 what soiled in my apparel by the accidents of the voyage, and 
 fiirtherraore my eyes having been strained thereby a slight matter, 
 it would please me. Roebuck, if thou wentest in search of the 
 charger : the troublesome part of looking at his quarters, and 
 handling him, and disbursing the moneys, I myself may, by God's 
 providence, bring unto good issue." 
 
 Ralph accepted the commission, and performed it faithfully and 
 amply. He returned with two powerful chargers, magnificently 
 caparisoned, and told his master that he would grieve to the day 
 of his death if he let either of them slip through his fingers. Sir 
 Magnus first asked the prices, and then the names of them. He 
 was informed that one was called Rufus, and the other Beauclerc, 
 after two great English kings. Enquiring of Ralph the history 
 of these English kings, and whether he had ever heard of them, 
 and on the confession of Ralph in the negative, he was vexed 
 and discontented, and told Ralph he knew nothing. The owner 
 of the horses was very fluent in the history of the two princes, 
 which nearly lost him his customer; for the knight shook his 
 head, saying he should be sorry to mount a beast of such an un- 
 lucky name as Rufiis : above all, in a country where arrows were 
 so rife. As for Beauclerc, he was unexceptionable. 
 
 " A horse indeed ! " cried Roebuck ; " in my mind, sir ! 
 Ismael is not fit to hold a candle to him." 
 
 " I would not say so much as that," gravely and majestically 
 replied the knight : " but this Beauclerc has his points. Roebuck." 
 Sir Magnus purchased the two horses, and acquired into the 
 bargain the two pages of history appertaining to their names; 
 
96 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 which, proud as he was of displaying them on all occasions, he 
 managed less dexterously. Before long he heard on every side 
 the most exalted praises of Humphrey and Henry ; and although 
 he was by no means invidious, he attributed a large portion of the 
 merit to Ismael, and appealed to Roebuck whether he did not 
 once hear him say that Jacob too would show himself one day or 
 other. Stimulated by the glory his horses had acquired, horses 
 bred upon his own land, and by the notice they had attracted 
 from our invincible Edward, under two mere striplings of half his 
 weight, he himself within a week or fortnight was changed in 
 character. Sloth and inactivity were no longer endurable to him. 
 He exercised his chargers and himself in every practice necessary 
 to the military career ; and at last being presented to the king, 
 Edward said to him that, albeit not being at Westminister, nor 
 having his chancellor at hand, he could not legally enforce the 
 payment of the three angels still due (he understood) as part of 
 the purchase-money of sundry chargers, nevertheless he would 
 oblige the gallant knight who bought them to present him on due 
 occasion a pair of spurs for his acquittance. 
 
 The ceremony was not performed in the presence of the king, 
 whose affairs required him elsewhere, but in the presence of his 
 glorious son, after the battle of Cressy. Here Sir Magnus was 
 surrounded, and perhaps would have fallen, being still inexpert in 
 the management of his arms, when suddenly a young soldier, 
 covered with blood, rushed between him and his antagonist, 
 whom he levelled with his battle-axe, and fell exhausted. Sir 
 Magnus had received many bruises through his armor, and 
 noticed but little the event ; many similar ones, or nearly so, 
 having occurred in the course of the engagement. Soon however 
 that quarter of the field began to show its herbage again in larger 
 spaces ; and at the distant sound of the French trumpets, which 
 was shrill, fitful, and tuneless, the broken ranks of the enemy near 
 him waved like a tattered banner in the wind, and melted, and 
 disappeared. Ralph had fought resolutely at his side and, though 
 wounded, was little hurt. The knight called him aloud : at his 
 voice not only Ralph came forward, but the soldier who had pre- 
 served his life rolled round toward him. Disfigured as he was 
 with blood and bruises, Ralph knew him again : it was Peter 
 Crosby of the bulrush. Sir Magnus did not find immediately the 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 97 
 
 words he wanted to accost him : and indeed, though he had 
 become much braver, he had not grown much more courteous, 
 much more generous, or much more humane. He took him 
 however by the hand, thanked him for having saved his Ufe, 
 and hoped to assist in doing him the same good turn. 
 
 Roebuck in the mean time washed the several wounds of his 
 former friend and playmate, from a cow's horn containing wine ; 
 of which, as he had reserved it only against thirst in battle, few 
 drops were left. Gashes opened from under the gore, which 
 made him wish that he had left it untouched ; and he drew in 
 his breath, as if he felt all the pain he awakened. 
 
 " Well meant, Ralph ! but prythee give over ! " said Crosby, 
 patiently. " These singings in my head are no merry-makings." 
 
 "Master! — if you are there — I would liefer have lain in 
 Hampton churchyard among the skittles, or as near them as 
 might be, so as not to spoil the sport ; and methinks had it been 
 a score or two of years later, it were none the worse. How- 
 soever, God's will be done ! Greater folks have been eaten here 
 by the dogs. Welladay, and what harm ? Dogs at any time 
 are better beasts than worms, and should be served first. They 
 love us, and watch us, and help us while we are living : the 
 others don't mind us while we are good for anything. There 
 are chaps, too, and feeding in clover, who think much as they do 
 upon that matter. 
 
 " Give me thy hand, Ralph ! Tell my father I have done 
 my best. If thou findest a slash or two athwart my back and 
 loins, swear to him, as thou safely mayest do on all the Gospels, 
 and on any bone of any martyr, that they closed upon me and 
 gave them when I was cutting my way through — aweary with 
 what had been done already — to lend my last service — ^to our 
 worthy master." 
 
 Now, Messer Francesco, I may call upon you, having seen you 
 long since throw aside your gravity, and at last spring up alert as 
 though you would mount for Picardy. 
 
 Petrarca. A right indeed have you acquired to call upon me, 
 Ser Geoffreddo ; but you must accept from me the produce of 
 our country. Brave men appeal" among us every age almost ; yet 
 all of them are apt to look to themselves : none will hazard his 
 life for another ; none will trust his best friend. Such is our 
 
98 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 breed ; such it always was. In affairs of love alone have we as 
 great a variety as you have, and perhaps a greater. I am by 
 nature very forgetful of light occurrences, even of those which 
 much amused me at the time ; and if your greyhound, Messer 
 GeofFreddo, had not been laying his muzzle between my knees, 
 urging my attention, shivering at the cold of this unmatted marble, 
 and treading upon my foot in preference, I doubt whether you 
 would ever have heard from me the story I shall now relate to 
 you. 
 
 It occurred the year before I left Avignon ; the inhabitants of 
 which city, Messer Giovanni will certify, are more beautiful than 
 any others in France. 
 
 Boccaccio. I have learned it from report, and believe it 
 readily ; so many Italians have resided there so long, and the 
 very flower of Italy : amorous poets, stout abbots, indolent 
 priests, high-fed cardinals, handsome pages, gigantic halberdiers, 
 md crossbow-men for ever at the mark. 
 
 Petrarca. Pish ! pish ! let me find my way through 'em, and 
 come to the couple I have before my eyes, and the spaniel that 
 was the prime mover in the business. 
 
 Tenerin de Gisors knew few things in the world ; and, if he 
 had known all therein, he would have found nothing so valuable, 
 in his own estimation, as himself. The ladies paid much court 
 to him, and never seemed so happy as in his presence : this 
 disquieted him. 
 
 Boccaccio. How the deuce ! he must have been a saint then : 
 which accords but little with his vanity. 
 
 Petrarca. You might mistake there, Giovanni ! The ob- 
 servation does not hold good in all cases, I can assure you. 
 
 Boccaccio. Well, go on with him. 
 
 Petrarca. I do think, Giovanni, you tell a story a great 
 deal more naturally ; but I will say plainly what my own eyes 
 have remarked, and will let the peculiarities of men appear as 
 they strike me, whether they are in symmetry with our notions of 
 character, or not. 
 
 Chaucer. The man of genius may do this : no other will 
 attempt it. He will discover the symmetry, the relations, and 
 the dependencies, of the whole : he will square the strange 
 problematic circle of the human heart. 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 99 
 
 Pardon my interruption ; and indulge us with the tale of 
 Tenerin. 
 
 Petrarca. He was disquieted, I repeat, by the gayety and 
 familiarity of the young women, who, truly to speak, betray at 
 Avignon no rusticity of reserve. Educated in a house where 
 music and poetry were cultivated, he had been hearing from his 
 earliest days the ditties of broken hearts and desperation ; and 
 never had he observed that these invariably were sung under 
 leering eyes, with smiles that turned every word upside-down, 
 and were followed by the clinking of glasses, a hearty supper, 
 and luhat not ! Beside,* he was very handsome : men of this 
 sort, although there are exceptions, are usually cold toward the 
 women ; and he was more displeased that they should share the 
 admiration which he thought due to himself exclusively, than 
 pleased at receiving the larger part of theirs. 
 
 At Avignon, as with us, certain houses entertain certain parties. 
 It is thought unpolite and inconstant ever to go from one into 
 another, I do not mean in the same evening, but in your lifetime ; 
 and only the religious can do it without reproach. As bees carry 
 and deposit the fecundating dust of certain plants, so friars and 
 priests the exhilarating tales of beauty, and the hardly less ex- 
 hilarating of frailty, covering it deeply with pity, and praising the 
 mercy of the Lord in permitting it for an admonition to others. 
 
 There are two sisters in our city (I forgot myself in calling 
 Avignon so), of whom among friends I may speak freely, and 
 may even name them : Cyrilla de la Haye, and Egidia. Cyrilla, 
 the younger, is said to be extremely beautiful : I never saw her, 
 and few beside the family have seen her lately. She is spoken of 
 among her female friends as very lively, very modest, fond of 
 reading and of music : added to which advantages, she is heiress 
 to her ancle the Bishop of Carpentras, now invested with the 
 purple. For her fortune, and for the care bestowed on her 
 education, she is indebted to her sister, who, having deceived 
 many respectable young men with hopes of marriage, was herself 
 at last deceived in them, and bore about her an indication that 
 deceived no one. During the three years that her father lived 
 after this too domestic calamity, he confined her in a country- 
 house, leaving her only the liberty of a garden, fenced with high 
 [* From " Beside " to " theirs " (5 lines) added in znd ed.] 
 
loo Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 walls. He died at Paris ; and the mother, who fondly loved 
 Egidia, went instantly and liberated her, permitting her to return 
 to Avignon, while she herself hid her grief, it is said, with young 
 Gasparin de I'CEuf in the villa. Egidia was resolved to enjoy 
 the first moments of freedom, and perhaps to show how little she 
 cared for an unforgiving father. No one however at Avignon, 
 beyond the family, had yet heard any thing of his decease. The 
 evening of her liberation she walked along the banks of the 
 Durance, with her favourite spaniel, which had become fat and 
 unwieldy by its confinement and by lying all day under the 
 southern wall of the garden, and, having never been combed nor 
 washed, exhibited every sign of dirtiness and decrepitude. To 
 render him smarter, she adorned him again with his rich silver 
 collar, now fitting him no longer, and hardly by any effort to 
 be clasped about his voluminous neck. He escaped from her, 
 dragging after him the scarlet ribbon which she had formed into 
 a chain, that it might appear the richer with its festoons about it, 
 and that she might hold the last object of her love the faster. 
 On the banks of the river he struggled with both paws to dis- 
 engage the collar, and unhappily one of them passed through a 
 link of the ribbon. Frightened and half-blind, he ran on his 
 three legs he knew not whither, and tumbled through some low 
 willows into the Durance. Egidia caught at the end of the 
 ribbon ; and, the bank giving way, she fell with him into deep 
 water. She had, the moment before, looked in vain for assist- 
 ance to catch her spaniel for her, and had cast a reproachfvJ 
 glance toward the bridge, about a hundred paces off, on which 
 Tenerin de Gisors was leaning with his arms folded upon the 
 battlement. 
 
 " Now," said he to himself, " one woman at least would die 
 for me. She implored my pity before she committed the rash 
 act, — as such acts are called on other occasions." 
 
 Without stirring a foot or unfolding an arm, he added pathetic- 
 ally from Ovid, — 
 
 Sic, ubi fata vocant, udis abjectus in herbis, 
 Ad vada Mseandri concinit albus olor. 
 
 We will not inquire whether the verses are the more mis- 
 placed by the poet, or were the more misapplied by the reciter. 
 Tenerin now stepped forward, both to preserve his conquest 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. loi 
 
 and add solemnity to his triumph. He lost however the op- 
 portunity of saving his mistress, and saw her carried to the other 
 side of the river by two stout peasants, who had been purchasing 
 some barrels in readiness for the vintage, and who placed her with 
 her face downward, that the water might run out of her mouth. 
 He gave them a livre, on condition that they should declare he 
 alone had saved the lady ; he then quietly walked up to his 
 neck in the stream, turned back again, and assisted (or rather 
 followed) the youths in conveying her to the monastery near the 
 city-gate. 
 
 Here he learned, after many vain inquiries, that the lady was 
 no other than the daughter of Philibert de la Haye. Perpetually 
 had he heard in every conversation the praises of Cyrilla ; of her 
 beauty, her temper, her reserve, her accomplishments ; and what 
 a lucky thing for her was the false step of her sister, immured 
 for life, and leaving her in sole expectation of a vast inheritance. 
 Hastening homeward, he dressed himself in more gallant trim, 
 and went forthwith to the Bishop of Carpentras, then at Avignon, 
 to whom he did not find admittance, as his lordship had only 
 that morning received intelligence of his brother-in-law's decease. 
 He expressed by letter his gratitude to Divine Providence for 
 having enabled him to rescue the loveliest of her sex from the 
 horrors of a watery grave ; announced his rank, his fortune (not 
 indeed to be mentioned or thought of in comparison with her 
 merits), and entreated the honor of a union with her, if his lord- 
 ship could sympathize with him in feeling that such purity ought 
 never to have been enfolded (might he say it ?) in the arms of 
 any man who was not destined to be her husband. 
 
 " Ah ! " said the bishop when he had perused the letter, 
 " the young man too well knows what has happened : who does 
 not ? The Holy Father himself hath shed paternal tears upon 
 it. Providential this falling into the water : this endangering of 
 a sinful life ! May it awaken her remorse and repentance, as it 
 hath awakened his pity and compassion ! His proceeding is 
 liberal and delicate : he could not speak more passionately and 
 more guardedly. He was (now I find) one of her early ad- 
 mirers. No reference to others; no reproaches. True love 
 wears well. I do not like this matter to grow too public. I 
 will set out for Carpentras in another hour, first writing a few 
 
I02 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 lines, directing M. Tenerin to meet me at the palace this evening, 
 as soon as may be convenient. We must forgive the fault of 
 Egidia now she has found a good match ; and we may put on 
 mourning for the father, my worthy brother-in-law, next week." 
 
 Such were the cogitations and plans of the bishop, and he 
 carried them at once into execution ; for, knowing what the 
 frailty of human nature is, as if he knew it from inspiration, he 
 had by no means unshaken faith in the waters of the Durance as 
 restorative or conservative of chastity. 
 
 Tenerin has been since observed to whistle oftener than to 
 sing ; and when he begins to warble any of his amatory lays, 
 which seldom happens, the words do not please him as they used 
 to do, and he breaks off abruptly. A friend of his said to him 
 in my presence, " Your ear, Tenerin, has grown fastidious, since 
 you walked up to it in the water on the first of August." 
 
 Boccaccio, Francesco ! the more I reflect on the story you 
 have related to us, the more plamly do I perceive how natural 
 it is, and this too in the very peculiarity that appeared to me at 
 first as being the contrary. Unless we make a selection of 
 subjects, unless we observe their heights and distances, unless we 
 give them their angles and shades, we may as well paint with 
 white-wash. We do not want strange events, so much as those 
 by which we are admitted into the recesses, or carried on amid 
 the operations, of the human mind. We are stimulated by its 
 activity, but we are greatly more pleased at surveying it leisurely 
 in its quiescent state, uncovered and unsuspicious. Few, how- 
 ever, are capable of describing, or even of remarking it ; while 
 strange and unexpected contingencies are the commonest pedlery 
 of the markets, and the joint patrimony of the tapsters. 
 
 I have drawn so largely from my brain for the production ot a 
 hundred stories, many ot which I confess are witless and worth- 
 less, and many just as Ser Geoffreddo saw them, incomplete, that 
 if my memory did not come to my assistance I should be mis- 
 trustful of my imagination. 
 
 Chaucer. Ungrateful man ! the world never found one like it.* 
 
 Boccaccio. Are Englishmen so Asiatic in the profusion of 
 compliments ? 
 
 P First ed. reads : " it, and could not promise nor hold another such. 
 
 BoccacciOf^ &c.] 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 103 
 
 I know not, Francesco, whether you may deem this cathedral 
 a befitting place for narratives of love. 
 
 Petrarca. No place is more befitting ; since, if the love be 
 holy, no sentiment is essentially so divine ; and if unholy, we may 
 pray the more devoutly and eflPectually in such an audience for 
 the souls of those who harbored it. Beside which, the coolness 
 of the aisles and their silence, and their solitariness at the ex- 
 tremity of the city, would check within us any motive or tend- 
 ency to lasciviousness and lightness, if the subject should lie that 
 way, and if your spirits should incautiously follow it, my friend, 
 Giovanni ; as (pardon my sincerity ! ) they are somewhat too 
 propense. 
 
 Boccaccio. My scruples are satisfied and removed. 
 
 The air of Naples is not so inclement as that of our Arezzo ; 
 and there are some who will tell us, if we listen to them, that 
 few places in the world are more favorable and conducive to 
 amorous inclinations. I often heard it while I resided there ; and 
 the pulpit gave an echo to the public voice. Strange then 
 it may appear to you, that jealousy should find a place in the 
 connubial state, and after a year or more of marriage : neverthe- 
 less, so it happened. 
 
 The Prince of Policastro was united to a lady of his own rank ; 
 and yet he could not be quite so happy as he should have been 
 with her. She brought him a magnificent dowry ; and I never 
 saw valets more covered with lace, fringes, knots, and every thing 
 else that ought to content the lordly heart, than I have seen 
 behind the chairs of the Prince and Princess of Policastro. Alas ! 
 what are all the blessings of this sublunary world, to the lord 
 whose lady has thin lips ! The princess was very loving ; as 
 much after the first year as the prince was after the first night. 
 Even this would not content him. 
 
 Time, Ser Geoffteddo, remembering that Love and he in some 
 other planet flew together, and neither left the other behind, is 
 angry to be outstripped by him, and challenges him to a trial of 
 speed every day. The tiresome dotard is always distanced, yet 
 always calls hoarsely after him ; as if he had ever seen Love 
 turn back again, any more than Love had seen him. Well, let 
 them settle the matter between themselves. 
 
 Would you believe it? — the princess could not make her 
 
104 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 husband in the least the fonder of her by all her assiduities ; not 
 even by watching him while he was awake, more assiduously than 
 the tenderest mother ever watched her sleeping infant. Although, 
 to vary her fascinations and enchantments, she called him wretch 
 and villain, he was afterward as wretched and villanous as if she 
 never had taken half the pains about him. 
 
 She had brought in her train a certain Jacometta, whom she 
 persuaded to espy his motions. He was soon aware of it, and 
 calling her to him, said, — 
 
 " Discreet and fair Jacometta, the princess, you know very 
 well, thinks me inattentive to her ; and being unable to fix on 
 any other object of suspicion, she marks out you, and boasts 
 among her friends that she has persuaded a foolish girl to follow 
 and watch me, that she may at last, by the temptation she throws 
 into our way, rid herself of a beauty who in future might give her 
 great uneasiness. Certainly, if my heart could wander, its 
 wanderings would be near home. I do not exactly say I should 
 prefer you to every woman on earth, for reason and gratitude must 
 guide my passion ; and, unless where I might expect to find at- 
 tachment, I shall ever remain indifferent to personal charms. 
 You may relate to your mistress whatever you think proper of 
 this conversation. If you believe a person of your own sex can 
 be more attached and faithful to you than the most circumspect 
 of ours, then repeat the whole. If on the contrary you imagine 
 that I can be hereafter of any use to you, and that it is my interest 
 to keep secret any confidence with which you may honor me, the 
 princess has now enabled us to avoid being circumvented by her. 
 It cannot hurt me : you are young, unsettled, incautious, and 
 unsuspicious." 
 
 Jacometta held down her head in confusion : the prince taking 
 her by the hand, requested her not to think he was offended. 
 He persuaded her to let him meet her privately, that he might 
 give her warning if ^ny thing should occur, and that he might 
 assist her to turn aside the machinations of their enemy. The 
 first time they met, nothing had occurred : he pressed her hand, 
 slipped a valuable ring on one of the fingers, and passed. The 
 second time nothing material, nothing but what might be warded 
 off: let the worst happen, the friend who gave him information 
 of the designs laid against her would receive her. The princess 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 105 
 
 saw with wonder and admiration the earnestness with which 
 Jaconietta watched for her. The faithless man could hardly 
 move hand or foot without a motion on the part of her attendant. 
 She had observed him near the chamber-door of Jacometta, 
 and laughed in her heart at the beguiled deceiver. " Do you 
 know, Jacometta, I myself saw him within two paces of your 
 bedroom ! " 
 
 " I am quite confident it was he, madam ! " answered Jaco- 
 metta: "and I do believe in my conscience he comes every night. 
 What!" he wants I cannot imagine. He seems to stop before the 
 tube-roses and carnations on the balustrade, whether to smell at 
 them a little, or to catch the fresh breezes from Sorrento. I 
 fancied at first he might be restless and unhappy (pardon me, 
 madonna ! ) at your differences." 
 
 " No, no," said the princess, with a smile, " I understand what 
 he wants : never mind, make no inquiries ; he is little aware how 
 we are planning to catch him. He has seen you look after him ; 
 he fancies that you care about him, that you really like him, 
 abeolutely love him, — I could almost laugh, — that you would 
 (foolish man! foolish man! genuine Policastro!) listen to him. 
 Do you understand ? " 
 
 Jacometta's two ears reddened into transparency; and, clapping 
 a hand on each, she cried, after a long sigh, " Lord ! can he 
 think of me ? is he mad ? does he take a poor girl for a princess ? 
 Generally I sleep soundly ; but once or twice he has awakened 
 me, pel haps not well knowing the passage. But if, indeed, he is 
 so very wicked as to design to ruin me, and what is worse to 
 deceive the best of ladies, might it not be advisable to fasten in 
 the centre and in the sides of the corridor five, or six, or seven 
 sharp swords, with their points toward whoever — " 
 
 " Jacometta ! do nothing violently ; nothing rashly ; nothing 
 without me." 
 
 There was only one thing that Jacometta wished to do with- 
 out the princess ; and certainly she was disposed to do nothing 
 violently or rashly, for she was now completely in the interest 
 (these holy walls forbid me to speak more explicitly) of 
 Policastro. 
 
 « We will be a match for him," said the princess. « You 
 must leave your room-door open to-night." 
 
 pTrom "What" to "princess" (15 lines) added in 2nd ed.] 
 
io6 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Jacoraetta fell on her knees, and declared she was honest 
 though poor, — an'exclamation which I daresay, Messer Geoffreddo, 
 you have often heard in Italy : it being the preface to every 
 act of roguery and lubricity, unless from a knight or knight's 
 lady. The Princess of Policastro was ignorant of this, and so 
 was Jacometta when she used it. The mistress insisted ; the 
 attendant deprecated. 
 
 " Simple child ! no earthly mischief shall befall you. To-night 
 you shall sleep in my bed, and I in yours, awaiting the false wretch 
 miscalled my husband." 
 
 Satisfied with the ingenuity of her device, the princess was 
 excessively courteous to the prince at dinner, and indeed through- 
 out the whole day. He on his part was in transports, he said, 
 at her affability and sweet amiable temper. Poor Jacometta really 
 knew not what to do : scarcely for one moment could she speak 
 to the prince, that he might be on his guard. 
 
 " Do it ! do it ! " said he, pressing her hand as she passed 
 him. " We must submit." 
 
 At the proper time he went in his slippers to the bedroom of 
 the princess, and entered the spacious bed ; which, like the 
 domains of the rich, is never quite spacious enough for them. 
 Jacometta was persuaded to utter no exclamation in the begin- 
 ning, and was allowed to employ whatever vehemence she pleased 
 at a fitter moment. The princess tossed about in Jacometta's 
 bed, inveighing most furiously against her faithless husband ; her 
 passionate voice was hardly in any degree suppressed. Jacometta 
 too tossed about in the princess's bed, and her voice labored 
 under little less suppression. At last the principal cause of vexa- 
 tion, with the jealous wife, was the unreasonable time to which 
 her husband protracted the commission of his infidelity. After 
 two hours or thereabout, she began to question whether he really 
 had ever been unfaithful at all ; began to be of the opinion that 
 there are malicious people in the world, and returned to her own 
 chamber. She fancied she heard voices within, and listening 
 attentively, distinguished these outcries : — 
 
 " No resistance, madam ! An injured husband claims impera- 
 tively his promised bliss, denied him not through antipathy, not 
 through hatred, not through any demerits on his part, but through 
 unjust and barbarous jealousy. Resist ! bite ! beat me ! ' Villain ' 
 
Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Petrarca. 107 
 
 — ' ravisher ' — am I ? am I ? Excruciated as I am, wronged, 
 robbed of my happiness, of my sacred conjugal rights, may the 
 Blessed Virgin never countenance me, never look on me or listen 
 to me, if this is not the last time I ask them, or if ever I accept 
 them though offered." 
 
 At which, he rushed indignantly from the bed, threw open the 
 door, and, pushing aside the princess, cried raving, "Vile, 
 treacherous girl ! standing there, peeping ! half-naked ! At your 
 infantine age dare you thus intrude upon the holy mysteries of the 
 marriage-bed ? " 
 
 Screaming out these words, he ran like one possessed by the 
 devil into his own room, bolted the door with vehemence, locked 
 It, cursed it, slipped between the sheets, and slept soundly. 
 
 The princess was astonished : she asked herself. Why did not 
 I do this ? why did not I do that ? The reason was, she had 
 learned her own part, but not his. Scarcely had she entered her 
 chamber, when Jacometta fell upon her neck, sobbing aloud, and 
 declaring that nothing but her providential presence could have 
 saved her. She had muffled herself up, she said, folding the 
 bed-clothes about her double and triple, and was several times on 
 the point of calling up the whole household in her extremity, 
 strict as was her mistress's charge upon her to be silent. The 
 princess threw a shower of odoriferous waters over her, and took 
 every care to restore her spirits and to preserve her from a 
 hysterical fit, after such exertion and exhaustion. When she 
 was rather more recovered, she dropped on her knees before 
 her lady, and entreated and implored that, on the renewal of 
 her love in its pristine ardor for the prince, she never would tell 
 him in any moment of tender confidence that it was she who was 
 in the bed. 
 
 The princess was slow to give the promise ; for she was very 
 conscientious. At last however she gave it, saying, " The prince 
 my husband has taken a most awful oath never to renew the 
 moments you apprehend. Our Lady strengthen me to bear my 
 heavy aiBiction ! Her divine grace has cured my agonized breast 
 of its inveterate jealousy." 
 
 She paused for some time ; then, drying her tears, for she had 
 shed several, she invited Jacometta to sit upon the bedside with 
 her. Jacometta did so ; and the princess, taking her hand, 
 
io8 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 continued : " T hardly know what is passing in my mind, Jaco- 
 metta ! I found it difficult to bear an injury, though an empty 
 and unreal one; let me try whether the efforts I make will 
 enable me to endure a misfortune, — on the faith of a woman, my 
 dear Jacometta, no unreal nor empty one. Policastro is young : 
 it would be unreasonable in me to desire he should lead the life 
 of an anchorite, and perhaps not quite reasonable in him to expect 
 the miracle of my blood congealing." 
 
 After this narration, Messer Francesco walked toward the 
 high altar and made his genuflexion : the same did Messer 
 Giovanni, and, in the act of it, slapped Ser Geoffreddo on the 
 shoulder, telling him he might dispense with the ceremony, by 
 reason of his inflexible boots and the buck-skin paling about his 
 loins. Ser Geoffreddo did it nevertheless, and with equal 
 devotion. His two friends then took him between them to 
 the house of Messer Francesco, where dinner had been some 
 time waiting. 
 
 XV. BARROW AND NEWTON.^ 
 
 Neiuton. I come, sir, before you with fear and trembling, at 
 the thoughts of my examination to-morrow. If the masters are 
 too hard upon me, I shall never take my degree. How I passed 
 
 [' Landor must suppose this Conversation to have taken place in 1668, the 
 day before Newton went up for his master's degree. He was then tw^enty- 
 seven years of age, and had completed the more important part of his 
 studies. Barrow was then Lucasian professor of Geometry, He had used 
 Mewton'sskill in the revisionofhisLectiones Optics, and hadacknowledged 
 the benefit his book had received from Newton's corrections and additions. 
 In the following year Barrow resigned his professorship to Newton, and 
 for the rest of his life devoted himself almost entirely to theology. In the 
 Critical Remetii. June 8, 1808, there is an article of Dr Parr's, in which 
 occurs (p. 118) an eulogy on Barrow, " Within tlie grasp of his mighty 
 and capacious mind were comprehended the broad generalities which are 
 discussed in science, and the minuter discriminations which are to be 
 learned only by familiarity with common life. At one moment he 
 soars aloft to the great, without any exhaustion of his vigour, and in the 
 next, without any diminution of his dignity, he descended to the little — 
 lie drew his materials from the richest treasures of learning, ancient and 
 modern, sacred and profane — he sets before us in solemn and magnificent 
 array, the testimony of historians, the criticisms of scholars, the arguments 
 
Barrow and Newton. 109 
 
 as bachelor I cannot tell : it must surely have been by especial 
 indulgence. 
 
 Barroiu. My dear Isaac ! do not be dispirited. The less 
 intelligent of the examiners will break their beaks against the 
 gravel, in trying to cure the indigestions and heartburnings your 
 plenteousness has given them ; the more intelligent know your 
 industry, your abilities, and your modesty: they would favor you, 
 if there were need of favor, but you, without compliment, surpass 
 them all. 
 
 Newton. Oh sir ! forbear, forbear ! I fear I may have for- 
 gotten a good deal of what you taught me. 
 
 Barromi. I wonder at that. I am older than you by many 
 years ; I have many occupations and distractions ; my memory is 
 by nature less retentive : and yet I have not forgotten any thing 
 you taught me. 
 
 Newton. Too partial tutor, too benevolent friend ! this 
 unmerited praise confounds me. I cannot calculate the powers of 
 my mind, otherwise than by calculating the time I require to 
 compass any thing. 
 
 Barrow. Quickness is among the least of the mind's proper- 
 ties, and belongs to her in almost her lowest state : nay, it doth 
 not abandon her when she is driven from her home, when she is 
 wandering and insane. The mad often retain it ; the liar has it, 
 the cheat has it ; we find it on the race-course and at the 
 card-table : education does not give it, and reflection takes away 
 from it. 
 
 Newton. I am slow ; and there are many parts of ordinary 
 learning yet unattained by me. 
 
 Barrow. I had an uncle, a sportsman, who said that the light 
 dog beats over most ground, but the heavier finds the covey. 
 
 Newton. Oftentimes indeed have I submitted to you problems 
 and possibilities — 
 
 Barrow. And I have made you prove them. 
 
 Newton. You were contented with me ; all may not be. 
 
 Barrow. AU will not be : many would be more so if you 
 could prove nothing. Men, like dogs and cats, fawn upon you 
 
 of metaphysicians, the description of poets, the profound remarks of 
 heathen sages, and the pious reflections of Christian fathers." (Imag. 
 Convers., v., 1819. Works, i., 1846 Works, iv., 1876.)] 
 
no Imaginary Conversations, 
 
 while you leave them on the ground ; if you lift them up they bite 
 and scratch ; and if you show them their own features in the glass, 
 they would fly at your throat and tear your eyes out. This 
 between ourselves ; for we must not indiJge in unfavourable views 
 of mankind, since by doing it we make bad men believe that they 
 are no worse than others, and we teach the good that they are 
 good in vain. Philosophers have taken this side of the question 
 to show their ingenuity ; but sound philosophers are not ingenious. 
 If philosophy can render us no better and no happier, away with 
 it ! There are things that can ; and let us take them. 
 
 What dost thou sigh at, Isaac ? 
 
 Neiuton. At my ignorance, in some degree, of their writings. 
 
 Barro-U). At your ignorance of the ignorant ? No man ever 
 understood the things that are most admired in Plato and 
 Aristoteles. In Plato there are incoherencies that fall to pieces 
 at a touch ; and Aristoteles lost himself in the involutions of his 
 own web. What must we think of a philosopher, who promised 
 to teach one pupil that which he withheld from the rest, although 
 these were more familiar with him and more instructed ? And 
 what must we think of a pupil, who was indignant that any others 
 should partake in his sentiments and his knowledge ? Yet such 
 men have guided the scientific, such men have ruled the world. 
 
 Newton. Not such was Bacon. 
 
 Barroiu. No, indeed. I told you, and I repeat it, I think 
 the small volume of Essays in your hand contains more wisdom 
 and more genius than we can find in all the philosophers of 
 antiquity ; with one exception, Cicero. On which I desired you 
 to peruse it attentively, and to render me an account of it accorefing 
 to your opinion. 
 
 Neiuton. Sir, I have been induced to believe, but rather from 
 the authority of my elders than from my own investigation, that 
 Bacon is the more profound of the two, although not the more 
 eloquent. 
 
 Barroiu. If Bacon had written as easily and harmoniously 
 as Cicero, he would have lost a portion of his weight with the 
 generality of the learned, who are apt to conceive that in easy 
 movement there is a want of solidity and strength.^ We must 
 
 P First ed. reads : " strength. Take away all Cicero's wit and half his 
 eloquence, and you leave a Bacon at bottom. Very wise," &c.] 
 
Barrow and Newton. 1 1 1 
 
 confess that antiquity has darkened colleges and has distorted 
 criticism. Very wise men, and very wary and inquisitive, walk 
 over the earth, and are ignorant not only what minerals lie 
 beneath, but what herbs and foliage they are treading. Some 
 time afterward, and probably some distant time, a specimen of 
 ore is extracted and exhibited ; then another -, lastly the bearing 
 and diameter of the vein are observed and measured. Thus 
 it is with writers who are to have a currency through ages. 
 In the beginning they are confounded with most others ; soon 
 they fall into some secondary class ; next, into one rather less 
 obscure and humble ; by degrees they are liberated from the dross 
 and lumber that hamper them ; and, being once above the heads 
 of contemporaries, rise slowly and waveringly, then regularly and 
 erectly, then rapidly and majestically, till the vision strains and 
 aches as it pursues them in their ethereal elevation. 
 
 Neither you nor I have wasted our time in the cultivation of 
 poetry ; but each of us hath frequently heard it discoursed on 
 by those who have ; and, if it serves for nothing else, it serves 
 for an illustration. In my early days, he would have been scoffed 
 out of countenance who should have compared the Lycidas, or the 
 AUegro and Penseroso, of Mr John Milton to the sterling poetiy 
 (as it was called) of Dr John Donne : and yet much may be said 
 in favor of the younger ; and there are those, and not only under- 
 graduates, but bachelors and masters, who venture even to prefer 
 him openly. Who knows but we may see him extolled to the 
 level of Lucan and Statius, strong as is the sense of the University 
 against all sorts of supplanters ! There are eyes that cannot see 
 print when near them ; there are men that cannot see merit. 
 
 Neivton. The Latin secretary may be pardoned for many 
 defects in his poetry, and even for many in his politics, in con- 
 sideration of the reverence he bore toward the Apocalypse. I 
 cannot think him a very irreligious man, although he does not 
 attend divine service, we are told, so regularly as we could have 
 wished. 
 
 Barroiu. Let us talk no more about him. I opposed his 
 principles : nevertheless he may have acted conscientiously ; and 
 even his principles are now coming again into fashion, and among 
 the sons of those very cavaliers who would have hanged him. 
 Perhaps the most dangerous of his doctrines, the lawfulness of 
 
1 1 2 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 setting aside God's anointed for misconduct, may soon be the 
 leading one in the front of our Constitution. Well ! we are not 
 met for politics : only it would be salutary to consider, if God's 
 anointed will not be set aside, what must be done, — how avoid 
 the commission of a diabolical act. 
 
 Ne<wton. Could we rightly understand the Revelation, I 
 question not but every difficulty of this nature would be solved. 
 
 Barrow. May be : let us trust in God. 
 
 Newton. We must have certain data for every thing upon 
 which we reason : the greater part of reasoners begin without 
 them. 
 
 Barrow. I wish the event may answer your expectations ; 
 that the Apocalypse, the Argonautic Expedition, and the Siege of 
 Troy, form the trident which is to push away our difficulties in 
 navigating through all the rocks and shoals of time, — all those of 
 religion, and all those of history. Happen what may, I doubt 
 nothing of your surpassing the foremost of your competitors, — of 
 your very soon obtaining a name in the University little below 
 Doctor Spry's of Caius, Doctor Brockhouse's of St John's, 
 Doctor Cockburn's of Emanuel, Doctor Tumbull's of Peter- 
 house, or Doctor Cruikshank's of Bennet ; nay, a name which, 
 within a few years, may reach even to Leyden and Paris, as that 
 of a most studious young man, distinguished alike for application 
 and invention. 
 
 Newton. Although I could not in conscience disclaim the 
 small merit there may be in application, since I owe it to the 
 encouragement of my tutor, I surely have no right or title to 
 invention. 
 
 Barrow. You have already given proofs of it beyond any 
 man I know. Your questions lead to great discoveries ; whether 
 it please God that you hereafter make them, or some one follow- 
 ing you, is yet uncertain. We are silly enough to believe that 
 the quality of invention, as applied to literature, lies in poetry and 
 romance, mostly or altogether. I dare to speculate on discoveries 
 in the subjects of your studies, every one far greater, every one 
 far more wonderful, than all that lie within the range of fiction. 
 In our days, the historian is the only inventor ; and it is ludicrous 
 to see how busily and lustily he beats about, with his string 
 and muzzle upon him. I wish we could drag him for a moment 
 
Barrow and Newton. 113 
 
 into philosophical life : it would be still more amusing to look at 
 him, as he runs over this loftier and dryer ground, throwing up 
 his nose and whimpering at the prickles he must pass through. 
 
 Few men are contented with what is stricdy true concerning 
 the occurrences of the world : it neither heats nor soothes. The 
 body itself, when it is in perfect health, is averse to a state of rest. 
 We wish our prejudices to be supported, our animosities to be in- 
 creased ; as those who are inflamed by liquor would add materials 
 to the inflammation. 
 
 Newton. The simple verities, important perhaps in their con- 
 sequences, which I am exploring, not only abstract me from the 
 daily business of society, but exempt me from the hatred and perse- 
 cution to which every other kind of study is exposed. In poetry, 
 a good pastoral would raise against one as vehement enemies as a 
 good satire. A great poet in our country, like the great giant in 
 Sicily, can never move without shaking the whole island ; while 
 the mathematician and astronomer may pursue their occupations, 
 and rarely be hissed or pelted from below. You spoke of histor- 
 ians : it would UI become a person of my small experience to dis- 
 course on them after you. 
 
 Barrow. Let me hear, however, what you have to say, since 
 at least it will be dispassionate. 
 
 Newton. Those who now write history do certainly write it 
 to gratify a party, and to obtain notoriety and money. The 
 materials lie in the cabinet of the statesman, whose actions and 
 their consequences are to be recorded. If you censure them, you 
 are called ungrateful for the facilities he has afforded you ; and, if 
 you commend them, venal. No man, both judicious and honest, 
 will subject himself to either imputation. 
 
 Barrow. Not only at the present day, but always, the indul- 
 gence of animosity, the love of gain, and the desire of favor have 
 been the inducements of an author to publish in his lifetime the 
 history of his contemporaries. But there have been, and let us 
 hope there may be, judicious and virtuous men, so inflamed by the 
 glory of their country in their days, that, leaving all passions and 
 prejudices, they follow this sole guide, and are crowned by universal 
 consent for commemorating her recent exploits. 
 
 Newton. Here are reasons enough for me rather to apply my 
 mind as you direct it, than to the examination of facts which never 
 
114 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 can be collected by one person ; or to poetry, for which I have 
 no call ; or to the composition of essays, such as those of Mon- 
 taigne and Bacon ; or dialogues, such as those of Cicero and Plato, 
 and, nearer our times, of Erasmus and Galileo. You had furnished 
 me before with arguments in abundance ; convincing me that, even 
 if 1 could write as well as they did, the reward of my labors 
 would be dilatory and posthumous. 
 
 Barroiu. I should entertain a mean opinion of myself, if all 
 men or the most-part praised and admired me : it would prove me 
 to be somewhat like them. Sad and sorrowful is it to stand 
 near enough to people for them to see us wholly ; for them to 
 come up to us and walk round us leisurely and idly, and pat us 
 when they are tired and going off. That lesson which a dunce 
 can learn at a glance, and likes mightily, must contain little, and 
 not good. Unless it can be proved that the majority are not 
 dunces, — are not wilful, presumptuous, and precipitate, — it is a 
 folly to care for popularity. There are indeed those who must 
 found their fortunes upon it ; but not with books in their hands. 
 After the first start, after a stand among the booths and gauds 
 and prostitutes of party, how few have lived contentedly, or died 
 calmly ! One hath fallen the moment when he had reached the 
 last step of the ladder, having undersawed it for him who went 
 before, and forgotten that knavish act ; another hath wasted away 
 more slowly, in the fever of a life externally sedentary, internally 
 distracted ; a third, unable to fulfil the treason he had stipulated, 
 and haunted by the terrors of detection, snaps the thread under 
 the shears of the Fates, and makes even thosp who frequented him 
 believe in Providence. 
 
 Isaac ! Isaac ! the climbing plants are slender ones. Men 
 of genius have sometimes been forced away from the service of 
 society into the service of princes ; but they have soon been driven 
 out, or have retired. When shall we see again, in the administra- 
 tion of any country, so accomplished a creature as Wentworth,* the 
 favorite of Charles ? Only light men recover false steps : his 
 greatness crushed him. Aptitude for serving princes is no proof 
 
 * He far excelled in energy and capacity the other councillors of 
 Charles ; but there was scarcely a crueller or (with the exception of his 
 master) a more perfidious man on either side. Added to which, he was 
 wantonly oppressive, and sordidly avaricious. 
 
Barrow and Newton. 115 
 
 or signification of genius, nor indeed of any elevated or extensive 
 knowledge. The interests of many require a multiplicity of 
 talents to comprehend and accomplish them. Mazarin and 
 Richelieu were as little able as they were little disposed to 
 promote the well-being of the community ; both of them had 
 keen eyes, and kept them on one object,^ — aggrandizement. We 
 find the most trivial men in the streets pursuing an object through 
 as many intricacies, and attaining it ; and the schemes of children, 
 though sooner dropped, are frequently as ingenious and judicious. 
 No person can see more clearly than you do the mortifications to 
 which the ambitious are subject ; but some may fall into the 
 snares of ambition whose nature was ever averse to it, and whose 
 wisdom would almost reach any thing, and only seems too lofty 
 to serve them watchfiilly as a guard. It may thus happen to such 
 as have been accustomed to study and retirement, and fall un- 
 expectedly on the political world by means of recommendations. 
 There are those, I doubt not, who would gladly raise their name 
 and authority in the State by pushing you forward, as the phrase 
 is, into Parliament. They seize any young man who has gained 
 some credit at coUege, no matter for what, whether for writing 
 an epigram or construing a passage in Lycophron ; and, if he 
 succeeds to power, they and their family divide the patronage. 
 The ambitious heart is liable to burst in the emptiness of its 
 elevation : let yours, which is sounder, lie lower and quieter. 
 Think how much greater is the glory you may acquire by opening 
 new paths to science, than by widening old ones to corruption. 
 I would not whisper a syllable in the ear of faction ; but the 
 words of the intelligent, in certain times and on certain occasions, 
 do not vary with parties and systems. The royalist and re- 
 publican meet : the difference lies merely in the intent, the 
 direction, and the application. Do not leave the wise for the 
 unwise, the lofty for the low, the retirement of a college for the 
 turbulence of a House of Commons. Rise, but let no man lift 
 you : leave that to the little and to the weak. Think within 
 yourself, I will not say how impure are the sources of election to 
 our Parliament, but how inconsiderable a distinction is conferred 
 on the representative, even where it is not an individual who 
 nominates, or only a few who appoint him, but where several 
 [^ First ed. reads : " the aggrandizement of their master. We," &c. ] 
 
Ii6 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 hundreds are the voters. For who are they, and who direct 
 them ? — the roughest bear-guard, the most ferocious bull-baiter, 
 the most impudent lawyer, the tinker that sings loudest, and the 
 parson that sits latest at the ale-house, hitting them all by turns 
 with his tobacco-pipe, calling them all sad dogs, and swearing 
 till he falls asleep he will hear no more filthy toasts. Show me 
 the borough where such people as these are not the most efficient 
 in returning a candidate to Parliament ; and then tell me which 
 of them is fit to be the associate — it would be too ludicrous to 
 say the patron — of a Euclid or an Archimedes? My dear 
 Newton ! the best thing is to stand above the world ; the next 
 is to stand apart from it on any side. You may attain the first ; 
 in trying to attain it, you are certain of the second. 
 
 Newton. I am not likely to be noticed by the great, nor 
 favored by the popular. I have no time for visiting : I detest 
 the strife of tongues ; all noises discompose me. 
 
 Barrow. We will then lay aside the supposition. The 
 haven of philosophy itself is not free at all seasons from its gusts 
 and swells. Let me admonish you to confide your secrets to 
 few : I mean the secrets of science. In every great mind there 
 are some : every deep inquirer hath discovered more than he 
 thought it prudent to avow, as almost every shallow one throws 
 out more than he hath well discovered. Among our learned 
 friends, we may be fully and unreservedly philosophical ; in the 
 company of others we must remember, first and chiefly, that dis- 
 cretion is a part of philosophy, and we must let out only some 
 glimpses of the remainder. 
 
 Neiuton. Surely no harm can befall us from following a 
 chain of demonstrations in geometry, or any branch of the 
 mathematics. 
 
 Barronu. Let us hope there may be none ; nevertheless we 
 cannot but recollect how lately Galileo was persecuted and im- 
 prisoned for his discoveries. 
 
 Neiuton. He lived under a popish government. 
 
 Barrow. My friend ! my friend ! all the most eminently 
 scientific, all the most eminently brave and daring in the 
 exercise of their intellects, live, and have ever lived, under a 
 popish government. There are popes in all creeds, in all 
 countries, in all ages. Political power is jealous of intellectual ; 
 
Barrow and Newton. 117 
 
 often lest it expose and mar its plans and projects, and oftener 
 lest it attract an equal share of celebrity and distinction. When- 
 ever the literary man is protected by the political, the incitement 
 to it is the pride of patronage ; not the advancement of letters, 
 nor the honor they confer on the cultivator or the country. 
 
 Newton. That is rational in England which beyond the Alps 
 is monstrous. By God's blessing, I firmly believe in the ffoly 
 Scriptures ,• yet, under your discretion and guidance, I would be 
 informed if* the sun's rays in Syria could ever be above the 
 horizon for twenty-four hours, without a material alteration, 
 without an utter derangement, of our whole mundane system ? * 
 
 Barroiv. Reserve that question for a future time and a wiser 
 teacher. At present, I would only remark to you that our mun- 
 dane system has been materially altered ; and that its alterations 
 may have been attributed to other causes than the true, and laid 
 down by different nations as having taken place at different epochs 
 and on different occasions, sometimes to gratify their pride, 
 sometimes to conceal their ignorance. 
 
 Newton. I am not quite satisfied. 
 
 Barrow. Those who are quite satisfied sit still and do no- 
 thing ; those who are not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of 
 the world. 
 
 [^ First ed. reads : " if the sun could stand stiller at one time than at 
 another ; and if his rays," &c. The footnote refers to the case of Thomas 
 Ailcenhead, who was executed in Scotland in the year 1696 for denying 
 the Trinity. See Macaulay, Hist. Eng., chapter xxii., for the whole dis- 
 gracefdi story. Le Clerc received from Loche a letter, written by New- 
 ton, on two texts in the Greek Testament, the first of which, i John v., 
 vii., is the celebrated text about the " three witnesses." Like every 
 other scholar of repute Newton denied its authenticity. Le Clerc was to 
 have published a French translation of the letter, but Newton, hearing of 
 it, wrote to Loche to stop the publication. Le Clerc at the timejdid not 
 know that Newton was the author, and it was not till some time after that 
 he discovered this and brought out a version of che letter in a slightly 
 altered form.] 
 
 * Newton was timid and reserved in expressing his opinions, and was 
 more orthodox (in the Anglican sense of orthodoxy) early in life than 
 later. What he thought at last is not clear ; and perhaps it was well 
 for him that it was no clearer. Under his eyes, in the reign of William 
 III., a youth of eighteen was punished with death for expressing such 
 opinions as our philosopher hinted to Le Clerc. To remove and consume 
 the gallows on which such men are liable to suffer is among the principal 
 aims and intents of these writings. 
 
ii8 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Newton. And are driven out of it for their pains. 
 
 Barrotv. Men seldom have loved their teachers. 
 
 Newton. How happens it, then, that you are loved so gener- 
 ally ; for who is there, capable of instruction, that you have not 
 taught ? Never, since I have been at the University, have I heard 
 of any one being your enemy who was not a Calvinist, — a sect 
 wherein good-humored and gracefiiUy-minded men are scanty. 
 
 Barrow. Do not attribute the failing to the sect, which hath 
 many strong texts of Scripture for its support ; but rather think 
 that the doctrines are such as are most consentaneous to the 
 malignant and morose. There are acrid plants that attract as 
 many insects as the sweeter, but insects of another kind. All 
 substances have their commodities, all opinions their partisans. I 
 have been happy in my pupils ; but in none of them have I 
 observed such a spirit of investigation as in you. Keep it, how- 
 ever, within the precincts of experimental and sure philosophy, which 
 are spacious enough for the excursions of the most vigorous mind, 
 and varied enough for the most inconstant and flighty. Never 
 hate, never dislike men, for difference of religion. Some receive 
 baleful impressions in it more easily than others, as they do diseases. 
 We do not hate a child for catching the small-pox, but pity its 
 sores and blemishes. Let the Calvinist hate us : he represents 
 his God as a hater, he represents him as capricious. I wish he 
 would love us, even from caprice ; but he seems to consider this 
 part of the Divine nature as a weakness. 
 
 Come, unroll your paper ; let me hear what you have to say 
 on Bacon's Essays, — a volume I place in the hand of those only 
 who appear to me destined to be great. 
 
 Newton. He says in his Preface, — 
 
 " I do now publish my Essays, which of all my other ^ works 
 have been most current." 
 
 How can the very thing of which you are speaking be another ? 
 
 Barrow. This is a chasm in logic, into which many have 
 fallen. 
 
 Newton. I had scarcely begun the first Essay, when an elderly 
 gentleman of another college came into the room, took up the 
 book, and read aloud, — 
 
 " This same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not 
 p Bacon wrote, " of all my works."] 
 
Barrow and Newton. 119 
 
 show the masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world half 
 so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may, perhaps, 
 come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day ; but it 
 will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth 
 best in vaiied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. 
 Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of men's minds 
 vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one 
 would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of 
 men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, 
 and unfleasing to themselves ? " 
 
 " One might well imagine," said he, " unpleasing to themselves, 
 if fidl of melancholy and indisposition. But how much of, truth 
 and wisdom is compressed in these few sentences ! Do not you 
 wonder that a man capable of all this should likewise be capable 
 of such foolery as the following : — 
 
 " First he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos ; 
 then he breathed light into the face of man ; and still he breatheth 
 and inspireth light into the face of his chosen." 
 
 I looked with wonder at him, knowing bis seriousness and 
 gravity, his habits and powers of ratiocination, and his blameless 
 life. But perhaps I owe to his question the intensity and sedulity 
 with which I have examined every page of Bacon. He called 
 the words I have quoted dull and colourless bombast ; he declared 
 them idle in allusion, and false and impious. I was appalled. 
 He added, " I do not know, Mr Newton, whether you have 
 brothers : if you have, what would you think of your father when 
 he gave a cherry to one, a whipping to a second, and burned the 
 fingers of a third against the bars of his kitchen grate, and vouch- 
 safed no better reason for it than that he had resolved to do so 
 the very night he begot them ? Election in such a case is 
 partiality ; partiality is injustice. Is God unjust ? " 
 
 I could have answered him, by God's help, if he had given 
 me time ; but he went on, and said : «' Bacon had much sagacity, 
 but no sincerity ; much force, but no firmness. It is painful to 
 discover in him the reviler of Raleigh, the last relic of heroism in 
 the dastardly court of James. It is horrible to hear him, upon 
 another occasion, the apologist of a patron's disgrace and death, — 
 the patron, whose friendly hand had raised him to the first steps 
 of the highest station." 
 
I20 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 " Sir," answered I, " his political conduct is not the question 
 before us." 
 
 " It may, however," said he, " enlighten us in regard to his 
 candour, and induce us to ask ourselves whether, in matters of 
 religion, he delivered his thoughts exactly, and whether he may 
 not have conformed his expression of them to the opinions of his 
 master." 
 
 Barrow. I hope you dropped the discussion after this. 
 
 Newton. No ; I cried resolutely, " Sir, when I am better 
 prepared for it, I may have something to say with you on your 
 irreverent expressions." 
 
 Barrow. Mr Newton, do not be ruffled. Bacon spoke 
 figuratively ; so did Moses, to whom the illusion was made. Let 
 the matter rest, my dear friend. 
 
 Newton. I told him plainly he was unfair : he was no friend 
 to Bacon. He smiled at me and continued: "My good Newton, 
 I am as ready to be told when I am unfair as you are to have 
 your watch set right when it goes amiss. You say I am no friend 
 to Bacon ; and in truth, after the experience he left us in the 
 Earl of Essex, he is not precisely the man to place one's friend- 
 ship on. Yet surely no folly is greater than hatred of those we 
 never saw, and from whom we can have received no injury. 
 Often do I wonder when I hear violent declamations against 
 theories and opinions ; which declamations I think are as ill- 
 directed as they would be against currents of air or watercourses. 
 We may keep out of their way if we will. I estimate the genius of 
 Bacon as highly as perhaps you do, and in this Essay I find a single 
 sentence which I would rather have written than all the volumes 
 of all the Greek philosophers ; let me read it : ' Certainly, it is 
 heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in 
 Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.' " 
 
 Barrow. Magnificent as Shakspeare ! 
 
 Newton. He who wrote tragedies ? 
 
 Barrow. The same : I have lately been reading them. 
 
 Newton. Sir, should you have marked the truths he demon- 
 strated, if any, I shall think it no loss of time to run over them, 
 at my leisure. I have now a question to ask you on the third of 
 these Essays. We find in it that " Quarrels and divisions about 
 religion were evils unknown to the heathen : the reason was, 
 
Barrow and Newton. 121 
 
 because the religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and 
 ceremonies than in constant belief." This is no truer of the old 
 Paganism than of the later in the same country, which however 
 burns men alive for slight divergencies. 
 
 " You may imagine," says Bacon, " what kind of faith theirs 
 was, when the chief doctors and fathers of their church were the 
 poets." 
 
 I read this loudly and triumphantly to my friend, who paused 
 and smiled, and then asked me complacently whether it were 
 better to imprison, bum, and torture, or to send away the audience 
 in good humor and good fellowship ; and whether I should 
 prefer the conversation and conviction of Doctor Bonner and 
 Doctor Gardiner to those of Doctor TibuUus and Doctor Ovid. 
 I thought the question too flippant for an answer, which indeed 
 was not quite at hand. He proceeded : " ' God has this attri- 
 bute, that he is a jealous God, and therefore his worship and 
 religion will endure no mixture.' His jealousy must be touched 
 to the quick," said my friend : " for every century there comes 
 forth some new pretender, with his sect behind him in the dark 
 passages ; and his spouse was hardly at her own door after the 
 nuptials, ere she cried out and shrieked against the filthiness of an 
 intruder." 
 
 I was lifting up my eyes and preparing an ejaculation, when 
 he interrupted me, and continued : " ' It is certain that heresies 
 and schisms are of all others the greatest scandals ; yea, more than 
 corruption of manners : for, as in the natural body a wound, or 
 solution of continuity, is worse than a coiTupt humor ' — " 
 
 Here he laid down the volume, and said, " I will ask the 
 professor of surgery whether a cut in the finger is worse than a 
 scrofula : I will then go to the professor of divinity, and ask him 
 whether the best Christian in Cambridge ought to be hanged 
 to-morrow morning." 
 
 I stared at him : whereupon he declared that every church 
 on earth is heretical and schismatical, if the word of Christ is the 
 foundation of the true ; and that the fellow who was hanged last 
 week for corruption of manners had, according to the decision of 
 Bacon, more Christianity in him than all the heads of colleges. 
 " When he would follow theologians," said my friend, " he falls 
 into gross absurdities : he corrects himself, or only trips harm- 
 lessly, when he walks alone." 
 
122 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 1 myself was obliged to agree with my disputant, in censur- 
 ing an exception. Speaking of sanguinary persecutions to force 
 consciences, the author blames them, "except it be in cases of 
 omert scandal, blasphemy, &c." Now who shall decide what is 
 overt scandal, or what is blasphemy ? That which is prodigiously 
 so in one age and one country is not at all in another. Such 
 exceptions are the most pernicious things a great author can 
 sanction. 
 
 Barroiv. I side with you. We come now, I perceive, to 
 the Essay On Revenge. 
 
 Neivton. " There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's 
 sake, but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honor, 
 or the like : therefore why should I be angry with a man for 
 loving himself better than me ? " 
 
 If this be an excuse, why send a rogue to prison ? All the 
 crimes that men commit are committed because they love them- 
 selves better than others ; and it is the direction and extent of 
 this loving, to the detriment of others, that constitutes the magni- 
 tude of the crime. Cruelty is the highest pleasure to the cruel 
 man : it is his love. Murder may ensue ; and shall we not be 
 angry with him for loving himself better than the murdered ? 
 
 On Simulation and Dissimulation, we are told, " The best com- 
 position and temperature ^ is to have a power to feign, if there be 
 no remedy." 
 
 Barrotu. In other words, to lie whenever we find it convenient. 
 The last two decisions you have reported from him as little be- 
 come the chancellor as the philosopher ; as little the philosopher as 
 the citizen. Why will you not read on ? 
 
 Newton. I am afraid to mention the remark of my visitor on 
 a sentence in the Essay Upon Goodness. 
 
 Barrow. Fear not : what is it ? 
 
 Newton. " The desire of knowledge in excess caused man to 
 fall." 
 
 Barrow, This is a sin the most rarely of all committed in 
 our days. If the earth is to be destroyed by fire, the bottom of a 
 rushchair will serve to consume all who are guilty of it ; and what 
 falls from heaven may fall upon other offenders. 
 
 [6 Bacon wrote : "temperature is to have openness in fame and opinion 
 secrecy in habit ; dissimulation in seasonable use, and a power," &c.] 
 
Barrow and Newton. 123 
 
 Neiuton. " Do you believe," said my friend, " that God 
 punished men for wishing to be wiser ? for wishing to follow 
 him and to learn his pleasure ? for wishing that acquisition 
 by which beneficence and charity may be the most luniinously 
 and extensively displayed ? No, Newton, no ! The Jews, who 
 invented this story, were envious of the scientific ; for they were 
 ignorant of the sciences. Astronomy, among the rest, was odious 
 to them ; and hence the fables stuck against the Tower of Babel, 
 the observatory of a better and a wiser people, their enemy, their 
 conqueror. Take care, or you may be hanged for shooting at the 
 stars. If these fictions are believed and acted on, you must 
 conceal your telescope and burn your observations." 
 
 On my representing to him the effects of divine justice in 
 casting down to earth the monument of human pride, he said : 
 "The Observatory of Babylon was constructed of unbaked 
 bricks, and upon an alluvial soil. I^ook at the Tower of Pisa ; 
 look at every tower and steeple in that city : you will find that 
 they all lean, and all in one direction, that is, toward the river. 
 Some have fallen ; many will fall. God would not have been so 
 angry with the Tower of Babel, if it had been built of Portland 
 stone a few weeks' journey to the westward, and you had been 
 as importunate as the Babylonians were in their attempt at paying 
 him a visit." 
 
 He expressed his wonder that Bacon, in the reign of James, 
 should have written, " A ^ king is the servant of his people, 
 or else he luere 'without a calling." In other words, whenever 
 he ceases to be the servant of the people, he forfeits his right to 
 the throne. 
 
 Barrow. Truth sometimes comes unaware upon caution, and 
 sometimes speaks in public as unconsciously as in a dream. 
 
 Netvton. Sir, although you desired me rather to investigate 
 and note the imperfections of my author than what is excellent in 
 him, as you would rather the opaquer parts of the sun than what 
 is manifest of his glory to the lowest and most insensible, yet, 
 
 17 Landor is here quoting from a spurious essay, entitled, " Of a King." 
 (See Spedding's Bacon, 1858, vol. vi., p. 595.) The passage reads: "To 
 conclude, as hee is of the greatest power, so hee is subject to the greatest 
 cares, made the servant of his people, or else he were without a calling at 
 all."] 
 
124 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 from the study of your writings, and from the traces of your hand 
 in others, I am sometimes led to notice the beauties of his style. 
 It requires the greatest strength to support such a weight of rich- 
 ness as we sometimes find in him. The florid grows vapid where 
 the room is not capacious, and where perpetual freshness of 
 thought does not animate and sustain it. Unhappily, it seems 
 to have been taken up mostly by such writers as have least 
 invention. 
 
 Barrow. Read to me the sentence or the paragraph that 
 pleases you. 
 
 Netuton. 'Tis On Envy : — 
 
 " Lastly, near kinsfolks and fellows in office, and those that 
 have been bred together, are more apt to envy their equals when 
 they are raised ; for it doth upbraid unto them their own fortunes, 
 and pointeth at them, and cometh oftener into their remembrance, 
 and incurreth likewise more into the note of others ; and envy 
 ever redoubleth from speech and fame." 
 
 Barroio. Very excellent I wish, before he cast his invec- 
 tives against Raleigh, he had reflected more on a doctrine in the 
 next page : " Those that have joined with their honor great 
 travels, cares, or perils, are less subject to envy : for men think 
 that they earn their honors hardly, and pity them sometimes ; and 
 pity ever healeth envy." I am afi-aid it will be found, on 
 examination, that Bacon in his morality was too like Seneca; 
 not indeed wallowing in wealth and vice and crying out against 
 them, but hard-hearted and hypocritical ; and I know not with 
 what countenance he could have said, " By^ indignities men come 
 to dignities." 
 
 Newton. I have remarked with most satisfaction those 
 sentences in which he appears to have forgotten both the age and 
 station wherein he lived, and to have equally overlooked the base 
 and summit of our ruder institutions. "Power to do good," 
 says he, as Euripides or Phocion might have said, and Pericles 
 might have acted on it, " is the true and lawful end of aspiring ; 
 for good thoughts, though God accept them, yet towards men 
 are little better than good dreams except they be put in act ; and 
 
 [8 This quotation and the three following are from the essay, " Of 
 Great Place." In the third quotation the correct reading is, " of the 
 ancient time."] 
 
Barrow and Newton. 125 
 
 that cannot be without power and place, as the vantage and com- 
 manding ground." 
 
 And again : " Reduce things to the first institution, and observe 
 wherein and how they have degenerated ! But yet ask counsel 
 of both times ; of the ancienter time •what is best, and of the latter 
 time what is fittest." 
 
 Barroiu. He spoke unadvisedly ; for, true as these sentences 
 are, they would lead toward republicanism, if men minded them. 
 Of this, however, there is as little danger as that the servants of 
 kings should follow the advice he gives afterward : — 
 
 " Embrace and invite helps and advices touching the execution 
 of thy place ; and do not drive away such as bring thee informa- 
 tion, as meddlers, but accept of them in good part." 
 
 Newton. On Seditions, he says the matter is of " two kinds ; 
 much poverty and much discontentment." It appears to me that 
 here is only one kind : for much discontentment may spring, and 
 usually does, from much poverty. 
 
 Barrow. Certainly. He should not have placed cause 
 and effect as two causes. You must however have remarked his 
 wonderful sagacity in this brief Essay, which I hesitate not to 
 declare the finest piece of workmanship that ever was composed 
 on any part of government. Take Aristoteles and Machiavelli, 
 and compare the best sections of their works to this, and then you 
 will be able, in some degree, to calculate the superiority of genius 
 in Bacon. 
 
 Newton. I have not analyzed the political works of Aris- 
 toteles ; but I find in Machiavelli many common thoughts, among 
 many ingenious, many just,' many questionable, and many false 
 ones. 
 
 Barrow. What are you turning over ? ' Do not let me lose 
 any thing you have remarked. 
 
 Newton. " Money," says my lord, " is like muck ; not good 
 except it be spread." I am afraid this truth would subvert, in 
 the mind of a reflecting man, all that has been urged by the 
 
 ["First ed. reads: "just, and more perverse ones. Let the following 
 serve for instances : and I hasten the sooner to the exposition of them, 
 that I may raise no objection against any part of a treatise which you 
 have commended so unexceptionally. Barrmv. Nay, be candid with me 
 and bring forward your objection. Newton. Money," &c.] 
 
1 26 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 learned author on the advantages of nobility, and even of royalty ; 
 for which reason I dare not examine it : only let me, sir, doubt 
 before you whether " this is to be done by suppressing, or at the 
 least keeping a straight hand upon, the devouring trades of usury, 
 engrossing, great pasturages, and the like. 
 
 Barrow. I wish he never had used, which he often does, 
 those silly words, and the like. 
 
 Newton. Great pasturages are not trades ; and they must 
 operate in a way directly opposite to the one designated. 
 
 Barrow. I know not whether a manifest fault in reasoning 
 be not sometimes more acceptable than stale and worm-eaten and 
 weightless truths. Heaps of these are to be found in almost 
 every modern writer : Bacon has fewer of them than any. 
 
 Nicholas Machiavelli is usually mentioned as the deepest and 
 acutest of the Italians : a people whose grave manner often makes 
 one imagine there is more to be found in them than they possess. 
 Take down that volume : read the examples I have transcribed 
 at the end : — 
 
 " The loss of every devotion and every religion draws after it 
 infinite inconveniences and infinite disorders." 
 
 Inconveniences and disorders would follow, sure enough : the 
 losses, being negatives, draw nothing. 
 
 " In a well-constituted government, war, peace, and amity 
 should be deliberated on, not for the gratification of a few, but 
 for the common good." 
 
 " That war is just which is necessary." 
 
 " It is a cruel, inhuman, and impious thing, even in war, 
 stuprare le donne, viziare le •vergini," &c. 
 " Fraud is detestable in every thing." 
 
 These most obvious truths come forward as if he had now dis- 
 covered them for the first time. He tells us also that, " A prince 
 ought to take care that the people are not without food." He 
 says with equal gravity that, " Fraud is detestable in every thing ; " 
 and that, " A minister ought to be averse from public rapine, and 
 should augment the public weal." 
 
 It would be an easy matter to fill many pages with flat and un- 
 profitable sentences. I had only this blank one for it ; and there 
 are many yet, the places of which are marked with only the first 
 words. Do not lose your time in looking for them : we must 
 not judge of him from these defects. 
 
Barrow and Newton, 127 
 
 Neivton, Whenever I have heard him praised, it was for 
 vigor of thought. 
 
 Barrow. He is strongest where he is most perverse. There 
 are men who never show their muscles but when they have the 
 cramp. 
 
 Nenuton. Consistency and firmness are not the characteristics 
 of the Florentines, nor ever were. Machiavelli wished at one 
 time to satisfy the man of probity, at another to conciliate the 
 rogue and robber ; at one time to stand on the alert for the return 
 of liberty, at another to sit in the portico of the palace, and trim 
 the new livery of nascent princes. If we consider him as a 
 writer, he was the acutest that had appeared since the revival of 
 letters. None had reasoned so profoundly on the political interests 
 of society, or had written so clearly or so boldly. 
 
 Barroiv. Nevertheless, the paper of a boy's cracker, when 
 he has let it oiF, would be ill-used by , writing such stuff upon 
 it as that which you have been reading. The great merit of 
 Machiavelli, in style, is the avoiding of superlatives. We can 
 with difficulty find an Italian prose-writer who is not weak and 
 inflated by the continual use of them, to give him pomp and energy, 
 as he imagines. 
 
 Neivton. Davila, too, is an exception. 
 
 Barroiu. The little elegance there is among the Italians 
 is in their historians and poets : the preachers, the theologians, 
 the ethic writers, the critics, are contemptible in the last degree. 
 Well ; we will now leave the Issimi nation, and turn home- 
 ward. 
 
 You win find that Bacon, like all men conscious of their 
 strength, never strains or oversteps, i" While the Italians are 
 the same in the church and in the market-place, while the 
 preacher and policinello are speaking in the same key and 
 employing almost the same language, while a man's God and his 
 rotten tooth are treated in the same manner, — ^we find at home 
 convenience and proportion. Yet the French have taken more 
 pains than we have done to give their language an edge and 
 polish ; and, although we have minds in England more massy 
 
 [lo First ed. reads : " oversteps, and is frugal in the use of superlatives ; 
 while the Italians," &c.] 
 
128 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 and more elevated than theirs, they may claim a nearer affinity to 
 the greater of the ancients. 
 
 I have been the less unwilling to make this digression, as we 
 are now come nigh the place where we must be slow and 
 circumspect. The subject awes and confounds me. Human 
 reason is a frail guide in our disquisitions on royalty, which 
 requires in us some virtue like unto faith. We cannot see into it 
 clearly with the eyes of the flesh or of philosophy, but must 
 humble and abase ourselves to be worthy of feeling what it is. 
 For want whereof, many high and proud spirits have been turned 
 aside from it by the right hand of God, who would not lead them 
 into its lights and enjoyments because they came as questioners, 
 not as seekers ; would have walked when they should have stood, 
 and would have stood when they should have knelt. 
 
 Newton. Sir, I do not know whether you wUl condescend 
 to listen with patience to the thoughts excited in me by Bacon's 
 observations on the character of a king. 
 
 Barrow. He shocked me by what he said before on the 
 fragility of his title : God forbid that common men should talk 
 like the Lord High Chancellor ! 
 
 Newton. I was shocked in a contrary direction, and as it 
 were by a repercussion, at hearing him call a king a mortal God 
 on earth : ^i and I do not find anywhere in the Scriptures that 
 "the living God told him he shoidd die like a man, lest he 
 should be proud, and flatter himself that God had, with his name, 
 imparted unto him his nature also." 
 
 Surely, sir, God would repent as heartily of having made a 
 king, as we know he repented of having made a man, if it were 
 possible his king should have turned out so silly and irrational a 
 creature. However vain and foolish, he must find about him, 
 every day, such natural wants and desires as could not appertain 
 to a God. I made the same remark to my visitor, who said 
 calmly : " Bacon in the next sentence hath a saving grace ; and 
 speaketh as wisely and pointedly as ever he did. He says, ' Of 
 all kind of men, God is the least beholden to them ; for he doth 
 
 [" The quotations in this and the following two paragraphs are from 
 the Essay " Of a King" (see note 7). The correct reading is, " a mortal 
 God on earth unto whom the living God hath lent his own name as a 
 great honor, but withal told him," &c. (Spedding's Bacon, p. 595.)] 
 
Barrow and Newton. 129 
 
 most for them, and they do ordinarily least for him.' A sentence 
 not very favorable to their admission as pastors of the people, and 
 somewhat strong against them as visible heads of the Church. 
 But, Mr Newton, you will detect at once a deficiency of logic 
 in the words, ' That king that holds not religion the best reason 
 of state is void of all piety and justice, the supporters of a king.' 
 Supposing a king soundly minded and well educated, — a broad 
 supposition, and not easily entering our preliminaries, — may not 
 he be just, be pious, be religious, without holding his religion as 
 the best reason of state, or the best guide in it ? Must he be void 
 of a// piety, and a// justice, who sometimes thinks other reasons of 
 state more applicable to his purposes than religion ? Psalms and 
 sack-cloth are admirable things ; but these, the last expedients of 
 the most contrite religion, will not always keep an enemy from 
 burning your towns and violating your women, when a few pieces 
 of cannon, and loftiness of spirit instead of humiliation, will do 
 it." 
 
 He went on, and asserted that the king is not the sole 
 fountain '^ of honor, as he is called in the Essay, and cannot be 
 more fairly entitled so than the doctors in convocation. He 
 remarked that the king had not made him master of arts ; which 
 dignity, he said, requires more merit than the peerage ; whereupon 
 he named several in that order, of whose learning or virtues I never 
 heard mention, and even of whose titles I thought I never had 
 until he assured me I must, and expressed his wonder that I had 
 forgotten them. When he came to the eighth section, — " he is 
 the life of the law," — " the law leads a notoriously bad life," 
 said he, " and therefore I would exempt his Majesty from the 
 imputation : and indeed if ' he animateth the dead letter, making it 
 active toward all his subjects,' the parliament and other magistratures 
 are useless. In the ninth paragraph he makes some accurate obser- 
 vations, but ends weakly. ' He that changeth the fundamental 
 laws of a kingdom thinketh there is no good title to a crown but 
 
 [12 See preceding note. The following passages read : " The fountain 
 of honor, which should not run a waste-pipe lest the courtiers sell the 
 waters and then (as Papists say of their Holy Wells) to lose the vertue. 
 " He is the life of the law, not only as he is lex loquem himself, but because 
 he animateth the dead letter, making it active towards all his subjects." 
 (P- 595-)] 
 
130 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 by conquest.' What ! if he changes them from the despotic to 
 the liberal ? — if, knowing the first possession to have been obtained 
 by conquest, he convokes the different orders of his people, and 
 requests their assent to the statutes he presents ? Nothing can be 
 more pedantic than the whole of the sixteenth section." 
 
 Barrotu. But there are sound truths in it, and advice too 
 good to be taken every day. 
 
 Newton. On Nobility : — 
 
 " A great and potent nobility . . . putteth life and spirit into 
 the people, but presseth their fortune." 
 
 " The man must have turned fool," said my friend, " to write 
 thus. Are life and spirit put into people by the same means as 
 their fortune is depressed ? " 
 
 On Atheism : — 
 
 " ' The fool hath said in his heart there is no God.' It is not 
 said, ' The fool hath thought in his heart.' " 
 
 No, nor is it necessary ; for to say in his heart, is to think 
 ivithin himself i to be intimately convinced. 
 
 " It appeareth in nothing more, that atheism is rather in the lip 
 than in the heart of man, than by this, — that atheists will ever be 
 talking of that their opinion as if they fainted in it themselves, 
 and would be glad to be strengthened by the consent of others : 
 nay more, you shall have atheists strive to get disciples, as it fareth 
 with other sects." 
 
 So great is my horror at atheists, that I would neither reason 
 •with them nor about them ; but surely they are as liable to conceit 
 and vanity as other men are, and as proud of leading us captive to 
 their opinions. I could wish the noble author had abstained from 
 quoting Saint Bernard to prove the priesthood to have been, even 
 in those days, more immoral than the laity ; and I am shocked at 
 hearing that " learned times" especially with peace and prosperity, 
 tend toward atheism. Better bhnd ignorance, better war and 
 pestilence and famine — 
 
 Barrow. Gently, gently ! God may forgive his creature for 
 not knowing him when he meets him ; but less easily for fighting 
 against him, after talking to him and supping with him ; less 
 easily for breaking his image, set up by him at every door, — and 
 such is man ; less easily for a series of fratricides, — and such is 
 war. 
 
Barrow and Newton. 131 
 
 Netuton. I am wrong: and here again let me re eat the 
 strange paradox of my visitor, rather than hazard another fault. 
 In the words about Superstition he agreed that Bacon spoke 
 wisely : — 
 
 " It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an 
 opinion as is unworthy of him ; for the one is unbelief, the other 
 is contumely." 
 
 " And here," remarked my visitor, " it is impossible not to 
 look back with wonder on the errors of some among the wisest 
 men, following the drift of a distorted education, or resting on 
 the suggestions of a splenetic disposition. I am no poet, and 
 therefore am ill qualified to judge the merits of the late Mr 
 Milton in that capacity ; yet, being of a serious and somewhat of 
 a religious turn, I was shocked greatly more at his deity than at 
 his devil. I know not what interest he could have in making 
 Satan so august a creature, and so ready to share the dangers and 
 sorrows of the angels he had seduced. I know not, on the other 
 hand, what could have urged him to make the better ones so 
 dastardly that, even at the voice of their Creator, not one among 
 them offered his service to rescue from eternal perdition the last 
 and weakest of intellectual beings. Even his own Son sat silent, 
 and undertook the mission but slowly ; although the trouble was 
 momentary if compared with his everlasting duration, and the 
 pain small if compared with his anterior and future bliss. Far be 
 it from me," cried he — 
 
 Barroiu. Did he cry so ? — then I doubt whatever he said ; 
 for those are precisely the words that all your sanctified rogues 
 begin their lies with. Well, let us hear however what he 
 asserted. 
 
 Newton. " Far be it from me, Mr Newton, to lessen the 
 merits of our Divine Redeemer. I, on the contrary, am indignant 
 that poets and theologians should frequently lean toward it." 
 
 Barrow. Did he look at all indignant ? 
 
 Newton. He looked quite calm. 
 
 Barrhw. Ha ! I thought so. I doubt your friend's sincerity. 
 
 Newton. He is a very sincere man. 
 
 Barrow. So much the worse. 
 
 Netuton. How ? 
 
 Barrow. We will discourse another time upon this. I 
 
132 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 meant only, — what we may easily elucidate when we meet 
 again. At present we have three-fourths of the volume to get 
 through. 
 
 Newton. " Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, 
 to natural piety, to laws, to reputation : all which may be guides 
 to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but 
 superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy 
 in the minds of men : therefore atheism did never perturb 
 States." 
 
 Again : " We see the times inclined to atheism as the times 
 of Augustus Caesar were civil times : but superstition hath been 
 the confusion of many States." 
 
 I wish the noble author had kept to himself the preference 
 he gives atheism over superstition ; for, if it be just, as it 
 seems to be, it follows that we should be more courteous and 
 kind toward an atheist than toward a loose Catholic or rigid 
 sectary. 
 
 Barrow. I see no reason why we should not be courteous 
 and kind toward men of all persuasions, provided we are certain 
 that neither by their own inclination nor by the instigation of 
 another they would bum us alive to save our souls, or invade 
 our conscience for the pleasure of carrying it with them at their 
 girdles. 
 
 Atheism would make men have too little to do with others : 
 superstition makes them wish to have too much. Atheism would 
 make some fools : superstition makes many madmen. Atheism 
 would oftener be in good humor than superstition is out of bad. 
 I could bring many more and many stronger arguments in support 
 of Bacon, and the danger would be little in adducing them ; for 
 the current nins violently in a contrary direction, and will have 
 covered every thing with slime and sand before atheism can have 
 her turn against it. 
 
 Neivton. If atheism did never perturb States, as Bacon asserts, 
 then nothing is more unjust than to punish it by the arm of the 
 civil power. It was impolitic in him to remind the world that 
 it was peaceful and happy for sixty years together, while those 
 who ruled it were atheists ; when we must acknowledge that it 
 never has been happy or peaceful for so many days at a time, 
 under the wisest and most powerful (as they call the present one) 
 
Barrow and Newton. 133 
 
 of the Most Christian kings. For if the observation and the 
 fact be true, and if it also be true that the most rational aim of 
 man is happiness, then must it follow that his most rational wish, 
 — and, being his most rational, therefore his most innocent and 
 laudable, — is the return of such times. 
 
 Barrow. We will go forward to the Essay On Empire. 
 
 Newton. I do not think the writer is correct in saying that 
 '• kings . . want matter of desire." Wherever there is vacuity 
 of mind, there must either be flaccidity or craving ; and this 
 vacuity must necessarily be found in the greater part of princes, 
 from the defects of their education, from the fear of offending 
 them in its progress by interrogations and admonitions, from the 
 habit of rendering all things valueless by the facility with which 
 they are obtained, and transitory by the negligence with which 
 they are received and holden. 
 
 " Princes many times make themselves desires, and set their 
 hearts upon toys, — sometimes upon a building ; sometimes upon 
 erecting of an order ; . . . sometimes upon obtaining excellency 
 in some art or feat of the hand." 
 
 On which my visitor said, " The latter desire is the least 
 common among them. Whenever it does occur, it arises from 
 idleness, and from the habitude of doing what they ought not. 
 For, commendable as such exercises are in those who have no 
 better and higher to employ their time in, they are unbecoming 
 and injurious in kings ; all whose hours, after needful recreation 
 and the pleasures which all men share alike, should be occupied 
 in taking heed that those under them perform their duties." 
 
 Barrow. Bacon lived in an age when the wisest men were 
 chosen, from every rank and condition, for the administration 
 of affairs. Wonderful is it that one mind on this subject 
 should have pervaded all the princes in Europe, not except- 
 ing the Turk ; and that we cannot point out a prime minister of 
 any nation, at that period, deficient in sagacity or energy.* Yet 
 
 * There is a remark in a preceding Essay, vrhich could not be noticed 
 in the text : — 
 
 " As for tlie acquaintance which is to be sought in travel, that wrhich 
 is most of all profitable is acquaintance with ^& secretaries and employed men 
 of embassadors ; for so, in travelling in one country, he shall suck the 
 experience of many." 
 
 This, whatever it may appear to us, was not ludicrous nor sarcastic 
 
134 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 that even the greatest, so much greater than any we have had 
 since among us, did not come up to the standard he had fixed, is 
 evident enough. 
 
 " The wisdom," says he, " of all these latter times in princes' 
 affairs, is rather fine deliveries, and shifting of dangers and mischiefs 
 when they are near, than solid and grounded courses to keep them 
 aloof: but this is but to try masteries with fortune. And let 
 men beware how they neglect and suffer matter of trouble to be 
 prepared ; for no man can forbid the spark, nor tell whence it 
 may come." 
 
 Ne'wton. Sir, it was on this passage that my friend exclaimed, 
 " The true philosopher is the only true prophet. From the death 
 of this, the brightest in both capacities, a few years opened the 
 entire scroll of his awful predictions. Yet age after age will the 
 same truths be disregarded, even though men of a voice as deep 
 and a heart less hollow should repeat them. Base men must 
 raise new families, though the venerable edifice of our Constitu- 
 tion be taken down for the abutments, and broken fortunes must 
 be soldered in the flames of war blown up for the occasion." 
 
 On this subject he himself is too lax and easy. Among the 
 reasons for legitimate war he reckons the embracing of trade. He 
 seems unwilling to speak plainly, yet he means to signify that we 
 may declare war against a nation for her prosperity ; a prosperity 
 raised by her industry, by the honesty of her dealings, and by ex- 
 celling us in the quality of her commodity, in the exactness of 
 workmanship, in punctuality, and in credit. 
 
 Barro-w. Hell itself, with all its jealousy and malignity and 
 falsehood, could not utter a sentence more pernicious to the 
 interests and improvement of mankind. It is the duty of every 
 State to provide and watch that not only no other in its vicinity, 
 but that no other with which it has dealings immediate or re- 
 moter, do lose an inch of territory or a farthing of wealth by 
 aggression. Princes fear at their next door rather the example 
 of good than of bad. Correct your own ill habits, and you need 
 not dread your rival's. Let him have them, and wear them 
 every day, — if indeed a Christian may propose it, — and they will 
 unfit him for competition with you. 
 
 vrhen Bacon wrote it, but might be applied as well to the embassadors 
 and secretaries of England as of other States. 
 
Barrow and Newton. 135 
 
 Nenuton. I now come to the words On Counsel: "The 
 doctrine of Italy, and practice of France, in some kings' times, 
 hath introduced cabinet counsels ; a remedy worse than the disease." 
 
 Cabinet — council ! It does indeed seem a strange apposition. 
 One would sooner have expected cabinet cards and counters, 
 cabinet miniature pictures, — or what not ! 
 
 Barrow. Isaac ! if you had conversed, as I have, with 
 some of those persons who constitute such councils, you would 
 think the word cabinet quite as applicable to them as to cards or 
 counters, or miniature pictures, or essences, or pots of pomatum. 
 
 Newton. How, then, in the name of wonder, are the great 
 matters of government carried on ? 
 
 Barroiv. Great dinners are put upon the table, not by the 
 entertainer, but by the waiters. There are usually some dexterous 
 hands accustomed to the business. The same weights are moved 
 by the same ropes and pulleys. There is no vast address required 
 in hooking them, and no mighty strength in the hauling. 
 
 Neivton. I have taken but few notes of some admirable things 
 in my way to the Essay On Cunning. 
 
 Barrow. I may remind you hereafter of some omissions in 
 other places. 
 
 Newton. I find Bacon no despiser of books in men of business, 
 as people mostly are. 
 
 Barrow. Because they know little of them, and fancy they 
 could manage the whole world by their genius. This is the 
 commonest of delusions in the shallows of society. Well doth 
 Bacon say, " There be that can pack the cards and yet cannot 
 play well ; so there are some that are good in canvasses and 
 factions that are otherwise weak men." 
 
 Fortunate the country that is not the dupe of these intruders and 
 bustlers, who often rise to the highest posts by their readiness to 
 lend an arm at every stepping-stone in the dirt, and are found as 
 convenient in their way as the candle-snufFers in gaming-houses, 
 who have usually their rouleau at the service of the half-ruined. 
 
 Newton. I am sorry to find my Lord High Chancellor 
 wearing as little the face of an honest man as doth one of these. 
 
 Barrow. How so ? 
 
 Newton. He says, " If a man would cross a business, that 
 he doubts some other would handsomely and effectually move, let 
 
136 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 him pretend to wish it well, and move it himself in such sort aa 
 may foil it." 
 
 What must I think of such counsel ? 
 
 Barroiv. Bacon, as I observed before, often forgets liis 
 character. Sometimes he speaks the language of truth and 
 honesty, with more freedom than a better man could do safely ; 
 again, he teaches a lesson of baseness and roguery to the public, 
 such as he could intend only for the private ear of some young 
 statesman, before his rehearsal on the stage of politics. The 
 words from the prompter's book have crept into the text, and 
 injure the piece. Bacon might not have liked to cancel the 
 directions he had given so much to his mind ; instead of which, 
 he draws himself up and cries austerely, " But these small wares 
 and petty points of cunning are infinite, and it were a good deed 
 to make a list of them ; for nothing doth more hurt in a State 
 than that cunning men pass for wise." 
 
 Newton. He has other things about wisdom in another place : 
 " Of the wisdom for a man's self." 
 
 Barroiv. I must repeat one noble sentence ; for I fear, if you 
 begin to read it, I may interrupt you, not being master of my 
 mind when his comes over it. " Divide with reason between 
 self-love and society ; and be so true to thyself as thou be not 
 false to others, especially to thy king and country. It is a poor 
 centre of a man's actions, himself : it is right earth ; for that only 
 stands fast upon his own centre ; whereas all things that have 
 affinity with the heavens move upon the centre of another, which 
 they benefit." 
 
 What an imagination is Bacon's ; what splendid and ardent 
 language ! In what prose-writer of our country, or of Rome, or 
 of Greece, is there any thing equal or similar to it ! 
 
 Newton. On Innovations I find the sentence which I have 
 heard oftener quoted than any in the volume : " Time is the 
 greatest innovator.'" 
 
 We take the axiom up without examination ; it is doubtful and 
 inconsiderate. Does it mean much time or little time ? By a 
 great innovator we must either signify an innovator in great matters, 
 or in many at once, or nearly at once. Now time is slow in inno- 
 vation of any kind ; and all great innovations are violences, as it 
 were, done to time, crowding into a small space what would in 
 
Barrow and Newton. 137 
 
 ordinary cases occupy a larger. Time, without other agents, 
 would innovate little ; for the portions of time are all the same, 
 and, being so, their forces must be the same likewise. 
 
 Barrow. That satisfies me. 
 
 Newton. Truth and falsehood are tlie two great innovators, 
 always at work, and sometimes the one uppermost and sometimes 
 the other. 
 
 Barronv. Let us engage ourselves in the service of truth, 
 where the service is not perilous ; and let us win time to help us, 
 for without him few cannot stand against many. 
 
 Newton. On Friendship there are some things which sit loose 
 upon the subject. The utility of it seems to be principally in the 
 view of Bacon. Some positions are questionable: — 
 
 " Certain it is that whosoever hath his mind fraught with many 
 thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and break up in the 
 communicating and discoursing with another; he tosseth his 
 thoughts more easily ; he marshalleth them more orderly ; he seeth 
 how they look when they are turned into words ; finally, he 
 waxeth wiser than himself, and that more by an hour's discourse 
 than by a day's meditation." 
 
 This I conceive is applicable to one frame of mind, but not to 
 another of equal capacity and elasticity. I admire the ingenuity 
 of the thought, and the wording of it; nevertheless I doubt 
 whether it suits not better the mind of an acute lawyer than of a 
 contemplative philosopher. Never have I met with any one whose 
 thoughts are marshalled more orderly in conversation than in com- 
 position ; nor am I acquainted in the University with any gentle- 
 man of fluent speech, whose ideas are not frequently left dry 
 upon the bank. Cicero and Demosthenes were laborious in com- 
 position, and their replies were, I doubt not, as much studied as 
 their addresses. For it was a part of the orator to foresee the 
 points of attack to which his oration was exposed, and to prepare 
 the materials, and the arrangement of them, for defending it. 
 
 " It was well said by Themistocles to the king of Persia, that 
 speech was like cloth of Arras," &c. 
 
 Themistocles might as well have spoken of velvet of Genoa 
 and satin of Lyons. 
 
 On Expense there is much said quite worthy of Bacon's 
 experience and prudence ; but he lays down one rule which I 
 think I can demonstrate to be injurious in its tendency :— 
 
138 Imaginary Conversations, 
 
 " If a man will keep but of even hand, his ordinary expenses 
 ought to be but to the half of his receipts ; and if he think to 
 wax rich, but to the third part." 
 
 Should all private gentlemen, and others who are not gentle- 
 men, but whose income is of the same value, spend only the third 
 part of it, the nation would be more nearly ruined within the 
 century, than it would be if every one of them mortgaged his 
 property to half its amount. 
 
 A wiser saying comes soon afterward, where he speaks On the 
 True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates : — 
 
 " No people overcharged with tribute is fit for empire." 
 
 How happy, my dear sir, is our condition, in having been ever 
 both generous and thrifty, ready at all times to succor the 
 oppressed, and condescending on this holy occasion to ask the 
 countenance of none ! How happy, to have marched straight 
 forward in the line of duty with no policy to thwart, no penury to 
 enfeeble, and no debt to burthen us ! Although our nobility is 
 less magnificent than in the reign of the Tudors, I do verily 
 believe it is as free and independent ; and its hospitality, so con- 
 ducive (as Bacon says) to martial greatness, is the same as ever, 
 although the quality of the guests be somewhat changed. 
 
 Barrow. Isaac ! are you serious ? 
 
 Neiuton. Dear sir, the subject animates me. 
 
 Barrow. What sparkles is hardly more transparent than what 
 is turbid. Your animation, my friend, perplexed me. I perceive 
 you are vehemently moved by the glory of our country. 
 
 Newton. As we derive a great advantage from the nature of 
 our nobility, so do we derive an equal one from the dispositions 
 and occupations of the people. How unfortunate would it be for 
 us, if we had artisans cooped up like tame pigeons in unwholesome 
 lofts, bending over the loom by tallow-light, and refreshing their 
 exhausted bodies at daybreak with ardent liquors ! Indeed, in 
 comparison with this, the use of slaves itself, which Bacon calls 
 a great advantage, was almost a blessing. 
 
 Barrow. Let us not speculate on either of these curses, 
 which may not be felt as such when they come upon us, for we 
 shall be stunned and torpified by the greatness of our fall. 
 
 What have you next ? 
 
 Newton. On Suspicion I find an Italian proverb, which the 
 
Barrow and Newton. 139 
 
 learned author has misconstrued. " Sospetto licenzia fede " he 
 translates, " Suspicion gives a passport to faith." The meaning 
 is (my visitor tells me), " Suspicion dismisses fidelity." " Licen- 
 ziare un servitore," is, to dismiss a servant. That the person 
 suspected is no longer bound to fidelity, is the axiom of a nation 
 in which fidelity is readier to quit a man than suspicion is. 
 
 It cost me many hours of inquiry to search into the propriety 
 of his thoughts U^on Ambition. He says : " It is counted by 
 some a weakness in princes to have favorites ; but it is of all others 
 the best remedy against ambitious great ones : for when the way 
 of pleasuring and displeasuring lieth by the favorite, it is impossible 
 any other should be overgreat." 
 
 I hope, and am willing to believe, that my Lord Chancellor 
 Bacon was a tme and loyal subject ; yet one would almost be 
 tempted to think, in reading him, that there must be a curse in 
 hereditary princes, and that he had set his private mark upon it 
 when he praises their use of favorites, and supposes them 
 surrounded by mean persons and ambitious ones, by poisons and 
 counterpoisons. Sejanus and Tigellinus, our Gavestons and 
 Mortimers, our Empsons and Dudleys, our Wolseys and Buck- 
 inghams, are like certain fiimigations to drive away rats ; which 
 indeed do drive them out, but also make the house undesirable to 
 inhabit. He recommends " the continual interchange of favors 
 and disgraces, whereby they may not know what to expect, and 
 be, as it were, in a wood." 
 
 Barrow. By the effect of this policy, we find the counte- 
 nances of the statesmen and courtiers who lived in his age, almost 
 without exception, mean and suspicious. The greatest men look, 
 in their portraits, as if they were waiting for a box on the ear ; 
 lowering their heads, raising their shoulders, and half-closing 
 their eyes, for the reception of it. 
 
 Newton. What he says Of Nature in Men seems spoken by 
 some one who saw through it from above : the same On Custom 
 and Education. Here he speaks with more verity than consola- 
 tion, when he says : " There^^ be not two more fortunate proper- 
 ties, than to have a little of the fool and not too much of the 
 honest: therefore extreme lovers of their country were never 
 
 P'The passage is from the Essay "Of Fortune."] 
 
140 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 fortunate ; neither can they be ; for when a man placeth his 
 thoughts without himself, he goeth not his own way." 
 
 In the Essay On Touth and Age, what can be truer, what, can 
 be more novel or more eloquent, than this sentence : — 
 
 " Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too 
 5ittle, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the 
 full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success." 
 
 What he says Of Beauty is less considerate. 
 
 Barroiv. I do not wonder at it : beauty is not stripped in a 
 Court of Chancery, as fortune is. 
 
 Newton. He is inconsequent in his reasoning when he says : 
 " There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in 
 the proportion. A man cannot tell whether Apelles or Albert 
 Durer were the more trifler, whereof the one would make a per- 
 sonage by geometrical proportions ; the other, by taking the best 
 parts out of divers faces to make one excellent." 
 
 Barrow. Whereof is of which, not of whom. 
 
 Newton. If " there is no excellent beauty that hath not some 
 strangeness in the proportion," then Apelles was no trifler in tak- 
 ing the best parts of divers faces, which would produce some 
 strangeness in the proportion unless he corrected it. 
 
 Barrow. True : Bacon's first remark, however, is perfectly 
 just and novel. What strikes us in beauty is that which we did 
 not expect to find from anything we had seen before : a new 
 arrangement of excellent parts. The same thing may be said of 
 genius, the other great gift of the Divinity, not always so acceptable 
 to his creatures ; but which however has this advantage, if you will 
 allow it to be one, that, whereas beauty has most admirers at its 
 first appearance, genius has most at its last, and begins to be com- 
 memorated in the period when the other is forgotten. 
 
 Newton. What you said of beauty, as striking us chiefly in 
 being unexpected from any thing we had seen before, is applicable 
 no less to ugliness. 
 
 Barrow. I am not giving a definition, but recording an^* ob- 
 servation, which would be inexact without the remaining words, 
 — " a new arrangement of excellent parts." 
 
 Newton. Our author errs more widely than before ; not, as 
 
 ["First ed. reads: " recording a fact. Newton. One," &c.] 
 
Barrow and Newton. 141 
 
 before, in drawing a false conclusion. " Such personages," he 
 continues to remark, " I think would please nobody but the 
 painter who made them : not but I think a painter may make a 
 better face than ever was ; but he must do it by a kind of felicity 
 (as a musician that maketh an excellent air in music) and not by 
 rule." Nothing of excellent is to be done by felicity. 
 
 Barroiv. Felicity and excellence rarely meet, and hardly 
 know one another. 
 
 Neiuton. Ceitainly no musician ever composed an excellent air 
 otherwise than by rule : felicity is without it. 
 
 Barro'w. Beauty does not seem to dazzle but to deaden him. 
 He reasons that the principal part of beauty lies in decent motion, 
 and asserts that " no youthy person can be comely but by pardon, 
 and by considering the youth as to make up the comeliness." 
 Much of this reflection may have been fashioned and cast by the 
 age of the observer ; much by the hour of the day . I think it 
 must have been a rainy morning, when he had eaten unripe fruit 
 for breakfast ! 
 
 Newton. Perhaps sour grapes. 
 
 On Deformity I have transcribed a long sentence : here he 
 seems more at home : — 
 
 " Because there is in man an election touching the frame of 
 his mind, and a necessity in the frame of his body, the stars of 
 natural inclination are sometimes obscured by the sun of discipline 
 and virtue ; therefore it is good to consider of deformity, not as a 
 sign which is most deceivable, but as a cause which seldom faileth 
 of the effect." 
 
 Nothing can be truer in all its parts, or more magnificent in 
 the whole. 
 
 Barroiu. This short Essay is worth many libraries of good 
 books. Several hundreds of esteemed authors have not in them 
 the substance and spirit of the sentence you recited. 
 
 Nenuton. On Building he says : " Houses are built to live in, 
 and not to look on." 
 
 Half of this is untrue. Sheds and hovels, the first habitations 
 (at least the first artificial ones) of men, were built to live in, and 
 not to look on ; but houses are built for both : otherwise why 
 give directions for the proportions of porticos, of columns, of inter- 
 columniations, and of whatever else delights the beholder in 
 
142 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 architecture, and flatters the possessor ? Is the beauty of cities 
 no honor to the inhabitants, no excitement to the defence? 
 External order in visible objects hath relation and intercourse 
 with internal propriety and decorousness. I doubt not but 
 the beauty of Athens had much effect on the patriotism, and 
 some on the genius, of the Athenians. Part of the interest and 
 animation men receive from Homer lies in their conception of 
 the magnificence of Troy. Even the little rock of Ithaca rears 
 up its palaces sustained by pillars ; and pillars are that portion 
 of an edifice on which the attention rests longest and most com- 
 placently. For we have no other means of calculating so well the 
 grandeur of edifices, as by the magnitude of the support they 
 need ; and it is the only thing about them which we measure in 
 any way by our own. 
 
 " Neither do I reckon it an ill seat only where the air is un- 
 wholesome, but likewise where the air is unequal : as you shall 
 see many fine seats set upon a knap of ground, environed with 
 higher hills round about it, whereby the heat of the sun is pent in, 
 and the wind gathereth as in troughs," &c. 
 
 Now surely this very knap of ground is the very spot to be 
 chosen for the commodiousness of its situation, its salubrity, 
 and its beauty. There is as little danger of the wind gather- 
 ing in these troughs as in goat-skins. He must have taken his 
 idea from some Italian work : the remark is suitable only to a 
 southern climate. 
 
 Barroiu. In one so rainy as ours is, it would have been more 
 judicious, I think, to have warned against building the house upon 
 clay or marl, which are retentive of moisture, slippeiy nine months 
 in the twelve, cracked the other three, of a color offensive to the 
 sight, of a soil little accommodating to garden-plants, the water 
 usually unwholesome, and the roads impassable. 
 
 Newton. On Negotiating I am sorry to find again our Lord 
 Chancellor a dissembler and a tutor to lies : — 
 
 " To deal in person is good when a man's face breedeth regard, 
 as commonly with inferiors ; or in tender cases, where a man's 
 eye upon the countenance of him with whom he speaketh may 
 give him a direction how far to go ; and generally luhere a man 
 •will reserve to himself liberty, either to disavo'w or to expound," 
 
 Barrow. Bad enough : but surely he must appear to you any 
 
Barrow and Newton. 
 
 143 
 
 thing rather than knave, when he recommends the employment of 
 froward and absurd men, be the business what it may. 
 
 Netvton. He recommends them for business luhich doth not 
 •vDett bear out itself; and in which, one would think, the wariest 
 are the most wanted. 
 
 Barrow. But, Uke men who have just tripped, he walks the 
 fiimer and stouter instantly. The remainder of the Essay is 
 worthy of his perspicacity. 
 
 Netuton. In the next. On Followers and Friends, I find the 
 word espial used by him a second time, for a minister the French 
 call espion. It appears to me that it should denote, not the person 
 but the action, as the same termination is used in trial. 
 
 Barrotv. Right. We want some words in composition as we 
 want some side-dishes at table, less for necessity than for decora- 
 tion. On this principle, I should not quarrel with a writer who 
 had used the verb originate ; on condition however that he used it 
 as a neuter : none but a sugar-slave would employ it actively. It 
 may stand opposite to terminate. 
 
 Bacon in the preceding sentence used glorious for -vain- 
 glorious ; a Latinism among the many of the age, and among 
 the few of the author. Our language bears Gallicisms better 
 than Latinisms ; but whoever is resolved to write soberly 
 must be contented with the number of each that was found 
 among us in the time of the Reformation. Little is to be re- 
 jected of what was then in use, and less of any thing new is 
 henceforward to be admitted. By which prudence and caution 
 we may in time have writers as elegant as the Italian and the 
 French, whom already we exceed, as this little volume proves, in 
 vigor and invention. 
 
 Newton. He says, further on : " It is true that in government 
 it is good to use men of one rank equally ; for to countenance 
 some extraordinarily is to make them insolent, and the rest dis- 
 content, because they may claim a due : but contrariwise in favor, 
 to use men with much difference and election is good ; for it 
 maketh the persons preferred more thankful, and the rest more 
 officious; because all is of favor." 
 
 Here again I am sorry so great an authority should, to use the 
 words of my visitor, let his conscience nm before his judgment, 
 and his tongue slip in between. " In saying that all is of favor " 
 
144 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 (thus carps my visitor) " he gives a preference to another form of 
 government over the monarchal ; another form indeed where all 
 is not of favor ; where something may be attributed to virtue, 
 something to industry, something to genius ; where something 
 may accrue to us from the gratitude of our fellow-citizens ; and 
 not every thing drop and drivel from the frothy pulings of one 
 swathed up in bandages never changed nor loosened ; of one held 
 always in the same arms, and with its face turned always in the 
 same direction." 
 
 Barrom). Hold ! hold ! this is as bad as Bacon or Milton : 
 nay, Cicero and Demosthenes, in the blindness of their hearts, 
 could scarcely have spoken, to the nations they guided, with more 
 contemptuous asperity of royal power. 
 
 Neiuton. I venerate it, as coming of God. 
 
 Barrom, Hold again ! all things come from him : the hang- 
 man and the hanged are in the same predicament with the anointer 
 and the anointed. 
 
 Ne'wton. Sir, you remind me of an observation made in my 
 father's house by the son of a republican, and who indeed was 
 little better than one himself. My father had upbraided him on 
 his irreverence to the Lord's anointed : he asked my father why he 
 allowed his mind to be lime-twigged and ruiBed and discomposed 
 by words ; and whether he would feel the same awe in repeating 
 the syllables, God's greased, as in repeating the syllables, God's 
 anointed. If the Esquimaux heard them, said he, they would 
 think the man no better reared than themselves, and worse dressed, 
 as dressed by one less in practice. 
 
 Barrotu. No men are so facetious as those whose minds are 
 somewhat perverted. Truth enjoys good air and clear light, but 
 no play-ground. Keep your eyes upon Bacon : we may more 
 safely look on him than on thrones. How wise is all the 
 remainder of the Essay ! 
 
 Newton. He says. On Suitors, and truly, that " Private suits 
 do putrefy the public good." Soon afterward, « Some embrace 
 suits tuhich never mean to deal effectually in them." This seems 
 ordinary and flat ; but the words are requisite to a sentence 
 founded (I fear) on a close observation of human nature, as courts 
 render it. I noted them as presenting an incorrectness and 
 indecision of language. Who is proper, not luhich ; although 
 
Barrow and Newton. 145 
 
 which was used indiscriminately, as we find in the beginning 
 of the " Lord's Prayer : " but in that place there could be no 
 confusion. 
 
 Barrow. Among the few crudities and barbarisms that 
 yet oppressed our language in his learned age, Bacon has 
 this, " A man were better rise in his suit." Indeed, he uses 
 •were better more than once ; with the simple verb after it, and 
 without to. 
 
 Newton. On Studies he cannot lose his road, having trodden 
 it so frequently, and having left his mark upon so many objects 
 all the way. Therefore it is no wonder that his genius points 
 with a finger of fire to this subject. 
 
 He says. On Faction, that, " Many a man's strength is in 
 opposition, and when that faileth he groweth out of use." He 
 must have written from inspiration ; for in his age I find no person 
 to whom he can have alluded. 
 
 Barroiv. Perhaps not ; yet the preceding may have furnished 
 him with examples. 
 
 Neivton. In the first sentence On Ceremonies and Respects 
 are the words, " He that is only real had need have exceed- 
 ing great parts of virtue." This weighty and sorrowful truth 
 does not prevent me from questioning the expression, had need have. 
 
 Barrow. The true words, which all authors write amiss, are, 
 hc^ need of. Ha' need sounds like had need, and have sounds like 
 of, in speaking quickly. Hence the wisest men have written the 
 words improperly, by writing at once from the ear without an 
 appeal or reference to grammar. 
 
 Neiuton. On Praise he says ingeniously, but not altogether 
 truly, " Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and 
 swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid." 
 
 Barrow. This is true only of literary fame ; and the drowned 
 things are brought to light again, sometimes by the warmer season 
 and sometimes by the stormier. 
 
 He uses suspect for suspicion: we retain aspect, respect, retrospect, 
 prospect. I know not whether the chancellor's award in favor of 
 suspect will be repealed or acquiesced in. 
 
 Newton. In the next Essay, On Vain-ghry, he says : " In 
 fame of learning the flight will be slow without some feathers of 
 ostentation." That is hard, if true. 
 
146 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Barrow. There must be a good deal of movement and 
 shuiBing before there is any rising from the ground ; and those 
 who have the longest wings have the most difficulty in the first 
 mounting. In literature, as at foot-ball, strength and agility are 
 insufficient of themselves : you must have your side, or you may 
 run till you are out of breath, and kick till you are out of shoes, 
 and never win the game. There must be some to keep others 
 off you, and some to prolong for you the ball's rebound. But 
 your figures, dear Isaac, will serve as tenterhooks to catch the 
 fingers of those who would meddle with your letters. Do not 
 however be ambitious of an early fame : such is apt to shrivel and 
 to drop under the tree. 
 
 Newton. The author continues the same subject in the next 
 Essay, though under a different title. Of Honor and Reputation 
 he says, " Discreet followers and servants help much to reputa- 
 tion." Then he who has no servant, or an indiscreet one, must 
 be content to be helped to little of it. 
 
 Barrow.^^ Seeing that reputation is casual, that the wise 
 may long want it, that the unwise may soon acquire it, that a 
 senrant may further it, that a spiteful man may obstruct it, that a 
 passionate man may maim it, and that whole gangs are ready to 
 waylay it as it mounts the hill, — I would not wish greatly to 
 carry it about me, but rather to place it in some safe spot, 
 where few could find, and not many will look after it. But 
 those who discover it will try in their hands its weight and quality, 
 and take especial care lest they injure it, saying, " It is his and 
 his only ; leave it to him, and wish him increase in it." 
 
 Newton. Where Bacon is occupied, " in the true marshalling 
 of sovran honor," he gives the third place to liberaiores or sd- 
 •uatores. He wishes to speak in Latin ; one of these words 
 belongs not to the language. 
 
 Barrow. His Latin is always void of elegance and grace ; 
 but he had the generosity to write in it, that he might be useful 
 the more extensively. We English are far below the Italians, 
 French, Germans, and Dutch in our Latinity ; yet we have 
 Latin volumes written by our countrymen, each of which, in its 
 matter, is fairly worth half theirs. They, like certain fine gentle- 
 men, seem to found their ideas of elegance on slenderness, and in 
 [15 Sarro-w and the following Newton added in 2nd ed ] 
 
Barrow and Newton. 147 
 
 twenty or thirty of them we hardly find a thought or remark at 
 all worthy of preservation. I remember but one sentence ; which 
 however, if Cicero had written it, would be recorded among the 
 best he ever wrote. " Valuit nimirum maledicentia, grata, 
 cunctis, etiam iis qui neque sibi maledici neque maledicere ipsi 
 aliis velint." 
 
 Newion^^ Permit me to inquire, sir, by whom was this 
 strong and shrewd and truly Sallustian sentence written I 
 
 Barrow. By Vavassor, a Jesuit. 
 
 It may he remarked, and perhaps you have done it, that the 
 title itself of this Essay, The True Marshalling of sovran Honor, 
 is incorrect. By marshalling he means the giving of rates or 
 degrees j now what is sovran has no rates or degrees : he should 
 have said " of titles assumed by sovran princes." 
 
 Neiaton. In the first sentence On Judicature, he uses the 
 singular and plural in designating the same body : either is ad- 
 missible, but not both : — 
 
 " Else will it be like the authority claimed by the Church of 
 Rome, which, under pretext of exposition of Scripture, doth not 
 stick to add and alter, and to pronounce that which they do not 
 find, and, by show of antiquity, to introduce novelty." 
 
 What gravity and wisdom is there in the remark that, " One 
 foul sentence doth more hurt than many foul examples : for 
 these do but corrupt the stream, the other corrupteth the 
 fountain." 
 
 The worst, and almost the only bad, sentence in the volume 
 is the childish antithesis, " There be, saith the Scripture, that 
 turn judgment into wormwood, and surely there be also that 
 turn it into vinegar : for injustice maketh it bitter, and delays 
 make it sour." 
 
 On the Vicissitudes of Things he observes that " the true religion 
 is built upon the rock, the rest are tossed upon the waves of 
 time." Myi^ visitor said hereupon : " I doubt whether this 
 magnificent figure hath truth for its basis. If by true religion is 
 meant the religion of our Saviour, as practised by his apostles, 
 
 [16 From " Neil-ton " to " Jesuit " (3 lines) added in 2nd ed. The words 
 below, " The true marshalling of sovran honor," are not the title of an 
 Essay, but occur in the text of the Essay " On Honors and Dignities."] 
 
 [1' From " My " to « hereupon " added in 2nd ed.] 
 
148 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 they outlived it. They complain that it never took firm posses- 
 sion even of their own auditors. Saint Peter himself was re- 
 proved by his master for using his sword too vigorously, after all 
 he had said against any use of it whatever ; yet, so little good did 
 the reproof, he fell immediately to betraying the very man he had 
 thus defended. But if by true religion we mean the Church of 
 Rome, we come nearer the fact ; for that religion, with patchings 
 and repairings, with materials purloined from others, with piles 
 driven under the foundation, and buttresses without that darken 
 every thing within, surmounted by pinnacles raised above the upper 
 story, hath lasted long, and will remain while men are persuaded 
 that wax and stockfish can atone for their vices. The obstacle 
 to our acceptance of the meaning is that it hath been convicted 
 of many impostures in its claims and miracles, that it Continues to 
 insist on them, and that it uses violence (which is forbidden by 
 Christ) against those who stumble or doubt." 
 
 Barroiu. Deafness is not to be healed by breaking the head, 
 nor blindness by pulling the eyes out : it is time the 'doctors 
 should try new experiments ; if they will not, it is time that the / 
 patients should try new doctors. ' 4 
 
 Newton. A bad religion may be kept afoot by the samej 
 means as other kinds of bad government ; by corruption anc^ 
 terror, by spies and torturers. No doubt it will please God to 
 see all things set to rights ; but we must acknowledge that the 
 best religion, like the best men, has fared the worst. 
 
 Bacon says he " reckons martyrdoms among miracles, because 
 they seem to exceed the strength of human nature." If they did 
 seem to exceed the strength of human nature, this is no suffici- 
 ent reason why they should be ranked with miracles; for 
 martyrdoms have appertained to many religions, if we may call 
 voluntary death to prove a misbeliever's sincerity a martyrdom, 
 while we know that miracles belong exclusively to the Christian : 
 and even in this faith there are degrees of latitude and longitude 
 which they were never known to pass, although, humanly speak- 
 ing, they were much wanted. The Lithuanians, and other north- 
 eastern nations, were long before they were reclaimed from 
 paganism, for want of miracles. God's good time had not 
 come : and he fell upon different expedients for their conversion. 
 
 On the Vicissitudes of Things we find mention of Plato's great 
 
Barrow and Newton. 149 
 
 year. I think you once told me, Plato took more from others 
 than he knew what to do with. 
 
 Barroiu. Instead of simplifying, he involves and confounds. 
 
 Newton. I hope hereafter to study the heavenly bodies with 
 greater accuracy and on other principles than philosophers have 
 done hitherto. The reasons of Bacon why " the northern tract 
 of the world ... is the more martial region " are unworthy of 
 his perspicacity. First, he assigns the stars of the hemisphere ; 
 then, the greatness of the continent, " whereas the south part is 
 almost all sea ; " then, the cold of the northern parts, " which is 
 that which, without aid of discipline, doth make the bodies 
 hardest and the courage warmest." The stars can have no effect 
 whatever on the courage or virtues of men, unless we call the sun 
 one of them, as the poets do. The heat of the sun may produce 
 effeminacy and sloth in many constitutions, and contrary effects in 
 many ; but I suspect that dryness and moisture are more efficient 
 on the human body than heat and cold. Some races, as in dogs 
 and horses and cattle of every kind, are better than others, and do 
 not lose their qualities for many ages, nor, unless others cross 
 them, without the confluence of many causes. There may be as 
 much courage in hot climates as in cold. The inhabitants of 
 Madagascar and Malacca are braver than the Laplanders, and 
 perhaps not less brave than the Londoners. The fact is this : 
 people in warm climates are in the full enjoyment of all the 
 pleasures that animal life affords, and are disinclined to toil after 
 that which no toil could produce or increase ; while the native of 
 the north is condemned by climate to a life of labor, which often- 
 times can procure for him but a scanty portion of what his 
 vehement and exasperated appetite demands. Therefore he 
 cuts it short with his sword, and reaps the field sown by the 
 southern. 
 
 Bacon seems to me just in his opinion, if not that ordnance, at 
 least that inflammable powder and annoyance by its means, perhaps 
 in rockets, was known among the ancients. He instances the 
 Oxydraces in India. The remark is, I imagine, equally ap- 
 plicable to the priests of Delphi, who repelled the Gauls with it 
 from the temple of Apollo. This i^ is the more remarkable, as 
 the Persians too encountered the same resistance, and experienced 
 fs From " This " to " exploded " (j lines) added in 2nd ed.] 
 
150 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 the double force of thunderbolts and earthquake. Whence we 
 may surmise that not only missiles, propelled by the combustion 
 of powder, were aimed against them, but likewise that mines ex- 
 ploded. And perhaps other priests, the only people in most 
 places who formerly had leisure for experiments, were equally 
 acquainted with it, and used it for their own defence only, and 
 only in cases of extremity. Etruscan i' soothsayers were appointed 
 to blast the army of Alaric with lightning, and the Pope acceded 
 to the proposal ; but his Holiness, on reflection, was of opinion 
 that aurum Julmlnans was more effectual. 
 
 I wish the Essay On Fame had been completed : and even 
 then its chief effect on me, perhaps, would be to excite another 
 wish ; as gratification usually does. It would have made me 
 sigh for the recovery of Cicero On Glory, that the two greatest 
 of philosophers might be compared on the same ground. 
 
 Barroiu. Let us look up at Fame without a desire or a 
 repining ; and let us pardon all her falsehoods and delays, in 
 remembrance that the best verse in Homer, and the best in 
 Virgil, are on her. Virgil's is indeed but a feather from the 
 wing of Homer. 
 
 Newton. You show a very forgiving mind, sir, and I hope 
 she will be grateful to you. I do not know what these lines are 
 worth, as they give me no equations. 
 
 Barrow. Nothing should be considered quite independently 
 of every thing else. We owe reverence to all great writers ; but 
 our reverence to one would be injustice to another, unless we 
 collated and compared their merits. 
 
 Newton. Some are so dissimilar to others, that I know not 
 how it can be done. 
 
 Barroiv. Liquids and solids are dissimilar, yet may be 
 weighed in the same scales. All things are composed of 
 portions ; and all things bear proportions relatively, — mind to 
 mind, matter to matter. Archimedes and Homer are suscep- 
 tible of comparison ; but the process would be long and tedious, 
 the principles must be sought from afar, nor is the man perhaps 
 at the next door who must be called for the operation. Bacon 
 and Milton, Bacon and Shakspeare, may be compared with 
 little difhculty, wide asunder as they appear to stand. How- 
 ['»From « Etruscan " to " effectual " (4 lines) added in snd ed.] 
 
Barrow and Newton. 151 
 
 ever, since the cogitative and imaginative parts of mind are 
 exercised by both in broad daylight and in open spaces, the 
 degrees in which they are exercised are within our calculation. 
 Until we bring together the weightiest works of genius from 
 the remotest distances, we shall display no admirable power 
 of criticism. None such hath been hitherto exhibited in the 
 world, which stands in relation to criticism as it stood in rela- 
 tion to metaphysics, until the time of Aristoteles. He left them 
 imperfect ; and they have Idn little better ever since. The 
 good sense of Cicero led him to clearer studies and whole- 
 somer exercise ; and where he could not pluck fruit he would 
 not pluck brambles. In Plato we find only arbors and grottos, 
 with moss and shell-work all misplaced. Aristoteles hath 
 built a solider edifice, but hath built it across our road : we 
 must throw it down again, and use what we can of the materials 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Newton. Bacon, seen only in his Essays, would have appeared 
 to me (fresh as I come from the study of the ancients, and 
 captivated as I confess I am by the graces of their language) 
 the wisest and most instructive of writers. 
 
 Barrovj. In calling him the wisest of writers, you must 
 except those who wrote from inspiration. 
 
 Nenuton. Ha ! that is quite another thing. 
 
 Barro'zv. Henceforward I would advise you to follow the 
 bent of your genius, in examining those matters principally which 
 are susceptible of demonstration. Every young man should have 
 some proposed end for his studies : let yours be philosophy ; 
 and principally those parts of it in which the ancients have 
 done little and the modems less. And never be dejected, 
 my dear Isaac, though it should enable you to throw but a 
 scarcity of light on the Revelation, The Rape of Helen, and 
 The Golden Fleece. 
 
 Netvton. I hope by my labors I may find a clew to them in 
 the process of time. But perhaps my conjectures may turn out 
 wrong, as those on the book before me have. 
 
 Barroiu. How ? 
 
 Newton. I should always have imagined, if you had not 
 taught me the contrary, that there is more of genius and philo- 
 sophy in Bacon's Essays than in all Cicero's works, howeve^- 
 
152 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 less there be of the scholastic and oratorical. Perhaps I, by 
 being no estimator of style 
 
 Barronu. Peace, peace ! my modest Newton ! Perhaps I, 
 by being too much an estimator of it, have overvalued the 
 clearest head and the purest tongue of antiquity. My 2" Lord 
 Justice Coke, and probably the more learned Selden, would 
 have ridiculed or reproved us, had we dared entertain in their 
 presence a doubt of Cicero's superiority over Bacon. No very 
 great man ever reached the standard of his greatness in the crowd 
 of his contemporaries. This hath always been reserved for the 
 secondary. There must either be something of the vulgar, some- 
 thing in which the commonalty can recognise their own features, 
 or there must be a laxity, a jealousy, an excitement stimulating 
 a false appetite. Your brief review of the Essays hath brought 
 back to my recollection so much of shrewd judgment, so much of 
 rich imagery, such a profusion of truths so plain, as (without his 
 manner of exhibiting them) to appear almost unimpoitant that, in 
 the various high qualities of the human mind, I must acknowledge 
 not only Cicero, but every prose-writer among the Greeks, to 
 stand far below him. Cicero is least valued for his highest merits, 
 his fulness and his perspicuity. Bad judges (and how few are 
 not so ! ) desire in composition the concise and the obscure, not 
 knowing that the one most frequently arises from paucity of 
 materials, and the other from inability to manage and dispose 
 them. Have you never observed that, among the ignorant in 
 painting, dark pictures are usually called the finest in the collec- 
 tion, and grey-bearded heads, fit only for the garret, are preferred 
 to the radiance of light and beauty ? Have you yourself never 
 thought, before you could well measure and calculate, that books 
 and furniture thrown about a room appeared to be in much greater 
 quantities than when they were arranged ? At every step we 
 take to gain the approbation of the wise, we lose something in the 
 estimation of the vulgar. Look within : cannot we afford it ? 
 
 The minds of few can take in the whole of a great author, and 
 fewer can draw him close enough to another for just commen- 
 suration. A fine passage may strike us less forcibly than one 
 beneath it in beauty, from less sensibility in us at the moment ; 
 whence less enthusiasm, less quickness of perception, less capacity, 
 f2» From " My " to " him " (16 lines) added in ind ed.] 
 
Barrow and Newton. 153 
 
 less hold. You have omitted to remark some of the noblest things 
 in Bacon, often I believe because there is no power of judgment to 
 be shown in the expression of admiration, and perhaps too some- 
 times from the repetition and intensity of delight. 
 
 Nenvton. Sir, I forebore to lift up my hands as a mark of ad- 
 miration. You ordered me to demonstrate, if I could, the defects 
 of this wonderfiJ man, unnoticed hitherto. 
 
 Barrow. You have done it to my satisfaction. Cicero dis- 
 dained not in the latter days of his life, when he was highest in 
 reputation and dignity, to perform a similar office in regard to 
 Epicurus : and I wish he had exhibited the same accuracy and 
 attention, the same moderation and respect. The objections of 
 your friend and visitor are not altogether frivolous : take care 
 however lest he, by his disceptations, move you from your faith. 
 If you hold the faith, the faith will support you ; as, if you make 
 your bed warm by lying in it, your bed will keep you so : never 
 mind what the ticking or the wadding may be made of. There 
 are few things against which I see need to warn you, and not 
 many on which you want advice. You are not profuse in your 
 expenditure ; yet as you, like most of the studious, are inattentive 
 to money-affairs, let me guard you against evils following on this 
 negligence, worse than the negligence itself. Whenever a young 
 man is remarked for it, a higher price is fixed on what he pur- 
 chases ; and dishonest men of every description push themselves 
 into his service, and often acquire his confidence, not only to the 
 injury of his fortune, but likewise of his credit and respectability. 
 Let a gentleman be known to have been cheated of twenty pounds, 
 and it costs him forty a-year for the remainder of his life. There- 
 fore, if you detect the cheat, the wisest thing is to conceal it ; 
 both for fear of the rogues about your sideboard, and of those 
 more dexterous ones round the green cloth, under the judge, in 
 your county assize-room. 
 
 You will become an author ere long ; and every author must 
 attend to the means of conveying his information. The plainness 
 of your style is suitable to your manners and your studies. Avoid, 
 which many grave men have not done, words taken from sacred 
 subjects and from elevated poetry : these we have seen vilely pro- 
 stituted. Avoid too the society of the barbarians who misemploy 
 therp : they are vain, irreverent, and irreclaimable to right feelings. 
 
154 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 The dialogues of Galileo, which you have been studying, are 
 written with much propriety and precision. I do not urge you 
 to write in dialogue, although the best writers of every age have 
 done it ; the best parts of Homer and Milton are speeches and 
 replies ; the best parts of every great historian are the same : the 
 wisest men of Athens and of Rome converse together in this 
 manner, as they are shown to us by Xenophon, by Plato, and by 
 Cicero. Whether you adopt such a form of composition, — ^which, 
 if your opinions are new, will protect you in part from the hostility 
 all novelty (unless it is vicious) excites, — or whether you choose 
 to go along the unbroken surface of the didactic, never look 
 abroad for any kind of ornament. Apollo, either as the god of 
 day or the slayer of Python, had nothing about him to obscure 
 his clearness or to impede his strength. To one of your mild 
 manners, it would be superfluous to recommend equanimity in com- 
 petition, and calmness in controversy. How easy is it for the 
 plainest things to be misinterpreted by men not unwise, which a 
 calm disquisition sets right ! — and how fortunate and opportune is 
 it to find in ourselves that calmness which almost the wisest have 
 wanted, on urgent and grave occasions ! If others for a time 
 are preferred to you, let your heart lie sacredly still ; and you will 
 hear from it the true and plain oracle, that not for ever will the 
 magistracy of letters allow the rancid transparencies of coarse 
 colormen to stand before your propylsea. It is time that Philosophy 
 should have her share in our literature ; that the combinations and 
 appearances of matter be scientifically considered and luminously 
 displayed. Frigid conceits on theological questions, heaps of snow 
 on barren crags, compose at present the greater part of our domain : 
 volcanoes of politics burst forth from time to time, and vary, 
 without enlivening, the scene. 
 
 Do not fear to be less rich in the productions of your mind at 
 one season than at another. Marshes are always marshes, and 
 pools are pools ; but the sea, in those places where we admire it 
 most, is sometimes sea and sometimes dry land ; sometimes it brings 
 ships into port, and sometimes it leaves them where they can be 
 refitted and equipped. The capacious mind neither rises nor sinks, 
 neither labors nor rests, in vain. Even in those intervals when it 
 loses the consciousness of its powers, when it swims as it were in 
 vacuity, and feels not what is external nor internal, it acquires or 
 
Barrow «pd Newton. 155 
 
 recovers strength, as tlie body does by sleep. Never try to say 
 things admirably ; 21 try only to say them plainly; for your business 
 is with the considerate philosopher, and not with the polemical 
 assembly. If a thing can be demonstrated two ways, demonstrate 
 it in both : one will please this man best, the other that ; and 
 pleasure, if obvious and unsought, is never to be neglected by those 
 appointed from above to lead us into knowledge. Many will 
 readily mount stiles and gates to walk along a footpath in a field, 
 whom the very sight of a bare public road would disincline and 
 weary ; and yet the place whereto they travel lies at the end of 
 each. Your studies are of a nature unsusceptible of much decora- 
 tion : otherwise it would be my duty and my care to warn you 
 against it, not merely as idle and unnecessary, but as obstructing 
 your intent. The fond of wine are little fond of the sweet or of 
 the new : the fond of learning are no fonder of its must than of 
 its dregs. Something of the severe hath always been appertaining 
 to order and to grace ; and the beauty that is not too liberal is 
 sought the most ardently and loved the longest. The Graces 
 have their zones, and Venus her cestus. In the writings of the 
 philosopher are the frivolities of ornament the most ill-placed ; in 
 you would they be particularly, who, promising to lay open before 
 us an infinity of worlds, should turn aside to display the petals of a 
 double pink. 
 
 It is dangerous to have any intercourse or dealing with small 
 authors. They are as troublesome to handle, as easy to discom- 
 pose, as difficult to pacify, and leave as unpleasant marks on you, 
 as small children. Cultivate on the other hand the society and 
 friendship of the higher ; first, that you may learn to reverence 
 them, which of itself is both a pleasure and a virtue ; and then, that 
 on proper occasions you may defend them against the malevolent, 
 which is a duty. And this duty cannot be well and satisfactorily per- 
 formed with an imperfect knowledge, or with an inadequate esteem. 
 Habits of respect to our superiors are among the best we can attain, 
 if we only remove from our bosom the importunate desire of un- 
 worthy advantages from them. They belong to the higher depart- 
 ment of justice, and will procure for us in due time our portion of 
 it. Beside, O Isaac! in this affair our humanity is deeply con- 
 
 [-1 For " admirably " ist ed. reads " well " ; for " plainly " ist ed. read? 
 •' clearly."] 
 
156 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 cerned. Think how gratifying, how consolatory, how all-sufficient, 
 are the regards and attentions of such wise and worthy men as 
 you to those whom inferior but more powerful ones, some in 
 scarlet, some in pui-ple, some (it may be) in ermine, vilify or 
 neglect ! Many are there to whom we are now indifferent, or 
 nearly, whom, if we had approached them as we ought to have 
 done, we should have cherished, loved, and honored. Let not 
 this reflection, which on rude and unequal minds may fall without 
 form and features and pass away like the idlest cloud-shadow, be 
 lost on you. Old literary men, beside age and experience, have 
 another quality in common with Nestor : they, in the literature 
 of the country, are praisers of times past, partly from moroseness, 
 and partly from custom and conviction. The illiterate, on the 
 contrary, raise higher than the steeples, and dress up in the 
 gaudiest trim, a maypole of their own, and dance round it while 
 any rag flutters. So tenacious are Englishmen of their opinions, 
 that they would rather lose their franchises and almost their lives. 
 And this tenacity hath not its hold upon letters only, but likewise 
 upon whatever is public. I have witnessed it in men guilty of 
 ingratitude, of fraud, of peculation, of prevarication, of treachery 
 to friends, of insolence to patrons, of misleading of colleagues, of 
 abandonment of party, of renunciation of principles, of arrogance 
 to honester men and wiser, of humiliation to strumpets for the 
 obtainment of place and profit, of every villany in short which 
 unfits not only for the honors of public, but rejects from the 
 confidence of private, life. And there have been people so 
 maddened by faction, that they would almost have erected a 
 monument to such persons, hoping to spite and irritate their 
 adversaries, and unconscious or heedless that the inscription must 
 be their own condemnation. Those who have acted in this 
 manner will repent of it ; but they will hate you for ever if you 
 foretell them of their repentance. It is not the fact nor the 
 consequence, it is the motive, that turns and pinches them ; and 
 they would think it straightforward and natural to cry out against 
 you, and a violence and a malady to cry out against themselves. 
 The praises they have given they will maintain, and more firmly 
 than if they were due ; as perjurers stick to perjury more hotly 
 than the veracious to truth. Supposing there should be any day 
 of your life unoccupied by study, there will not be one without 
 
Barrow and Newton. 157 
 
 an argument why parties, literary or political, should be avoided. 
 You are too great to be gregarious ; and were you to attempt it, 
 the gregarious in a mass would turn their heads against you. 
 The greater who enter into public life are disposed at last to quit 
 it : retirement •with dignity is their device ; the meaning of which 
 is, retirement with as much of the public property as can be 
 amassed and carried away. This race of great people is very 
 numerous. I want before I die to see one or two ready to 
 believe, and to act on the belief, that there is as much dignity in 
 retiring soon as late, with little as with loads, with quiet minds 
 and consciences as with ulcerated or discomposed. 1 have 
 already seen some hundred sectaries of that pugnacious pope, who, 
 being reminded that Christ commanded Peter to put up his sword, 
 replied, " Yes, when he had cut the ear off." 
 
 To be in right harmony, the soul not only must be never out 
 of time, but must never lose sight of the theme its Creator's hand 
 hath noted. 
 
 Why are you peeping over your forefinger into those pages 
 near the beginning of the volume ? 
 
 Newton. I have omitted the notice of several Essays. 
 
 Barrow. There are many that require no observation for 
 peculiarities ; though perhaps there is not one that any other man 
 could have written. 
 
 Newton. I had something more, sir, to say— or rather — I 
 had something more, sir, to ask — about Friendship. 
 
 Barrow. All men, but the studious above all, must beware 
 in the formation of it. Advice or caution on this subject comes 
 immaturely and ungracefully from the young, exhibiting a proof 
 either of temerity or suspicion ; but when you hear it from a man 
 of my age, who has been singularly fortunate in the past, and 
 foresees the same felicity in those springing up before hira, you 
 may accept it as the direction of a calm observer, telling you all he 
 has remarked on the greater part of a road which he has nearly 
 gone through, and which you have but just entered. Never take 
 into your confidence, or admit often into your company, any man 
 who does not know, on some important subject, more than you 
 do. Be his rank, be his virtues, what they may, he will be 
 a hindrance to your pursuits, and an obstruction to your greatness. 
 If indeed the greatness were such as courts can bestow, and such 
 
158 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 as can be laid on the shoulders of a groom and make him look 
 like the rest of the company, my advice would be misplaced; 
 but since all transcendent, all true and genuine greatness must be 
 of a man's own raising, and only on the foundation that the hand 
 of God has laid, do not let any touch it : keep them off civilly, 
 but keep them off. Affect no stoicism ; display no indifference : 
 let their coin pass current ; but do not you exchange for it the 
 purer ore you carry, nor think the milling pays for the alloy. 
 Greatly favored and blessed by Providence will you be, if you 
 should in your lifetime be known for what you are : the contrary, 
 if you should be transformed. 
 
 Neivton. Better and more decorous would it be perhaps, if I 
 filled up your pause with my reflections : but you always have 
 permitted me to ask you questions ; and now, unless my gratitude 
 misleads me, you in^te it. 
 
 Barrovi. Ask me any thing : I will answer it, if I can ; and 
 I will pardon you, as I have often done, if you puzzle me. 
 
 Newton. Is it not a difficult and a painful thing to repulse, or 
 to receive ungraciously, the advances of friendship ? 
 
 Barroiv. It withers the heart, if indeed his heart were ever 
 sound who doth it. Love, serve, run into danger, venture life, 
 for him who would cherish you : give him every thing but your 
 time and your glory. Morning recreations, convivial meals, 
 evening walks, thoughts, questions, wishes, wants, partake with 
 him. Yes, Isaac ! there are men bom for friendship ; men to 
 whom the cultivation of it is nature, is necessity, as the making of 
 honey is to bees. Do not let them suffer for the sweets they 
 would gather ; but do not think to live upon those sweets. Our 
 corrupted state requires robuster food, or must grow more and 
 more unsound. 
 
 Newton. I would yet say something ; a few words ; on this 
 subject — or one next to it. 
 
 Barronv. On Expense then : that is the next. I have given 
 you some warning about it, and hardly know what else to say. 
 Cannot you find the place ? 
 
 Newton. I had it under my hand. If — that is, provided— 
 your time, sir! — 
 
 Barrow. Speak it out, man ! Are you in a ship of Marcellus 
 under the mirror of Archimedes, that you fiune and redden so ? 
 
Walton, Cotton, and Oldways. 159 
 
 Cry to him that you are his scholar, and went out only to 
 parley. 
 
 Neiuton. Sir ! in a word — ought a studious man to think of 
 matrimony ? 
 
 Barroiv. Painters, poets, mathematicians, never ought : other 
 studious men, after reflecting for twenty years upon it, may. Had 
 I a son of your age, I would not leave him in a grazing country. 
 Many a man hath been safe among cornfields, who falls a victim 
 on the grass under an elm. There are lightnings very fatal in such 
 places. 
 
 Neiuton. Supposing me no mathematician, I must reflect then 
 for twenty years ! 
 
 Barroiv. Begin to reflect on it after the twenty ; and continue 
 to reflect on it all the remainder : I mean at intervals, and quite 
 leisurely. It will save to you many prayers, and may suggest to 
 you one thanksgiving. 
 
 XVI. WALTON, COTTON, AND OLDWAYS.i 
 
 Walton. God be with thee and preserve thee, old Ashbourne ! 
 Thou art verily the pleasantest place upon his earth ; I mean 
 from May-day till Michaelmas. Son Cotton, let us tarry a little 
 here upon the bridge. Did you ever see greener meadows than 
 these on either hand ? And what says that fine lofty spire upon 
 the left, a trowling-line's cast from us ? It says methinks, 
 " Blessed be the Lord for this bounty : come hither and repeat 
 it beside me." How my jade winces ! I wish the strawberry- 
 spotted trout, and ash-colored grayling under us, had the bree 
 that plagues thee so, my merry wench ! Look, my son, at the 
 great venerable house opposite. You know these parts as well as 
 
 P The character of Mr Oldways in this Conversation is imaginary, or 
 ratlier his association with Walton and Cotton is. See note on p. 165. 
 The poems attributed to Donne are, of course, from Landor's own pen, 
 and Margaret Hayes is equally a creature of fancy. The facts of Donne's 
 life are taken from Walton's life. The reader of Charles Cotton's poems 
 may find it hard to believe that he was as ingenuous a youth as Landor 
 paints him. (Imag. Convers., v., 18x9. Works, i., 1846. Works, iv. 
 1876.)] 
 
i6o Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 I do, or better ; are you acquainted with the worthy who lives 
 over there ? 
 
 Cotton. I cannot say I am.^ 
 
 Walton. You shall be then. He has resided here forty-five 
 years, and knew intimately our good Doctor Donne, and (I hear) 
 hath some of his verses, written when he was a stripling or little 
 better, the which we come after. 
 
 Cotton. That, I imagine, must be he ! — the man in black, 
 walking above the house. 
 
 Walton. Truly said on both counts. Willy Oldways, 
 sure enough ; and he doth walk above his house-top. The 
 gardens here, you observe, overhang the streets. 
 
 Cotton. Ashbourne, to my mind, is the prettiest town in 
 England. 
 
 Walton. And there is nowhere between Trent and Tweed 
 a sweeter stream for the trout, I do assure you, than the one our 
 horses are bestriding. Those, in my opinion, were very wise men 
 who consecrated certain streams to the Muses : I know not 
 whether I can say so much of those who added the mountains. 
 Whenever I am beside a river or rivulet on a sunny day, and think 
 a little while, and let images warm into life about me, and joyous 
 sounds increase and multiply in their innocence, the sun looks 
 brighter and feels warmer, and I am readier to live, and less 
 unready to die. 
 
 Son Cotton I these light idle brooks. 
 
 Peeping into so many nooks, 
 
 Yet have not for their idlest wave 
 
 The leisure you may think they have: 
 
 No, not the little ones that run 
 
 And hide behind the first big stone, 
 
 When they have squirted in the eye 
 
 Of their next neighbor passing by ; 
 
 Nor yonder curly sideling fellow 
 
 Of tones than Pan's own flute more mellow, 
 
 Who learns his tune and tries it over 
 
 As girl who fain would please her lover 
 
 Something has each of them to say ; 
 
 He says it and then runs away, 
 
 And says it in another place, 
 
 Continuing the unthrifty chase, 
 
 ['First ed reads: " am tho' he visits my relatives when he rides so far."] 
 
Walton, Cotton, and Oldways. i6i 
 
 We have as many tales to tell, 
 
 And look as gay and run as well, 
 
 But leave another to pursue 
 
 What we had promised we would do ; 
 
 Till in the order God has fated. 
 
 One after one precipitated, 
 
 Whether we •would on, or would not on, 
 
 Just like these idle waves, son Cotton ! 
 
 And now I have taken you by surprise, I will have (finished or 
 unfinished) the verses you snatched out of my hand, and promised 
 me another time, when you awoke this morning. 
 
 Cotton. If s you must have them, here they are. 
 
 Walton {reads). 
 
 Rocks under Okeover park-paling 
 Better than Ashbourne suit the grayling. 
 Reckless of people springs the trout, 
 Tossing his vacant head about, 
 And his distinction-stars, as one 
 Not to be touched but looked upon. 
 And smirks askance, as who should say 
 " I'd lay now (if I e'er did lay) 
 The brightest fly that shines above. 
 You know not what Vm thinking of; 
 What ^ou are, I can plainly tell 
 And so, my gentles, fare ye well t " 
 
 Heigh ! heigh ! what have we here ? — a* double hook with a 
 bait upon each side. Faith ! son Cotton, if my friend Oldways 
 had seen these, — not the verses I have been reading, but these 
 others I have run over in silence, — he would have reproved me, 
 in his mild amicable way, for my friendship with one who, at 
 two-and-twenty, could either know so much or invent so much 
 about a girl. He remarked to me, the last time we met, that our 
 climate was more backward and our youth more forward than 
 anciently ; and, taking out a newspaper from under the cushion of 
 his arm-chair, showed me a paragraph, with a cross in red ink, and 
 seven or eight marks of admiration, — some on one side, some on 
 the other, — in which there was mention made of a female servant, 
 
 P From " If " to '■' {readi) " (2 lines) added in 2nd ed.] 
 [* From " a " to « side " added in 2nd ed. One line below, from " not " 
 to " silence " (2 lines) added in 2nd ed.J 
 
1 62 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 who, hardly seventeen years old, charged her master's son, who was 
 barely two older — 
 
 Cotton. Nonsense ! nonsense ! impossible ! 
 
 Walton. Why, he himself seemed to express a doubt ; for 
 beneath was written, " Qu., if perjured — which God forbid ! 
 May all turn out to his glory ! " 
 
 Cotton. But really I do not recollect that paper of mine, if 
 mine it be, which* appears to have stuck against the Okeover 
 paling lines. 
 
 Walton. Look ! they are both on the same scrap. Truly, 
 son, there are girls here and there who might have said as much 
 as thou, their proctor, hast indicted for them : they have such 
 froward tongues in their heads, some of them. A breath keeps 
 them in motion, like a Jew's harp, God knows how long. If 
 you do not or will not recollect the verses on this endorsement, I 
 will read them again, and aloud. 
 
 Cotton. Pray do not balk your fancy. 
 
 Walton {reads). 
 
 Where * 's my apron ? I will gather 
 
 Daffodils and kingcups, rather 
 
 Than have fifty silly souls, 
 
 False as cats and dull as owls, 
 
 Looking up into my eyes 
 
 And half-blinding me with sighs. 
 
 Cats, forsooth ! Owls, and cry you mercy ! Have ^ they no 
 better words than those for civil people ? Did any young woman 
 really use the expressions, bating the metre, or can you have 
 contrived them out of pure likelihood ? 
 
 Cotton. I will not gratify your curiosity at present. 
 
 [' From " which " to " lines " and "look" to "scrap" added in 2nd 
 ed. Two lines below, from " as thou " to " them " added in 2nd ed. One 
 line below, from " God " to « (reads) " (5 lines) added in 2nd ed.] 
 
 [" First ed. reads : 
 
 " In my bosom I would rather 
 Daffodils and kingcups gather, 
 Than have fifty sighing souls 
 False as cats and dull as owls.* 
 
 Last couplet added in 2nd ed.] 
 
 F From " Have " to " then " (5 lines) added in 2nd ed ] 
 
Walton, Cotton, and Oldways. 163 
 
 Walton. Anon, then. 
 
 Here I stretch myself along, 
 Tell a tale or sing a song, 
 By my cousin Sue or Bet — 
 And, for dinner here I get 
 Strawberries, curds, or what I pleaae, 
 With my bread upon my knees ; 
 And, when I have had enough. 
 Shake, and olF to blind-man's-buff? 
 
 Spoken in the character of a maiden, it seem?, who little 
 knows, in her innocence, that blind-man's-buff' is a perilous 
 game. 
 
 P First ed. adds the following four lines : 
 
 " Which I cannot do if they 
 Ever come across my way, 
 They so puzzle me ! . . that tongue 
 Always makes one cry out wrong 1 " 
 
 A note is appended to these verses in the ist ed, whose application it 
 is somewhat hard to discover. 
 
 " I cannot but think that I am indebted to a beautiful little poem of 
 Redi, for the train of these ideas, though without a consciousness of it 
 while I was writing. His sonnets are among the worst in the language : 
 there is but one exception. I am likely to be a bad translator ; and 
 moreover I must inform the reader that I am designedly an unfaithful one 
 in the second line, of which the literal and entire version is " who pas 
 thro' Pify-ifrcct." I have taken the elegiac measure as more becoming 
 the subject. 
 
 " Ye gentle souls, ye tenderer of the fair 
 
 Who, passing by, to Pity's voice incline, 
 
 O, stay a while and hear me ! then declare 
 
 If there was ever grief that equal'd mine. 
 
 " There was a woman to whose hallowed breast 
 
 Faith had retired, and Honour fixed his throne — 
 Pride, tho' upheld by Virtue, she repressed, 
 Ye gentle souls, that woman was my own 
 
 " Her form was fill'd with beauty, from her face ; 
 Grace was in all she did, in all she said, 
 Grace in her pleasures, in her sorrows grace — 
 Ye gentle souls, that gentle soul is fled 1 " 
 
 From " spoken " to " church " (4 lines) added in 2nd ed. First ed 
 reads: "In the chuich, to our right, lie the Coekaynes. Whole," &c.J 
 
164 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 You are looking, I perceive, from ofF the streamlet toward the 
 church. In its chancel lie the first and last of the Cockaynes. 
 Whole races of men have been exterminated by war and pestil- 
 ence ; families and names have slipped down and lost themselves 
 by slow and imperceptible decay : but I doubt whether any breed 
 of fish, with heron and otter and angler in pursuit of it, hath 
 been extinguished since the Heptarchy. They might humble 
 our pride a whit, methinks, though they hold their tongues. 
 The people here entertain a strange prejudice against the nine- 
 eyes. 
 
 Cotton. What, in the name of wonder, is that ? 
 
 Walton. At your years, do not you know ? It is a tiny kind 
 of lamprey, a finger long ; it sticketh to the stones by its sucker, 
 and, if you are not warier and more knowing than folks in general 
 from the South, you might take it for a weed : it wriggles its 
 whole body to and fro so regularly, and is of that dark color 
 which subaqueous weeds are often of, as though they were wet 
 through ; which they are not any more than land-weeds, if one 
 may believe young Doctor Plott, who told me so in confidence. 
 
 Hold my mare, son Cotton. I wiU try whether my whip can 
 reach the window, when I have mounted the bank. 
 
 Cotton. Curious ! the middle of a street to be lower than the 
 side by several feet. People would not believe it in London 
 orHuU. 
 
 Walton. Ho ! lass ! tell the good parson, your master, or 
 his wife if she be nearer at hand, that two friends would dine 
 with him : Charles Cotton, kinsman of Mistress Cotton of the 
 Peak, and his humble servant, Izaak Walton. 
 
 Girl. If you are come, gentles, to dine with my master, I 
 will make another kidney-pudding first, while I am about it, and 
 then tell him ; not but we have enough and to spare, yet master 
 and mistress love to see plenty, and to welcome with no such 
 peacods as words. 
 
 Walton. Go, thou hearty jade ; trip it, and tell him. 
 
 Cotton. I will answer for it, thy friend is a good soul : ^ I 
 perceive it in the heartiness and alacrity of the wench. She 
 glories in his hospitality, and it renders her labor a delight. 
 
 [' First ed. reads : " soul, although I know but little of him and have 
 not met him for years. Walton. He wants," &c.] 
 
Walton, Cotton, and Oldways. 165 
 
 Walton. He wants nothing, yet he keeps the grammar- 
 school, and is ready to receive, as private tutor, any young 
 gentleman in preparation for Oxford or Cambridge ; but only 
 one. They live like princes, converse like friends, and part like 
 lovers.* 
 
 Cotton. Here he comes : I never saw such a profusion of 
 snow-white hair. 
 
 Walton. Let us go up and meet him. 
 
 Old'ways. Welcome, my friends ! will you walk back into 
 the house, or sit awhile in the shade here ? 
 
 Walton. We will sit down in the grass, on each side of your 
 arm-chair, good master William. Why, how is this ? here are 
 tulips and other flowers by the thousand growing out of the turf. 
 You are all of a piece, my sunny saint : you are always concealing 
 the best things about you, except your counsel, your raisin-wine, 
 and your money. 
 
 Oldnuays. The garden was once divided by borders. A 
 young gentleman, my private pupil, was fond of leaping : his 
 heels ruined my choicest flowers, ten or twenty at a time. I 
 remonstrated: he patted me on the shoulder, and said, "My dear 
 Mr Oldways, in these borders if you miss a flower you are uneasy ; 
 now, if the whole garden were in turf, you would be delighted to 
 discover one. Turf it then, and leave the flowers to grow or not 
 to grow, as may happen." I mentioned it to my wife: "Suppose 
 we do," said she. It was done ; and the boy's remark, I have 
 found by experience, is true. 
 
 Walton. You have some very nice flies about the trees here, 
 friend Oldways. Charles, do prythee lay thy hand upon that 
 green one. He has it ! he has it ! bravely done, upon my life ! 
 I never saw any thing achieved so admirably — not a wing nor an 
 antenna the worse for it. Put him into this box. Thou art 
 caught, but shalt catch others : lie softly. 
 
 * I pay this tribute to my worthy old tutor, Mr Langley of Ashbourne, 
 under whose tuition I passed a year between Rugby and Oxford. He 
 would take only one private pupil, and never liad but me. The kindness 
 of him and his wife to me was parental. They died nearly together, about 
 five-and-twenty years ago. Never was a youth blest with three such 
 indulgent and affectionate private tutors as I was : before, by the elegant 
 and generous Doctor John Sleath, at Rugby ; and, after, by the saintly 
 Benwell, at Oxford.— W. S. L. 
 
1 66 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Cotton. The transport of Dad Walton will carry him off (1 
 would lay a wager) from the object of his ride. 
 
 Oldtuays. What was that, sir ? 
 
 Cotton. Old Donne, I suspect, is nothing to such a fly. 
 
 Walton. All things in their season. 
 
 Cotton. Come, I carried the rods in my hand all the way. 
 
 Oldivays. I never could have believed. Master Izaak, that yoii 
 would have trusted your tackle out of your own hand. 
 
 Walton. Without cogent reason, no, indeed : but — let me 
 whisper. 
 
 I told youngster it was because I carried a hunting-whip, and 
 could not hold that and rod too. But why did I carry it, bethink 
 you ? 
 
 Oldtuays. I cannot guess. 
 
 Walton. I must come behind your chair and whisper softlier. 
 I have that in my pocket which might make the dogs inquisitive 
 and troublesome, — a rare paste, of my own invention. When 
 son Cotton sees me draw up gill after gill, and he can do nothing, 
 he will respect me, — not that I have to complain of him as yet, 
 — and he shall know the whole at supper, after ^^ the first day's 
 sport. 
 
 Cotton. Have you asked ? 
 
 Walton. Anon : have patience. 
 
 Cotton. Will no reminding do ? Not a rod or line, or 
 fly of any color, false or true, shall you have. Dad Izaak, 
 before you have made to our kind host here your intended 
 application. 
 
 Oldtuays. No ceremony with me, I desire. Speak, and 
 have. 
 
 Walton. Oldways, I think you were curate to Master 
 Donne ? 
 
 Oldtuays. When I was first in holy orders, and ^ he was 
 ready for another world. 
 
 Walton. I have heard it reported that you have some of his 
 earlier poetry. 
 
 Oldtuays. I have (I believe) a trifle or two ; but, if he were 
 living, he would not wish them to see the light. 
 
 [ID From " after " to " sport " added in 2nd ed.] 
 [" From "and " to "world " added in 2nd ed.J 
 
Walton, Cotton, and Oldways. 167 
 
 Walton. Why not ? — he had nothing to fear : his fame was 
 established ; and he was a discreet and holy man. 
 
 Oldnuays. He was almost in his boyhood when he wrote 
 it, being but in his twenty-third year, and subject to fits of 
 love. 
 
 Cotton. This passion, then, cannot have had for its object 
 the daughter of Sir George More, whom he saw not until 
 afterward. 
 
 Oldways. No, nor was that worthy lady called Margaret, 
 as was this ; who scattered so many pearls in his path, he was 
 wont to say, that he trod uneasily on them, and could never skip 
 them. 
 
 Walton. Let us look at them in his poetry. 
 
 Old-ways. I know not whether he would consent thereto, were 
 he living, the lines running so totally on the amorous. 
 
 Walton. Faith and troth ! we mortals are odd fishes. We 
 care not how many see us in choler, when we rave and bluster 
 and make as much noise and bustle as we can ; but if the kindest 
 and most generous affection comes across us, we suppress every 
 sign of it, and hide ourselves in nooks and coverts. Out with 
 the drawer, my dear Oldways : we have seen Donne's sting ; in 
 justice to him, let us now have a sample of his honey. 
 
 Oldiuays. Strange that you never asked me before. 
 
 Walton. I am fain to write his life, now one can sit by 
 Dove-side and hold the paper upon one's knee, without fear 
 that some unlucky catchpole of a rheumatism tip one upon 
 the shoulder. I have many things to say in Donne's favor: 
 let me add to them, by your assistance, that he not only 
 loved well and truly, as was proved in his marriage, — though 
 like a good angler he changed his fly, and did not at all seasons 
 cast his rod over the same water, — ^but that his heart opened early 
 to the genial affections ; that his satire was only the overflowing 
 of his wit ; that he made it administer to his duties ; that he 
 ordered it to officiate as he would his curate, and perform half 
 the service of the church for him. 
 
 Cotton. Pray, who was the object of his affections ? 
 
 Oldways. The damsel was Mistress Margaret Hayes. 
 
 Cotton. I am curious to know, if you will indulge my 
 curiosity, what figure of a woman she might be. 
 
1 68 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Oldmiays. She was of lofty stature, red-haired (which some 
 folks dislike), but with comely white eyebrows, a very slender 
 transparent i^ nose, and elegantly thin lips, covering with due 
 astringency a treasure of pearls beyond price, which, as her lover 
 would have it, she never ostentatiously displayed. Her chin was 
 somewhat long, with what I should have simply called a sweet 
 dimple in it, quite proportionate : but Donne said it was more 
 than dimple ; that it was peculiar ; that her angelic face could not 
 have existed without it, nor it without her angelic face, — that is, 
 unless by a new dispensation. He was much taken thereby, and 
 mused upon it deeply : calling it in moments of joyousness the 
 cradle of all sweet fancies, and, in hours of suffering from her 
 sedateness, the vale of death. 
 
 Walton. So ingenious are men when the spring torrent 
 of passion shakes up and carries away their thoughts, covering 
 (as it were) the green meadow of still homely life with pebbles 
 and shingle, — some colorless and obtuse, some sharp and spark- 
 ling. 
 
 Cotton. I hope he was happy in her at last. 
 
 Oldiuays. Ha ! ^^ ha ! here we have 'em. Strong lines ! 
 Happy, no ; he was not happy. He was forced to renounce her, 
 by what he then called his evil destiny ; and wishing, if not to 
 forget her, yet to assuage his grief under the impediments to their 
 union, he made a voyage to Spain and the Azores with the Earl 
 of Essex. When this passion first blazed .out he was in his 
 twentieth year ; for the physicians do tell us that where the 
 genius is ardent the passions are precocious. The lady had pro- 
 fited by many more seasons than he had, and carried with her 
 manifestly the fruits of circumspection. No benefice falling unto 
 him, nor indeed there being fit preparation, she submitted to the 
 will of Providence. Howbeit, he could not bring his mind to 
 reason until ten years after, when he married the daughter of the 
 worshipful Sir George More. 
 
 Cotton. I do not know whether the arduous step of matri- 
 mony, on which many a poor fellow has broken his shin, is a 
 step geometrically calculated for bringing us to reason ; but 
 
 [12 First ed. reads : " veiy slender nose, and thin lips. Her chin," &c.1 
 [13 From " Ha ! " to " obtrusively " (30 lines) added in 2nd ed.] 
 
Walton, Cotton, and Oldways. 169 
 
 I have seen passion run up it in a minute, and down it in half a 
 one. 
 
 OMivays. Young gentleman ! my patron the doctor was none 
 of the light-hearted and oblivious. 
 
 Cotton. Truly I should think it a hard matter to forget such a 
 beauty as his muse and his chaplain have described ; at least if one 
 had ever stood upon the brink of matrimony with her. It is 
 allowable, I hope, to be curious concerning the termination of so 
 singular an attachment. 
 
 Oldtuays. She would listen to none other. 
 
 Cotton. Surely she must have had good ears to have heard one. 
 
 Oldiuays. No pretender had the hardihood to come forward 
 too obtrusively. Donne had the misfortune, as he then thought 
 it, to outlive her, after a courtship of about five years, which 
 enabled him to contemplate her ripening beauties at leisure, and to 
 bend over the opening flowers of her virtues and accomplishments. 
 Alas ! they were lost to the world (unless by example) in her 
 forty-seventh spring. 
 
 Cotton. He might then leisurely bend over them, and quite 
 as easily shake the seed out as smell them. Did she refuse him, 
 then? 
 
 Oldiuays. He dared not ask her. 
 
 Cotton. Why, verily, I should have boggled at that said vale 
 (I think) myself. 
 
 Oldtuays. Izaak! our young friend Master Cotton is not 
 sedate enough yet, I suspect, for a right view and perception of 
 poetry. I doubt whether these affecting verses on her loss will 
 move him greatly ; somewhat, yes : there is in the beginning so 
 much simplicity, in the middle so much reflection, in the close so 
 much grandeur and sublimity, no scholar can peruse them without 
 strong emotion. Take, and read them. 
 
 Cotton. Come, come ; do not keep them to yourself, dad ! I 
 have the heart of a man, and will bear the recitation as valiantly 
 as may be. 
 
 Walton. I will read aloud the best stanza only. What strong 
 
 language ! 
 
 " Her one hair would hold a dragon, 
 Her one eye would burn an earth : 
 Fall, my tears ! fill each your flagon ! 
 Millions fall ! A dearth 1 a dearth ! " 
 
170 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Cotton. The doctor must have been desperate about the fair 
 Margaret. 
 
 Walton. His verses are fine, indeed : one feels for him, poor 
 man ! 
 
 Cotton. And wishes him nearer to Stourbridge, or some other 
 glass-furnace. He must have been at great charges. 
 
 Oldivays. Lord help the youth! Tell him, Izaak, that is 
 poetical, and means nothing. 
 
 Walton. He has an inkling of it, I misgive me. 
 
 Cotton. How could he write so smoothly in his affliction, 
 when he exhibited nothing of the same knack afterward ? 
 
 Walton. I don't know ; unless it may be that men's verses, 
 like their knees, stiffen by age.^* 
 
 Oldways. I do like vastly your glib verses ; but you cannot 
 be at once easy and majestical. 
 
 Walton. It is only our noble rivers that enjoy this privilege. 
 The greatest conqueror in the world never had so many triumphal 
 arches erected to him as our middlesized brooks have. 
 
 Oldways. Now, Master Izaak, by your leave, I do think you 
 are wrong in calling them triumphal. The ancients would have 
 it that arches over waters were signs of subjection 
 
 Walton. The ancients may have what they will, excepting 
 your good company for the evening, which (please God!) we 
 shall keep to ourselves. They were mighty people for subjection 
 and subjugation. 
 
 Oldivays. Virgil says, " Pontem indignatus Araxes." 
 
 Walton. Araxes was testy enough imder it, I dare to aver. 
 But what have you to say about the matter, son Cotton ? 
 
 Cotton. I dare not decide either against my father or mine 
 host. 
 
 Oldways. So, we are yet no friends. 
 
 Cotton. Under favor, then, I would say that we but acknow- 
 ledge the power of rivers and runlets in bridging them ; for 
 without so doing we could not pass. We are obliged to offer 
 them a crown or diadem as the price of their acquiescence. 
 
 Oldways. Rather do I think that we are feudatory to them 
 much in the same manner as the dukes of Normandy were to the 
 
 \}* First ed. reads : " age. Cotton. One would wish the stiffness some- 
 where else. Oldivays. Ay, truly, I do like," &c.] 
 
Walton, Cotton, and Oldways. 171 
 
 kings of France ; pulling them out of their beds, or making them 
 lie narrowly and uneasily therein. 
 
 Walton. Is that between thy fingers. Will, another piece of 
 honest old Donne's poetry ? 
 
 Oldivays. Yes ; these and one other are the only pieces I 
 have kept : for we often throw away or neglect, in the lifetime of 
 our friends, those things which in some following age are searched 
 after through all the libraries in the world. What ^^ I am about 
 to read he composed in the meridian heat of youth and genius. 
 
 " She was so beautiful, had God but died 
 
 For her, and none beside. 
 Reeling with holy joy from east to west 
 
 Earth would have sunk down blest ; 
 And, burning with bright zeal, the buoyant Sun 
 
 Cried through his worlds, ' Well done ! ' " 
 
 He must have had an eye on the Psalmist; for I would not 
 asseverate that he was inspired. Master Walton, in the theological 
 sense of the word ; but I do verily believe I discover here a 
 thread of the mantle. 
 
 Cotton. And with enough of the nap on it to keep him hot 
 as a muffin when one slips the butter in. 
 
 Oldiuays. True. Nobody would dare to speak thus but 
 from authority. The Greeks and Romans, he remarked, had 
 neat baskets, but scanty simples ; and did not press them down 
 so closely as they might have done, and were fonder of nosegays 
 than of sweet-pots. He told me the rose of Paphos was of one 
 species, the rose of Sharon of another. Whereat he burst forth 
 to the purpose, — 
 
 " Rather give me the lasting rose of Sharon : 
 But dip it in the oil that oil'd thy beard, O Aaron 1 " 
 
 Nevertheless, I could perceive that he was of so equal a mind that he 
 liked them equally in their due season. These majestical verses — 
 
 Cotton. I am anxious to hear the last of 'em. 
 
 Oldiuays. No wonder : and I will joyfully gratify so laudable 
 a wish. He wrote this among the earliest : — 
 
 " Juno was proud, Minerva stern, 
 Venus would rather toy than learn : 
 What fault is there in Margaret Hayes ? 
 Her high disdain and pointed stays." 
 
 ps From " What " to " wish " (28 lines) added in 2nd ed.] 
 
172 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 I do not know whether, it being near our dinner-time, I ought to 
 enter so deeply as I could into a criticism on it, which the doctor 
 himself, in a single evening, taught me how to do. Charley is 
 rather of the youngest ; but I will be circumspect. That Juno 
 was proud may be learned from Virgil. The following passages 
 in him and other Latin poets — 
 
 Cotton. We will examine them all after dinner, my dear 
 sir. 
 
 Oldways. The nights are not mighty long ; but we shall find 
 time, I trust. 
 
 " Minerva stern." 
 
 Excuse me a moment: my Homer is in the study, and my 
 memory is less exact than it was formerly. 
 
 Cotton. Oh, my good Mr Oldways ! do not let us lose a 
 single moment of your precious company. Doctor Donne could 
 require no support from these heathens, when he had the dean 
 and chapter on his side. 
 
 Oldways. A few parallel passages. — One would wish to 
 write as other people have written. 
 
 Cotton. We must sleep at Uttoxeter. 
 
 Oldivays. I hope not. 
 
 Walton. We must, indeed ; and, if we once get into your 
 learning, we shall be carried down the stream without the power 
 even of wishing to mount it. 
 
 Oldiuays. Well, I will draw in, then. 
 
 " Venus would rather toy than learn." 
 
 Now, Master Izaak, does that evince a knowledge of the world, 
 a knowledge of men and manners, or not? In our days we 
 have nothing like it : exquisite wisdom ! Reason and meditate 
 as you ride along, and inform our young friend here how the 
 beautiful trust in their beauty, and how little they learn from 
 experience, and how they trifle and toy. Certainly the Venus 
 here is Venus Urania ; the Doctor would dissertate upon none 
 other; yet even she, being a Venus — the sex is the sex — 
 ay, Izaak ! 
 
 "Her high disdain and pointed stays.'' 
 Volumes and volumes are under these -words. Briefly, he could 
 
Walton, Cotton, and Oldways. 173 
 
 find no other faults in his beloved than the defences of her virgin 
 chastity against his marital and portly ardor. What can be more 
 delicately or more learnedly expressed ! 
 
 Walton. This is the poetry to reason upon from morning to 
 night. 
 
 Cotton, By my conscience is it ! He wrongs it greatly who 
 ventures to talk a word about it, unless after long reflection, or 
 after the instruction of the profound author. 
 
 Oldiuays. Izaak, thou hast a son worthy of thee, or about to 
 become so — ^the son here of thy adoption — ^how grave and 
 thoughtfU ! 
 
 Walton. These verses are testimonials of a fine fancy in 
 Donne ; and I like the man the better who admits Love into 
 his study late and early : for which two reasons I seized the 
 lines at first with some avidity. On second thoughts, however, 
 I doubt whether I shall insert them in my biography, or indeed 
 hint at the origin of them. In the whole story of his marriage 
 with the daughter of Sir George More there is something so 
 sacredly romantic, so full of that which bursts from the tenderest 
 heart and from the purest, that I would admit no other light or 
 landscape to the portraiture. For if there is aught, precedent 
 or subsequent, that offends our view of an admirable character, 
 or intercepts or lessens it, we may surely cast it down and sup- 
 press it, and neither be called injudicious nor disingenuous. I 
 think it no more requisite to note every fit of anger or of love, 
 than to chronicle the returns of a hiccup, or the times a man rubs 
 between his fingers a sprig of sweet brier to extract its smell. 
 Let the character be taken in the complex ; and let the more 
 obvious and best peculiarities be marked plainly and distinctly, or 
 (if those predominate) the worst. These latter I leave to others, 
 of whom the school is fiiU, who like anatomy the better because 
 the subject of their incisions was hanged. When I would sit 
 upon a bank in my angling, I look for the even turf, and do not 
 trust myself so willingly to a rotten stump or a sharp one. I am 
 not among those who, speaking ill of the virtuous, say, " Truth 
 obliges me to confess — ^the interests of learning and of society 
 demand from me — " and such things ; when this truth of theirs 
 is the elder sister of malevolence, and teaches her half her tricks ; 
 and when the interests of learning and of society may be found in 
 
174 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 the printer's ledger, under the author's name, by the side of 
 shillings and pennies. 
 
 Oldiuays. Friend Izaak, you are indeed exempt from all 
 suspicion of malignity ; and I never heard you intimate that you 
 carry in your pocket the letters-patent of society for the manage- 
 ment of her interests in this world below. Verily do I believe 
 that both society and learning will pardon you, though you never 
 talk of pursuing, or exposing, or laying bare, or cutting up ; or 
 employ any other term in their behalf drawn from the woods and 
 forests, the chase and butchery. Donne fell into unhappiness 
 by aiming at espousals with a person of higher condition than 
 himself. 
 
 Walton. His affections happened to alight upon one who was ; 
 and in most cases I would recommend it rather than the con- 
 trary, for the advantage of the children in their manners and in 
 their professions. 
 
 Light and worthless men, I have always observed, choose the 
 society of those who are either much above or much below them ; 
 and, like dust and loose feathers, are rarely to be found in their 
 places. Donne was none such : he loved his equals, and would 
 find them where he could ; when he could not find them, he 
 could sit alone. This seems an easy matter ; and yet, masters, 
 there are more people who could run along a rope from yonder 
 spire to this grass-plot, than can do it. 
 
 Oldiuays. Come, gentles : the girl raps at the garden-gate. I 
 hear the ladle against the lock : dinner waits for us. 
 
 XVII. MACHIAVELLI AND MICHEL-ANGELO 
 BUONARROTI.i 
 
 Michel- Angela. And how do you like my fortificationSj 
 Messer Niccolo ? 
 
 \} For the details of the history of Florence at the date of this Conver- 
 sation, see Villari's Life and Times of Machiavelli, vol. iv., chapter xiv., 
 seq. Only a short sketch can be given here. Clement VII., one of the 
 Medici family, was at this time pope, and the Medici were in power at 
 Florence. Charles V. was on the point of sending into Italy the ex- 
 
Machiavelli and Michel- Angelo. 175 
 
 MachtaveUi. It will easily be taken, Messer Michel-Angelo 
 because there are other points — Bello-squardo, for instance, and 
 the Poggio above Boboli — whence every street and edifice may be 
 cannonaded. 
 
 Michel- Angelo. Surely you do not argue with your wonted 
 precision, my good friend. Because the enemy may occupy those 
 positions and cannonade the city, is that a reason why our fort of 
 Samrainiato should so easily be surrendered I 
 
 Machiavelli. There was indeed a time when such an argu- 
 ment would have been futile ; but that time was when Florence 
 was iTiled by only her own citizens, and when the two factions 
 that devoured her started up with equal alacrity from their prey, 
 and fastened on the invader. But, it being known to Charles 
 that we have neglected to lay in provisions more than sufficient 
 for one year, he will allow our courageous citizens to pelt and 
 scratch and bite his men occasionally for that short time ; after 
 which they must surrender. This policy will leave to him the 
 houses and furniture in good condition, and whatsoever fines and 
 taxes may be imposed will be paid the more easily ; while the 
 Florentines will be able to boast of their courage and perseverance, 
 the French of their patience and clemency. It will be a good 
 example for other people to follow, and many historians will 
 praise both parties : all will praise one. 
 
 I have given my answer to your question ; and I now approve 
 and applaud the skill and solidity with which you construct the 
 works, regretting only that we have neither time to erect the 
 others that are necessary, nor to enroll the countrymen who are 
 equally so for their defence. Charles is a prudent and a patient 
 conqueror, and he knows the temper and the power of each 
 
 pedition which succeeded in sacking Rome, capturing Florence, and mak- 
 ing him master of the whole country. Machiavelli was in the employ- 
 ment of the Medici in Florence, and was appointed chancellor of the 
 curators for the fortification of the city. But before he could make any 
 progress with the work the German army had captured Rome and a 
 revolution in Florence had expelled the Medici. Machiavelli at this 
 time was absent from Florence, and on his return he found a new govern- 
 ment, who regarded him as an adherent of the Medici, and refused to 
 employ him. A few days after this disappointment he fell ill and died. 
 Michel-Angelo had already been entrusted with the construction of the 
 fortifications, but it will be seen that no such Conversation can ever have 
 taken place. (Works, ii., 1846. Works, iv., 1876.)] 
 
176 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 adversary. He will not demolish nor greatly hurt the city. 
 What he cannot effect by terror, he will effect by time, — that 
 miner whom none can countermine. We have brave men among 
 our citizens, — men sensible of shame and ignominy in enduring 
 the dictation of a stranger, or the domination of an equal ; but 
 we have not many of these, nor have they any weight in our 
 councils. The rest are far different, and altogether dissimilar to 
 their ancestors. They, whatever was their faction, contended for 
 liberty, for domestic ties, for personal honour, for public approba- 
 tion ; we, for pictures, for statues, bronze tripods, and tessellated 
 tables : these, and the transient smiles of dukes and cardinals, are 
 deemed of higher value than our heirloom, — worm-eaten, creak- 
 ing, crazy freedom. 
 
 Michel-Angelo. I never thought them so ; and yet somewhat 
 of parental love may be supposed to influence me in favour of 
 the fairer, solider, and sounder portion of the things you set 
 before me. 
 
 Machiavelli. It is a misfortune to possess what can be retained 
 by servility alone ; and the more precious the possession, the 
 greater is the misfortune. 
 
 Michel-Angelo. Dukes and cardinals, popes and emperors, 
 cannot take away from me the mind and spirit that God has 
 placed immeasurably high above them. If men are become so 
 vile and heartless as to sit down quietly and see pincers and 
 pulleys tear the sinews of their best benefactors, they are not worth 
 the stones and sand we have been piling up for their protection. 
 
 Machiavelli. To rail is indecorous ; to reason is idle and 
 troublesome. When you seriously intend to lead people back 
 again to their senses, do not call any man wiser or better than 
 the rabble ; for this affronts all, and the bad and strong the most. 
 But tell them calmly that the chief difference between the govern- 
 ment of a republic and a dukedom is this, — in a republic there are 
 more deaths by day than by night ; in a dukedom, the contrary : 
 that perhaps we see as many taken to prison in a republic ; cer- 
 tainly we see more come out. 
 
 Michel-Angelo. If any man of reflection needs to be shown 
 the futility and mischief of hereditary power, we Florentines surely 
 may show it to him in the freshest and most striking of examples. 
 Lorenzo de Medici united a greater number of high and amiable 
 
Machiavelli and Michel-Angelo. 1 77 
 
 qualities than any other man among his contemporaries ; and yet 
 Lorenzo lived in an age which must ever be reckoned most fertile 
 in men of genius and energy. His heart was open to the poor 
 and afflicted ; his house, his library, his very baths and bed-rooms, 
 to the philosopher and the poet. What days of my youth have I 
 spent in his society ! Even after he was at the head of the 
 commonwealth, he had society; for even then he had fellow- 
 citizens. What lessons has he himself given me in every thing 
 relating to my studies ! — in mythology, in architecture, in sculp- 
 ture, in painting, in every branch and ramification of eloquence ! 
 Can I ever forget the hour when he led me by the arm, in the 
 heat of the day, to the eastern ^ door of our baptistery, and said, 
 " Michel-Angelo, this is the only wonder of the world ! It rose, 
 like the world itself, out of nothing. Its great maker was with- 
 out an archetype : he drew from the inherent beauty of his soul. 
 Venerate here its image." It was then I said, " It is worthy to 
 be the gate of Paradise : " and he replied, " The garden is walled 
 up ; let us open a space for the portal." He did it, as far as 
 human ability could do it ; and, if afterward he took a station 
 which belonged not of right to him, he took it lest it should be 
 occupied by worse and weaker men. His son succeeded to him : 
 what a son ! The father thought and told me that no materials 
 were durable enough for my works. Perhaps he erred ; but how 
 did Piero correct the error ? He employed me in making statues 
 of snow in the gardens of Boboli ; statues the emblems at once of 
 his genius and his authority. ^ 
 
 Machiaiielli. How little foresight have the very wisest of 
 those who invade the liberties of their country ! — how little true 
 love for their children ! — how little foresight for their descendants, 
 in whose interest they believe they labor ! There neither is nor 
 ought to be any safety for those who clap upon our shoulders their 
 heavy pampered children, and make us carry them whether we 
 will or not. Lorenzo was well versed in history : could he for- 
 
 [2 The church of San Giovanni has three gates, two of which are de- 
 signed by Ghiberti. The one called by Michel-Angelo "the Gate ot 
 Paradise " is the northern gate, in which alone Ghiberti was allowed to 
 follow his own genius. The eastern gate was also constructed by him, 
 but he was required to make it after the manner of the southern gate, 
 which had been designed by Giotto.] 
 
178 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 get, or could he overlook, the dreadful punishments that are the 
 certain inheritance of whoever reaps the harvest of such misdeeds ? 
 How many sanguinary deaths by the avenging arm of violated 
 law ! — how many assassinations from the people ! — how many 
 poisonings and stabbings from domestics, from guards, from kin- 
 dred ! — fratricides, parricides ; and that horrible crime for which 
 no language has formed a name, — the bloodshed of the son by 
 the parental hand ! A citizen may perhaps be happier, for the 
 moment, by so bold and vast a seizure as a principality; but 
 his successor, born to the possession of supremacy, can enjoy 
 nothing of this satisfaction. For him there is neither the charm 
 of novelty nor the excitement of action, nor is there the glory of 
 achievement ; no mazes of perplexing difficulty gone safely 
 through, no summit of hope attained. But there is perpetually 
 the same fear of losing the acquisition, the same suspicion of 
 friends, the same certainty of enemies, the same number of virtues 
 shut out, and of vices shut in, by his condition. This is the 
 end obtained, which is usually thought better than the means. 
 And what are the means, than which this end is better ! They 
 are such as, we might imagine, no man who had ever spent 
 a happy hour with his equals would employ, even if his family 
 were as sure of advantage by employing them as we have shown 
 that it is sure of detriment. In order that a citizen may become 
 a prince, the weaker are seduced, and the wiser are corrupted ; 
 for wisdom on this earth is earthly, and stands not above the 
 elements of corruption. His successor, finding less tractability, 
 works with harder and sharper instruments. The revels are 
 over, the dream is broken ; men rise, bestir themselves, and are 
 tied down. Their confessors and wives console them, saying, 
 "You would not have been tied down had you been quiet." 
 The son is warned not to run into the error of his father, by this 
 clear demonstration : " Yonder villa was his, with the farms 
 about it ; he sold it and them to pay the fine." 
 
 Michel-Angelo. And are these the doctrines our children 
 must be taught ? I will have none, then. I will avoid the 
 marriage-bed as I would the bed of Procrustes. Oh that, by 
 any exertion of my art, I could turn the eyes of my countrymen 
 toward Greece ! I wish to excel in painting or in sculpture, 
 partly for my glory, partly for my sustenance, being poor; but 
 
Machiavelli and Michel-Angelo. 1 79 
 
 greatly more to arouse in their breasts the recollection of what 
 was higher. Then come the questions, Whence was it ? — 
 how was it? Surely, too surely, not by Austrians, French, 
 and Spaniards, — all equally barbarous ; though the Spaniards 
 were in contiguity with the Moors, and one sword polished the 
 other. 
 
 Machiavelli. The only choice left us was the choice of our 
 enslaver : we have now lost even that. Our wealthier citizens 
 make up their old shopkeeping silks into marquis caps, and 
 tranquilly fell asleep under so soft a coverture. Represent to 
 them what their grandfathers were, and they shake the head 
 with this fiirred foolery upon it, telling us it is time for the world 
 to go to rest. They preach to us from their new cushions on the 
 sorrowful state of effervescence in our former popular govern- 
 ment, and the repose and security to be enjoyed under hereditary 
 princes chosen from among themselves. 
 
 Michel-^ngelo. Chosen by whom ? and from what ? — our- 
 setves ? Well might one of such creatures cry, as Atys did, 
 if like Atys he could recover his senses under a worse and more 
 shameful eviration, — 
 
 Ego non quod habuerim ; 
 Ego Maenas ; ego mei pars ; ego vir sterilis ero. 
 Jam, jam dolet quod egi 1 
 
 Yes, indeed, there was all this effervescence. Men spoke 
 loud; men would have their own, although they might have 
 blows with it. And is it a matter of joyance to those wise 
 and sober personages, that the government which reared and 
 nurtured them to all their wisdom and sobriety, and much other 
 more erect and substantial, should be now extinct ? Rivers run 
 on and pass away ; pools and morasses are at rest for ever. But 
 shall I build my house upon the pool or the morass because 
 it lies so still? — or shall I abstain from my recreation by the 
 river-side because the stream runs on ? Whatever you have 
 objected to republicanism may, in its substance a little modified, 
 be objected to royalty, great and small, principalities, and duke- 
 doms. In republics, high and tranquil minds are liable to 
 neglect, and, what is worse, to molestation ; but those who 
 molest them are usually grave men or acute ones, and act openly, 
 with fair formalities and professed respect. On the contrary, in 
 
i8o Imaginary Conversations, 
 
 such governments as ours was recently, a young commissary of 
 police orders you to appear before him ; asks you first whether 
 you know why he called you ; and then, turning over his papers 
 at his leisure, puts to you as many other idle questions as come 
 into his head ; remands you ; calls you back at the door ; gives 
 you a long admonition, partly by order (he tells you) of his 
 superiors, partly his own ; bids you to be more circumspect 
 in future, and to await the fuither discretion of his Excellency 
 the President of the Buon Governo. O Messer Niccolo ! surely 
 the rack^ you suffered is more tolerable, not merely than the 
 experience, but even than the possibility, of such arrogance and 
 insult. 
 
 Machia-velli. Caesar's head was placed on the neck of the 
 world, and was large enough for it; but our necks, Messer 
 Michel-Angelo, are grasped, wrung, and contracted for the heads 
 of geese to surmount them. It was not the kick, it was the ass, 
 that made the sick lion roar and die. Either the state of things 
 which you have been describing is very near its termination, or 
 people are growing low enough to accommodate themselves to 
 their abject fortunes. Some fishes, once of the ocean, lost irre- 
 trievably, by following up a contracted and tortuous channel, their 
 pristine form and nature, and became of a size and quality for 
 dead or shallow waters, which narrow and weedy and slimy banks 
 confine. There are stages in the manners of principalities, as 
 there are in human life. Princes at first are kind and affable ; 
 their successors are condescending and reserved ; the next, in- 
 different and distant ; the last, repulsive, insolent, and ferocious, 
 or, what is equally fatal to arbitrary power, voluptuous and slothful. 
 The cruel have many sympathizers; the selfish, few. These 
 wretches bear heavily on the lower classes, and usually fall as 
 they are signing an edict of famine, or protecting a favorite who 
 enforces it. By one or other of these diseases dies arbitrary 
 power ; and much and various purification is necessary to render 
 the chamber where it has lain salubrious. Democracies may be 
 longer-lived, although they have enemies in most of the rich, in 
 more of the timorous, and nearly in all the wise. The former 
 will pamper tliem to feed upon them ; the latter will kiss them 
 
 [s Machiavelli was suspected of complicity in the conspiracy of Boseoli 
 and Capponi, against the Medici. See ViUari, vol. iii., p, 169.] 
 
Machiavelli and Michel- Angelo. i8i 
 
 to betray them ; the intermediate will slink off and wish them 
 well. Those governments alone can be stable, or are worthy of 
 being so, in which property and intellect keep the machine in right 
 order and regular operation : each being conscious that it is the 
 natural ally and reciprocal protector of the other ; that nothing 
 ought to be above them ; and that what is below them ought to 
 be as little below as possible ; otherwise it never can consistently, 
 steadily, and effectually support them. None of these considera- 
 tions seem to have been ever entertained by men who, with more 
 circumspection and prudence, might have effected the regeneration 
 of Italy. The changes they wished to bring about were entirely 
 for their own personal aggrandizement. Cassar Borgia and Julius 
 the Second would have expelled all strangers from interference in 
 our concerns. But the former, although intelligent and acute, 
 having a mind less capacious than his ambition ; and the latter 
 more ambition than any mind without more instruments could 
 manage ; and neither of them the wish or the thought of employ- 
 ing the only means suitable to the end, — their vast, loose projects 
 crumbled under them. 
 
 Michel-Angelo. Your opinion of Borgia is somewhat high ; 
 and I fancied you did not despise Pope Julius. 
 
 Machia-uelli. Some of you artists ought to regard him with 
 gratitude ; but you yourself must despise the frivolous dotard, 
 who, while he should have been meditating and accomplishing 
 the deliverance of Italy, — ^which he could have done, and he only, 
 — was running after you, and breathing at one time caresses, at 
 another time menaces, to bring you back into the Vatican, after 
 your affront and flight. Instead of this grand work of liberation 
 (at least from barbarians) what was he planning ? His whole 
 anxiety was about his mausoleum ! Now, cei"tainly, Messer 
 Michel-Angelo, the more costly a man's monument is, the more 
 manifest, if he himself orders the erection, must be his conscious- 
 ness that there is much in him which he would wish to be 
 covered over by it, and much which never was his, and which he is 
 desirous of appropriating. But no monument is a bed capacious 
 enough for his froward and restless imbecilities ; and any that is 
 magnificent only shows one the more of them. 
 
 Michel-Angelo. He who deserves a mausoleum is not desirous 
 
1 82 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 even of a grave-stone. He knows his mother earth ; he frets for 
 no fine cradle, but lies tranquilly and composed at her feet. The 
 pen will rise above the pyramid ; but those who would build the 
 pyramid would depress the pen. Julius had as little love of true 
 glory as of civil liberty, which never ruler more pertinaciously 
 suppressed. His only passion, if we may call it one, was vanity. 
 Csesar Borgia had penetration and singleness of aim, — the great 
 constituents of a great man. His birth, which raised him many 
 favorers in his ascent to power, raised him more enemies in his 
 highest elevation. He had a greater number of friends than he 
 could create of fortunes ; and bees, when no hive is vacant, carry 
 their honey elsewhere. 
 
 Mach'iavelli. Borgia* was cruel, both by necessity and by 
 nature : now, no cruel prince can be quite cruel enough ; when 
 he is tired of striking, he falls. He who is desirous of becoming 
 a prince should calculate first how many estates can be confiscated. 
 Pompey learned and wrote fairly out this lesson of arithmetic ; 
 but Julius Cassar tore the copy-book from his hand and threw it 
 among those behind him, who repeated it in his ear until he gave 
 them the reward of their application. 
 
 Michel-Angelo. He alone was able and willing to reform the 
 State. It is well for mankind that human institutions want 
 revisal and repair. Our bodies and likewise our minds require 
 both refreshment and motion ; and, unless we attend to the 
 necessities of both, imbecility and dissolution soon ensue. It was 
 as easy, in the Middle Ages, for the towns of Italy to form them- 
 selves into republics, which many did, as it was for the villages of 
 Switzerland ; and not more difficult to retain their immunities. 
 We are surely as populous, we are as well armed, we are as strong 
 and active, we are as docile to discipline, we are as rich and 
 flourishing : we want only their moral courage, their resolute" 
 perseverance, their public and private virtue, their self-respect and 
 mutual confidence. These are indeed great and many wants, and 
 have always been ill-supplied since the extinction of the Gracchi. 
 
 [■' As to the security of a tyrant " all depends v?hether cruelties are 
 well done or ill. Those are well done, if we may speak so of evil deeds, 
 which are done suddenly for the sake of establishing a safe position, and 
 are not continued afterwards. Those are ill done that are long con- 
 tinued." Prince, chap, viii.] 
 
Machiavelli and Michel- Angelo. 183 
 
 The channel that has been dry so many centuries can only be 
 replenished by a great convulsion. Even now, if ever we rise 
 again to the dignity of men and citizens, it must be from under 
 the shield and behind the broadsword of the Switzers. 
 
 Machiavelli. Thirty thousand of them, whenever France 
 resumes her arms against the emperor, might be induced to 
 establish our independence and secure their own, by engaging them 
 to oblige the state of Lombardy first, and successively Rome and 
 Naples, to contribute a subsidy, for a certain number of years, on 
 the overthrow of their infirm and cumbrous governments. The 
 beggars, the idle and indigent of those nations, might, beneficially to 
 themselves, be made provisional serfs to our defenders, who on their 
 part would have duties as imperative to perform. In the Neapo- 
 litan and papal territories, there is an immensity of land ill 
 cultivated, or not cultivated at all, claimed and occupied as the 
 property of the government, — enough for all the paupers of Italy 
 to till, and all her defenders to possess. Men must use their 
 hands rightly before they can rightly use their reason : those 
 usually think well who work well. Beside, I would take especial 
 care that they never were in want of religion to instruct and com- 
 fort them : they should enjoy a sprinkling of priests and friars, 
 with breviaries and mattocks in the midst of them, and the laborer 
 in good earnest should be worthy of his hire. The feudal 
 system, which fools cry out against, was supremely wise. The 
 truckle-bed of valor and freedom is not wadded with floss-silk : 
 there are gnarls without and knots within ; and hard is the bolster 
 of these younger Dioscuri. Genoa, on receiving the dominion of 
 Piedmont, would cede to Tuscany the little she possesses on the 
 south of the Trebbia ; Venice would retain what she holds ; 
 Bologna would be the capital of all the country to the eastward 
 of the Apennines, from the Po to the Ofanto ; Rome, from the 
 sources of the Nar to the mouth of the Tiber (which still should 
 be a Tuscan river, excepting what is within the walls), and south- 
 ward as far as the Vultumus ; Naples would be mistress of the 
 rest. These seven republics should send each five deputies yearly, 
 for the first twenty days of March, enjoying the means of living 
 splendidly in the apartments of the Vatican. For without a high 
 degree of splendor no magistrate is at all respected in our country, 
 and slightly anywhere else. The consul, invested with the 
 
184 Imaginary Conrersations. 
 
 executive power, should be elected out of the body of legates on 
 the third day of each annual session ; he should proceed daily to 
 the hall of deliberation, at the Capitol, in state; the trumpet 
 should sound as he mounts his carriage, drawn by eight horses, 
 and again as he alights ; no troops should accompany him, except- 
 ing twelve of the civic guard on each side, twelve before and 
 twelve behind, on white chargers richly caparisoned, and 
 appertaining to the consular establishment. 
 
 Michd-Angelo. I approve of this ; and I should approve as 
 heartily of any means whatsoever by which it might be effected. 
 But it appears to me, Messer Niccolo, that the territories of 
 Rome and Bologna, although the Bolognese would continue to 
 the whole extent of the Apennines, would be less populous than 
 the others. 
 
 Machiavelli. Where is the harm of that ? A city may be 
 angry and discontented if she cannot tear away somewhat from 
 her neighbors. But, in the system I propose, all enjoy equal 
 laws ; and, as it cannot be of the slightest advantage to any 
 town or hamlet to form a portion of a larger State rather than 
 of a smaller, so neither can the smaller State be liable to a 
 disadvantage by any town or hamlet lying out of it. Rome has 
 always been well contented to repose on her ancient glory. She 
 loses nothing by the chain being snapped that held others to 
 her ; for it requires no stretch of thought (if it did, I would 
 not ask it of her) to recollect that it held her as well as them. 
 Bologna's territory would begin with Ferrara on the north, 
 and terminate with the Mediterranean on the south; still, 
 excepting the Roman, it would be the least. Her position 
 wUl not allow her more, and well is it that it will not. For 
 the priesthood has too long made its holes there, running under- 
 ground from Rome; and you know, Messer Michel- Angelo, 
 the dairy will smell disagreeably where the rats have burrowed 
 lately. 
 
 Michel-Angelo. True enough. Let me now make another 
 remark. Apparently you would allow no greater number of 
 legates from the larger States than from the smaller. 
 
 Machiavelli. A small community has need for even more to 
 protect its interests than a larger. He who has a strong body 
 has less occasion for a loud voice, and fewer occasions to cry for 
 
Machiavelli and Michel- Angelo. 185 
 
 assistance. Five legates from each republic are sufficient in 
 number, if they are sufficient in energy and information. If they 
 are not, the fault lies with their constituents. The more debaters 
 there are the less business will be done, and the fewer inquiries 
 brought to an issue. In federal States, all having the same 
 obligations and essentially the same form of government, hardly 
 is it possible for any two to quarrel ; and the interest of the 
 remainder would require, and compel if necessary, a prompt and 
 a firm reconciliation. No State in Europe, desirous of maintaining 
 a character for probity, will refuse to another the surrender of a 
 criminal or debtor who has escaped to avoid that other's laws. 
 If churches and palaces ought not to be sanctuaries for the 
 protection of crime, surely whole kingdoms ought not; Our 
 republics, by avoiding this iniquity, would obviate the most 
 ordinary and most urgent cause of discord. Mortgaging no little 
 of what is called the property of the church (subtracted partly 
 by fraud from ignorance and credulity, and partly torn by violence 
 from debility and dissension), I would raise the money requisite 
 to obtain the co-operation of Switzerland and the alliance of 
 Savoy ; but taking care that our own forces much outnumber 
 the allies, and, in case of war, keeping all the artillery in our 
 hands. 
 
 Mkhel-Angelo. But what would you do with the pope ? 
 
 Machiavelli.. A very important consideration. I would 
 establish him in Venice, where he would enjoy many advantages 
 which Rome herself does not affi)rd him. First, he would be 
 successor to Saint Mark as well as to Saint Peter ; secondly, he 
 would enjoy the exercise of his highest authority more frequently, 
 by crowning a prince every year in the person of the Doge (for 
 that title, and every other borne by the chief magistrate of each 
 city, should continue), and a princess in the person of the Adriatic, 
 and, moreover, of solemnizing the ceremony of their nuptials ; 
 thirdly and what is more glorious, he would be within call of the 
 Bosniacs, who, hearing his paternal voice, would surely renounce their 
 errors, abandon their vices, and come over and embrace the faith. 
 The Bull of Indulgences might be a little modified in their favor. 
 Germans had no objection to the bill of fare, but stamped and 
 sweated to see the price of the dishes, which more elegant 
 men in France and Italy, having tasted them all, thought 
 
1 86 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 reasonable enough. But in Bosnia they must be reduced a 
 trifle lower ; else they will be a stumbling-block to the neo- 
 phyte, whose infinner knees yet totter in mounting the Santa 
 Scala. 
 
 Michd-Angelo. Do not joke so gravely, Messer Niccolo ; for 
 it vexes and saddens me. 
 
 Machiauelli. If you dislike my reasons, take some others very 
 different. The nobility and people of Venice have less venera- 
 tion for the Holy Father than have the rest of us Catholics, and 
 longer opposed his authority. Beside, as they prefer Saint Mark 
 to Saint Peter, there would always be a salutary irritation kept 
 up in the body of Italy, and all the blood would not run into the 
 head. 
 
 Michel-Angelo. Its coagulation there has paralyzed her. 
 
 Machiavelli. Furthermore, the Venetians would take meas- 
 ures that Saint Mark should have fair play, and that his part 
 of the pugilistic ring should be as open and wide as the opposite. 
 And now, in order to obtain your pardon for joking so infelici- 
 tously, let me acknowledge it among my many infirmities, that 
 I cannot laugh heartily. I experience the same sad constriction 
 as those who cannot bring out a sneeze, or any thing else that 
 would fain have its way. You, however, have marvellously 
 well performed the operation ; and now the ripples on lip and 
 cheek, on beard and whisker, have subsided, let me tell you, 
 Messer Michel-Angelo, we form our wisest thoughts and pro- 
 jects on the depth and density of men's ignorance ; our strength 
 rises from the vast arena of their weaknesses. I know not 
 when my scheme will be practicable ; but it has been, and it 
 may be again. 
 
 Michel-Angelo. Finally, what is to become of Sicily, Sardinia, 
 and Corsica ? 
 
 Machia-velli. I would place these islands at the emperor's 
 disposal, to conciliate him. 
 
 Michel-Angelo. It would exasperate France. 
 
 Machiavelli. Let him look to that : it would be worth 
 his while. Exasperated or not, France never can rest quiet. 
 Her activity is only in her pugnacity : trade, commerce, agri- 
 culture, are equally neglected. Indifferent to the harvests on 
 
Machiavelli and Michel-Angela 187 
 
 the earth before her, she springs on the palm-tree for its scanty 
 fruit.* 
 . Michel-Angelo. She would not be pleased at your allusion. 
 
 MachitroeUu I wish she would render it inapplicable. Italy, 
 in despite of her, would become once more the richest and most 
 powerful of nations, the least liable to attacks, and the least 
 interested in disturbing her neighbors. Were she one great 
 kingdom, as some men and all boys desire, she would be per- 
 petually at variance with Hungary, Germany, France, and 
 Spain.^ The confederacies and alliances of republics are always 
 conducive to freedom, and never are hurtful to independence; 
 those of princes are usually injurious to the liberty of the subject, 
 and often the origin of wars. Federal republics give sureties for 
 the maintenance of peace, in their formation and their position : 
 even those States with which any of them is confederated are as 
 much interested in impeding it from conquests as fi'om subjection. 
 In kingdoms, the case is widely different. Many pestilences 
 grow weaker by length of time and extent of action ; but the 
 pestilence of kingly power increases in virulence at every stride 
 and seizure, and expires in the midst of its victims by the 
 lethargy of repletion. At no period of my life have I ne- 
 glected to warn my fellow-citizens of the fate impending over 
 them. Only a few drops of the sultry and suffocating storm 
 have yet fallen : we stop on the road, instead of pushing on ; 
 and, whenever we raise our heads, it will be in the midst of the 
 inundation. 
 
 Michel-Angelo. I do believe that Lorenzo would have covered 
 the shame of his parent State, rather than have wantoned with 
 its inebriety. 
 
 • The population of France, at this time, amounted to scarcely four- 
 teen millions; Franche-comte, Lorraine, Alsace, and several cities on the 
 borders of the Netherlands, not being yet annexed. Her incessant wars, 
 of late generally disastrous, had depopulated her provinces, and there was 
 less industry than in any other great nation round about her, not except- 
 ing the Spanish. Italy was supreme in civilization, commerce, and the 
 fine arts, and was at least as populous as at present. 
 
 [5 There can be no doubt that Machiavelli desired the unity of Italy, 
 and that this desire of his is one reason for the admiration which he felt 
 for CsEsar Borgia as long as Csesar was successful. The views which 
 Landor has put in Machiavelli's mouth he would not have been likely to 
 express himself.] 
 
1 88 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Machia-uelU. He might, by his example and authority, have 
 corrected her abuses ; and by his wealth, united to ours, have 
 given work to the poor and idle in the construction of roads, and 
 the excavation of canals through the Marerama. 
 
 Michel-Angelo. It was easier to kill Antaeus than to lift him 
 from the ground. Lorenzo was unable to raise or keep up 
 Tuscany : he therefore sought the less glorious triumph of leading 
 her captive, laden with all his jewels, and escorted by men of 
 genius in the garb of sycophants and songsters. 
 
 Machiavelli. In fact, Messer Michel- Angelo, we had borne 
 too long and too patiently the petulance and caprices of a 
 brawling and impudent democracy. We received instructions 
 from those to whom we should have given them, and we gave 
 power to those from whom we should have received it. Re- 
 publican as I have lived, and shall die, I would rather any 
 other state of social life than naked and rude democracy: 
 because I have always found it more jealous of merit, more 
 suspicious of wisdom, more proud of riding on great minds, 
 more pleased at raising up little ones above them, more fond of 
 loud talking, more impatient of calm reasoning, more unsteady, 
 more ungrateful, and more ferocious ; above all, because it leads 
 to despotism through fraudulence, intemperance, and corruption. 
 Let democracy live among the mountains, and regulate her 
 village, and enjoy her chalet ; let her live peacefully and con- 
 tentedly amid her flocks and herds ; never lay her rough hand 
 on the balustrade of the council-chamber; never raise her 
 boisterous voice among the images of liberators and legislators, 
 of philosophers and poets. 
 
 Mkhel-Angelo. In the course of human things, you cannot 
 hinder her. All governments inin ultimately into the great gulf 
 of despotism, widen or contract them, straighten or divert them, 
 as you will. From this gulf, the Providence that rules all nature 
 liberates them. Again they return, to be again absorbed, at 
 periods not foreseen or calculable. Every form of government is 
 urged onward by another and a different one. The great recep- 
 tacle in which so many have perished casts up the fragments, and 
 indefatigable man refits them. 
 
 Machiavelli. Other foi"ms may take the same direction as 
 democracy, but along roads less miry, and infested with fewer 
 thieves. 
 
Machiavelli and Michel-Angelo. 189 
 
 Michel- Angela. Messer Niccolo, you have spoken like a 
 secretary and a patrician ; I am only a mere mason, as you 
 see, and (by your appointment) an engineer. You indeed 
 have great reason to condemn the levity, the stupidity, and the 
 ingratitude of the people. But, if they prefer worse men to 
 better, the fault cames the punishment with it, or draws it after ; 
 and the graver the fault the severer the punishment. Neither the 
 populace nor the prince ever chooses the most worthy of all ; 
 who indeed, if there were any danger of their choosing him, 
 would avoid the nomination ? — for it is only in such days as these 
 that men really great come spontaneously forward, and move with 
 the multitude from the front ; stilling the voice of the crier, and 
 scattering the plumes of the impostor. In ordinary times, less 
 men are quite suiBcient, and are always ready. In a democracy, 
 the bad may govern when better are less required ; but, if they 
 govern injudiciously, the illusion under which they were elected 
 vanishes, the harm they do is brief, and attended by more peril 
 to themselves than to their country. Totally the reverse with 
 hereditary princes : being fiirther from the mass of the community, 
 they know and care little about us ; they do not want our votes ; 
 they would be angry if we talked of our esteem for them ; and, 
 if ever they treat us well, their security, not their sympathy, is the 
 motive. I agree with you, Messer Niccolo, that never were there 
 viler slaves than our populace, except oui" nobles, and those 
 mongrels and curs intermediate who lean indolently on such sap- 
 less trunks, and deem it magnificent to stand one palm higher than 
 the prostrate. 
 
 Mach'umeUi. A fine picture have you been drawing ! — another 
 Last Judgment! 
 
 Michel-Angelo. Your nobility, founded in great measure on 
 yourself, is such that you would accept from me no apology 
 for my remarks on that indiscriminately lavished by our enslavers 
 among later families. None in Tuscany, few in Europe, can 
 contend in dignity with yours, which has given to our republic 
 thirteen chief magistrates. The descendants of a hunter from 
 an Alpine keep in Switzerland can offer no pretence to any thing 
 resembling it. Yet these are they who bind and bruise us ! — 
 these are they who impose on us as governors men whom we ex- 
 punge as citizens. 
 
I go Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Machiavellt. In erecting your fortification, you oppose but a 
 temporary obstacle to the insult. My proposal, many years ago, 
 was the institution of national guards ; ^ from which service no 
 condition whatever, no age, from adolescence to decrepitude, 
 should be exempt. But Italy must always be in danger of utter 
 servitude, unless her free States, which are still rich and powerful, 
 enter into a cordial and strict alliance against all arbitrary rule, 
 instead of undermining or beating down each other's prosperity. 
 While one great city holds another great city in subjection, — as 
 Venice does with Padua and Verona, as Florence with Siena and 
 Pisa, — the subdued will always rejoice in the calamities of the 
 subduer, and empty her cup of bitterness into them when she can, 
 although without the prospect or hope of recovering her inde- 
 pendence. For there are more who are sensible to affronts than 
 there are who are sensible to freedom ; and vindictiveness, in 
 many breasts the last cherished relic of justice, is in some the only 
 sign of it. 
 
 Mkhel-Angelo. Small confederate republics are the most free, 
 the most happy, the most productive of emulation, of learning, of 
 genius, of glory, in every form and aspect. They also, for the 
 reason you have given, are stronger and more durable than if 
 united under one principality. This is proved, too, in the history 
 of ancient Tuscany, which, under her Lucumons, resisted for 
 many centuries the violent and vast irruptions of the Gauls, and 
 the systematic encroachments of the wilier Romans. But the 
 governors of no country possess so much wisdom as shall teach 
 them to renounce a portion of immediate authority for the future 
 benefit of those they govern, much less for any advantage to those 
 who lie beyond their jurisdiction. 
 
 Machia'veUi. Italy, and Europe in general, would avoid the 
 most frequent and the worst calamities by manifold and just 
 federation, to the exclusion of all princes, ecclesiastical and 
 secular. Spain, in the multitude of her municipalities, is divided 
 into republics, but jealous and incoherent. Wiser Germany 
 possesses in many parts the same advantages, and uses them 
 
 P The proposal was carried out. See Villari, vol. ii., p. 256. Machia- 
 veUi's preference for a militia over tlie mercenaries employed by Italian 
 States was due to his conviction that the creation of a nation could be 
 eiTected only by creating a national army.] 
 
Machiavelli and Michel- Angelo. 191 
 
 better; but the dragon's teeth, not sown by herself, shoot up 
 between her cities. Switzerland rears among her snows little, 
 fresh, and stout republics. Italy, in particular, is formed for 
 them : many of her cities being free ; all bearing within them 
 the memory, most the desire, of freedom. No pontiff, no 
 despot, can ever be friendly to science ; least of all, to that 
 best of sciences which teaches us that liberty and peace are the 
 highest of human blessings. And I wonder that the ministers 
 of religion (at least all of them who believe in it) do not strenu- 
 ously insist on this truth, — essentially divine, since the founder 
 of Christianity came on earth on purpose to establish peace ; and 
 peace cannot exist, and ought not, without liberty. But this 
 blessing is neither the produce nor the necessity of one soil only. 
 How different is the condition of the free cities in Germany 
 from that of territories under the sceptre of princes ! If seven 
 or eight are thus flourishing, with such obstacles on every side, 
 why might not the rest without any ? What would they all be 
 when hindrances were removed, when mutual intercourse, mutual 
 instruction, mutual advantages of every kind, were unrestricted ? 
 Why should not all be as free and happy as the few ? They 
 will be, when learning has made way for wisdom ; when those 
 for whom others have thought begin to think for themselves. 
 The intelligent and the courageous should form associations 
 everywhere ; and little trust should be reposed on the good-will 
 of even good men accustomed to authority and dictation. I 
 venerate the arts almost to the same degree as you do ; for 
 ignorance is nowhere an obstacle to veneration : but I venerate 
 them because, above them, I see the light separating from the 
 darkness. 
 
 Michel-Angelo. The arts cannot long exist without the advent 
 of freedom. From every new excavation whence a statue rises, 
 there rises simultaneously a bright vision of the age that produced 
 it ; a strong desire to bring it back again ; a throbbing love, an 
 inflaming regret, a resolute despair, beautiful as Hope herself; and 
 Hope comes, too, behind. 
 
 Men are not our fellow-creatures because hands and articu- 
 late voices belong to them in common with us : they are then, 
 and then only, when they precede us, or accompany us, or follow 
 us, contemplating one grand luminary, periodically obscured, but 
 
192 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 eternally existent in the highest heaven of the soul, without 
 which all lesser lights would lose their brightness, their station, 
 their existence. 
 
 If these things should ever come to pass, how bold shall be 
 the step, how exalted the head, of genius ! Clothed in glorified 
 bodies of living marble, instructors shall rise out of the earth, 
 deriders of barbarism, conquerors of time, heirs and coequals 
 of eternity. Led on by these, again shall man mount the 
 ladder that touches heaven ; again shall he wrestle with the 
 angels. 
 
 Machiavelli. You want examples of the arts in their perfec- 
 tion : few models are extant. Apollo, Venus, and three or 
 four beside, are the only objects of your veneration ; and, al- 
 though I do not doubt of its sincerity, I much doubt of its 
 enthusiasm, and the more the oftener I behold them. Perhaps 
 the earth holds others in her bosom more beautiful than the 
 Mother of Love, more elevated than the God of Day. Nothing 
 is existing of Phidias, nothing of Praxiteles, nothing of Seopas. 
 Their works, collected by Nero, and deposited by him in his 
 Golden Palace, were broken by the populace, and their fragments 
 cast into the Tiber. 
 
 Michel- Angelo. All ? — surely not all ! 
 
 Machtavelli. Every one, too certainly. For such was the 
 wealth, such the liberality, of this prince, and so solicitous were 
 all ranks, and especially the higher, to obtain his favor, I enter- 
 tain no doubt that every work of these consummate masters 
 was among the thousands in his vast apartments. Defaced and 
 fragmentary as they are, they still exist under the waters of the 
 Tiber. 
 
 Mkhel-Angelo. The nose is the part most liable to injury. I 
 have restored it in many heads, always of marble. But it occurs 
 to me (at this instant, for the first time) that wax would serve 
 better, — both in leaving no perceptible line, and in similarity of 
 color. The Tiber, I sadly fear, will not give up its dead until the 
 last day; but do you think the luxurious cities of Sibaris and 
 Croton hide no treasures of art under their ruins ? And there are 
 others in Southern Italy of Greek origin, and rich (no doubt) in 
 similar divine creations. Sculpture awaits but the dawn of free- 
 dom to rise up before new worshippers in the fulness of her glory 
 
Southey and Landor. 193 
 
 Meanwhile I must work incessantly at our fortress here, to protect 
 ray poor clay models from the Germans. 
 
 Machiavelti. And from the Italians ; although the least fero- 
 cious in either army would rather destroy a thousand men than 
 the graven image of one. 
 
 XVIII. SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.i 
 
 Southey. Of all the beautiful scenery round King's-weston the 
 view from this terrace, and especially fi-om this sun-dial, 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 Shire- 
 hampton, 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 Lantony 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 path- 
 
 [1 The meeting between Landor and Southey, during which this Con- 
 versation might have taken place, must have been in the winter of 1836, 
 or the early spring of the next year. Landor was then living at Clifton, 
 and Southey and he wandered together, revisiting the places Southey had 
 known in his youth. (Life, 372.) King's-weston lies lower down the 
 Avon than Clifton, on the hills above Shirehampton, just as Landor 
 describes it. The two Conversations are taken up with 3 long criticism 
 of Milton in which Landor shows himself a more reasonable and accurate 
 critic than was common with him. A large number of the references 
 as given in the 1X76 edition are incorrect. In the present edition these 
 have been corrected to correspond with the Globe edition of Milton, and 
 others have been added. (Works, ii., 1846. Works, iv., 1876.)] 
 
1,94 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 way 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 
 
 S admirable old expression ! ), I never saw any in whose presence 
 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 forbear- 
 ance ! At the very moment when most, beside yourself, catching 
 up half my words, would call and employ against me in its ordi- 
 nary signification what ought to convey the most honorific, — ^the 
 term self-sufficiency, — T bow my head before the humble, with 
 greatly more than their humiliation. You are better-tempered 
 than I am, and readier to converse. There are half-hours when, 
 although in good-humor 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 
 
Southey and Landor. 195 
 
 nor sunshine of the mind, but calm and (as the farmer would call 
 it) gro'wing weather, in which the blades of thouglit 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 con- 
 tended that public men, public women, and the public press may 
 be all designated by one and the same trisyllable. He is re- 
 ported 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 1 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 sea- 
 man, 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 midship- 
 man, " 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 indifl^erence, a conscious- 
 
196 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 ness 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 con- 
 troller 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 gener- 
 alities. Radishes and salt are the picnic quota of slim spruce re- 
 viewers : 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 somewhat poetical. 
 
 Southey. Little do I approve of it in prose on any subject. 
 Demosthenes and iEschines, Lysias and Isgeus, and finally Cicero, 
 avoided it. 
 
 Landor. They did : but Chatham and Burl^e 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 
 
Southey and Landor. 197 
 
 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, wc 
 stUI 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 an- 
 other 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 
 
igS Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 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 acknow- 
 ledge 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 every thing 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 any thing 
 are unable to confine the displeasure to one spot. We dislike 
 every thing a little when we dislike any thing 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 puflfy 
 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. As 
 some men conceive that, if their name is engraven in Gothic 
 letters with several superfluous, it denotes antiquity of family, 
 so do others that a congestion of words swept together out 
 
Southey and Landof. 19^ 
 
 of a comerj and dry chopped sentences which turn the mouth 
 awry in reading, make them look like original thinkers. 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 fiJl establish- 
 ment 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 
 ^schylus, and no little of Dante, would be censurable. 
 
 Landor. Acknowledge that he whose poetry I am holding in 
 ray 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 favorite 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 dis- 
 dained 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 modem, 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 sat 
 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 de- 
 lights 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' 
 
20O Imaginat-y Conversations. 
 
 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. 
 
 Southey. Shall we begin with it immediately ? — or shall we 
 listen a little while to the woodlark ? He seems to know what 
 we are about ; for there is a sweetness, a variety, and a gravity in 
 his cadences, befitting the place and theme. Another time we 
 might afford the whole hour to him. 
 
 Landar. The woodlark, the nightingale, and the ringdove 
 have made me idle for many, even when I had gone into the fields 
 on purpose to gather fresh materials for composition. A little 
 thing turns me from one idleness to another. More than once, 
 when I have taken out my pencil to fix an idea on paper, the 
 smell of the cedar, held by me unconsciously across the nostrils, 
 hath so absorbed the senses, that what I was about to write down 
 has vanished, altogether and irrecoverably. This vexed me ; for 
 although we may improve a first thought, and generally do, yet if 
 we lose it, we seldom or never can find another so good to replace 
 it. The lattermath has less substance, succulence, and fragrance 
 than the summer crop. I dare not trust my memory for a moment 
 with any thing of my own : it is more faithful in storing up what 
 is another's. But am I not doing at this instant something like 
 what I told you about the pencil ? If the loss of my own thoughts 
 vexed me, how much more will the loss of yours ! Now, pray, 
 begin in good earnest. 
 
 Southey. Before we pursue the details of a poem, it is cus- 
 tomary to look at it as a whole, and to consider what is the scope 
 and tendency, or what is usually called the moral. But surely it 
 is a silly and stupid business to talk mainly about the moral of a 
 poem, unless it professedly be a fable. A good epic, a good 
 tragedy, a good comedy, will inculcate several. Homer does not 
 represent the anger of Achilles as being fatal or disastrous to that 
 hero, which would be what critics call poetical justice ; but he 
 demonstrates in the greater part of the Iliad the evil effects of 
 arbitrary power, in alienating an elevated soul from the cause of 
 his country. In the Odyssea he shows that every obstacle jrields 
 to constancy and perseverance ; yet he does not propose to show 
 it : and there are other morals no less obvious. Why should the 
 machinery of the longest poem be di'awn out to establish an 
 
Southey and Landor. 2oi 
 
 obvious truth, which a single verse would exhibit more plainly, 
 and impress more memorably ? Both in epic and dramatic poetry 
 it is action, and not moral, that is first demanded. The feelings 
 and exploits of the principal agent should excite the principal in- 
 terest. The two greatest of human compositions are here de- 
 fective : I mean the Iliad and Paradise Lost. Agamemnon is 
 leader of the confederate Greeks before Troy, to avenge the 
 cause of Menelaus ; yet not only Achilles and Diomed on his 
 side, but Hector and Sarpedon on the opposite, interest us more 
 than the " king of men," the avenger, or than his brother, the in- 
 jured prince, about whom they all are fighting. In the Paradise 
 Lost no principal character seems to have been intended. There 
 is neither truth nor wit however in saying that Satan is hero of 
 the piece, unless, as is usually the case in human life, he is the 
 greatest hero who gives the widest sway to the worst passions. 
 It is Adam who acts and suffers most, and on whom the con- 
 sequences have most influence. This constitutes him the main 
 character ; although Eve is the more interesting, Satan the more 
 energetic, and on whom the greater force of poetry is displayed. 
 The Creator and his angels are quite secondary. 
 
 Landor. Must we not confess that every epic hitherto has 
 been defective in plan ; and even that each, until the time of 
 Tasso, was more so than its predecessors ? Such stupendous 
 genius, so much fancy, so much eloquence, so much vigor of 
 intellect, never were united as in Paradise Lost. Yet it is neither 
 so correct nor so varied as the Iliad, nor, however important the 
 action, so interesting. The moral itself is the reason why it 
 wearies even those who insist on the necessity of it. Founded 
 on an event believed by nearly all nations, certainly by all who' 
 read the poem, it lays down a principle which concerns every man's 
 welfare, and a fact which every man's experience confirms : that 
 great and irremediable misery may arise from apparently small 
 offences. But will any one say that, in a poetical view, our 
 certainty of moral truth in this position is an equivalent for the 
 vmcertainty mihich of the agents is what critics call the hero of 
 the piece? 
 
 Southey. We are informed in the beginning of the Iliad that 
 the poet, or the Muse for him, is about to sing the anger of 
 Achilles, with the disasters it brought down on the Greeks. But 
 
202 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 these disasters are of brief continuance, and this anger terminates 
 most prosperously. Another fit of anger, from another motive, 
 less ungenerous and less selfish, supervenes ; and Hector falls 
 because Patroclus had fallen. The son of Peleus, whom the poet 
 in the beginning proposed for his hero, drops suddenly out of 
 sight, abandoning a noble cause from an ignoble resentment. 
 Milton, in regard to the discontinuity of agency, is in the same 
 predicament as Homer. 
 
 Let us now take him more in detail. He soon begins to give 
 the learned and less obvious signification to English words. In 
 the sixth line, — 
 
 That on the secret top, &c. 
 
 Here secret is in the same sense as Virgil's 
 
 Sisretosgue pios, his dantem jura Catonem. 
 
 Would it not have been better to omit the fourth and fifth verses, 
 as encumbrances, and deadeners of the harmony ; and for the 
 same reason, the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth ? 
 
 That with no middle flight intends to soar 
 Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues 
 Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. 
 
 Landor. Certainly much better : for the harmony of the 
 sentence is complete without them, and they make it gasp for 
 breath. Supposing the fact to be true, the mention of it is un- 
 necessary and unpoetical. Little does it become Milton to run 
 in debt with Ariosto for his 
 
 Cose non dette mai ne in prosa o in rima. 
 
 Prosaic enough in a rhymed romance, for such is the Orlando 
 with all its spirit and all its beauty, and far beneath the dignity 
 of the epic. 
 
 Southey. Beside, it interrupts the intensity of the poet's 
 aspiration in the words, — 
 
 And chiefly thou, O Spirit I 
 
 Again : I would rather see omitted the five which follow that 
 beautiful line, — 
 
 Dovelike satst brooding on the vast abyss. 
 
Southey and Landor. 203 
 
 Landor. The ear, however accustomed to the rhythm of these 
 sentences, is relieved of a burden by rejecting them ; and they are 
 not wanted for any thing they convey. 
 
 Southey. I am sorry that Milton (v. 34) did not always keep 
 separate the sublime Satan and "the infernal Serpent." The 
 thirty-eightli verse is the first hendecasyllabic in the poem. It is 
 much to be regretted, I think, that he admits this metre into' epic 
 poetry. It is often very efficient in the dramatic, at least in 
 Shakspeare, but hardly ever in Milton. He indulges in it much 
 less fluently in the Paradise Lost than in the Paradise Regained. 
 In the seventy-third verse he tells us that the rebellious angels 
 
 As far removed from God and light of heaven 
 As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole. 
 
 Not very far for creatures who could have measured all that 
 distance, and a much greater, by a single act of the will. 
 V. 188 ends with the word repair ; igi with despair. 
 
 335. Nor did they not perceive the evil plight 
 
 In tuhich they 'were. 
 
 Landor. We are oftener in such evil plight of floundering in 
 the prosaic slough about your neighborhood than in Bunhill 
 Fields. 
 
 360. And Powers that erst in heaven sat on throne. 
 
 Excuse my asking why you, and indeed most poets in most places, 
 make a monosyllable of heaven ? I observe you treat spirit in the 
 same manner ; and although not peril, yet perilous. I would not 
 insist at all times on an iambic foot, neither would I deprive these 
 words of their right to a participation in it. 
 
 Southey. I have seized all fair opportunities of introducing the 
 tribrachys, and these are the words that most easily afford one. 
 I have turned over the leaves as far as verse 584, where I wish 
 he had written Damascus (as he does elsewhere) for Damasco, 
 which never was the English appellation. Beside, he sinks the 
 last vowel in Meriie in Paradise Regained, which follows ; and 
 should consistently have done the same in Damasco, following the 
 
204 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 practice of the Italian poets, which certainly is better than leaving 
 the vowels open and gaping at one another. 
 
 549- Anon they move 
 
 In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood. 
 
 Thousands of years before there were phalanxes, schools of music, 
 or Dorians. 
 
 Landor. Never mind the Dorians, but look at Satan : — 
 
 57'- And now his heart 
 
 Distends with pride, and, hardening in his strength, 
 Glories ! 
 
 What an admirable pause is here ! I wish he had not ended one 
 verse with " his heart," and the next with " his strength." 
 Southey. What think you of 
 
 575- That small infantry 
 
 Warred on by cranes. 
 
 Landor. I think he might easily have turned the flank of that 
 small infantry. He would have done much better by writing, not 
 
 For never since created man 
 Met such imbodied force as named with these 
 Could merit more than that small infantry 
 Warred on by cranes, though all the giant-brood, &c., 
 
 but leaving behind him also these heavy and unserviceable tumbrils, 
 it would have been enough to have written, — 
 
 Never since created man, 
 Met such imbodied force ; though all the brood 
 Of Phlegra with the Heroic race were joined. 
 
 But where, in poetry or painting, shall we find any thing that 
 approaches the sublimity of that description, which begins v. 589 
 and ends in v. 620 ? What an admirable pause at 
 
 Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth I 
 
 V. 642. But tempted our attempt. Such a play on words 
 would be unbecoming in the poet's own person, and even on the 
 
Southey and Landor, 205 
 
 lightest subject, but is most injudicious and intolerable in the mouth 
 of Satan, about to assail the almighty. 
 
 672. Undoubted sign 
 
 That in hh womb was hid metallic ore. 
 
 I know not exactly which of these words induces you to raise 
 your eyes above the book and cast them on me : perhaps both. 
 It was hardly worth his while to display in this place his know- 
 ledge of mineralogy, or his recollection that Virgil, in the wooden 
 horse before Troy, had said, — 
 
 Uterumque armato milite complent, 
 
 and that some modem poets had followed him. 
 Southey. 
 
 675. As when bands 
 
 Of pioneers, with spade and piclc-axe armed, 
 Fore-run the royal camp to trench a field 
 Or cast a rampart. 
 
 Nothing is gained to the celestial host by comparing it with 
 the terrestrial. Angels are not promoted by brigading with 
 sappers and miners. Here we are entertained (v. 712) with 
 
 Dulcet symphonies . . . and voices sivcet, 
 
 among " pilasters and Dork pillars." 
 
 Verse 745 is that noble one on Vulcan, who 
 
 Dropt from the zenith like a falling star, 
 
 Landor. The six following are quite superfluous. Instead 
 of stopping where the pause is so natural and so necessary, he 
 carries the words on, — 
 
 Dropt from the zenith, like a' falling star, 
 
 On Lemnos, the ^gean isle. Thus they relate. 
 
 Erring ; for he, with this rebellious rout, 
 
 Fell long before ; nor aught avail'd him now 
 
 To have built in heaven high towers, nor did he scape 
 
 By all his engines, but was headlong icnt 
 
 With his industrious crew to build in hell. 
 
 My good Milton ! why in a passion ? If he was sent to build in 
 
2o6 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 hell, and did build there, give the Devil his due ; and acknowledge 
 that on this one occasion he ceased to be rebellious. 
 
 Southey. The verses are insufferable stufF, and would be ill 
 placed anywhere. 
 
 Landor. Let me remark that in my copy I find a mark of 
 elision before the first letter in scape. 
 
 Southey. The same in mine. 
 
 Landor. Scaped is pointed in the same manner at the 
 beginning of the fourth book. But Milton took the word 
 directly from the Italian scappare, and committed no mutilation. 
 We do not always think it necessary to make the sign of an 
 elision in its relatives, as appears hy scape-grace. Inverse 752, 
 what we write herald he more properly writes harald ; in the 
 next sovran equally so, following the Italian rather than the 
 French. 
 
 Southey. At verse 768 we come to a series of twenty lines, 
 which, excepting the metamorphosis of the Evil Angels, would 
 be delightful in any other situation. The poem is much better 
 without these. And, in these verses, I think there are two 
 whole ones and two hemistichs which you would strike out : — 
 
 As bees 
 In spring-time, when the sun with Taurus rides, 
 Pour forth their populous youth about the hive 
 In clusters : they among fresh dews and flowers 
 Fly to and fro, or on the smoothened plank, 
 The suburb of their straw-built citadel, 
 New rubbed with balm, expatiate and confer 
 Their state affairs. So thick the aery crowd, &c. 
 
 Landor. I should be sorry to destroy the suburb of the 
 straw-built citadel, or even to remove the smoothened ^ plank, 
 if I found them in any other place. Neither the harmony of 
 the sentence, nor the propriety and completeness of the simile, 
 would suffer by removing all between "to and fro," and "so 
 thick," &c. But I wish I had not been called upon to " Behold 
 a luonder." 
 
 Southey. (Book II.) 
 
 High on a throne of royal state, which far 
 Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, 
 Or where the gorgeous east, &c. 
 
 [2 Globe ed. reads : " smoothed."] 
 
Southey and Landor. 207 
 
 Are not Ormus and Ind within the gorgeous East ? If so, 
 would not the sense be better if he had written, instead of " Or 
 where," « There where " ? 
 
 Landor. Certainly. 
 
 Southey. Turn over, if you please, another two or three pages, 
 and tell me whether in your opinion the 1 50th verse, — 
 
 In the vride womb of uncreated night, 
 
 — might not also have been omitted advantageously. 
 
 Landor. The sentence is long enough and full enough with- 
 out it ; and the omission would cause no visible gap. 
 
 Southey. 
 
 226. Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason's garb, 
 
 CounsePd ignoble ease and peaceful sloth, 
 Mot peace. 
 
 These words are spoken by the poet in his own person, very 
 improperly : they would have suited the character of any fallen 
 angel ; but the reporter of the occurrence ought not to have 
 delivered such a sentence. 
 
 299. Which when Beelzebub perceived (than whom, 
 
 Satan except, none higher sat) with grave 
 Aspect he rose, and in his rising seem'd 
 A pillar of State. Deep on his front engraven 
 Deliberation sat and public care ; 
 And princely counsel in his face yet shone 
 Majestic, though in ruin : sage he stood, 
 With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear 
 The weight of mightiest monarchies. 
 
 Often and often have these verses been quoted, without a sus- 
 picion how strangely the corporeal is substituted for the moral. 
 However Atlantean his shoulders might be, the weight of 
 monarchies could no more be supported by them than by the 
 shoulders of a grasshopper. The verses are sonorous ; but they 
 are unserviceable as an incantation to make a stout figure look 
 like a pillar of State. 
 
 Landor. We have seen pillars of State which made no figure 
 at all, and which are quite as misplaced as Milton's. But, 
 seriously, the pillar's representative, if any figure but a meta- 
 
2o8 Imaginary Conversations, 
 
 phorical one could represent him, would hardly be brought to 
 represent the said pillar by rising up ; as, — 
 
 Beelzebub in his rising seem'd, &c. 
 
 His fondness for Latinisms induces him to write, — 
 
 329. What sit we then projecting peace and war ? 
 
 For " Why sit lue ? " as quid for cur. To my ear. What sit 
 sounds less pleasingly than Why sit. 
 
 I have often wished that Cicero, who so delighted in har- 
 monious sentences, and was so studious of the closes, could 
 have heard, — 
 
 35I- So was his will 
 
 Pronounced among the Gods, and, by an oath 
 That shook heaven's tvhole circumference^ confirmed. 
 
 Although in the former part of the sentence two cadences are 
 the same, — 
 
 So was his will. 
 
 And by an oath. 
 
 This is unhappy. But at verse 412 bursts forth again such a 
 torrent of eloquence as there is nowhere else in the regions of 
 poetry, although strict and thick, in v. 412 sound unpleasantly. 
 
 594. The parching wind^ 
 
 Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire / 
 
 The latter part of this verse is redundant, and ruinous to the 
 former. 
 
 Southey. Milton, like Dante, has mixed the Greek mjrthology 
 with the Oriental. To hinder the damned from tasting a single 
 drop of the Lethe, they axe: ferried over : — 
 
 611. Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards 
 
 The ford. 
 
 It is strange that until now they never had explored the banks of 
 the other four infernal rivers. 
 
 Landor. It appears to me that his imitation of Shakspeare, — 
 
 From beds of raging fire to starve in ice, 
 
 P Globe ed. reads : " air."] 
 
Southey and Landor. 209 
 
 — is feeble. Never was poet so little made to imitate another. 
 Whether he imitates a good or a bad one, the offence of his 
 voluntary degradation is punished in general with ill success. 
 Shakspeare, on the contrary, touches not even a worthless thing 
 but he renders it precious. 
 
 Southey, To continue the last verse I was reading, — 
 
 And of itself the water flies 
 AU taste of living wigfit, as once it fled 
 The lip of Tantalus. 
 
 No living wight had ever attempted to taste it ; nor was it this 
 water that fled the lip of Tantalus at any time ; least of all can 
 we imagine that it had already fled it. In the description of Sin 
 and Death, and Satan's interview with them, there is a wonderful 
 vigor of imagination and of thought, with such sonorous verse as 
 Milton alone was capable of composing. But there is also much 
 of what is odious and intolerable. The temfic is then sublime, 
 and then only, when it fixes you in the midst of all your energies ; 
 and not when it weakens, nauseates, and repels you. 
 
 678. God and his Son except, 
 
 Created thing naught valued he. 
 
 This is not the only time when he has used such language, 
 evidently with no other view than to defend it by his scholar- 
 ship. But no authority can vindicate what is false, and no 
 ingenuity can explain what is absurd. You have remarked it 
 already in the Imaginary Conversations, referring to 
 
 The fairest of her daughters. Eve. 
 
 There is something not dissimilar in the form of expression, 
 when we find on a sepulchral stone the most dreadful of 
 denunciations against any who should violate it : — 
 
 Ultimus suutn moriatur. 
 
 Landor. I must now be the reader. It is impossible to 
 refiise the ear its satisfaction at 
 
 [■614.] Thus roving on 
 
 In confused march forlorn, the adventurous bands 
 With shuddering horror pale and eyes aghast, 
 
 IV. o 
 
2io Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 View'd first their lamentable lot, and found 
 
 No rest. Through many a dark and dreary valfe 
 
 They past, and many a region dolorous ; 
 
 O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, 
 
 Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, 
 
 A universe of death. 
 
 Now who would not rather have forfeited an estate, than that 
 Milton should have ended so deplorably ? — 
 
 Which God by curse 
 Created evil,yor evil only goad. 
 Where all life dieSf death lives. 
 
 Southey. How O vidian ! This book would be greatly 
 improved, not merely by the rejection of a couple such as these, 
 but by the whole from verse 647 to verse 1007. The number 
 would still be 705, — fewer by only sixty- four than the first 
 would be after its reduction. 
 
 Verses 1008 and 1009 could be spared. Satan but little 
 encouraged his followers by reminding them that, if they took the 
 course he pointed out, they were 
 
 So much the nearer danger ; 
 
 nor was it necessary to remind them of the obvious fact by 
 saying,— 
 
 Havoc and spoil and ruin are my gain.* 
 
 Landor, In the third book the Invocation extends to fifty- 
 five verses ; of these, however, there are only two which you 
 would expunge. He says to the Holy Light, — 
 
 But thou 
 Revisit'st not these eyes, that toil in vain 
 To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn. 
 So thick a drop serene hath quencht their orbs, 
 Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more, &c. 
 
 [* This criticism is very much confused. Southey wishes to exclude 
 the meeting with Sin and Death, and, apparently, the whole of Satan's 
 journey through chaos. Where he intended to take up the action again 
 it is difficult to say ; but as he considers verses 1008 and 1009 to be at 
 the end of Satan's speech to his followers, it is plain that he had no very 
 clear idea himself. The verses, of course, come at the end of the speech 
 by Chaos.] 
 
Southey and Landor. 211 
 
 The fantastical Latin expression gutta serena, for amaurosis, was 
 never received under any form into our language ; and a thick 
 drop serene would be nonsense in any. I think every reader 
 would be contented with, — 
 
 To find thy piercing ray. Yet not the more 
 Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt, &c. 
 
 Southey. Pope is not highly reverent to Milton, or to God 
 the Father, whom he calls a schoool-divine. The doctrines, in 
 this place (v. 80) more Scripturally than poetically laid down, are 
 apostolic. But Pope was unlikely to know it : for, while he was 
 a papist, he was forbidden to read the Holy Scriptures ; and, 
 when he ceased to be a papist, he threw them overboard and 
 clung to nothing. The fixedness of his opinions may be 
 estimated by his having written at the commencement of his 
 Essay, first, — 
 
 A mighty maze, a maze without a plan ; 
 
 And then, — 
 
 A mighty maze, but not without a plan. 
 
 After the seventy-sixth verse, I wish the poet had abstained from 
 writing all the rest until we come to 345 ; and that after the 
 383d, from all that precede the 418th. Again, all between 462 
 and 497. This about the Fool's Paradise, — 
 
 The indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls, 
 
 — is too much in the manner of Dante, whose poetry, admirable 
 as it often is, is at all times very far removed from the dramatic 
 and the epic. 
 
 Landor. Verse 586 is among the few inharmonious in this 
 poem, — 
 
 Shoots invisible virtue even to the deep. 
 
 There has lately sprung up among us a Vulcan-descended body 
 of splay-foot poets, who, unwilling 
 
 Incudi reddere versus, 
 
 or unable to hammer them into better shape and more solidity, 
 tell us how necessary it is to shovel in the dust of a discord now 
 
212 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 and then. But Homer and Sophocles and Virgil could do with- 
 out it. 
 
 What a beautiful expression is there in verse 546, which I do 
 not remember that any critic has noticed ! — 
 
 Obtains the brow oi some high-climbing hili. 
 
 Here the hill itself is instinct with Hfe and activity. 
 
 Verse 574. " But up or down " in " longitude " are not worth 
 the parenthesis. 
 
 [iv. 109.] Farewell remorse I all good to me is lost. 
 
 Nothing more surprises me in Milton than that his ear should 
 have endured this verse. 
 
 Southey. How admirably contrasted with the malignant spirit 
 of Satan, in all its intensity, is the scene of Paradise which opens 
 at verse 131! The change comes naturally and necessarily to 
 accomplish the order of events. 
 
 The fourth book contains several imperfections. The six verses 
 after 181 efface the delightful impression we had just received. 
 
 At one slight tmnd high overleapt all bound. 
 
 Such a play on words, so grave a pun, is unpardonable : and such 
 a prodigious leap is ill represented by the feat of a wolf in a sheep- 
 fold ; and still worse by 
 
 A thief bent to unhoard the cask 
 Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors, 
 Crois-barr'd and bolted fast, fear no assault. 
 In at the 'windo'w climbs^ or o^er the tiles, 
 
 Landor. This " in at the window " is very unlike the " bound 
 high above all bound ; " and climbing " o'er the tiles " is the 
 practice of a more deliberate burglar. 
 
 So since into his church lewd hirelings climb. 
 
 I must leave the lewd hirelings where I find them : they are 
 too many for me. I would gladly have seen omitted all between 
 verses 160 and 205. 
 
 Southey. 
 
 [zjx.] Betwixt them lawns or level downs, and flocks 
 
 Grazing the tender herb. 
 
Southey and Landor. 213 
 
 There had not yet been time for flocks, or even for one 
 flock. 
 
 Landor. At verse 297 commences a series of verses so har- 
 monious that my ear is impatient of any other poetry for several 
 days after I have read them. I mean those which begin, — 
 
 For contemplation he and valor formed. 
 For softness she and sweet attractive grace ; 
 
 and ending with, — 
 
 And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay. 
 
 Southey. Here, indeed, is the triumph of our language, and I 
 should say of our poetry, if, in your preference of Shakspeare, 
 you could endure my saying it. But, since we seek faults rather 
 than beauties this morning, tell me whether you are quite con- 
 tented with, — 
 
 She, as a veil, down to the slender waist 
 Her unadorned golden tresses wore, 
 Dishevel'd, but in wanton ringlets waved 
 As the vine curls her tendrils ; luhick implied 
 Sul^ection, but required 'with gentle sviay. 
 And by her yielded, by him best received. 
 
 Landor. Stopping there, you break the link of harmony just 
 above the richest jewel that poetry ever wore : — 
 
 Yielded with coy submission, modest pride. 
 And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay. 
 
 I would rather have written these two lines than all the poetry 
 that has been written since Milton's time in all the regions of the 
 earth. We shall see again things equal in their way to the best 
 of them ; but here the sweetest of images and sentiments is seized 
 and carried for away from all pursuers. Never tell me, what I 
 think is already on your lips, that the golden tresses in their 
 wanton ringlets implied nothing like subjection. Take away, if 
 you will, — 
 
 And by her yielded, by him best received ; 
 
 and all until you come to, — 
 
 [32 J.] Under a tuft of shade. 
 
214 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Southey. In verse 388, I wish he had employed some other 
 epithet for innocence than harmless. 
 
 Verses 620 and 6?. i might be spared : — 
 
 While other animals inactive range, 
 And of their doings God takes no account. 
 
 660. Daughter of God and man, accomplisht Eve ! 
 
 Surely she was not daughter of man ; and, of all the words that 
 Milton has used in poetry or prose, this accomplisht is the worst. 
 In his time it had already begun to be understood in the sense it 
 bears at present. 
 
 Verse 674. " These, then, tho'," — harsh sounds so near 
 together. 
 
 700. Mosaic; underfoot the violet. 
 
 Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay 
 
 Broidered the ground, more colored than with stone 
 
 Of costliest emblem. 
 
 The broidery and mosaic should not be set quite so closely and 
 distinctly before our eyes. I think the passage might be much im- 
 proved by a few defalcations. Let me read it : — 
 
 The roof 
 Of thickest covert was inwoven shade. 
 Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew 
 Of firm and fragrant leaf; the violet. 
 Crocus, and hyacinth. 
 
 I dare not handle the embroidery. Is not this sufficiently 
 verbose ? 
 
 Landor. Quite. 
 
 Southey. Yet, if you look into yoiir book again, you will find 
 a gap as wide as the bank on either side of it : — 
 
 On either side 
 Acanthus and each odorous bushy shrub 
 Fenced up the verdant wall ; each beauteous flower, 
 Iris all hues, roses and jessamin 
 
 Reared high then Jlourishid heads between, and ■wrought 
 Mosaic. 
 
 He had before told us that there was every tree oi fragrant 
 leaf: we wanted not "each odorous shrub." Nor can we imagine 
 
Southey and Landor. 215 
 
 how it fenced up a verdant wall : it constituted one itself ; one 
 very unlike any thing else in Paradise, and more resembling the 
 topiary artifices which had begun to flourish in France. Here is 
 indeed an exuberance, and "a wanton growth that mocks our 
 scant manuring." 
 
 705. In shadier bower 
 
 More sacred and sequestered, though butfeign'd. 
 Pan or Sylvanus never slept. 
 
 He takes especial heed to guard us against the snares of Paganism, 
 at the expense of his poetry. In Italian books, as you remember, 
 where Fate, Fortune, Pan, Apollo, or any mythological personage 
 is named incidentally, notice is given at the beginning that no 
 harm is intended thereby to the Holy Catholic-Apostolic religion. 
 But harm is done on this occasion, where it is intended just as 
 little. 
 
 [719.] On him tvho had stole Jove's authentic fire. 
 
 This is a very weak and unsatisfactory verse. By one letter it 
 may be much improved, — stolen, which also has the advantage of 
 rendering it grammatical. The word "who coalesces with had. 
 Of such coalescences the poetry of Milton is full. In five 
 consecutive lines you find three : — 
 
 [iii. 398.] Thee only extolled, Son of thy Father's might 
 To e3:ecute his vengeance on his foes, 
 Not so on man ; him through their malice fallen, 
 Father of mercy and grace thou didst not doom 
 So strictly, but much more to pity inclined. 
 
 722. The God that made both sky, air, earth, and heaven. 
 
 Both must signify two things or persons, and never can signify 
 more. 
 
 From verse 735 I would willingly see all removed until we 
 come to, — 
 
 Hail, wedded love I 
 
 After these eight I would reject thirteen. 
 In verses 773 and 774 there is an unfortunate recurrence of 
 sound :— r 
 
2i6 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 The flowery roof 
 Showered roses which the morn ref aired. Sleep on 
 Blest fair ! 
 
 And somewhat worse in the continuation, — 
 
 And O yet happiest, if ye seek 
 No happier state, and Ikntnv to knoiv no more. 
 
 Five similar sounds in ten syllables, besides the aflfiectation of 
 " know to know." 
 
 7S0. To their night watches in warlike parade, 
 
 is not only a slippery verse in the place where it stands, but is 
 really a verse of quite another metre. And I question whether 
 you are better satisfied with the word parade. 
 
 Si 4. As when a spark 
 
 Lights on a heap of nitrous powder, laid 
 Fit for the tun, some magazine to store 
 Against a rumored war. 
 
 Its fitness for the tun and its convenience for the magazine 
 adapt it none the better to poetry. Would there be any detri- 
 ment to the harmony or the expression, if we skip over that 
 verse, reading, — 
 
 Stored 
 Against a rumored war ? 
 
 Landor. No harm to either. The verses 933 and 934, I 
 perceive, have the same cesura, and precisely that which rhyme 
 chooses in preference, and Milton in his blank verse admits the 
 least frequently. 
 
 A faithful leader, not to hazard all, 
 Through ways of danger by himself untried. 
 
 Presently, what a flagellation he inflicts on the traitor Monk ! — 
 
 [947O ^° *^y ^"^ straight unsay, pretending first 
 
 Wise to fly pain, professing next the spy, 
 Argues no leader, but a liar traced. 
 
 When he loses his temper he loses his poetry, in this place and 
 
Southey and Landor. 217 
 
 most others. But such coarse hemp and wire were well adapted 
 to the stripped shoulders they scourged. 
 
 Satan I and couldst thoM faithful add ? O name I 
 
 O sacred name of faithfulness pro&ned ! 
 
 Faithful to whom ? to thy rebellious crew ? 
 
 Army of fiends, fit body to fit head, 
 
 Was this your discipline and faith engaged ? 
 
 Your military obedience, to dissolve 
 
 Allegiance to the acknowledged Power supreme ? 
 
 And thou, sly hypocrite, who now wouldst seem 
 
 Patron of liberty, who more than thou 
 
 Once fawned and cringed ? 
 
 You noticed the rhyme ot supreme and seem. Great heed 
 should be taken against this grievous fault, not only in the 
 final syllables of blank verse, but also in the cesuras. In our 
 blank verse, it is less tolerable than in the Latin heroic, where 
 Ovid and Lucretius, and Virgil himself, are not quite exempt 
 from it. 
 
 Southey. It is very amusing to read Johnson for his 
 notions of harmony. He quotes these exquisite verses, and 
 says, "There are two lines in this passage more remarkably 
 inharmonious." 
 
 [7ZO.] This delicious place, 
 
 For us too large, ■where thy abundance wants 
 Partakers, and uncropt/aZ/j to the ground. 
 
 There are few so dull as to be incapable of perceiving the beauty 
 of the rhythm in the last. Johnson goes out of his way to censure 
 the best thought and the best verse in Cowley : — 
 
 And the soft wings of Peace cover him round. 
 
 Certainly, it is not iambic where he wishes it to be. Milton, like 
 the Italian poets, was rather too fond of this cadence ; but, in the 
 instances which Johnson has pointed out for reprobation, it produces 
 a fine effect. So in the verse, — 
 
 Not Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine. 
 It does the same in Samson Agontstes: — 
 
 Retiring from the popular noise, I seek 
 This unfrequented place, to find some ease,— 
 Ease to the body some, none to the mind. 
 
 Johnson tells us that the third and seventh are weak syllableSf 
 
2i8 Imaginary Conversations; 
 
 and that the period leaves the ear unsatisfied. Milton's ear 
 happened to be satisfied by these pauses ; and so will any ear 
 be that is not (or was not intended by nature to be) nine fair 
 inches long. Johnson is sensible of the harmony which is pro- 
 duced by the pause on the sixth syllable ; but commends it for no 
 better reason than because it forms a complete verse of itself. 
 There can be no better reason against it. 
 
 In regard to the pause at the third syllable, it is very singular 
 and remarkable that Milton never has paused for three lines to- 
 gether on any other point. In the 327th, 328th, and 329th of 
 Paradise Lost, axe these : — 
 
 [Bk. i., 326.] His swift pursuers from heaven's gates pursue^ 
 The advantage, and descending tread us dovrn, 
 Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts 
 Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf. 
 
 Another, whose name I have forgotten, has censured in like 
 manner the defection and falling off in the seventh syllable 
 of that very verse, which I remember your quoting as among 
 the innumerable proofs of the poet's exquisite sensibility and 
 judgment, — 
 
 [ii., 873.] And toward the gate rolling her bestial train, 
 
 where another would have written 
 
 And rolling toward the gate, &c. 
 
 On the same occasion, you praised Thomson very highly for 
 having once written a most admirable verse where an ordinary 
 one was obvious : — 
 
 And tremble every feather with desire. 
 
 Pope would certainly have preferred 
 
 And every feather trembles with desire. 
 
 So would Dryden, probably. Johnson, who censures some of the 
 most beautiful lines in Milton, praises one in VirgU, with as little 
 judgment. He says, " We hear the passing arrow," — 
 
 Et fiigit horrmdum stridens elapsa sagitta. 
 
 Now there never was an arrow in the world that made a horrible 
 ^ Globe ed. reads : "discern."] 
 
Southey and Landor. 219 
 
 stridor in its course. The only sound is a very slight one occa- 
 sioned by the feather. Homer would never have fallen into such 
 an incongruity. 
 
 How magnificent is the close of this fourth book, from, — 
 
 [970.] Then when I am thy captive I 
 
 Landor. I do not agree to the use of golden scales, not 
 figurative but real jeweller's gold, for weighing events : — 
 
 [lOOZ.] Battles and realms. In these he put two •weights, 
 The sequel each of parting and of fight ; 
 The latter guici up-flew and iicied the beam. 
 
 To pass over the slighter objection of quid and iick as displeasing 
 to the ear, the vulgarity of kicking the beam is intolerable. He 
 might as well, among his angels, and among sights and sounds be- 
 fitting them, talk of kicking the bucket. Here, again, he pays a 
 penalty for trespassing. 
 
 Southey. I doubt whether (fifth book) there ever was a poet 
 in a warm or temperate climate, who at some time or other of his 
 life has not written about the nightingale. But no one rivals or 
 approaches Milton in his fondness or his success. However, at 
 the beginning of this book, in a passage full of beauty, there are 
 two expressions, and the first of them relates to the nightingale, 
 which I disapprove : — 
 
 41. Tunes sweetest his loiie-laioredsong. 
 
 In love-labored, the ear is gained over by the sweetness of the 
 sound ; but in the nightingale's song there is neither the reality 
 nor the appearance of labor. 
 
 43. S«*j 0^ the face of things, 
 
 is worthier of Addison than of Milton. 
 
 100, But know that in the soul, &c. 
 
 This philosophy on dreams, expounded by Adam, could 
 never have been hitherto the fruit of his experience or hi^ 
 reflection. 
 
 Landor. 
 
 ijj. These are thy glorious works, ^c 
 
2 20 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Who could imagine that Milton, who translated the Psalms worse 
 than any man ever translated them before or since, should in this 
 glorious hymn have made the 148th so much better than the 
 original ? But there is a wide difference between being bound to 
 the wheels of a chariot and guiding it. He has ennobled that 
 more noble one, — 
 
 O all ye works ot the Lord, &c. 
 
 But in 
 
 185. Ye mists and exhalations that now rise 
 
 From hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray, 
 Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold, &c. 
 
 Such a verse might be well ejected from any poem whatsoever ; 
 but here its prettiness is quite insufferable. Adam never knew 
 any thing either of paint or gold. But, casting out this devil of 
 a verse, surely so beautiful a psalm or hymn never rose to the 
 Creator. 
 
 Southey. " No fear lest dinner cool " (v. 396) might as well 
 never have been thought of: it seems a little too jocose. The 
 speech of Raphael to Adam, on the subject of eating and drinking 
 and the consequences, is neither angelic nor poetical ; but the Sun 
 supping with the Ocean is at least Anacreontic, and not very 
 much debased by Cowley. 
 
 t433'J ^^ doivn they sat 
 
 And to their vianis fell. 
 
 Landor. 
 
 711. Meanwhile the eternal eye, whose sight discerns 
 
 Abstrasest thoughts, from forth his holy mount 
 And from within the golden lamps that burn 
 Nightly before him, saw without their light 
 Rebellion rising, &c. 
 And smiling to his only Son thus said, &c. 
 
 Bentley, and several such critics of poetry, are sadly puzzled, 
 perplexed, and irritated at this. One would take refuge with 
 the first grammar he can lay hold on, and cry pars pro toto ; 
 another strives hard for another suggestion. But if Milton 
 by accident had written both Eternal and Eye with a capital 
 
Southey and Landor. 221 
 
 letter at the beginning, they would have perceived that he had 
 used a noble and sublime expression for the Deity. No one is 
 offended at the words : " It is the will of Providence," or " It is 
 the will of the Almighty ; " yet Providence is that which sees 
 before, and m'dl is different from might. True it is that Provi- 
 dence and Almighty are qualities converted into appellations, and 
 are well known to signify the Supreme Being ; but if the Eternal 
 Eye is less well known to signify him, or not known at all, that 
 is no reason why it should be thought inapplicable. It might be 
 used injudiciously : for instance, the right hand of the Eternal 
 Eye would be singularly so ; but smiles not. The Eternal Eye 
 speaks to his only Son. This is more incomprehensible to the 
 critics than the preceding. And truly if that eye were like ours, 
 and the organ of speech like ours also, it might be strange. Yet 
 the very same good people have often heard without wonder of 
 a speaking eye in a very ordinary person, and are conversant with 
 poets who precede an expostulation, or an entreaty for a reply 
 with " Lux mea." There is a much greater fault, which none 
 of them has observed, in the beginning of the speech : — 
 
 [719.] Son! thou in whom my glory I behold 
 
 In full resplendence ! heir of all my might. 
 
 Now an heir is the future and not the present possessor ; and he 
 to whom he is heir must be extinct before he comes into 
 possession. But this is nothing if you compare it with what 
 follows, a few lines below : — 
 
 [7^9-] ^^^ ^^ advise and to this hazard draw 
 
 With speed what force is left, and all employ 
 In our defence, lest unaivares tve lose 
 This our high placet our sanctuary^ our hill. 
 
 Such expressions of derision are very ill-applied, and derogate 
 much from the majesty of the Father. We may well imagine 
 that far different thoughts occupied the Divine mind at the 
 defection of innumerable angels, and their inevitable and ever- 
 lasting punishment. 
 
 Southey. The critics do not agree on the meaning of the 
 words, — 
 
 799. Much less for this to be our Lord. 
 
222 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Nothing, I think, can be clearer, even without the explanation 
 which is given by Abdiel in verse 813 : — 
 
 Canst thou with impious obloquy condemn 
 The just decree of God, pronounced and sworn 
 That to his only Son, by right endued 
 With royal sceptre, every soul in heaven 
 S/iali bend the knee ? 
 
 V. 869. There are those who cannot understand the plainest 
 things, yet who can admire every fault that any clever man has 
 committed before. Thus, beseeching or besieging, spoken by an 
 angel, is thought proper, and perhaps beautiful, because a quibbler 
 m a Latin comedy says, amentium baud amantium. It appears, 
 then, on record that the first overt crime of the refractory angels 
 was punning : they fell rapidly after that. 
 
 LiOndor. 
 
 870. These tidings carry to the anointed king. 
 
 Whatever anointing the kings of the earth may have undergone, 
 the King of Heaven had no occasion for it. Who anointed 
 him ? When did his reign commence ? 
 
 874. Through the tnjimte host. 
 
 Although our poet would have made no difficulty of accenting 
 " infinite " as we do, and as he himself has done in other places, 
 I am inclined to think that the accent is here on the second 
 syllable. He does not always accentuate the same word in the 
 same place. In verse 888, Bentley and the rest are in a bustle 
 about,— 
 
 IVetl didst thou advise ; 
 Yet not for thy advice or threats JJly 
 These "wicked hosts ^ devoted, lest the "wrath, ^c. 
 
 One suggests one thing, another another ; but nothing is more 
 simple and easy than the construction, if you put a portion of the 
 second verse in a parenthesis, thus, — 
 
 Yet (not for thy advice or threats), &c. 
 
 Southey, The archangel Michael is commanded (Book VI., 
 
 £6 Globe ed. reads : " tents."] 
 
Southey and Landor, 223 
 
 V. 44) to do what the Almighty, who commands it, gave him 
 not strength to do, as we find in the sequel, and what was 
 reserved for the prowess of the Messiah. 
 
 Landor. V. 115. " Where faith and realty," &c. Bentley, 
 more unlucky than ever, here would substitute fealty, as if there 
 were any difference between fealty and faith : reale and leale are 
 the same in Italian. 
 
 Southey. 
 
 160. Before thy fellows, ambitious to win, &c. 
 
 Surely this line is a very feeble one, and where so low a tone is 
 not requisite for the harmony or effect of the period. But the 
 battle of Satan and Michael is worth all the battles in all other 
 poets. I wish, however, I had not found 
 
 [332.] A stream of mcfarms humor issuing. 
 
 The ichor of Homer has lost its virtue by exposure and 
 application to ordinary use. Yet even this would have been 
 better. 
 
 [33S-] Forthwith on all sides to his aid -was run 
 
 By angels. 
 
 This Latinism is inadmissible ; there is no loophole in our 
 language for its reception. He once uses the same form in 
 his History : " Now was fought eagerly on both sides." Even 
 here the word it should have preceded, and the phrase would 
 still remain a stiff intractable Latinism. In the remainder of 
 this book there are much graver faults, amid highest beauty. 
 Surely it was unworthy of Milton to follow Ariosto and 
 Spenser, and many others, in dragging up his cannon from 
 hell ; although it is not, as in the Faerie Queen, represented 
 to us distinctly, — 
 
 RanCd with bullets round, 
 Landor. I wish he had omitted all from verse 483,— 
 
 Which into hollow engines, long and round 
 Thick ramm'd at the other bore, 
 
 ^down to 523; and again from 546, "barbed with fire," to 
 
224 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 verse 628, where the wit, which Milton calls the pleasant vein, 
 is worthy of newly-made devils who never had heard any before, 
 and falls as foul on the poetry as on the antagonist. 
 
 [656.] Their armour helpt their Aarm. 
 
 Here helft means increased. A few lines above, we find " Light 
 as the lightning glimpse." We should have quite enough of this 
 description if at verse 628 we substituted bat for so, and con- 
 tinued to verse 644, "They pluckt the seated hills," skipping 
 over all until we reach 654, — 
 
 Which in the air, &c. 
 
 Soulhey. I think I would go much farther, and make 
 larger defalcations. I would lop off the whole from " Spirits 
 of purest light," verse 660 to 831 ; then (for He) reading, 
 " God on his impious foes," as far as 843, " his ire." Again, 
 omitting nine verses, to "yet half his strength." The 866th 
 line is not a verse : it is turned out of an Italian mould, but in a 
 state too fluid and incohesive to stand in English. This book 
 should close with, — 
 
 [874.] Hell at last 
 
 Yawning received them whole, and on them clos'd. 
 
 Landor. The poem would indeed be much the better for all 
 the omissions you propose ; if you, could anywhere find room for 
 those verses which begin at the 760th, "He in celestial panoply," 
 and end with that sublime, — 
 
 He onward came : far off his coming shone. 
 
 The remainder, both for the subject and the treatment of it, 
 may be given up without a regret. The last verse of the book 
 falls " succiso poplite," — 
 
 Remember ; and fear to transgress. 
 
 Beautiftil as are many parts of the Invocation at the commence- 
 ment of the seventh book, I should more gladly have seen it 
 without the first forty lines, and beginning, — 
 
 The affable archangel. 
 
Southey and Landor. 225 
 
 Southey. 
 
 [ii6.] But knowledge is as food, and needs no less 
 
 Her temperance over appetite, 
 
 He might have ended here. He goes on thus : — 
 
 to know 
 In measure what the mind may well contain. 
 
 Even this does not satisfy him : he adds, — 
 
 Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns 
 Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to ivind. 
 
 Now, certainly Adam could never yet have known any thing 
 about the meaning of surfeit ; and we may suspect that the angel 
 himself must have been just as ignorant on a section of physics 
 which never had existed in the world below, and must have been 
 without analogy in the world above. 
 
 Landor. His supper with Adam was unlikely to produce a 
 surfeit. 
 
 139. At least our envious foe hath ^il'd. 
 
 There is no meaning in at least : " at last " would be little better. 
 I would not be captious nor irreverent ; but surely the words which 
 Milton gives as spoken by the Father to the Son bear the appear- 
 ance of boastfulness and absurdity. The Son must already have 
 known both the potency and will of the Father. How incom- 
 parably more judicious, after five terrific verses, comes at once, 
 without any intervention, — 
 
 [216.3 Silence, ye troubled waves ! and thou deep, peace ! 
 
 If we can imagine any thought or expression at all worthy of the 
 Deity, we find it here. In verse 242 we have another specimen 
 of Milton's consummate art : — 
 
 And earth, self-balanced, on her centre hung. 
 
 Unhappily, he permitted his learning to render him verbose imme- 
 diately after : — 
 
 " Let there be light," said God, and forthwith light 
 Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure, 
 Sprung from the deep. 
 
2 26 Imaginary Conversations, 
 
 The intermediate verse is useless and injurious ; beside, according 
 to his own account, light was not " first of things." He repre- 
 sents it springing from " the deep " after the earth had " hung on 
 her centre," and long after the waters had been apparent. We do 
 not want philosophy in the poem : we only want consistency. 
 
 Southey. There is no part of Milton's poetry where harmony 
 is preserved, together with conciseness, so remarkably as in the 
 verses beginning with 3 1 3, and ending at 338 ; but in the midst 
 of this beautiful description of the young earth, we find 
 
 And bush y/i^ frizzled hair implicit. 
 
 But what poet or painter ever in an equal degree has raised our 
 admiration of beasts, fowls, and fish ? I know you have objected 
 to the repetition of shoal in the word scull. [402.] 
 
 Landor. Shoal is a corruption of scull, which ought to be 
 restored, serving the other with an ejectment to another place. 
 Nor do I like_/rji. But the birds never looked so beautifiil since 
 they left Paradise. Let me read, however, three or four verses 
 in order to offer a remark : — 
 
 [437.] Others, on silver lakes and rivers, bathed 
 
 Their downy breast : the swan with arched neck 
 Between lier white wings mantling proudly, rows 
 Her state with oary feet ; yet oft they quit 
 The dank, and rising on stiff pennons, tower, &c. 
 
 Frequently, as the great poet pauses at the ninth syllable, it is 
 incredible that he should have done it thrice in the space of five 
 verses. For which reason, and as nothing is to be lost by it, I 
 would place the comma after mantling. No word in the whole 
 compass of our language has been so often ill applied or misunder- 
 stood by the poet as this. 
 Southey, 
 
 Bk. viii., 38. Speed to describe whose swiftness number fails 
 
 Adam could have had no notion of swiftness in the heavenly 
 bodies or the earth : it is among the latest and most wonderful of 
 discoveries. 
 
 Landor. Let us rise to Eve, and throw aside our algebra. 
 The great poet is always greatest at this beatific vision. I wish. 
 
Southey and Landor. 227 
 
 however, he had omitted the 46th and 4.7th verses, and also the 
 60th, 6lst, 62d, and 63d. There is a beautiful irregularity in 
 the 62d, — 
 
 And from about her shot darts of desire. 
 
 But when he adds, " Into all eyes," as there were but four, we 
 must except the angel's two : the angel had no occasion for wish- 
 ing to see what he was seeing. 
 
 [76.] He his fabric of the heavens 
 
 Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to mmie 
 His laughter. 
 
 I cannot well entertain this opinion of the Creator's risible facul- 
 ties and propensities. Milton here carries his anthropomorphism 
 much farther than the poem (which needed a good deal of it) 
 required. 
 
 Southey. I am sorry to find a verse of twelve syllables in 216. 
 I mean to say where no syllables coalesce ; in which case there 
 are several which contain that number unobjectionably. 
 
 Landor. In my opinion, a greater fault is to be found in the 
 passage beginning at verse 287 : — 
 
 There gentle sleep 
 First found me, and with soft oppression seiz'd 
 My drowsied sense, untroubled, though I thought 
 I then was passing to my former state, 
 Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve. 
 
 How could he think he was passing into a state of which, at 
 that time, he knew nothing ? 
 
 [Bk. ix.] Z91. Daughter of God and man, immortal Eve! 
 
 Magnificent verse, and worthy of Milton in his own person : but 
 Adam, in calling her thus, is somewhat too poetical, and too pre- 
 sumptuous ; for what else does he call her, but " daughter of God 
 and me" P Now the idea of daughter could never, by any 
 possibility, have yet entered his mind. 
 
 j2g Affronts US with his foul esteem 
 
 Of our integrity : his foul esteem 
 Sticks no dishonor on our front, but turns 
 Foul on himself ; 
 
2 28 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 The word affront is to be taken in its plain English sense, not in 
 its Italian ; but what a jingle and clash and clumsy play of words ! 
 In verse 353, I find, " But bid her well be ware ; " and be ware 
 is very properly in two words : so should be gone, and cannot. 
 
 [Bk. viii.] 299. To the garden of bliss, thy seat prepared. 
 
 This verse is too slippery, too Italian. 
 
 403. What thinkest thou then of me and this my state ? 
 
 Seem I to thee sufficiently possest 
 Of happiness or not, who am alone 
 From all eternity ? for none I know 
 Second to me or like, equal much less. 
 
 This comes with an ill grace, after the long consultation which 
 the Father had holden with the Son, equal (we are taught to 
 believe) in the godhead. 
 Southey. 
 421. And through all numbers absolute^ though one, 
 
 I wish he had had the courage to resist this pedantic, quibbling 
 Latinism. Our language has never admitted the phrase, and 
 never will admit it. 
 
 Landor. I have struck it out, you see, and torn the paper in 
 doing so. In verse 576, — 
 
 Made so adorn, &c. 
 
 I regret that we have lost this beautifiil adjective, which was well 
 worth bringing from Italy. Here follows some very bad reasoning 
 on love, which (being human love) the angel could know nothing 
 about, and speaks accordingly. He adds, — 
 
 [588.] In loving thou dost well, in passion not. 
 
 Now love, to be perfect, should consist of passion and sentiment, 
 in parts as nearly equal as possible, with somewhat of the material 
 to second them. 
 
 Southey. We are come to the ninth book, from which I would 
 cast away the first forty-seven verses. 
 
 Landor. Judiciously. In the 8 ist you will find a verb singular 
 for two substantives, " the land where flows Ganges and Indus." 
 The small fry will carp at this, which is often an elegance ; but 
 
Southey and Landor. 229 
 
 oftener in Greek than in Latin, in Latin than in French, in 
 French than in English. Here follow some of the dullest lines in 
 Milton : — 
 
 Him, after long debate irresolute 
 Of thoughts resolved, his final sentence chose 
 Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in virhom 
 To enter, and his dark suggestion hide 
 From sharpest sight : for in the wily snake 
 Whatever sleights, none vrould suspicious mark. 
 As from his wit and native subtilty 
 Proceeding, which in other beasts observed. 
 Doubt might beget of diabolic power 
 Active within, beyond the sense of brute. 
 
 Not to insist on the prosaic of the passage, we may inquire who 
 could be suspicious, or who could know any thing about his wit and 
 subtility ? He had been created but a few days ; and probably 
 no creature (brute, human, or angelic) had ever taken the least 
 nodce of him, or heard anything of his propensities. " Diabolic 
 power " had taken no such direction ; and the serpent was so 
 obscure a brute that the Devil himself knew scarcely where to 
 find him. When, however, he did find him, — 
 
 [183.] In labyrinth of many a round self-rolled, 
 
 His head the midst, ivell stored tuith subtile ivHesi 
 
 — he made the most of him. But why had he hitherto borne 
 so bad a character ? Who had ever yet been a sufferer by his 
 wit and subtilty ? In the very next verses, the poet says he 
 was — 
 
 Not nocent yet ; but on the grassy herb 
 Fearless, unfear'd, he slept. 
 
 Southey. These are the contradictions of a dreamer. Horace 
 has said of Homer, "aliquando bonus dormitat." This reelly 
 is no napping ; it is heavy snoring. But how fresh and 
 vigorous he rises the next moment ! And we are carried by 
 him, we know not how, into the presence of Eve, and help 
 her to hold down the strong and struggling woodbine for the 
 arbor. I wish Milton had forgotten the manner of Euripides 
 in his dull reflections, and had not forced into Adam's 
 mouth, — 
 
230 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 [13a.] For nothing lovelier can be found 
 
 In woman than to itudi/ household good, 
 And good works in her husband to promote. 
 
 All this is very true, but very tedious, and very out of place. 
 
 Landor. Let us come into the open air again with her. I 
 wish she had not confessed such a predilection for 
 
 581. The smell of sweetest yi«/i«/; 
 
 for, although it is said to be very pleasant to serpents, no serpent 
 had yet communicated any of his tastes to womankind. Again, 
 I suspect you would wish our good Milton a little farther from 
 the schools, when he tells Eve that 
 
 [267.] The wife, where danger or dishonor lurks, 
 Safest and seemliest by her husband stays. 
 Who guards her, or with her the worst endures. 
 
 But how fully and nobly he compensates the inappropriate 
 thought by the most appropriate ! — 
 
 [278.] Just then return'd at shut of evening Jlo^ers. 
 
 Southey. 
 625 . To whom the wily adder, blithe and glad. 
 
 I Strongly object to the word adder, which reduces the grand 
 serpent to very small dimensions. It never is, or has been, 
 applied to any other species than the little ugly venomous 
 viper of our country. Of such a reptile, it never could be 
 said that 
 
 [631.] He . . . siviftly roll'd 
 
 In tangles 
 
 Nor that 
 
 Hope elevates, and joy 
 Brightens his crest. 
 
 Here, again. Homer would have run into no such error. But 
 error is more pardonable than wantonness, such as he commits 
 in verse 648 : — 
 
 Fruitless to me, though yrai/ be here to excess. 
 
Southey and Landor. 231 
 
 Landor. You have often, no doubt, repeated in writing a 
 word you had written just before. Milton has done it inad- 
 vertently in 
 
 674- While each part, , 
 
 Motion, each act, won audience ere the tongue, &c. 
 
 Evidently each should be and. Looking at the tempter in the 
 shape of an adder, as he is last represented to us, there is 
 something which prepares for a smile on the face of Eve, when 
 he says, — 
 
 [687-] Look on me. 
 
 Me, who have touched and tasted, yet both live 
 And life more perfect have attained than fate 
 Meant me, 
 
 Now certainly the adder was the most hideous creature that 
 ever had crossed her path ; and she had no means of knowing, 
 unless by taking his own word for it, that he was a bit wiser 
 than the rest. Indeed, she had heard the voices of many long 
 before she had heard his ; and, as they all excelled him in state- , 
 liness, she might well imagine they were by no means inferior to 
 him in intellect, and were more likely by their conformation to 
 have reached and eaten the apple, although they held their tongues. 
 In verse 781, — 
 
 She pluclced, she eat. 
 Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat, &c. 
 
 Surely he never wrote eat for ate ; nor would he admit a rhyme 
 where he could at least palliate it. But although we met together 
 for the purpose of plucking out the weeds and briars of this 
 boundless and most glorious garden, and not of over-lauding the 
 praises of others, we must admire the wonderful skill of Milton 
 in this section of his work. He represents Eve as beginning to 
 be deceitfiil and audacious; as ceasing to fear, and almost as ceas- 
 ing to reverence the Creator ; and shuddering not at extinction 
 itself, until she thinks 
 
 [8z8.] Of Adam wedded to another Eve. 
 
 Southey. We shall lose our dinner, our supper, and our sleep, 
 
232 Imaginary Conversations, 
 
 if we expatiate on tiie innumerable beauties of the volume : we 
 have scarcely time to note the blemishes. Among these, — 
 
 [853.] In her face excuse 
 
 Came prologue and apology less' prompt. 
 
 There is a levity and impropriety in thus rushing on the stage. 
 I think the verses 957, 958, and 959 superfluous, and somewhat 
 dull ; beside that they are the repetition of verses 9 1 5 and 9 1 6 
 in his soliloquy. 
 
 Landor. I wish that after verse 1003, — 
 
 Wept at completing of the mortal sin, 
 
 — every verse were omitted, until we reach the 1 1 2 1 st. 
 
 They sat them down to weep. 
 
 A very natural sequence. We should indeed lose some fine 
 poetry ; in which, however, there are passages which even the 
 sanctitude of Milton is inadequate to veil decorously. At all 
 events, we should get fairly rid of "Herculean Samson." V. 
 1060. 
 
 Southey. But you would also lose such a flood of harmony as 
 never ran on earth beyond that Paradise. I mean, — 
 
 [1080.] How shall I behold the face 
 
 Henceforth of God or angel, erst with joy 
 And rapture so oft beheld ? Those heavenly shapes 
 Will dazzle now this earthly with their blaze, 
 Insufferably bright. Oh ! might I here 
 In solitude live savage ! in some glade 
 Obscured, where highe.st woods, impenetrable 
 To star or sunlight, spread their umbrage broad 
 And brown as evening. Cover me, ye pines. 
 Ye cedars, with innumerable boughs, 
 Hide me, where I may never see them more. 
 
 Landor. Certainly, when we read these verses, the ear is 
 closed against all others, for the day, or even longer. It some- 
 times is a matter of amusement to hear the silliness of good men 
 
 [' Globe ed. reads : 
 
 "... in her face excuse 
 Came prologue, and apology to prompt 
 WWch with bland words at will she thus addressed "] 
 
Southey and Landor. 233 
 
 conversing on poetry ; but when they lift up some favorite on their 
 shoulders, and tell us to look at one equal in height to Milton, I 
 feel strongly inclined to scourge the more prominent fool of the 
 two, the moment I can discover which it is. 
 
 Southey. 
 
 1064. Long they sat, as strackcn mute. 
 
 Stillingfleet says, " This vulgar expression may owe its origin to 
 the stories in romances of the effect of the magical wand." No- 
 thing more likely. How many modes of speech are called vulgar, 
 in a contemptuous sense, which, because of their propriety and 
 aptitude, strike the senses of all who hear them, and remain in 
 the memory during the whole existence of the language ! This 
 is one, and although of daily parlance, it is highly poetical, and 
 among the few flowers of romance that retain their freshness and 
 odor. 
 Landor. 
 
 Bk. X., V. 5. For what can 'scape the eye, &c. 
 
 When we find in Milton such words as 'scape, 'sdain, &c., with 
 the sign of elision in front of them, we may attribute such a sign 
 to the wilfulness of the printer, and the indifference of the author 
 in regard to its correction. He wrote both words without it, from 
 the Italian scappare and sdegnare. In verse 29, — 
 
 Made haste to mate appear, 
 
 — is negligence or worse ; but incomparably worse still is, — 
 
 95. And usher in 
 
 The evening cool, when he from wrath more cool. 
 
 Southey. In 118, he writes revile (a substantive) for rebuke. 
 In I 30 and 131 are two verses of similar pauses in the same 
 place : — 
 
 I should conceal, and not expose to blame 
 By my complaint. 
 
 The worst of it is, that the words become a verse, and a less 
 heavy one, by tagging the two pieces together. 
 
 And not expose to blame by my complaint. 
 
 I agree with you that, in blank verse, the pause, after the fourth 
 
234 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 syllable, which Pope and Johnson seem to like the best, is 
 very tiresome if often repeated ; and Milton seldom falls into 
 it. But he knew where to employ it with effect ; for example, 
 in this sharp reproof, twice over. Verses 1 45 and 1 46 : — 
 
 Was she thy God, that her thou didst obey 
 Before his voice ? 
 
 In verse 155 he represents the Almighty using a most unseemly 
 metaphor : — 
 
 Which was thy part 
 And person. 
 
 A metaphor taken from the masks of the ancient stage certainly 
 ill suits " His part and person." 
 
 Landor. Here are seven (v. 175) such vile verses, and 
 forming so vile a sentence, that it appears to me a part of God's 
 malediction must have fallen on them on their way from Genesis. 
 In 194, he says, — 
 
 Children thou shalt bring 
 In sorrow forth, and to thy husband's will 
 Thine shall submit ; he over thee shall rule. 
 
 The Deity had commanded the latter part from the beginning : 
 it now comes as the completion of the curse. 
 Verse 1 98 is no verse at all. 
 
 Because thou hast harkened to the voice 01 thy wile. 
 
 There are very few who have not done this, bon-gre mal-gre, 
 and many have thought it curse enough of itself ; poor Milton, 
 no doubt, among the rest. 
 
 Southey. I suspect you will abate a little of your hilarity, 
 if you continue to read from verse 220 about a dozen : they 
 are most oppressive. 
 
 [z66.] I shall not lag behind, nor err 
 
 The way thou leading. 
 
 Such is the punctuation ; virrong, I think. I would read, — 
 
 I shall not lag behind nor err, 
 The way thou leading. 
 
 Landor. He was very fond of this Latinism ; but to err a 
 
Southey and Landor, 235 
 
 •way is neither Latin idiom nor English. From 293 to 316, 
 what a series of verses! — a stnicture more magnificent and 
 wonderful than the terrific bridge itself, the construction of 
 which required the united work of the two great vanquishers of 
 all mankind. 
 
 Southey. Pity that he could not abstain from a pun at the 
 bridge-foot, "by wondrous art pontifical." In verse 348 he 
 recurs to the word pontifice. A few lines above, I mean verse 
 315, there must be a parenthesis. The verses are printed, — 
 
 FoUowring the track 
 Of Satan to the self-same place where he 
 First lighted from his wing and landed safe 
 From out of chaos, to the outside bare 
 Of this round world. 
 
 I would place all the words after " Satan," including chaos, 
 in a parenthesis ; else we must alter the second to for on ; and 
 it is safer and more reverential to correct the punctuation of 
 a great poet than the slightest word. Bentley is much addicted 
 to this impertinence. 
 
 Landor. In his emendations, as he calls them, both of 
 Milton and of Horace, for one happy conjecture he makes at 
 least twenty wrong, and ten ridiculous. In the Greek poets, 
 and sometimes in Terence, he, beyond the rest of the pack, was 
 often brought into the trail by scenting an unsoundness in the 
 metre. But let me praise him where few think of praising him, 
 or even of suspecting his superiority. He wrote better English 
 than his adversary Middleton, and established for his university 
 that supremacy in classical literature which it still retains. 
 
 In verse 369 I find " Thou us empower^;/." This is ungram- 
 matical : it should be empower^i^j;, since it relates to time past. 
 Had it related to time present, it would still be wrong : it should 
 then be empower^j/. I wonder that Bentley has not remarked 
 this, for it lay within his competence. 
 
 Southey. That is no reason why he omitted to remark it. I 
 like plain English so much that I cannot refrain from censuring 
 the phraselogy of verse 345, "With joy and tidings fraught," 
 meaningy'oj^/ tidings, and defended by Virgil's munera lutitiamque 
 dei. Phrases are not good, whether in Latin or English, which 
 do not convey their meaning unbroken and unobstructed. The 
 
236 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 best understanding would with difficulty master such expressions, 
 of which the signification is traditional from the grammarians, but 
 beyond the bounds of logic, or even the liberties of speech. You, 
 who have ridiculed Virgil's odor attulit auras, and many similar 
 foolish tricks committed by him, will pardon my animadversion 
 on a smaller (though no small) fault in Milton. 
 
 Landor. Right. Again I go forward to punctuation. 
 Bentley is puzzled again at verse 368. It is printed with the 
 following : — 
 
 Thou hast achieved our liberty, con6ned 
 Within hell-gates till now ; thou us empower'd 
 To fortify thus far, and overlay 
 With this portentous bridge, die dark abyss. 
 
 The punctuation should be, — 
 
 Thou hast achieved our liberty : confined 
 
 Within hell-gates till now, thou us empowerdst, &c. 
 
 I wonder that Milton should a second time have committed so 
 grave a grammatical fault as he does in writing " thou empowerfi/," 
 instead of empowered^/. Verse 380, — 
 
 Parted by the empyreal bounds. 
 His quadrature, from thy orbicular world. 
 
 Again the schoolmen, and the crazy philosophers who followed 
 them. It was believed that the empyrean is a quadrangle, 
 because in the Revelation the Holy City is square. It is lament- 
 able that Milton should throw overboard such prodigious stores 
 of poetry and wisdom, and hug with such pertinacity the ill-tied 
 bladders of crude learning. But see him here again in all his 
 glory. I wish indeed he had rejected "the plebeian angel 
 militant," and that we might read, missing four verses, — 
 
 [441 .] He through the midst unmarked 
 
 Ascended his high throne. 
 
 What noble verses, fifteen together ! 
 
 Southey. It is much to be regretted that most of the worst 
 verses and much of the foulest language are put into the mouth 
 
Southey and Landor. 237 
 
 of the Almighty. For instance, verse 630, &c. I am afraid 
 you will be less tolerant here than you were about the quadrature. 
 
 My hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth . . . 
 . . . till crammed and gorged, nigh burst . . . 
 With suckt and glutted offal. 
 
 We are come 
 
 [657.] To the other five, 
 
 Their planetary motions and aspects. 
 In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite — 
 
 693. Like change on sea and land ; sideral blast. 
 
 Although he is partial to this scansion, I am inclined to believe 
 that here he wrote sidereal ; because the same scansion as sideral 
 recurs in the close of the verse next but one : — 
 
 Novfyrom the north. 
 
 And, if it is not too presumptuous, I should express a doubt 
 whether the poet wrote 
 
 [79s ■] Is his wrath also ? Beit: man is not so. 
 
 Not so and also, in this position, are disagreeable to the ear ; 
 which might have been avoided by omitting the unnecessary so 
 at the close. 
 
 Landor. You are correct. " Ay me." So I find it spelled 
 (v. 813), not ah me! as usually. It is wonderfiil that, of all 
 tilings borrowed, we should borrow the expression of grief. 
 One would naturally think that every nation had its own, and 
 indeed every man his. Ay me ! is the ah'tme of the Italians. 
 Ahi lasso J is also theirs. Our gadso, less poetical and senti- 
 mental, comes also from them : we need not look for the root. 
 
 Southey. Again I would curtail a long and somewhat foul 
 excrescence, terminating with coarse invectives against the female 
 sex, and with reflections more suitable to the character and 
 experience of Milton than of Adam. I would insert my pruning- 
 knife at verse 871, — 
 
 To warn all creatures from thee — 
 
 and cut clean through, quite to " household peace confound," 
 verse 908. 
 
238 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Landor. The reply of Eve is exquisitely beautiful, espe- 
 cially, — 
 
 [930,] Both have sinned, but thou 
 
 Against God only, I against God and thee 
 
 At last her voice fails her, — 
 
 Me, me only, just object of his ire. 
 
 Bentley, and thousands more, would read, " Me, only me ! " 
 But Milton did not write for Bentley, nor for those thousands 
 more. Similar, in the trepidation of grief, is Virgil's " Me, 
 me, adsum qui feci," &c. 
 
 1003. Why stand we longer shivering under fears, 
 
 That shovy no end but death, and have the power 
 Of many ways to die the shortest choosing. 
 Destruction with destruction to destroy. 
 
 This punctuation is perhaps the best yet published : but, after 
 all, it renders the sentence little better than nonsense. Eve, 
 according to this, talks at once of hesitation and of choice, 
 " shivering under fears," and both of them " choosing the 
 shortest way ; " yet she expostulates with Adam why he is 
 not ready to make the choice. The perplexity would be solved 
 by writing thus : — 
 
 Why stand we longer shivering under fears 
 That show no end but death ? and have the power 
 Of many ways to die ! the shortest choose — 
 Destruction with destruction to destroy. 
 
 If we persist in retaining the participle choosing, instead of 
 the imperitive choose, grammar, sense, and spirit, all escape us. 
 I am convinced that it was an oversight of the transcriber ; and 
 we know how easily, in our own works, faults to which the 
 eye and ear are accustomed escape our detection, and we are 
 surprised when they are first pointed out to us. 
 Southey. I wish you could mend as easily, — 
 
 1053. On me the curse aslope 
 
 Glanced on the ground : with labor I must earn, &c. 
 
 Landor. In the very first verse of the eleventh book, Milton 
 is resolved to display his knowledge of the Italian idiom. We 
 
Southey and Landor. 239 
 
 left Adam and Eve prostrate ; and prostrate he means that they 
 should still appear to us, although he writes, — 
 
 Thus they, in loneliest plight, repentant stood 
 Praying. 
 
 Stavano pregando would signify they continued praying. The 
 Spaniards have the same expression : the French, who never 
 stand still on any occasion, are without it. 
 
 Southey. It is piteous that Milton, in all, his strength, is 
 forced to fall back on the old fable of Deucalion and Pyrrha. 
 And the prayers which the Son of God presents to the Father 
 in a " golden censer, mixed with incense," had never yet been 
 offered to the Mediator, and required no such accompaniment 
 or conveyance. There are some noble lines beginning at verse 
 72 ; but one of them is prosaic in itself, and its discord is profit- 
 less to the others. In verse 86, — 
 
 Ot that definded fruit, 
 
 — I must remark that Milton is not quite exempt from the evil 
 spirit of saying things for the mere pleasure of defending them. 
 Chaucer used the word defend as the English of education then 
 used it, in common with the French. It was obsolete in that 
 sense when Milton wrote ; so it was even in the age of Spencer, 
 who is forced to employ it for the rhyme. 
 
 Landor. This evil spirit, which you find hanging about 
 Milton, fell on him from two school-rooms, both of which are 
 now become much less noisy and somewhat more instructive, 
 although Phillpots is in the one, and although Brougham is in 
 the other ; I mean the school-rooms of theology and criticism. 
 
 Southey. You will be glad that he accents contrite (v. 90) 
 on the last syllable, but the gladness will cease at the first of 
 receptacle, verse 123. 
 
 Landor. I question whether he pronounced it so. My 
 opinion is that he pronounced it receptacle. Latinizing as usual, 
 and especially in Book VIII., v. 565, — 
 
 By attributing overmuch to things, &c. 
 
 We are strange perverters of Latin accentuations. From 
 irr\to we make Irritate ; from excito, excite. But it must be con- 
 
240 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 ceded that the latter is much for the better, and perhaps the 
 former also. You will puzzle many good Latin scholars in Eng- 
 land, and nearly all abroad, if you make them read any sentence 
 containing irrito or excito in any of their tenses. 1 have often 
 tried it ; and nearly all, excepting the Italians, have pronounced 
 both words wrong. 
 Southey. 
 
 [ii8.] Watchful cherubim, four faces each 
 
 Had, like.it double Janus. 
 
 Better left this to the imagination : double Januses are queer 
 figures. He continues, — 
 
 All their shape 
 
 Spangled with eyes, more numerous than those 
 
 Of Argus. 
 
 At the restoration of learning, it was very pardonable to seize 
 on every remnant of antiquity, and to throw together into one 
 great storeroom whatever could be collected from all countries, 
 and from all authors, sacred and profane. Dante has done it, 
 sometimes rather ludicrously. Milton here copies his Argus. 
 And, four lines farther on, he brings forward Leucotho'i, in her 
 own person, although she had then no existence. 
 
 Landor. Nor indeed had subscriptions, to articles or any 
 thing else: yet we find "but Fate subscribed not," v. 181. 
 And within three more lines, "The bird of Jove." Otherwise, 
 the passage is one of exquisite beauty. Among the angels, 
 and close at the side of the archangel, " Iris had dipped her 
 woof." Verse 267, retire is a substantive, from the Italian and 
 Spanish. 
 
 How divinely beautiful is the next passage ! It is impos- 
 sible not to apply to Milton himself the words he has attributed 
 to Eve : — 
 
 [281.] From thee 
 
 How shall 1 part ? and whither wander down 
 Into a lower world ? 
 
 My ear, I confess it, is dissatisfied with every thing, for days and 
 weeks, after the harmony of Paradise Lost. Leaving this 
 magnificent temple, I am hardly to be pacified by the fairy-built 
 
Sou they and Landor. 241 
 
 chambers, the rich cupboards of embossed plate, and the omni- 
 genous images of Shakspeare. 
 
 Southey. I must interrupt your transports. 
 
 L385.] His «ye might there command wliere ever stood 
 
 City of old or modern fame. 
 
 Here are twenty-five lines describing cities to exist long after, 
 and many which his eye could not have commanded even if they 
 existed then, because they were situated on the opposite side of 
 the globe. But some of them, the poet reminds us afterward, 
 Adam might have seen in spirit. Diffuse as he is, he appears 
 quite moderate in comparison with Tasso on a similar occasion, 
 who expatiates not only to the length of five-and-twenty lines, 
 but to between four and five hundred. 
 
 Landor. At verse 480 there begins a catalogue of diseases, 
 which Milton increased in the second edition of the poem. 
 He added, — 
 
 Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy, 
 And moonstruck madness, pining atrophy, 
 Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence 1 
 
 There should be no comma after " melancholy," as there is in 
 my copy. 
 
 Southey. And in mine too. He might have afforded to 
 strike out the two preceding verses when these noble ones were 
 presented. 
 
 Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs, 
 
 are better to be understood than to be expressed. His descrip- 
 tion of old age is somewhat less sorrowful and much less repulsive. 
 It closes with, — 
 
 [543.] In thy blood will reign 
 
 A melancholy damp of cold and dry. 
 
 Nobody could understand this who had not read the strange 
 notions of physicians, which continued down to the age of 
 Milton, in which we find such nonsense as " adust humors." 
 I think you would be unreluctant to expunge verses 624, 625, 
 626, 627. 
 
 IV. Q 
 
^42 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Landor. Quite : and there is also much verbiage about the 
 giants, and very perplexed from verse 688 to 697. But some of 
 the heaviest verses in the poem are those on Noah, from 7 1 7 to 
 737. In the following, we have " vapour and exhalation" which 
 signify the same. 
 
 749. Sea covered sea, 
 
 Sea without shore. 
 
 This is very sublime ; and indeed I could never heartily join with 
 those who condemn in Ovid 
 
 Omnia pontus erant ; deerant quoque litora ponto. 
 
 It is true, the whole fact is stated in the first hemistich ; but the 
 mind's eye moves from the centre to the circumference, and the 
 pleonasm carries it into infinity. If there is any fault in this 
 passage of Ovid, Milton has avoided it ; but he frequently falls 
 into one vastly more than Ovidian, and after so awful a pause as 
 is nowhere else in all the regions of poetry : — 
 
 How didst thou grieve then, Adam, to behold 
 The end of all thy offspring ! end so sad ! 
 Depopulation ! 
 
 Thee another Jloodf 
 Of tears and sorroiv ajtoodt thee also droiuned. 
 And sank thee as thy sons. 
 
 It is wonderful how little reflection on many occasions, and 
 how little knowledge on some very obvious ones, is displayed by 
 Bentley. To pass over his impudence in pretending to correct the 
 words of Milton (whose handwriting was extant), just as he 
 would the corroded or con-upt text of any ancient author, here in 
 verse 895, "To drown the world with man therein, or beast," 
 he tells us that birds are forgot, and would substitute " With man 
 or beast or foiul." He might as well have said that Jieas ait 
 forgot. Beast means every thing that is not man. It would be 
 much more sensible to object to such an expression as men and 
 animals, and to ask. Are not men animals ? and even more so 
 than the rest, if anima has with men a more extensive meaning 
 than with other creatures. Bentley in many things was very acute ; 
 but his criticisms on poetry produce the same effect as the water 
 of a lead mine on plants. He knew no more about it than Hallam 
 
Sou they and Landor. 243 
 
 knows, in ^whom acuteness is certainly not blunted by such a 
 weight of learning. 
 
 Southey. We open the twelfth book : we see land at last. 
 Landor. Yes, and dry land too. Happily the twelfth is the 
 shortest. In a continuation of six hundred and twenty-five flat 
 verses, we are prepared for our passage over several such deserts 
 of almost equal extent, and still more frequent, in Paradise Re- 
 gained. But, at the close of the poem now under our examina- 
 tion, there is a brief union of the sublime and the pathetic for 
 about twenty lines, beginning with " All in bright array." 
 
 We are comforted by the thought that Providence had not 
 abandoned our first parents, but was still their guide ; that, 
 although they had lost Paradise, they were not debarred from 
 Eden ; that, although the angel had left them solitary and 
 sorrowing, he left them "yet in peace." The termination is 
 proper and complete. 
 
 In Johnson's estimate I do not perceive the unfairness of which 
 many have complained. Among his first observations is this : 
 " Scarcely any recital is wished shorter for the sake of quickening 
 the main action." This is untrue : were it true, why remark, as 
 he does subsequently, that the poem is mostly read as a duty, not 
 as a pleasure. I think it unnecessary to say a word on the moral 
 or the subject ; for it requires no genius to select a grand one. 
 The heaviest poems may be appended to the loftiest themes. 
 Andreini and others, whom Milton turned over and tossed aside, 
 are evidences. It requires a large stock of patience to travel 
 through Vida ; and we slacken in our march, although accom- 
 panied with the livelier sing-song of Sannazar. Let any reader, 
 who is not by many degrees more pious than poetical, be 
 asked whether he felt a very great interest in the greatest 
 actors of Paradise Lost, in what is either said or done by the 
 angels or the Creator ; and whether the humblest and weakest 
 does not most attract him. Johnson's remarks on the allegory 
 of Milton are just and wise ; so are those on the non-materi- 
 ality or non-immateriality of Satan. These faults might have 
 been easily avoided ; but Milton, with all his strength, chose 
 rather to make antiquity his shield-bearer, and to come forward 
 under a protecUon which he might proudly have disdained. 
 
 Southey. You will not countenance the critic, nor Dryden 
 
244 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 whom he quotes, in saying that Milton "saw Nature through 
 the spectacles of books." 
 
 Landor. Unhappily, both he and Dryden saw Nature from 
 between the houses of Fleet Street. If ever there was a poet 
 who knew her well, and described her in all her loveliness, it 
 was Milton. In the Paradise Lost, how profuse in his descrip- 
 tions, as became the time and place ! In the Allegro and Penseroso, 
 how exquisite and select ! 
 
 Johnson asks, "What Englishman can take delight in tran- 
 scribing passages, which, if they lessen the reputation of Milton, 
 diminish in some degree the honor of our country ! " I hope 
 the honor of our country will always rest on truth and justice. 
 It is not by concealing what is wrong that any thing right can 
 be accomplished. There is no pleasure in transcribing such 
 passages ; but there is great utility. Inferior writers exercise no 
 interest, attract no notice, and serve no purpose. Johnson has 
 himself done great good by exposing great faults in great authors. 
 His criticism on Milton's highest work is the most valuable of 
 all his writings. He seldom is erroneous in his censures ; but 
 he never is sufficiently excited to admiration of what is purest 
 and highest in poetry. He has this in common with common 
 minds (from which, however, his own is otherwise far remote), 
 to be pleased with what is nearly on a level with him, and to , 
 drink as contentedly a heady beverage, with its discolored 
 froth, as what is of the best vintage. He is morbid, not only 
 in his weakness, but in his strength. There is much to pardon, 
 much to pity, much to respect, and no little to admire, in 
 him. 
 
 After I have been reading the Paradise Lost, I can take up 
 no other poet with satisfaction. I seem to have left the music 
 of Handel for the music of the streets, or at best for drums 
 and fifes. Although in Shakspeare there are occasional bursts 
 of harmony no less sublime ; yet, if there were many such 
 in continuation, it would be hurtful, not only in comedy, but 
 also in tragedy. The greater part should be equable and con- 
 versational. For, if the excitement were the same at the be- 
 ginning, the middle, and the end ; if, consequently (as must be 
 the case), the language and versification were equally elevated 
 throughout, — any long poem would be a bad one, and, worst of 
 
Southey and Landor. 245 
 
 all, a drama. In our English heroic verse, such as Milton has 
 composed it, there is a much greater variety of feet, of move- 
 ment, of musical notes and bais, than in the Greek heroic ; and 
 the final sounds are incomparably more diversified. My predilec- 
 tion in youth was on the side of Homer ; for I had read the 
 Iliad twice, and the Odyssea once, before the Paradise Lost. 
 Averse as I am to every thing relating to theology, and especi- 
 ally to the view of it thrown open by this poem, I recur to it 
 incessantly as the noblest specimen in the world of eloquence, 
 harmony, and genius. 
 
 Southey. Learned and sensible men are of opinion that the 
 Paradise Lost should have ended with the words, " Providence 
 their guide." It might very well have ended there ; but we are 
 unwilling to lose sight all at once of our first parents. Only one 
 more glimpse is allowed us : we are thankful for it. We have 
 seen the natural tears they dropped ; we have seen that they 
 wiped them soon. And why was it ? Not because the world 
 was all before them ; but because there still remained for them, 
 under the guidance of Providence, not indeed the delights ot 
 Paradise, now lost for ever, but the genial clime and calm repose 
 of Eden. 
 
 Landor. It has been the practice in late years to supplant 
 one dynasty by another, political and poetical. Within our 
 own memory, no man had ever existed who prefen^ed Lucretius 
 on the whole to Virgil, or Dante to Homer. But the great 
 Florentine, in these days, is extolled high above the Grecian and 
 Milton. Few, I believe, have studied him more attentively or 
 with more delight than I have ; but, beside the prodigious dis- 
 proportion of the bad to the good, there are fundamental defects 
 which there are not in either of the other two. In the Divina 
 Commedia the characters are without any bond of union, any 
 field of action, any definite aim. There is no central light above 
 the Bolge ; and we are chilled in Paradise even at the side of 
 Beatrice. 
 
 Southey. Some poetical Perillus must surely have invented 
 the terza rima. I feel in reading it as a school-boy feels when 
 he is beaten over the head with a bolster. 
 
 Landor. We shall hardly be in time for dinner. What 
 should we have been if we had repeated with just eulogies all the 
 noble things in the poem we have been reading ? 
 
246 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Southey. They would never have weaned you from the 
 Mighty Mother who placed her turreted crown on the head of 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 Landor. A rib of Shakspeare would have made a Milton ; 
 the same portion of Milton, all poets born ever since. 
 
 SECOND CONVERSATION.! 
 
 Southey. As we are walking on, and before we open our 
 Milton again, we may digress a little in the direction of those 
 poets who have risen up from under him, and of several who seem 
 to have never had him in sight. 
 
 Landor. We will, if you please ; and I hope you may not 
 find me impatient to attain the object of our walk. However, 
 let me confess to you, at starting, that I disapprove of models, 
 even of the most excellent. Faults may be avoided, especially if 
 they are pointed out to the inexperienced in such bright examples 
 as Milton ; and teachers in schools and colleges would do well 
 to bring them forward, instead of inculcating an indiscriminate 
 admiration. But every man's mind, if there is enough of it, has 
 its peculiar bent. Milton may be imitated, and has been, where 
 he is stiff, where he is inverted, where he is pedantic ; and probably 
 those men we take for mockers were unconscious of their mockery. 
 But who can teach, or who is to be taught, his richness, or his 
 tenderness, or his strength ? The closer an inferior poet comes 
 to a great model, the more disposed am I to sweep him out of 
 my way. 
 
 Southey. Yet you repeat with enthusiasm the Latin poetry of 
 Robert Smith, an imitator of Lucretius. 
 
 Landor. I do ; for Lucretius himself has nowhere written 
 such a continuity of admirable poetry. He is the only modern 
 Latin poet who has composed three sentences together worth 
 reading ; and, indeed, since Ovid, no ancient has done it. I 
 ought to bear great ill-will toward him ; for he drove me from 
 the path of poetry I had chosen, and I crept into a lower. What 
 
 [» Works, ii.. 1846. Works, iv., 1876.] 
 
Southey and Landor. 247 
 
 a wonderful thing it is, that the most exuberant and brilliant wit, 
 and the purest poetry in the course of eighteen centuries, should 
 have flowed from two brothers ! 
 
 Southey. We must see through many ages before we see 
 through our own distinctly. Few among the best judges, and 
 even among those who desired to judge dispassionately and im- 
 partially, have beheld their contemporaries in those proportions in 
 which they appeared a century later. The ancients have greatly 
 the advantage over us. Scarcely can any man believe that one 
 whom he has seen in coat and cravat can possibly be so great as 
 one who wore a chlamys and a toga. Those alone look gigantic 
 whom Time " multo acre sepsit," or whom childish minds, for the 
 amusement of other minds more childish, have lifted upon stilts. 
 Nothing is thought so rash as to mention a modern with an 
 ancient ; but, when both are ancient, the last-comer often stands 
 first. The present form one cluster, the past another. We are 
 petulant if some of the existing have pushed by too near us ; but 
 we walk up composedly to the past, with all our prejudices 
 behind us. We compare them leisurely one with another, and 
 feel a pleasure in contributing to render them a plenary, however 
 a tardy, justice. In the fervor of our zeal, we often exceed it ; 
 which we never are found doing with our contemporaries, unless 
 in malice to one better than the rest. Some of our popular and 
 most celebrated authors are employed by the booksellers to cry 
 up the wares on hand or forthcoming, partly for money and 
 partly for payment in kind. Without such management, the 
 best literary production is liable to moulder on the shelf. 
 
 Landor. A wealthy man builds an ample mansion, well pro- 
 portioned in all its parts, well stored with the noblest models of 
 antiquity ; extensive vales and downs and forests stretch away 
 from it in every direction ; but the stranger must of necessity pass 
 it by, unless a dependent is stationed at a convenient lodge to ad- 
 mit and show him in. Such, you have given me to understand, 
 is become the state of our literature. The bustlers who rise into 
 notice by playing at leap frog over one another's shoulders will 
 disappear when the game is over ; and no game is shorter. But 
 was not Milton himself kept beyond the paling ? Nevertheless, 
 how many toupees and roquelaures, and other odd things with odd 
 names, have fluttered among the jays in the cherry orchard, while 
 
248 Imaginary Conversations, 
 
 we tremble to touch with the finger's end his grave, close-buttoned 
 gabardine ! He was called strange and singular long before he 
 was acknowledged to be great : so, be sure, was Shakspeare ; so, 
 be sure, was Bacon ; and so were all the rest, in the order of 
 descent. You are too generous to regret that your liberal praise 
 of Wordsworth was seized upon with avidity by his admirers, not 
 only to win others to their party, but also to depress your merits. 
 Nor will you triumph over their folly in confounding what is piti- 
 ful with what is admirable in him ; rather will you smile, and, 
 without a suspicion of malice, find the cleverest of these good 
 people standing on his low joint-stool with a slender piece of 
 wavering tape in his hand, measuring him with Milton back to 
 back. There is as much difference between them as there is 
 between a celandine and an ilex. The one lies at fiiU length and 
 full breadth along the ground ; the other rises up, stiff, strong, 
 lofty, beautiful in the play of its slenderer branches, overshadow- 
 ing with the infinitude of its grandeur. 
 
 Southey. You will be called to account as resentful ; and not 
 for yourself, which you never have been thought, but for another, 
 — a graver fault in the estimation of most. 
 
 Landor. I do not remember that resentment has ever made 
 me commit an injustice. Instead of acrimony, it usually takes the 
 form of ridicule ; and the sun absorbs whatever is noxious in the 
 vapor. 
 
 Southey. You think me mild and patient ; yet I have found it 
 difficult to disengage from my teeth the clammy and bitter heavi- 
 ness of some rotten nuts with which my Edinburgh hosts have 
 regaled me ; and you little know how tiresome it is to wheeze 
 over the chaff and thistle-beards in the chinky manger of 
 Hallam.2 
 
 Landor. We are excellent Protestants in asserting the liberty 
 of private judgment on all the mysteries of poetry ; denying the 
 exercise of a decretal to any one man, however intelligent and 
 
 [2 There are several attacks upon Hallam in this Conversation. Landor 
 appears to have had two reasons for disliking him. In the first place, he 
 always ascribed to Hallam an unfavourable review of the Pentameron 
 which appeared in the Foreign Quarterly; moreover, Landor had met 
 Hallam at Sir Charles Elton's, and had been snubbed by him. (See 
 Forster's Life, p. 204.] 
 
Southey and Landor. 249 
 
 enlightened, but assuming it for a little party of our own, with 
 Self in the chair. A journalist who can trip up a slippery minister 
 fancies himself able to pull down the loftiest poet or the soundest 
 critic. It is amusing to see the labors of Lilliput. 
 
 Southey. I have tasted the contents of every bin, down to the 
 ^nger-beer of Brougham. The balance of criticism is not yet 
 fixed to any beam in the public warehouses that offer it, but is 
 held unevenly by intemperate hands, and is swayed about by every 
 pufF of wind. 
 
 Landor. Authors should never be seen by authors, and little 
 by other people. The Dalai Lama is a god to the imagination, 
 a child to the sight ; and a poet is much the same ; only that the 
 child excites no vehemence, while the poet is staked and faggoted 
 by his surrounding brethren, — all from pure love, however ; partly 
 for himself, partly for truth. When it was a matter of wonder 
 how Keats, who was ignorant of Greek, could have written his 
 Hyperion, Shelley, whom envy never touched, gave as a reason, 
 " Because he luas a Greek." Wordsworth, being asked his 
 opinion of the same poem, called it, scofEngly, " a pretty piece of 
 paganism." Yet he himself, in the best verses he ever wrote, and 
 beautiful ones they are, reverts to the powerful influence of the 
 pagan creed. 
 
 Southey. How many who write fiercely or contemptuously 
 against us, not knowing us at all, would, if some accident or whim 
 had never pushed them in the wrong direction, write with as much 
 satisfaction to themselves a sonnet full of tears and tenderness on 
 our death ! In the long voyage we both of us may soon expect 
 to make, the little shell-fish will stick to our keels, and retard us 
 one knot in the thousand. But while we are here, let us step 
 aside, and stand close by the walls of the old houses ; making 
 room for the swell-mob of authors to pass by, with their puffiness 
 of phraseology, their german-silver ornaments, their bossy and iU- 
 soldered sentences, their little and light parlor-faggots of trim 
 philosophy, and their top-heavy baskets of false language, false 
 criticism, and false morals. 
 
 Landor. Our sinews have been scarred and hardened with the 
 red-hot implements of Byron ; and, by way of refreshment, we 
 are now standing up to the middle in the marsh. We are told 
 that the highly-seasoned is unwholesome ; and we have taken in 
 
250 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 good earnest to clammy rye-bread, boiled turnips, and scrag of 
 mutton. If there is nobody who now can guide us through the 
 glades in the Forest of Arden, let us hail the first who will con- 
 duct us safely to the gates of Ludlow Castle. But we have other 
 reasons left on hand. For going through the Paradise Regained, 
 how many days' indulgence will you grant me ? 
 
 Soulhey. There are some beautiful passages, as you know, 
 although not numerous. As the poem is much shorter than the 
 other, I will spare you the annoyance of uncovering its nakedness. 
 I remember to have heard you say that your ear would be better 
 pleased, and your understanding equally, if there had been a pause 
 at the close of the fourth verse. 
 
 Landor. True ; the three following are useless and heavy. I 
 would also make another defalcation, of the five after " else mute." 
 If the deeds he relates are 
 
 Above heroic, though in secret done, 
 
 it was unnecessary to say that they are 
 
 Worthy to have not remained so long unsung. 
 
 Southey. Satan, in his speech, seems to have caught hoarse- 
 ness and rheumatism since we met him last. What a verse is, — 
 
 [85.] This is my Son beloved, in him, am pleased ! 
 
 It would not have injured it to have made it English, by writing 
 " in him I am pleased." It would only have continued a sadly 
 dull one. 
 
 [118.] Of many a pleasant realm — and province -wide, 
 
 [139.] The Holy Ghost, and the power of the Highest. 
 
 But this is hardly more prosaic than, " Oh,^ what a multitude 
 of thoughts, at once awakened in me, swarm, while I consider 
 what within I feel myself, and hear ! " &c. But the passage has 
 reference to the poet, and soon becomes very interesting on that 
 account. 
 
 [175.] But to vanquish by wisdom hellish wiles. 
 
 pLine 195. Globe ed.] 
 
Southey and Landor. 251 
 
 It is difficult so to modulate our English verse as to render this 
 endurable to the ear. The first line in the Gerusalemme Liberata 
 begins with a double trochee, Canto I'arme. The word " But " 
 is too feeble for the trochee to turn on. We come presently to 
 such verses as we shall never see again out of this poem : — 
 
 [299.] And he still on was led, but with such thoughts 
 Accompanied, of things past and to come, 
 Lodged in his breast, as •well might recommend 
 Suck solitude before choicest society. 
 
 [360.] But was driven 
 
 With them from bliss to the bottomless deep. 
 
 This is dactylic. 
 
 With them from | bliss to the bottomless | deep, 
 
 41 z. He before had sat 
 
 Among the prime in splendor, now deposed, 
 £jected, emptied, gazed, unpitied, shunned, 
 A spectacle of ruin or of scorn, &c. 
 
 Or should be and. 
 
 [436.] Which they who ask'd have seldom understood. 
 
 And, not well understood, as good not known. 
 
 To avoid the jingle, which perhaps he preferred, he might have 
 written " as "well ; " but how prosaic ! 
 
 Landor. The only tolerable part of the first book are the six 
 closing lines ; and these are the more acceptable because they are 
 the closing ones. 
 
 Southey. The second book, opens inauspiciously. The Devil 
 himself was never so unlike the Devil as these verses are unlike 
 
 fy.J Andrew and Simon, Jizmous after knoton. 
 
 With others though in holy writ not named, 
 Now missing him, &c. 
 
 [27.] Plain fishermen, no greater men them call. 
 
 Landor. I do not believe that any thing short of your friend- 
 ship would induce me to read a third time, during my life, the 
 Paradise Regained ; and I now feel my misfortune and imprud- 
 ence in having given to various friends this poem and many 
 
252 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 others, in which I have marked with a pencil the faults and 
 beauties. The dead level lay wide and without a finger-post ; the 
 highest objects appeared, with few exceptions, no higher or orna- 
 mental than bulrushes. We shall spend but little time in repeat- 
 ing all the passages where they occur ; and it will be a great 
 relief to us. Invention, energy, and grandeur of design — the 
 three great requisites to constitute a great poet, and which no 
 poet since Milton hath united — are wanting here. Call the design 
 a grand one, if you will ; you cannot, however, call it his. 
 Wherever there are thought, imagination, and energy, grace in- 
 variably follows ; otherwise the colossus would be without its 
 radiance, and we should sail by with wonder and astonishment, 
 and gather no roses and gaze at no images on the sunny isle. 
 
 Southey. Shakspeare, whom you not only prefer to every 
 other poet, but think he contains more poetry and more wisdom 
 than all the rest united, is surely less grand in his designs than 
 several. 
 
 Landor. To the eye. But Othello was loftier than the citadel 
 of Troy ; and what a Paradise fell before him ! Let us descend ; 
 for from Othello we must descend, whatever road we take. Let 
 us look at Julius Casar. No man ever overcame such difficulties, 
 or produced by his life and death such a change in the world we 
 inhabit. But that also is a grand design which displays the in- 
 terior workings of the world within us, and where we see the 
 imperishable and unalterable passions depicted al fresco on a lofty 
 dome. Our other dramatists painted only on the shambles, and 
 represented what they found there, — blood and garbage. We 
 leave them a few paces behind us, and step over the gutter into 
 the green-market. There are, however, men rising up among us, 
 endowed with exquisiteness of taste and intensity of thought. 
 At no time have there been so many who write well in so many 
 ways. 
 
 Southey. Have you taken breath ; and are you ready to go 
 on with me ? 
 
 Landor. More than ready, — alert. For we see before us 
 a longer continuation of good poetry than we shall find again 
 throughout the whole poem, beginning at verse 1 53, and ter- 
 minating at 22^ In these, however, there are some bad verses, 
 such as, — 
 
Southey and Landor. 253 
 
 ['SsO Among daughters of men the fairest found, 
 
 [171.] And made him bow to the gods of his wives. 
 
 Verse 180, — 
 
 Cast wanton eyes on the daughters of men, 
 
 — is false grammar : " thou cast" for, " thou castedst." I find 
 the same fault where I am as much surprised to find it, in 
 Shelley : — 
 
 Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 
 
 Shelley in his Cenci has overcome the greatest difficulty that ever 
 was overcome in poetiy, although he has not risen to the greatest 
 elevation. He possesses less vigor than Byron, and less com- 
 mand of language than Keats ; but I would rather have written 
 his 
 
 " Music, when soft voices die," 
 
 than all that Beaumont and Fletcher ever wrote, together with all 
 of their contemporaries, excepting Shakspeare. 
 
 Southey. It is wonderful that Milton should praise the con- 
 tinence of Alexander as well as of Scipio. Few conquerors had 
 leisure for more excesses, or indulged in greater, than Alexander. 
 He was reserved on one remarkable occasion : we hear of only 
 one. Scipio, a much better man, and temperate in all things, 
 would have been detested, even in Rome, if he had committed 
 that crime from which the forbearance is foolishly celebrated as 
 his chief virtue. 
 
 You will not refuse your approbation to another long pas- 
 sage, beginning at verse 260, and ending at 300. But at the 
 conclusion of them, where the Devil says that " beauty * stands 
 in the admiration only of weak minds," he savors a little of 
 the Puritan. Milton was sometimes angry with her ; but never 
 had she a more devoted or a more discerning admirer. For 
 these forty good verses, you will pardon, — 
 
 [243.] After forty days' fasting had remained. 
 
 [4 "For beauty stands in the admiration only of wealt minds led 
 captive," is line 220. The passage, at whose conclusion it comes, must 
 be that praised by Landor above, and not the passage which Southey here 
 commends. There is some confusion in the passage as it now stands.] 
 
254 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Landor. Very much like the progress of Milton himself in 
 this jejunery. I remember your description of the cookery in 
 Portugal and Spain, which my own experience most bitterly 
 confirmed; but I never met with a.bonito " gris-amber-steamed."" 
 This certainly was reserved for the Devil's own cookery. Our 
 Saviour, I think, might have fasted another forty days before he 
 could have stomached this dainty ; and the Devil, if he had had 
 his wits about him, might have known as much. 
 
 Southey. I have a verse in readiness which may serve as a 
 napkin to it : — 
 
 [405.] And with these words his temptation pursued ; 
 
 where it would have been very easy to have rendered it less dis- 
 agreeable to the ear by a transposition, — 
 
 And his temptation with these words pursued. 
 
 I am afraid you will object to a redundant heaviness in — 
 
 [4*7. ] Get riches first — get -uiealth — and treasure heap ; 
 
 and no authority will reconcile you to roll-calls of proper names, 
 such as — 
 
 [361.] Launcelot or Fellias or Pellenore ; 
 
 and — 
 
 [446.] Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus ; 
 
 or, again, to such a verse as — 
 
 [428.] Not difffcult, if thou hearken to me. 
 
 Verse 461, — 
 
 To him who wears the regal diadem, 
 
 — is quite superfluous, and adds nothing to the harmony. Verses 
 472-476 have the same cesura. This, I believe, has never been 
 P Line 341 (Globe ed.). 
 
 " beasts of chase or fowl of game 
 In pastry built or from the spit or boiled 
 Gris-amber steamed." 
 
 There is no bonito in Milton.J 
 
Southey and Landor. 255 
 
 remarked, and yet is the most remarkable thing in all Milton's 
 poetry. 
 
 It is wonderful that any critic should be so stupid, as a 
 dozen or two of them have proved themselves to be, in ap- 
 plying the last verses of this second book to Christina of 
 Sweden : — 
 
 To give a kingdom hath been thought 
 Greater and nobler done, and to lay down 
 Far more magnanimous than to assume. 
 niches are needless then, &c. 
 
 Whether he had written this before or after the abdication of 
 Richard Cromwell, they are equally applicable to him. He 
 did retire not only from sovereignty but from riches. Christina 
 took with her to Rome prodigious wealth, and impoverished 
 Sweden by the pension she exacted. 
 The last lines are intolerably harsh : — 
 
 OJiest better rniis'd, 
 
 It may have been written " often : " a great relief to the ear, 
 and no detriment to the sense or expression. We never noticed 
 his care in avoiding such a ruggedness in verse 401, — 
 
 Whose pains have earn'd Xh^far-fet spoil. 
 
 He employed " far-^* " instead of " isx -fetch' d ; " not only 
 because the latter is in conversational use, but because no sound 
 is harsher than "fetch'd," and especially before two sequent 
 consonants, followed by such words as " mith that." It is 
 curious that he did not prefer " ivherewith ; " both because a 
 verse ending iq "that" is followed by one ending in "quite," 
 and because "that" also begins the next. I doubt whether 
 you will be satisfied with the first verse I have marked in the 
 third book, — 
 
 [217,] From that placid aspect and meek regard. 
 
 Landor. The trochee in "placid" is feeble there, and "meek 
 regard" conveys no new idea to "placid aspect." Presently we 
 come to — 
 
 [335.] Mules after these, camels and dromedaries. 
 
 And wagons fraught with utensils of war. 
 
256 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 And here, if you could find any pleasure in a triumph over the 
 petulance and frowardness of a weak adversary, you might laugh 
 at poor Hallam, who cites the following as among the noble 
 passages of Milton : — 
 
 [337-] Su'^h forces met not, mr so -wide a camp, 
 
 When Agrican with all his northern powers 
 Besieged Albracca, as romances tell, 
 The city of Gallafron, from whence to win 
 The fairest of her sex, Angelica. 
 
 Southey. How very like Addison when his milk was turned 
 to whey ! I wish I could believe that the applauders of this 
 poem were sincere, since it is impossible to think them judicious ; 
 their quotations, and especially Hallam's, having been selected 
 from several of the weakest parts when better were close before 
 them : but we have strong evidence that the opinion was given 
 in the spirit of contradiction, and from the habit of hostility to 
 what is eminent. I would be charitable. Hallam may have 
 hit upon the place by hazard ; he may have been in the situa- 
 tion of a young candidate for preferment in the church, who 
 was recommended to the Chancellor Thurlow. After much 
 contemptuousness and ferocity, the chancellor, throwing open on 
 the table his Book of Livings, commanded him to choose for 
 himself. The young man modestly and timidly thanked him 
 for his goodness, and entreated his lordship to exercise his own 
 discretion. With a volley of oaths, of which he was at all 
 times prodigal, but more especially in the presence of a clergy- 
 man, he cried aloud, "Put this pen, sir, at the side of one 
 or other." Hesitation was now impossible. The candidate 
 placed it without looking where : it happened to be at a bene- 
 fice of small value. Thurlow slapped his hand upon the table, 
 and roared, " By God ! you were within an ace of the best 
 living in my gift ! " 
 
 Landor. Hear the end : — 
 
 His daughter, sought by many prowest knights, 
 Both Paynim and the peers of Charlemagne. 
 
 Southey. It would be difficult to extract, even from this 
 poem, so many schoolboy's verses together. The preceding, 
 
Southey and Landor. 257 
 
 which also are verbose, are much more spirited ; and the illus- 
 tration of one force by the display of another, and which the 
 poet tells us is less, exhibits but small discrimination in the 
 critic who extols it; To praise a fault is worse than to com- 
 mit one. I know not whether any such critic has pointed out 
 for admiration the "glass of telescope," by which the Tempter 
 might have shown Rome to our Saviour, verse 42, Book IV. 
 But we must not pass over lines nearer the commencement, 
 verse 1 o : — 
 
 But as a man who had been matchless held 
 In cunning, over-reached where least he thought, 
 To salve his credit, and for very spite 
 Still will be tempting him who foils him still. 
 
 This is no simile, no illustration ; but exactly what Satan had 
 been doing. 
 
 Landor. The Devil grows very dry in the desert, where he 
 discourses — 
 
 [278.] Of Academics old and new, with those 
 
 Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect 
 Epicurean, and the Stoic severe. 
 
 Southey. It is piteous to find the simplicity of the gospel 
 overlaid and deformed by the scholastic argumentation of our 
 Saviour, and by the pleasure he appears to take in holding a long 
 conversation with the adversary : — 
 
 Not therefore am I short 
 Of knowing what I ought. He who receives 
 Light from above, from the fountain of light. 
 
 What a verse, verse 287, &c. ! A dissertation from our Saviour, 
 delivered to the Devil in the manner om" poet has delivered it, 
 was the only thing wanting to his punishment ; and he catches 
 it at last. Verse 397 : — 
 
 Darkness now rose 
 As daylight sunk, and brought in lowering night. 
 Her shadowy offspring. 
 
 This is equally bad poetry and bad philosophy : the darkness 
 rising and bringing in the night lotuering ; when he adds, — 
 
258 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Unsubstantial both, 
 Privation mere of light — and absent day. 
 
 How ? Privation of its absence ! He wipes away with a 
 single stroke of the brush two very indistinct and ill-drawn 
 figures. 
 Landor. 
 
 Our Saviour meek and with untroubled mind, 
 After his zirj jaunt, tho' hurried sore. 
 
 How " hurried sore," if with untroubled mind ? 
 
 Hungry and cold, betook him to his rest. 
 
 I should have been quite satisfied with a quarter of this. 
 
 Darkness now rose ; 
 Our Saviour meek betook him to his rest. 
 
 Such simplicity would be the more grateful and the more effective 
 in preceding that part of Paradise Regained wliich is the most 
 sublimely pathetic. It would be idle to remark the propriety of 
 accentuation of concourse, and almost as idle to notice that in 
 verse 420 is — 
 
 Thou only stoodst unshaken ; 
 
 and in verse 425, — 
 
 Thou satst unappalled. 
 
 But to stand, as I said before, is to remain, or to be, in Milton, 
 following the Italian. Never was the eloquence of poetry so 
 set forth by words and numbers in any language as in this period. 
 Pardon the infernal and hellish. 
 
 Infernal ghosts and hellish furies round 
 
 Environ'd thee : some liowl'd, some yell'd, some shriekt, 
 
 Some bent at thee their fiery darts, •while thou 
 
 Satst unappalled in calm and sinless peace. 
 
 The idea of silling is in itself more beautiful than of standing 
 or lying down ; but our Saviour is represented as lying down, 
 while, — 
 
 The tempter watcht, and soon with ugly dreams 
 Disturbed his sleep. 
 
Southey and Landor. 259 
 
 He could disturb but not appall him, as he himself says in 
 verse 487. 
 
 Southey. It is thought by Joseph Warton and some others, 
 that, where the Devil says, — 
 
 [500.] Then hear, O Son of David, virgin-born, 
 
 For Son of God to me is yet in doubt, &c., 
 
 — he speaks sarcastically in the viford mrgin-hom. But the 
 Devil is not so bad a rhetorician as to turn round so suddenly 
 from the ironical to the serious. He acknowledges the miracle 
 of the nativity ; he pretends to doubt its divinity. 
 
 [J41 .] So saying he caught him up, and •without iving 
 
 Of hiffogrif, bore through the air sublime. 
 
 Satan had given good proof that his wing was more than a 
 match for a hippogrif 's ; and, if he had borrowed a hippogrif 's 
 for the occasion, he could have made no use of it, unless he 
 had borrowed the hippogrif too, and rode before or behind 
 on him, — 
 
 Over the wilderness — and o^cr the plain. 
 
 Two better verses follow ; but the temple of Jenisalem could 
 never have appeared, — 
 
 Topt with golden spires. 
 
 [581.] So Satan fell ; and straight a fiery globe 
 
 Of angels on full sail of wing flew nigh. 
 Who on their plumy vans received him soft. 
 
 He means our Saviour, not Satan. In any ancient we should 
 manage a little the ductus llterarum, and for the wretched words, 
 '^ him soft," propose to substitute their lord. But by what 
 ingenuity can we erect into a verse verse 597 ? 
 
 In the bosom of bliss and light of light. 
 
 In verses 613 and 614 we find rhyme. 
 
 Landor. The angels seem to have lost their voices since they 
 left Paradise. Their denunciations against Satan are very angiy, 
 but very weak : — 
 
26o Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 [629.] Thee and thy legions ; yelling they shall fly 
 
 And beg to hide them in a herd of swine, 
 Lest he command them down into the deep 
 Bound, and to torment sent before their time 
 
 Surely they had been tormented long before. 
 
 The close of the poem is extremely languid, however much it 
 has been commended for its simplicity. 
 Southey. 
 
 He, unobserved, 
 Home, to his mother's house, private return'd. 
 
 Unobserved and private ; home and his " mother's house," are not 
 very distinctive. 
 
 Landor. Milton took but little time in forming the plan of his 
 Paradise Regained, doubtful and hesitating as he had been in the 
 construction of Paradise Lost. In composing a poem or any 
 other work of imagination, although it may be well and proper to 
 lay down a plan, I doubt whether any author of any durable work 
 has confined himself to it very strictly. But writers will no more 
 tell you whether they do or not than they will bring out before 
 you the foul copies, or than painters will admit you into the secret 
 of composing or of laying on their colors. I confess to you, that 
 a few detached thoughts and images have always been the 
 beginnings of my works. Narrow slips have risen up, more or 
 fewer, above the surface. These gradually became larger and 
 more consolidated ; freshness and verdure first covered one part, 
 then another ; then plants of firmer and of higher growth, how- 
 ever scantily, took their places, then extended their roots and 
 branches ; and among them and round about them in a little while 
 you yourself, and as many more as I desired, found places for 
 study and for recreation. 
 
 Returning to Paradise Regained. If a loop in the netting of 
 a purse is let down, it loses the money that is in it ; so a poem 
 by laxity drops the weight of its contents. In the animal body, 
 not only nerves and juices are necessary, but also continuity and 
 cohesion. Milton is caught sleeping after his exertions in Paradise 
 Lost, and the lock of his strength is shorn off; but here and there 
 a prominent muscle swells out from the vast mass of the collapsed. 
 
 Southey. The Samson Agonistes, now before us, is less Ian- 
 
Southey and Landor. 261 
 
 guid ; but it may be charged with almost the heaviest fault of a 
 poem, or indeed of any composition, particularly the di-amatic, 
 which is, there is insufHcient coherency or dependence of part on 
 part. Let us not complain that, while we look at Samson and 
 hear his voice, we are forced to think of Milton, of his blindness, 
 of his abandonment, with as deep a commiseration. If we lay 
 open the few faults covered by his transcendent excellences, we 
 feel confident that none are more willing (or would be more 
 acceptable were he present) to pay him homage. I retain all my 
 admiration of his poetry ; you all yours, not only of his poetry, 
 but of his sentiments on many grave subjects. 
 
 Landor. I do ; but I should be reluctant to see disturbed the 
 order and course of things, by alterations at present unnecessary, 
 or by attempts at what might be impracticable. When an evil 
 can no longer be borne manfully and honestly and decorously, then 
 down with it, and put something better in its place. Meanwhile 
 guard strenuously against such evil. The vigilant will seldom be 
 constrained to vengeance. 
 
 Southey. Simple as is the plan of this drama, there are pretti- 
 nesses in it which would be far from ornamental anywhere. Milton 
 is much more exuberant in them than Ovid himself, who certainly 
 would never have been so commended by Quintilian for the 
 Media, had he written — 
 
 7. Where I, a prisoner chain'd, scarce freely draw 
 
 The air imprisoned also 
 
 But into what sublimity he soon ascends ! 
 
 [40.] Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him 
 
 Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves. 
 
 Landor. My copy is printed as you read it ; but there ought 
 to be commas after eyeless, after Gaza, and after mill. Generally 
 our printers or writers put three commas where one would do ; 
 but here the grief of Samson is aggravated at every member of the 
 sentence. Surely it must have been the resolution of Milton to 
 render his choruses as inharmonious as he fancied the Greek were, 
 or would be, without the accompaniments of instruments, accen- 
 tuation, and chants. Otherwise, how can we account for " aban- 
 doned,^ and by himself given over ; in slavish hahit, ill-Jitted lueeds, 
 PLine 120. Globe ed.] 
 
262 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 oiier-iuorn and soiled. Or do my eyes misrepresent ? Can this he he, 
 that heroic, that renowned, irresistible Samson ? 
 
 Southey. We are soon compensated, regretting only that 
 the chorus talks of " Chalylean tempered steel " in the beginning, 
 and then informs us of his exploit with the jaw-bone, — 
 
 [145.] In Ramath-lehij/aABom to this day. 
 
 It would be strange indeed if such a victory as was never won 
 before were forgotten in twenty years, or thereabout. 
 
 Southey. Passing Milton's oversights, we next notice his 
 systematic defects. Fondness for Euripides made him too 
 didactic when action was required. Perhaps the French drama 
 kept him in countenance, although he seems to have paid little 
 attention to it, comparatively. 
 
 Landor. The French drama contains some of the finest 
 didactic poetry in the world, and is peculiarly adapted both to 
 direct the reason and to control the passions. It is a well-lighted 
 saloon of graceful eloquence, where the sword-knot is appended 
 by the hand of Beauty, and where the snuff-box is composed of 
 such brilliants as, after a peace or treaty, kings bestow on 
 diplomatists. Whenever I read a French Alexdrine, I fancy I 
 receive a box on the ear in the middle of it, and another at the 
 end, sufficient, if not to pain, to weary me intolerably, and to 
 make the book drop out of my hand. Moliere and La Fontaine 
 can alone by their homoeopathy revive me. Such is the power 
 of united wit and wisdom in ages the most desperate ! These 
 men, with Montaigne and Charron, will survive existing customs, 
 and probably existing creeds. MOlions will be captivated by 
 them, when the eloquence of Bossuet himself shall interest 
 extremely few. Yet the charms of language are less liable to be 
 dissipated by time than the sentences of wisdom. While the 
 incondite volumes of more profound philosophers are no longer in 
 existence, scarcely one of writers who enjoyed in a high degree 
 the gift of eloquence is altogether lost. Among the Athenians 
 there are indeed some ; but in general they were worthless men, 
 squabbling on worthless matters : we have little to regret, excepting 
 of Phocion and of Pericles. If we turn to Rome, we retain all 
 the best of Cicero ; and we patiently and almost indifferently 
 hear that nothing is to be found of Marcus Antonius or 
 
Southey and Landor. 263 
 
 Hortensius ; for the eloquence of the bar is and ought always to 
 be secondary. 
 
 Southey. You were remarking that our poet paid little atten- 
 tion to the French drama. Indeed, in his preface he takes no 
 notice of it whatsoever, — not even as regards the plot, in which 
 consists its chief excellence, or perhaps I should say rather its 
 superiority. He holds the opinion that " A plot, whether 
 intricate or explicit, is nothing but such economy or disposition 
 of the fable as may stand best with verisimilitude and decorum." 
 Surely, the French tragedians have observed this doctrine atten- 
 tively. 
 
 Landor. It has rarely happened that dramatic events have 
 followed one another in their natural order. The most remark- 
 able instance of it is in the King (Edipus of Sophocles. But 
 Racine is in general the most skilful of the tragedians, with little 
 energy and less invention. I wish Milton had abstained from 
 calling " ^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides the three tragic 
 poets unequalled yet by any ; " because it may leave a suspicion 
 that he fancied he, essentially undramatic, could equal them, and 
 had now done it; and because it exhibits him as a detractor 
 from Shakspeare. I am as sorry to find him in this condition as 
 I should have been to find him in a fit of the gout, or treading on 
 a nail with naked foot in his blindness. 
 
 Southey. Unfortunately, it is impossible to exculpate him ; 
 for you must have remarked where, a few sentences above, are 
 these expressions : " This is mentioned to vindicate from the 
 small esteem or rather infamy which in the account of many it 
 undergoes at this day, with other common interludes ; happening 
 through the poet's error of intermixing comick stuff -with tragick 
 sadness and gravity, or intermixing trivial and vulgar persons, 
 which, by all judicious, hath been counted absurd, and brought in 
 without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people." 
 
 Landor. It may be questioned whether the people in the 
 reign of Elizabeth, or indeed the queen herself, would have been 
 contented with a drama without a smack of the indecent or the 
 ludicrous. They had alike been accustomed to scenes of ribaldry 
 and of bloodshed ; and the palace opened on one wing to the 
 brothel, on the other to the shambles. The clowns of Shak- 
 speare are still admired by not the vulgar only. 
 
264 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Southey. The more the pity. Let them appear in their 
 proper places. But a picture by Morland or Frank Hals ought 
 never to break a series of frescoes by the hand of Raphael, or 
 of senatorial portraits animated by the sun of Titian. There is 
 much to be regretted in, and (since we are alone I will say it) 
 a little which might without loss or injury be rejected from, the 
 treasury of Shakspeare. 
 
 Landor. It is difficult to sweep away any thing and not to 
 sweep away gold-dust with it : but viler dust lies thick in some 
 places. The grave Milton, too, has cobwebs hanging on his 
 workshop, which a high broom, in a steady hand, may reach with- 
 out doing mischief. But let children and short men, and unwary 
 ones, stand out of the way. 
 
 Southey. Necessary warning ! for nothing else occasions so 
 general satisfaction as the triumph of a weak mind over a stronger. 
 And this often happens ; for the sutures of a giant's armor are 
 most penetrable from below. Surely no poet is so deeply pathetic 
 as the one before us, and nowhere more than in those verses which 
 begin at the sixtieth and end with the eighty-fifth. There is 
 much fine poetry after this ; and perhaps the prolixity is very 
 rational in a man so afflicted, but the composition is the worse for 
 it. Samson could have known nothing of the interlunar cave; 
 nor could he ever have thought about the light of the soul, and of 
 the soul being all in every part. 
 
 Landor. Reminiscences of many sad afflictions have already 
 burst upon the poet ; but, instead of overwhelming him, they have 
 endued him with redoubled might and majesty. Verses worthier 
 of a sovereign poet, sentiments worthier of a pure, indomitable, 
 inflexible republican, never issued from the human heart than these 
 referring to the army, in the last effort made to rescue the English 
 nation from disgrace and servitude : — 
 
 [265.] Had Judah that day joined, or one whale tribe, 
 
 They had by this possest the towers of Gath, 
 And lorded over them vi^hom nov^r they serve. 
 But what more oft, in nations grown corrupt 
 And by their vices brought to servitude, 
 Than to love bondage move than liberty, 
 Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty, 
 And to despise or envy or suspect 
 Whom God hath of his special fever rais'd 
 
Southey and Landor. 265 
 
 As their deliverer ? If he aught begin, 
 How frequent to desert him 1 and at last 
 To heap ingratitude on worthiest deeds ! 
 
 Southey. I shall be sorry to damp your enthusiasm, in how- 
 ever slight a degree, by pursuing our original plan in the detection 
 of blemishes. Eyes the least clear-sighted could easily perceive 
 
 297. For ot such doctrine never was there school 
 
 But the heart of the fool. 
 And no man therein doctor but himself. 
 
 They could discern here nothing but the quaint conceit ; and it 
 never occurred to them that the chorus knew nothing of schools 
 and doctors. A line above, there is an expression not English. 
 For " who believe not the existence of God," — 
 
 295. Who think not God at all. 
 
 And is it captious to say that, when Manoah's locks are called 
 "white as down," whiteness is no characteristic of down ? Per- 
 haps you will be propitiated by the number of words in our days 
 equally accented on the first syllable, which in this drama the 
 great poet, with all his authority, has stamped on the second; 
 such as Impulse, edict, contrary, prescript, the substantive contest, 
 instinct, crystalline, pretext. 
 
 Landor. I wish we had preserved them all in that good 
 condition, excepting the substantive contest, which ought to 
 follow the lead of conquest. But "now we have got to the 
 worst, let us keep to the worst," is the sound conservative 
 maxim of the day. 
 
 Southey. I perceive you adhere to your doctrine in the 
 termination of A.nAoteles. 
 
 Landor. If we were to say Aiistotle, why not Themistocle, 
 Enrpedock, and Pericle P Here, too, neath has always a mark 
 of elision before it, quite unnecessarily. From neath comes 
 nether, which reminds me that it would be better spelled, as it 
 was formerly, nethe. 
 
 But go on : we can do no good yet. 
 
 Southey. 
 
 341. 'I'hat inmnciUe Samson, far renowned. 
 
266 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Here, unless we place the accent on the third syllable, the verse 
 assumes another form, and such as is used only in the ludicrous 
 or light poetry, scanned thus : — 
 
 That inv-ji | cible Sam ) son, &c. 
 
 There is great eloquence and pathos in the speech of Manoah ; 
 but the "scorpion's tail behind," in verse 360, is inapposite. Per- 
 haps ray remark is unworthy of your notice ; but, as you are 
 reading on, you seem to ponder on something which is worthy. 
 
 Landor. How very much would literature have lost, if this 
 marvellously great and admirable man had omitted the various 
 references to himself and his contemporaries ! He had grown 
 calmer at the close of life, and saw in Cromwell as a fault what 
 he had seen before as a necessity or a virtue. The indignities 
 offered to the sepulchre and remains of the greatest of English 
 sovereigns, by the most ignominious, made the tears of Milton 
 gush from his darkened eyes, and extorted from his generous and 
 grateful heart this exclamation : — 
 
 [368.] Alas ! methinks when God hath chosen one 
 
 To worthiest deeds, if he through fraihy err. 
 He should not so o'erwhelm, and as a thrall 
 Subject him to so foul indignities, 
 Be it but for honor's sake of former deeds. 
 
 How supremely grand is the close of Samson's speech ! 
 Southey. In verse 439, we know what is meant by — 
 
 Slewst them many a slain. 
 
 But the expression is absurd : he could not slay the slain. We 
 also may object to — 
 
 [553.] Use of strongest wines 
 
 And strongest drinks, 
 
 knowing that wines were the " strongest drinks " in those times : 
 perhaps they might have been made stronger by the infusion of 
 herbs and spices. You will again be saddened by the deep har- 
 mony of those verses in which the poet represents his own con- 
 dition. Verse 590 : — 
 
 All otherwise to me my thoughts portend, &c. 
 
Southey and Landor. 267 
 
 In verses 729 and 731, the words address and addrest are in- 
 elegant : — 
 
 And words addrest seem into tears dissolved, 
 Wetting the borders of her silken veil ; 
 But now again she makes address to speak. 
 
 In verse 734, — 
 
 Which to have merited, without excuse, 
 I cannot but acknowledge, 
 
 — the comma should be expunged after excuse, else the sentence 
 is ambiguous. And in 745, "what amends is in my power." 
 We have no singular, as the French have, for this word ; although 
 many use it ignorantly, as Milton does inadvertently. 
 
 934. Thyfair enchanted cup and warbling charms. 
 
 Here we are forced by the double allusion to recognise the later 
 mythos of Circe. The cup alone, or the warbling alone, might 
 belong to any other enchantress, — any of his own or of a preced- 
 ing age, — since we know that in all times certain herbs and certain 
 incantations were used by sorceresses. 
 
 The chorus in this tragedy is not always conciliating and 
 assuaging. Never was anything more bitter against the female sex 
 than the verses from lOio to 1060. The invectives of Euripides 
 are never the outpourings of the chorus, and their venom is cold 
 as hemlock ; those of Milton are hot and corrosive : — 
 
 It is not virtue, wisdom, valor, wit, 
 
 Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merits 
 
 That woman's love can ivin or long inherit ; 
 
 But what it is, is hard to say. 
 
 Harder to hit, 
 
 Which way soever men refer it : 
 
 Much like thy riddle, Samson, in one day 
 
 Or seven, though one should musing sit. 
 
 Never has Milton, in poetry or prose, written worse than this. 
 The beginning of the second line is untrue ; the conclusion is tauto- 
 logical. In the third, it is needless to inform us that what is not 
 to be gained is not to be inherited ; or, in the fourth, that what is 
 hard to say is hard to hit ; but it really is a new discovery that it 
 is harder. Where is the distinction in the idea he would present 
 
268 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 of saying and hitting ? However, we will not " musing sit " on 
 these dry thorns. 
 
 [1034.] Whate'er it be to wisest men and best, 
 
 Seeming at first all heavenly under virgin veil, &c. 
 
 This is a very ugly misshapen Alexandrine. The verse would 
 be better and more regular by the omission of " seeming " or 
 " at first," neither of which is necessary. 
 
 Landor. The giant Harapha is not expected to talk wisely ; 
 but he never would have said to Samson, — 
 
 108 1. Thou knowest me now. 
 
 If thou at all art knaixm ; much I have heard 
 Of thy prodigious strength. 
 
 A pretty clear evidence of his being somewhat known. 
 
 [1133.] And black enchantments, some magician's art. 
 
 No doubt of that. But what glorious lines from 1 167 to 1 1 79 ! 
 I cannot say so much of these : — 
 
 [1323.] Have they not sword-players and every sort 
 Of gymnic artists, wrestlers, riders, runners. 
 Jugglers and dancers, antics, mummers, mimics ? 
 
 No, certainly not: the jugglers and the dancers they probably 
 had, but none of the rest. Mummers are said to derive their 
 appellation from the word mum. I rather think mum came 
 corrupted from them. Mummer in reality is mime. We know 
 how frequently the letter r has obtained an undue place at the 
 end of words. The English mummers were men who acted, 
 without speaking, in coarse pantomime. There are many things 
 which I have marked between this place and verse 1665. 
 
 1634. That to the arched roof gave main support. 
 
 There were no arches in the time of Samson ; but the mention 
 of the two pillars in the centre makes it requisite to imagine such 
 a structure. Verse 1660, — 
 
 O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious. 
 
 It is Milton's practice to make vowels syllabically weak either 
 
Southey and Landor. ' 269 
 
 coalesce with or yield to others. In no place but at the end 
 of a verse would he protract glorious into a trisyllable. The 
 structure of his versification was founded on the Italian, in which 
 io and ia in some words are monosyllables in all places but the 
 last. Verse 1664, — 
 
 Among thy slain self-kill'd, 
 Not willingly, but tangled in the fold 
 Of dire necessity, whose law in death conjoined 
 Thee with thy slaughtered foes, in number more 
 Than all thy life hath slain before. 
 
 Milton differs extremely from the Athenian dramatists in 
 neglecting the beauty of his choruses. Here the third line is 
 among his usually bad Alexandrines ; and there is not only 
 a debility of rhythm, but also a redundancy of words. The 
 verse would be better, and the sense too, without the words 
 "in death." And "slaughtered" is alike unnecessary in the 
 next. Farther on, the chorus talks about the phoenix. Now 
 the phoenix, although Oriental, was placed in the Orient by 
 the Greeks. If the phoenix "no second knonus" it is probable 
 it knows " no third." All this nonsense is prated while Samson 
 is lying dead before them. But the poem is a noble poem ; 
 and the characters of Samson and Delilah are drawn with pre- 
 cision and truth. The Athenian dramatists, both tragic and 
 comic, have always one chief personage, one central light : 
 Homer has not in the Iliad, nor has Milton in the Paradise 
 Lost, nor has Shakspeare in several of his best tragedies. We 
 find it in Racine, in the great Corneille, in the greater Schiller. 
 In Calderon, and the other dramatists of Spain, it rarely is 
 wanting ; but their principal delight is in what we caU plot 
 or intrigue, — in plainer English (and vei-y like it), intricacy 
 and trick. Hurd, after saying of the Samson Agonistes, that 
 " it is, as might be expected, a masterpiece," tucks up his lawn 
 sleeve and displays his slender wrist against Lowth. Nothing 
 was ever equal to his cool effrontery when he says, " This critic, 
 and all such, are greatly out in their judgments," &c. He might 
 have profited, both in criticism and in style, by reading Lowth 
 more attentively and patiently. In which case, he never would 
 have written out in, nor obliged to such freedoms, nor twenty more 
 
270 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 such strange things. Lowth was against the chorus. Hurd 
 says, " It will be constantly wanting to rectify the wrong con- 
 clusions of the audience." Would it not be quite as advisable 
 to drop carefully a few drops of laudanum on a lump of sugar, to 
 lull the excitement of the sufferers by the tragedy ? The chorus 
 in Milton comes well provided with this narcotic. Voltaire 
 wrote an opera, and intended it for a serious one, on the same 
 subject. He decorated it with choruses sung to Venus and 
 Adonis, and represented Samson more gallantly French than 
 either. He pulled down the temple on the stage, and cried, — 
 
 J'ai repar^ ma bonte, etj 'expire en vainqueurl 
 
 And yet Voltaire was often a graceful poet, and sometimes a 
 judicious critic. It may be vain and useless to propose for 
 imitation the chief excellences of a great author, such being the 
 gift of transcendent genius, and not an acquisition to be obtained 
 by study or labor ; but it is only in great authors that defects are 
 memorable when pointed out, and unsuspected until they are 
 distinctly. For which reason, I think it probable that at no 
 distant time I may publish your remarks, if you consent to it. 
 
 Southey. It is well known in what spirit I made them, 
 and as you have objected to few, if any, I leave them at your 
 discretion. Let us now pass on to Lycidas. It appears 
 to me that Warton is less judicious than usual, in his censure 
 of— 
 
 [5.] Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. 
 
 I find in his note, " The melloiuing year could not affect the 
 leaves of the laurel, the myrtle, and the ivy, which last is charac- 
 terized before as nenier sere." The ivy sheds its leaves in the 
 proper season, though never all at once, and several hang on the 
 stem longer than a year. In verse 89, — 
 
 But now my oat proceeds 
 And listens to the herald of the sea. 
 
 Does the oat listen ? 
 
 119. Blind mouths that scarce themselves know how to hold 
 
 A sheep-hook. 
 
Southey and Landor. 271 
 
 Now, although mouths and bellies may designate the possessors 
 or bearers, yet surely the blind mouth holding a shepherd's crook 
 is a fitter representation of the shepherd's dog than of the shep- 
 herd. Verse 145, may he not have written the gloming violet, — 
 not indeed well, but better than glowing ? 
 
 154. Ay me ! while thee the s/iorcs and sounding seas 
 
 Wash far away. 
 
 Surely the shores did not. 
 
 [176.] And hears the inexfreisim nuptial song 
 
 In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. 
 
 What can be the meaning ? 
 
 Landor. It is to be regretted, not so much that Milton has 
 adopted the language and scenery and mythology of the ancients, 
 as that he confounds the real simple field-shepherds with the 
 mitred shepherds of St Paul's Churchyard and Westminster 
 Abbey, and ties the two-handed sword against the crook. I 
 have less objection to the luxury spread out before me than to be 
 treated with goose and mince-pie on the same plate. 
 
 No poetry so harmonious had ever been written in our lan- 
 guage ; but in the same free metre both Tasso and Guarini 
 had captivated the ear of Italy. In regard to poetry, the Lycidas 
 will hardly bear a comparison with the Allegro and Penseroso. 
 Many of the ideas in both are taken from Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 from Raleigh and Marlowe, and from a poem in the first edition 
 of Burton's Melancholy. Each of these has many beauties ; but 
 there are couplets in Milton's worth them all. We must, how- 
 ever, do what we set about. If we see the faun walk lamely, we 
 must look at his foot, find the thorn, and extract it. 
 
 Southey. There are those who defend in the first verses the 
 matrimonial, or other less legitimate, alliance of Cerberus and 
 Midnight ; but I have too much regard for Melancholy to sub- 
 scribe to the filiation, especially as it might exclude her presently 
 from the nunnery, whither she is invited as pensive, devout, andpure. 
 The union of Erebus and Night is much spoken of in poetical 
 circles, and we have authority for announcing it to the public ; 
 but Midnight, like Cerberus, is a misnomer. We have occasion- 
 ally heard, in objurgation, a man called a son of a dog, on the 
 
272 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 mother's side ; but never was there goddess of that parentage. 
 You are pleased to find Milton writing plncht instead oi pinched. 
 
 Landor. Certainly ; for there never existed the word 
 " pinche//," and never can exist the word " pincAV." In the 
 same verse he writes sed for said. We have both of these, and 
 we should keep them diligently. The pronunciation is always 
 sed, excepting in rhyme. For the same reason, we should retain 
 agen as well as again. 
 
 What a cloud of absurdities has been whiffed against me, by no 
 unlearned men, about the Conversation of Tooke and Johnson ! 
 Their own petty conceits rise up between their eyes and the 
 volume they are negligently reading, and utterly obscure or confound 
 it iiTetrievably, One would represent me as attempting to under- 
 mine our native tongue ; another as modernizing ; a third as 
 antiquating it. Whereas I am trying to underprop, not to under- 
 mine : I am trying to stop the man-milliner at his ungainly work 
 of trimming and flouncing ; I am trying to show how gracefiJ is 
 our English, not in its stiff decrepitude, not in its riotous luxuriance, 
 but in its hale mid-life. I would make bad writers follow good 
 ones, and good writers accord with themselves. If all cannot be 
 reduced into order, is that any reason why nothing should be done 
 toward it ? If languages and men too are imperfect, must we 
 never make an effort to bring them a few steps nearer to what is 
 preferable ? If we find on the road a man who has fallen from 
 his horse, and who has three bones dislocated, must we refiise him 
 our aid because one is quite broken ? It is by people who answer in 
 the affirmative to these questions, or seem to answer so, — it is by 
 such writers that our language for the last half-century has fallen 
 more rapidly into corruption and decomposition than any other 
 ever spoken among men. The worst losses are not always those 
 which are soonest felt, but those which are felt too late. 
 
 Southey. I should have adopted all your suggestions in ortho- 
 graphy, if I were not certain that my bookseller would protest 
 against it as ruinous. If you go no farther than to write compell 
 anA foretell, the compositor wiU correct your oversight ; yet surely 
 there should be some sign that the last syllable of those verbs 
 ought to be spelled differently, as they are pronounced differently, 
 from shrivel and level. 
 
 Landor. Let us i-un back to our plantain. But a bishop 
 
Southey and Landor. 273 
 
 stands in the way, — a bishop no other than Hurd, who says that 
 " Milton shows hJs judgment in celebrating Shakspeare's comedies 
 rather than his tragedies." Pity he did not live earlier ! — he 
 would have served among the mummers both for bishop and fool. 
 We now come to the Penseroso, in which title there are 
 many who doubt the propriety of the spelling. Marsand, an 
 editor of Petrarca, has defended the poet who used equally 
 pensiero and pensero. The mode is more peculiarly Lombard. 
 The Milanese and Comascs invariably say penser. Yet it is 
 wonderful how, at so short a distance, and professing to speak the 
 same language, they differ in many expressions. The wonder 
 ceases with those who have resided long in the country, and are 
 curious about such matters, when they discover that at two gates 
 of Milan two languages are spoken. The same thing occurs in 
 Florence itself, where a street is inhabited by the Camaldolese, 
 whose language is as little understood by learned academicians as 
 that of Dante himself. Beyond the eastern gates a morning's 
 walk, you come into Varlunga, a pastoral district, in which the 
 people speak differently from both. 1 have always found a great 
 pleasure in collecting the leaves and roots of these phonetic 
 simples, especially in hill-countries. Nothing so conciliates many, 
 and particularly the uneducated, as to ask and receive instruction 
 from them. I have not hesitated to collect it from swineherds 
 and Fra Diavolo : I should have looked for it in vain among 
 universities and professors. 
 
 Southey. Turning back to the Allegro, I find an amusing note 
 conveying the surprising intelligence, all the way from Oxford, 
 that eglantine means really the dog-rose ; and that both dog-rose 
 and honeysuckle (for which Milton mistook it) "are often growing 
 against the sides or 'walls of a house." Thus says Mr Thomas 
 Warton. I wish he had also told us in what quarter of the 
 world a house has sides without •walls of some kind or other. 
 But it really is strange that Milton should have misapplied the 
 word, at a time when botany was become the favorite study. I 
 do not recollect whether Cowley had yet written his Latin poems 
 on the appearances and qualities of plants. What are you smiling at ? 
 
 Landor. Our old field of battle, where Milton 
 
 Calls up him vfho left untold 
 The story of Cambuscan bold. 
 
274 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Chaucer — like Shakspeare, like Homer, like Milton, like 
 every great poet that ever lived — derived from open sources 
 the slender origin of his immortal works. Imagination is not 
 a mere workshop of images, great and small, as there are many 
 who would represent it; but sometimes thoughts also are im- 
 agined before they are felt, and descend from the brain into the 
 bosom. Young poets imagine feelings to wliich in reality they 
 are strangers. 
 
 Southey. Copy them rather. 
 
 Landor. Not entirely. The copybook acts on the im- 
 agination. Unless they felt the truth or the verisimilitude, it 
 could not take possession of them. But feelings and images fly 
 from distant coverts into their little field, without their conscious- 
 ness whence they come, and rear young ones there which are 
 properly their own. Chatterton hath shown as much imagination, 
 in the Bristo'we Tragedie as in that animated allegory which 
 begins, — 
 
 When Freedom dreste in blood-stain'd veste. 
 
 Keats is the most imaginative of our poets, after Chaucer, Spenser, 
 Shakspeare, and Milton. 
 
 Southey. I am glad you admit my favorite, Spenser. 
 
 Landor. He is my favorite too, if you admit the expression 
 without the signification of precedency. I do not think him 
 equal to Chaucer even in imagination ; and he appears to me 
 very inferior to him in all other points, excepting harmony. 
 Here the miscarriage is in Chaucer's age, not in Chaucer, 
 many of whose verses are highly beautiful, but never (as in 
 Spenser) one whole period. I love the geniality of his tempera- 
 ture, — no straining, no effort, no storm, no fury. His vivid 
 thoughts burst their way to us through the coarsest integuments 
 of language. 
 
 The heart is the creator of the poetical world : only the atmo- 
 sphere is from the brain. Do I then undervalue imagination ? 
 No indeed ; but 1 find imagination where others never look for 
 it, — in character multiform yet consistent. Chaucer first united 
 the two glorious realms of Italy and England. Shakspeare came 
 after, and subjected the whole universe to his dominion. But 
 he mounted the highest steps of his throne under those bland 
 
Southey and Landor. 275 
 
 skies which had warmed the congenial breasts of Chaucer and 
 Boccaccio. 
 
 The powers of imagination are but slender when it can invent 
 only shadowy appearances : much greater are requisite to make an 
 inert and insignificant atom grow up into greatness, — to give it 
 form, life, mobility, and intellect. Spenser hath accomplished 
 the one ; Shakspeare and Chaucer, the other. Pope and Dryden 
 have displayed a little of it in their Satires. In passing, let me 
 express my wish that writers who compare them in generalities, 
 and who lean mostly toward the stronger, would attempt to trim 
 the balance by placing Pope among our best critics on poetry, 
 whUe Dryden is knee-deep below John Dennis. You do not 
 like either : I read both with pleasure, so long as they keep to 
 the couplet. But St Cecilia's music-book is interlined with epi- 
 grams ; and ytlexander's Feast smells of gin at second-hand, with 
 true Briton fiddlers fulUof native talent in the orchestra. 
 
 Southey. Dryden says : " It were an easy matter to produce 
 some thousands of Chaucer's verses mhich axe lame for want of 
 half, and sometimes a whole, foot, •which no pronunciation can 
 make othenvise." 
 
 Landor. Certainly no pronunciation but the proper one can 
 do it. 
 
 Southey. On the opposite quarter, comparing him with 
 Boccaccio, he says : " He has refined on the Italian, and has 
 mended his stories in his way of telling. Our countryman 
 carries weight, and yet wins the race at disadvantage." 
 
 Landor. Certainly our brisk and vigorous poet carries with 
 him no weight in criticism. 
 
 Southey. Vivacity and shrewd sense are Dryden's charac- 
 teristics, with quickness of perception rather than accuracy of 
 remark, and consequently a facility rather than a fidelity of 
 expression. 
 
 We are coming to our last days, if, according to the prophet 
 Joel, " blood and fire and pillars of smoke " are signs of them. 
 Again to Milton and the Penseroso. 
 
 90. What worlds, or what vast regions . . . 
 
 Are not vast regions included in luorld ? In verses 1 1 9, 1 20, 
 121, 122, the same rhymes are repeated. 
 
 Thus, night, oft see me in thy pale career, 
 
276 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 is the only verse of ten syllables, and should be reduced to 
 the ranks. You always have strongly objected to epithets which 
 designate dresses and decoration ; of which epithets, it must be 
 acknowledged, both Milton and Shakspeare are unreasonably 
 fond. Cimlsuited, froiunced, kercheft, come close together. I 
 suspect they will find as little favor in your eyes as embroidered, 
 trimmed, and gilded, 
 
 Landor. I am fond of gilding, not in our poetry, but in our 
 apartments, where it gives a sunniness greatly wanted by the 
 climate. Pindar and Virgil are profuse oi gold ; but they reject 
 the gilded. 
 
 Southey. I have counted ninety-three lines in Milton where 
 gold is used, and only four where gilded is. A question is raised 
 whether /la/e, in — 
 
 [156.] To walk the studious cloisters /)a/f, 
 
 is substantive or adjective. What is your opinion ? 
 
 Landor. That it is an adjective. Milton was very Italian, 
 as you know, in his custom of adding a second epithet after 
 the substantive, where one had preceded it. The Wartons 
 followed him. Yet Thomas Warton would read in this verse 
 the substantive, giving as his reason that our poet is fond of the 
 singular. In the present word there is nothing extraordinai-y in 
 finding it thus. We commonly say, within the pale of the 
 church, of the law, &c. But pale is an epithet to which Milton 
 is very partial. Just before, he has written "pale career," and 
 we shall presently see the " pale-eyed priest." 
 
 Southey. 
 
 With antick pillars massy-proof. 
 
 The Wartons are fond of repeating in their poetry the word 
 massy-proof, — in my opinion an inelegant one, and, if a com- 
 pound, compounded badly. It seems more applicable to castles, 
 whose massiveness gave proof of resistance. Antick was probably 
 spelled antike by the author, who disdained to follow the fashion 
 in antique, Pindaricque, &c., affected by Cowley and others, who 
 had been, or would be thought to have been, domiciliated with 
 Charles II. in France. 
 
 Landor. Whenever I come to the end of these poems, or 
 
Southey and Landor 277 
 
 either of them, it is always with a sigh of regret. We will pass 
 by the Arcades, of which the little that is good is copied from 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 Southey. Nevertheless, we may consider it as a nebula, which 
 was not without its efficiency in forming the star of Cotnus. 
 This Mask is modelled on another by George Peele. Two 
 brothers wander in search of a sister enthralled by a magician. 
 They call aloud her name, and echo repeats it, as here in Comus. 
 Much has also been taken from Puteanus, who borrowed at 
 once the best and the worst of his poem from Philostratus. In 
 the third verse, 1 find spirits a dissyllable, which is unusual in 
 Milton. 
 
 Landor. I can account for his monosyllabic sound by his 
 fondness of imitating the Italian spirto. But you yourself are 
 addicted to these quavers, if you will permit me the use of the 
 word here ; and I find spirit, peril, &c., occupying no longer a 
 time than if the second vowel were wanting. I do not approve 
 of the apposition in — 
 
 [38.] The nodding horrour of whose shady brows. 
 
 Before which I find — 
 
 [21.3 Sea-girt isles 
 
 That, like to rich and various gems, inlay 
 The utiadorned bosom of the deep. 
 
 How can a bosom be unadorned which already is inlaid with 
 gems ? 
 
 Southey. You will object no less strongly to — 
 
 [115.] Sounds and seas with all their finny drove, 
 
 founds being parts oi seas. 
 
 Landor. There are yet graver faults. Where did the 
 young lady ever hear or learn such expressions as " Swilled 
 insolence?"^ 
 
 fiSB.] 'Y\vi greij-hooded Etien, 
 
 Like a sad votarist in palmer's •weed. 
 Rose from the hindmost ■wheels of Phoebus' wain. 
 
 [' Line 178, Globe ed.] 
 
278 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Here is Eve, a manifest female, with her own proper hood upon 
 her head, taking the other parts of male attire, and rising (by 
 good luck) from under a wagon-wheel. But nothing in Milton, 
 and scarcely any thing in Cowley, is viler than — 
 
 [19J.] Else, O thiemsh night, 
 
 Why should'st thou, but for some Jelonious end, 
 In thy dark-lantern thus close up the stars. 
 
 It must have been a capacious dark-lantern that held them all. 
 
 That Nature hung in heaven, and fiU'd their lamps 
 With everlasting oil. 
 
 Hardly so bad ; but very bad is — 
 
 [221. "I Does a sable cloud 
 
 Turn forth her silver lining on the night ? 
 
 A greater and more momentous fault is that three soliloquies come 
 in succession for about 240 lines together. 
 
 [291.] What time the labored ox 
 
 In his loose traces from the furrow came 
 And the swinkt hedger at his supper sat. 
 
 These are blamed by Warton, but blamed in the wrong place. 
 The young lady, being in the wood, could have seen nothing of 
 ox or hedger, and was unlikely to have made any previous obser- 
 vations on their work-hours. But, in the summer, — and this was 
 in summer, — neither the ox nor the hedger are at work. That 
 the ploughman always quits it at noon, as Warton says he does, is 
 untrue. When he quits it at noon, it is for his dinner. Gray 
 says, — 
 
 The ploughman homeward plods his weary way. 
 
 He may do that, but certainly not at the season when — 
 
 The beetle wheels her drony flight. 
 
 Nevertheless, the stricture is captious : for the ploughman may 
 return from the field, although not from ploughing ; and ploughman 
 may be accepted for any agriculturist. Certainly such must have 
 been Virgil's meaning when he wrote — 
 
 Quos durus arator 
 Observans nido imphimes detraxit. 
 
Southey and Landor. 279 
 
 For ploughing, in Italy more especially, is never the labor in June, 
 when the nightingale's young are hatched. Gray's verse is a good 
 one, which is more than can be said of Virgil's. 
 
 [230.] Sweet Echo ! sweetest nymph ! that livest unseen 
 Within thy airy shell ! 
 
 The habitation is better adapted to an oyster than to Echo. 
 We must, however, go on and look after the young gentlemen. 
 Comus says, — 
 
 [294.] I saw them under a green mantling vine 
 
 Plucking ripe clusters, &c. 
 
 It is much to be regretted that the banks of the Severn in our 
 days present no such facilities. You would find some difficulty 
 in teaching the readers of poetry to read metrically the exquisite 
 verses which follow. What would they make of — 
 
 [302.] And^ as I | past I | worshipt it ! 
 
 These are the true times ; and they are quite unintelligible to those 
 who divide our verses into iambics, with what they call licences. 
 
 Southey. We have found the two brothers ; and never were 
 two young gentlemen in stiffer doublets. 
 
 [331.] £7i!«K»^i;, ye faint stars, &c. 
 
 The elder, although "as smooth' as Hebe's his unrazor'd lip," 
 talks not only like a man, but like a philosopher of much exper- 
 ience, — 
 
 [362.] What need a man forestall his date of grief, &c. 
 
 How should he know that — 
 
 [353.] Beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree. 
 
 Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard 
 
 Of dragon watch with unenchanted eye 
 
 To save her blossoms and defend her fruit, &c. ? 
 
 [8 Line 301 reads: 
 
 "I was awe-strook. 
 And, as I passed, I worshipped. If those you seek 
 It were a journey like the path to Heavea 
 To help you find them.'T 
 
28o Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Landor. We now come to a place where we have only the 
 choice of a contradiction or nonsense : — 
 
 [378.] She plumes her feathers and lets grow her wings. 
 
 There is no sense in pluming a plume. Beyond a doubt, Milton 
 wrote prunes, and subsequently it was printed plumes to avoid what 
 appeared a contrariety. And a contrariety it would be, if the 
 word prune were to be taken in no other sense than the gardener's. 
 We suppose it must mean to cut shorter ; but its real signification 
 is to trim, which is usually done by that process. MUton here 
 means to smoothen and put in order : prine is better. Among the 
 strange, unaccountable expressions which within our memory, or a 
 little earlier, were carried down, like shingles by a sudden torrent, 
 over our language, can you tell me what writer first wrote " un- 
 bidden tears " ? 
 
 Southey. No indeed. The phrase is certainly a curiosity, 
 although no rarity. I wish some logician, or (it being beyond the 
 reach of any) some metaphysician, would attempt to render us an 
 account of it. Milton has never used unbidden where it really 
 would be significant, and only once unbid. Can you go forward 
 with this " Elder brother " ? 
 
 Landor. Let us try. I wish he would turn off his " liveried 
 angels," verse 455, and would say nothing about lust. How 
 could he have learned that lust — 
 
 [464-] By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk. 
 But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, &c. ? 
 
 Can you tell me what wolves are " stabled ■wo\ves," verse 534? 
 
 Southey. Not exactly. But here is another verse of the same 
 construction as you remarked before : — 
 
 [599.] And earth's base built on stubble. But come, let's on. 
 
 This was done by choice, not by necessity. He might have 
 omitted the But, and have satisfied the herd bovine and porcine. 
 Just below are two others in which three syllables are included in 
 the time of two. 
 
 [602.] But for that damn'd magician, let him be girt, &c. 
 
 605. Harpies and hydras, or all the monstrous forms, &c. 
 
Sou they and Landor. 281 
 
 And again — 
 
 615. And crumble all thy sinews. Why, prithee, shepherd. 
 Landor. You have crept uusoiled from — 
 [604,] Under the sooty flag of Acheron. 
 
 And you may add many dozens more of similar verses, if you 
 think it worth your while to go back, for them. In verse 6 1 o, 
 I find " yet " redundant : — 
 
 I love thy courage yet, and bold emprise. 
 
 Commentators and critics bogle sadly a little farther on : — 
 
 [632.] But in another country, as he said, 
 
 Bore a bright golden flower ; but not in this soil. 
 
 On which hear T. Warton : " Milton, notwithstanding his 
 singular skill in music, appears to have had a veiy bad ear." 
 Warton was celebrated in his time for his great ability in 
 raising a laugh in the common-room. He has here shown a 
 capacity more extensive in that faculty. Two or three honest 
 men have run to Milton's assistance, and have applied a remedy 
 to his ear : they would help him to mend the verse. In fact, it 
 is a bad one : he never wrote it so. The word but is useless in 
 the second line, and comes with the worse grace after the But 
 in the preceding. They who can discover faults in versification 
 where there are none but of their own imagining have failed to 
 notice verse 666 : — 
 
 Why are you | vext, lady, | why do you | frown ? 
 
 Now, this in reality is inadmissible, being of a metre quite 
 different from the rest. It is dactylic ; and consequently, al- 
 though the number of syllables is just, the number of feet is 
 defective. But Milton, in reciting it, would bring it back to 
 the order he had established. He would read it — 
 
 Why ore you vext ? 
 
 And then in a faltering and falling accent, and in the tender 
 
 trochee, — 
 
 Lady | why do you frown ? 
 
282 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 There are some who in a few years can learn all the harmony 
 of Milton ; there are others who must go into another state of 
 existence for this felicity. 
 
 Southey. I am afraid I am about to check for a moment your 
 enthusiasm, in bringing you — 
 
 [707.] To those budge doctors of the Stoic^r, 
 
 whom Comus is holding in derision. 
 
 Landor. Certainly it is odd enough to find him in such com- 
 pany. It is the first time either Cynic or Stoic ever put on fur ; 
 and it must be confessed it little becomes them. We are told 
 that, verse 727, — 
 
 And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons, 
 
 — is taken from the Bible. Whencesoever it may be taken, the 
 expression is faulty ; for a son may be a bastard, and quite as 
 surely a bastard may be a son. In verse 732, "the unsought 
 diamonds " are ill-placed ; and we are told that Doctors War- 
 burton and Newton called these four lines "exceeding childish." 
 They are so, for all that. I wonder none of the fraternity had 
 his fingers at liberty to count the syllables in verse 743 : — 
 
 If you let I slip time, like a neglected rose, &c. 
 
 I wish he had cast away \hs yet in verse 755. 
 
 Think virhat ; and be advised ; you are but young yet. 
 
 Not only is yet an expletive, and makes the verse inharmonious, 
 but the syllables young and yet coming together would of them- 
 selves be intolerable anywhere. What a magnificent passage ! 
 How little poetry in any language is comparable to this, which 
 closes the lady's reply, — 
 
 792-799. Thou art not fit to hear thyself convinced ! 
 
 This is worthy of Shakspeare himself in his highest mood, and 
 is unattained and unattainable by any other poet. What a trans- 
 port of enthusiasm ; what a burst of harmony ! He who writes 
 one sentence equal to this will have reached a higher rank in poetry 
 than any has done since this was written. 
 
Southey and Landor. 283 
 
 Southey. I thought it would be difficult to confine you to cen- 
 sure, as we first proposed. The anger and wit of Comus effervesce 
 into flatness, one dashed upon the other. 
 
 [806.] Come, no more ; 
 
 This is mere moral babble, and direct 
 Against the canon lanvs of our foundation. 
 
 He rolls out from the " cynic tub " to put on cap and gown. 
 The laughter of Milton soon assumed a wry, puritanical cast. 
 Even whUe he had the molle, he wanted the facetum in all its 
 parts and qualities. It is hard upon Milton, and harder still 
 upon inferior poets, that every expression of his used by a pre- 
 decessor should be noted as borrowed or stolen. Here, in verse 
 812,— 
 
 Will bathe the drooping spirits in delist 
 
 is traced to several, and might be traced to more. Chaucer, in 
 whose songs it is more beautiful than elsewhere, writes, — 
 
 His harte bathed in a bath of blisse. 
 
 Probably he took the idea from the bath of knights. You could 
 never have seen Chaucer, nor the rest, when you wrote those verses 
 at Rugby ^ on Godiva : you drew them out of the Square Pool, and 
 assimilated them to the tranquillity of prayer, — such a tranquillity, 
 as is the effect of prayer on the boyish mind, when it has any 
 effect at all. 
 
 Landor. I have expunged many thoughts for their close re- 
 semblance to what others had written, whose works I never saw 
 until after. But all thinking men must think, all imaginative men 
 must imagine, many things in common, although they differ. 
 Some abhor what others embrace ; but the thought strikes them 
 equally. With some an idea is productive, with others it lies 
 inert. I have resigned and abandoned many things because I un- 
 reasonably doubted my legitimate claim to them, and many more 
 because I believed I had enough substance in the house without 
 them, and that the retention might raise a clamor in my court- 
 yard. I do not look very sharply after the poachers on my pro- 
 perty. One of your neighbors has broken down a shell in my 
 [■9 See the Conversation between Leofric and Godiva, vol. v.] 
 
284 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 grotto, and a town gentleman has lamed a rabbit in my warren : 
 heartily welcome both. Do not shut your book : we have time 
 left for the rest. 
 
 Southey. Sabrina in person is now before us. Johnson talks 
 absurdly, not on the long narration, for which he has reasons, 
 but in saying that " it is of no use, because it is false, and there- 
 fore unsuitable to a good being." Warton answers this objection 
 with great propriety. It may be added that things in themselves 
 very false are very true in poetry, and produce not only delight, 
 but beneficial moral effects. This is an instance. The part 
 before us is copied from Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess. The 
 Spirit, in his thanksgiving to Sabrina for liberating the lady, is 
 extremely warm in good wishes. After the aspiration, — 
 
 [934.] May thy lofty head be crown'd 
 
 With many a tower and terrace round, 
 
 he adds, — 
 
 And here and there, thy banis upon. 
 With groves of myrrh and cinnamon. 
 
 It would have been more reasonable to have said, — 
 
 And here and there some fine fat geese. 
 And ducklings waiting for green pease. 
 
 The conclusion is admirable, though it must be acknowledged 
 that the piece is undramatic. Johnson makes an unanswerable 
 objection to the prologue ; but he must have lost all the senses 
 that are affected by poetry, when he calls the whole drama 
 tediously instructive. There is, indeed, here and there prolixity ; 
 yet refreshing springs burst out profusely in every part of die 
 wordy wilderness. We are now at the Sonnets. I know your 
 dislike of this composition. 
 
 Landor. In English, not in Italian ; but Milton has 
 ennobled it in our tongue, and has tiivialized it in that. He who 
 is deficient in readiness of language is half a fool in writing, and 
 more than half in conversation. Ideas fix themselves about the 
 tongue, and fall to the ground when they are in want of that 
 support. Unhappily, Italian poetry in the age of Milton was 
 almost at its worst, and he imitated what he heard repeated or 
 praised. It is better to say no more about it, or about his Psalms, 
 when we come to them. 
 
Southey and Landor. 285 
 
 Southey. Among his minor poems several are worthless. 
 
 Landor. True ; but, if they had been lost, we should be 
 glad to have recovered them. Cromwell would not allow 
 Lely to omit or diminish a single wart upon his face ; yet there 
 were many and great ones. If you had found a treasure of gold 
 and silver, and afterwards in the same excavation an urn in which 
 only brass coins were contained, would you reject them ? You 
 will find in his English Sonnets some of a much higher strain than 
 even the best of Dante's. The great poet is sometimes recum- 
 bent, but never languid ; often unadorned, — I wish I could 
 honestly say, not often inelegant. But what noble odes (for 
 such we must consider them) are the eighth, the fifteenth, the 
 sixteenth, the seventeenth, and, above all, the eighteenth ! There 
 is a mild and serene sublimity in the nineteenth. In the twentieth 
 there is the festivity of Horace, with a due observance of his 
 precept, applicable metaphorically, — 
 
 Simplici myrto nihil adlabores. 
 
 This is among the few English poems which are quite classical, 
 according to our notions, as the Greeks and Romans have im- 
 pressed them. It is pleasing to find Milton, in his later days, 
 thus disposed to cheerfulness and conviviality. There are 
 climates of the earth, it is said, in which a warm season inter- 
 venes between autumn and winter. Such a season came to 
 reanimate, not the earth itself, but what was highest upon it. 
 
 A few of Milton's Sonnets are extremely bad : the rest are 
 excellent. Among all Shakspeare's, not a single one is very 
 admirable, and few sink very low. They are hot and pothery : 
 there is much condensation, little delicacy ; like raspberry jam 
 without cream, without crust, without bread, to break its viscidity. 
 But I would rather sit down to one of them again than to a 
 string of such musty sausages as are exposed in our streets at the 
 present dull season. Let us be reverent ; but only where 
 reverence is due, even in Milton and in Shakspeare. It is a 
 privilege to be near enough to them to see their faults : never are 
 we likely to abuse it. Those in high station, who have the folly 
 and the impudence to look down on us, possess none such. Silks 
 perish as the silkworms have perished ; kings, as their carpets and 
 canopies. There are objects too great for these animalcules of 
 
286 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 the palace to see well and wholly. Do you doubt that the 
 most fatuous of the Georges, whichever it was, thought him- 
 self Newton's superior? Or that any minister, any peer of 
 Parliament, held the philosopher so high as the assayer of the 
 mint ? Was it not always in a grated hole, among bars and 
 bullion, that they saw whatever they could see of his dignity? 
 Was it ever among the interminable worlds he brought down 
 for men to contemplate ? Yet Newton stood incalculably more 
 exalted above the glorious multitude of stars and suns, than 
 these ignorant and irreclaimable wretches above the multitude 
 of the street. Let every man hold this faith, and it will teach 
 him what is lawful and right in veneration ; namely, that there 
 are divine beings and immortal men on the one side, mortal 
 men and brute beasts on the other. The two parties stand com- 
 pact ; each stands separate : the distance is wide, but there is 
 nothing in the interval. 
 
 Will you go on, after a minute or two, for I am inclined 
 to silence ? 
 
 Southey. Next to the Sonnets come the Odes, written much 
 earlier. One stanza in that On the Morning of the Nativity 
 has been often admired. What think you of this stanza, the 
 fourth ? But the preceding and the following are beautiful too. 
 
 Landor. I think it incomparably the noblest piece of lyric 
 poetry in any modern language I am conversant with ; and I 
 regret that so much of the remainder throws up the bubbles 
 and fetid mud of the Italian. In the thirteenth, what a rhyme 
 is harmony with symphony ! In the eighteenth, — 
 
 Swinges the scaly horror of hisyi/ati/tail. 
 
 I wish you would unfold the folded taU for me : I do not like to 
 meddle with it. 
 
 Southey. Better to rest on the fourth stanza, and then regard 
 fresh beauties in the preceding and the following. Beyond 
 these, very far beyond, are the nineteenth and twentieth. But 
 why is the priest pale-eyed ? 
 
 Landor. Who knows ? I would not delay you with a 
 remark on the modern spelling of what Milton wrote list, 
 and what some editors have turned into kiss'd ; a word which 
 could not exist in its contraction, and never did exist in speech 
 
Southey and Landor. 287 
 
 even uncontracted. Yet they make iiss'd rhyme with whisi. 
 Let me remark again on the word unexpressive, verse ir6, used 
 before in Lycldas, verse 176, and defended by the authority 
 of Shakspeare {^As You Like It. Act III., 82.),— 
 
 The fair, the chaste, the unexpressive she. 
 
 This is quite as wrong as resistless for irresistible, and even more 
 so. I suspect it was used by Shakspeare, who uses it only 
 once, merely to turn mto ridicule a fantastic euphuism of the 
 day. Milton, in his youth, was fond of seizing on odd things 
 wherever he found them. 
 Southey. 
 
 130. And let the base of heaven's deep organ blow, 
 
 Landor. No, I will not : I am too puritanical in poetry 
 for that. 
 
 Southey. The twenty-third, " And sullen Moloch," is grand, 
 until we come to — 
 
 The brutish gods of Nile, as fast 
 Isis and Osiris and the dog Anubis, haste. 
 
 As fast as what ? We have heard nothing but the ring of 
 cymbals calling the grisly king. We come to worse in twenty- 
 six, — 
 
 So when the sun in bed 
 
 Curtain'd with cloudy red, 
 
 Pilltnvs kis chin, &c. 
 
 [xxvii.] And all about the courtly stable 
 
 Bright-harnest angels sit . . . in order serviceable. 
 
 They would be the less serviceable by being seated, and not the 
 more so for being harnessed. 
 
 The Passion. — The five first verses of the sixth stanza are 
 good, and very acceptable after the "letters where my tears 
 have -washt a •tvannish white." The last two verses are guilty 
 of such an offence as Cowley himself was never indicted for. 
 The sixth stanza lies between two others full of putrid conceits, 
 hke a large pearl which has exhausted its oyster. 
 
 Landor. But can any thing be conceived more exquisite 
 
 than — 
 
 Grove and spring 
 Would soon unbosom all their echoes mild ? 
 
288 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 This totally withdraws us from regarding the strange superfetation 
 just below. 
 
 The Circumcision, verse 6 : — 
 
 Now mourn ; and if sad share with us to bear. 
 
 Death of an Infant. — It is never at a time when the feelings 
 are most acute that the poet expresses them ; but sensibility and 
 taste shrink alike, on such occasions, from witticisms and 
 whimsies. Here are too many ; but the last two stanzas are 
 very beautiful. Look at the note. Here are six verses, four of 
 them in Shakspeare, containing specimens of the orthography you 
 recommend : — 
 
 Sweet Rose 1 fair flower, untimely plucit, soon faded, 
 Pluckt in the bud and faded in the spring. 
 Bright Orient pearle, alacl( too timely shaded ! 
 Fair creature til'd too soon by Death's sharp sting. 
 
 Again,— 
 
 Sweete lovely Rose ! ill flucit before thy time, 
 Fair worthy Sonne, not conquered, but betraid. 
 
 Southey. The spelling of Milton is not always to be copied, 
 though it is better on the whole than any other writer's. He 
 continues to wnlejift and slxt. In what manner would he write 
 eighth P If he omitted the final h, there wovJd be irregularity 
 and confusion. Beside, how would he continue ? Would he 
 say the tent for the tenth, and the thlrtent, fourtent, &c. ? 
 
 Landor. We have corrected and fixed a few inconsiderate 
 and random spellings ; but we have as frequently taken the wrong 
 and rejected the right. No edition of Shakspeare can be valuable 
 unless it strictly follows the first editors, who knew and observed 
 his orthography. 
 
 Southey. 
 
 . . . from thy prefixed seat didst /oj*. — St. 9, v. 59. 
 
 We find the same expression more than once in Milton, — surely 
 one very unfit for grave subjects in his time as in ours. 
 
 Let us, sitting beneath the sundial, look at the poem On 
 Time .• — 
 
 Call on the lazy leaden-stepping Hours 
 Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace. 
 
Southey and Landor. 289 
 
 Now, although the Hours may be the lazier for the lead about 
 them, the plummet is the quicker for it. 
 
 And glut thyseli with what thy womb devours. 
 
 It is incredible how many disgusting images Milton indulges in. 
 
 Landor. In his age, and a century earlier, it was called 
 strength. The Graces are absent from this chamber of Ilithyia. 
 But the poet would have defended his position with the horse of 
 Virgil,- 
 
 Uterumgue armato milite complent. 
 
 Southey. 
 
 Then long eternity shall greet our bliss 
 With an individual kiss, 
 
 meaning undivided ; and he employs the same word in the same 
 sense again in the Paradise Lost. How much more properly 
 than as we are now in the habit of using it, calling men and 
 women, who never saw one another, individuals, and often 
 employing it beyond the person : for instance, " a man's indi- 
 vidual pleasure," although the pleasure is divided with another 
 or with many. The last part, from " When every thing " 
 to the end, is magnificent. The word sincerely bears its Latin 
 agnification. 
 
 The next is. At a Solemn Music. And I think you will 
 agree with me that a sequence of rhymes never ran into 
 such harmony as those at the conclusion, from " That we on 
 earth." 
 
 Landor. Excepting the commencement of Di-yden's Religio 
 Laid, where indeed the poetry is of a much inferior order; 
 for the head of Dryden does not reach so high as to the loins 
 of MUton. 
 
 Southey. No, nor to the knees. We now come to the 
 Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester. He has often much 
 injured this beautiful metre by the prefix of a syllable which 
 distorts every foot. The entire change in the Allegro, to welcome 
 Euphrosyne, is admirably judicious. The flow in the poem 
 before us is trochaic : he turns it into the iambic, which is 
 exactly its opposite. The verses beginning — 
 
290 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 The God that sits at marriage-feast, 
 are infinitely less beautifiJ than Ovid's. These, — 
 
 He at their invoking came, 
 
 But with a scarce well-lighted flame, 
 
 — bear a faint resemblance to — 
 
 Fax quoque quam tenuit lacrimoso stridula ftimo 
 Usque fuit, nullosque invenit motibus ignes. 
 
 Here the conclusion is ludicrously low, — 
 
 No marchioness, but now a queen. 
 
 In Vacation Exercise : 
 
 Driving dumb silence from the portal door^ 
 Where he had mutely sat two years before. 
 
 What do you think of that ? 
 
 Landor. Why, I think it would have been as well if he had 
 sat there still. In the Z7th verse, he uses the noun substantive 
 suspect for suspicion ; and why not ? I have already given my 
 reasons for its propriety. From verse 33 to 44 is agdn such 
 a series of couplets as you will vainly look for in any other 
 poet. 
 
 Southey. " On the Ens." — Nothing can be more ingenious. 
 It was in such subjects that the royal James took delight. I 
 know not what the rivers have to do with the present ; but they 
 are very refreshing after coming out of the schools. 
 
 The Epitaph on Shakspeare is thought unworthy of Milton. I 
 entertain a very different opinion of it, considering it was the first 
 poem he ever published. Omit the two lines, — 
 
 Thou in our wonder and astonishment 
 Hast built thyself a live-long monument, 
 
 — and the remainder is vigorous, direct, and enthusiastic ; after 
 invention, the greatest qualities of all great poetry. 
 
 On the Forces of Conscience. — Milton is among the least witty 
 of mankind. He seldom attempts a witticism unless he is angry; 
 and then he stifles it by clenching his fist. His unrhymed 
 translation of Quis multd gracilis is beautiful for four lines only, 
 
Southey and Landor. 291 
 
 Plain in thy neatness is almost an equivoke ; neat in thy plainness of 
 attire would be nearer the mark. 
 
 Landor. Simplex munditis does not mean that, nor plain in 
 thy "ornaments," as "Warton thinks; but, without any reference 
 to ornaments, plain in attire. Mundus muliebris (and from mundus 
 munditiie) means the toilet ; and always will mean it, as long as 
 the world lasts. We now come upon the Psalms ; so let us 
 close the book. 
 
 Southey. Willingly ; for I am desirous of hearing you say a 
 little more about the Latin poetry of Milton than you have said 
 in your Dissertation, 
 
 Landor. Johnson gives his opinion more freely than favorably. 
 It is wonderfvJ that a critic, so severe in his censures on the 
 absurdities and extravagances of Cowley, should prefer the very 
 worst of them to the gracefulness and simplicity of Milton. His 
 graceftdness he seldom loses ; his simplicity he not always retains. 
 But there is no Latin verse of Cowley worth preservation. 
 Thomas May, indeed, is an admirable imitator of Lucan ; so 
 good a one, that, if in Lucan you find little poetry, in May you 
 find none. But his verses sound well upon the anvil. It is 
 surprising that Milton, who professedly imitated Ovid, should so 
 much more rarely have run into conceits than when he had no 
 such leader. His early English poetry is full of them, and in the 
 gravest the most. The best of his Latin poems is that addressed to 
 Christina in the name of Cromwell : it is worthy of the classical and 
 courtly Bembo. But, in the second verse, lucida Stella violates 
 the metre : stella serena would be more descriptive and applicable. 
 It now occurs to me, that he who edited the last Ainsmiorth's 
 Dictionary calls Cowley poetarum sieculi sui facile princeps, and 
 totally omits all mention of Shakspeare in the obituary of 
 illustrious men. Among these he has placed not only the most 
 contemptible critics, who bore indeed some relation to learning, 
 but even such people as Lord Comwallis and Lord Thurlow. 
 Egregious ass ! above all other asses by a good ear's length ! 
 Ought a publication so negligent and injudicious to be admitted 
 into our public schools, after the world has been enriched by the 
 erudition of Facciolati and Furlani ? Shall we open the book 
 again, and go straight on ? 
 
 Southey. If you please. But as you insist on me saying most 
 
292 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 about the English, I expect at your hands a compensation in the 
 Latin. 
 
 Latidor. I do not promise you a compensation ; but I will 
 waste no time in obeying your wishes. Severe and rigid as 
 the character of Milton has been usually represented to us, it 
 is impossible to read his Elegies without admiration for his 
 warmth of friendship and his eloquence in expressing it. His 
 early love of Ovid, as a master in poetry, is enthusiastic. 
 
 [23.] Non tunc lonio quidquam cessisset Homero, 
 
 Neve foret victo laus tibi prima, Maro ! 
 
 Neve is often used by the modems for neque, very improperly. 
 Although we hear much about the Metamorphoses and the Mnad 
 being left incomplete, we may reasonably doubt whether the 
 authors could have much improved them. There is a deficiency 
 of skill in the composition of both poems ; but every part is 
 elaborately worked out. Nothing in Latin can excel the beauty 
 of Virgil's versification. Ovid's at one moment has the fluency, 
 at another the discontinuance, of mere conversation. Sorrow, 
 passionate, dignified, and deep, is never seen in the Metamorphoses 
 as in the Mneid ; nor in the Mneid is any eloquence so sustained, 
 any spirit so heroic, as in the contest between Ajax and Ulysses. 
 But Ovid frequently, in other places, wants that gravity and 
 potency in which Virgil rarely fails : declamation is no substitute 
 for it. Milton, in his Latin verses, often places words beginning 
 with so, St, sp, &c., before a dactyl, which is inadmissible. 
 
 [53'] -^^ ^ quoties dignse stupui miracula formse 
 
 QuK possit senium vel reparare Jovis. 
 
 No such difficult a matter as he appears to represent it ; for 
 Jupiter, to the very last, was much given to such reparations. 
 This elegy, with many slight faults, has great facility and spirit of 
 its own, and has caught more by running at the side of Ovid and 
 TibuUus. In the second elegy, alipes is a dactyl ; pes, simple or 
 compound, is long. This poem is altogether unworthy of its 
 author. The third is on the death of Launcelot Andrews, Bishop 
 of Winchester. It is florid, puerile, and altogether deficient in 
 pathos. The conclusion is curious : — 
 
 Flebam turbatos Cepheleia pellice somnos ; 
 Tnlia coniingant somtiia sape mihi. 
 
Southey and I/andor. 293 
 
 Ovid has expressed the same wish in the same words ; but the 
 aspiration was for somewhat very dissimilar to a Bishop of Win- 
 chester. The fourth is an epistle to Thomas Young, his preceptor, 
 a man whose tenets were puritanical, but who encouraged in his 
 scholar the love of poetry. Much of this piece is imitated from 
 Ovid. There are several thoughts which might have been 
 omitted, and several expressions which might have been improved. 
 For instance : — 
 
 [ill.] Namque eris ipse Dei radian te sub agide tutus, 
 
 Ille tibi custos et fugil ille tibi. 
 
 All the verses after these are magnificent. The next is on 
 Spring, — very inferior to its predecessors. 
 
 [39.] Nam dolus et czdes et ms, cum nocte recessit 
 
 Neve giganteum Dii metuere scelus. 
 
 How thick the faults lie here ! But the invitation of the Earth 
 to the Sun is quite Ovidian. 
 
 [122.] Semicaperque deus semideusque caper 
 
 is too much so. Elegy the sixth is addressed to Deodati. 
 
 Mitto tibi sanam non pleno ventre salutem, 
 Qua tu, ilsleiito, forte carere potes. 
 
 I have often observed, in modern Latinists of the first order, that 
 they use indifferently forte and forsan or forsitan. Here is an 
 example. Forte is, hy accident, without the implication of a 
 doubt ; forsan always implies one. Martial wrote bad Latin 
 when he wrote " Si forsan." Runchenius himself writes ques- 
 tionably to D'Orville, " sed forte res non est tanti." It surely 
 would be better to have written fortasse. I should have less 
 wondered to find forte in any modern Italian (excepting Bembo, 
 who always writes with as much precision as Cicero or Caesar) ; 
 because ma forse, their idiom, would prompt sed forte. 
 
 [19.] Naso CorallEEis mala carmina misit ab agris. 
 
 Untrue. He himself was discontented with them because they 
 had lost their playfulness ; but their only fault lies in their adula- 
 tion. I doubt whether all the elegiac verses that have been 
 written in the Latin language ever since are worth the books of 
 
294 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 them he sent from Pontus. Deducting one couplet from Joannes 
 Secundus, I would strike the bargain. 
 
 [79.] Si modo saltan. 
 
 The saltern is here redundant and contrary to Latinity. 
 
 Sottthey. This elegy, I think, is equable and pleasing, without 
 any great fault or great beauty. 
 
 Landor. In the seventh, he discloses the first effects of love 
 on him. Here are two verses which I never have read without 
 the heart-ache : — 
 
 [15.] Ut mihi adhuc refiigam qusrebant lumina noctem 
 Nee matutinum sustinuere jubar. 
 
 We perceive at one moment the first indication of love and of 
 blindness. Happy, had the blindness been as unreal as the love. 
 Cupid is not exalted by a comparison with Paris and Hylas, nor 
 the frown of Apollo magnified by the Parthian. He writes, as 
 many did, author for auctor, very improperly. In the sixtieth verse 
 is again neve for nee ; nor is it the last time. But here come 
 beautiful verses: — 
 
 [99.] Deme meos tandem, varum nee deme, furores; 
 Nescio cur, miser est suaviter omnis amans. 
 
 I wish cur had been qui. Subjoined to this elegy are ten verses 
 in which he regrets the time he had wasted in love. Probably it 
 was on the day (for it could not have cost him more) on which 
 he composed it. 
 
 Southey. The series of these compositions exhibits little more 
 than so many exercises in mythology. You have repeated to me 
 all that is good in them, and in such a tone of enthusiasm as made 
 me think better of them than I had ever thought before. The 
 first of his epigrams, on Leonora Baroni, has little merit ; the 
 second, which relates to Tasso, has much. 
 
 Landor. I wish, however, that in the sixth i" line he had 
 substituted ilia for eddem, — and not on account of the metre ; for 
 eadem becomes a spondee, as eodem in Virgil's "uno eodemque 
 igni." And sihi, which ends the poem, is superfluous ; if there 
 must be any word, it should be «', which the metre rejects. The 
 
 P" The tenth line of this poem runs — 
 
 "Voce eadem poteras composuisse tua."] 
 
Sou they and Landor. 295 
 
 Seasons against Salmasius are a miserable copy of Persius's heavy 
 prologue to his satires ; and, moreover, a copy at second-hand : 
 for Menage had imitated it in his invective against Mommor, 
 whom he calls Gargilius. He begins, — 
 
 Quis expedivit psittaco suo xo'pc- 
 
 But Persius's and Menage's at least are metrical, which Milton's 
 in one instance are not. The fifth foot should be an iambic. 
 In prtmatum v/e have a spondee. The iambics which follow, on 
 Salmasius again, are just as faulty. They start with a false quan- 
 tity, and go on stumbling with the same infirmity. The epigram 
 on More, the defender of Salmasius, is without wit : the pun is 
 very poor. The next piece, a fable of the Farmer and Master, is 
 equally vapid. But now comes the Bell'tpotens Virgo, of which 
 we often have spoken, but of which no one ever spoke too highly. 
 Christina was flighty and insane ; but it suited the policy of Crom- 
 well to flatter a queen almost as vain as Elizabeth, who could still 
 command the veterans of Gustavus Adolphus. We will pass 
 over the Greek verses. They are such as no boy of the sixth 
 form would venture to show up in any of our public schools. 
 We have only one Alcaic ode in the volume, and a very bad one 
 it is. The canons of this metre 11 were unknown in Milton's 
 time. But, versed as he was in mythology, he never should have 
 written — 
 
 Nee puppe lustrasses Charontis 
 Horribiles barathri recessus. 
 
 The good Doctor Goslyn was not rowed in that direction, nor 
 could any such place be discovered from the bark of Charon, 
 from whom Dr Goslyn had every right, as Vice-Chancellor of 
 the University, to expect civility and attention. 
 
 Southey. We come now to a longer poem, and in heroic verse, 
 on the Gunpowder Plot. It appears to me to be even more 
 Ovidian than the Ekgies. Monstrosus Typhoeus, Mavortigena 
 Quirinus, the Pope, and the mendicant friars meet strangely. 
 However, here they are ; and now comes Saint Peter, and 
 Bromius. 
 
 pi tandor is referring to the faulty form used by Milton in the third 
 line of the Archaic stanza. Five out of the twelve are incorrect.] 
 
296 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Landor. 
 
 Hie Dolus intortis semper sedet ater ocellis. 
 
 Though ocellus is often used for oculus, being a diminurive, it 
 is, if not always a word of endearment, yet never applicable 
 to what is terrific or heroic. In the 163d verse the Pope is 
 represented as declaring the Protestant religion to be the true 
 one. 
 
 Et quotquot fidei caluere cupidine verse. 
 
 This poem, which ends poorly, is a wonderful work for a boy of 
 seventeen, although much less so than Chatterton's Bristoiue 
 Tragedle and MUa. 
 
 Southey. I suspect you will be less an admirer of the next, on 
 Obitum Praulis Eltenses, — 
 
 [13.] Qui rex sacrorum ilia fuisti in insula 
 
 Qua namen Anguillm tenet, 
 
 — where he wishes Death were dead. 
 
 [14."] Et imprecor neci necem. 
 
 Again, — 
 
 [43.] Sub regna fiarvi luctuosa Tartar! 
 
 Sedesque subterraneas. 
 
 Landor. He never has descended before to such a bathos 
 as this, where he runs against the coming blackamoor in the 
 dark. However, he recovers from the momentary stupefaction ; 
 and there follow twenty magnificent verses, such as Horace 
 himself, who excels in this metre, never wrote in it. But the 
 next, Naturam non pati senium, is still more admirable. I wish 
 only he had omitted the third verse. 
 
 Heu quam perpetuis erroribus acta fatiscit 
 
 Avia mens hominum, tenebrisque immersa profundis 
 
 (Edipodioniam volvit sub pectore noctem. 
 
 Sublime as volmt sub pectore noctem is, the lumbering and ill- 
 composed word, (Edipodioniam, spoils it. Beside, the sentence 
 would go on very well, omitting the whole line. Gray has 
 much less vigor and animation in the fragment of his philosophi- 
 cal poem. Robert Smith alone has more, — how much more! 
 
Sou they and Landor. 297 
 
 Enough to rival Lucretius in his noblest passages, and to deter 
 the most aspiring from an attempt at Latin poetry. The next is 
 also on a philosophical subject, and entitled, De Idea Platonica 
 quemadmodum Aristoteles iniellexit. This is obscure. Aristoteles 
 kneiu, as others do, that Plato entertained the whimsy of God 
 working from an archetype ; but he himself was too sound and 
 solid for the admission of such a notion. The first five verses 
 are highly poetical ; the sixth is Cowleian. At the close, he 
 scourges Plato for playing the fool so extravagantly, and tells 
 him either to recall the poets he has turned out of doors, or 
 to go out himself. There are people who look up in astonish- 
 ment at this archetypus gigas, frightening God while he works 
 at him. MUton has invested him with great dignity, and slips 
 only once into the poetical corruptions of the age. 
 
 Southey. Lover as you are of Milton, how highly must you 
 be gratified by the poem he addresses to his father ! 
 
 Landor. I am happy, remote as we are, to think of the 
 pleasure so good a father must have felt on this occasion, and 
 how clearly he must have seen in prospective the glory of his 
 son. 
 
 In the verses after the forty-second, — 
 
 Carmina regales epulas ornare solebant, 
 Cum nondum luxus vastsque immensa vorago 
 Nota gulae, et modico fumabat ccena Lyseo, 
 Turn de more sedans festa ad convivia vates, &c. 
 
 I wish he had omitted the two intermediate lines, and had 
 
 written, — 
 
 Carmina regales epulas ornare solebant, 
 Cum, de more, &c. 
 
 The four toward the conclusion, — 
 
 At tibi, chare pater, &c. 
 
 — must have gratified the father as much almost by the harmony 
 as the sentiment. 
 
 Southey. The scazons to Salsilli are a just and equitable return 
 for his quatrain ; for they are full of false quantities, without an 
 iota of poetry. 
 
 Landor. But how gloriously he bursts forth again in all his 
 
298 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 splendor for Manso ! — for Manso, who before had enjoyed the 
 immortal honor of being the friend of Tasso ! 
 
 [70.] Diis dilecte senex I te Jupiter zquus oportet 
 Nascentem et miti lustrarit lumine Phcebus, 
 Atlantisque nepos ; neque enim nisi charus ab ortu. 
 Diis superis poterit magna Juvisse poetee. 
 
 And the remainder of the poem is highly enthusiastic. What 
 a glorious verse is, — 
 
 [84.] Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub Marte phalanges ! 
 
 Southey. I have often wondered that our poets, and Milton 
 more especially, should be the partisans of the Britons rather 
 than of the Saxons. I do not add the Normans ; for very few 
 of our poets are Norman by descent. The Britons seem to 
 have been a barbarous and treacherous race, inclined to drunken- 
 ness and quarrels. Was the whole nation ever worth this noble 
 verse of Milton ? It seems to come sounding over the ^gean 
 Sea, and not to have been modulated on the low country of the 
 Tiber. 
 
 Landor. In his pastoral on the loss of Diodati, entitled 
 Epttaphium Damonis, there are many beautiful verses : for 
 instance, — 
 
 [66.] Ovium quoque tsdet, at ills 
 
 Moerent, inque suum convertunt ora magistrum. 
 
 The pause at marent, and the word also, show the great master. 
 In Virgil himself it is impossible to find anything more scientific. 
 Here, as in Lyctdas, mythologies are inteimixed, and the heroic 
 bursts forth from the pastoral. Apollo could not for ever be 
 disguised as the shepherd-boy of Admetus. 
 
 [60.] Supra caput imber et Eurus 
 
 Triste sonant, fraeteeque agitata crepuscula sylvte. 
 
 Southey. This is finely expressed ; but he found the idea 
 not untouched before. Gray and others have worked upon 
 it since. It may be well to say little on the Presentation of the 
 poems to the Bodleian Library. Strophes and antistrophes are 
 here quite out of place ; and on no occasion has any Latin poet 
 
Southey and Landor. 299 
 
 so jumbled together the old metres. Many of these are irregular 
 and imperfect. 
 
 [60O Icn Actea genitus Creusa 
 
 is not a verse ; authorum is not Latin. 
 
 [78-] Et tutela dabit solen Roiisi 
 
 is defective in metre. This Pindaric ode to Rouse, the libra- 
 rian, is indeed fuller of faults than any other of his Latin compo- 
 sitions. He tells us himself that he has admitted a spondee 
 for the third foot in the Phaljecian verse, because Catullus had 
 done so in the second. He never wrote such bad verses, or 
 gave such bad reasons, all his life before. But beautifully and 
 jusdy has he said, — 
 
 [86.] Si quid meremur sana posteritas sciet 
 
 Landor. I find traces in Milton of nearly all the best Latin 
 poets, excepting Lucretius. This is singular; for there is in 
 both of them a generous warmth and a contemptuous severity. 
 I admire and love Lucretius. There is about him a simple 
 majesty, a calm and lofty scorn of every thing pusillanimous and 
 abject ; and, consistently with this character, his poetry is mascu- 
 line, plain, concentrated, and energetic. But since invention 
 was precluded by the subject, and glimpses of imagination could 
 be admitted through but few and narrow apertures, it is the in- 
 sanity of enthusiasm to prefer his poetical powers to those of 
 Virgil, of Catullus, and of Ovid ; in all of whom every part of 
 what constitutes the true poet is much more largely displayed. 
 The excellence of Lucretius is, that his ornaments are never out 
 of place, and are always to be found wherever there is a place 
 for them. Ovid knows not what to do with his, and is as fond 
 of accumulation as the frequenter of auction-rooms. He is 
 playful so out of season, that he reminds me of a young lady I 
 saw at Sta. Maria Novella, who at one moment crossed herself, 
 and at the next tickled her companion ; by which process they 
 were both put upon their speed at their prayers, and made very 
 good and happy. Small as is the portion of glory which accrues 
 to Milton from his Latin poetry, there are single sentences in 
 it, ay, single images, worth all that our island had produced 
 
300 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 before. In all the volume of Buchanan, 1 doubt whether you 
 can discover a glimpse of poetry ; and few sparks fly off the 
 anvil of May. 
 
 There is a confidence of better days expressed in this closing 
 poem. Enough is to be found in his Latin to insure him a high 
 rank and a lasting name. It is, however, to be regretted that 
 late in life he ran back to the treasures of his youth, and estimated 
 them with the fondness of that undiscerning age. No poet ever 
 was sorry that he abstained from early publication. But Milton 
 seems to have cherished his first effusions with undue partiality. 
 Many things written later by him are unworthy of preservation, 
 especially those which exhibit men who provoked him into 
 bitterness. Hatred, the most vulgar of vulgarisms, could never 
 have belonged to his natural character. He must have contracted 
 the distemper from theologians and critics. The scholar in his 
 days was half clown and half trooper. College life could leave 
 but few of its stains and incrustations on a man who had stepped 
 forward so soon into the amenities of Italy, and had conversed so 
 familiarly with the most polished gentlemen of the most polished 
 nation. 
 
 Southey. In his attacks on Salmasius, and others more obscure, 
 he appears to have mistaken his talent in supposing he was witty. 
 
 Landor. Is there a man in the world wise enough to know 
 whether he himself is witty or not, to the extent he aims at ? I 
 doubt whether any question needs more self-examination. It is 
 only the fool's heart that is at rest upon it. He never asks how 
 the matter stands, and feels confident he has only to stoop for it. 
 Milton's dough, it must be acknowledged, is never the lighter for 
 the bitter barm he kneads up with it. 
 
 Southey. The Sabbath of his mind required no levities, — no 
 excursions or amusements. But he was not ill-tempered. The 
 worst-tempered men have often the greatest and readiest store of 
 pleasantries. Milton, on all occasions indignant and wrathful at 
 injustice, was unwilling to repress the signification of it when it 
 was directed against himself. However I can hardly think he felt 
 so much as he expresses ; but he seized on bad models in his 
 resolution to show his scholarship. Disputants, and critics in 
 particular, followed one another with invectives ; and he was 
 thought to have given the most manifest proof of original genius 
 
Southey and Landor. 301 
 
 who had invented a new form of reproach. I doubt if Milton 
 was so contented with his discomfiture of Satan, or even with his 
 creation of Eve, as with the overthrow of Salmasius under the 
 loads of fetid brimstone he fulminated against him. 
 
 It is fortunate we have been sitting quite alone while we 
 detected the blemishes of a poet we both venerate. The mali- 
 cious are always the most ready to bring forward an accusation of 
 malice ; and we should certainly have been served, before long, 
 with a writ pushed under the door. 
 
 Landor. Are we not somewhat like two little beggar-boys, 
 who, forgetting that they are in tatters, sit noticing a few stains 
 and rents in their father's raiment ? 
 
 Southey. But they love him. 
 
 Let us now walk homeward. We leave behind us the Severn 
 and the sea and the mountains ; and, if smaller things may be 
 mentioned so suddenly after greater, we leave behind us the sun- 
 dial, which marks, as we have been doing in regard to Milton, 
 the course of the great luminary by a slender line of shadow. 
 
 Landor. After witnessing his glorious ascension, we are 
 destined to lower our foreheads over the dreaiy hydropathy and 
 flanneUy voices of the swathed and sinewless. 
 
 Southey. Do not be over-sure that you are come to the worst, 
 even there. Unless you sign a certificate of their health and 
 vigor, your windows and lamps may be broken by the mischievous 
 rabble below. 
 
 Landor. Marauders will cook their greens and bacon, though 
 they tear down cedar panels for the purpose. 
 
 Southey. There is an incessant chatterer^^ who has risen to 
 the first dignities of State by the same means as nearly all men 
 rise now by ; namely, opposition to whatever is done or projected 
 by those invested with authority. He will never allow us to 
 contemplate greatness at our leisure : he will not allow us indeed 
 to look at it for a moment. Cssar must be stripped of his laurels 
 and left bald ; or some reeling soldier, some insolent swaggerer, 
 some stilted ruflttan, thrust before his triumph. If he fights, he 
 does not know how to use his sword ; if he speaks, he speaks vile 
 Latin. 1 wonder that Cromwell fares no better ; for he lived a 
 hypocrite, and he died a traitor. I should not recall to you this 
 [12 Lord Brougham.] 
 
302 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 ridiculous man, to whom the Lords have given the run of the House, 
 — a man pushed ofF his chair by every party he joins, and enjoying 
 all the disgraces he incurs, — were it not that he has also, in the 
 fulness of his impudence, raised his cracked voice and incondite 
 language against Milton. 
 
 Landor. I hope his dapple fellow-creatures in the lanes will 
 be less noisy and more modest as we pass along them homeward. 
 
 Southey. Wretched as he is in composition, superficial as he is 
 in all things, without a glimmer of genius or a grain of judgment, 
 yet his abilities and acquirements raise him somewhat high above 
 those more quiescent and unaspiring ones you call his fellow- 
 creatures. 
 
 Landor. The main difference is, that they are subject to have 
 their usual burdens laid upon them all their lives, while his of the 
 woolsack is taken off for ever. The allusion struck me fi-om the 
 loudness and dissonance of his voice, the wilfulness and perverse- 
 ness of his disposition, and his habitude of turning round on a 
 sudden and kicking up behind. 
 
 XIX. ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP 
 PARKER.1* 
 
 Parker. Most happy am I to encounter you, Mr Marvel. 
 It is some time, I think, since we met. May I take the liberty 
 
 \} The Controversy, of which the Rehearsal Tramprosed was part, began 
 with three books written by Dr Parker, " the most sanguine hound of the 
 clerical pack, who seemed to have a mitre in his eye" (Thompson's 
 "Life of Marvel," iii., 470). These were Ecclesiastical Polity (id-JO), A 
 Defence of Ecclesiastical Polity (1671), and A Preface to a Reprint of Bishop 
 BrambalPs Vindication of himself and the rest of the Episcopal Clergy from the 
 charge of Popery (1672). Marvel's book was an attack on all three. 
 Dr Parker retorted with a Reproof to the Rehearsal Tramprosed, which pro- 
 voked the second part of the Rehearsal Transprosed from ■which (p. 498, 
 Thompson ed.) Landor has quoted the passage given in the note below. 
 He has, however, omitted several words, and curiously enough, one passage, 
 
 * He wrote a work entitled, as Hooker's was. Ecclesiastical Polity, in 
 which are these words: " It is better to submit to the unreasonable im- 
 positions of Nero and Caligula than to hazard the dissolution of the 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 303 
 
 of inquiring what brought you into such a lonely quarter as Bun- 
 hillfields ? 
 
 Marvel. My lord, I return at this instant from visiting an 
 
 in which Marvel denies that he was ever on friendly terms with Parker. 
 In Captain Thompson's Life (p. 474) an account is given of one conversa- 
 tion between Marvel and Parker, which was not likely to have led to 
 another. Parker was not made bishop of Oxford until some years after 
 Marvel's death. The full text of the passage quoted by Landor is as 
 follows : " At His Majesty's happy return, J. M. did partake, even as you 
 yourself did for all your huffing, of his regal clemency, and has ever since 
 expiated himself in a retired silence. It was after that, I well remember 
 it, that being one day at his house, I there first met you, and accidentally. 
 Since that I have been scarce four or 6ve times in your company, but, 
 whether it were my foresight or my good fortune, I never contracted any 
 friendship or confidence with you. But then it was, when you, as I told 
 you, wandered up and dowra Moorfields, astrologizing upon the duration 
 of His Majesty's government, that you frequented J. M. incessantly, 
 and haunted his house day by day. What discourses you there used he 
 is too generous to remember. But, he never having in the least provoked 
 you, for you to insult thus over his old age, to traduce him by your scara 
 mucdot, and in your own person, as a schoolmaster, who was born and 
 hath lived much more ingenuously and liberally than yourself; to have 
 done all this, and lay at last my simple book to his charge, without ever 
 taking care to inform yourself better, which you had so easie opportunity 
 to do ; nay, when you yourself, too, have said, to my knowledge, that you 
 saw no such great matter in it but that I might be the author : it is in- 
 humanely and inhospitably done, and will, I hope, be a warning to all 
 others, as it is to me, to avoid (I will not say such a Judas) but a man 
 that creeps into all companies to jeer, trepan, and betray them." (Works, 
 ii., 1846. Works, iv., 1876.)] 
 
 State." It is plain enough to what imfasitions he recommended the duty 
 of submission ; for, in our fiscal sense of the word, none ever bore more 
 lightly on the subject than CaUgula's and Nero's : even the provinces were 
 taxed very moderately and fairly by them. He adds, " Princes may with 
 less danger give liberty to men's vices and debaucheries than to their con- 
 sciences." Marvel answered him in his Rehearsal Tramprosed, in which he 
 says of Milton : " I well remember that, being one day at his house, I 
 there first met you, and accidentally. Then it was that you wandered up 
 and down Moorfields, astrologizing upon the duration of His Majesty's 
 government. You frequented John Milton incessantly, and haunted his 
 house day by day. What discourses you there used he is too generous to 
 remember; but, he never having in the least provoked you, it is in- 
 humanely and inhospitably done to insult thus over his old age. I hope 
 it will be a warning to all others, as it is to me, to avoid, I will not say 
 such a Judas, but a man that creeps into all companies, to jeer, trepan, 
 and betray them." 
 
304 Imaginarj- Conversations. 
 
 old friend of ours, hard by, in Artillery Walk ; who, you will be 
 happy to hear, bears his blindness and asthma with truly Christian 
 courage. 
 
 Parker. And pray, who may that old friend be, Mr Marvel ? 
 
 Mar-vel. Honest John Milton. 
 
 Parker. The same gentleman whose ingenious poem, on our 
 first parents, you praised in some elegant verses prefixed to it ? 
 
 Marvel. The same who likewise, on many occasions, merited 
 and obtained your lordship's approbation. 
 
 Parker. I am happy to understand that no harsh measures 
 were taken against him, on the return of our most gracious sove- 
 reign. And it occurs to me that you, Mr Marvel, were earnest 
 in his behalf. Indeed, I myself might have stirred upon it, had 
 Mr Milton solicited me in the hour of need. 
 
 Marvel. He is grateful to the friends who consulted at the 
 same time his dignity and his safety ; but gratitude can never be 
 expected to grow on a soil hardened by solicitation. Those who 
 are the most ambitious of power are often the least ambitious of 
 glory. It requires but little sagacity to foresee that a name will 
 become invested with eternal brightness by belonging to a bene- 
 factor of Milton. / might have served him ! is not always the 
 soliloquy of late compassion or of virtuous repentance : it is fre- 
 quently the cry of blind and impotent and wounded pride, angry 
 at itself for having neglected a good bargain, a rich reversion. 
 Believe me, my lord bishop, there are few whom God has pro- 
 moted to serve the truly great. They are never to be superseded, 
 nor are their names to be obliterated in earth or heaven. Were 
 I to trust my observation rather than my feelings, I should be- 
 lieve that friendship is only a state of transition to enmity. The 
 wise, the excellent in honor and integrity, whom it was once our 
 ambition to converse with, soon appear in our sight no higher than 
 the ordinary class of our acquaintance ; then become fit objects to 
 set our own slender wits against, to contend with, to interrogate, 
 to subject to the arbitration, not of their equals, but of ours ; and, 
 lastly, — what indeed is less injustice and less indignity, — to neglect, 
 abandon, and disown. 
 
 Parker. I never have doubted that Mr Milton is a learned 
 man, — indeed, he has proven it ; and there are many who, 
 like yourself, see considerable merit in his poems. I confess 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 305 
 
 that I am an indifferent judge in these matters ; and I can only- 
 hope that he has now corrected what is erroneous in his doctrines. 
 
 Marvel. Latterly, he hath never changed a jot, in acting or 
 thinking. 
 
 Parker. Wherein I hold him blamable, well aware as I 
 am that never to change is thought an indication of rectitude 
 and wisdom. But if every thing in this world is progressive ; 
 if every thing is defective ; if our growth, if our faculties, are 
 obvious and certain signs of it, — then surely we should and 
 must be different in different ages and conditions. Conscious- 
 ness of error is, to a certain extent, a consciousness of under- 
 standing ; and correction of error is the plainest proof of energy 
 and mastery. 
 
 Marvel. No proof of the kind is necessary to my friend ; 
 and it was not always that your lordship looked down on him 
 so magisterially in reprehension, or delivered a sentence from so 
 conmianding an elevation. I, who indeed am but a humble 
 man, am apt to question my judgment where it differs from his. 
 I am appalled by any supercilious glance at him, and disgusted 
 by any austerity ill assorted with the generosity of his mind. 
 When I consider what pure delight we have derived from it, 
 what treasures of wisdom it has conveyed to us, I find him 
 supremely worthy of my gratitude, love, and veneration ; and the 
 neglect in which I now discover him leaves me only the more 
 room for the free effusion of these sentiments. How shallow in 
 comparison is every thing else around us, trickling and dimpling 
 in the pleasure-grounds of our literature ! If we are to build 
 our summer-houses against ruined temples, let us at least abstain 
 from ruining them for the purpose. 
 
 Parker. Nay, nay, Mr Marvel ! so much warmth is uncalled 
 for. 
 
 Marvel. Is there any thing offensive to your lordship in my 
 expressions f 
 
 Parker. I am not aware that there is. But let us generalize 
 a little ; for we are prone to be touchy and testy in favor of our 
 intimates. 
 
 Marvel. I believe, my lord, this fault, or sm, or whatso- 
 ever it may be designated, is among the few that are wearing 
 fast away. 
 
3o6 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Parker. Delighted am I, my dear sir, to join you in your 
 innocent pleasantry. But, truly and seriously, I have known 
 even the prudent grow warm and stickle about some close 
 affinity. 
 
 Marvel. Indeed ! so indecorous before your lordship ? 
 
 Parker. We may remember when manners were less polite 
 than they are now ; and not only the seasons of life require an 
 alteration of habits, but likewise the changes of society. 
 
 Marvel. Your lordship acts up to your tenets. 
 
 Parker. Perhaps you may blame me, and more severely than 
 I would blame our worthy friend Mr John Milton, upon finding 
 a slight variation in my exterior manner, and somewhat more 
 reserve than formerly ; yet wiser and better men than I presume 
 to call myself have complied with the situation to which it hath 
 pleased the Almighty to exalt them. 
 
 Marvel. I am slow to censure any one for assuming an 
 air and demeanor which, he is persuaded, are more becoming 
 than what he has left off. And I subscribe to the justice of 
 the observation, that wiser and better men than your lordship 
 have adapted their language and their looks to elevated station. 
 But sympathy is charity, or engenders it ; and sympathy requires 
 proximity, closeness, contact; and at every remove, and more 
 especially at every gradation of ascent, it grows a little colder. 
 When we' begin to call a man our -worthy friend, our friend- 
 ship is already on the wane. In him who has been raised 
 above his old companions, there seldom remains more warmth 
 than what turns every thing about it vapid : familiarity sidles 
 towards affability, and kindness courtesies into condescension. 
 
 Parker. I see, we are hated for rising. 
 
 Marvel. Many do really hate others for rising ; but some, 
 who appear to hate them for it, hate them only for the bad 
 effects it produces on the character. 
 
 Parker. We are odious, I am afraid, sometimes for the 
 gift, and sometimes for the giver; and malevolence cools her 
 throbs by running to the obscurity of neglected merit. We 
 know whose merit that means. 
 
 Marvel. What ! because the servants of a king have stamped 
 no measure above a certain compass, and such only as the vulgar 
 are accustomed to handle, must we disbelieve the existence of any 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 307 
 
 greater in its capacity, or decline the use of it in things lawful 
 and commendable ? Little men like these have no business at 
 all with the mensuration of higher minds : gaugers are not 
 astronomers. 
 
 Parker. Really, Mr Marvel, I do not understand metaphors. 
 
 Marvel. Leaving out arithmetic and mathematics, and the 
 sciences appertaining to them, I never opened a page without one : 
 no, not even a title-page with a dozen words in it. Perhaps I 
 am unfortunate in my tropes and figures : perhaps they come, by 
 my want of dexterity, too near your lordship. I would humbly 
 ask, Is there any criminality in the calculation and casting up of 
 manifold benefits, or in the employment of those instruments by 
 which alone they are to be calculated and cast up ? 
 
 Parker. Surely none whatever. 
 
 Marvel. It has happened to me and my schoolfellows, that, 
 catching small fish in the shallows and ditches of the Humber, 
 we called a minnow a perch, and a dace a pike ; because they 
 pleased us in the catching, and because we really were ignorant of 
 their quality. In like manner do some older ones act in regard 
 to men. They who are caught and handled by them are treated 
 with distinction, because they are so caught and handled, and 
 because self-love and self-conceit dazzle and delude the senses ; 
 while those whom they neither can handle nor catch are without 
 a distinctive name. We are informed by Aristoteles, in his 
 Treatise on Natural History, that solid horns are dropped and that 
 hollow ones are permanent. Now, although we may find solid men 
 cast on the earth and hollow men exalted, yet never will I believe 
 in the long duration of the hollow, or in the long abasement of the 
 solid. Milton, although the generality may be ignorant of it, is 
 quite as great a genius as Bacon, bating the chancellorship, which 
 goes for little where a great man is estimated by a wise one. 
 
 Parker. Rather enthusiastic ! ay, Mr Marvel ! — the one 
 name having been established for almost a century, the other 
 but recently brought forward, and but partially acknowledged. 
 By coming so much later into the world, he cannot be quite so 
 original in his notions as Lord Verulam. 
 
 Marvel. Solomon said that, even in his time, there was 
 nothing new under the sun : he said it unwisely and untruly. 
 
 Parker. Solomon ? untruly ? unwisely ? 
 
3o8 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Marvel. The spectacles which, by the start you gave, had so 
 nearly fallen from the bridge of your nose, attest it. Had he any i 
 It is said, and apparently with more reason than formerly, that 
 there are no new thoughts. What do the fools mean who say 
 it ! They might just as well assert that there are no new men, 
 because other men existed before with eyes, mouth, nostrils, 
 chin, and many other appurtenances. But as there are myriads 
 of forms between the forms of Scarron and Hudson * on one side, 
 and of Mercury and Apollo on the other, so there are myriads of 
 thoughts, of the same genus, each taking its peculiar conformation, 
 ^schylus and Racine, struck by the same idea, would express a 
 sentiment very differently. Do not imagine that the idea is the 
 thought : the idea is that which the thought generates, rears up to 
 maturity, and calls after its own name. Every note in music has 
 been sounded frequently ; yet a composition of Purcell may be 
 brilliant by its novelty. There are extremely few roots in a 
 language ; yet the language may be varied, and novel too, age 
 after age. Chessboards and numerals are less capable of exhibiting 
 new combinations than poetry ; and prose likewise is equally 
 capable of displaying new phases and phenomena in images and 
 reflections. Good prose, to say nothing of the original thoughts 
 it conveys, may be infinitely varied in modulation. It is only an 
 extension of metres, an amplification of harmonies, of which even 
 the best and most varied poetry admits but few. Comprehending 
 at once the prose and poetry of Milton, we could prove, before 
 " fit audience," that he is incomparably the greatest master of 
 harmony that ever lived. 
 
 There may be, even in these late days, more originality of 
 thought, and flowing in more channels of harmony, more bursts 
 and breaks and sinuosities, than we have yet discovered. The 
 admirers of Homer never dreamed that a man more pathetic, 
 more sublime, more thoughtful, more imaginative, would follow. 
 
 Parker. Certainly not. 
 
 Marvel. Yet Shakspeare came, in the memory of our 
 fathers. 
 
 Parker. Mr William Shakspeare, of Stratford upon Avon ? 
 A remarkably clever man : nobody denies it. 
 
 Marvel. At first, people did not know veiy well what to 
 • A dwarf in that age. 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 309 
 
 make of him. He looked odd ; he seemed witty ; he drew 
 tears. But a grin and a pinch of snuff can do that. 
 
 Every great author is a great reformer ; and the reform is 
 either in thought or language. Milton is zealous and effective 
 in both. 
 
 Parker. Some men conceive that, if their name is engraven 
 in Gothic letters, it signifies and manifests antiquity of family ; 
 and others, that a congestion of queer words and dry chopped 
 sentences, which turn the mouth awry in reading, make them 
 look like original thinkers. I have seen fantastical folks of this 
 description who write mend instead of go, and are so ignorant 
 of grammar as even to put ivended for -went. I do not say that 
 Mr Milton is one of them ; but he may have led weak men 
 into the feult. 
 
 Marvel, Not only is he not one of them, but his language is 
 never a patchwork of old and new : all is of a piece. Beside, 
 he is the only writer whom it is safe to follow in spelling : others 
 are inconsistent ; some for want of learning, some for want of 
 reasoning, some for want of memory, and some for want of care. 
 But there are certain words which ceased to be spelled properly 
 just before his time : the substantives childe and nuilde, and the 
 T/erhsJmde and 'winde, for instance. 
 
 Parker. Therein we agree. We ought never to have devi- 
 ated from those who delivered to us our Litany, of which the 
 purity is unapproachable and the harmony complete. Our tongue 
 has been drooping ever since. 
 
 Marvel. Until Milton touched it again with fire from 
 heaven. 
 
 Parker. Gentlemen seem now to have delegated the cor- 
 rection of the press to their valets, and the valets to have de- 
 volved it on the chambermaids. But I would not advise you 
 to start a fresh reformation in this quarter ; for the Round- 
 heads can't spell, and the Royalists won't ; and, if you bring 
 back an ancient form retaining all its beauty, they will come 
 forward from both sides against you on a charge of coining. 
 We will now return, if you please, to the poets we were speaking 
 of. Both Mr Shakspeare and Mr Milton have considerable 
 merit in their respective ways ; but both, surely, are unequal. Is 
 it not so, Mr Marvel ? 
 
3IO Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Marvel. Under the highest of their immeasurable Alps, all 
 is not valley and verdure : in some places, there are frothy 
 cataracts, there are the fruitless beds of noisy torrents, and there 
 are dull and hollow glaciers. He must be a bad writer, or 
 however a very indifferent one, in whom there are no inequalities. 
 The plants of such table-land are diminutive, and never worth 
 gathering. What would you think of a man's eyes to which 
 all things appear of the same magnitude and at the same elevation ? 
 You must think nearly so of a writer who makes as much of 
 small things as of great. The vigorous mind has mountains 
 to climb and valleys to repose in. Is there any sea without 
 its shoals ? On that which the poet navigates, he rises in- 
 trepidly as the waves rise round him, and sits composedly as 
 they subside. 
 
 Parker. I can listen to this ; but where the authority of 
 Solomon is questioned and rejected, I must avoid the topic. 
 Pardon me ; I collect from what you threw out previously, that, 
 with strange attachments and strange aversions, you cherish 
 singular ideas about greatness. 
 
 Marvel. To pretermit all reference to myself, our evil 
 humors, and our good ones too, are brought out whimsically. 
 We are displeased by him who would be similar to us, or who 
 would be near, unless he consent to' walk behind. To-day 
 we are unfriendly to a man of genius, whom ten days hence 
 we shall be zealous in extolling, — not because we know any 
 thing more of his works or his character, but because we have 
 dined in his company and he has desired to be introduced to us. 
 A flat ceiling seems to compress those animosities which flame 
 out furiously under the open sky. 
 
 Parker. Sad prejudices ! sad infirmities 1 
 
 Marvel. The sadder are opposite to them. Usually men, in 
 distributing fame, do as old maids and old misers do : they give 
 every thing to those who want nothing. In literature, often a 
 man's solitude, and oftener his magnitude, disinclines us from 
 helping him if we find him down. We are fonder of warming 
 our hands at a fire already in a blaze than of blowing one. I 
 should be glad to see some person as liberal of fame in regard to 
 Milton as in regard to those literators of the town who speedily 
 run it out. 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 3 1 1 
 
 Parker. 1 have always called him a man of parts. But, Mr 
 Marvel, we may bestow as injudiciously as we detract 
 
 Marvel. Perhaps as injudiciously, certainly not as injuri- 
 ously. If indeed we are to be called to account for the mis- 
 application of our bestowals, a heavy charge will lie against me 
 for an action I committed in my journey hither from Hull. I 
 saw an old man working upon the road, who was working upon 
 the same road, and not far from the same spot, when I was first 
 elected to represent that city in Parliament. He asked me for 
 something to make him drink ; which, considering the heat of the 
 weather and the indication his nose exhibited of his propensities, 
 did appear superfluous. However, I gave him a shilling, in addi- 
 tion to as many good wishes as he had given me. 
 
 Parker. Not reflecting that he would probably get intoxi- 
 cated with it ? 
 
 Marvel. I must confess I had all that reflection, with its 
 whole depth of shade, upon my conscience ; and I tried as well 
 as I could to remove the evil. I inquired of him whether he 
 was made the happier by the shilling. He answered, that, if I 
 was none the worse for it, he was none. " Then," said I, 
 «' honest friend ! since two are already the happier, prythee try 
 whether two more may not become so : therefore, drink out of 
 it at supper with thy two best friends." 
 
 Parker. I would rather have advised frugality and laying-by. 
 Perhaps he might have had a wife and children. 
 
 Marvel. He could not then, unless he were a most unlucky 
 man, be puzzled in searching for his two best friends. My 
 project gave him more pleasure than my money ; and 1 was 
 happy to think that he had many hours for his schemes and 
 anticipations between him and sunset. 
 
 Parker. When I ride or walk, I never carry loose money 
 about me, lest, through an inconsiderate benevolence, I be tempted 
 in some such manner to misapply it. To be robbed would give 
 me as little or less concern. 
 
 Marvel. A man's self is often his worst robber. He steals 
 firom his own bosom and heart what God has there deposited, 
 and he hides it out of his way, as dogs and foxes do with bones. 
 But the robberies we commit on the body of our superfluities, 
 and store up in vacant places, — in places of poverty and sorrow, — 
 
312 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 these, whether in the dark or in the daylight leave us neither in 
 nakedness nor in fear, are marked by no burning-iron of conscience, 
 are followed by no scourge of reproach ; they never deflower 
 prosperity, they never distemper sleep. 
 
 Parker. I am ready At all times to award justice to the 
 generosity of your character, and no man ever doubted its consist- 
 ency. Believing you to be at heart a loyal subject, I am thrown 
 back on the painful reflection that all our acquaintance are not 
 equally so. Mr Milton, for example, was a republican ; yet he 
 enteied into the service of a usurper ; you disdained it. 
 
 Marvel. Events proved that my judgment of Cromwell's 
 designs was correcter than his ; but the warier man is not always 
 the wiser, nor the more active and industrious in the service of 
 his country. 
 
 Parker. His opinions on religion varied also considerably, 
 until at last the vane almost wore out the socket, and it could turn 
 no longer. 
 
 Marvel. Is it nothing in the eyes of an Anglican bishop to 
 have carried the gospel of Christ against the Talmudists of Rome; 
 the word of God against the traditions of men ; the liberty of 
 conscience against the conspiracy of tyranny and fraud ? If so, 
 then the Protector, — such was Milton, — not of England only, 
 but of Europe, was nothing. 
 
 Parker. You are warm, Mr Marvel. 
 
 Marvel. Not by any addition to my cloth, however. 
 
 Parker. He hath seceded, I hear, from every form of public 
 worship ; and doubts are entertained whether he believes any 
 longer in the co-equality of the Son with the Father, or indeed 
 in his atonement for our sins. Such being the case, he forfeits 
 the name and privileges of a Christian. 
 
 Marvel. Not with Christians, if they know that he keeps the 
 ordinances of Christ. Papists, Calvinists, Lutherans, and every 
 other kind of scoria, exploding in the furnace of zeal, and 
 cracking off from Christianity, stick alike to the side of this 
 gloomy, contracted, and unwholesome doctrine. But the steadiest 
 believer in the divinity of our Lord, and in his atonement for us, 
 if pride, arrogance, persecution, malice, lust of station, lust of 
 money, lust of power, inflame him, is incomparably less a Christian 
 than he who doubteth all that ever was doubted of his genealogy 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 3 1 3 
 
 and hereditary rights, yet who never swerveth from his command- 
 ments. A wise man will always be a Christian, because the 
 perfection of wisdom is to know where lies tranquillity of mind, 
 and how to attain it, which Christianity teaches ; but men equally 
 wise may differ and diverge on the sufficiency of testimony, and 
 still farther on matters which no testimony can affirm and no 
 intellect comprehend. To strangle a man because he has a 
 narrow swallow, shall never be inserted among the "infallible 
 cures," in my Book of Domestic Remedies. 
 
 Parker. We were talking gravely : were it not rather more 
 seemly to continue in the same strain, Mr Marvel ? 
 
 Marvel. I was afraid that my gravity might appear too 
 specific ; but, with your lordship's permission and exhortation, 
 1 will proceed in serious reflections, — to which indeed, on this 
 occasion, I am greatly more inclined. Never do I take the 
 liberty to question or examine any man on his religion, or to look 
 over his shoulder on his account-book with his God. But I 
 know that Milton, and evei-y other great poet, must be religious ; 
 for there is nothing so godlike as a love of order, witli a power of 
 bringing great things into it. This power, — unlimited in the one, 
 limited (but incalculably and inconceivably great) in the other, — 
 belongs to the Deity and the poet. 
 
 Parker. I shudder. 
 
 Marvel. Wherefore ? at seeing a man what he was designed 
 to be by his Maker, — his Maker's image ? But pardon me, my 
 lord ! the surprise of such a novelty is enough to shock you. 
 
 Resendng to myself for a fiiture time the liberty of defending 
 my friend on theology, in which alone he shifted his camp, I may 
 remark what has frequently happened to me. I have walked 
 much : finding one side of the road miry, I have looked toward 
 the other and thought it cleaner ; I have then gone over, and 
 when there I have found it just as bad, although it did not seem 
 nearly so, until it was tried. This, however, has not induced me 
 to wish that the overseer would bar it up ; but only to wish that 
 both sides were mended effectually with smaller and more binding 
 materials, not with large loose stones, nor with softer stuff, soon 
 converted into mud. 
 
 Parker. Stability, then, and consistency are the qualities most 
 desirable ; and these I look for in Mr Milton. However fond 
 
314 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 he was of Athenian terms and practices, he rejected them after he 
 had proved them. 
 
 Marvel. It was not in his choice to reject or establish. He 
 saw the nation first cast down and lacerated by fanaticism, and 
 then utterly exhausted by that quieter blood-sucker, hypocrisy. 
 A powerful arm was wanted to drive away such intolerable pests, 
 and it could not but be a friendly one. Cromwell and the saner 
 part of the nation were unanimous in beating down Presbyterianism, 
 which had assumed the authority of the Papacy without its lenity. 
 
 Parker. He, and those saner people, had subverted already 
 the better form of Christianity which they found in the Anglican 
 church. Your Samson had shaken its pillars by his attack on 
 prelaty. 
 
 Marvel. He saw the prelates, in that reign, standing as ready 
 there as anywhere to wave the censer before the king, and under 
 its smoke to hide the people from him. He warned them as an 
 angel would have done, — nay, as our Saviour has done, — that the 
 wealthy and the proud, the flatterer at the palace and the flatterer 
 at the altar, in short, the man for the world, is not the man for 
 heaven. 
 
 Parker. We must lay gentle constructions and liberal inter- 
 pretations on the Scriptures. 
 
 Marvel. Then let us never open them. If they are true, we 
 should receive them as they are ; if they are false, we should re- 
 ject them totally. We cannot pick and choose : we cannot say to 
 the Omniscient, " We think you right here ; we think you wrong 
 there ; however, we will meet you halfway, and talk it over with 
 you." This is such impiety as shocks us even in saying we must 
 avoid it ; yet our actions tend to its countenance and support. 
 We clothe the ministers of Christ in the same embroidery as was 
 worn by the proudest of his persecutors, and they mount into 
 Pilate's chair. The Reformation has effected little more than 
 melting down the gold lace of the old wardrobe, to make it enter 
 the pocket more conveniently. 
 
 Parker. Who would have imagined Mr John Milton 
 should ever have become a seceder and sectarian ? — he who, 
 after the days of adolescence, looked with an eye of fondness 
 on the idle superstitions of our forefathers, and celebrated them in 
 his poetry ! 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 315 
 
 Marvel. When superstitions are only idle, it is wiser to look 
 on them kindly than unkindly. I have remarked that those 
 which serve best for poetry have more plumage than talon, and 
 those which serve best for policy have more talon than plumage. 
 Milton never countenanced priestcraft, never countenanced fraud 
 and fallacy. 
 
 Parker. The business is no easy one to separate devotion 
 from practices connected with it. There is much that may 
 seem useless, retained through ages in an intermixture with 
 what is better; and the better would never have been so 
 good as it is, if you had cast away the rest. What is chaff 
 when the grain is threshed was useful to the grain before its 
 threshing. 
 
 Marvel. Since we are come unaware on religion, I would 
 entreat of your lordship to enlighten me, and thereby some others 
 of weak minds and tender consciences, in regard to the criminality 
 of pretence to holiness. 
 
 Parker. The Lord abominates, as you know, Mr Marvel, 
 from the Holy Scriptures, all hypocrisy. 
 
 Marvel. If we make ourselves or others who are not holy 
 seem holy, are we worthy to enter his kingdom ? 
 
 Parker. No ; most unworthy. 
 
 Marvel. What if we set up, not only for good men, but for 
 exquisitely religious, such as violate the laws and religion of the 
 country ? 
 
 Parker. Pray, Mr MarveL no longer waste your time and mine 
 in such idle disquisitions. We have beheld such men lately, and 
 abominate them. 
 
 Marvel. Happily for the salvation of our souls, as I con- 
 ceive, we never went so far as to induce, much less to authorize, 
 much less to command, any one to fall down and worship 
 them. 
 
 Parker. Such insolence and impudence would have brought 
 about the blessed Restoration much earlier. 
 
 Marvel. We are now come to the point. It seems wonder- 
 ful to pious and considerate men, unhesitating believers in God's 
 holy word, that although the Reformation under his guidance 
 was brought about by the prayers and fasting of the bishops, 
 and others well deserving the name of saints, chiefly of the 
 
3i6 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 equestrian order, no place in the calendar hath ever been assigned 
 to them. 
 
 Parker. Perhaps, as there were several, a choice might have 
 seemed particular and invidious. Perhaps, also, the names of 
 many as excellent having been removed from the rubric, it was 
 deemed unadvisable to inaugurate them. 
 
 Marvel. Yet, my lord bishop, we have inserted Charles the 
 Martyr. Now, there have been saints not martyrs, but no martyr 
 not a saint. 
 
 Parker. Do you talk in this manner, — you who had the 
 manliness to praise his courage and constancy to Cromwell's 
 face? 
 
 Marvel. Cromwell was not a man to undervalue the courage 
 and constancy of an enemy ; and, had he been, I should have 
 applauded one in his presence. But how happens it that the 
 bishops, priests, and deacons throughout England treat Charles as 
 a saint and martyr, and hold his death-day sacred, who violated 
 those ecclesiastical ordinances the violation whereof you would 
 not only reprobate in another, but visit with exemplary punish- 
 ment ? Charles was present at plays in his palace on the Sabbath. 
 Was he a saint in his lifetime ; or only after his death ? If in 
 his lifetime, the single miracle performed by him was to act 
 against his established church without a diminution of holiness. 
 If only in his death, he holds his canonization by a different 
 tenure from any of his blessed predecessors. 
 
 It is curious and sorrowfvd that Charles the Martyr should have 
 suffered death on the scaffold for renewing the custom of arbitrary 
 loans and forced benevolences, which the usurper Richard III. 
 abolished. Charles, to be sure, had the misfortune to add the 
 practice of torture and mutilation, to which those among the 
 English who are most exposed to it bear a great dislike. Being 
 a martyr, he is placed above the saints in dignity : they tortured 
 only themselves. 
 
 Parker. Let me bring to your recollection, that plays were 
 not prohibited on the Sabbath by our great Reformers. 
 
 Mar-vel. But if it is un-Christianlike now, it was then ; and 
 a saint must have been aware of it, although it escaped a 
 reformer. 
 
 Parker. You scofr, Mr Manrel ! I never answer the scoffer. 
 
Andrew Mai-vel and Bishop Parker. 317 
 
 Marvel. I will now be serious. Is the canonization of 
 Charles the effect of a firm conviction that he was holier than 
 all those ejected from the calendar ; or is it merely an ebullition 
 of party-spirit, an ostentatious display of triumphant spite against 
 his enemies ? In this case, — and there are too many and too 
 cogent reasons for believing it, — would it not be wiser never to 
 have exhibited to the scrutinizing Church of Rome a consecration 
 more reprehensible than the former desecrations ? Either you 
 must acknowledge that saints are not always to be followed in 
 their practices, or you must allow men, women, and children to 
 dance and frequent the playhouses on Sundays, as our martyr did 
 before he took to mutilating and maiming ; and he never left off 
 the custom by his own free-will. 
 
 Parker. I think, Mr Marvel, you might safely leave these 
 considerations to us. 
 
 Marvel. Veiy safely, my lord ! for you are perfectly sure 
 never to meddle with them : you are sure to leave them as they 
 are, — -solely from the pious motive that there may be peace in our 
 days, according to the Litany. On such a principle, there have 
 been many, and still perhaps there may be some remaining, who 
 would not brush the dust from the bench, lest they should raise 
 the moths and discover the unsoundness and corrosions. But 
 there is danger lest the people at some future day should be wiser, 
 braver, more inquisitive, more pertinacious : there is danger lest, 
 on finding a notorious cheat and perjurer set up by Act of Parlia- 
 ment among the choice and sterling old saints, they undervalue 
 not only saints but Parliaments. 
 
 Parker. I would rather take my ground where politics are 
 unmingled with religion ; and I see better reason to question the 
 wisdom of Mr Milton than the wisdom of our most gracious 
 King's privy council. We enjoy, thank God ! liberty of con- 
 science. I must make good my objection on the quarter of 
 consistency, lest you think me resolute to find fault where there 
 is none. Your friend continued to serve the Protector when he 
 had reconstructed a House of Lords, which formerly he called 
 an abomination. 
 
 Marvel. He never sen'ed Cromwell but when Cromwell 
 served his country ; and he would not abandon her defence for 
 the worst wounds he had received in it. He was offended at the 
 
3i8 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 renewal of that house, after all the labor and pains he had taken 
 in its demolition ; and he would have given his life, if one man's 
 life could have paid for it, to throw down again so unshapely and 
 darkening an obstruction. From his youth upward, he had felt 
 the Norman rust entering into our very vitals ; and he now saw 
 that, if we had received from the bravest of nations a longer 
 sword, we wore a heavier chain to support it. He began his 
 History from a love of the Saxon institutions, than which the 
 most enlightened nations had contrived none better ; nor can we 
 anywhere discover a worthier object for the meditations of a 
 philosophical or for the energies of a poetical mind. 
 
 Parker. And yet you republicans are discontented even with 
 this. 
 
 Marvel. We are not mere Saxons. A wise English repub- 
 lican will prefer (as having grown up with him) the Saxon in- 
 stitutions generally and mainly, both in spirit and practice, to 
 those of Rome and Athens. But the Saxon institutions, how- 
 ever excellent, are insuiRcient. The moss must be rasped off the 
 bark, and the bark itself must be slit, to let the plant expand. 
 Nothing is wholesomer than milk from the udder ; but would you 
 always dine upon it ? The seasons of growth, physical and in- 
 tellectual, require different modes of preparation, different instru- 
 ments of tillage, different degrees of warmth and excitement. 
 Whatever is bad in our Constitution we derive from the Normans, 
 or from the glosses put against the text under their Welsh and 
 Scotch successors : the good is thrown back to us out of what 
 was ours before. Our boasted Magna Charta is only one side of 
 the old Saxon coat ; and it is the side that has the broken loop- 
 holes in it. It hangs loose, and at every breeze 'tis a hard matter 
 to keep it on. In fact, the Magna Charta neither is, nor ever was 
 long together, of much value to the body of the people. Our 
 princes could always do what they wished to do, until lately ; 
 and this palladium was so light a matter that it was easily 
 taken from the town-hall to the palace. It has been holden 
 back or missing whenever the people most loudly called for it. 
 Municipalities — in other words, small republics — are a nation's 
 main-stay against aristocratical and regal encroachments. 
 
 Parker. If I speak in defence of the peerage, you may think 
 me interested. 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 319 
 
 Marvel. Bring forward what may fairly recommend the in- 
 stitution, and I shall think you less interested than ingenious. 
 
 Parker. Yet surely you, who are well connected, cannot be 
 insensible of the advantages it offers to persons of family. 
 
 Marvel. Is that any proof of its benefit to the public ? And 
 persons of family ! — who are they? Between the titled man of 
 ancient and the titled man of recent times, the difference, if any 
 is in fevor of the last. Suppose them both raised for merit (here 
 indeed we do come to theory ! ), the benefits that society has re- 
 ceived from him are nearer us. It is probable that many in the 
 poor and abject are of very ancient families, and particularly in 
 our county, where the contests of the York and Lancaster broke 
 down, in many places, the high and powerful. Some of us may 
 look back six or seven centuries, and find a stout ruffian at the 
 beginning ; but the great ancestor of the pauper, who must be 
 somewhere, may stand perhaps far beyond. 
 
 Parker. If we ascend to the Tower of Babel, and come to the 
 confiision of tongues, we come also to a confusion of ideas. A 
 man of family, in all countries, is he whose ancestor attracted by 
 some merit, real or imputed, the notice of those more eminent, 
 who promoted him in wealth and station. Now, to say nothing 
 of the humble, the greater part even of the gentry had no such 
 progenitors. 
 
 Marvel. I look to a person of very old family as I do to any 
 thing else that is very old ; and I thank him for bringing to me a 
 page of romance which probably he himself never knew or heard 
 about. Usually, with all his pride and pretensions, he is much 
 less conscious of the services his ancestor performed than my 
 spaniel is of his own when he carries my glove or cane for me. 
 I would pat them both on the head for it ; and the civiler and 
 more reasonable of the two would think himself well rewarded. 
 
 Parker. The additional name may light your memory to the 
 national service. 
 
 Marvel. We extract this benefit from any ancient peer ; this 
 phosphorus, from a rotten post. 
 
 Parker. I do not complain or wonder that an irreligious man 
 should be adverse not only to prelaty, but equally to a peerage. 
 
 Marvel. Herodotus tells us that among the Egjrptians a herald 
 was a herald because he was a herald's son, and not for the clear- 
 
320 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 ness of his voice. He had told us before that the Egyptians were 
 worshippers of cats and crocodiles ; but he was too religious a 
 man to sneer at that. It was an absurdity that the herald should 
 hold his office for no better reason than because his father held it. 
 Herodotus might peradventure have smiled within his sleeve at no 
 other being given for the privileges of the peer ; unless he thought 
 a loud voice, which many do, more important than information 
 and discretion. 
 
 Parker. You will find your opinions discountenanced by both 
 our universities. 
 
 Marvel. I do not want anybody to corroborate my opinions. 
 They keep themselves up by their own weight and consistency. 
 Cambridge on one side and Oxford on the other could lend me 
 no effectual support ; and my skiff shall never be impeded by the 
 sedges of Cam, nor grate on the gravel of Isis. 
 
 Parker. Mr Marvel, the path of what we fondly call 
 patriotism is highly perilous. Courts at least are safe. 
 
 Marvel. I would rather stand on the ridge of Etna than 
 lower my head in the Grotto del Cane. By the one I may share 
 the fate of a philosopher ; by the other I must suffer the death of 
 a cur. 
 
 Parker. We are all of us dust and ashes. 
 
 Marvel. True, my lord ; but in some we recognize the dust 
 of gold and the ashes of the phoenix ; in others, the dust of the 
 gateway and the ashes of turf and stubble. With the greatest 
 rulers upon earth, head and crown drop together, and are over- 
 looked. It is true, we read of them in history ; but we also read 
 in history of crocodiles and hyasnas. With great writers, whether 
 in poetry or prose, what falls away is scarcely more or other than 
 a vesture. The features of the man are imprinted on his works ; 
 and more lamps burn over them, and more religiously, than are 
 lighted in temples or churches. Milton, and men like him, 
 bring their own incense, kindle it with their own fire, and 
 leave it unconsumed and unconsumable ; and their music, by 
 day and by night, swells along a vault commensurate with the 
 vault of heaven. 
 
 Parker. Mr Marvel, I am admiring the extremely fine lace 
 of your cravat. 
 
 Marvel. It cost me less than lawn would have done ; and it 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 321 
 
 wins me a reflection. Very few can think Uiat man a great man, 
 whom they have been accustomed to meet, dressed exactly like 
 themselves ; more especially if they happen to find him, not in 
 park, forest, or chase, but warming his limbs by the reflected heat 
 of the bricks in Artillery Walk. In England, a man becomes a 
 great man by living in the middle of a great field ; in Italy, by 
 living in a walled city ; in France, by living in a courtyard : no 
 matter what lives they lead there. 
 
 Parker. I am afraid, Mr Marvel, there is some slight 
 bitterness in your observation. 
 
 Marvel. Bitterness, it may be, from the bruised laurel of 
 Milton. 
 
 What falsehoods will not men put on, if they can only pad 
 them with a little piety ! And how few will expose their whole 
 faces, from a fear of being frost-bitten by poverty ! But Milton 
 was among the few. 
 
 Parker. Already have we had our Deluge : we are now 
 once more upon dry land again, and we behold the same creation 
 as rejoiced us formerly. Our late gloomy and turbulent times 
 are passed for ever. 
 
 Marvel. Perhaps they are, if anything is for ever ; but the 
 sparing Deluge may peradventure be commuted for unsparing 
 fire, as we are threatened. The arrogant, the privileged, the 
 stiff upholders of established wrong, the deaf opponents of 
 equitable reformation, the lazy consumers of ill-requited in- 
 dustry, the fraudulent who, unable to stop the course of the sun, 
 pervert the direction of the gnomon, — all these, peradventure, 
 may be gradually consumed by the process of silent contempt, 
 or suddenly scattered by the tempest of popular indignation. 
 As we see in masquerades the real judge and the real soldier 
 stopped and mocked by the fictitious, so do we see in the 
 carnival of to-day the real man of dignity hustled, shoved aside, 
 and derided by those who are invested with the seinblance by 
 the milliners of the court. The populace is taught to respect 
 this livery alone, and is proud of being permitted to look 
 through the grating at such ephemeral frippery. And yet false 
 gems and false metals have never been valued above real ones. 
 Until our people alter these notions ; until they estimate the 
 wise and virtuous above the silly and profligate, the man of 
 
32 2 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 genius above the man of title ; until they hold the knave 
 and cheat of St James's as low as the knave and cheat of 
 St Giles's, — they are fitter for the slave-market than for any 
 other station. 
 
 Parker. You would have no distinctions, I fear. 
 Mar'oeL On the contrary, I would have greater than exist 
 at present. You cannot blot or burn out an ancient name ; you 
 cannot annihilate past services ; you cannot subtract one single 
 hour from eternity, nor wither one leaf on his brow who hath 
 entered into it. Sweep away from before me the soft grubs of 
 yesterday's formation, generated by the sickliness of the plant 
 they feed upon ; sweep them away unsparingly, — then wUl you 
 clearly see distinctions, and easily count the men who have 
 attained them worthily. 
 
 Parker. In a want of respect to established power and 
 principles, originated most of the calamities we have latterly 
 undergone. 
 
 Marvel. Say rather, in the averseness of that power and 
 the inadequacy of those principles to resist the encroachment 
 of injustice ; say rather, on their tendency to distort the poor 
 creatures swaddled up in them ; add, moreover, the reluctance 
 of the old women who rock and dandle them to change their 
 habiliments for fresh and wholesome ones. A man will break 
 the windows of his own house, that he may not perish by foul 
 air within ; now, whether is he, or those who bolted the door on 
 him, to blame for it ? If he is called mad or inconsiderate, it is 
 only by those who are ignorant of the cause and insensible of the 
 urgency. I declare I am rejoiced at seeing a gentleman, whose 
 ancestors have signally served their country, treated with deference 
 and respect ; because it evinces a sense of justice and of grati- 
 tude in the people, and because it may incite a few others, whose 
 ambition would take another course, to desire the same. Different 
 is my sentence, when he who has not performed the action 
 claims more honor than he who performed it, and thinks himself 
 the worthier if twenty are between them than if there be one 
 or none. Still less accordant is it with my principles, and less 
 reducible to my comprehension, that they who devised the ruin 
 of cities and societies should be exhibited as deserving much 
 higher distinction than they who have corrected the hearts 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker, 323 
 
 and enlarged the intellects, and have performed it not only 
 without the hope of reward, but almost with the certainty of 
 persecution. 
 
 Parker. Ever too hard upon great men, Mr Marvel I 
 
 Marvel. Little men in lofty places, who throw long shadows 
 because our sun is setting, — the men so little and the places 
 so lofty, that, casting my pebble, I only show where they stand. 
 They would be less contented with themselves, if they had 
 obtained their preferment honestly. Luck and dexterity always 
 give more pleasure than intellect and knowledge ; because they 
 fill up what they fall on to the brim at once, and people run to 
 them with acclamations at the splash. Wisdom is reserved and 
 noiseless, contented with hard earnings, and daily letting go some 
 early acquisition, to make room for better specimens. But great 
 is the exultation of a worthless man, when he receives, for the 
 chips and raspings of his Bridewell logwood, a richer reward than 
 the best and wisest for extensive tracts of well-cleared truths ; 
 when he who has sold his country — 
 
 Parker. Forbear, forbear, good Mr Marvel ! 
 
 Marvel. When such is higher in estimation than he who 
 would have saved it ; when his emptiness is heard above the 
 voice that has shaken fanaticism in her central shrine, that hath 
 bowed down tyrants to the scaffold, that hath raised up nations 
 from the dust, that alone hath been found worthy to celebrate, as 
 angels do, creating and redeeming Love, and to precede with its 
 solitary sound the trumpet that will call us to our doom. 
 
 Parker. I am unwilling to feign ignorance of the gendeman 
 you designate ; but really now you would make a very Homer 
 of him. 
 
 Marvel. It appears to me that Homer is to Milton what 
 a harp is to an organ, though a harp under the hand of Apollo. 
 
 Parker. I have always done him justice : I have always 
 called him a learned man. 
 
 Marvel. Call him henceforward the most glorious one that 
 ever existed upon earth. If two — Bacon and Shakspeare — 
 have equalled him in diversity and intensity of power, did either 
 of these spring away with such resolution from the sublimest 
 heights of genius, to liberate and illuminate with patient labor 
 the manacled human race ? And what is his recompence ? The 
 
324 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 same recompence as all men like him have received, and will 
 receive for ages. Persecution follows righteousness : the Scorpion 
 is next in succession to Libra. The fool, however, who ventures 
 to detract from Milton's genius, in the night which now appears 
 to close on him, will, when the dawn has opened on his dull 
 ferocity, be ready to bite off a limb, if he might thereby limp 
 away from the trap he has prowled into. Among the gentler, 
 the better, and the wiser, few have entered yet the awful struc- 
 ture of his mind ; few comprehend, few are willing to contem- 
 plate, its vastness. Politics now occupy scarcely a closet in it. 
 We seldom are inclined to converse on them ; and, when we 
 do, it is jocosely rather than austerely. For even the bitterest 
 berries grow less acrid when they have been hanging long on the 
 tree. Beside, it is time to sit with our hats between our legs, 
 since so many grave men have lately seen their errors, and 
 so many brave ones have already given proofs enough of their 
 bravery, and trip aside to lay down their laurels on gUt tables 
 and velvet cushions. If my friend condemns any one now, it 
 is Cromwell, and principally for reconstructing a hereditary 
 house of peers. He perceives that it was done for the purpose 
 of giving the aristocracy an interest in the perpetuation of power 
 in his family, of which he discovered the folly just before his 
 death. He derides the stupidity of those who bandy about the 
 battered phrase of useful checks and necessary counterpoises. He 
 would not desire a hindrance on his steward in the receipt of 
 his rent, if he had any, nor on his attorney in prosecuting his 
 suit ; he would not recommend any interest in opposition to that 
 of the people ; he would not allow an honest man to be an-ested 
 and imprisoned for debt, while a dishonest one is privileged to be 
 exempt from it ; and he calls that nation unwise, and those laws 
 iniquitous, which tolerate so flagrant an abuse. He would not 
 allow a tradesman, who lives by his reputation for honesty, 
 to be calumniated as dishonest, without the means of vindicat- 
 ing his character unless by an oppressive and dilatory procedure, 
 while a peer, who perhaps may live by dishonesty, as some are 
 reported to have done in former reigns, recurs to an immediate 
 and uncostly remedy against a similar accusation. He would not 
 see Mother Church lie with a lawyer on the woolsack, nor the 
 ministry of the apostles devolve on the Crown, sacred and uncon- 
 taminated as we see it is. 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 325 
 
 Parker. No scoffs at the Crown, I do beseech you, Mr 
 Marvel ! whatever enmity you and Mr Milton may bear against 
 the peers. He would have none of them, it seems. 
 
 Maruel. He would have as many as can prove, by any pre- 
 cedent or argument, that virtue and abilities are hereditary ; and 
 I believe he would stint them exactly to that number. In regard 
 to their semces, he made these observations a few days ago : 
 "Why, in God's name, friend Andrew, do we imagine that a 
 thing can be made stable by pulling at it perpetually in different 
 directions ? Where there are contrary and conflicting interests, 
 one will predominate at one time, another at another. Now, what 
 interest at any time ought to predominate against the public ? We 
 hear, indeed, that when the royal power is oppressive to them, the 
 peers push their horns against the leopards ; but did they so in the 
 time of James or his son ? And are not the people strong enough 
 to help and right themselves, if they were but wise enough? 
 And if they were wise enough, would they whistle for the wolves 
 to act in concert with the shepherd-dogs ? Our consciences tell 
 us," added he, " that we should have done some good, had our 
 intentions been well seconded and supported. Collegians and 
 barristers and courtiers may despise the poverty of our intellects, 
 throw a few of their old scraps into our satchels, and send the 
 beadle to show us the road we ought to take : nevertheless, we 
 are wilful, and refuse to surrender our old customary parochial 
 footpath. 
 
 Parker. And could not he let alone the poor innocent 
 collegians i 
 
 Marvel. Nobody ever thought them more innocent than he, 
 unless when their square caps were fanning the flames round 
 heretics ; and every man is liable to be a heretic in his turn. 
 Collegians have always been foremost in the cure of the lues of 
 heresy by sweating and caustic. 
 
 Parker. Sir ! they have always been foremost in maintaining 
 the unity of the faith. 
 
 Marvel. So zealously, that whatever was the king's faith was 
 theirs. And thus it will always be, until their privileges and im- 
 munities are in jeopardy; then shall you see them the most 
 desoerate incendiaries. 
 
 Parker. After so many species of religion, generated in the 
 
326 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 sty of old corruptions, we return to what experience teaches us is 
 best. If the Independents, or any other sect, had reason on their 
 side and truly evangelical doctrine, they would not die away and 
 come to nothing as they have done. 
 
 Mar-uel. Men do not stick veiy passionately and tenaciously 
 to a pure religion : there must be honey on the outside of it, and 
 warmth within, and latitude around, or they make little bellow 
 and bustle about it. That Milton has been latterly no frequenter 
 of public worship may be lamented, but is not unaccountable. 
 He has lived long enough to perceive that all sects are animated 
 by a spirit of hostility and exclusion, — a spirit the very opposite 
 to the gospel. There is so much malignity, hot-blooded and 
 cold-blooded, in zealots, that I do not wonder at seeing the 
 honest man, who is tired of dissension and controversy, wrap him- 
 self up in his own quiet conscience, and indulge in a tranquillity 
 somewhat like sleep apart. Nearly all are of opinion that devo- 
 tion is purer and more ardent in solitude, but declare to you that 
 they believe it to be their duty to set an example by going to 
 church. Is not this pride and vanity ? What must they conceive 
 of their own value and importance, to imagine that others will 
 necessarily look up to them as guides and models ! A hint of 
 such an infirmity arouses all their choler ; and from that moment 
 we are unworthy of being saved by them. But if they abandon 
 us to what must appear to them so hopeless a condition, can we 
 doubt whether they would not abandon a babe floating like Moses 
 in a basket on a wide and rapid river ? I have always found these 
 people, whatever may be the sect, self-sufficient, hard-hearted, in- 
 tolerant, and unjust, — in short, the opposite of Milton. What 
 wonder, then, if he abstains from their society ; particularly in 
 places of worship, where it must affect a rational and religious 
 man the most painfully ? He thinks that churches, as now con- 
 stituted, are to religion what pest-houses are to health, — that they 
 often infect those who ailed nothing, and withhold them from 
 freedom and exercise. Austerity hath oftener been objected to 
 him than indifference. That neither of the objections is well- 
 founded, I think I can demonstrate by an anecdote. Visiting 
 him last month, I found him hearing read by his daughter the 
 treatise of Varro On Agriculture ; and I said, laughingly, " We 
 will walk over your farm together." He smiled, although he 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 327 
 
 could not see that I did ; and he answered, " I never wish to 
 possess a farm, because I can enjoy the smell of the hay anH of 
 the hawthorn in a walk to Hampstead, and can drink fresh milk 
 there." After a pause, he added, " I cannot tell (for nobody is 
 more ignorant in these matters) in what our agriculture differs 
 from the ancient ; but I am delighted to be reminded of a custom 
 which my girl has been recalling to my memory, — the custom 
 of crowning with a garland of sweet herbs, once a year, the 
 brink of wells. Andrew ! the old moss-grown stones were not 
 neglected, from under which the father and son, the wife and 
 daughter, drew the same pure element with the same thankfulness 
 as their hale progenitors." His piety is infused into all the 
 moods of his mind : here it was calm and gentle, at other times 
 it was ardent and enthusiastic. The right application of homely 
 qualities is of daily and general use. We all want glass for the 
 window : few want it for the telescope. 
 
 Parker. It is very amiable to undertake the defence of a 
 person who, whatever may be his other talents, certainly has 
 possessed but in a moderate degree the talent of making or of 
 retaining friends. 
 
 Marvel. He, by the constitution of the human mind, or 
 rather by its configuration under those spiritual guides who claim 
 the tutelage of it, must necessarily have more enemies than even 
 another of the same principles. The great abhor the greater, 
 who can humble but cannot raise them. The king's servants 
 hate God's as much (one would fancy) as if he fed them better, 
 dressed them finelier, and gave them more plumy titles. Poor 
 Milton has all these against him : what is wanting in weight is 
 made up by multitude and multiformity. Judges and privy 
 counsellors throw axes and halters in his path ; divines grow 
 hard and earthy about him ; slim, straddling, blotchy writers, 
 those of quality in particular, feel themselves cramped and stunted 
 under him ; and people of small worth in every way detract from 
 his, stamping on it as if they were going to spring over it. What- 
 ever they pick up against him, they take pains to circulate ; and 
 are sorrier at last that the defamation is untrue than that they 
 helped to propagate it. I wish truth were as prolific as false- 
 hood, and as many were ready to educate her offspring. But 
 although we see the progeny of falsehood shoot up into amazing 
 
328 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 stature, and grow day by day more florid, yet they soon have 
 reached their maturity, — soon lose both teeth and tresses. As 
 the glory of England is in part identified with Milton's, his 
 enemies are little less than parricides. If they had any sight 
 beyond to-day, what would they give, how would they implore 
 and supplicate, to be forgotten ! 
 
 Parker. Very conscientious men may surely have reprehended 
 him, according to the lights that God has lent them. 
 
 Marvel. They might have burned God's oil in better inves- 
 tigations. Your conscientious men are oftener conscientious in 
 withholding than in bestowing. 
 
 Parker. Writers of all ranks and conditions, from the lowest 
 to the highest, have disputed with Mr Milton on all the topics he 
 has undertaken. 
 
 Marvel. And I am grieved to think that he has noticed 
 some of them. Salmasius alone was not unworthy suhl'tmi flageUo. 
 But what would your lordship argue from the imprudence and 
 irreverence of the dwarfs ? The most prominent rocks and head- 
 lands are most exposed to the violence of the sea ; but those 
 which can repel the waves are in little danger from the corrosion 
 of the limpets. 
 
 Parker. Mr Milton may reasonably be censured for writing 
 on subjects whereof his knowledge is imperfect or null : on courts, 
 for instance. The greater part of those who allow such a license 
 to their pens, and he among the rest, never were admitted into 
 them. I am sorry to remark that our English are the foremost 
 beagles in this cry. 
 
 Marvel, If Milton was never admitted within them, he 
 never was importunate for admittance ; and, if none were 
 suffered to enter but such as are better and wiser than he, 
 the gates of Paradise are themselves less glorious, and with 
 less difficulty thrown open. The great, as we usually call the 
 fortunate, are only what Solomon says about them, — " the 
 highest part of the dust of the world ; " and this highest part 
 is the lightest. Do you imagine that all the ministers and kings 
 under the canopy of heaven are, in the sight of a pure Intelli- 
 gence, equivalent to him whom this pure Intelligence hath 
 enabled to penetrate with an unfailing voice the dense array of 
 distant generations ? Can princes give more than God can ; or 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 329 
 
 are their gifts better ? That they are usually thought so, is no 
 conclusive proof of the fact. On the contrary, with me at least, 
 what is usually thought on any subject of importance, and on 
 many of none, lies under the suspicion of being wrong ; for 
 surely the number of those who think correctly is smaller than 
 of those who think incorrectly, even where passions and interests 
 interfere the least. Of those who appear to love God, and who 
 sincerely think they do, the greater part must be conscious that 
 they are not very fond of the men whom he hath shown himself 
 the most indulgent to, and the most enriched with abilities and 
 virtues. Among the plants of the field we look out for the 
 salubrious, and we cultivate and cull them ; to the wholesomer 
 of our fellow-creatures we exhibit no such partiality : we think 
 we do enough when we only pass them without treading on 
 them; if we leave them to blossom and run to seed, it is 
 forbearance. 
 
 Parker. Mr Milton hath received his reward from his 
 employers. 
 
 Marvel. His services are hardly yet begun ; and no mortal 
 man, no series of transitory generations, can repay them. God 
 will not delegate this ; no, not even to his angels. I venture 
 no longer to stand up for him on English ground ; but, since 
 we both are Englishmen by birth, I may stand up for the 
 remainder of our countrymen. Your lordship is pleased to 
 remark that they are the first beagles in the cry against courts. 
 Now I speak with all the freedom and all the field-know- 
 ledge of a Yorkshireman, when I declare that your lordship 
 is a bad sportsman in giving a hound's title to dogs that hunt 
 vermin. 
 
 Parker. Mr Marvel ! a person of your education should 
 abstain from mentioning thus contemptuously men of the same 
 rank and condition as yourself. 
 
 Marvel. All are of the same rank and condition with me 
 who have climbed as high, who have stood "a* firmly, and who 
 have never yet descended. Neglect of time, subserviency to 
 fortune, compliance with power and passions, would thrust men 
 far below me, although they had been exalted higher, to the 
 uncalculating eye, than mortal ever was exalted. Sardanapalus 
 had more subjects and more admirers than Cromwell ; whom. 
 
330 Imaginary Conversations, 
 
 nevertheless, I venture to denominate the most sagacious and 
 prudent, the most tolerant and humane, the most firm and 
 efFective, prince in the annals of our country. 
 
 Parker. Usurpers should not be thus commended. 
 
 Marvel. Usurpers are the natural and imprescriptible succes- 
 sors of imbecile, unprincipled, and lawless kings. In general, 
 they too are little better fiirnished with virtues, and even their 
 wisdom seems to wear out under the ermine. Ambition makes 
 them hazardous and rash : these qualities raise the acclama- 
 tions of the vulgar, to whom meteors are always greater than 
 stars, and the same qualities which raised them precipitate them 
 into perdition. Sometimes obstreperous mirth, sometimes gipsy- 
 like mysteriousness, sometimes the austerity of old republicanism, 
 and sometimes the stilts of modem monarchy, come into play, 
 until the crowd hisses the actor off the stage, pelted, broken- 
 headed, and stumbling over his sword. CromweU used none of 
 these grimaces. He wore a mask while it suited him ; but its 
 features were grave, and he threw it off in the heat of action. 
 
 Parker. On the whole, you foeak more favorably of a man 
 who was only your equal than of those whom legitimate power 
 has raised above you. 
 
 Marvel. Never can I do so much good as he did. He 
 was hypocritical, and, in countermining perfidy, he was perfidious ; 
 but his wisdom, his valor, and his vigilance saved the nation 
 at Worcester and Dunbar. He took unlawfid and violent 
 possession of supreme authority ; but he exercised it with mode- 
 ration and discretion. Even fanaticism had with him an English 
 cast of countenance. He never indulged her appetite in blood, 
 nor carried her to hear the music of tortures reverberated by the 
 arch of a dungeon. He supplied her with no optical glass at the 
 spectacle of mutilations ; he never thought, as Archbishop Laud 
 did, he could improve God's image by amputating ears and slitting 
 noses ; he never drove men into holy madness with incessant 
 bowlings, like the lycanthropic saints of the North. 
 
 Having, then, before me not only his arduous achievements, 
 but likewise his abstinence from those evil practices in which 
 all our sovereigns, his predecessors, had indulged, I should be 
 the most insolent and the most absurd of mortals if I supposed 
 that the Protector of England was only my equal. But I am 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 331 
 
 not obliged by the force of truth and duty to admit even to 
 this position those whom court servility may proclaim to the 
 populace as my superiors. A gardener may write siueet lupin on 
 the cover of rape seed ; but the cover will never turn rape-seed 
 into sweet lupin. Something more than a couple of beasts, 
 couchant or rampant, blue or blazing, or than a brace of birds 
 with a claw on a red curtain, is requisite to raise an earl 
 or a marquis up to me, although lion-king-at-arms and garter- 
 kings-at-arms equip them with all their harness, and beget them a 
 grandfather each. I flap down with the border of my glove, 
 and brush away and blow off these gossamer pretensions ; and 
 I take for my motto, what the king bears for his, I hope as 
 a model for all his subjects, — " Dieu et mon droit." 
 
 Parker. Mr Marvel ! Mr Marvel ! I did not think you so 
 proud a man. 
 
 Maroel. No, my lord ? — not when you know that Milton 
 is my friend ? If you wish to reduce me and others to our 
 level, pronounce that name, and we find it. The French motto, 
 merely from its being French, recalls my attention to what I 
 was about to notice when your lordship so obligingly led me 
 to cover. I will now undertake to prove that the English 
 beagles are neither the first nor the best in scenting what lieth 
 about courts. A French writer, an ecclesiastic, a dignitary, a 
 bishop, wrote lately, — 
 
 " Courts are full of ill offices : it is there that all the passions are in an 
 uproar ; * it is there that hatred and friendship change incessantly for 
 interest, and nothing is constant but the desire of injuring. Friend, 
 as Jeremiah says, is fraudulent to friend, brother to brother. The art 
 of ensnaring has nothing dishonorable in it excepting ill success. In 
 short, virtue herself, often false, becomes more to be dreaded than vice." 
 
 Now, if there were any like place upon earth, would not even 
 the worst prince, the worst people, insist on its destruction ? 
 What brothel, what gaming-house, what den of thieves, what 
 wreck, what conflagration, ought to be surrounded so strictly 
 by the protectors of property, the guardians of morals, and the 
 ministers of justice ? Should any such conspirator, any aider or 
 
 * The original is defective in logic. " C'est la que toutes les passions 
 se reunissent pour s'entre-chocquer et se detnire." So much the better, 
 were it true. 
 
332 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 abettor, any familiar or confidant, of such conspiracy be suffered 
 to live at large ? Milton, in the mildness of his humanity, would 
 at once let loose the delinquents, and would only nail up for ever 
 the foul receptacle. 
 
 Parker. The description is exaggerated. 
 
 Marvel. It is not a schoolboy's theme, beginning wth, 
 " Nothing is more sure," or, " Nothing is more deplorable ; " 
 it is not an undergraduate's exercise, drawn from pure fresh 
 thoughts, where there are only glimpses through the wood before 
 him, or taken up in reliance on higher men to whom past ages 
 have bowed in veneration : no, the view is taken on the spot 
 by one experienced and scientific in it, — by the dispassionate, 
 the disinterested, the clear-sighted, and clear-souled MassUlon. 
 
 Parker. To show his eloquence, no doubt. 
 
 Marvel. No eloquence is perfect, none worth showing, none 
 becoming a Christian teacher, but that in which the postulates 
 are just, and the deductions not carried beyond nor cast beside 
 them, nor strained hard, nor snatched hastily. I quote not 
 from stern republicans ; I quote not from loose lay people : 
 but from the interior of the court, from the closet of the palace, 
 from under the canopy and cope of Episcopacy herself. In 
 the same spirit, the amiable and modest Fenelon speaks thus : 
 " Alas ! to what calamities are kings exposed ! The wisest of 
 them are often taken by surprise ; men of artifice, swayed by 
 self-interest, surround them ; the good retire from them, because 
 they are neither supplicants nor flatterers, and because they wait 
 to be inquired for, and princes know not where they are to 
 be found. Oh how unhappy is a king, to be exposed to the 
 designs of the wicked ! " 
 
 It is impossible to draw any other deduction from this hypo- 
 thesis than the necessity of abolishing the kingly office, not only 
 for the good of the people, but likewise of the functionaries. 
 Why should the wisest and the best among them be subject to so 
 heavy a calamity, — a calamity so easily avoided ? Why should 
 there be tolerated a focus and point of attraction for wicked 
 men ? Why should we permit the good to be excluded, whether 
 by force or shame, from any place which ought to be a post of 
 honor ? Why do we suffer a block to stand in their way, which 
 by its nature hath neither eyes to discern them, nor those about it 
 who would permit the use of the discovery if it had ? 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop IParker. 333 
 
 Parker. Horrible questions ! leading God knows whither ! 
 
 Marvel. The questions are originally not mine. No person 
 who reasons on what he reads can ever have read the works of 
 Fenelon, and not have asked them. If what he says is true, 
 they follow necessaiily ; and the answer is ready for every one of 
 them. That they are true we may well surmise ; for surely 
 nobody was less likely to express his sentiments with prejudice or 
 precipitancy or passion. He and Massillon are such witnesses 
 against courts and royalty as cannot be rejected. They bring 
 forward their weighty and conclusive evidence, not only without 
 heat, but without intention, and disclose what they overheard as 
 they communed with their conscience. There may be malice in 
 the thoughts, and acrimony in the expressions, of those learned 
 men who, as you remark, were never admitted into courts ; 
 although malice and acrimony are quite as little to be expected 
 in them as in the spectators at a grand amphitheatre, because they 
 could only be retired and look on, and were precluded from the 
 arena in the combat of man and beast. 
 
 Parker. There may be malice where there is no acrimony : 
 there may be here. 
 
 Marvel. The existence of either is impossible in well- 
 regulated minds. 
 
 Parker. I beg your pardon, Mr Marvel. 
 
 Marvel. What, ray lord ! do you admit that even in well- 
 regulated minds the worst passions may be excited by royalty ? 
 It must, then, be bad indeed ; worse than Milton, worse than 
 Massillon, worse than Fenelon, represents it. The frugal re- 
 publican may detest it for its vicious luxury and inordinate expendi- 
 ture ; the strict religionist, as one of the worst curses an offended 
 God inflicted on a disobedient and rebellious people ; the man of 
 calmer and more indulgent piety may grieve at seeing it, with all 
 its devils, possess the swine, pitying the poor creatures into which 
 it is permitted to enter, not through their fault, but their infirmity, 
 — not by their will, but their position. 
 
 Parker. And do you imagine it is by their will that what is 
 inrooted is taken away from them ? 
 
 Marvel. Certainly not. Another proof of tlieir infirmity. 
 Did you ever lose a rotten tooth, my lord, without holding up 
 your hand against it ? Or was there ever one drawn at which 
 
334 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 you did not rejoice when it was done ? All the authorities we 
 have brought forward may teach us, that the wearer of a crown 
 is usually the worse for it ; that it collects the most vicious 
 of eveiy kind about it, as a nocturnal blaze in uncultivated lands 
 collects poisonous reptiles ; and that it renders bad those who, with- 
 out it, might never have become so. But no authority, before your 
 lordship, ever went so far as to throw within its noxious agency 
 the little that remained uncorrupted : none ever told us, for our 
 caution, that it can do what nothing else can ; namely, that it can 
 excite the worst passions in well-regulated minds. 
 
 O Royalty ! if this be true, I, with my lord bishop, will detest 
 and abhor thee as the most sweeping leveller! Go, go, thou 
 indivisible in the infernal triad with Sin and Death ! 
 
 Parker. I must not hear this. 
 
 Marvel. I spoke hypothetically, and stood within your own 
 premises, referring to no actual state of things, and least of all 
 inclined to touch upon the very glorious one in which we live. 
 Royalty is in her place, and sits gracefully by the side of our 
 second Charles. 
 
 Parker. Here, Mr Marvel, we have no divergence of opinion. 
 
 Marvel. Enjoying this advantage, I am the more anxious 
 that ray friend should partake in it, whose last political conversa- 
 tion with me was greatly more moderate than the language of the 
 eloquent French bishop. "We ought," said he, "to remove 
 any thing by which a single fellow-creature may be deteriorated : 
 how much rather, then, that which deteriorates many millions, 
 and brands with the stamp of servitude the brow of the human 
 race ! " 
 
 Parker. Do you call this more moderate ? 
 
 Marvel. I call it so, because it is more argumentative. It is 
 in the temper and style of Milton to avoid the complalaing tone 
 of the one prelate, and the declamatory of the other. His hand 
 falls on his subject without the softener of cuff or ruffle. 
 
 Parker. So much the worse. But better as it is than with 
 an axe in it ; for God knows where it might fall. 
 
 Marvel. He went on saying that the most clear-sighted kings 
 can see but a little way before them and around them, there being 
 so many mediums ; and that delegated authority is liable to gross 
 abuses. 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 335 
 
 Parker. Republics, too, must delegate a portion of their 
 authority to agents at a distance. 
 
 Mar-oel. Every agent in a well-regulated republic is a portion 
 of itself. Citizen must resemble citizen in all political essentials ; 
 but what is privileged bears little resemblance to what is unprivi- 
 leged. In fact, the words primlege and prerogathie are manifestoes 
 of injustice, without one word added. 
 
 Parker. Yet the people would not have your republic when 
 they had tried it. 
 
 Marvel. Nor would the people have God when they had tried 
 him. But is this an argument why we should not obey his 
 ordinances, and senre him with all our strength ? 
 
 Parker. Oh, strange comparison ! I am quite shocked, Mr 
 Marvel ! 
 
 Marvel. What ! at seeing any work of the Deity at all re- 
 semble the Maker, at all remind us of him ? May I be often so 
 shocked, that light thoughts and troublesome wishes and unworthy 
 resentments may be shaken off me ; and that the Giver of all good 
 may appear to me and converse with me in the garden he has 
 planted ! 
 
 Parker. Then walk humbly with him, Mr Marvel. 
 
 Marvel. Every day I bend nearer to the dust that is to receive 
 me ; and, if this were not sufficient to warn me, the sight of my 
 old friend would. I repress my own aspirations that I may con- 
 tinue to repeat his words, tending to prove the vast difference 
 between the administration of a kingly government and a common- 
 wealth, where all offices in contact with the people are municipal, 
 where the officers are chosen on the spot by such as know them 
 personally, and by such as have an immediate and pai-amount in- 
 terest in giving them the preference. This, he insisted, is the 
 greatest of all advantages ; and this alone (but truly it is not 
 alone) would give the republican an incontestable superiority over 
 every other system. 
 
 Parker. Supposing it in theory to have its merits, the laws no 
 longer permit us to recommend it in practice. 
 
 Marvel. I am not attempting to make or to reclaim a convert. 
 The foot that has slipped back is less ready for progress than the 
 foot that never had advanced. 
 
 Parker. Sir ! I know my duty to God and my king. 
 
336 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Marvel. I also have attempted to learn mine, however un- 
 successfully. 
 
 Parker. There is danger, sir, in holding such discourses. 
 The cause is no longer to be defended without a violation of the 
 statutes. 
 
 Marniel. I am a republican, and will die one ; but rather, if 
 the choice is left me, in my own bed ; yet on turf or over the 
 ladder unreluctantly, if God draws thitherward the cause and con- 
 science, and strikes upon my heart to waken me. I have been, 
 I will not say tolerant and indulgent (words applicable to children 
 only), but friendly and cordial toward many good men whose 
 reason stood in opposition and almost (if reason can be hostile) in 
 hostility to mine. When we desire to regulate our watches, we 
 keep them attentively before us, and touch them carefully, gently, 
 delicately, with the finest and best-tempered instrument, day after 
 day. When we would manage the minds of men, finding them 
 at all different from our own, we thrust them away from us with 
 blind impetuosity, and throw them down in the dirt to make them 
 follow us the quicklier. In the turbulence of attack from all 
 directions, our cause hath been decried by some, not for being 
 bad in itself, but for being supported by bad men. What ! are 
 there no pretenders to charity, to friendship, to devotion ? Should 
 we sit uneasy and shuffling under it, and push our shoulders against 
 every post to rub it off, merely for the Scotch having worn it in 
 common with us, and for their having shortened, unstitched, and 
 sold it ? 
 
 Parker. Their history is overrun more rankly than any other, 
 excepting the French, with blood and treachery.* 
 
 Marvel. Half of them are Menteiths.f Even their quietest 
 and most philosophical spirits are alert and clamorous in defence 
 of any villany committed by power or compensated by wealth. 
 In the degeneracy of Greece, in her utter subjugation, was 
 there one historian or one poet vile enough to represent as 
 
 * Undoubtedly such were the sentiments of Milton and Marvel ; and 
 they were just. But Scotland in our days has produced not only the 
 calmest and most profound reasoners, she has also given birth to the most 
 enlightened and energetic patriots. 
 
 f Menteith was the betrayer of Wallace, the bravest hero, the hero in 
 most points, our island has gloried in since Alfred. 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 337 
 
 blameless the conduct of Clytemnestra ? Yet what labors of 
 the press are bestowed on a Queen of Scotland, who com- 
 mitted the same crime without the same instigation, who had 
 been educated in the principles of Christianity, who had con- 
 versed from her girlhood with the polite and learned, and who 
 had spent only a very few years among the barbarians of the 
 North! 
 
 Parker. Her subjects were angry, not that she was punished, 
 but that she was unpaid for. They would have sold her cheaper 
 than they sold her grandson ; and, being so reasonable, they were 
 outrageous that there were no bidders. Mr Marvel ! the Scotch 
 have always been cringing when hungry, always cruel when full : 
 their avarice is without satiety, their corruption is without shame, 
 and their ferocity is without remorse. 
 
 Marvel. Among such men there may be demagogues, there 
 cannot be republicans ; there may be lovers of free quarters, 
 there cannot be of freedom. Reverencing the bold and the 
 sincere, and in them the character of our country, we English- 
 men did not punish those ministers who came forth uncited, 
 and who avowed in the House of Commons that they had been 
 the advisers of the Crown in all the misdemeanors against which 
 we brought the heaviest charges. We bethought us of the in- 
 gratitude, of the injuries, of the indignities, we had sustained ; 
 we bethought us of our wealth transferred from the nation to 
 raise up enemies against it ; we bethought us of patient piety and 
 of tranquil courage in chains, in dungeons, tortured, maimed, 
 mangled, for the assertion of truth and of freedom, of religion 
 and of law. 
 
 Parker. Our most gracious king is disposed to allow a con- 
 siderable latitude, repressing at the same time that obstinate spirit 
 which prevails across the border. Much of the Scottish charac- 
 ter may be attributed to the national religion, in which the 
 damnatory has the upper hand of the absolving. 
 
 Marvel. Our judges are merciful to those who profess the 
 king's reputed and the duke's acknowledged tenets ; but let a 
 man stand up for the Independents, and out pops Mr Attorney- 
 General, throws him on his back, claps a tongue-scraper into his 
 mouth, and exercises it resolutely and unsparingly. 
 
 Parker. I know nothing of your new-fangled sects ; but 
 
338 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 the doctrines of the Anglican and the Romish church ap- 
 proximate. 
 
 Marvel. The shepherd of the seven hills teaches his sheep 
 in what tone to bleat before him, just as the Tyrolean teaches 
 his bullfinch, — first by depriving him of sight, and then by 
 making him repeat a certain series of notes at stated intervals. 
 Prudent and quiet people v/ill choose their churches as they 
 choose their ale-houses, — partly for the wholesomeness of the 
 draught, and partly for the moderation of the charges ; but 
 the host in both places must be civil, and must not damn you, 
 body and soul, by way of invitation. The wheat-sheaf is a 
 very good sign for the one, and a very bad one for the other. 
 Tithes are more ticklish things than tenets, when men's brains 
 are sound ; and there are more and worse stumbling-blocks at 
 the barn-door than at the church-porch. I never saw a priest, 
 Romanist or Anglican, who would tuck up his surplice to 
 remove them. Whichever does it first will have the most 
 voices for him : but he must be an Englishman, and serve 
 only Englishmen ; he must resign the cook's perquisites to the 
 Spaniard ; he must give up not only the fat, but the blood ; 
 and he must keep fewer fagots in the kitchen. Since what- 
 ever the country, whatever the state of civilization, the Church 
 of Rome remains the same ; since under her influence the 
 polite Louis at the present day commits as much bloodshed 
 and perfidy, and commands as many conflagrations and rapes 
 to her honor and advancement as the most barbarous kings 
 and prelates in times past, — I do hope that no insolence, no 
 rapacity, no profligacy, no infidelity, in our own lord spiritual 
 will render us either the passive captives of her insinuating 
 encroachments, or the indifferent spectators of her triumphal 
 entrance. We shall be told it was the religion of Alfred, 
 the religion of the Plantagenets. There may be victory, there 
 may be glory, there may be good men, under all forms and 
 fabrics of belief. Titus, Trajan, the two Antonines, the two 
 Gordians, Probus, Tacitus, rendered their countrymen much 
 happier than the Plantagenets, or the greater and better Alfred, 
 could do. Let us receive as brethren our countrymen of every 
 creed, and reject as Christians those only who refuse to receive 
 them. 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 339 
 
 Parker. Most willingly, if such is the pleasure of the King 
 and Privy Council. And I am delighted to find you, who are 
 so steadfast a republican, extolling the emperors. 
 
 Marvel. Your idea of emperor is incorrect or inadequate. 
 Cincinnatus and Cato were emperors in the Roman sense of 
 the word. The Germans and Turks and Marocchines cut out 
 theirs upon another model. These Romans, and many more in 
 the same station, did nothing without the consent, the approba- 
 tion, the command (for such was the expression), of the senate 
 and the people. They lived among the wiser and better citizens, 
 with whom they conversed as equals, and, where it was proper 
 (for instance, on subjects of literature), as inferiors. From these 
 they took their wives, and with the sons and daughters of these 
 they educated their children. In the decline of the Common- 
 wealth, kings themselves, on the boundaries of the empire, were 
 daily and hourly conversant with honest and learned men. All 
 princes in our days are so educated as to detest the unmalleable 
 and unmelting honesty which will receive no impression from 
 them ; nor do they even let you work for them unless they can 
 bend you double. We must strip off our own clothes, or they 
 never will let us be measured for their livery, which has now 
 become our only protection. 
 
 Parker. It behooves us to obey ; otheiTvise we can expect no 
 forbearance and no tranquillity 
 
 Marniel. I wish the tranquillity of our country may last 
 beyond our time, although we should live (which we cannot 
 expect to do) twenty years. 
 
 Parker. God grant we may ! 
 
 Marvel. Life clings with the pertinacity of an impassioned 
 mistress to many a man who is willing to abandon it, while he 
 who too much loves it loses it. 
 
 Parker, Twenty years ! 
 
 Marvel. I have enjoyed but little of it at a time when it 
 becomes a necessary of life, and I fear I shall leave as little for a 
 heritage. 
 
 Parker. But in regard to living, — we are both of us hale 
 men ; we may hope for many days yet ; we may yet see many 
 changes. 
 
 Marvel. I have lived to see one too many. 
 
340 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Parker. Whoever goes into political life must be contented 
 with the same fare as others of the same rank who embark in the 
 same expedition. 
 
 Marvel. Before his cruise is over, he learns to be satisfied 
 with a very small quantity of fresh provisions. His nutriment 
 is from what is stale, and his courage from what is heady ; he 
 looks burly and bold, but a fatal disease is lying at the bottom 
 of an excited and inflated heart. We think to thrive by sur- 
 rendering our capacities ; but we can no more live, my lord 
 bishop, with breathing the breath of other men, than we can 
 by not breathing our own. Compliancy will serve us poorly and 
 ineffectually. Men, like columns, are only strong while they are 
 upright. 
 
 Parker. You were speaking of other times ; and you always 
 speak best among the Greeks and Romans. Continue, pray ! 
 
 Marvel. Sovereignty, in the heathen world, had sympathies 
 with humanity ; and power never thought herself contaminated 
 by touching the hand of wisdom. It was before Andromache 
 came on the stage, painted and patched and powdered, with a 
 hogshead-hoop about her haunches and a pack-saddle on her pole, 
 surmounted with upright hair larded and dredged ; it was before 
 Orestes was created monseigneur ; it was before there strutted 
 under a triumphal arch of curls, and through a Via Sacra of 
 plumery, Louis the Fourteenth. 
 
 Parker. The ally of His Majesty — 
 
 Marvel. And something more. A gilded organ-pipe, puffed 
 from below for those above to play. 
 
 Parker. Respect the cousin — 
 
 Marvel. I know not whose cousin ; but the acknowledged 
 brat of milliner and furrier, with perruquier for godfather. And 
 such, forsooth, are the make-believes we must respect ! A nucleus 
 of powder ! an efflorescence of frill ! 
 
 Parker. Subject and prince stand now upon another footing 
 than formerly. 
 
 Marvel. Indeed they do. How dignified is the address 
 of Plutarch to Trajan ! how familiar is Pliny's to Vespasian ! 
 how tender, how paternal, is Fronto's to Antoninus ! how 
 totally free from adulation and servility is Julius Pollux to the 
 ungentle Commodus ! Letters were not trampled down dis- 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 341 
 
 dainfuUy either in the groves of Antioch or under the colon- 
 nades of Palmyra. Not pleasure, the gentle enfeebler of the 
 human intellect ; not tyranny and bigotry, its violent assailants, — 
 crossed the walk of the philosopher, to stand between him and 
 his speculations. What is more; two ancient religions, the 
 Grecian and Egyptian, met in perfectly good temper at Alex- 
 andria, lived and flourished there together for many centuries, 
 united in honoring whatever was worthy of honor in each com- 
 munion, and never heard of persecution for matters of opinion 
 until Christianity came and taught it. Thenceforward, for fifteen 
 hundred years, blood has been perpetually spouting from under- 
 neath her footsteps ; and the wretch, clinging exhausted to the 
 cross, is left naked by the impostor, who pretends to have stripped 
 him only to heal his wounds. 
 
 Parker. Presbyterians, and other sectaries, were lately as cruel 
 and hypocritical as any in former times. 
 
 Marvel. They were certainly not less cruel, and perhaps even 
 more hjrpocritical. English hearts were contracted and hardened 
 by an open exposure to the North • they now are collapsing into 
 the putridity of the South. We were ashamed of a beggarly dis- 
 temper, but parasitical and skin-deep ; we are now ostentatious of 
 a .gentlemanly one, eating into the veiy bones. 
 
 Parker. Our children may expect from Lord Clarendon a 
 fair account of the prime movers in the late disturbances. 
 
 Marvel. He knew but one party, and saw it only in its gala 
 suit. He despises those whom he left on the old litter ; and he 
 fancies that all who have not risen want the ability to rise. No 
 doubt, he will speak unfavorably of those whom I most esteem : 
 be it so ; if their lives and writings do not controvert him, they 
 are unworthy of my defence. Were I upon terms of intimacy 
 with him, I would render him a service by sending him the best 
 translations, from Greek and Latin authors, of maxims left us by 
 the wisest men, — maxims which my friends held longer than their 
 fortunes, and dearer than their lives. And are the vapors of 
 such quagmires as Clarendon to overcast the luminaries of man- 
 kind ? Should a Hyde lift up, — I will not say his hand, I will 
 not say his voice, — should he lift up his eyes against a Milton ? 
 
 Parker. Mr Milton would have benefited the world much 
 more by coming into its little humors, and by complying vsrith it 
 cheerfully. 
 
342 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Marvel. As the needle turns away from the rising sun, from 
 the meridian, from the Occident, from regions of fragrancy and 
 gold and gems, and moves with unerring impulse to the frosts and 
 deserts of the North, so Milton and some few others, in politics, 
 philosophy, and religion, walk through the busy multitude, wave 
 aside die importunate trader, and, after a momentary oscillation 
 from external agency, are found in the twilight and in the storm 
 pointing with certain index to the pole-star of immutable truth. 
 
 Parker, The nation in general thanks him little for what he 
 has been doing. 
 
 Marvel. Men who have been unsparing of their wisdom, like 
 ladies who have been unfrugal of their favors, are abandoned by 
 those who owe most to them, and hated or slighted by the rest. 
 I wish beauty in her lost estate had consolations like genius. 
 
 Parker. Fie, fie ! Mr Marvel ! Consolations for frailty ! 
 
 Marvel. What wants them more ? The reed is cut down, 
 and seldom does the sickle wound the hand that cuts it. There 
 it lies ; trampled on, withered, and soon to be blown away. 
 
 Parker. We should be careful and circumspect in our pity, 
 and see that it falls on clean ground. Such a laxity of morals 
 can be taught only in Mr Milton's school. He composed, I 
 remember, a Treatise on Divorce, and would have given it great 
 facilities. 
 
 Marvel. He proved by many arguments what requires but 
 few, — that happiness is better than unhappiness ; that, when two 
 persons cannot agree, it is wiser and more Christianlike that they 
 should not disagree ; that, when they cease to love each other, it^^ 
 is something if they be hindered by the gentlest of checks from y* 
 running to the extremity of hatred ; and, lastly, how it conduces , 
 to circumspection and forbearance to be aware that the bond of- 
 matrimony is not indissoluble, and that the bleeding heart may be 
 aved from bursting. 
 
 Parker. Monstrous sophistry ! abominable doctrines ! What 
 more, sir ! what more ? 
 
 Marvel. He proceeds to demonstrate that boisterous manners, 
 captious contradictions, jars, jealousies, suspicions, dissensions, are 
 juster causes of separation than the only one leading to it through 
 the laws ; — which fault, grievous as it is to morality and religion, 
 may have occurred but once, and may have been followed by 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 343 
 
 immediate and most sorrowful repentance, and by a greater 
 anxiety to be clear of future offence than before it was com- 
 mitted; in itself, it is not so irreconcilable and inconsistent 
 with gentleness, good-humor, generosity, and even conjugal 
 affection. 
 
 Parker. Palpable perversion ! 
 
 Marvel. I suppose it to have been committed but once ; and 
 then there is the fairest inference, the most reasonable as well as 
 the most charitable supposition, — nay, almost the plainest proof, — 
 of the more legitimate attachment. 
 
 Parker. Fear, apprehension of exposure, of shame, of 
 abandonment, may force the vagrant to retrace her steps. 
 
 Marvel. God grant, then, the marks of them never may be 
 discovered ! 
 
 Parker. Let the laws have their satisfaction. 
 
 Marvel. Had ever the Harpies theirs, or the Devil his ? 
 And yet when were they stinted ? Are the laws or are we the 
 better or the milder for this satisfaction ? — or is keenness of 
 appetite a sign of it I 
 
 Parker. Reverence the laws of God, Mr Marvel, if you 
 contemn those of your country. Even the Parliament, which 
 you and Mr MUton must respect, since no King was coexistent 
 with it, discountenanced and chastised such laxity. 
 
 Marvel. I dare not look back upon a Parliament which was 
 without the benefit of a King, and had also lost its spiritual 
 guides, — the barons of your bench ; but well do I remember 
 that our blessed Lord and Saviour was gentler in his rebuke 
 to the woman who had offended, than he was to Scribes and 
 Pharisees. 
 
 Parker. There is no argument of any hold on men of 
 slippery morals. 
 
 Marvel. My morals have indeed been so slippery that they 
 have let me down on the ground and left me there. Every year 
 I have grown poorer ; yet never was I conscious of having spent 
 my money among the unworthy, until the time came for them to 
 show it by their ingratitude. My morals have not made me slip 
 into an Episcopal throne — 
 
 Parker. Neither have mine me, sir ! and I would have you 
 to know it, Mr Marvel ! 
 
344 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Marvel. Your lordship has already that satisfaction. 
 
 Parker. Pardon my interruption, my dear sir ! and the 
 appearance of warmth, such as truth and sincerity at times 
 put on. 
 
 Marvel. It belongs to your lordship to grant pardon ; it is 
 ours, who have offended, to receive it. 
 
 Parker. Mr Marvel, I have always admired your fine 
 gentlemanly manners, and regretted that you never have turned 
 your wit to good account, in an age when hardly any thing 
 else is held of value. Sound learning rises indeed, but rises 
 slowly ; piety, although in estimation with the King, is less 
 prized by certain persons wlio have access to his presence ; 
 wit, Mr Marvel, when properly directed, — not too high nor too 
 low, — will sooner or later find a patron. It is well at all times 
 to avoid asperity and acrimony, and to submit with a willing 
 mind to God's dispensations, be what they may. Probably a 
 great part of your friend's misfortunes may be attributed to the 
 intemperance of his rebukes. 
 
 Marvel. Then what you call immoral and impious did him 
 less harm ? 
 
 Parker. I would not say that altogether. To me, indeed, 
 his treatise on Divorce is most offensive : the treatise on Prelaty 
 is contemptible. 
 
 Marvel. Nevertheless, in the narrow view of my humble 
 understanding, there is no human eloquence at all comparable 
 to certain parts of it. And permit me to remind your lordship, 
 that you continued on the most friendly terms with him long 
 after its publication. 
 
 Parker. I do not give up a friend for a trifle. 
 
 Marvel. Your lordship, it appears, must have more than a 
 trifle for the surrender. I have usually found that those who 
 make faults of foibles, and crimes of faults, have within themselves 
 an impulse toward worse, and give ready way to such impulse 
 whenever they can secretly or safely. There is a gravity which 
 is not austere nor captious, which belongs not to melancholy, nor 
 dwells in contraction of heart, but arises from tenderness and 
 hangs upon reflection. 
 
 Parker. Whatsoever may be the gravity of Mr Milton, 
 I have heard indistinctly that he has not always been the 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 345 
 
 kindest of husbands. Being a sagacious and a prudent man, 
 he ought never to have taken a wife until he had ascertained 
 her character. 
 
 Marvel. Pray inform me whether the wisest men have been 
 the most fortunate, or, if you prefer the expression, the most 
 provident, in their choice ? Of Solomon's wives (several hun- 
 dreds) is it recorded that a single one sympathized with him, 
 loved him, respected him, or esteemed him ? His wisdom and 
 his poetry flowed alike on barren sand ; his cedar frowned on 
 him ; his lily drooped and withered before he had raised up 
 his head from its hard, cold glossiness, or had inhaled its frag- 
 rance with a second sigh. Disappointments sour most the less 
 experienced. Young ladies are ready in imagining that marriage 
 is all cake and kisses ; but very few of them are housewives 
 long, before they discover that the vinous fermentation may be 
 followed too soon by the acetous. Rarely do they discover, and 
 more rarely do they admit, that such is the result of their own 
 mismanagement. What woman can declare with sincerity that 
 she never in the calmer days of life has felt sui-prise — and shame 
 also, if she is virtuous and sensible — at recollecting how nearly 
 the same interest was excited in her by the most frivolous 
 and least frivolous of her admirers. The downy thistle-seed, 
 hard to be uprooted, is carried by the lightest breath of air, and 
 takes an imperceptible hold on what it catches : it falls the more 
 readily into the more open breast ; but sometimes the less open is 
 vainly buttoned up against it. 
 
 Milton has, I am afraid, imitated too closely the authoritative 
 voice of the patriarchs, and been somewhat too Oriental (I for- 
 bear to say Scriptural) in his relations as a husband. But who, 
 whether among the graver or less grave, is just, to woman ? 
 There may be moments when the beloved tells us, and tells 
 us truly, that we are dearer to her than life. Is not this enough ? 
 Is it not above all merit ? Yet, if ever the ardor of her en- 
 thusiasm subsides ; if her love ever loses, later in the day, the 
 spirit and vivacity of its early dawn ; if between the sigh and the 
 blush an interval is perceptible ; if the arm mistakes the chair for 
 the shoulder, — what an outcry is there ! what a proclamation of 
 her injustice and her inconstancy ! what an alternation of shrink- 
 ing and spurning at the coldness of her heart ! Do we ask 
 
346 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 within if our own has retained all its ancient loyalty, all its own 
 warmth, and all that was poured into it ? Often the true lover 
 has little of true love compared with what he has undeservedly 
 received and unreasonably exacts. But let it also be remem- 
 bered that marriage is the metempsychosis of women, — that 
 it turns them into different creatures from what they were before. 
 Liveliness in the girl may have been mistaken for good temper ; 
 the little pervicacity which at first is attractively provoking, at 
 last provokes without its attractiveness ; negligence of order and 
 propriety, of duties and civilities, long endured, often deprecated, 
 ceases to be tolerable, when children grow up and are in danger 
 of following the example. It often happens that, if a man 
 unhappy in the married state were to disclose the manifold causes 
 of his uneasiness, they would be found, by those who were 
 beyond their influence, to be of such a nature as rather to excite 
 derision than sympathy. The waters of bitterness do not fall 
 on his head in a cataract, but through a colander, — one, how- 
 ever, like the vases of the Danaides, perforated only for re- 
 plenishment. We know scarcely the vestibule of a house of 
 which we fancy we have penetrated into all the corners. We 
 know not how grievously a man may have suffered, long before 
 the calumnies of the world befell him as he reluctantly left his 
 house-door. There are women from whom incessant tears of 
 anger swell forth at imaginary wrongs ; but, of contrition for 
 their own delinquencies, not one. 
 
 Milton, in writing his treatise, of which probably the first 
 idea was suggested from his own residence, was aware that the 
 laws should provide, not only against our violence and injustice, 
 but against our levity and inconstancy ; and that a man's capri- 
 ciousness or satiety should not burst asunder the ties by which 
 families are united. Do you believe that the crime of adultery 
 has never been committed to the end of obtaining a divorce ? 
 Do you believe that murder, that suicide, never has been com- 
 mitted because a divorce was unattainable ? Thus the most 
 crael tortures are terminated by the most frightful crimes. 
 Milton has made his appeal to the authority of religion : we 
 lower our eyes from him, and point to the miseries and guilt 
 on every side before us, caused by the corrosion or the violent 
 disruption of bonds which humanity would have loosened. He 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 347 
 
 would have tried with a patient ear and with a delicate hand the 
 chord that offended by its harshness ; and, when he could not 
 reduce it to the proper tone, he would remove it for another. 
 
 Parker. Mr Marvel ! Mr Marvel ! I cannot follow you 
 among these fiddlesticks. The age is notoriously irreligious. 
 
 Marvel. I believe it ; I know it ; and, without a claim to 
 extraordinary acuteness, I fancy I can discover by what means, 
 and by whose agency, it became so. The preachers who exhibit 
 most vehemence are the very men who support the worst corrup- 
 tions,-^corruptions not a portion of our nature, but sticking 
 thereto by our slovenly supineness. Of what use is it to rail 
 against our infirmities, of what use even to pity and bemoan 
 them, if we help not in removing the evils that rise perpetually 
 out of them ? Were every man to sweep the mire from before 
 his house every morning, he would have little cause to complain 
 of dirty streets. Some dust might be carried into them by the 
 wind ; the tread of multitudes would make unsound what was 
 solid, — yet, nothing being accumulated, the labor of removing the 
 obstructions would be light. Another thing has increased the 
 irreligion and immorality of the people, beside examples in 
 elevated stations. Whatever is over-constrained will relax or 
 crack. The age of Milton (for that was his age in which he 
 was heard and honored) was too religious, if any thing can 
 be called so. Prelaty now lays a soft and frilled hand upon our 
 childishness. Forty years ago she stripped up her sleeve, scourged 
 us heartily, and spat upon us, — to remove the smart, no doubt ! 
 This treatment made people run in all directions from her ; not 
 unlike the primeval man described by Lucretius, fleeing before 
 the fiercer and stronger animals : 
 
 Viva videns vivo sepeliri viscera busto. 
 At quos ecfugium servarat, corpore adeso 
 Posterius, tremulas super ulcera tetra tenentes 
 Palmas, horrificis adcibant vocibus orcum. 
 
 Parker. Dear me ! what a memory you possess, good Mr 
 Marvel ! You pronounce Latin verses charmingly. I wish you 
 would go on to the end of the book. 
 
 Marvel. Permit me to go on a shorter distance, — to the 
 conclusion of my remarks. As popery caused the violence 
 
348 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 of the Reformers, so did prelaty (the same thing under an- 
 other name) the violence of the Presbyterians and Anabaptists. 
 She treated them inhumanly : she reduced to poverty, she exiled, 
 she maimed, she mutilated, she stabbed, she shot, she hanged, 
 those who followed Christ in the narrow and quiet lane, rather 
 than along the dust of the market-road, and who conversed with 
 him rather in the cottage than the tollbooth. She would have 
 nothing pass unless through her hands ; and she imposed a heavy 
 and intolerable tax on the necessaries both of physical and of 
 spiritual life. This baronial privilege our Parliament would have 
 suppressed ; the King rose against the suppression, and broke his 
 knuckles in the cogs of the mill. 
 
 Parker. Sad times, Mr Marvel, sad times ! It fills me with 
 heaviness to hear of them. 
 
 Marvel. Low places are foggy first ; days of sadness wet 
 the people to the skin ; they hang loosely for some time upon 
 the ermine, but at last they penetrate it, and cause it to be 
 thrown off. I do not like to hear a man cry out with pain ; 
 but I would rather hear one than twenty. Sorrow is the growth 
 of all seasons : we had much, however, to relieve it. Never 
 did our England, since she first emerged from the ocean, rise 
 so high above surrounding nations. The rivalry of Holland, 
 the pride of Spain, the insolence of France, were thrust back by 
 one finger each ; yet those countries were then more powerfij 
 than they had ever been. The sword of Cromwell was preceded 
 by the mace of Milton ; by that mace which, when Oliver had 
 rendered his account, opened to our contemplation the garden- 
 gate of Paradise. And there were some around not unworthy to 
 enter with him. In the compass of sixteen centuries, you will 
 not number on the whole earth so many wise and admirable men 
 as you could have found united in that single day, when England 
 showed her time magnitude and solved the question. Which is 
 most, one or a million ? There were giants in those days ; but 
 giants who feared God, and not who fought against him Less 
 men, it appears, are braver. They show him a legal writ of 
 ejectment, seize upon his house, and riotously carouse therein. 
 But the morning must come ; and heaviness, we know, cometh 
 in the morning. 
 
 Parker. Wide is the difference between carousal and austerity. 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 349 
 
 Your friend miscalculated the steps to fortune, in which as we all 
 are the architects of our own, if we omit the insertion of one or 
 two, the rest are useless in furthering our ascent. He was too 
 passionate, Mr Marvel, he was indeed. 
 
 Marvel. Superficial men have no absorbing passion : there are 
 no whirlpools in a shallow. I have often been amused at thinking 
 in what estimation the greatest of mankind were holden by their 
 contemporaries. Not even the most sagacious and prudent one 
 could discover much of them, or could prognosticate their future 
 course in the infinity of space ! Men like ourselves are permitted 
 to stand near, and indeed in the very presence of, Milton. What 
 do they see ? — dark clothes, gray hair, and sightless eyes ! Other 
 men have better things : other men, therefore, are nobler ! The 
 stars themselves are only bright by distance ; go close, and all is 
 earthy. But vapors illuminate these : from the breath and from 
 the countenance of God comes light on worlds higher than they, 
 — ^worlds to which he has given the forms and names of Shak- 
 speare and of Milton. 
 
 Parker. After all, I doubt whether much of his doctrine is 
 remaining in the public mind. 
 
 Marvel. Others are not inclined to remember all that we re- 
 member, and will not attend to us if we propose to tell them half. 
 Water wUl take up but a certain quantity of salt, even of the finest 
 and purest. If the short memories of men are to be quoted against 
 the excellence of instruction, your lordship would never have cen- 
 sured them from the pulpit for forgetting what was delivered by 
 their Saviour. It is much, my lord bishop, that you allow my 
 friend even the pittance of praise you have bestowed ; for, if you 
 will permit me to express my sentiments in verse, which I am in 
 the habit of doing, I would say, — 
 
 Men like the ancient kalends, nones, and ides, 
 Are reckoned backward, and the first stand last. 
 
 I am confident that Milton is heedless of how little weight he is 
 held by those who are of none ; and that he never looks toward 
 those somewhat more eminent, between whom and himself there 
 have crept the waters of oblivion. As the pearl ripens in the 
 obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is 
 truly precious. In fame he will be happier than in friendship. 
 
350 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Were it possible that one among the faithful of the angels could 
 have suffered wounds and dissolution in his conflict with the false, 
 I should scarcely feel greater awe at discovering on some bleak 
 mountain the bones of this our mighty defender, once shining in 
 celestial panoply, once glowing at the trumpet-blast of God, but 
 not proof against the desperate and the damned, than I have felt 
 at entering the humble abode of Milton, whose spirit already 
 reaches heaven, yet whose corporeal frame hath no quiet or safe 
 resting-place here below. And shall not I, who loved him early, 
 have the lonely and sad privilege to love him still ? Or shall 
 fidelity to power be a virtue, and fidelity to tribulation an 
 ofl^ence ? 
 
 Parker. We may best show our fidelity by our discretion. 
 It becomes my station, and suits my principles, to defend the Eng- 
 lish Constitution, both in Church and State. 
 
 Marvel. You highly praised the Defence of the English 
 People : you called it a masterly piece of rhetoric and ratio- 
 cination. 
 
 Parker. I might have admired the subtilty of it, and have 
 praised the Latinity. 
 
 Marvel. Less reasonably. But his godlike mind shines glori- 
 ously throughout his work ; only perhaps we look the more intently 
 at it for the cloud it penetrates. Those who think we have enough 
 of his poetry still regret that we possess too little of his prose, and 
 wish especially for more of his historical compositions. Davila 
 and Bacon — 
 
 Parker. You mean Lord Verulam. 
 
 Marvel. That idle title was indeed thrown over his shoulders ; 
 but the trapping was unlikely to rest long upon a creature of such 
 proud paces. He and Davila are the only men of high genius 
 among the modems who have attempted it ; and the greater of 
 them has failed. He wanted honesty, he perverted facts, he 
 courted favor : the present in his eyes was larger than the fiiture. 
 
 Parker. The Italians, who far excel us in the writing of his- 
 tory, are farther behind the ancients. 
 
 Marvel. True enough. From Guicciardini and Machiavelli, 
 the most celebrated of them, we acquire a vast quantity of trivial 
 informarioQ. There is about them a sawdust which absorbs much 
 blood and impurity, and of which the level surface is dry ; but no 
 
Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker. 35 1 
 
 traces by what agency rose such magnificent cities above the 
 hovels of France and Germany, — none 
 
 Ut fortis Etruria crevit, 
 
 or, on the contrary, how the mistress of the world sank in the 
 ordure of her priesthood. 
 
 Scilicet et rerum facta est nequissima Roma. 
 
 We are captivated by no charms of description, we are detained 
 by no peculiarities of character : we hear a clamorous scuffle in 
 the street, and we close the door. How different the historians 
 of antiquity ! We read Sallust, and always are incited by the 
 desire of reading on, although we are surrounded by conspirators 
 and barbarians ; we read Livy, until we imagine we are standing 
 in an august pantheon, covered with altars and standards, over 
 which are the four fatal letters that spellbound all mankind.* 
 We step forth again among the modern Italians : here we find 
 plenty of rogues, plenty of receipts for making more ; and little 
 else. In the best passages, we come upon a crowd of dark 
 reflections, which scarcely a glimmer of glory pierces through ; 
 and we stare at the tenuity of the spectres, but never at their 
 altitude. 
 
 Give me the poetical mind, the mind poetical in all things ; 
 give me the poetical heart, the heart of hope and confidence, 
 diat beats the more strongly and resolutely under the good 
 thrown down, and raises up fabric after fabric on the same 
 foundation. 
 
 Parker. At your time of life, Mr Marvel ? 
 
 Mar-vel. At mine, my lord bishop ! I have lived with Milton. 
 Such creative and redeeming spirits are like kindly and renovat- 
 ing Nature. Volcano comes after volcano ; yet covereth she 
 with herbage and foliage, with vine and olive, and with what- 
 ever else refreshes and gladdens her, the Earth that has been 
 gasping under the exhaustion of her lliroes. 
 
 Parker. He has given us such a description of Eve's beauty 
 as appears to me somewhat too pictorial, too luxuriant, too 
 suggestive, too — I know not what. 
 
 * S. P. Q. R. 
 
352 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Marvel. The sight of beauty, in her purity and beatitude, 
 turns us from all unrighteousness, and is death to sin. 
 
 Parker. Before we part, my good Mr Marvel, let me assure 
 you that we part in amity, and that I bear no resentment in my 
 breast against your friend. I am patient of Mr Milton ; I am 
 more than patient, — I am indulgent, seeing that his influence on 
 society is past. 
 
 Marvel. Past it is, indeed. What a deplorable thing is 
 it that folly should so constantly have power over wisdom, and 
 wisdom so intermittently over folly ! But we live morally, as 
 we used to live politically, under a representative system ; and 
 the majority (to employ a phrase of people at elections) carries 
 the day. 
 
 Parker. Let us piously hope, Mr Marvel, that God in his 
 good time may turn Mr Milton from the error of his ways, and 
 incline his heart to repentance, and that so he may finally be 
 prepared for death. 
 
 Marvel. The wicked can never be prepared for it ; the good 
 always are. What is the preparation which so many ruffled 
 wrists point out ? — to gabble over prayer and praise and con- 
 fession and contrition. My lord, heaven is not to be won by 
 short hard work at the last, as some of us take a degree at the 
 university, after much irregularity and negligence. I prefer a 
 steady pace from the outset to the end; coming in cool, and 
 dismounting quietly. Instead of which, I have known many old 
 playfellows of the Devil spring up suddenly from their beds, and 
 strike at him treacherously; while he, without a cuff, laughed 
 and made grimaces in the corner of the room. 
 
 XX. STEELE AND ADDISON.» 
 
 Addison. Dick ! I am come to remonstrate with you on 
 those unlucky habits which have been so detrimental to your 
 health and fortune. 
 
 [1 Mr Aitken, in his erudite " Life of Steele," says, concerning the sub- 
 ject of this Conversation : " The most trustworthy account is that told by 
 Benjamin Victor to Garrick in a letter written in 1762. He says that 
 
 ? 
 
Steele and Addison. 353 
 
 Steele. Many thanks, Mr Addison : but really my fortune is 
 not much improved by your arresting me for the hundred pounds; 
 nor is my health, if spirits are an indication of it, on seeing my 
 furniture sold by auction to raise the money. 
 
 Addison. Pooh, pooh, Dick ! what furniture had you about 
 the house ? 
 
 Steele. At least I had the arm-chair, of which you never 
 before had dispossessed me longer than the evening ; and happy 
 should I have been to enjoy your company in it again and again, 
 if you had left it me. 
 
 Addison. We will contrive to hire another. I do assure you, 
 my dear Dick, I have really felt for you. 
 
 Steele. I only wish, my kind friend, you had not put out 
 your feelers quite so far, nor exactly in this direction ; and 
 that my poor wife had received an hour's notice : she might 
 have carried a few trinkets to some neighbor. She wanted her 
 salts ; and the bailiff thanked her for the bottle that contained 
 them, telling her the gold head of it was worth pretty nearly 
 half-a-guinea. 
 
 Addison. Lady Steele then wanted her smelling-bottle ? 
 Dear me ! the weather, I apprehend, is about to change. Have 
 you any symptoms of your old gout ? 
 
 Steele. My health has been long on the decline, you know. 
 
 Addison. Too well I know it, my dear friend, and I hinted 
 it as delicately as I could. Nothing on earth beside this con- 
 sideration should have induced me to pursue a measure in appear- 
 ance so unfriendly. You must grow more temperate, — you really 
 must. 
 
 Steele. Mr Addison, you did not speak so gravely and so 
 
 he had his relation first from Wilkes, but that afterwards, in 1725, he 
 had a fall confirmation of it from Steele's own lips. According to 
 Victor's letter, Steele borrowed JEiooo from Addison . . on the house 
 at Hampton Wick, giving bond and judgment for the repayment of the 
 money at the end of twelve months. Upon the forfeiture of the bond, 
 Addison's attorney proceeded to execution, the house and furniture being 
 sold, and the surplus sent to Steele with a genteel letter ' stating the 
 friendly reason for this extraordinary proceeding, viz.: to awaken him, 
 if possible, from a lethargy that must end in his inevitable ruin." .... 
 The affair seems to have caused no interruption in the friendship between 
 Steele and Addison. (Ablett's Literary Hours, 1837. Works, ii., 1846. 
 Works, v., 1876.)] 
 
354 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 firmly when we used to meet at Will's. You always dranK as 
 much as I did, and often invited and pressed me to continue, 
 when I was weary, sleepy, and sick. 
 
 Addison. You thought so, because you were drunk. Indeed, 
 at my own house I have sometimes asked you to take another 
 glass, in compliance with the rules of society and hospitality. 
 
 Steele. Once, it is true, you did it at your house, — the only 
 time I ever had an invitation to dine in it. The countess was 
 never fond of the wit that smells of wine : her husband could 
 once endure it. 
 
 Addison. We could talk more freely, you know, at the 
 tavern. There we have dined together some hundred times. 
 
 Steele. Most days, for many years. 
 
 Addison. Ah, Dick ! since we first met there, several of our 
 friends are gone off the stage. 
 
 Steele. And some are still acting. 
 
 Addison. Forbear, my dear friend, to joke and smile at 
 infirmities or vices. Many have departed from us in conse- 
 quence, I apprehend, of indulging in the bottle. When passions 
 are excited, when reason is disturbed, when reputation is sullied, 
 when fortune is squandered, and when health is lost by it, a 
 retreat is sounded in vain. Some cannot hear it ; others will not 
 profit by it. 
 
 Steele. I must do you the justice to declare, that I never saw 
 any other effect of hard drinking upon you than to make you 
 more circumspect and silent. 
 
 Addison. If ever I urged you, m the warmth of my heart, 
 to transgress the bounds of sobriety, I entreat you, as a Christian, 
 to forgive me. 
 
 Steele. Most willingly, most cordially. 
 
 Addison. I feel confident that you will think of me, speaK 
 °f pje, and write of me, as you have ever done, without a 
 diminution of esteem. We are feeble creatures : we want one 
 another's aid and assistance, — a want ordained by Providence 
 to show us at once our insufficiency and our strength. We 
 must not abandon our friends from slight motives, nor let our 
 passions be our interpreters in their own cause. Consistency is 
 not more requisite to the sound Christian than to the accom- 
 plished politician. 
 
Steele and Addison. 355 
 
 Steele. I am inconsistent in my resolutions of improvement, 
 —no man ever was more so ; but my attachments have a nerve 
 in them neither to be deadened by ill-treatment nor loosened 
 by indulgence. A man grievously wounded knows by the acute- 
 ness of the pain that a spirit of vitality is yet in him : I know 
 that I retain my friendship for you by what you have made me 
 suffer. 
 
 Addison. Entirely for your own good, I do protest, if you 
 could see it. 
 
 Steele. Alas ! all our sufferings are so ; the only mischief is, 
 that we have no organs for perceiving it. 
 
 jiddison. You reason well, my worthy sir ; and, relying on 
 your kindness in my favor (for every man has enemies, and 
 those mostly who serve their friends best), — I say, Dick, on 
 these considerations, since you never broke your word with me, 
 and since I am certain you would be sorry it were known that 
 only fourscore pounds' worth could be found in the house, I 
 renounce for the present the twenty yet wanting. Do not beat 
 about for an answer ; say not one word ; farewell ! 
 
 Steele. Ah ! could not that cold heart,* often and long as 
 I reposed on it, bring me to my senses? I have indeed been 
 drunken ; but it is hard to awaken in such heaviness as this 
 of mine is. I shared his poverty with him : I never aimed to 
 share his prosperity. Well, well ; I cannot break old habits : 
 I love my glass ; I love Addison. Each will partake in killing 
 me. Why cannot I see him again in the arm-chair, his right 
 hand upon his heart under the fawn-colored waistcoat, his brow 
 erect and clear as his conscience ; his wig even and composed as 
 his temper, with measurely curls and antithetical top-knots, like 
 his style ; the calmest poet, the most quiet patriot : dear Addison ! 
 drunk, deliberate, moral, sentimental, foaming over with truth 
 and virtue, with tenderness and friendship, and only the worse in 
 one rufHe for the wine. 
 
 * Doubts are now entertained whether the character of Addison is 
 fairly represented by Pope and Johnson. It is better to make this state- 
 ment than to omit a Conversation which had appeared elsewhere. 
 
356 lamginary Conversations. 
 
 XXI. LA FONTAINE AND DE LA ROCHEFOU- 
 CAULT.i 
 
 La Fontaine. I am truly sensible of the honor I receive, 
 M. de la Rochefoucault, in a visit from a personage so dis- 
 tingvdshed 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, — aplenty 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 care- 
 lessly 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 afficted 
 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 
 
 [1 The date of this Conversation, which is strictly " Imaginary," can 
 be fixed. In 1679 La Fontaine went to Court to present a copy of his 
 works to the King, and forgot the book. Rochefoucault died in the 
 year 1680. The Conversation is one of the best. Both the characters 
 are well kept up, and there is very little Theology. (Works, ii., 1846. 
 ■Works, v., 1876.)] 
 
La Fontcdne and La Rochef'oucault. 357 
 
 a pinch of snuff, opened his waistcoat, drew down his niffles, 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 gray 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 color 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. 
 
358 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 La Fontaine. I know little of the court, and less ot 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 eflfect 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 offen- 
 sive 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 favor 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 
 
La Fontaine and La Rochefoucault. 359 
 
 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 elert 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 every thing 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^re 
 exhibited a remarkable proof of it. 
 
 La Fontaine. Ah, poor MoKre ! the best man in the 
 world ; but flighty, negligent, thoughtless. He throws him- 
 self 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. 
 
360 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 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 Moli^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 fleur-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 any 
 thing like absence of mind, he returned to his bed-room, 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 per- 
 plexed 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 
 
La Fontaine and La Rochefoucault. 36 1 
 
 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 ; every thing 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 ! — Allans 1 we are 
 out of danger. 
 
 La Fontaine. Delightful ! I have him before my eyes. 
 What simplicity ! ay, 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; ay, M. 
 de la Rochefoucault ? But, on the stage or oflF, all is natural in 
 Moli^re. 
 
 Rochefoucault. Away he went. He reached the palace, 
 stood before die Dauphin. — Oh, consternation ! Oh, despair ! 
 " Morbleu ! bete que je suis," exclaimed the hapless man, " le 
 livre, oil done 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 Rochefou- 
 cault, 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 tip-top of comedy. 
 Excuse my flashes and dashes and rushes of merriment. In- 
 
362 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 controllable ! 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 fidler 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, al- 
 together, 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 adven- 
 ture of my innocent, honest friend, Moli^re, seemed to have befallen 
 myself. I can only account for it by having heard the tale when 
 I was half-asleep. 
 
 Rochefaucault. Nothing more probable. 
 
 La Fontaine. You absolutely have relieved me from an in- 
 cubus. 
 
 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 Dau- 
 phin, that I myself had come into his presence,* had fallen on 
 my knee, and cried, " Peste ! ou est done 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 affeirs ; but, hear- 
 ing that you have spoken favorably 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 
 * This happened. 
 
La Fontaine and La Rochefoucault. 363 
 
 favor 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 English- 
 man, M. 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 agiee 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 naturally bad. Badness is acci- 
 dental, 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. 
 L.ife 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 as 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 M. 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. 
 
364 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Rochefoucauk. 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 colors, 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. 
 
 Rochefoucauk. 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. M. 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, tliey soon desseminate abroad 
 again ; what the laws take, they hoard. The thief takes a part 
 of your property ; he who prosecutes the thief for you takes an- 
 other 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. 
 
La Fontaine and La Rochefoucault. 365 
 
 Rochefoucauh. 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 supine- 
 ness, 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 inclosure-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. M. 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 is one thing; a sound philosopher is another. 
 
366 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 I admire your power and precision. Monks wiU 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 exami- 
 nation, without thought. The nearest resemblance in opinions, 
 if we could trace every line of it, would be found gi-eatly 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 
 
La Fontaine and La Rochefoucault. 367 
 
 similar to those of others ; but in many I shall be gratified if, 
 by just degrees and after a long survey, those of others approxi- 
 mate 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 
 favor, — but it springs from a natural §nd 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 tp him at what passes 
 he hath deviated from his true interest, and where he hath 
 mistaken selfishness for generosity, coldness for judgment, con- 
 traction 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 
 assaUant who is not of too slender a make to be detained an hour 
 in the stocks he has 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 labor 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 
 
368 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 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 OJjices 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 any thing 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 am- 
 bitious 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 
 
La Fontaine and La Rochefoucault. 369 
 
 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 incontro- 
 vertible 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 Hkely to compute 
 ill his own vigor 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 ? 
 
 IV. 2 A 
 
2,yo Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Rochefoucauk. 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 ! 
 
 Rochefoucauk. 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 langmdly, 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 neighborhood in the discussion of their 
 private causes ; they quarrel and fight on small motives, such as a 
 little bad food, or a little vain-glory, 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 exer- 
 tion just sufficient, and no more. In regard to honor 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 
 
La Fontaine and La Rochefoucault, 371 
 
 out a-hiinting, 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 trast 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 curi- 
 osity would turn, are intercepted from it by the policy of our 
 
372 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 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 civi- 
 lized, while on the dress of a courtier is hung the instrument of 
 a cut-throat. How deplorably feeble must be that honor 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 any thing 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 die squirrel are dominant there. Whenever I have 
 a mind for a filbert, I have only to shake my foretop. Improve- 
 ment does not end in that quarter. I might forget to take my 
 
La Fontaine and La Rochefoucault. 373 
 
 pinch of snuft 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 loophole 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 uulities. 
 We pray the more commodiously, and of course the more fre- 
 quendy, 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 trufler ? 
 
 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-color 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. 
 
374 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 XXII. MELANCTHON AND CALVIN.i 
 
 Cahin. Are you sure, O Melancthon, that you yourself are 
 among the elect ? 
 
 Melancthon. My dear brother, so please it God, I would 
 rather be among the many. 
 
 Cahin. Of the damned ? 
 
 Melancthon. Alas! no. But I am inclined to believe that 
 the many will be saved and will be happy, since Christ came into 
 the world for the redemption of sinners. 
 
 Cahin. Hath not our Saviour said explicitly that many are 
 called, but few chosen ? 
 
 Melancthon. Our Saviour ? — hath he said it ? 
 
 Cahin. Hath he, forsooth! Where is your New Testa- 
 ment? 
 
 Melancthon. In my heart. 
 
 Cahin. Without this page, however. 
 
 Melancthon. When we are wiser and more docile, that is, 
 when we are above the jars and turmoils and disputations of the 
 world, — our Saviour will vouchsafe to interpret what, through 
 the fumes of our intemperate vanity, is now indistinct or dark. 
 He will plead for us before no inexorable judge. He came to 
 remit the sins of man ; not the sins of a few, but of many ; not 
 the sins of many, but of all. 
 
 Cahin. What ! of the benighted heathen too ? — of the 
 pagan ? of the idolater ? 
 
 Melancthon. I hope so ; but I dare not say it. 
 
 Cahin. You would include even the negligent, the indif- 
 ferent, the sceptic, the unbeliever. 
 
 Melancthon. Pitying them for a want of happiness in a want 
 of faith. They are my brethren ; they are God's children. He 
 will pardon the presumption of my wishes for their welfare ; my 
 sorrow that they have fallen, some through their blindness, others 
 through their deafness, others through their terror, others through 
 their anger peradventure at the loud denunciations of unforgiving 
 man. If I would forgive a brother, may not he, who is im- 
 
 [1 Works, ii., 1846. Works, v., 1876.] 
 
Melancthon and Calvin. 375 
 
 measurably better and more merciful, have pity on a child ? He 
 came on earth to take our nature upon him : will he punish, will 
 he reprehend us, for an attempt to take as much as may be of his 
 upon ourselves? 
 
 Cahin. There is no bearing any such fallacies. 
 
 Melancthon. Is it harder to bear these fallacies (as they 
 appear to you, and perhaps are, for we all are fallible, and many 
 even of our best thoughts are fallacies), — is it harder, O my 
 friend, to bear these, than to believe in the eternal punishment of 
 the erroneous I 
 
 Cahin. Erroneous, indeed ! Have they not the Book of 
 Life, now at last laid open before them, for their guidance ? 
 
 Melancthon. No, indeed ; they have only two or three places, 
 dog-eared and bedaubed, which they are commanded to look into 
 and study. These are so uninviting that many close again the 
 volume of salvation, clasp it tight, and throw it back in our faces. 
 
 I would rather show a man green fields than gibbets ; and, if 
 I called him to enter the service of a plenteous house and power- 
 ful master, he may not be rendered the more willing to enter it 
 by my pointing out to him the stocks in the gateway, and telling 
 him that nine-tenths of the household, however orderly, must 
 occupy that position. The book of good news, under your in- 
 terpretation, tells people not only that they may go and be damned, 
 but that, unless they are lucky, they must inevitably. Again, it 
 informs another set of inquirers that, if once they have been under 
 what they feel to be the influence of grace, they never can 
 relapse. All must go well who have once gone well ; and a 
 name once written in the list of favorites can never be erased. 
 
 Calvin. This is certain. 
 
 Melancthon. Let us hope, then, and in holy confidence let 
 us believe, that the book is large and voluminous ; that it 
 begins at an early date of man's existence ; and that, amid 
 the agitation of inquiry, it comprehends the humble and sub- 
 missive doubter. For doubt itself, between the richest patrimony 
 and utter destitution, is quite sufficiently painful ; and surely it is 
 a hardship to be turned over into a criminal court for having lost 
 in a civil one. But if all who have once gone right can never go 
 astray, how happens it that so large a part of the angels fell off 
 from their allegiance ? They were purer and wiser than we are, 
 
'i,']6 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 and had the advantage of seeing God face to face. They were the 
 ministers of his power ; they knew its extent, yet they defied it. 
 If we err, it is in relying too confidently on his mercies, not in 
 questioning his omnipotence. If our hopes forsake us, if the 
 bonds of sin bruise and corrode us, so that we cannot walk up- 
 right, there is, in the midst of these calamities, no proof that we 
 are utterly lost. Danger far greater is there in the presumption 
 of an especial favor, which men incomparably better than ourselves 
 can never have deserved. Let us pray, O Calvin, that we may 
 hereafter be happier than our contentions and animosities will 
 permit us to be at present ; and that our opponents, whether now 
 in the right or in the wrong, may come at last where all error 
 ceases. 
 
 Cdniin. I am uncertain whether such a wish is rational ; and 
 I doubt more whether it is religious. God hath willed them to 
 walk in their blindness. To hope against it, seems like repining 
 at his unalterable decree, — a weak indulgence in an unpermitted 
 desire ; an imholy entreaty of the heart that he will forego his 
 vengeance, and abrogate the law that was from the beginning. Of 
 one thing I am certain : we must lop off the unsound. 
 
 Melancthon. What a curse hath metaphor been to religion ! 
 It is the wedge that holds asunder the two great portions of the 
 Christian world. We hear of nothing so commonly as fire and 
 sword. And here, indeed, what was metaphor is converted into 
 substance and applied to practice. The unsoundness of doctrine 
 is not cut off nor cauterised ; the professor is. The head falls on 
 the scaffold, or fire surrounds the stake, because a doctrine is 
 bloodless and incombustible. Fierce, outrageous animals, for 
 want of the man who has escaped them, lacerate and trample his 
 cloak or bonnet. This, although the work of brutes, is not half 
 so brutal as the practice of theologians, — seizing the man himself, 
 instead of bonnet or cloak. 
 
 Calvin. We must leave such matters to the magistrate. 
 
 Melancthon. Let us instruct the magistrate in his duty : this 
 is ours. Unless we can teach humanity, we may resign the charge 
 of religion. For fifteen centuries, Christianity has been conveyed 
 into many houses, in many cities, in many regions, but always 
 through slender pipes ; and never yet into any great reservoir in 
 any part of the earth. Its principal ordinances have never been 
 
Melancthon and Calvin. 377 
 
 observed in the polity of any State whatever. Abstinence from 
 spoliation, from oppression, from bloodshed, has never been incul- 
 cated by the chief priests of any. These two facts excite the 
 doubts of many in regard to a Divine origin and a Divine pro- 
 tection. Wherefore, it behooves us the more especially to preach 
 forbearance. If the people are tolerant one toward another in the 
 same country, they will become tolerant in time toward those 
 whom rivers or seas have separated from them. For, surely, it is 
 strange and wonderfiil that nations which are near enough for 
 hostility should never be near enough for concord. This arises 
 from bad government; and bad government arises from a negligent 
 choice of counsellors by the prince, usually led or terrified by a 
 corrupt, ambitious, wealthy (and therefore un-Christian) priest- 
 hood. While their wealth lay beyond the visible horizon, they 
 tarried at the cottage, instead of pricking on for the palace. 
 
 Calvin. By the grace and help of God, we will turn them 
 back again to their quiet and wholesome resting-place, before the 
 people lay a rough hand upon the silk. 
 
 But you evaded my argument on predestination. 
 Melancthon. Our blessed Lord himself, in his last hours, ven- 
 tured to express a wish before his Heavenly Father that the bitter 
 cup might pass away from him. I humbly dare to implore that a 
 cup much bitterer may be removed from the great body of man- 
 kind, — a cup containing the poison of eternal punishment, where 
 agony succeeds to agony, but never death. 
 Calvin. I come armed with the gospel. 
 
 Melancthon. Tremendous weapon ! — as we have seen it through 
 many ages, if man virields it against man ; but, like the fabled spear 
 of old mythology, endued with the faculty of healing the saddest 
 wound its most violent wielder can inflict. Obscured and rusting 
 with the blood upon it, let us hasten to take it up again, and apply 
 it, as best we may, to its appointed uses. 
 
 The life of our Saviour is the simplest exposition of his 
 words. Strife is what he both discountenanced and forbade. 
 We ourselves are right-minded, each of us all ; and others are 
 right-minded in proportion as they agree with us, chiefly in 
 matters which we insist are well worthy of our adherence, but 
 which whosoever refuses to embrace displays a factious and 
 un-Christian spirit. These for the most part are matters which 
 
^y8 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 neither they nor we understand, and which, if we did under- 
 stand them, would little profit us. The weak will be supported 
 by the strong, if they can ; if they cannot, they are ready to be 
 supported even by the weaker, and cry out against the strong as 
 arrogant or negligent, or deaf or blind ; at last, even their strength 
 is questioned, and the more if, while there is fury all around 
 them, they are quiet. 
 
 I remember no discussion on religion in which religion was not 
 a sufferer by it, if mutual forbearance and belief in another's good 
 motives and intentions are (as I must always think they are) its 
 proper and necessary appurtenances. 
 
 Calmn. Would you never make inquiries ? 
 
 Melancthon. Yes, and as deep as possible : but into my own 
 heart ; for that belongs to me, and God hath entrusted it most 
 especially to my own superintendence. 
 
 Calmn. We must also keep others from going astray by 
 showing them the right road, and, if they are obstinate in 
 resistance, then by coercing and chastising them through the 
 magistrate. 
 
 Melancthon. It is sorrowful to dream that we are scourges 
 in God's hand, and that he appoints for us no better work than 
 lacerating one another. I am no enemy to inquiry where I see 
 abuses, and where I suspect falsehood. The Romanists, our 
 great oppressors, think it presumptuous to search into things 
 abstruse ; and let us do them the justice to acknowledge that, 
 if it is a fault, it is one which they never commit. But 
 surely we are kept sufficiently in the dark by the infirmity of 
 our nature : no need to creep into a corner and put our hands 
 before our eyes. To throw away or turn aside from God's 
 best gifts is verily a curious sign of obedience and submission. 
 He not only hath given us a garden to walk in ; but he hath 
 planted it also for us, and he wills us to know the nature and 
 properties of every thing that grows up within it. Unless we 
 look into them and handle them and register them, how shall we 
 discover this to be salutaiy, that to be poisonous ; this annual, 
 that perennial ? 
 
 Calmn. Here we coincide ; and I am pleased to find ia 
 you less apathy than I expected. It becomes us, moreover, to 
 denounce God's vengeance on a sinful world. 
 
Melancthon and Calvin. 379 
 
 Melancthon. Is it not better and pleasanter to show the 
 wanderer by what course of life it may be avoided ? Is it not 
 better and pleasanter to enlarge on God's promises of salvation, 
 than to insist on his denunciations of wrath ? Is it not better 
 and pleasanter to lead the wretched up to his mercy-seat, than 
 to hurl them by thousands under his fiery chariot ? 
 
 Calvin. We have no option. By our Heavenly Father 
 many are called, but few are chosen. 
 
 Melancthon. There is scarcely a text in the Holy Scriptures 
 to which there is not an opposite text, written in characters 
 equally large and legible ; and there has usually been a sword 
 laid upon each. Even the weakest disputant is made so con- 
 ceited by what he calls religion, as to think himself wiser than 
 the wisest who thinks differently from him ; and he becomes so 
 ferocious by what he calls holding it fast, that he appears to me 
 as if he held it fast much in the same manner as a terrier holds 
 a rat, and you have about as much trouble in getting it from 
 between his incisors. When at last it does come out, it is 
 mangled, distorted, and extinct. 
 
 Cal-oin. M. Melancthon, you have taken a very perverse 
 view of the subject. Such language as yours would extinguish 
 that zeal which is to enlighten the nations, and to consume the 
 tares by which they are overrun. 
 
 Melancthon. The tares and the com are so intermingled 
 throughout the wide plain which our God hath given us to 
 cultivate, that I would rather turn the patient and humble into 
 it to weed it carefully, than a thresher who would thresh wheat 
 and tare together before the grain is ripened, or who would 
 carry fire into the furrows when it is. 
 
 Calvin. Yet even the most gentle, and of the gentler sex, are 
 inflamed with a holy zeal in the propagation of the faith. 
 
 Melancthon. I do not censure them for their earnestness 
 ia maintaining truth. We not only owe our birth to them, 
 but also the better part of our education ; and, if we were not 
 divided after their first lesson, we should continue to live in a 
 widening circle of brothers and sisters all our lives. After our 
 infancy and removal from home, the use of the rod is the 
 principal thing we learn of our alien preceptors ; and, catching 
 their dictatorial language, we soon begin to exercise their instru- 
 
380 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 ment of enforcing it, and swing it right and left, even after we are 
 paralyzed by age, and until death's hand strikes it out of ours. I 
 am sorry you have cited the gentler part of the creation to appear 
 before you, obliged as I am to bear witness that I myself have 
 known a few specimens of the fair sex become a shade less fair 
 among the perplexities of religion. Indeed, I am credibly 
 informed that certain of them have lost their patience, running up 
 and down in the dust where many roads diverge. This, surely, is 
 not walking humbly with their God, nor walking with him at all ; 
 for those who walk with him are always readier to hear his voice 
 than their own, and to admit that it is more persuasive. But at 
 last the zealot is so infatuated, by the serious mockeries he imitates 
 and repeats, that he really takes his own voice for God's. Is it 
 not wonderful that the words of eternal life should have hitherto 
 produced only eternal litigation ; and that, in our progress heaven- 
 ward, we should think it expedient to plant unthrifty thorns over 
 bitter wells of blood in the wilderness we leave behind us ? 
 
 Calvin. It appears to me that you are inclined to tolerate even 
 the rank idolatry of our persecutors. Shame ! shame ! 
 
 Melancthon. Greater shame if I tolerated it within my 
 own dark heart, and waved before it the foul incense of self- 
 love. 
 
 Calvin. I do not understand you. What I do understand is 
 this, and deny it at your peril, — I mean at the peril of your 
 salvation, — that God is a jealous God : he himself declares it. 
 
 Melancthon. We are in the habit of considering the God of 
 Nature as a jealous God, and idolatry as an enormous evil, — an 
 evil which is about to come back into the world, and to subdue 
 or seduce once more our strongest and most sublime affections. 
 Why do you lift up your eyes and hands ? 
 
 Calvin. An evil about to come back ! — about to come ! Do 
 we not find it in high places ? 
 
 Melancthon. We do indeed, and always shall, while there are 
 any high places upon earth. Thither will men creep, and there 
 fall prostrate. 
 
 Calvin. Against idolatry we still implore the Almighty that 
 he will incline our hearts to keep his law. 
 
 Melancthon. The Jewish law ; the Jewish idolatry : you fear 
 the approach of this, and do not suspect the presence of a worse. 
 
Melancthon and Calvin. 38 1 
 
 Calvin. A worse than that which the living God hath 
 denounced ? 
 
 Melancthon. Even so. 
 
 Cahin. Would it not offend, would it not wound to the 
 quick, a mere human creature, to be likened to a piece of metal 
 or stone, a calf or monkey ? 
 
 Melancthon. A mere human creature might be angry ; because 
 his influence among his neighbours arises in great measure from 
 the light in which he appears to them ; and this light does not 
 emanate from himself, but may be thrown on him by any hand 
 that is expert at mischief. Beside, the likeness of such animals to 
 him could never be suggested by reverence or esteem, nor be 
 regarded as a type of any virtne. The mere human creature, 
 such as human creatures for the most part are, would be angry ; 
 because he has nothing which he can oppose to ridicule but resent- 
 ment. 
 
 Calvin. I am in consternation at your lukewarmness. If you 
 treat idolaters thus lightly, what hope can I entertain of discussing 
 with you the doctrine of grace and predestination ? 
 
 Melancthon. Entertain no such hope at all. Wherever I 
 find in the Holy Scriptures a disputable doctrine, I interpret it as 
 judges do, in favor of the culprit ; such is man. The benevolent 
 judge is God. But, in regard to idolatry, I see more criminals 
 who are guilty of it than you do. I go beyond the stone-quarry 
 and the pasture, beyond the graven image and the ox-stall. If 
 we bow before the distant image of good, while there exists with- 
 in our reach one solitary object of substantial sorrow, which 
 sorrow our efforts can remove, we are guilty (I pronounce it) of 
 idolatry : we prefer the intangible effigy to the living form. 
 Surely we neglect the service of our Maker, if we neglect his 
 children. He left us in the chamber with them, to take care of 
 them, to feed them, to admonish them, and occasionally to amuse 
 them ; instead of which, after a warning not to run into the fire, 
 we slam the door behind us in their faces, and run eagerly down- 
 stairs to dispute and quarrel with our fellows of the household 
 who are about their business. The wickedness of idolatry does 
 not consist in any inadequate representation of the Deity ; for, 
 whether our hands or our hearts represent him, the representation 
 is almost alike inadequate. Every man does what he hopes and 
 
382 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 believes will be most pleasing to his God ; and God, in his 
 wisdom and mercy, will not punish gratitude in its error. 
 
 Cah'tn. How do you know that ? 
 
 Melancthon. Because I know his loving-kindness, and ex- 
 perience it daily. 
 
 Calvin. If men blindly and wilfully run into error when God 
 hath shown the right way, be will visit it on their souls. 
 
 Melancthon. He will observe from the serenity of heaven — 
 a serenity emanating from his presence — that there is scarcely 
 any work of his creation on earth which hath not excited, in 
 some people or other, a remembrance, an admiration, a symbol, 
 of his power. The evil of idolatry is this : Rival nations have 
 raised . up rival deities ; war hath been denounced in the name 
 of Heaven ; men have been murdered for the love of God ; and 
 such impiety hath darkened all the regions of the world, that the 
 Lord of all things hath been invoked by all simultaneously as the 
 Lord of hosts. This is the only invocation in which men of 
 every creed are united, — an invocation to which Satan, bent on 
 the perdition of the human race, might have listened from the 
 fallen angels. 
 
 Calvin. We cannot hope to purify men's hearts until we lead 
 them away from the abomination of Babylon ; nor will they be 
 led away from it until we reduce the images to dust. So long 
 as they stand, the eye will hanker after them, and the spirit be 
 corrupt. 
 
 Melancthon. And long afterward, I sadly fear. 
 
 We attribute to the weakest of men the appellations and powers 
 of Deity ; we fall down before them ; we call the impious and 
 cruel by the title of gracious and most religious : and, even in the 
 house of God himself, and before his very altar, we split his 
 Divine Majesty asunder, and offer the largest part to the most 
 corrupt and most corrupting of his creatures. 
 
 Calvin. Not we, M. Melancthon. I will preach, I will 
 exist, in no land of such abomination. 
 
 Melancthon. So far, well ; but religion demands more. Our 
 reformers knock off the head from Jupiter : thunderbolt and 
 sceptre stand. The attractive, the impressive, the august, they 
 would annihilate ; leaving men nothing but their sordid fears of 
 vindictive punishment, and their impious doubts of our Saviour's 
 promises. 
 
Melancthon and Calvin. 383 
 
 Calvin. We should teach men to retain for ever the fear 
 ot God before their eyes, never to cease from the apprehension 
 of his wrath, to be well aware that he often afflicts when he is 
 farthest from wrath, and that such infliction is a benefit bestowed 
 by him. 
 
 Melancthon. What ! if only a few are to be saved when the 
 infliction is over ? 
 
 Calvin. It becometh not us to repine at the number of vessels 
 which the supremely wise Artificer forms, breaks, and casts away, 
 or at the paucity it pleaseth him to preserve. The ways of 
 Providence are inscrutable. 
 
 Melancthon. Some of them are, and some of them are not ; 
 and in these it seems to be his design that we should see and 
 adore his wisdom. We fancy that all our inflictions are sent us 
 directly and immediately from above : sometimes we think it in 
 piety and contrition, but oftener in moroseness and discontent. 
 It would, however, be well if we attempted to trace the causes of 
 them. We should probably find their origin in some region of 
 the heart which we never had well explored, or in which we had 
 secretly deposited our worst indulgences. The clouds that inter- 
 cept the heavens from us come not from the heavens, but from 
 the earth. 
 
 Why should we scribble our own devices over the Book of 
 God, erasing the plainest words, and rendering the Holy Scrip- 
 tures a worthless palimpsest ? Cannot we agree to show the 
 nations of the world that the whole of Christianity is practicable, 
 although the better parts never have been practised, no— not even 
 by the priesthood — in any single one of them ? Bishops, con- 
 fessors, saints, martyrs, have never denounced to king or people, 
 nor ever have attempted to delay or mitigate, the most accursed 
 of crimes, the crime of Cain, — the crime indeed whereof Cain's 
 was only a germ, — the crime of fratricide ; war, war, devastating, 
 depopulating, soul-slaughtering, heaven-defying war. Alas ! the 
 gentle call of mercy sounds feebly, and soon dies away, leaving 
 no trace on the memory : but the swelling cries of vengeance, in 
 which we believe we imitate the voice of Heaven, run and rever- 
 berate in loud peals and multiplied echoes along the whole vault 
 of the brain. All the man is shaken by them ; and he shakes all 
 the earth. 
 
384 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Calvin ! I beseech you, do you who guide and govern so 
 many, do you (whatever others may) spare your brethren. 
 Doubtful as I am of lighter texts, blown backward and forward 
 at the opening of opposite windows, I am convinced and certain 
 of one grand immovable verity. It sounds strange ; it sounds 
 contradictory. 
 
 Calvin. I am curious to hear it. 
 
 Melancthon. You shall. This is the tenet : There is nothing 
 on earth divine beside humanity. 
 
 XXIII. GALILEO, MILTON, AND A 
 DOMINICAN.i 
 
 Milton. Friend ! let me pass. 
 
 Dominican. Whither ? To whom ? 
 
 Milton. Into the prison ; to Galileo Galilei. 
 
 Dominican. Prison ! We have no prison. 
 
 Milton. No prison here ! What sayest thou ? 
 
 Dominican. Son ! For heretical pravity indeed, and some 
 other less atrocious crimes, we have a seclusion, a confinement, a 
 penitentiary : we have a locality for softening the obdurate, and 
 furnishing them copiously with reflection and recollection ; but 
 prison we have none. 
 
 Milton. Open ! 
 
 Dominican {to himself). What sweetness! what authority! 
 what a form ! what an attitude I what a voice ! 
 
 Milton. Open ! Delay me no longer. 
 
 Dominican. In whose name ? 
 
 Milton. In the name of humanity and of God. 
 
 Dominican. My sight staggers ; the walls shake ; he must be 
 — do angels ever come hither ? 
 
 Milton. Be reverent, and stand apart. \To Galileo.'] Pardon 
 me, sir, an intrusion. 
 
 [' At the date of Milton's journey into Italy, Galileo had been for some 
 time free from actual imprisonment. He was living at Arcetri, near 
 Florence. His blindness was just become complete. (Works, ii., 1846. 
 Works, v., 1876.)] 
 
Galileo, Milton, and a Dominican. 385 
 
 Galileo. Young man ! if I may judge by your voice and 
 manner, you are litde apt to ask pardon or to want it. I am as 
 happy at hearing you as you seem unhappy at seeing me. I per- 
 ceive at once that you are an Englishman. 
 
 Milton, I am. 
 
 Galileo. Speak, then, freely ; and I will speak freely, too. In 
 no other man's presence, for these many years, — indeed, from my 
 very childhood, — have I done it. 
 
 Milton. Sad fate for any man ! most sad for one like you ! — 
 the follower of truth, the companion of reason in her wanderings 
 on earth ! 
 
 Galileo. We live among priests and princes and empoisoners. 
 Your dog, by his growling, seems to be taking up the quarrel 
 against them. 
 
 Milton. We think and feel alike in many things. I have 
 observed that the horses and dogs of every country bear a resem- 
 blance in character to the men. We English have a wonderful 
 variety of both creatures. To begin with the horses : some are 
 remarkable for strength, others for spirit ; while in France there 
 is little diversity of race, — all are noisy and windy, skittish and 
 mordacious, prancing and libidinous, fit only for a rope, and fond 
 only of a ribbon. Where the ribbon is not to be had, the jowl 
 of a badger will do : any thing but what is native to the creature 
 is a decoration. In Flanders, you find them slow and safe, tract- 
 able and substantial. In Italy, there are few good for work, none 
 for battle ; many for light carriages, for standing at doors, and for 
 every kind of street-work. 
 
 Galileo. Do let us get among the dogs. 
 
 Milton. In France, they are finely combed and pert and 
 pettish ; ready to bite if hurt, and to fondle if carressed ; without 
 fear, without animosity, without affection. In Italy, they creep 
 and shiver and rub their skins against you, and insinuate their 
 slender beaks into the patronage of your hand, and lick it, and 
 look up modestly, and whine decorously, and supplicate with 
 grace. The moment you give them anything, they grow impor- 
 tunate ; and, the moment you refuse them, they bite. In Spain 
 and England, the races are similar ; so, indeed, are those of the 
 men. Spaniards are Englishmen in an ungrafted state, — however, 
 with this great difference, that the English have ever been the 
 
 IV. 2 B 
 
386 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 least cruel of nations, excepting the Swedes ; and the Spaniards 
 
 the most cruel, excepting the French. Then they were, under 
 
 one and the same religion, the most sanguinary and sordid of all 
 
 the institutions that ever pressed upon mankind. 
 
 Galileo. To the dogs, to the dogs again, be they of what 
 
 breed they may ! 
 
 Milton. The worst of them could never have driven you up 
 
 into this corner, merely because he had been dreaming, and you 
 
 had disturbed his dream. How long shall this endure ? 
 
 Galileo. I sometimes ask God how long. I should 
 
 repine, and almost despair, in putting the question to myself or 
 
 another. 
 
 Milton. Be strong in him through reason, his great gift. 
 Galileo. I fail not, and shall not fail. I can fancy that the 
 
 heaviest link in my heavy chain has dropped off me since you 
 
 entered. 
 
 Milton. Let me, then, praise our God for it ! Not those 
 alone are criminal who placed you here, but those no less who 
 left unto them the power of doing it. If the learned and 
 intelligent in all the regions of Europe would unite their learning 
 and intellect, and would exert their energy in disseminating the 
 truth throughout the countries they inhabit, soon must the 
 ignorant and oppressive, now at the summit of power, resign their 
 offices ; and the most versatile nations, after this purifying and 
 perfect revolution, rest for ages. But, bursting from their 
 collegiate kennels, they range and hunt only for their masters ; 
 and are content at last to rear up and catch the offal thrown 
 among them negligently, and often too with scourges on their 
 cringing spines, as they scramble for it. Do they run through 
 mire and thorns, do they sweat from their tongues' ends, do they 
 breathe out blood, for this ? The Dominican is looking in ; not 
 to interrupt us, I hope, for my idle exclamation. 
 
 Galileo. Continue to speak generously, rationally, and in 
 Latin ; and he will not understand one sentence. The fellow is 
 the most stupid, the most superstitious, the most hard-hearted, and 
 the most libidinous in the confraternity. He is usually at my 
 door, that he may not be at others', where he would be more in 
 the way of his superiors. You Englishmen are inclined to 
 melancholy ; but what makes you so very grave, so much graver 
 than before ? 
 
Galileo, Milton, and a Dominican. 387 
 
 Milton. I hardly know which is more afflicting, — to hear 
 the loudest expression of intolerable anguish from the weak who 
 are sinking under it, or to witness an aged and venerable man 
 bearing up against his sufferings with unshaken constancy. And, 
 alas, tliat blindness should consummate your sufferings ! 
 
 Galileo. There are worse evils than blindness, and the best 
 men suffer most by them. The spirit of liberty, now rising up in 
 your country, will excite a blind enthusiasm, and leave behind a 
 bitter disappointment. Vicious men will grow popular, and the 
 interests of the nation will be entrusted to them ; because 
 they descend from their station in order, as they say, to serve 
 you. 
 
 Milton. Profligate impostors ? We know there are such 
 among us ; but truth shall prevail against them. 
 
 Galileo. In argument, truth always prevails finally ; in politics, 
 falsehood always : else would never States fall into decay. Even 
 good men, if indeed good men will ever mix with evil ones for 
 any purpose, take up the trade of politics, at first intending to deal 
 honestly ; the calm bower of the conscience is soon converted 
 into the booth of inebriating popularity ; the shouts of the 
 multitude then grow unexciting, then indifferent, then trouble- 
 some ; lastly, the riotous supporters of the condescendent fall- 
 ing half-asleep, he looks agape in their faces, springs upon his 
 legs again, flings the door behind him, and escapes in the 
 livery of Power. When Satan would have led our Saviour into 
 temptation, he did not conduct him where the looser passions 
 were wandering ; he did not conduct him amid flowers and 
 herbage, where a faU would have only been a soilure to our frail 
 human nature : no, he led him up to an exceedingly high mountain, 
 and showed him palaces and towers and treasuries, knowing that 
 it was by those alone that he himself could have been so utterly 
 lost to rectitude and beatitude. Our Saviour spurned the tempta- 
 tion, and the greatest of his miracles was accomplished. After 
 which, even the father of lies never ventured to dispute his divine 
 natiire. 
 
 Dominican. I must not suffer you to argue on theology ; you 
 may pervert the young man. 
 
 Milton. In addition to confinement, must this fungus of 
 vapid folly stain your cell? If so, let me hope you have re- 
 
388 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 ceived the assurance that the terra of your imprisonment will be 
 short. 
 
 Galileo. It may be, or not, as God wills : it is for life. 
 
 Milton. For life ! 
 
 Galileo. Even so. I regret that I cannot go forth ; and my 
 depression is far below regret when I think that, if ever I should 
 be able to make a discovery, the world is never to derive the 
 benefit. I love the fields, and the country air, and the sunny sky, 
 and the starry ; and I could keep my temper when, in the midst 
 of my calculations, the girls brought me flowers from lonely 
 places, and asked me their names, and puzzled me. But now I 
 fear lest a compulsory solitude should have rendered me a little 
 moroser. And yet methinks I could bear again a stalk to be 
 thrown in my face, as a deceiver, for calling the blossom that 
 had been on it Andromeda ; and could pardon as easily as ever 
 a slap on the shoulder for my Ursa Major. Pleasant Arcetri ! 
 
 Milton. I often walk along its quiet lanes, somewhat too fiill 
 of the white eglantine in the narrower parts of them. They are 
 so long and pliant, a little wind is enough to blow them in the 
 face ; and they scratch as much as their betters. 
 
 Galileo. Pleasant Arcetri ! 
 
 Milton. The sigh that rises at the thought of a friend may be 
 almost as genial as his voice. 'Tis a breath that seems rather to 
 come from him than from ourselves. 
 
 Galileo. I sighed not at any thought of friendship. How 
 do I know that any friend is left me ? I was thinking that, in 
 those unfrequented lanes, the birds that were frightened could fly 
 away. Pleasant Arcetri ! Well : we (I mean those who are 
 not blind) can see the stars from all places ; we may know that 
 there are other worlds, and we may hope that there are happier. 
 So, then, you often walk to that village? 
 
 Milton. Oftener to Fiesole. 
 
 Galileo. You like Fiesole better ? 
 
 Milton. Must I confess it ? For a walk, I do. 
 
 Galileo. So did I, — so did I. What friends we are already ! 
 I made some observations from Fiesole. 
 
 Milton. I shall remember it on my return, and shall revisit 
 the scenery with fresh delight. Alas ! is this a promise I can 
 keep, when I must think of you here ? 
 
Galileo, Milton, and a Dominican. 389 
 
 GaUleo. My good, compassionate young man ! I am con- 
 cerned that my apartment allows you so little space to walk 
 about. 
 
 Milton. Could ever I have been guilty of such disrespect ! 
 
 sir, far remote, far beyond all others, is that sentiment from 
 my heart ! It swelled, and put every sinew of every limb into 
 motion, at your indignity. No, no ! Suffer me still to bend in 
 reverence and humility on this hand, now stricken with years and 
 with captivity ! — on diis hand, which science has followed, which 
 God himself has guided, and before which all the worlds above 
 us, in all their magnitudes and distances, have been thrown open. 
 
 Galileo. Ah, my too frienijly enthusiast ! may yours do more, 
 and with impunity. 
 
 Milton. At least, be it instrumental in removing from the 
 earth a few of her heaviest curses ; a few of her oldest and worst 
 impediments to liberty and wisdom, — mitres, tiaras, crowns, and 
 the trumpery whereon they rest. I know but two genera of 
 men, — the annual and the perennial. Those who die down, and 
 leave behind them no indication of the places whereon they grow, 
 are cognate with the gross matter about them ; those on the con- 
 trary, who, ages after their departure, are able to sustain the 
 lowliest, and to exalt the highest, — those are surely the spirits 
 of God, both when upon earth and when with him. What do 
 
 1 see, in letting fall die sleeve ? The scars and lacerations on 
 your arms show me that you have fought for your country. 
 
 GaUleo. I cannot claim that honor. Do not look at them. 
 My guardian may understand that. 
 
 Milton. Great God ! they are the marks of the torture ! 
 
 Galileo. My guardian may understand that likewise. Let us 
 converse about something else. 
 
 Milton. Italy ! Italy ! Italy ! drive thy poets into exile, into 
 prison, into maiiess ! — spare, spare thy one philosopher ! What 
 track can the mind pursue, in her elevations or her plains or her 
 recesses, without the dogging and prowling of the priesthood ? 
 
 Galileo. They have not done with me yet. A few days 
 ago they informed me that I was accused or suspected of 
 disbelieving the existence of devils. When I protested that in my 
 opinion there are almost as many devils as there are men, and that 
 eveiy wise man is the creator of hundreds at his first appearance. 
 
39° Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 they told me with much austerity and scornfulness of rebuke, that 
 this opinion is as heretical as the other ; and that we have no 
 authority from Scripture for believing that the complement ex- 
 ceeded some few legions, several of which were thinned and 
 broken by beating up their quarters, — thanks chiefly to the 
 Dominicans. I bowed, as became me ; for these are worthy 
 masters, and their superiors, the successors of Peter, would bum 
 us for teaching any thing untaught before. 
 
 Milton. They would burn you, then, for resembling the great 
 apostle himself? 
 
 Galileo. In what but denying the truth and wearing chams ? 
 
 Milton. Educated with such examples before them, literary 
 societies are scarcely more tolerant to the luminaries of imagina- 
 tion than theological societies are to the luminaries of science. I 
 myself, indeed, should hesitate to place Tasso on an equality, or 
 nearly on an equality, with Ariosto ; yet, since his pen hath been 
 excelled on the Continent by only two in sixteen centuries, he 
 might have expected more favor, more forbearance, than he found. 
 I was shocked at the impudence of his critics in this country : 
 their ignorance less surprised me.* 
 
 Galileo. Of yours I am unable to speak. 
 
 Milton. So much the better. 
 
 Galileo. Instead of it, you will allow me to express my ad- 
 miration of what (if I understand any thing) I understand. No 
 nation has produced any man, except Aristoteles, comparable to 
 either of the Bacons. The elder was the more wonderful ; the 
 later In season was the riper and the greater. Neither of them 
 told all he knew, or half he thought ; and each was alike prodigal 
 in giving, and prudent in withholding. The learning and genius 
 
 * Criticism is still very low in Italy. Tiraboschi has done little for it : 
 nothing can be less exact than his judgments on the poets. There is not 
 one remarkable sentence, or one happy expression, in all his volumes. 
 The same may be said of Abbate Cesarotti, and of the Signer Calsabigi, 
 who wrote on Alfieri. There is scarcely a glimpse of poetry in Alfieri; 
 yet his verses are tight-braced, and his strokes are animating, — not, indeed, 
 to the Signor Calsabigi. The Italians are grown more generous to their 
 literary men in proportion as they are grown poorer in them. Italy is 
 the only great division of Europe where there never hath existed a Review 
 bearing some authority or credit. These things do not greatly serve 
 literature ; but they rise from it, and show it. 
 
Galileo, Milton, and a Dominican. 391 
 
 of Francis led him onward to many things which his nobility and 
 stateliness disallowed. Hence was he like the leisurely and rich 
 agriculturist, who goeth out a-field after dinner, well knowing 
 where lie the nests and covies ; and in such idle hour throweth 
 his hat partly over them, and they clutter and run and rise 
 and escape from him without his heed, to make a louder whirr 
 thereafter, and a longer flight elsewhere. 
 
 Milton. I believe I have discovered no few inaccuracies in 
 his reasoning, voluntary or involuntary. But I apprehend he 
 committed them designedly, and that he wanted in wisdom but 
 the highest, — the wisdom of honesty. It is comfortable to escape 
 from him, and return again to Sorrento and Tasso. He should 
 have been hailed as the worthy successor, not scrutinized as the 
 presumptuous rival, of the happy Ferrarese. He was ingenious, 
 he was gentle, he was brave ; and what was the reward ? Did 
 cities contend for his residence within them ? Did princes throw 
 open their palaces at his approach ? Did academies send deputa- 
 tions to invite and solicit his attendance ? Did senators cast 
 branches of laurel under his horse's hoofs ? Did prelates and 
 princes hang tapestries from their windows, meet him at the gates, 
 and conduct him in triumph to the Capitol ? Instead of it, his 
 genius was derided, his friendship scorned, his love rejected ; he 
 lived despairingly, he died broken-hearted. 
 
 Galileo. My friend ! my friend ! you yourself in your language 
 are almost a poet. 
 
 Milton. I may be, in time to come. 
 
 Galileo. What ! with such an example before your eyes ? 
 Rather be a philosopher : you may be derided in this too ; but 
 you will not be broken-hearted. I am ashamed when I reflect 
 that the worst enemies of Torquato, pushing him rudely against 
 Ariosto, are to be found in Florence. 
 
 Milton. Be the difference what it may between them, your 
 academicians ought to be aware that the lowest of the animals are 
 nearer to the highest of them, than these highest are to the lowest 
 of those two. For in what greatly more do they benefit the 
 world than the animals do, or how much longer remain in the 
 memory of their species ? 
 
 Galileo. Little, very little ; and the same thing may be easily 
 proved of those whom they praise and venerate. My knowledge 
 
392 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 of poetry is narrow ; and, having little enthusiasm, I discover 
 faults where beauties escape me. I never would venture to say 
 before our Italians what 1 will confess to you. In reading the 
 Gerusalemme Liberata, I remarked that among the epithets the 
 poet is fondest of grande : I had remarked that Virgil is fondest 
 of alius. Now, we cannot make any thing greater or higher by 
 clapping these words upon it : where the substructure is not suf- 
 ficiently broad and solid, they will not stick. The first verses in 
 the Gerusalemme, for instance, are — 
 
 Canto le arme pietose e *1 capitano 
 Che il gran sepolcro libero di Cristo. 
 
 Surely, the poet would rather have had a great captain than a 
 great cenotaph. 
 
 Milton. He might have written, with a modester and less 
 sonorous exordium, — 
 
 Canto le arme pietose e '1 capitano, 
 Lui che il sepolcro libero di Cristo. 
 
 Galileo. It would not have done for our people, either the 
 unlearned or learned. They must have high, gigantic, immense ,■ 
 they must have ebony, gold, azure; they must have honey, 
 sugar, cinnamon, as regularly in their places as blue-lettered 
 jars, full or empty, are found in apothecaries' shops. Dante 
 and Ariosto, different as they are, equally avoided these sweet 
 viscidities. I wish you would help me to exonerate Tasso 
 from the puffy piece of impediment at the beginning of his 
 march. 
 
 Milton. Let us imagine that he considered all Jerusalem as 
 the sepulchre of Christ. 
 
 Galileo. No friend or countryman hath said it for him. We 
 will accept it, and go on. Our best histories, excepting Giovio's 
 and Davila's, contain no picture, no character, no passion, no 
 eloquence ; and Giovio's is partial and faithless. Criticism is 
 more verbose and less logical here than among the French, the 
 Germans, and the Dutch. 
 
 Milton. Let us return to Ariosto and Tasso, who, whatever 
 the academicians may gabble in their assemblies, have delighted 
 the most cultivated minds, and will delight them for incalculable 
 ages. 
 
Essex and Spenser. 393 
 
 Galileo. An academician, a dunghill-cock, and a worm do 
 indeed form a triangle more nearly equilateral than an academician, 
 a Lodovico, and a Torquato. The Dominican is listening yet. 
 Behold, he comes in ! 
 
 Dominican. Young gentleman, I did not suspect, when you 
 entered, that you would ever talk about authors whose writings 
 are prohibited. Ariosto is obscene. I have heard the same of 
 Tasso, in some part or other. 
 
 Milton. Prythee, begone ! 
 
 Dominican. We retire together. 
 
 Galileo. It would be better to leave me, if he urges it ; 
 otherwise I may never expect again the pleasure I have received 
 to-day. 
 
 Dominican. Signor Galileo, do you talk of pleasure to young 
 persons ? Most illustrious signorino, the orders of my superior 
 are to reconduct you. 
 
 Milton. Adieu, then, O too great man ! 
 
 Galileo. For to-day, adieu ! 
 
 Dominican {out of the door). In my lowly cell, O signorino 
 (if your excellency in her inborn gentleness could condescend to 
 favor her humblest slave with her most desired presence), are 
 prepared some light refreshments. 
 
 Milton. Swallow them, swallow them ; thou seemest thirsty : 
 I enter but one cell here. 
 
 Dominican {aside, iamng bowed respectfully). Devil! heretic! 
 never shalt thou more ! 
 
 XXIV. ESSEX AND SPENSER.i 
 
 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 
 
 P Spenser had served in Ireland as the Secretary to Lord Grey, the 
 Deputy, and had been rewarded by a large grant of the Desmond 
 property. Upon the rebellion of the Earl of Desmond, an attack was 
 made upon his house, so suddenly, that, though Spenser himself escaped. 
 
394 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 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 over- 
 come, 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. 
 
 Some attribute to the Irish all sorts of excesses ; others tell 
 us that these are old stories ; that there is not a more inoffensive 
 race of merry creatures under heaven, and that their crimes are 
 all hatched for them here in England, by the incubation of 
 printers' boys, and are brought to market at times of distressing 
 dearth in news. From all that I myself have seen of them, I 
 can only say that the civilized (I mean the richer and titled) are 
 as susceptible of heat as iron, and as impenetrable to light as 
 granite. The half-barbarous are probably worse ; the utterly 
 barbarous may be somewhat better. Like game-cocks, they must 
 spur when they meet. One fights because he fights an English- 
 man ; another, because the fellow he quan'els with comes from a 
 distant county ; a third, because the next parish is an eyesore to 
 him, and his fist-mate is from it. The only thing in which they 
 all agree as proper law is the tooth-for-tooth act. Luckily, we 
 have a bishop who is a native, and we call him before the Queen. 
 He represented to Her Majesty that eveiy thing in Old Ireland 
 tended to re-produce its kind, — crimes among others ; and he 
 declared frankly that if an honest man is murdered, or, what is 
 dearer to an honest man, if his honor is wounded in the person of 
 his wife, it must be expected that he will retaliate. Her Majesty 
 delivered it as her opinion, that the latter case of vindictiveness 
 
 one of his children was left behind and perished in the fire. He himself 
 returned to England to die soon after, and to the Earl of Essex he owed 
 his tomb. 
 
 (First printed (1834) with "The Citation of William Shakespeare." 
 Works, ii. 1846; Works, v. 1876. In the first edition there are 
 certain prefaces and appendices to this Conversation, which are only 
 intelligible when read with " The Citation ; " they are not reprinted 
 here.)] 
 
Essex and Spenser. 395 
 
 was more likely to take effect than the former. But the bishop 
 replied, that in his conscience he could not answer for either if 
 the man was up. The dean of the same diocese gave us a more 
 favorable report. Being a justice of the peace, he averred most 
 solemnly that no man ever had complained to him of murder, 
 excepting one who had lost so many fore-teeth by a cudgel that 
 his deposition could not be taken exactly ; added to which, his 
 head was a little clouded with drunkenness ; furthermore, that 
 extremely few women had adduced sufficiently clear proofs of 
 violence, excepting those who were wilful, and resisted with tooth 
 and naU. In all which cases, it was difficult — nay, impossible — 
 to ascertain which violence began first and lasted longest. 
 
 There is not a nation upon earth that pretends to be so super- 
 latively generous and high-minded ; and there is not one (I speak 
 fi-om experience) so utterly base and venal. I have positive proof 
 that the nobility, in a mass, are agreed to sell, for a stipulated 
 sum, all their rights and privileges, so much per man ; and the 
 Queen is inclined thereunto. But would our Parliament consent 
 to pay money for a cargo of rotten pilchards ? And would not 
 our captains be readier to swamp than to import them ? The 
 noisiest rogues in that kingdom, if not quieted by a halter, may 
 be quieted by making them brief-collectors, and by allowing 
 them, first, to encourage the incendiary ; then, to denounce and 
 hang him ; and, lasdy, to collect all the money they can, running 
 up and down with the whining ferocity of half-starved hyenas, 
 under pretence of reptdring the damages their exhausted country 
 hath sustained. Others ask, modestly, a few thousands a year, 
 and no more, from those whom they represent to us as naked and 
 famished ; and prove clearly, to every dispassionate man who hath 
 a single drop of free blood in his veins, that at least this pittance 
 is due to them for abandoning their liberal and lucrative pro- 
 fessions, and for endangering their valuable lives on the tempes- 
 tuous seas, in order that the voice of truth may sound for once 
 upon the shores of England, and humanity cast her shadow on the 
 council-chamber. 
 
 I gave a dinner to a party of these fellows a few weeks ago. 
 I know not how many kings and princes were among them, nor 
 how many poets and prophets and legislators and sages. When 
 they were half-drunk, they coaxed and threatened ; when they 
 
396 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 had gone somewhat deeper, they joked, and croaked and hic- 
 coughed, and wept over sweet 5 reland ; and, when they could 
 neither stand nor sit any longer, they fell upon their knees and 
 their noddles, and swore that limbs, life, liberty, Ireland, and 
 God himself, were all at the Queen's service. It was only their 
 holy religion, the religion of their forefathers, — here sobs inter- 
 rupted some, howls others, execrations more, and the liquor they 
 had ingulfed the rest. I looked down on them with stupor and 
 astonishment, seeing faces, forms, dresses, much like ours, and 
 recollecting their ignorance, levity, and ferocity. My pages drew 
 them gently by the heels down the steps ; my grooms set them 
 upright (inasmuch as might be) on their horses ; and the people 
 in the streets, shouting and pelting, sent forward the beasts to 
 their straw. 
 
 Various plans have been laid before us for civilizing or coercing 
 them. Among the pacific, it was proposed to make an offer to 
 five hundred of the richer Jews in the Hanse-towns and in 
 Poland, who should be raised to the dignity of the Irish peerage, 
 and endowed with four thousand acres of good forfeited land, on 
 condition of each paying two thousand pounds, and of keeping up 
 ten horsemen and twenty foot, Germans or Poles, in readiness for 
 service. 
 
 The Catholics bear nowhere such ill-will toward Jews as 
 toward Protestants. Brooks make even worse neighbors than 
 oceans do. 
 
 I myself saw no objection to the measure ; but our gracious 
 Queen declared she had an insuperable one, — they stank ! We 
 all acknowledged the strength of the argument, and took out 
 our handkerchiefs. Lord Burleigh almost fainted ; and Raleigh 
 wondered how the Emperor Titus could bring up his men against 
 Jeimsalem. 
 
 " Ah ! " said he, looking reverentially at Her Majesty, " the 
 star of Berenice shone above him ! And what evil influence 
 could that star not quell ! what malignancy could it not anni- 
 hilate ! " 
 
 Hereupon he touched the earth with his brow, until the Queen 
 said, — 
 
 " Sir Walter ! lift me up those laurels." 
 
 At which manifestation of princely good-will he was ad- 
 
Essex and Spenser. 397 
 
 vancing to kiss Her Majesty's hand ; but she waved it, and said 
 sharply, — 
 
 " Stand there, dog ! " 
 
 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 MuUa I found deep contentment. 
 Under the dark alders did I muse and meditate. Innocent hopes 
 were my gravest cares, and my playfuUest 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 injuri- 
 ously. 
 
 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. 
 
 * It was purchased by a victualler and banker, the father or grandfather 
 of Lord Riversdale. 
 
398 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 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 per- 
 formance 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 any 
 thing except the loss of favor at court, or of a hawk, or of 
 a buck-hound. And were I to swear out my 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 eveiy evil thou hast sustained. What ! does 
 that enforce thee to wail yet 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 wield 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 and Spenser. 399 
 
 Essex. I now perceive that thou kmentest 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 am- 
 bassadors, 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 de- 
 pendent ? 
 
 Spenser. God avert it ! 
 
 Essex. Every day, every hour of the year, do hundreds mourn 
 what thou moumest. ' 
 
 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 arras recently quartered over the gate- 
 way 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 trae 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 burned to ashes before their eyes ? 
 
 Essex. Gracious God ! Merciful Father ! what is this ? 
 * It happened so. 
 
400 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Spenser. Burned alive ! burned to ashes ! burned 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 enthrall 
 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, ray 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 powerfiil. You have brought 
 comfort, and will leave it with me ; for gratitude is comfort. 
 
 Oh ! my memory stands all a tip-toe 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. 
 
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 401 
 
 XXV. ARCHDEACON HARE AND WALTER 
 LANDOR.1 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. In some of your later writings, I perceive, 
 you have not strictly followed the line you formerly laid down 
 for spelling. 
 
 Walter Landor. I found it inexpedient ; since, whatever the 
 pains I took, there was, in every sheet almost, some deviation on 
 the side of the compositor. Inconsistency was forced on me 
 against all my struggles and reclamations. At last, nothing is 
 left for me but to enter my protest, and to take the smooth path 
 instead of the broken-up highway. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. It is chiefly in the preterites and parti- 
 ciples that I have followed you perseveringly. We are rich 
 in having two for many of our verbs, and unwise in corrupt- 
 ing the spelling, and thereby rendering the pronunciation dif- 
 ficult. We pronounce " astonisht ; " we write " astonished " or 
 " astonish' d," — an unnecessary harshness. Never was spoken 
 dropped or lopped or hopped or propped, but dropt, &c. ; yet, 
 with the choice before us, we invariably take the wrong. I 
 do not resign a right to " astonishfi/" or " diminishf</." They 
 may, with many like them, be useful in poetry ; and several 
 such terminations add dignity and solemnity to what we read 
 
 P The first part of this Conversation is concerned with words and 
 letters. But the latter and larger part is extremely interesting. It is in 
 part an answer to De Quincey's rather spiteful " Notes on Walter Savage 
 Landor " (Works, viii., ed. 1852), and in part an answer to a reviewer 
 who had quoted from that book. Landor does not seem to have read 
 De Quincey's attack. Had he done so, he must have noticed the parallel 
 drawn between himself and Plato. " Both are unread," says De Quincey, 
 " both inclined to be voluptuous ; both had a hankering after purple 
 and fine linen . . . and both bestowed pains as elaborate upon the secret 
 art of a dialogue, as a lapidary wou^d upon the cutting of a Sultan's 
 rubies" Had Landor read this, his retort would have been rougher, 
 though not less contemptuous. Archdeacon Hare is so well known, that 
 nothing need be said of him here, except that he was a faithful friend 
 to Landor, believed in him, saw the first editions of the Conversations 
 through the press, and printed some in the Philohgkal Museum, a 
 magazine edited by him at Cambridge. ("Last Fruit," 1853 ; Works, 
 v., 1876.)] 
 
 IV. 2C 
 
402 Imaginary Conversations, 
 
 in our church, — the sanctuary at once of our faith and of our 
 language. 
 
 Walter Landor. In more essential things than preterites and 
 participles, 1 ought rather to have been your follower than you 
 mine. No language is purer or clearer than yours. Vigorous 
 streams from the mountain do not mingle at once with the turbid 
 lake, but retain their force and their color in the midst of it. We 
 are sapped by an influx of putridity. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Come, come ; again to our spelling-book. 
 Walter Landor. Well then, we differ on the spelling of 
 honour, favour, &c. You would retain the « .• I would eject 
 it, for the sake of consistency. We have dropped it in author, 
 emperor, ambassador. Here again, for consistency and compli- 
 ancy, I write " embassador ; " because I write, as all do, " em- 
 bassy." I write theater, sepulcher, met^r, in their English form 
 rather than the French. The best authors have done it. All 
 write " hexameter " and " pentameter." 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. It is well to simplify and systematize 
 wherever we can do it conveniently. 
 
 Walter Landor. And without violence to vested rights ; 
 which words have here some meaning. Why "amend," if 
 " emendation " ? Why not « pontj/"," if « caxtif" ? 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Why, then, should grander be left in 
 solitary state ? The Englishman less easily protrudes his nether 
 jaw than the Frenchman, as "grandmr" seems to require. 
 Grandeur (or grander, if you will have it so) sounds better. 
 
 Walter Landor. I -wtll have it so ; and so will you and others 
 at last. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Meanwhile, let us untie this last knot of 
 Norman bondage on the common law of language in our land. 
 
 Walter Landor. Set about it : no authority is higher than 
 yours. I wiU run by the side of you, or be your herald, or (what 
 better becomes me) your pursuivant. 
 
 There is an affectation of scholarship in compilers of spelling- 
 books, and in the authors they follow for examples, when they 
 bring forward phenomena and the like. They might as well bring 
 forward mysteria. We have no right to tear Greek and Latin 
 declensions out of their grammars : we need no "vortices when we 
 have vortexes before us ; and while we have memorandums, fac- 
 
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 403 
 
 totums, ultimatums, let our shepherd-dogs bring back to us by the 
 ear such as have wandered from the flock. 
 
 Archeacon Hare. We have " stimulant / " why " stimulwj " ? 
 why " stimul/ " ? Why " recipe " ? why " receipt " ? — we might 
 as reasonably write " deceipt " and " conceipt." I believe we are 
 the only people who keep the Dramatis Persann on the stage, or 
 announce their going off by " exeunt : " " exit " for departure is 
 endurable, and kept in countenance by transit. Let us deprecate 
 the danger of hearing of a friend's obit, which seems imminent : a 
 "post-obit" is bad enough. An item I would confine to the 
 ledger. I have no mind for animus. 
 
 Waber Landor. Besides these, there are two expressions either 
 of which is quite enough to bring down curses and mortality on 
 the poet. '■'■ Stand confest" (even if not written "confejjV) is 
 one ; " unbidden tears" the other. I can imagine no such non- 
 sense as unbidden tears. Why do we not write the verb control 
 with an e at the end, and the substantive with a, as soul ? We 
 might as reasonably write •whol for ivhole. Very unreasonably do 
 we write •a/holly with a double / ; -wioly and soly might follow 
 the type of holy. We see printed befal with one /, but never fal; 
 and yet in the monosyllable we should not be doubtful of the 
 accentuation. It is but of late that we contro/, reca/, appa/ ; we 
 do not yet rol. Will any one tell me who put such a lazy beast 
 to our munition-train, and spelled on the front of the carriage 
 ammunition ? We write enter and inter equally with a single final 
 r .■ surely the latter wants another. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. What is quite as censurable, while we 
 reject the good of om- own countrymen, we adopt the bad of the 
 foreigner. We are much in the habit of using the word flibustier. 
 Surely, we might let the French take and torture our freebooter. 
 In our fondness for making verbs out of substantives, we even go 
 to the excess of flibustering. And now from coarse vulgarity let 
 us turn our eyes towards inconsiderate refinement. When I was 
 a boy, every girl among the poets was a nymph, whether in 
 country or town. Johnson countenanced them, and, arm-in-arm 
 with Pope, followed them even into Jerusalem : " Ye nymphs of 
 Solyma," &c. 
 
 Walter Landor. Pity they ever found their way back ! 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Few even now object to muse and bard. 
 
404 Imaginary Conversations, 
 
 Walter Landor. Nor would I, in their proper places : the 
 muse in Greece and Italy ; the bard, on our side of the Alps, up 
 almost as far as Scandinavia, quite as far as the Cimbrian Cher- 
 sonese. But the bard looks better at nine or ten centuries off than 
 among gentlemen in roquelaures or paletots. Johnson, a great 
 reprehender, might fairly and justly have reprehended him in the 
 streets of London, whatever were his own excesses among the 
 " nymphs of Solyma." In the midst of his gravity, he was not 
 quite impartial, and, extraordinary as were his intellectual powers, 
 he knew about as much of poetry as of geography. In one of his 
 letters he talks of Guadaloupe as being in another hemisphere. 
 Speaking of that island, his very words are these : " Whether you 
 return hither, or stay in another hemisphere." At the com- 
 mencement of his Satire on the Vanity of Human Wishes (a 
 noble specimen of declamation), he places China nearer to us 
 than Peru. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. The negligences of Johnson may easily be 
 forgiven, in consideration of the many benefits he has conferred 
 on literature. A small poet, no great critic, he was a strenuous 
 and lofty moralist. Your pursuers are of another breed, another 
 race. They soon tire themselves, hang out their tongues, and 
 drop along the road. Time is not at all misapplied by you in the 
 analysis and valuation of Southey's and Wordsworth's poetry, 
 which never has been done scrupulously and correctly. But surely 
 gravel may be carted and shot down on the highway without the 
 measure of a Winchester bushel. Consider if what you have taken 
 in hand is worthy of your workmanship. 
 
 Walter Landor. The most beautiful tapestry is worked on ex- 
 tremely coarse canvas. Open a volume of Bayle's Biographical 
 Dictionary, and how many just and memorable observations will 
 you find on people of no " note or likelihood " ! 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Unhappily for us, we are insensible of the 
 corruptions that creep yearly into our language. At Cambridge 
 or Oxford (I am ignorant which of them claims the glory of the 
 invention), some undergraduate was so facetious as to say, "Well, 
 while you are discussing the question, I will discuss my wine." 
 The gracefulness of this witticism was so captivating that it took 
 possession not only of both universities, but seized also on " men 
 about town." Even the ladies, the vestals who preserve the purity 
 
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 405 
 
 of language, caught up the expression from those who were liber- 
 tines in it. 
 
 Walter Landor. Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, who are 
 among the most refined of our senators, have at present no more 
 authority in language than in dress. By what we see, we might 
 imagine that the one article is to be cast aside after as short a 
 wear as the other. It occurs to me at this moment, that, when 
 we have assumed the habiliments of the vulgar, we are in danger 
 of contracting their coarseness of language and demeanor. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Certainly the Romans were togali in their 
 tongue as well as in their wardrobe. Purity and gravity of style 
 were left uncontaminated and unshaken by the breath of Tiberius 
 and his successor. The Antonines spoke better Latin than the 
 Triumvir Antonius ; and Marcus Aurelius, although on some 
 occasions he preferred the Greek, was studious to maintain his 
 own idiom strong and healthy. When the tongue is paralysed, 
 the limbs soon follow. No nation hath long survived the de- 
 crepitude of its language. 
 
 There is perpetually an accession of slang to our vernacular, 
 which is usually biennial or triennial. 
 
 Walter Landor. I have been either a fortunate or a prudent 
 man to have escaped for so many years together to be " pitched 
 into" among "giant trees," "monster meetings," "glorious fruit," 
 "splendid cigars, dogs, horses, and bricks" "palmy days," "rich 
 oddities ; " to owe nobody a farthing for any other fashionable 
 habits of rude device and demi-saison texture ; and, above all, to 
 have never come in at the " eleventh hour" which has been sound- 
 ing all day long the whole year. They do me a little injustice 
 who say that such good fortune is attributable to my residence in 
 Italy. The fact is, I am too cautious and too aged to catch dis- 
 orders, and I walk fearlessly through these epidemics. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Simply to open is insufficient: we "open up" 
 and " open out." A gentleman indues a coat ; it will be difficult 
 to exue if he tries : he must lie down and sleep in it. 
 
 "Foolery " was thought of old sufficiently expressive : nothing 
 short of tomfoolery wUl do now. To repudiate was formerly to 
 put away what disgraced us: it now signifies (in America at 
 least) to reject the claims of justice and honor. We hear people 
 re-read, and see them re-ivrite ; and are invited to a spread. 
 
4o6 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 where we formerly went to a dinner or collation. We cut down 
 barracks to a single barrack ; but we leave the " stocks " in good 
 repair. We are among ambitions and among peoples, until Stern- 
 hold and Hopkins call us into a quieter place, and we hear once 
 again — 
 
 " AU people that on earth do dwell." 
 
 Shall we never have done with " rule and exception" " ever and 
 anon," " many a time and oft " P 
 
 Walter Landor. It is to be regretted that Home Tooke and 
 Bishop Lowth were placed so far apart, by many impediments and 
 obstructions, that they never could unite in order to preserve the 
 finials and pinnacles of our venerable fabric, to stop the innovations 
 and to diminish the anomalies of our language. Southey, although 
 in his youth during their time, might have assisted them ; for 
 early in life he had studied as sedulously the best of our old 
 authors as they had, and his judgment was as mature at twenty- 
 five as theirs at fifty. He agreed with me that mind, find, kind, 
 blind, behind, should have a final e, in order to signify the sound ; 
 and that the verb wind should likewise, for the same reason. I 
 brought Fairfax's Tasso with me, and showed him that Fairfax 
 had done it, and had spelled many other words better than our 
 contemporaries, or even than the most part of his own. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. There are two expressions of frequent 
 occurrence, equally wrong, — " incorrect orthography " and 
 "vernacular idiom." Distempers in language, as in body, 
 which rise from the crowded lane, creep up sometimes to where 
 the mansions are higher and better ventilated. I think you once 
 remarked to me that you would just as properly write pUlanger 
 for pillager, as messenger for messager. The more excusable 
 vulgar add to these dainties their sausenger. Have you found any- 
 thing more to notice where you have inserted those slips of paper 
 in your Fairfax ? 
 
 Walter Landor. Much ; to run over all would be tedious. 
 He writes with perfect propriety dismaid, applte, chefe, hart, ivisht, 
 husht, spred. Southey was entirely of my opinion that, if lead in 
 the present is led in the preterite, read should be red. There is 
 no danger of mistaking the adjective for the verb by it. He 
 ridiculed the spelling of Byron, — redde ; which is qiute as ridicu- 
 
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 407 
 
 lous as the conceit of that antiquarian society which calls itself the 
 " Roxburghi? Club ;" e was never added to burgh. 
 
 Howell, a very careful writer, an excellent authority, writes 
 forren, frend, Mahometism, toung, extemporal, shipiurack, cole, onely, 
 sutable,flaid, askt, begg'er, apparanfe, brest, yeer, lanch,peece, tresure, 
 scepter, incertain, klnde, perle. 
 
 Drayton and Daniel may be associated with Howell. Dray- 
 ton in his prose wrote red ; and there is no purer or more con- 
 siderate author. He writes also ransacks, distinguish^, dispers/, 
 worship/, admonish/, tax/, deck/, wrack/, profes/, extoli/, purchas/. 
 He wntes /ained, tuch, yeers, onely, dore. 
 
 Sir Thomas More writes lerned, clereness, preste (priest), 
 sholde, 'wolde, le've, yere, harte, mynde, here (hear), herer (hearer), 
 appere, speker, seke, grevous, fynde, doute, luherof, seme, dede, nede, 
 tethe (teeth), precher, peple, sene (seen), eres (ears), take, therfor, 
 mete (meat), frend, therm, fere (fear), a tueiier, rede (read). A 
 host of these words only show that the best authors avoided the 
 double vowel. 
 
 Chaucer, in consecutive verses, writes were (wear) and bere 
 (bear) and heven and_/ba/e. 
 
 " Upon her thombe or in her purse to bere.'' 
 " There is no foule that flieth under heven." 
 
 Camden ■writes forraine and Hand. 
 
 It was late before ea was employed in place of the simple vowel 
 e. Chaucer writes " eny pecock." Shal and 'wil, so written by 
 him, are more proper than shall and -will, by avoiding the form of 
 substantives. Caxton writes, as many of his time, 'werk, not 
 " work." Tyndal, long after, writes doo for do. Spenser writes 
 dore instead of door. Sackville writes pearst. Dryden is less 
 accurate than Cowley and Waller and Sprat. Speaking of 
 Cowley, he says, " He never could forgme a conceit," meaning 
 forego. In our own age, many (Burke among the rest) say, 
 " By this means." It would be affectation to say, " By tins 
 mean^' m the singular ; but the proper expression is, " By these 
 means." 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. In regard to terminations, it is diiEcult to 
 account for the letter e when we say " by and bye." There is 
 none in accountmg for it in " GooA-bye," which is the most com- 
 
40 8 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 prehensive of all contractions : it is, " Good be with ye ! " or 
 " God be with ye ! " which in effect is the same. Formerly ye 
 was more universal than you. Ignorant critics reprehend it 
 wrongly in such a position as, " I would not hurt ye." But it is 
 equally good English as, " Te would not hurt me." No 
 word is more thoroughly vernacular, from of old to this present 
 day, among the people throughout the land. We should keep 
 our homely, well-seasoned words, and never use the grave for 
 light purposes. 
 
 Among the many we misapply is the word destiny. We hear 
 of a man controlling the destiny of another. Nothing on earth 
 can control the destined, whether the term be applied strictly or 
 laxly. Element is another, meaning only a constituent. Graver 
 still is incarnation. We hear about the mission of fellows whose 
 highest could be only to put a letter into the post-office. 
 
 We usually set ' before neath, improperly : the better spelling 
 is nethe, whence nether. We also prefix the same ' iofore. We 
 say (at least those who swear do), " 'fore God ; " never, " beiore. 
 God." Cause in like manner is a word of itself, no less than 
 " becwLse." But this form is properer for poetry. 
 
 Chaucer writes peple, as we pronounce it. 
 
 Skelton writes sault and mault, also in accordance with the 
 pronunciation ; and there is exactly the same reason for it as in 
 fault. It could not be going far out of our way to bring them 
 back again, and then cry hault, which we do only with the pen 
 in hand. 
 
 We are in the habitude of writing onwardj, backwards, 
 toward/, afterwards ; he more gracefully drops the final s. We 
 write strip?, whip* ,• yet hesitate at trip* and worships We 
 possess in many cases two for one of the preterites ; and, to show 
 our impartiality and fairness, we pronounce the one and write the 
 other. We write said and laid, but never staid or plaid. We 
 write offia'al ; why not influena'al, circumstana'al, differenoal ? 
 We write entrance the substantive like entrance the verb. Shak- 
 speare wisely wrote, — 
 
 " That sounds the fatal entjrance of Duncan," &c. 
 
 Wonderous is a finer word than -wondrous. 
 
 It is not every good scholar, or every fair poet, who possesses 
 
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 409 
 
 the copiousness and exhibits the discrimination of Shakspeare. 
 Even when we take the hand he offers us, we are accused of 
 innovating. 
 
 Walter Landor. So far from innovating, the words I propose 
 are brought to their former and legitimate station. You have 
 sanctioned the greater part, and have thought the remainder worth 
 your notice. Every intelligent and unprejudiced man will agree 
 with you. I prefer high authorities to lower, analogy to fashion, 
 a Restoration to a Usurpation. Innovators, and worse than in- 
 novators, were those Reformers called who disturbed the market- 
 place of manorial theology, and went back to religion where she 
 stood alone in her original purity. We English were the last 
 people to adopt the reformed style in the calendar, and we seem 
 determined to be likewise the last in that of language. We are 
 ordered to please the public ; we are forbidden to instruct it. 
 Not only publishers and booksellers are against us, but authors 
 too ; and even some of them who are not regularly in the service 
 of those masters. The outcry is, " We have not ventured to 
 alter what we find in use, and why should he ? " 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. If the most learned and intelligent, in that 
 age which has been thought by many the most glorious in our 
 literature, were desirous that the language should be settled and 
 fixed, how much more desirable is it that its accretion of cor- 
 ruptions should be now removed ! It may be difficult ; and still 
 more difficult to restore the authority of the ancient dynasty. 
 
 Walter Landor. We never have attempted it. But there are 
 certain of their laws and usages which we would not willingly 
 call obsolete. Often in the morning I have looked among your 
 books for them, and I deposit in your hands the first-fruits of my 
 research. It is only for such purposes that I sit hours together 
 in a library. Either in the sunshine or under the shade of trees, 
 I must think, meditate, and compose. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Thoughts may be bom in a room above- 
 stairs or below ; but they are stronger and healthier for early 
 exercise in the open air. It is not only the conspirator to 
 whom is appropriate the " modo citus modo tardus incessus : " 
 it is equally his who follows fancy, and his also who searches 
 after truth. 
 
 Walter Landor. The treasures of your library have some- 
 
410 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 times tempted me away from your pictures ; and I have ceased 
 for a moment to regret that by Selections and Corapendiums we 
 had lost a large portion of the most noble works, when I find so 
 accurate a selection, so weighty a compendium, carried about with 
 him who is now walking at my side. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. I would have strangled such a compli- 
 ment ere it had attained its full growth : however, now it is not 
 only full-grown but over-grown, let me offer you in return, not a 
 compliment, but a congratulation, on your courage in using the 
 plural " compendiamj " where another would have pronounced 
 " compendia." 
 
 Walter Landor. Would that other, whoever he may be, have 
 said musea ? All I require of people is consistency, and rather 
 in the right than in the wrong. When we have admitted a 
 Greek or Latin or French word, we ought to allow it the right 
 of citizenship, and induce it to comply and harmonize with the 
 rest of the vocular community. " Pindarigra^ " went away with 
 Cowley, and died in the same ditch with him ; but " oblija? " is 
 inflexible, and stands its ground. He would do well who should 
 shove it away, or push it into the ranks of the new militia. 
 " Antiyaf " is the worst portion of Gray's heritage. His former 
 friend, Horace Walpole, had many antiques and other trifles at 
 Strawberry-hill ; but none so worthless as this. In honest truth, 
 we neither have, nor had then, a better and purer writer than he, 
 although he lived in the time of the purest and best, — Goldsmith, 
 Sterne, Fielding, and Inchbald. He gave up his fashionable 
 French for a richer benefice. He would not use " rouge" but 
 "red;" very different from the ladies and gentlemen of the 
 present day, who bring in entremets and lardes, casting now and 
 then upon the lukewarm hearth a log of Latin, and, in the sleeping- 
 room they have prepared for us, spread out as counterpane a 
 remnant of Etruscan, from under a courier's saddle-bag. 
 
 Chaucer, who had resided long in France, and much among 
 courtiers, made English his style. Have you patience to read a 
 list of the words he spelled better than we do ; and not he only, 
 but his remote successors ? 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. I have patience, and more than patience, 
 to read or hear or see whatever is better than ourselves. Such 
 investigations have always interested me, you know of old. 
 
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 41 1 
 
 Walter Landor. Rare quality ! I scarcely know where to find 
 another who possesses it, or whose anger would not obtain the 
 mastery over his conscience at the imputation. 
 
 Let your eyes run down this catalogue. Here are s<wete and 
 s-wote, jinde, ther, <wel, herken, herk, gilt (guilt), shal, don (done), 
 luerks (works), tueptng, dene, defaulte, therof, speking, erthe, 
 lereth (beareth), seate, mete (meat), shuld (should), hevy, hetin, 
 grevous, grete, hete, yere, fade (food) ; we still say fodder, not 
 fooder ; ete (eat), lede, throt, 'wel, drede, shal, gess (guess), ful, 
 wheras, trespas, betwene, repe, slepe, shete, frend, dedly, delites, 
 teres, herlng, clereness, juge, plese, speke, ivold (would), ded, tred, 
 iereve, tired, peple, dore, dreme, deme, reson, indede, meke, fehle, 
 ivede, nede,fele, cese, pece, dedly, deme, resonable, slepe, tit el, refrain, 
 preeste. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. In adding the vowel, he makes it available 
 for verse. Covetise, how much better than covetiousness > 
 Among the words which might be brought back again to adorn 
 our poetical diction is beforne (before). Here is distemperament 
 (for inclemency of season) ; forlet (forgive), another good word ; 
 so is nvanhope (despair). Has no poet the courage to step forth 
 and to rescue these maidens of speech, unprotected beneath the 
 very castle-walls of Chaucer ? 
 
 Walter Landor. If they are resolved to stitch up his rich old 
 tapestry with muslin, they would better let it stay where it is. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Several more words are remaining in which 
 a single vowel is employed where we reduplicate. Sheres, appere, 
 speche, luele, bereth, reson, mening, pleasance, stele, coles, mekeness, 
 reve (bereave) rore, long, corageous, forbere, kepe, othe (oath), cese, 
 shepe, dreme, nverse (worse), reken (reckon). Certainly this old 
 spelling is more proper than its substitute. To reken is to look 
 over an account before casting it up. Here are grevance, lerne, 
 bete, seke, speke, freze (freeze), chese, dense, tretise, meke. Here I 
 find axe (ask, which is now a vulgarism, though we use tax for 
 task. With great propriety he writes perse-ver ; we, with great 
 impropriety, persevere. He uses the word spiced for overnice, 
 which in common use is gingerly. I think you would not be a 
 stickler for the best of these, whichever it may be. 
 
 Walter Landor. No, indeed ; but there are in Chaucer, as 
 there are in other of our old yet somewhat later writers, things 
 
412 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 which with regret I see cast aside for worse. I wish every 
 editor of an author, whether in poetry or prose, would at least 
 add a glossary of his words as he spelled and wrote them, without 
 which attention the history of a language must be incomplete. 
 Heine in his Virgil, Wakefield in his Lucretius, have preserved 
 the text itself as entire as possible. Greek words do not appear 
 in their spelling to have been subject to the same vicissitudes as 
 Latin. 
 
 I have not been engaged in composing a grammar or vocabu- 
 lary, nor is a conversation a treatise ; so with your usual kindness 
 you will receive a confused collection of words, bearing my mark 
 on them and worthy of yours. They are somewhat like an Italian 
 pastry, of heads and necks and feet and gizzards of a variety of 
 birds of all sorts and sizes. If my simile is undignified, let me 
 go back into the Sistine Chapel, where Michel Angelo displays 
 the same thing more gravely and grandly in his Last Judgment. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Do not dissemble your admiration of this 
 illustrious man, nor turn into ridicule what you reverence. Among 
 the hardy and false things caught from mouth to mouth is the 
 apothegm, that " there is only a step from the sublime to the 
 ridiculous." There was indeed but a step from Bonaparte's. 
 
 Walter Landor. I perceive you accept the saying as his. It 
 was uttered long before his birth, and so far back as the age of 
 Louis the Foiuteenth. Another is attributed to him, which was 
 spoken by Barrere in the Convention. He there called the 
 English " cette nation boutiquiere. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Well, now empty out your sack of words, 
 and never mind which comes first. 
 
 Walter Landor. Probably there are several of them which 
 we have noticed before. Here are a few things which I have 
 marked with my pencil from time to time ; others are obliterated, 
 others lost. 
 
 There is a very good reason why ra-uel and tra-vel should be 
 spelled with a single / .• pronunciation requires it. Equally does 
 pronunciation require a double / in befell, expell, compell. 
 
 We often find kneeled instead of Inelt ; yet I do not remember 
 feeled ior felt. Shaftesbury, and the best writers of his age and 
 later, wrote cou'd, shou'd, -wou'd : we do not, although in 
 speaking we never insert the /. Hurd writes, " Under the 
 circumstances." Circumstances are about us, not above us. 
 
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor, 4 1 3 
 
 " Master of the situation " is the only expression we have 
 borrowed lately of the Spanish, and it is not worth having. 
 
 I have observed rent as preterite of rend, — improper ; as ment 
 would be of mend. 
 
 " M too well," &c., — the world all used needlessly. "All the 
 greater," &c. These expressions are among the many which 
 have latterly been swept out of the servants' hall, who often say 
 (no doubt), " I am all the better for my dinner." 
 
 Daresay is now written as one word. 
 
 Egotist should be egoist ; to doze should not be written dose, as 
 it often is. 
 
 I once was present when a scholar used the words vexed 
 question ; he was not laughed at, although he was thought a 
 pedant for it. Many would willingly be thought pedants who 
 never can be ; but they can more cheaply be thought affected, as 
 they would be if they assumed this Latinism. In our English 
 sense, many a question vexes : none is vexed. The sea is 
 •vexatum when it is tossed hither and thither, to and fro ; but a 
 question, however unsettled, has never been so called in good 
 English. 
 
 " Sought his bedchamber ; " improper, because he knew 
 where it was. To seek is to go after what may or may not be 
 found. Firstly is not English. To gather a rose is improper. 
 To gather t<wo roses would be proper. Better to cull, which 
 may be said of choosmg one out of several ; cull is from the 
 It^an cogliere, originally in Latin colligare. But to us, in our 
 vernacular, the root is invisible : not so to gather, of which we 
 are reminded by together. 
 
 There is a bull of the largest Irish breed in nearly the most 
 beautiful of Wordsworth's poems : — 
 
 " I lived upon what casual bounty yields, 
 Now coldly given, noiv utterly refused.''^ 
 
 The Irish need not cry out for their potatoes, if they can live 
 upon what they cannot get. 
 
 " The child is father of the man," 
 
 says Wordsworth, well and truly. The verse animadverted on 
 must have been written before the boy had begotten his parent. 
 
414 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 What can be sillier than those verses o£ his which many have 
 quoted with unsuspicious admiration ? — 
 
 " A maid whom there was none to praise, 
 And very few to love." 
 
 He might have written more properly, if the rhyme and metre 
 had allowed it, — 
 
 A maid whom there were none to love, 
 And very few to praise. 
 
 For surely the few who loved her would praise her. Here he 
 makes love subordinate to praise : there were some who loved 
 her, none (even of these) who praised her. Readers of poetry 
 hear the bells, and seldom mind what they are ringing for. 
 Where there is laxity there is inexactness. 
 
 Frequently there are solid knolls in the midst of Wordsworth's 
 morass ; but never did I expect to find so much animation, 
 such vigor, such succinctness, as in the paragraph beginning 
 with — 
 
 « All degrees and shapes of spurious form,'' 
 
 and ending with — 
 
 "Left to herself, unheard of and unknown.'' 
 
 Here, indeed, the wagoner's frock drops off, and shows to our 
 surprise the imperial pui-ple underneath it. Here is the brevity 
 and boldness of Cowper ; here is heart and soul ; here is the nvLuf 
 ^aaiXixri of poetry. 
 
 I believe there are few, if any, who enjoy more heartily than I 
 do the best poetry of my contemporaries, or who have commended 
 them both in private and in public with less parsimony and reserve. 
 Several of them, as you know, are personally my friends, although 
 we seldom meet. Perhaps in some I may desiderate the pure 
 ideal of what is simply great. If we must not always look up at 
 Theseus and the Amazons, we may however catch more frequent 
 glimpses of the Graces, with their zones on, and their zones only. 
 Amplification and diffuseness are the principal faults of those who 
 are now standing the most prominent. Dilution does not always 
 make a thing the clearer : it may even cause turbidity. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Stiffness is as bad as laxness. Pindar and 
 
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor, 415 
 
 Horace, Milton and Shakspeare, never caught the cramp in 
 their mountain streams : their movements are as easy as they are 
 vigorous. 
 
 Walter Landor. The strongest are the least subject to stiffness. 
 Diffiiseness is often the weakness of vanity. The vain poet is ot 
 opinion that nothing of his can be too much : he sends to you 
 basketful after basketful of juiceless fruit, covered with scentless 
 flowers. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Many an unlucky one is like the big and 
 bouncing foot-ball, which is blown up in its cover by unseemly 
 puffing, and serves only for the game of the day. I am half- 
 inclined to take you to task, my dear friend, feeling confident and 
 certain that I should do it without offence. 
 
 Walter Landor. Without offence, but not without instruction. 
 Here I am ready at the desk, with both hands down. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. To be serious. Are you quite satisfied 
 that you never have sought a pleasure in detecting and exposing 
 the faults of authors, even good ones ? 
 
 Walter Landor. I have here and there sought that pleasure, 
 and found it. To discover a truth, and to separate it from a 
 falsehood is surely an occupation worthy of the best intellect, and 
 not at all unworthy of the best heart. Consider how few of our 
 countrymen have done it, or attempted it, on works of criticism : 
 how few of them have analysed and compared. Without these 
 two processes, there can be no sound judgment on any production 
 of genius. We are accustomed to see the beadle limp up into the 
 judge's chair, to hear him begin with mock gravity, and to find 
 him soon dropping it for his natural banter. He condemns with 
 the black cap on ; but we discover through its many holes and 
 dissutures the uncombed wig. Southey is the first and almost 
 the only one of our critics who moves between his intellect and 
 his conscience, close to each. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. How much better would it be if our re- 
 viewers and magazine-men would analyze, in this manner, to the 
 extent of their abilities, and would weigh evidence before they 
 pass sentence. But they appear to think that, unless they hazard 
 much, they can win little ; while in fact they hazard and lose a 
 great deal more than there is any possibility of their recovering. 
 One rash decision ruins the judge's credit, which twenty correcter 
 
41 6 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 never can restore. Animosity, or perhaps something more ignoble, 
 usually stimulates rampant inferiority against high desert. 
 
 I have never found you disconcerted by any injustice toward 
 yourself, — not even by the assailants of this our Reformation. 
 
 Walter Landor. If we know a minor, whose guardians and 
 trustees have been robbing him of his patrimony, or misapplying 
 it, or wearing out the land by bad tillage, would we not attempt 
 to recover for him whatever we could ; and especially if we were 
 intimate with the family, if we had enjoyed the shade of its 
 venerable woods, the refreshing breezes from its winding streams, 
 and had in our early days taken our walks among them for study, 
 and in our stUl earlier gone into the depths of its forests for our 
 
 recreation 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Next in criminality to him who violates 
 the laws of his country, is he who violates the language. In this 
 he is a true patriot, and somewhat beside, — 
 
 " Qui consulta patrum qui leges juraque servat." 
 
 Byron is among the defaulters. On Napoleon he says, 
 « Like he of Babylon." " The annal of Gibbon." « I have 
 eat" &c. There is a passage in Tacitus on a vain poet, Lu- 
 terius, remarkably applicable to our lately fashionable one ; 
 " Studia ilia, ut plena vecordiae, ita inania et fluxa sunt : nee 
 quidquam grave ac serium ex eo metuas qui, suorum ipse 
 flagitiorum proditor, non virorum animis sed muliercularum 
 adrepit." 
 
 Walter Landor. It suits him perfectly. I would, however, 
 pardon him some false grammar and some false sentiment, for 
 his vigorous application of the scourge to the two monsters of 
 dissimilar configuration who degraded and disgraced, at the same 
 period, the two most illustrious nations in the world. The Ode 
 against Napoleon is fvdl of animation : against the other there 
 is less of it ; for animation is incompatible with nausea. Byron 
 had good action ; but he tired by fretting, and tossing his head, 
 and rearing. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Let reflections for a moment give way 
 to recollections. In the morning we were interrupted in some 
 observations on the aspirate. 
 
 Walter Landor. Either I said, or was about to say, that 
 
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 417 
 
 the aspirate, wherever it is written, should be pronounced. If 
 we say " a house," why not say " a hour ; " if " a horse," why 
 not " a honor ? " Nobody says " an heavy load," " an heavenly 
 joy," " an holy man," " an hermit," " an high place," " an 
 huge monster," " an holly-bough," " an happy day." Let the 
 minority yield here to the majority. Our capriciolisness in 
 admitting or rejecting the service of the aspirate was contracted 
 from the French. The Italians, not wanting it, sent it off, and 
 called it back merely for a mark discriminatory ; for instance in 
 the verb Ho, hat, ha. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. You have been accused of phonetic 
 spelling. 
 
 Walter Landor. Inconsiderately, and with even less foun- 
 dation than falsehood has usually under it. Nothing seems 
 to me more grossly absurd, or more injurious to an ancient 
 family, — the stem of our words and thoughts. Such a scheme, 
 about fourscore years ago, was propounded by Elphinstone ; 
 it has lately been reproduced, only to wither and die down 
 again. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. I always knew, and from yourself, that 
 you are a "good hater" of innovation, and that your efforts 
 were made strenuously on the opposite side, attempting to 
 recover in our blurred palimpsests what was written there of 
 old. We have dropped a great deal of what is good, as you 
 just now have shown ; and we have taken into our employment 
 servants without a character, or with a worthless one. We 
 adorn our new curtains with faded fringe, and embellish stout 
 buckskin with point-lace. 
 
 Walter Landor. After this conversation, if it ever should 
 reach the public ear, I may be taken up for a brawl in the 
 street, — more serious than an attack on the new grammar- 
 school. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. What can you mean ? Taken up ? For 
 a brawl ? 
 
 Walter Landor. Little are you aware that I have lately 
 been accused of a graver offence, and one committed in the 
 dark. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. And in the dark you leave me. Pray; 
 explain. 
 
 rv. 2D 
 
41 8 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 IValter Landor. I am indicted for perpetrating an Efnc. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Indeed ! I am glad to hear the announce- 
 ment. And when does the cause come into court ? And who 
 is the accuser ? And what are his grounds ? 
 
 Walter Landor. Longer ago by some years than half a 
 century, I wrote Geblr. The cause and circumstances I have 
 detailed elsewhere. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Is this the epic ? 
 
 Walter Landor. It appears so. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Already you look triumphant from that 
 ancient car. 
 
 Walter Landor. No, truly : I am too idle for a triumph ; 
 and the enemy's forces were so small that none could legiti- 
 mately be decreed. 
 
 " Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor 
 Qui face barbaricos calatnoque sequare colonos." 
 
 '.' Surely shall some one come, alert and kind, 
 With torch and quill to guide the blundering hind." 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Clowns and boys and other idlers, if they 
 see a head above a garden-wall, are apt to throw a pebble at it ; 
 which mischief they abstain from doing when the head is on 
 their level and near. 
 
 Walter Landor. Nobody reads this poem, I am told ; and 
 nothing more likely. 
 
 Archdecaon Hare. Be that as it may, the most disappointed 
 of its readers would be the reader who expected to find an epic 
 in it. To the epic not only its certain spirit, but its certain form, 
 is requisite ; and not only in the main body, but likewise in 
 the minute articulations. I do not call epic that which is in 
 lyric metre, nor indeed in any species of rhyme. The cap and 
 bells should never surmount the helmet and breastplate : Ariosto 
 and Tasso are lyrical romancers. Your poem, which Southey 
 tells us he took for a model, is in blank verse. 
 
 Walter Landor. Southey, whom I never had known or cor- 
 responded with, hailed it loudly in the Critical Review, on its 
 first appearance. He recommended it to Charles Wynne ; 
 Charles Wynne, to the Hebers; they, to your uncle Shipley, 
 Dean of St Asaph's. Southey's splendid criticism, whatever 
 
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 419 
 
 may be the defects and deficiences of the poem, must have 
 attracted at the time some other readers ; yet I believe (though 
 I never heard or inquired) that they were not numerous. Fi ere. 
 Canning, and Bobus Smith were among them. Enough for 
 me. 
 
 Within these few months, a wholesale dealer in the brittle 
 crockery of market criticism has picked up some shards of it, and 
 stuck them in his shelves. Among them is my Sea-Shell, which 
 Wordsworth clapped into his pouch. There it became incrusted 
 with a compost of mucus and shingle ; there it lost its " pearly 
 hue within," and its memory of where it had abided. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. But Wordsworth had the industry and 
 skill to turn every thing to some account. 
 
 Walter Landor. Perfectly true. And he is indebted to me 
 for more than the value of twenty Shells : he is indebted to me 
 for praise, if not more profuse, yet surely more discriminating, 
 than of those critics who were collected at wakes and hired by 
 party. Such hospital-nurses kill some children by starving, and 
 others by pampering with unwholesome food. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. I have often heard you express your 
 admiration of Wordsworth ; and I never heard you complain, or 
 notice, that he owed any thing to you. 
 
 Walter Landor. Tnily he owes me little. My shell may be 
 among the prettiest on his mantelpiece ; but a trifle it is at best. 
 1 often wish, in his longest poem, he had obtained an inclosure- 
 act, and subdivided it. What a number of delightful idyls it 
 would have afforded ! It is pity that a vapor of metaphysics 
 should overhang and chill any portion of so beautiful a plain ; of 
 which, however, the turf would be finer and the glebe solider for 
 a moderate expenditure in draining and top-dressing. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Your predilections led you to rank Southey 
 higher. 
 
 Walter Landor. Wordsworth has not written three poems so 
 excellent as Thalaba, the Curse of Kehama, and Roderic ; nor, 
 indeed, any poem exhibiting so great a variety of powers. 
 Southey had abundance of wit and humor, of which Wordsworth, 
 like greater men, — such, for instance, as Goethe and Milton, — 
 was destitute. The present age wU easily pardon me for placing 
 here the German and the Englishman together: the future, I 
 
420 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 sadly fear, would, without some apology, be inexorable. If 
 Wordsworth wants the diversity and invention of Southey, no 
 less than the humor, he wants also the same geniality belonging 
 in the same degree to Cowper, with terseness and succinctness. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. You have often extolled, and in the 
 presence of many the beauty of his rural scenes, and the truth of 
 his rural characters. 
 
 Walter Landor. And never will I forego an opportunity. In 
 the delineation of such scenes and characters, far, infinitely far, 
 beneath him are Virgil and Theocritus. Yet surely it is an act 
 of grievous cruelty, however unintentional, in those who thrust him 
 into the same rank, and file with Milton. He wants muscle, 
 breadth of shoulder, and height. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Sometimes he may be prosaic. 
 
 Walter Landor. He slithers on the soft mud, and cannot stop 
 himself until he comes down. In his poetry there is as much of 
 prose as there is of poetry in the prose of Milton. But prose 
 on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry: on the 
 other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight 
 of prose ; and neither fan nor burned feather can bring her to 
 herself again. 
 
 It is becoming and decorous that due honors be paid to 
 Wordsworth ; undue have injured him. Discriminating praise, 
 mingled with calm censure, is more beneficial than lavish 
 praise without it. Respect him : reverence him ; abstain from 
 worshipping him. Remember, no ashes are lighter than those of 
 incense, and few things burn out sooner. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. It appears that you yourself, of late, have 
 not suffered materially by the wafting of the thurible. 
 
 Walter Landor. Faith ! I had quite forgotten what we were 
 speaking about last. 
 
 It was about myself, I suspect, and the worthy at Edinburgh 
 who remetus me. According to him, it appears that only two 
 had read Gehtr, — namely, Southey and Mr De Quincey. I 
 have mentioned a few others. I might have added Coleridge, to 
 whom Southey lent it, and who praised it even more enthu- 
 siastically, until he once found Southey reciting a part of it in 
 company ; after which, I am told, he never mentioned it, or 
 slightly. In the year of its publication, Carey, translator of Dante, 
 
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 421 
 
 had praised it. His opinion of it I keep to myself, as one among 
 the few which I value. This was long before Mr De Quincey 
 knew Southey. It is marvellous that a man of so retentive a 
 memoi-y as Southey should have forgotten a thing to which he 
 himself had given its importance : it is less so that Mr De 
 Quincey imagined it, under the influence of that narcotic the 
 effects of which he so ingenuously and so well described, before 
 he exhibited this illustration. 
 
 He had another imaginary conversation with Southey, in which 
 they agree that Gebir very much resembled the ylrgonautics of 
 Valerius Flaccus. Hearing of this, about a twelvemonth ago, I 
 attempted to read that poem ; but was unsuccessful. Long before, 
 and when my will was stronger, I foundered in the midst of 
 Statius. Happily, in my school-days I had mastered Lucan and 
 Juvenal. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. They are grandly declamatory ; but decla- 
 mation overlays and strangles poetry, and disfigures even satire. 
 
 Walter Landor. Reserving the two mentioned, and Martial, 
 I doubt whether the most speculative magazine-man would 
 hazard five pounds for the same quantity of English poetry 
 (rightly called letter-press) as all the other post-Ovidian poets 
 have left behind. After the banishment of Ovid, hardly a breath 
 of pure poetry breathed over the Campagna di Roma. Declama- 
 tion was spouted in floodgate verse : Juvenal and Lucan are high 
 in that school, in which, at the close of the poetical day, was heard 
 the street cow-horn of Statius. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Even for the company of such as these, 1 
 think I would have left the Reeker in Auld Reekie. Flies are 
 only the more troublesome and importunate for being driven off, 
 and they will keep up with your horse, however hard you ride, 
 without any speed or potency of their own. 
 
 Walter Landor. True ; but people who sell unsound wares, 
 and use false scales and measures, ought to be pointed out and put 
 down, although we ourselves may be rich enough to lose an ounce 
 or two by their filching. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. No one ever falls among a crowd of literary 
 men without repenting of it sooner or later. You may encounter 
 a single hound outside the kennel ; but there is danger if you 
 enter in among them, even with a kind intention and a bland 
 countenance. 
 
422 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Walter Landor. It must be a dog in the distemper that raises 
 up his spine at me. I have spoken favorably of many an author ; 
 undeservedly, of none : therefore both at home and abroad I have 
 received honorary visits from my countrymen and from foreigners. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Possibly there may be some of them incon- 
 tinent of the acrimonious humor pricking them in the paroxysm 
 of wit. I know not whether there be any indication of it in the 
 soil under your shovel. Grains of wit, however, may sometimes be 
 found in petulance, as grains of gold in quartz ; but petulance is 
 not wit nor quartz gold. 
 
 Are you aware how much thought you have here been throw- 
 ing away ? 
 
 Walter Landor. My dear friend ! thought is never thrown 
 away : wherever it falls, or runs, or rests, it fertilizes. I speak 
 not of that thought which has evil in it, or which tends to evil, 
 but of that which is the exercise of intellect on the elevated and 
 healthy training-ground of truth. We descend ; and, as we 
 descend, we may strike off the head of a thistle, or blow away the 
 wandering seed of a dandelion which comes against the face ; but, 
 in a monient, forgetting them totally, we carry home with us 
 freshness and strength. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. I have never known you, at any former 
 time, take much trouble about your literary concerns. 
 
 Walter Landor. Never have I descended to repel an attack, 
 and never will ; but I must defend the understanding and con- 
 sistency of a wiser and better man in Southey. Never have I 
 feared that a little and loose petard would burst or unhinge the 
 gates of my fortress, or that a light culverin at a vast distance 
 below would dismantle or reach the battlements. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. It is dangerous to break into a park where 
 the paling is high ; for it may be difficult to find the way out 
 again, or to escape the penalty of transgression. You never before 
 spoke a syllable about your Shell. 
 
 Walter Landor. The swallow builds her nest under a Doric 
 architrave, but does not build it of the same materials. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. It is amusing to observe the ofF-hand facility 
 and intrepid assurance with which small writers attack the greater, 
 as small birds do, pursuing them the more vociferously the higher 
 the flight. Milton stooped and struck down two or thi-ee of these 
 
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 423 
 
 obstreperous chatterers, of which the feathers he scattered are all 
 that remains ; and these are curiosities. 
 
 It is moroseness to scowl at the levity of impudence ; it is 
 af&bility, not without wisdom, to be amused by it. Graver men, 
 critics of note, have seen very indistinctly where the sun has been 
 too bright for them. Gifford, the translator of Juvenal, who 
 was often so grave that ordinary people took him for judicious, 
 thought wit the better part of Shakspeare, and in which alone 
 he was superior to his contemporaries. Another finds him sadly 
 deficient in his female characters. Johnson's ear was insensible to 
 Milton's diapason ; and in his Life of Somerville he says, — 
 
 "If blank verse be not tumid and gorgeous, it is crippled 
 prose." 
 
 Walter Landor. Johnson had somewhat of the medlar in his 
 nature : one side hard and austere, the other side unsound. We 
 call him ejected for his turgidity : this was not affected ; it was 
 the most natural part of him. He hated both affectation and 
 lameness. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Two things intolerable, whether in prose 
 or poetry. Wordsworth is guiltless- at least of affectation. 
 
 Walter Landor. True ; but he often is as tame as an abbess's 
 cat, which in kittenhood has undergone the same operation as the 
 Holy Father's choristers. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Sometimes, indeed, he might be more 
 succinct. A belt is good for the breath, and without it we fail 
 in the long run. And yet a man will always be more looked at 
 whose dress flutters in the air than he whose dress sits tight upon 
 him ; but he will soon be left on the roadside. Wherever there 
 is a word beyond what is requisite to express the meaning, that 
 word must be peculiarly beautiful in itself or strikingly harmonious ; 
 either of which qualities may be of some service in fixing the 
 attention and enforcing the sentiment. But the proper word in 
 the proper place seldom leaves any thing to be desiderated on the 
 score of harmony. The beauty of health and strength is more 
 attractive and impressive than any beauty conferred by ornaments 
 I know the delight you feel, not only in Milton's immortal verse, 
 but (although less) in Wordsworth's. 
 
 Walter Landor. A Mozart to a Hansel ! But who is not 
 charmed by the melody of Mozart ? Critics have their favorites ; 
 
424 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 and, like the same rank of people at elections, they chair one 
 candidate and pelt another. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. A smaller object may be so placed before 
 a greater as to intercept the view of it in its just proportions. 
 This is the favorite manoeuvre in the Review-field. Fierce 
 malignity is growing out of date. Nothing but fairness is spoken 
 of ; regret at the exposure of faults, real or imaginary, has taken 
 the place of derision, sarcasm, and arrogant condemnation. 
 Nothing was wanting to Byron's consistency when he had ex- 
 pressed his contempt of Shakspeare. 
 
 Walter Landor. Giffords, who sniffed at the unsavory skirts 
 of Juvenal, and took delight in paddling among the bubbles of 
 azote, no longer ply the trade of critics to the same advantage. 
 Generosity, in truth or semblance, is expected and required. 
 Chattertons may die in poverty and despair ; but Keatses are ex- 
 posed no longer to a lingering death under that poison which 
 paralyzes the heart, — contempt. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. In youth the appetite for fame is strongest. 
 It is cruel and inhuman to withhold the sustenance which is 
 necessary to the growth, if not the existence, of genius, — 
 sympathy, encouragement, commendation. Praise is not fame ; 
 but the praise of the intelligent is its precursor. Vaticide is no 
 crime in the statute-book : but a crime, and a heavy crime, it is ; 
 and the rescue of a poet fi'om a murderous enemy, although 
 there is no oaken crown decreed for it, is among the higher 
 virtues. 
 
 Walter Landor. Many will pass by ; many will take the 
 other side ; many will cherish the less deserving : but some 
 one, considerate and compassionate, will raise up the neglected ; 
 and, where a strong hand does it, several less strong will presently 
 be ready to help. Alas ! not always. There is nothing in the 
 ruins of Rome which throws so chilling a shadow over the heart 
 as the monument of Keats. 
 
 Our field of poetry at the present time is both wider and 
 better cultivated than it has ever been. But if the tyrant of old 
 who walked into the growing corn, to inculcate a lesson of order 
 by striking off the heads of the higher poppies, were to enter 
 ours, he would lay aside his stick, so nearly on a level is the 
 crop. Every year there is more good pofetry written now, in 
 
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 425 
 
 this our country, than was written between the Metamorphoses 
 and the Oivina CommetGa. We walk no longer in, the cast-ofF 
 clothes of the ancients, often ill sewn at first, and now ill-fitting. 
 We have pulpier flesh, stouter limbs ; we take longer walks, ex- 
 plore wider fields, and surmount more craggy and more lofty 
 eminences. From these let us take a leisurely look at Fancy 
 and Imagination. Your friend Wordsworth was induced to 
 divide his minor poems under the separate heads of these two, 
 probably at the suggestion of Coleridge, who persuaded him, as 
 he himself told me, to adopt the name of Lyrical Ballads. He 
 was sorry, he said, that he took the advice. And well he might 
 be ; for lyre and ballad belong not to the same age or the same 
 people. It would have puzzled Coleridge to have drawn a 
 straight boundary-line between the domains of Fancy and those 
 of Imagination, on a careful survey of these pieces ; or perhaps 
 to have given a satisfactory definition of their qualities. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Do you believe you yourself can ? 
 
 Walter Landor. I doubt it. The face is not the same, but 
 the resemblance is sisterly ; and, even by the oldest friends 
 and intimates of the family, one is often taken for the other, so 
 nearly are they alike. Fancy is Imagination in her youth and 
 adolescence. Fancy is always excursive ; Imagination, not seldom, 
 is sedate. It is the business of Imagination, in her maturity, to 
 create and animate such beings as are worthy of her plastic hand ; 
 certainly not by invisible wires to put marionettes in motion, nor 
 to pin butterflies on blotting-paper. Vigorous thought, elevated 
 sentiment, just expression, development of character, power to 
 bring man out from the secret haunts of his soul, and to place 
 him in strong outline against the sky, belong to Imagination. 
 Fancy is thought to dwell among the Fairies and their congeners ; 
 and they frequently lead the weak and ductile poet far astray. 
 He is fond of playing at little-go among them ; and, when he grows 
 bolder, he acts among the Witches and other such creatures ; but 
 his hankering after the Fairies still continues. Their tiny rings, 
 in which the intelligent see only the growth of funguses, are no 
 arena for action and passion. It was not in these circles that 
 Homer and ^schylus and Dante strove. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. — But Shakespeare sometimes entered them, 
 who, with infinitely greater power, moulded his composite and 
 
426 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 consistent man, breathing into him an immortality never to be 
 forfeited. 
 
 Walter Landor. Shakespeare's full strength and activity were 
 exerted on Macbeth and Othello : he trifled with Ariel and 
 Titania ; he played with Caliban ; but no other would have 
 thought of playing with him, any more than of playing with 
 Cerberus. Shakespeare and Milton and Chaucer have more 
 imagination than any of those to whom the quality is peculiarly 
 attributed. It is not inconsistent with vigor and gravity. There 
 may be a large and effuse light without — 
 
 " The motes that people the sunbeams." 
 
 Imagination follows the steps of Homer throughout the Troad, 
 from the ships on the strand to Priam and Helen on the city- 
 wall. Imagination played with the baby Astyanax at the de- 
 parture of Hector from Andromache ; and was present at the 
 noblest scene of the Iliad, where, to repeat a verse of Cowper's 
 on Achilles, more beautifiil than Homer's own, — 
 
 " His hand he placed 
 On the old man's hand, and pushed it gently atvay. 
 
 No less potently does Imagination urge ^schylus on, from 
 the range of beacons to the bath of Agamemnon ; nor expand 
 less potently the vulture's wing over the lacerated bosom on the 
 rocks of Caucasus. With the earliest flowers of the freshly 
 created earth, Imagination strewed the nuptial couch of Eve. 
 Not Ariel, nor Caliban, nor Witches who ruled the elements, 
 but Eve and Satan and Prometheus, are the most wondrous and 
 the most glorious of her works. Imagination takes the weaker 
 hand of VigU out of Dante's who grasps it, and guides the 
 Florentine exile through the triple world. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Whatever be your enthusiasm for the 
 great old masters, you must often feel, if less of so strong an 
 impulse, yet a cordial self-congratulation in having bestowed so 
 many eulogies on poetical contemporaries, and on others whose 
 genius is apart from poetry. 
 
 Walter Landor. Indeed I do. Every meed of Justice is 
 delivered out of her own full scale. The poets, and others who 
 may rank with them, — indeed, all the great men, — have borne 
 
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 427 
 
 towards me somewhat more than civility. The few rudenesses I 
 have ever heard of are from such as neither I nor you ever meet 
 in society, and such as warm their fingers and stomachs round less 
 ornamental hearths. 
 
 When they to whom we have been unknown, or indifferent, 
 begin to speak a little well of us, we are sure to find some honest 
 old friend ready to trim the balance. I have had occasion to 
 smile at this. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. We sometimes stumble upon sly invidi- 
 ousness and smouldering malignity, quite unexpectedly, and in 
 places which we should have believed were above the influence of 
 such malaria. When Prosperity pays to Wisdom her visit in 
 state, would we not, rather than halloo the yard-dog against her, 
 clear the way for her, and adorn the door with garlands ? How 
 fond are people in general of clinging to a great man's foibles ! — 
 they can climb no higher. It is not the solid, it is the carious, 
 that grubs feed upon. 
 
 Walter Landor. The practice of barring out the master is 
 still continued in the world's great school-room. Our sturdy 
 boys do not fear a flogging : they fear only a book or a lecture. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Authors are like cattle going to a fair: 
 those of the same field can never move on without butting one 
 another. 
 
 Walter Landor. It has been my fortune and felicity, from 
 my earliest days to have avoided all competitions. My tutor 
 at Oxford could never persuade me to write a piece of Latin 
 poetry for the prize, earnest as he was that his pupil should be a 
 winner at the forthcoming Encenia. Poetry was always my 
 amusement ; prose, my study and business. I have published 
 five volumes of Imaginary Cowversations : cut the worst of them 
 through the middle, and there will remain in this decimal 
 fraction quite enough to satisfy my appetite for fame. I shall 
 dine late ; but the dining-room vsdll be well lighted, the guests 
 few and select. 
 
 In this age of discovery it may haply be discovered who first 
 among our Cisalpine nations led Greek to converse like Greek, 
 Roman like Roman, in poetry or prose. Gentlemen of fashion 
 have patronized them occasionally, — have taken them under the 
 arm, have recommended their own tailor, their own perfumer, 
 
428 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 and have lighted a cigar for them from their own at the door of 
 the Traveller's or Atherueum : there they parted. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Before we go into the house again, let me 
 revert to what you seem to have forgotten, — the hasty and inac- 
 curate remarks on Gebir. 
 
 Walter Landor. It is hardly worth our while. Evidently 
 they were written by a very young person, who, with a little 
 encouragement, and induced to place his confidence in somewhat 
 _safer investment than himself, may presently do better things. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Southey too, I remember, calls the poem 
 in some parts obscure. 
 
 Walter Landor. It must be, if Southey found it so. I never 
 thought of asking him where lies the obscurity ; I would have 
 attempted to correct whatever he disapproved. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. He himself, the clearest of writers, pro- 
 fesses that he imitated your versification ; and the style of his 
 Colloquies is in some degree modified by yours. 
 
 Walter Landor. Little cause had he for preferring any other 
 to his own. 
 
 Perhaps the Indktum ore alio is my obscurity. Goethe is 
 acknowledged by his highest admirers to be obscure in several 
 places ; which he thinks a poet may and should be occasion- 
 ally. I differ from him, and would avoid it everywhere : he 
 could see in the dark. This great poet carries it with him 
 so far as into epigram. I now regret that I profited so little 
 by the calm acuteness of Southey. In what poet of the last 
 nineteen centuries, who has written so much, is there less 
 intermixture of prose, or less contamination of conceit ? In what 
 critic, who has criticised so many, less of severity or assumption ? 
 
 I would never fly for shelter under the strongest wing ; but 
 you know that commentators, age after age, have found obscurities 
 in Pindar, in Dante, and in Shakespeare. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. And it is not in every place the effect of 
 time. You have been accused, I hear, either by this writer or 
 some such another, of turgidity. 
 
 Walter Landor. Certainly by this : do not imagine there is 
 anywhere such another. 
 
 /Irchdeacon Hare. Without a compliment, no poet of ours is 
 less turgid. Guests may dispense with pottage and puff-paste. 
 
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 429 
 
 with radishes and water-cresses, with salad and cream-cheese, who 
 " implentur veteris bacchi pinguisque ferinae." 
 
 Walter Landor. Encouraged by your commendation, let me 
 read to you (for I think I placed it this evening in my pocket) 
 what was transcribed for me as a curiosity, out of the same Article. 
 Yes ; here it is : — 
 
 "His great defect is a certain crudeness of the judgment, implied in the 
 selection of the subject-matter, and a further want of slcill and perspicuity 
 in the treatment. Except in a few passages, it has none of those peculiar 
 graces of style and sentiment which render the writings of our more pro- 
 minent modem authors so generally delightful." 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Opinion on most matters, but chiefly on 
 literary, and, all above, on poetical, seems to me like an empty 
 eggshell in a duck-pond, turned on its stagnant water by the 
 slightest breath of air ; at one moment the cracked side nearer to 
 sight, at another the sounder, but the emptiness at all times 
 visible. 
 
 Is your detractor a brother poet. 
 
 Walter Landor. An incipient one he may be. Poets in that 
 stage of existence, subject to sad maladies, kick hard for life, and 
 scratch the nurse's face. Like some trees, — fir trees, for 
 instance, — ^they must attain a certain height and girth before they 
 are serviceable or sightly. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. The weakest wines fall soonest into the 
 acetous fermentation : the more generous retain their sweetness 
 with their strength. Somewhat of this diversity is observable in 
 smaller wits and greater, more especially in the warm climate 
 where poetry is the cultivation. 
 
 Walter Londor. The ancients often hung their trophies on 
 obtruncated and rotten trees: we may do the like at present, 
 leaving our enemies for sepulture. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Envy of pre-eminence is universal and ever- 
 lasting. Little men, whenever they find an opportunity, follow 
 the steps of greater in this dark declivity. The apple of discord 
 was fiill-grown soon after the creation. It fell between the two 
 first brothers in the garden of Eden ; it fell between two later on 
 the plain of Thebes. Narrow was the interval, when again it 
 gleamed portentously on the short grass of Ida. It rolled into 
 the palace of Pella, dividing Philip and « Philip's godlike son ; " 
 
43° Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 it followed that insatibk youth to the extremities of his conquests, 
 and even to his sepulchre ; then it broke the invincible phalanx 
 and scattered the captains wide apart. It lay in the gates of 
 Carthage, so that they could not close against the enemy ; it lay 
 between the generous and agnate families of Scipio and Gracchus. 
 Marius and Sulla, Julius and Pompeius, Octavius and Antonius, 
 were not the last who experienced its fatal malignity. King 
 imprisoned king ; emperor stabbed emperor ; pope poisoned pope, 
 contending for God's vicegerency. The roll-call of their names, 
 with a cross against each, is rotting in the lumber-room of history. 
 Do not wonder, then, if one of the rabble runs after you from the 
 hustings, and, committing no worse mischief, snatches at the 
 colors in your hatband. 
 
 Walter Landor. Others have snatched more. My quarry lies 
 upon a high common a good way from the public road, and every- 
 body takes out of it what he pleases " with privy paw, and nothing 
 said " beyond, A curse on the oldfelloiu! hoiu hard his granite is ! 
 one can never male it Jit." This is all I get of quit-rent or 
 acknowledgment. I know of a poacher who noosed a rabbit on 
 my warren, and I am told he made such a fricassee of it that 
 there was no taste of rabbit or sauce. I never had him taken 
 up : he is at large, dressed in new clothes, and worth money. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Your manors are extensive, comprehending — 
 
 " Prata, arva, ingentes sylvas, saltusque paludesque 
 Usque ad oceanum." 
 
 Walter Landor. I never drive the poor away, if they come 
 after dry sticks only ; but they must not with impunity lop or 
 bum my plantations. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. I regret that your correspondent was 
 sickened or tired of transcribing. 
 
 Walter Landor. Here is another slip from the same crab- 
 tree. It is objected that most of my poems are occasional. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. In number they may be ; but in quantity 
 of material I doubt whether they constitute a seventh. We will 
 look presently, and we shall find perhaps that the gentleman is 
 unlucky at his game of hazard. 
 
 Walter Landor. Certainly his play is not deep. We who are 
 sober dare not sit down at a table where a character may be lost at 
 
Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor. 431 
 
 a cast : they alone are so courageous who have nothing to be 
 seized on. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. The gentleman sweeps the cloth with little 
 caution and less calculation. Of your poems, the smaller alone 
 are occasional : now not only are the smaller, but the best, of 
 Catullus and Horace, and all of Pindar. Were not the speeches 
 of Lysias, ^schines, Demosthenes, occasional ? Draw nearer 
 home : what but occasional were the Letters of Junius ? 
 Materiem superabat opus. 
 
 Walter Landor. True. The ministers and their king are 
 now mould and worms: they were little better when above- 
 ground ; but the bag-wig and point-lace of Junius axe suspended 
 aloft upon a golden peg, for curiosity and admiration. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Regarding the occasional in poetry, is 
 there less merit in taking and treating what is before us, than 
 in seeking and wandering through an open field as we would for 
 mushrooms ? 
 
 Walter Landor. I stand out a rude rock in the middle of a 
 river, with no exotic or parasitical plant on it, and few others. 
 Eddies and dimples and froth and bubbles pass rapidly by, 
 without shaking me. Here, indeed, is little room for pic-nic 
 and polka. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. Praise and censure are received by you with 
 nearly the same indifference. 
 
 Walter Landor. Not yours. Praise on poetry, said to be the 
 most exhilarating of all, affects my brain but little. Certainly, I 
 never attempted to snatch " the peculiar graces so generally de- 
 lightfvJ." My rusticity has at least thus much of modesty in it. 
 
 Archdeacon Hare. 
 
 " The richest flowers have not most honey-cells. 
 Vou seldom find the bee about the rose, 
 Oftener the beetle eating into it. 
 The violet less attracts the noisy hum 
 Than the minute and poisonous bloom of box. 
 Poets know this ; Nature's invited guests 
 Draw near and note it down and ponder it ; 
 The idler sees it, sees unheedingly, 
 Unheedingly the rifler of the hive." 
 
 Is your critic wiser, more experienced, and of a more poetical 
 mind than Southey ? Utri horum creditis, Quirites ? 
 
432 Imaginary Conversations. 
 
 Vanity and presumption are not always the worst parts of 
 the man they take possession of, although they are usually 
 the most prominent. Malignity sticks as closely to him, and 
 keeps more cautiously out of sight. Sorry I have often 
 been to see a fellow-Christian — one of much intellect and 
 much worth, one charitable to the poor, one attendant on 
 the sick, one compassionate with the sufferer, one who never 
 is excited to anger, but by another's wrongs — enjoying a 
 secret pleasure in saying unpleasant things at no call of duty ; 
 inflicting wounds which may be long before they heal ; and not 
 only to those who are unfriendly or unknown, but likewise to the 
 nearest and the friendliest. Meanwhile those who perhaps are 
 less observant of our ritual not only abstain from so sinful an 
 indulgence, but appear to be guided in their demeanor by the 
 less imperative and less authoritative dictate of philosophy. I 
 need not exhort or advise you, who have always done it, to 
 disregard the insignificant and obscure, so distant from you, so 
 incapable of approaching you. Only look before you at this 
 instant ; and receive a lesson from Nature, who is able and ready 
 at all times to teach us, and to teach men wiser than we are. 
 Unwholesome exhalations creep over the low marshes of Peven- 
 sey ; but they ascend not to Beachyhead nor to Hurstmonceaux. 
 
 TURNBULX AND SPEAKS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH 
 
^M