Sophocles. Cities are ignorant that nothing is more disgraceful to them, than to be the birthplaces of the illustriously good, and not afterward the places of their residence; that their dignity consists in adorning them with distinctions, in entrusting to them the regulation of the commonwealth, and not in having sold a crust or cordial to the nurse or midwife. he was drunk; thirdly, by acting to perfection like a drunken man when he was sober; and fourthly, by a most surprising trick indeed, which it is reported he learnt in Babylonia: one would have sworn he had a blazing fire in his mouth; take it out, and it is nothing but a lump of ice. The king, before whom he was admitted to play his tricks, hated him at first, and told him that the last conjuror had made him cautious of such people, he having been detected in filching from a royal tiara one of the weightiest jewels: but talents forced their way. As for Chloros, I mention him by the name under which I knew him; he has changed it since; for although the dirt wherewith it was encrusted kept him comfortable at first, when it cracked and began to crumble it was incommodious. The barbarians have commenced, I understand, to furbish their professions and vocations with rather whimsical skirts and linings: thus for instance a chessplayer is lion-hearted and worship Pericles. O Zeus and Pallas! grant a right mind to the Athenians! If, throughout so many and such eventful ages they have been found by you deserving of their freedom, render them more and more worthy of the great blessing you bestowed on them! May the valour of our children defend this mole for ever; and constantly may their patriotism increase and strengthen among these glorious reminiscences! Shield them from the jealousy of surrounding states, from the ferocity of barbarian kings, and from the perfidy of those who profess the same religion! Teach them that between the despot and the free all compact is a cable of sand, and every alliance unholy ! ful; a drunkard is serenity and highness; a hunter And, O givers of power and wisdom! remove from them the worst and wildest of illusions, that happiness, liberty, virtue, genius, will be fostered or long respected, much less attain their just ascendancy, under any other form of government! Sophocles. May the Gods hear thee, Pericles, as they have always done! or may I, reposing in my tomb, never know that they have not heard thee! I smile on imagining how trivial would thy patriotism and ideas of government appear to Chloros. And indeed much wiser men, from the prejudices of habit and education, have undervalued them, preferring the dead quiet of their wintry hives to our breezy spring of life and busy summer. The countries of the vine and olive are more subject to hailstorms than the regions of the north yet is it not better that some of the fruit should fall than that none should ripen? Pericles. Quit these creatures; let them lie warm and slumber; they are all they ought to be, all they can be. But prythee who is Chloros, that he should deserve to be named by Sophocles? Sophocles. He was born somewhere on the opposite coast of Euboea, and sold as a slave in Persia to a man who dealt largely in that traffic, and who also had made a fortune by displaying to the public four remarkable proofs of ability: first, by swallowing at a draught an amphora of the strongest wine; secondly, by standing up erect and modulating his voice like a sober man when of the three. It is true he had afterward the glory of proposing and of carrying to Sparta the decree of his recall. Let us contemplate the brighter side of his character, his eloquence, his wit, his clemency, his judgment, his firm ness, his regularity, his decorousness, his domesticity; let us then unite him with his predecessor, and acknowledge that such illustrious rivals never met before or since, in enmity or in friendship. Could the piety attributed to Pericles have belonged to a scholar of Anaxagoras? Eloquent men often talk like religious men: and where should the eloquence of Pericles be more inflamed by enthusiasm than in the midst of his propylea, at the side of Sophocles, and before the Gods of Phidias ? of fox, badger, polecat, fitchew, and weazel, is excellency and right honourable; while, such is the delicacy of distinction, a rat-catcher is considerably less: he however is illustrious, and appears, as a tail to a comet, in the train of a legation, holding a pen between his teeth to denote his capacity for secretary, and leading a terrier in the right hand, and carrying a trap baited with cheese and anise-seed in the left. It is as creditable among them to lie with dexterity as it is common among the Spartans to steal. Chloros, who performed it with singular frankness and composure, had recently a cock's feather mounted on his turban, in place of a hen's, and the people was commanded to address him by the title of most noble. His brother Alexaretes was employed at a stipend of four talents to detect an adultress in one among the royal wives: he gave no intelligence in the course of several months: the king on his return cried angrily, "What hast thou been doing? hast thou never found her out?" He answered, "Thy servant, 0 king, hath been doing more than finding out an adultress: he hath, O king, been making one." Pericles. I have heard the story with this difference, that the bed-ambassador being as scantily gifted with facetiousness as with perspicacity, the reply was framed satirically by some other cour tier, who, imitating his impudence, had forgotten his dulness. But about the reward of falsehood, that is wonderful, when we read that formerly the Persians were occupied many years in the sole study of truth. Sophocles. How difficult then must they have found it! no wonder they left it off the first moment they could conveniently. The grandfather of Chloros was honest: he carried a pack upon his shoulders, in which pack were contained the coarser linens of Caria: these he retailed among the villages of Asia and Greece, but principally in the islands. He died on the rumour of war the son and grandson, then an infant, fled: the rest is told. Sophocles. A solecism from Pericles! Has the most eloquent of men forgotten the Attic language? has he forgotten the language of all Greece? Can the father of his country be ignorant that he should have said hither comes? for citizen and soldier is one. In Persia no man inquires how | tax, debt, exile, fine, imprisonment, delivered from another comes to wealth or power, the suddenness of monarchy, from oligarchy, and from anarchy, which appears to be effected by some of the demons walking along their porticoes, inhaling their seaor genii of their songs and stories. Chloros grew breezes, crowning their Gods daily for fresh blessrich, was emancipated from slavery, and bought ings, and their children for deserving them, reply several slaves himself. One of these was exces- to this voice by the symphony of their applause. sively rude and insolent to me: I had none near Hark! my words are not idle. Hither come the enough to chastise him, so that I requested of his youths and virgins, the sires and matrons; hither master, by a friend, to admonish and correct him come citizen and soldier . at his leisure. My friend informs me that Chloros, crossing his legs, and drawing his cock's feather through the thumb and finger, asked languidly who I was, and receiving the answer, said, “I am surprised at his impudence: Pericles himself could have demanded nothing more." My friend remarked that Sophocles was no less sensible of an affront than Pericles. "True," replied he, "but he has not the power of expressing his sense of it quite so strongly. For an affront to Pericles, who could dreadfully hurt me, I would have imprisoned my whole gang, whipped them with wires, mutilated them, turned their bodies into safes for bread and water, or cooled their prurient tongues with hemlock but no slave shall ever shrug a shoulder the sorer or eat a leek the less for Sophocles." Pericles. The ideas of such a man on government must be curious: I am persuaded he would prefer the Persian to any. I forgot to mention that, according to what I hear this morning, the great king has forbidden strange ships to sail within thirty parasangs of his coasts, and has elaimed the dominion of half ours. Sophocles. Where is the scourge with which Xerxes lashed the ocean? Were it not better laid on the back of a madman than placed within his hand? Pericles. It has been observed by those who look deeply into the history of physics, that all royal families become at last insane. Immoderate power, like other intemperance, leaves the progeny weaker and weaker, until Nature, as in compassion, covers it with her mantle and it is seen no more, or until the arm of indignant man sweeps it from before him. We must ere long excite the other barbarians to invade the territories of this, and before the cement of his new acquisitions shall have hardened. Large conquests break readily off from an empire by their weight, while smaller stick fast. A wide and rather waste kingdom should be interposed between the policied states and Persia, by the leave of Chloros. Perhaps he would rather, in his benevolence, unite us with the great and happy family of his master. Despots are wholesale dealers in equality; and, father Zeus! was ever equality like this? Sophocles. My dear Pericles! . . do excuse a smile.. is not that the best government which, whatever be the form of it, we ourselves are called upon to administer? Pericles. The Piræus and the Poecile have a voice of their own wherewith to answer thee, O Sophocles! and the Athenians, exempt from war, famine, Pericles. The fault is graver than the reproof, or indeed than simple incorrectness of language: my eyes misled my tongue: a large portion of the citizens is armed. O what an odour of thyme and bay and myrtle, and from what a distance, bruised by the procession! Sophocles. What regular and full harmony! What a splendour and effulgence of white dresses ! painful to aged eyes and dangerous to young. Pericles. I can distinguish many voices from among others. Some of them have blessed me for defending their innocence before the judges; some for exhorting Greece to unanimity; some for my choice of friends. Ah surely those sing sweetest ! those are the voices, O Sophocles! that shake my heart with tenderness, a tenderness passing love, and excite it above the trumpet and the cymbal. Return we to the Gods: the crowd is waving the branches of olive, calling us by name, and closing to salute us. Sophocles. O citadel of Pallas, more than all other citadels, may the Goddess of Wisdom and of War protect thee! and never may strange tongue be heard within thy walls, unless from captive king! Live, Pericles! and inspire into thy people the soul that once animated these heroes round us. Hail, men of Athens! Pass onward; leave me ; I follow. Go; behold the Gods, the Demigods, and Pericles! Artemidoros! come to my right. No: better walk between us; else they who run past may knock the flute out of your hand, or push it every now and then from the lip! Have you received the verses I sent you in the morning? soon enough to learn the accents and cadences? Artemidoros. Actaios brought them to me about sunrise; and I raised myself up in bed to practise them, while he sat on the edge of it, shaking the dust off his sandals all over the chamher by beating time. Sophocles. Begin we. The colours of thy waves are not the same "O Sun! careering over Sipylus, If desolation (worse than ever there Deeper and deeper came the darkness down; Sound, fifes! there is a youthfulness of sound On one bright point we gaze, one wish we breathe, Athens! be ever as thou art this hour, LOUIS XIV. AND FATHER LA CHAISE. Louis. Father, there is one thing which I never | enabled us to starve them out, and we had more have confessed; sometimes considering it almost engineers and better. Beside which, I took pecuas a light matter, and sometimes seeing it in its true colours. In my wars against the Dutch I committed an action . . La Chaise. Sire, the ears of the Lord are always open to those who confess their sins to their confessor. Cruelties and many other bad deeds are perpetrated in war, at which we should shudder in our houses at Paris. Louis. The people who were then in their houses did shudder, poor devils! It was ludicrous to see how such clumsy figures skipped, when the bombs fell among their villages, in which the lower part of the habitations was under water; and children looked from the upper windows, between the legs of calves and lambs, and of the old household dog, struggling to free himself, as less ignorant of his danger. Loud shrieks were sometimes heard, when the artillery and other implements of war were silent for fevers raged within their insulated walls, and wives execrated their husbands, with whom they had lived in concord and tenderness many years, when the father enforced the necessity of throwing their dead infant into the lake below. Our young soldiers on such occasions exercised their dexterity, and took their choice; for the whole family was assembled at the casement, and prayers were read over the defunct, accompanied with some firm and with some faltering responses. By these terrible examples God punished their heresy. La Chaise. The Lord of Hosts is merciful: he protected your Majesty in the midst of these horrors. Louis. He sustained my strength, kept up my spirits, and afforded me every day some fresh amusement, in the country of this rebellious and blasphemous people, who regularly, a quarter before twelve o'clock, knowing that mass was then performed among us, sang their psalms. La Chaise. I cannot blame a certain degree of severity on such occasions: on much slighter, we read in the Old Testament, nations were smitten with the edge of the sword. Louis. I have wanted to find that place, but my Testament was not an old one: it was printed at the Louvre in my own time. As for the edge of the sword, it was not always convenient to use that; they are stout fellows; but our numbers liar vengeance on some of the principal families, and on some among the most learned of their professors for if any had a dissolute son, who, as dissolute sons usually are, was the darling of the house, I bribed him, made him drunk, and converted him. This occasionally broke the father's heart: God's punishment of stubbornness! La Chaise. Without the especial grace of the Holy Spirit, such conversions are transitory. It is requisite to secure the soul while we have it, by the exertion of a little loving-kindness. I would deliver the poor stray creatures up to their Maker straightway, lest he should call me to account for their back-sliding. Heresy is a leprosy, which the whiter it is the worse it is. Those who appear the most innocent and godly, are the very men who do the most mischief and hold the fewest observances. They hardly treat God Almighty like a gentleman, grudge him a clean napkin at his own table, and spend less upon him than upon a Christmas dinner. Louis. O father La Chaise! you have searched my heart: you have brought to light my hidden offences. Nothing is concealed from your penetration. I come forth like a criminal in his chains. La Chaise. Confess, Sire, confess! I will pour the oil into your wounded spirit, taking due care that the vengeance of heaven be satisfied by your atonement. Louis. Intelligence was brought to me that the cook of the English general had prepared a superb dinner, in consequence of what that insolent and vainglorious people are in the habit of calling a success. "We shall soon see," exclaimed I," who is successful: God protects France." The whole army shouted, and, I verily believe, at that moment would have conquered the world. I deferred it: my designs lie in my own breast. Father, I never heard such a shout in my life: it reminded me of Cherubim and Seraphim and Archangels. The infantry cried with joy; the horses capered and neighed and ventriloquized right and left, from an excess of animation. Leopard-skins, bear-skins, Genoa velvet, Mechlin ruffles, Brussels cravats, feathers and fringes and golden bands, up in the air at once; pawings and snortings, threats and adjurations, beginnings and ends of songs. I was Henry and Cæsar, Alexander and David, Charle magne and Agamemnon: I had only to give the word; they would swim across the Channel, and bring the tyrant of proud Albion back in chains. All my prudence was requisite to repress their ardour. A letter had been intercepted by my scouts, addressed by the wife of the English general to her husband. She was at Gorcum: she informed him that she would send him a glorious mincepie, for his dinner the following day, in celebration of his victory. "Devil incarnate!" said I on reading the dispatch, "I will disappoint thy malice." I was so enraged, that I went within a mile or two of cannon-shot; and I should have gone within half a mile if my dignity had permitted me, or if my resentment had lasted. I liberated the messenger, detaining as hostage his son who accompanied him, and promising that if the mincepie was secured, I would make him a chevalier on the spot. Providence favoured our arms: but unfortunately there were among my staff-officers some who had fought under Turenne, and who, I sus pect, retained the infection of heresy. They presented the mincepie to me on their knees, and I ate. It was Friday. I did not remember the day when I began to eat; but the sharpness of the weather, the odour of the pie, and something of vengeance springing up again at the sight of it, made me continue after I had recollected; and for my greater condemnation, I had inquired that very morning of what materials it was composed. God set his face against me, and hid from me the light of his countenance. I lost victory after victory; nobody knows how; for my Generals were better than the enemy's, my soldiers more numerous, more brave, more disciplined. And, extraordinary and awful! even those who swore to conquer or die, ran back again like whelps just gelt, crying, "It is the first duty of a soldier to see his king in safety." I never heard so many fine sentiments, or fewer songs. My stomach was out of order by the visitation of the Lord. I took the sacrament on the Sunday. La Chaise. The sacrament on a Friday's gras! I should have recommended first a de profundis, a miserere, and an eructavit cor meum, and lastly a little oil of ricina, which, administered by the holy and taken by the faithful, is almost as efficacious in its way as that of Rheims. Penance is to be done your Majesty must fast: your Majesty must wear sackcloth next your skin, and carry ashes upon your head before the people. Louis. Father, I can not consent to this humiliation: the people must fear me. What are you doing with those scissors and that pill? I am sound; give it Villeroy or Richelieu. La Chaise. Sire, no impiety, no levity, I pray. In this pill, as your Majesty calls it, are some flakes of ashes from the incense, which seldom is pure gum; break it between your fingers, and scatter it upon your peruke: well done. Now take this. Louis. Faith! I have no sore on groin or limb. A black plaister! what is that for? La Chaise. Did it, in descending, touch your back, belly, ribs, breast, or shoulder, or any part that needs mortification, and can be mortified without scandal ? Louis. I placed it between my frills. La Chaise. In such manner as to touch the skin sensibly? : Louis. It tickled me, by stirring a hair or two. La Chaise. Be comforted then for people have been tickled to death. Louis. But, father, you remit the standing in presence of the people? La Chaise. Indeed I do not. Stand at the window, son of St. Louis. Louis. And perform the same ceremonies? no, upon my conscience! My almoner.. La Chaise. They are performed. Louis. But the people will never know what is on my head or in my pantaloon. La Chaise. Penance is performed so far: tomorrow is Friday: one more rigid must be enforced. Six dishes alone shall come upon the table; and, although fasting does not extend to wines or liqueurs, I order that three kinds only of wine be presented, and three of liqueur. Louis. In the six dishes is soup included? La Chaise. Soup is not served in a dish; but I forbid more than three kinds of soup. Louis. Oysters of Cancale? La Chaise. Those come in barrels: take care they be not dished. Your Majesty must either eat them raw from the barrel, or dressed in scallop, or both; but beware, I say again, of dishing this article, as your soul shall answer for it at the last day. There are those who would prohibit them wholly. I have experienced. . I mean in others .. strange uncouth effects therefrom, which, unless they shadow forth something mystical, it were better not to provoke. Louis. Pray, Father, why is that frightful day which you mentioned just now, and which I think I have heard mentioned on other occasions, called the last? when the last in this life is over before it comes, and when the first in the next is not begun. La Chaise. It is called the last day by the Church, because after that day the Church can do nothing for the sinner. Her saints, martyrs, and confessors, can plead at the bar for him the whole of that day until sunset, some say until after angelus ; then the books are closed, the candles put out, the doors shut, and the key turned. The flames of purgatory then sink into the floor, and would not wither a cistus-leaf full-blown and shed: there is nothing left but heaven and hell, songs and La Chaise. This is sackcloth. It was the sack lamentations. Louis. Permit me to ask another question of no less importance, and connected with my penance. The Bishop of Aix in Provence has sent me thirty fine quails. La Chaise. There are naturalists who assert that quails have fallen from heaven, like manna. Externally they bear the appearance of birds, and I have eaten them in that persuasion. If however anyone from grave authority is convinced of the contrary, or propends to believe so, and eats thereof, the fault is venial. I conferred with Tamburini on this momentous point. He distinguishes between quails taken in the field or in the air as they descend, and tame quails bred within coops and enclosures, which are begotten in the ordinary way of generation, and of which the substance in that case must be different. I cannot believe that the Bishop of Aix would be the conservator of creatures so given to fighting and wantonness; but rather opine that his quails alighted somewhere in his diocese, and perhaps as a mark of divine favour to so worthy a member of the Church. It is safer to eat them after twelve o'clock at night; but where there is purity and humility of spirit, I see not that they are greatly to be dreaded. The fiction of the quails will appear extravagant to those only who are in ignorance that such opinions have prevailed among casuists. The Carthusians, to whom animal food is forbidden, whereby they mean solely the flesh of quadrupeds and of birds, may nevertheless eat the otter and the gull; it may be eaten by Catholics even in Lent. From this permission in regard to the gull, do we derive the English verb and noun ? We often lay most stress on our slightest faults, and have more apprehension from things unessential than from things essential. When Lord Tylney was on his death bed, and had not been shaved for two days, he burst suddenly into tears, and cried to his valet," Are not you ashamed to abandon me? would you let me go this figure into the presence of my Maker?" He was shaved, and (let us hope) presented. Louis XIV. is the great examplar of kingship, the object of worship to declaimers against the ferocity of the people. The invasion of Holland, the conflagration of the Palatinate, the revocation of the edict of Nantes, have severally French jurists, and French bishops, Massillon and Bossuet been celebrated, by French poets, French historians, among them. The most unprovoked act of cruelty on record was perpetrated by another King of France. These are the words of an historian, their defender and panegyrist, Bussieres. "Victi Bulgari, et ex sociis in servitutem rapti, Ex iis ad novem millia, uxoribus liberisque impliciti, a mox eorum plures relictâ patriâ exulatum ultro abierunt. Dagoberto sedes petunt . . Jussi per hyemem hærere in Bavariâ dum amplius rex deliberaret, in plures urbes domosque sparsi sunt; tum novo barbaroque facinore una consilio Boiarios jubet, singulos suis hospitibus necem nocte cæsi omnes simul. Quippe Dagobertus immani inferre, ratione nulla ætatis aut sexus; et quâ truculentiâ imperatum, obtemperatum eâdem. Condicta nocte miseri homines in asylo somni obtruncantur, imbelles feminæ, inA sontes pueri; totque funera hilaritati fuerunt, non luctui." peculiar feature in the national character, indestructi ble amid all forms of government. It is amusing to read our jesuit's words in the sequel. "Ad beneficiorum fontem se convertit, multaque dona elargitus templis, emendabat scelera liberalitate.. Nec Dagoberto liberalitas pia frustra fuit: siquidem sancti quos in vivis multum coluerat, Dionysius, Mauritius, et Martinus, oblati sunt Joanni monacho vigilanti, regis animam eripientes e potestate dæmonum sævisque tormentis, eamque secum in cœli regiam deducentes." SAMUEL JOHNSON AND Tooke. Doctor Johnson, I rejoice in the opportunity, late as it presents itself, of congratulating you on the completion of your great undertaking: my bookseller sent me your Dictionary the day it came from the press, and it has exercised ever since a good part of my time and attention. Johnson. Who are you, sir? Johnson. Keep it then at home and to yourself, sir, as you would any other treasure, and talk no more about it than you would about that. You have picked up some knowledge, sir; but out of dirty places. What man in his senses would fix his study on the hustings? When a gentleman takes it into his head to conciliate the rabble, I deny his discretion and I doubt his honesty. Sir, what can you have to say to me? Tooke. Doctor, my studies have led me some little way into etymology, and I am interested in whatever contributes to the right knowledge of our language. Johnson. Sir, have you read our old authors? JOHN HORNE (TOOKE). Tooke. Almost all of them that are printed and extant. Johnson. Prodigious! do you speak truth? Johnson. Sir, how could you, a firebrand tossed about by the populace, find leisure for so much reading? Tooke. The number of English books printed before the accession of James the First, is smaller than you appear to imagine; and the manuscripts, I believe, are not numerous; certainly in the libraries of our Universities they are scanty. I wish you had traced in your preface all the changes made in the orthography these last three centuries, for which about five additional pages would have been sufficient. The first attempt to purify and reform the tongue was made by John Lyly, in a book entitled Euphues and his Eng land, and a most fantastical piece of fustian it is. This Author has often been confounded with William Lily, a better grammarian, and better known. Benjamin Jonson did somewhat, and could have done more. Although our governors *Among the works of Charles de St. Pierre is Projet pour reformer l'Orthographie des Langues de l'Europe: he * J. Horne assumed the name of Tooke after the sup- must not be confounded with Barnardin de St. Pierre, posed date of this Conversation. fanciful as is the treatise. |
