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from a pretty girl a bracelet or locket, or other such trifle?

Anacreon. Not without her permission, and some equivalent.

Polycrates. I likewise have obtained the consent of the people, and have rendered them a great deal more than an equivalent. Formerly they called one another the most opprobrious names in their assemblies, and sometimes even fought there; now they never do. I entertained from the very beginning so great a regard for them, that I punished one of my brothers with death, and the other with banishment, for attempting to make divisions among them, and for impeding the measures I undertook to establish unanimity and order. My father had consented to bear alone all the toils of government; and filial piety induced me to imitate his devotion to the commonwealth. The people had assembled to celebrate the festival of Juno, and had crowded the avenues of her temple so unceremoniously and indecorously, that I found it requisite to slay a few hundreds to her glory. King Lygdamus of Naxos lent me his assistance in this salutary operation, well knowing that the cause of royalty in all countries, being equally sacred, should be equally secure.

Anacreon. My sweet Polycrates! do not imagine that I, or any wise man upon earth, can be interested in the fate of a nation that yields to the discretion of one person. But pray avoid those excesses which may subject the Graces to the Tempests. Let people live in peace and plenty, for your own sake; and go to war then only when beauteous slaves are wanting. Even then it is cheaper to buy them of the merchant, taking care that at every importation you hire a philosopher or poet to instruct them in morality and religion. The one will demonstrate that obedience is a virtue; the other, that it is a pleasure. If age stimulates the senses, or if youth is likely to return (as the ring did), not a syllable can I add against the reasonableness of conquests to assuage the wants of either.

Polycrates. The people in all countries must be kept in a state of activity: for men in cities, and horses in stables, grow restive by standing still. It is the destination of both to be patted, ridden, and whipped. The riding is the essential thing; the patting and whipping are accessories; and few are very careful or expert in timing them.

Anacreon. In courts, where silliness alone escapes suspicion, we must shake false lights over the shallows, or we shall catch nothing. But, O Polycrates! I am not in the court of a prince: I am in the house of a friend. I might flatter you, if flattery could make you happier : but, as you have neglected nothing which could render my abode with you delightful, I would omit no precaution, no suggestion, which may secure and prolong my blessings. Do not believe that every poet is dishonest, because most are. Homer was not; Solon is not; I doubt at times whether I

myself am; in despite of your inquisitive eye. My opinion of your wisdom is only shaken by your assumption of royalty, since I cannot think it an act of discretion to change tranquillity for alarm, or friends for soldiers, or a couch for a throne, or a sound sleep for a broken one. If you doubt whether I love you (and every prince may reasonably entertain that doubt of every man around him), still you can not doubt that I am attached to your good fortune, in which I have partaken to my heart's content, and in which I hope to continue a partaker.

Polycrates. May the Gods grant it?

Anacreon. Grant it yourself, Polycrates, by following my counsel. Everything is every man's over which his senses extend. What you can enjoy is yours; what you can not, is not. Of all the islands in the world the most delightful and the most fertile is Samos. Crete and Cyprus are larger; what then? The little Teios, my own native country, affords more pleasure than any one heart can receive: not a hill in it but contains more beauty and more wine than the most restless and active could enjoy. Teach the Samiots, O Polycrates, to refuse you and each other no delight that is reciprocal and that lasts. Royalty is the farthest of all things from reciprocity, and what delight it gives must be renewed daily, and with difficulty. In the order of nature, flowers grow on every side of us: why take a ploughshare to uproot them? We may show our strength and dexterity in guiding it for such a purpose, but not our wisdom. Love, in its various forms, according to our age, station, and capacity, is the only object of reasonable and just desire. I prefer that which is the easiest to give and to return you, since you have chosen royalty, have taken the most difficult in both: yet by kindness and courtesy you may conciliate those minds, which, once abased by royalty, never can recover their elasticity and strength, unless in the fires of vengeance. The Gods avert it from you, my friend! Do not inure your people to war: but instead of arming and equipping them, soften them more and more by peace and luxury. Let your deceit in the ring be your last; for men will rather be subjugated than deceived, not knowing, or not reflecting, that they must have been deceived before they could be subjugated. Let you and me keep this secret: that of the cook is hardly so safe.

Polycrates. Perfectly, or death would have sealed it; although my cook is, you know, an excellent one, and would be a greater loss to me than any native of the island. A tolerably good minister of state may be found in any cargo of slaves that lands upon the coast. Interest ensures fidelity. As for difficulty, I see none: to handle great bodies requires little delicacy. He would make in a moment a hole through a mud-wall, who could never make the eye of a needle: and it is easier to pick up a pompion than a single grain of dust. With you, however, who have lived among such people, and know them thoroughly, I need not discourse long about them, nor take the trouble

to argue how impossible it is to blunder on so wide and smooth a road, where every man is ready with a lamp if it is dark, or with a cart if it is miry. You know that a good cook is the peculiar gift of the Gods. He must be a perfect creature, from the brain to the palate, from the palate to the fingers' end.

is no person, young or old, who does not respect more highly the guest of Polycrates than the poet of Teios. You, my dear friend, who are a usurper, for which courage, prudence, affability, liberality, are necessary, would surely blush to act no better or more humanely than an hereditary and estaPleasure and displeasure, sick-blished king, the disadvantages of whose conness and health, life and death, are consigned to his arbitration. It would be little to add that he alone shares with royalty the privilege of exemption from every punishment but capital: for it would be madness to flog either, and turn it loose. The story of the ring will be credited as long as I want it; probably all my life, perhaps after. For men are swift to take up a miracle, and slow to drop it; and woe to the impious wretch who would undeceive them! They never will believe that I can be unprosperous, until they see me put to death: some, even then, would doubt whether it were I, and others whether I were really dead, the day following. As we are in no danger of any such event, let us go and be crowned for the feast, and prove whether the mullet has any other merits than we have yet discovered.

dition you yourself have stated admirably. Society is not yet trodden down and forked together by you into one and the same rotten mass, with rank weeds covering the top and sucking out its juices. Circe, when she transformed the companions of Ulysses into swine, took no delight in drawing their tusks and ringing their snouts, but left them, by special grace, in quiet and full possession of their new privileges and dignities. The rod of enchantment was the only rod she used among them, finding a pleasanter music in the chorusses of her nymphs than in the grunts and squeals of her subjects.

Polycrates. Now tell me truly, Anacreon, if you knew of a conspiracy against me, would you reveal it?

Anacreon. I would; both for your sake and for Come, Anacreon, you must write an ode to the conspirators. Even were I not your guest Fortune, not forgetting her favourite. and friend, I would dissuade from every similar design.

Anacreon. I dare not, before I have written one to Juno, the patroness of Samos: but, as surely as you are uncrucified, I will do it then. Pardon me, however, if I should happen to praise the beauty of her eyes, for I am used to think more about the goddess who has the loveliest; and, even if I began with the Furies, I should end in all likelihood with her.

Polycrates. Follow your own ideas. You can not fail, however, to descant on the facility with which I acquired my power, and the unanimity by which I retain it, under the guidance and protection of our patroness. I had less trouble in becoming the master of Samos than you will have in singing it. Indeed when I consider how little I experienced, I wonder that liberty can exist in any country where there is one wise and resolute man.

Polycrates. In some points, however, you appear to have a fellow-feeling with the seditions. You differ from them in this: you would not take the trouble to kill me, and could not find a convenient hour to run away.

Anacreon. I am too young for death, too old for flight, and too comfortable for either. As for killing you, I find it business enough to kill a kid as a sacrifice to Bacchus. Answer me as frankly as I answered you. If by accident you met a girl carried off by force, would you stop the ravisher?

Polycrates. Certainly, if she were pretty if not, I would leave the offence to its own punishment.

Anacreon. If the offence had been perpetrated to its uttermost extent, if the girl were silent, and if the brother unarmed should rush upon the perpe

Anacreon. And I that tyranny can, where there trator armed are two.

Polycrates. What! Anacreon, are even you at last so undisguisedly my adversary?

Anacreon. Silly creature! behold the fruit of royalty! Rottenness in the pulp, and bitterness in the kernel.

Polycrates, if I had uttered those words before the people, they would have stoned me for being your enemy. for being a traitor! This is the expression of late, not applied to those who betray, but to those who resist or traverse the betrayer. To such a situation are men reduced when they abandon self-rule! I love you from similarity of studies and inclinations, from habit, from gaiety of heart, and because I live with you more conveniently than in a meaner house and among coarser slaves. As for the Samiots, you can not suppose me much interested about them. Beauty itself is the less fierce from servitude; and there

Polycrates. I would catch him by the sleeve and stop him.

Anacreon. I would act so in this business of yours. You have deflowered the virgin. Whether the action will bring after it the full chastisement, I know not; nor whether the laws will ever wake upon it, or, waking upon it, whether they will not hold their breath and lie quiet. Weazels, and other animals that consume our corn, are strangled or poisoned, as may happen: usurpers and conquerors must be taken off quietly in one way only, lest many perish in the attempt, and lest it fail. No conspiracy of more than two persons ought ever to be entered into on such a business. Hence the danger is diminished to those concerned, and the satisfaction and glory are increased. Statues can be erected to two, not to many; gibbets can be erected as readily to many as to few; and would be; for most conspiracies have been discovered

and punished, while hundreds of usurpers have been removed by their cooks, their cup-bearers, and their mistresses, as easily, and with as little noise or notice, as a dish from the table, or a slipper from the bed-side.

Banish the bloated and cloudy ideas of war and conquest. Continue to eat while you have anything in your mouth, particularly if sweet or savoury, and only think of filling it again when it is empty.

Croesus hath no naval force, nor have the Persians they desire the fish but fear the water, and will mew and purr over you until they fall asleep and forget you, unless you plunge too loud and glitter too near. They would have attacked you in the beginning, if they had ever wished to do it, or been ignorant that kings have an enemy the less on the ruin of every free nation. I do not tell you to sit quiet, any more than I would a man who has a fever or an ague, but to sit as quiet as your condition will permit. If you leave to others | their enjoyments, they will leave yours to you. Tyrants never perish from tyranny, but always from folly; when their fantasies build up a palace for which the earth has no foundation. It then becomes necessary, they think, to talk about their similitude to the Gods, and to tell the people, "We have a right to rule you, just as they have a right to rule us: the duties they exact from us, we exact from you: we are responsible to none but to them."

Anacreon. Hylactor tells a story delightfully, and his poetry is better than most poets will allow.

Polycrates. I do not think it. . I speak of the poetry.

Anacreon. Now, my dear Polycrates, without a word of flattery to you, on these occasions you are as ignorant as a goat-herd.

Polycrates. I do not think that either.

Anacreon. Who does, of himself? Yet poetry and the degrees of it are just as difficult to mark and circumscribe, as love and beauty.

Polycrates. Madman!

Anacreon. All are madmen who first draw out hidden truths.

Polycrates. You are envious of Hylactor, because on that day I had given him a magnificent dress, resembling those of the Agathyrsi.

Anacreon. I can go naked at my own expense. I would envy him (if it gave me no trouble) his lively fancy, his convivial fun, and his power to live in a crowd, which I can do no longer than a trout can in the grass. What I envied on that day, I had. When with eyes turned upward to you, modestly and reverentially, he entreated the possession of the beechen bowl out of which you had taken one draught, I, with like humility of gesture and similar tone of voice, requested I might be possessor of the barrel out of which you had taken but one. The people were silent at his request; they were rapturous at mine: one excepted.

Polycrates. And what said he?

Anacreon. "By Bacchus!" he exclaimed, "I thought sycophants were the most impudent people in the world: but, Anacreon, verily thou surpassest them thou puttest them out of countenance, out of breath, man!"

Polycrates. Anacreon! Anacreon! who, in the name of Hermes, ever talked thus, since the reign of Salmoneus? People who would listen to such inflated and idle arrogance, must be deprived, not of their liberties only, but their senses. Lydians or Carians, Cappadocians or Carmanians, would revolt at it: I myself would tear the diadem from my brow, before I would commit such an outrage Your liberality was, as usual, enough for us; on the dignity of our common nature. A little and, if Envy must come in, she must sit between fallacy, a little fraud and imposture, may be re- us. Really the dress, coarse as it was, that you quisite to our office, and principally on entering gave Placoeis, the associate of Hylactor, would it; there is, however, no need to tell the people have covered Tityus : nay, would have made that we, on our consciences, lay the public ac-winding-sheets, and ample ones, for all the giants, counts before Jupiter for his signature; that, if if indeed their mother Earth enwrapt their bones there is any surplus, we will return it hereafter; in any. Meditating the present of such another but that, as honest and pious men, their business is with him, not with us.

My dear Anacreon, you reason speciously, which is better in most cases than reasoning soundly; for many are led by it and none offended. But as there are pleasures in poetry which I can not know, in like manner there are pleasures in royalty which you can not. Say what you will, we have this advantage over you. Sovrans and poets alike court us; they alike treat you with malignity and contumely. Do you imagine that Hylactor, supposing him to feign a little in regard to me, really would on any occasion be so enthusiastic in your favour as he was in mine?

Anacreon. You allude to the village-feast, in which he requested from your hand the cup you had poured a libation from, and tasted?

Polycrates. The very instance I was thinking on.

investiture, you must surprise or scale Miletus; for if, in addition to the sheep of Samos, the cows and oxen, the horses and swine, the goats and dogs, were woolly, the fleeces of ten years would be insufficient. As Placoeis moved on, there were exclamations of wonder on all sides, at all distances. "Another* Epeüs must have made that pageant!" was the cry and many were trodden under foot from wishing to obtain a sight of the rollers. His heat, like the sun's, increased as he proceeded; and those who kept egg-stalls and fish-stalls cursed him and removed them.

Polycrates. We will feast again no less magnificently when I return from my victory on the continent. There are delicate perfumes and generous wines and beautiful robes at Sardis.

*Framer of the Trojan Horse.

T

LORD COLERAINE, REV. MR. BLOOMBURY, AND REV. MR. SWAN.

Swan. Whither are you walking so fast, Mr. Bloombury?

Bloombury. My dear brother in Christ, Mr. Swan, I am truly happy to meet you. A fine fresh pleasant day! Any news? I am going to visit Lord Coleraine, who has been attacked by an apoplexy.

Swan. Such was the report I heard yesterday. Accidents of this kind, when they befall the light and thoughtless, shock us even more than when it pleases God to inflict them on the graver and the better. What is more awful than to confront so unexpectedly the gay in spirit with the king of terrors? Sincerely as I grieve to hear of this appalling visitation, it is consolatory to think that his lordship has brought himself to such a comfortable and cheering frame of mind.

Bloombury. Has he, Mr. Swan? Methinks it is rather early, if he has.

Swan. He must be sensible of his situation, or he would not have required your spiritual aid. Bloombury. He require it! no more than a rank heathen or unchristened babe. He shall have it though. I will awaken him; I will prick him; I will carry to him the sword of faith; it shall pierce his heart.

Swan. Gently with the rowels on a foundered steed.

Bloombury. Mr. Swan, our pulpits should not smell of the horse-cloth. I never heard that text before.

Swan. How? and were you, Mr. Bloombury, ever a gamester?

Bloombury. At that time I was not under grace. Swan. Well, really now I would converse with a dying man on other topics. Comfort him; prepare him for his long journey.

Bloombury. Ay, sing to him; read to him Shakspeare and Cervantes and Froissart! Make him believe that man is better than a worm, lovelier than a toad, wiser than a deaf adder. Mr. Swan, you are a virtuous man (I mean no offence by calling you so), a good neighbour, a cordial friend, but you are not touched.

Swan. Bloombury, if you are sincere, you will acknowledge that, among your evangelicals, this touching for the most part begins with the pocket, or its environs.

Bloombury. O for shame! such indecency I never heard! This comes from your worldly and university view of things, your drinkings and cricketings.

Swan. Too frequently. We want drilling in our armour of faith from the Horse-guards: we want teaching from those who pay fifty guineas the lesson. I am not so unchristian as to deny that you are adepts in the practice of humility, but it is quite of a new kind. You are humble while you speak, but the reverse when you are spoken to; and, if it were not for your sanctification, I should call you the most arrogant and selfsufficient of sectarians.

Bloombury. We are of the church; the true

Swan. You have heard many a worse. Bloombury. Profane! there are none but from English church. the Bible.

Swan. The application and intent make them more or less good. Smite is in that book; do not smite is there also. Now which is best?

Bloombury. Both are excellent if they are there: we can only know which is best by opening the volume of grace, and the text that we open first is for our occasion the best of the two.

Swan. There is no logic to place against this. Of course you are intimately acquainted with Lord Coleraine. You can remind him of faults which it is still in his power to correct; of wrongs...

Bloombury. I can, and will. When I was in the Guards, he won a trifle of money from me: I shall bring him to a proper sense of his sinfulness in having done it.

Swan. In winning your money? Bloombury. He may make some reparation to society for his offence.

Swan. He could not have won your money if you had not played with him.

Bloombury. I was young: he ought to have taught me better.

Swan. He did, if he won much.
Bloombury. He won fifty guineas.

Swan. Few sects are not, opposite as they may be. Take the general spirit and practice of it, and tell me what church under heaven is more liberal and forbearing.

Bloombury. Because you forego and forget the most prominent of the thirty-nine articles. There is the sword in them.

Swan. Let it lie there, in God's name.
Bloombury. There is doctrine.

Swan. I take what I understand of it, and would not give a pinch of snuff for the rest. Our Saviour has taught me whatever is useful to know in Christianity. If churches, or any members of them, wanted more from his apostles, I hope they enjoyed what they wanted. The coarser Gentiles must needs have cheese and garlic upon their bread of life: my stomach won't digest them. Those who like the same fare may take it; only let them, when their mouths are full of it, sit quiet, and not open them upon me. We are at the house, I think. Good morning. . A word at parting. May not that musk about you hurt the sick man?

Bloombury. What musk? I protest I never have used any.

Swan. Then the creature that bears it has run

LORD COLERAINE, REV. MR. BLOOMBURY, AND REV. MR. SWAN.

between your legs, and rubbed its fur against your dress but lately. Adieu.

Bloombury (to a Servant). Is my Lord Coleraine

at home?

Servant. No, sir.

...

Bloombury. Mark me, young man; the ways of the world are at an end so near the chamber of death. Tell his lordship that the Reverend .. better tell him that Captain Frederick Bloombury, late of the Guards, has something of great importance to communicate.

Servant (returning). My master desires you to walk up, sir.

Coleraine. I have had the pleasure, I think, of meeting you formerly, Captain Bloombury; I can not say exactly where; for we guardsmen meet in strange places. I had sold out; and, as you are not in uniform, I presume that you too have left

the service.

Bloombury. On the contrary, I have just entered it.

Coleraine. Rather late in the day; is not it? However, if I can serve you, speak. I feel a difficulty in conversing: this apoplexy has twisted my mouth on one side like a turbot's, and Death and I seem to be grinning for a wager. What do you lift up your eyebrows at? My sight is imperfect; they seem to me to be greyish, and fitter for a lieutenant-general than a captain.

Bloombury. I am ageing.. that is, I have a whitish or rather a lighter-coloured hair here and there. Sober thinking brings them.

Coleraine. Particularly when it comes after the thinking that is not quite so sober.. ay, Bloombury! Excuse me, was it expedient to enter the service so late in life, and in the midst of peace? Bloombury. There begins our warfare: these are riotous and bloody times.

Coleraine. They are getting better, if people will let them. What would they have? Would they tear a new coat to pieces because the old one will not fit? How do you like your brother officers?

Bloombury. Reasonably well.

Coleraine. And the service at large? Bloombury. The sweetest of services is the service of the Lamb.

..

Coleraine. They told me so.. talking does me harm.. yet I did not feel it. Gentlemen, it is of no use to bleed me any more. You need not feel my pulse I am too weak. I am losing my intellects, such as they are. I seem to see faces and to hear words the strangest in the world. Bloombury. He shuts his eyes and appears to doze a little. He smiles.. a very bad sign in a dying man!

275

Physician. He seems quite tranquil, and may go off so.

Bloombury. In that perilous state! It is the dimple of a whirlpool, at the bottom whereof is hell. I will arouse him : I will wrestle with Christ for him.

Physician. In another ring then I keep the ground here.

Bloombury. You physicians are materialists. Physician. Undoubtedly, sir, you would desire to be the contrary?

Bloombury. Undoubtedly, indeed.

Physician. You methodists then are immaterialists?

Bloombury. Ho! ho! grace and election and sanctification are things immaterial !

Physician. Which of you ever has preached gratitude to God; in another word, contentment? Which of you has ever told a man that his principal duty is to love his neighbour?

Bloombury. Who dares lie, in the face of God? We love the Lamb; the rest follows.

Physician. Unless the rest (as you call it) precedes, the Lamb will never be caught by you, whine to him and pipe to him as you may. Love to God must be conveyed and expressed by a mediator.

Bloombury. There you talk soundly.

Physician. You can show your love to him only through the images he has set on every side of you.

Bloombury. Idolater! When I uplift my eyes to heaven and see Jupiter (so called) and Saturn (name of foolishness) and all the starry host..

Physician. You see things less worthy of your attention than a gang of gipsies in a grassy lane. You can not ask Saturn (name of foolishness) nor Jupiter (so called) whether he wants anything, nor could you give it if he did: but one or other of these poor creatures may be befriended in some way, may in short be made better and honester and cleanlier.

Bloombury. What! no prayers, I suppose, nor thanksgivings?

Physician. Catch the prayer that is rising to God, and act for him; receive in turn the thanksgiving; he authorises and commands you. If there is a man in your parish who wants a meal while you eat two in the day, let me advise you neither to sing a psalm nor to bend a knee until you have divided your quartern loaf with him.

I must go in and see my patient: if you follow, step gently.

Coleraine. I beg your pardon, Captain Bloombury: how long have you been waiting?

Bloombury. An instant only, my lord. I hope
your lordship has benefited by your easy slumber.
Coleraine. I feel no pain.
Bloombury. Unhappy man!

Coleraine. Thank you: I am sure you are.*
Bloombury. The Lord sends hither me, his un-

Physician. With deference, I think otherwise, sir. He can not live the day through, but he is in full possession of his senses. If you have any secret, anything interesting to his family, any omission to suggest, we will retire. Let me how-worthy servant, O George Viscount Coleraine, to ever request of you, not to disturb him on matters of business.

Bloombury. The Lord forbid !

bring you unto him.

* Misunderstanding; and supposing he said "I am glad to hear it, or some such thing."

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