Phocion. "Lady!" replied I, " Demosthenes is fortunate to be protected by the same cuirass as Codrus."

The commendations of these people are not always, what you would think them, left-handed and detractive: for singular must every man appear who is different from the rest; and he is most different from them who is most above them. If the clouds were inhabited by men, the men must be of other form and features than those on earth, and their gait would not be the same as upon the grass or pavement. Diversity no less is contracted by the habitations, as it were, and haunts, and exercises, of our minds. Singularity, when it is natural, requires no apology; when it is affected, is detestable. Such is that of our young people in bad handwriting. On my expedition to Byzantion, the city decreed that a cloak should be given me worth forty drachmas: and, when I was about to return, I folded it up carefully, in readiness for any service in which I might be employed hereafter. An officer, studious to imitate my neatness, packed up his in the same manner, not without the hope perhaps that I might remark it, and my servant, or his, on our return, mistook it. I sailed for Athens; he, with a detachment, for Heraclea; whence he wrote to me that he had sent my

somewhat of their greatness by being near us; ordinary men gain much. As we are drawing nigh to humble buildings, those at a distance beyond them sink below: but we may draw so nigh to the grand and elevated as to take in only a small part of the whole. I smile at reflecting on the levity with which we contemporaries often judge of those authors whom posterity will read with most admiration: such is Demosthenes. Differ as we may from him in politics, we must acknowledge that no language is clearer, no thoughts more natural, no words more proper, no combinations more unexpected, no cadences more diversified and harmonious. Accustomed to consider as the best what is at once the most simple and emphatic, and knowing that what satisfies the understanding, conciliates the ear, I think him little if at all inferior to Aristoteles in style, though in wisdom he is as a mote to a sunbeam; and superior to my master Plato, excellent as he is; gorgeous indeed, but becomingly, like wealthy kings. Defective however and faulty must be the composition in prose, which you and I with our uttermost study and attention cannot understand. In poetry it is not exactly so: the greater share of it must be intelligible to the multitude; but in the best there is often an undersong of sense, which none beside the poetical mind, or one deeply versed in its mysteries, can compre-cloak, requesting his own by the first conveyance. hend. Euripides and Pindar have been blamed by many, who perceived not that the arrow drawn against them fell on Homer. The Gods have denied to Demosthenes many parts of genius; the urbane, the witty, the pleasurable, the pathetic. But, O Eschines! the tree of strongest fibre and longest duration, is not looked up to for its flower nor for its leaf.

Let us praise, O Eschines, whatever we can reasonably nothing is less laborious or irksome, no office is less importunate or nearer a sinecure. Above others praise those who contend with you for glory, since they have already borne their suffrages to your judgment by entering on the same career. Deem it a peculiar talent, and what no three men in any age have possessed, to give each great citizen or great writer his just proportion of applause. A barbarian king or his eunuch can distribute equally and fairly beans and lentils; but I perceive that Eschines himself finds a difficulty in awarding just commendations.

A few days ago an old woman, who wrote formerly a poem on Codrus, such as Codrus with all his self-devotion would hardly have read to save his country, met me in the street, and taxed me with injustice toward Demosthenes.

"You do not know him," said she; "he has heart, and somewhat of genius; true he is singular and eccentric; yet I assure you I have seen compositions of his that do him credit. We must not judge of him from his speeches in public: there he is violent; but a billet of his, I do declare, is quite a treasure."

The name was quite illegible, and the carrier, whoever he was, had pursued his road homeward: I directed it then, as the only safe way, if indeed there was any safe one, to the officer who writes worst at Heraclea.

Come, a few more words upon Demosthenes. Do not, my friend, inveigh against him, lest a part of your opposition be attributed to envy. How many arguments is it worth to him, if you appear to act from another motive than principle! True, his eloquence is imperfect: what among men is not? In his repartees there is no playfulness, in his voice there is no flexibility, in his action there is neither dignity nor grace: but how often has he stricken you dumb with his irony! how often has he tossed you from one hand to the other with his interrogatories! Concentrated are his arguments, select and distinct and orderly his topics, ready and unfastidious his expressions, popular his allusions, plain his illustrations, easy the swell and subsidence of his periods, his dialect purely attic. Is this no merit? Is it none in an age of idle rhetoricians, who have forgotten how their fathers and mothers spoke to them?

Eschines. But what repetitions!

Phocion. If a thing is good it may be repeated; not indeed too frequently nor too closely, nor in words exactly the same. The repetition shows no want of invention: it shows only what is uppermost in the mind, and by what the writer is most agitated and inflamed.

Eschines. Demosthenes tells us himself, that he has prepared fifty-six commencements for his Eschines. What answer of yours could be the future speeches: how can he foresee the main return for such silliness?

subject of them all? They are, indeed, all invec

everyone to be more pleased and more easily led by us, when we bring forward his thoughts indirectly and imperceptibly, than when we elbow and outstrip them with our own. The sentences of your adversary are stout and compact as the Macedonian phalanx, animated and ardent as the sacred band of Thebes. Praise him, Æschines, if you wish to be victorious; if you acknowledge

tives against Philip: but does Demosthenes | pose would occur to the auditor and reader, in imagine that Philip is not greatly more fertile consequence of anything said before, knowing in the means of annoyance than any Athenian is in the terms of vituperation? And which gives most annoyance? Fire and sword ravage far and wide: the tongue cannot break through the shield nor extinguish the conflagration: it brings down many blows, but heals no wounds whatever. Phocion. I perceive in the number of these overtures to the chorusses of the Furies, a stronger argument of his temerity than your acuteness you are vanquished, then revile him and comhath exposed. He must have believed that Philip could not conquer us before he had time enough to compose and deliver his fifty-six speeches. I differ from him widely in my calculation. But, returning to your former charge, I would rather praise him for what he has omitted, than censure him for what he has repeated.

Eschines. And I too.

Phocion. Those words were spoken in the tone of a competitor rather than of a comrade, as you soon may be.

Eschines. I am jealous then? Did I demonstrate any jealousy of him when I went into the Peloponnese, to second and propel the courage his representations of the common danger had excited? where I beheld the youths of Olynthus, sent as slaves and donatives to his partisans, in that country of degenerate and dastard Greeks! What his orations had failed to bring about, my energy and zeal, my sincerity and singleness of aim, effected. The Athenians there followed me to the temple of Agraulos, and denounced in one voice the most awful imprecations against the Peloponnesians corrupted by the gold of Macedon. Phocion. You have many advantages over your rival: let him have some over you. There are merits which appear demerits to vulgar minds and inconsiderate auditors. Many in the populace of hearers and readers, want links and cramps to hold together the thoughts that are given them, and cry out if you hurry them on too fast. You must leap over no gap, or you leave them behind and startle them from following you. With them the pioneer is a cleverer man than the commander. I have observed in Demosthenes and Thucydides, that they lay it down as a rule, never to say what they have reason to sup

plain. In composition I know not a superior to him; and in an assembly of the people he derives advantages from his defects themselves, from the violence of his action and from the vulgarity of his mien. Permit him to possess these advantages over you; look on him as a wrestler whose body is robust, but whose feet rest upon something slippery: use your dexterity, and reserve your blows. Consider him, if less excellent as a statesman, citizen, or soldier, rather as a genius or demon, who, whether beneficent or malignant, hath, from an elevation far above us, launched forth many new stars into the firmament of mind.

Eschines. O, that we had been born in other days! The best men always fall upon the worst.

Phocion. The Gods have not granted us, Eschines, the choice of being born when we would; that of dying when we would, they have. Thank them for it, as one among the most excellent of their gifts, and remain or go, as utility or dignity may require. Whatever can happen to a wise and virtuous man from his worst enemy, whatever is most dreaded by the inconsiderate and irresolute, has happened to him frequently from himself, and not only without his inconvenience, but without his observation. We are prisoners as often as we bolt our doors, exiles as often as we walk to Munychia, and dead as often as we sleep. It would be a folly and a shame to argue that these things are voluntary, and that what our enemy imposes are not they should be the more if they befall us from necessity, unless necessity be a weaker reason than caprice. In fine, Eschines, I shall then call the times bad when they make me so: at present they are to be borne, as must be the storm that follows them.

QUEEN ELIZABETH AND CECIL.

Elizabeth. I advise thee again, churlish Cecil, how that our Edmund Spenser, whom thou callest most uncourteously, a whining whelp, hath good and solid reason for his complaint. God's blood! shall the lady that tieth my garter and shuffles the smock over my head, or the lord that steadieth my chair's back while I eat, or the other that looketh to my buck-hounds lest they be mangy, be holden by me in higher esteem and estate, than he who hath placed me among the bravest of past times, and will as safely and surely set me down among the loveliest in the future.

Cecil. Your Highness must remember he carouseth fully for such deserts... fifty pounds a-year of unclipt monies, and a butt of canary wine; not to mention three thousand acres in Ireland, worth fairly another fifty and another butt, in seasonable and quiet years.

Elizabeth. The monies are not enow to sustain a pair of grooms and a pair of palfreys, and more wine hath been drunken in my presence at a feast. The monies are given to such men, that they may not incline nor be obligated to any vile or lowly occupation; and the canary, that they

may entertain such promising Wits as court their company and converse; and that in such manner there may be alway in our land a succession of these heirs unto Fame. He hath written, not indeed with his wonted fancifulness, nor in learned and majestical language, but in homely and rustic wise, some verses which have moved me; and haply the more, inasmuch as they demonstrate to me that his genius hath been dampened by his adversities. Read them.

Cecil. How much is lost when neither heart nor eye

Rosewinged Desire or fabling Hope deceives;
When boyhood with quick throb hath ceased to spy
The dubious apple in the yellow leaves;
When, rising from the turf where youth reposed,

We find but deserts in the far-sought shore;
When the huge book of Faery-land lies closed,

And those strong brazen clasps will yield no more.

Elizabeth. The said Edmund hath also furnished unto the weaver at Arras, John Blanquieres, on my account, a description for some of his cunningest wenches to work at, supplied by mine own self indeed as far as the subject-matter goes, but set forth by him with figures and fancies, and daintily enough bedecked. I could have wished he had thereunto joined a fair comparison between Dian... no matter... he might perhaps have fared the better for it . . . but poets' wits, God | help them! when did they ever sit close about them! Read the poesy, not over-rich, and concluding very awkwardly and meanly.

Cecil. Where forms the lotus, with its level leaves

And solid blossoms, many floating isles,
What heavenly radiance swift descending cleaves
The darksome wave! unwonted beauty smiles
On its pure bosom, on each bright-eyed flower,
On every nymph, and twenty sate around.
Lo! 'twas Diana.. from the sultry hour

Hither she filed, nor fear'd she sight or sound.
Unhappy youth, whom thirst and quiver-reeds

Drew to these haunts, whom awe forbade to fly! Three faithful dogs before him rais'd their heads,

And watched and wonder'd at that fixed eye. Forth sprang his favourite.. with her arrow-hand, Too late the goddess hid what hand may hide, Of every nymph and every reed complain'd,

And dashed upon the bank the waters wide. On the prone head and sandal'd feet they flew..

Lo! slender hoofs and branching horns appear! The last marr'd voice not e'en the favorite knew,

But bay'd and fasten'd on the upbraiding deer. Far be, chaste goddess, far from me and mine

The stream that tempts thee in the summer noon! Alas that vengeance dwells with charms divine.. Elizabeth. Psha! give me the paper: I forewarned thee how it ended. . pitifully, pitifully.

Cecil. I cannot think otherwise than that the undertaker of the aforecited poesy hath choused your Highness; for I have seen painted, I know not where, but I think no farther off than Putney, the identically same Dian, with full as many nymphs, as he calls them, and more dogs. So small a matter as a page of poesy shall never stir my choler nor twitch my purse-string.

Elizabeth. I have read in Plinius and Mela of a runlet near Dodona, which kindled by approximation an unlighted torch, and extinguished a

lighted one. Now, Cecil, I desire no such a jetty to be celebrated as the decoration of my court: in simpler words, which your gravity may more easily understand, I would not from the fountain of Honour give lustre to the dull and ignorant, deadening and leaving in its tomb the lamp of literature and genius. I ardently wish my reign to be remembered: if my actions were different from what they are, I should as ardently wish it to be forgotten. Those are the worst of suicides, who voluntarily and propensely stab or suffocate their fame, when God hath commanded them to stand on high for an example. We call him parricide who destroys the author of his existence: tell me, what shall we call him who casts forth to the dogs and birds of prey its most faithful propagator and most firm support? Mark me, I do not speak of that existence which the proudest must close in a ditch, the narrowest too whereunto a pinch of ratsbane or a poppyhead of ditches and the soonest filled and fouled, and may bend him; but of that which reposes on our own good deeds, carefully picked up, skilfully put together, and decorously laid out for us by istence such as no father is author of, or provides another's kind understanding: I speak of an exfor. The parent gives us few days and sorrowful; him discreet and kindly) best reproves our faults; the poet many and glorious: the one (supposing the other best remunerates our virtues.

A page of poesy is a little matter: be it so : but of a truth I do tell thee, Cecil, it shall master full many a bold heart that the Spaniard cannot trouble; it shall win to it full many a proud and flighty one that even chivalry and manly comeliness cannot touch. I may shake titles and dignities by the dozen from my breakfast-board; but I may not save those upon whose heads I shake them from rottenness and oblivion. year they and their sovran dwell together, next year they and their beagle. Both have names, but names perishable. The keeper of my privyseal is an earl: what then! the keeper of my poultry-yard is a Caesar. In honest truth, a name given to a man is no better than a skin given to him what is not natively his own falls off and comes to nothing.

:

This

I desire in future to hear no contempt of penmen, unless a depraved use of the pen shall have so cramped them, as to incapacitate them for the sword and for the council-chamber. If Alexander was the great, what was Aristoteles who made him so? and taught him every art and science he knew, except three; those of drinking, of blaspheming, and of murdering his bosom-friends. Come along: I will bring thee back again nearer home. Thou mightest toss and tumble in thy bed many nights, and never eke out the substance of a stanza: but Edmund, if perchance I should call upon him for his counsel, would give me as wholesome and prudent as any of you. We should indemnify such men for the injustice we do unto them in not calling them about us, and for the mortification they must suffer at seeing their

inferiors set before them. Edmund is grave and gentle he complains of Fortune, not of Elizabeth, of courts, not of Cecil. I am resolved, so help me God, he shall have no further cause for his repining. Go, convey unto him those twelve silver spoons, with the apostles on them, gloriously gilded; and deliver into his hand these twelve large golden pieces, sufficing for the yearly maintenance of another horse and groom. Beside

which, set open before him with due reverence this Bible, wherein he may read the mercies of God toward those who waited in patience for his blessing; and this pair of crimson silk hose, which thou knowest I have worne only thirteen months, taking heed that the heel-piece be put into good and sufficient restoration, at my sole charges, by the Italian woman nigh the pollard elm at Charing-cross.

KING JAMES I. AND ISAAC CASAUBON..

James. Good M. Casaubon, I am vexed and perturbed in spirit, to find that my moderation and my zeal, which never has departed from it, should be opposed and thwarted by the pontificials.

Casaubon. Touch gently, sire, the hinder quarters of a vicious horse, and he will lay down his ears and kick: smite him resolutely and stoutly, and, behold! he draws his legs in, and sidles toward you.

James. As I am a king and a christian, I have a mind to act vigorously and with my whole courage. Methinks it would not be misplaced. What are these doughty bishops of Rome, forsooth, that they should lay hands thus rudely upon God's anointed? I shudder at their violence, though I see it athwart times gone by. Raymond the Sixth, Count of Toulouse... God forefend that anything mischievous should lie upon the number... I being, as you know, the sixth monarch of my name in Scotland... what think you, Casaubon?

Casaubon. I see no reason why your majesty should apprehend any.

James. Raymond then, a descendant of Charlemagne, was dragged to the church of Saint Egidius, naked to the waist and with a halter round his neck, to be flogged by a monk while the pope's legate was at dinner. His son, although a catholic, yet being the begotten of a reputed heretic, was stripped, not of his shirt, like the father, but of all his domains and hereditaments. He fought, however, so valiantly (which I would likewise do were I not unaccountably afraid of a naked sword) that the pope could only extort from him the county of Venaissin, the richest of his lands indeed, with seventy-three castles, on the

* Casaubon wrote a treatise De Libertate Ecclesiastica, of which 264 pp. were printed, when Henry IV., on the agreement of the Venetians with the pope, forbade the continuation, and attempted to suppress the commencement. Some copies escaped; and Goldast inserted the 264 pp. in the first volume of his Monarchia Imperii.

Pompous as James was, he was less unbending than many constitutional kings have been. The royal practice of unnatural stiffness did not prevail in Europe until the minor potentates thought it becoming to imitate Louis XIV, and took that part of his character which was the easiest to copy. Unbendingness, in the moral as in the vegetable world, is an indication as frequently of unsoundness as of strength. Indeed wise men, kings as well

as others, have been free from it. Stiff necks are diseased

other side of the Rhone, and 13,800 marks in silver.

Casaubon. Crimes, of which the heresy of princes is the richest, fertilize Saint Peter's patrimony. The celebrated Queen Giovanna, of Naples, a descendant from the brother of Saint Louis, accused of privity to the murder of her husband...

James. I do not believe a word of it; a fabrication, a forgery! Proceed forthwith to the pope's part in the business: there lies the guilt: say on.

Casaubon. The beautiful young queen had need of his protection. Although the people of Provence had obliged her to swear upon the Gospels that she would alienate none of her dominions, his Holiness, a few months afterward, compelled her to sell him Avignon.

James. Ay, and never paid her. I know not which is the more execrable; that a vicar of Christ should be guilty of simony, and of exacting the commission of a perjury, or that a people should require an oath from a prince.

Casaubon. The people, sire, have sometimes been suspicious; and overwatchfulness hath made them feverish but pontiffs in all ages have mounted and ridden hard both restive rulers and wellbroken ones.

James. Afore God! my back shall never bend under them. If they run restive with me, they shall bleed in both flanks ere the last leg quit the stirrup.

Casaubon. Not only counts, lords paramount, as your majesty hath recited, but even kings have been stripped bare, and emperors unbreeched, by the popes, who followed them up into their very dreams, threatening them as disobedient children, rod in hand. The Emperor Maximilian swore to defend the freedom of religion as declared in the Confession of Augsburg. Terrified by the pope's denunciations, he rescinded the diploma; and he protested, in excuse of such conduct, that he saw Pius shaking a scourge over his shoulder in his sleep. Pius the Fifth, too, commanded Charles the Ninth, of France, to revoke the Edict of Orléans on religious toleration. The holy father was introduced into the farce by the Most Apostolic and Most Christian Majesties. They prevailed on his Holiness that he should oblige them to loosen and lay aside their sacred obligations. On timorous and treacherous men like these, depended, and still depend, the prosperity and improvement of the human race. Charles and Maximilian, the

reverse of Achilles, abhorred the gates of hell far tolerated and encouraged. It is not the interest more than falsehood.