initial commit of ebook 17667HEADmain

1 files changed, 6693 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/17667.txt b/17667.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41d3383
--- /dev/null
+++ b/17667.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6693 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Dialogues of the Dead, by Lord Lyttelton,
+Edited by Henry Morley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Dialogues of the Dead
+
+
+Author: Lord Lyttelton
+
+Editor: Henry Morley
+
+Release Date: February 3, 2006  [eBook #17667]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD***
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1889 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD.
+
+
+BY
+LORD LYTTELTON.
+
+CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
+_LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
+1889.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+George, Lord Lyttelton, was born in 1709, at Hagley, in Worcestershire.
+He was educated at Eton and at Christchurch, Oxford, entered Parliament,
+became a Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.  In 1757
+he withdrew from politics, was raised to the peerage, and spent the last
+eighteen years of his life in lettered ease.  In 1760 Lord Lyttelton
+first published these "Dialogues of the Dead," which were revised for a
+fourth edition in 1765, and in 1767 he published in four volumes a
+"History of the Life of King Henry the Second and of the Age in which he
+Lived," a work upon which he had been busy for thirty years.  He began it
+not long after he had published, at the age of twenty-six, his "Letters
+from a Persian in England to his Friend at Ispahan."  If we go farther
+back we find George Lyttelton, aged twenty-three, beginning his life in
+literature as a poet, with four eclogues on "The Progress of Love."
+
+To the last Lord Lyttelton was poet enough to feel true fellowship with
+poets of his day.  He loved good literature, and his own works show that
+he knew it.  He counted Henry Fielding among his friends; he was a friend
+and helper to James Thomson, the author of "The Seasons;" and when acting
+as secretary to the king's son, Frederick, Prince of Wales (who held a
+little court of his own, in which there was much said about liberty), his
+friendship brought Thomson and Mallet together in work on a masque for
+the Prince and Princess, which included the song of "Rule Britannia."
+
+Before Lord Lyttelton followed their example, "Dialogues of the Dead" had
+been written by Lucian, and by Fenelon, and by Fontenelle; and in our
+time they have been written by Walter Savage Landor.  This half-dramatic
+plan of presenting a man's own thoughts upon the life of man and
+characters of men, and on the issues of men's characters in shaping life,
+is a way of essay writing pleasant alike to the writer and the reader.
+Lord Lyttelton was at his best in it.  The form of writing obliged him to
+work with a lighter touch than he used when he sought to maintain the
+dignity of history by the style of his "History of Henry II."  His calm
+liberality of mind enters into the discussion of many topics.  His truths
+are old, but there are no real truths of human life and conduct, worth
+anything at all, that are of yesterday.  Human love itself is called "the
+old, old story;" but do we therefore cease from loving, or from finding
+such ways as we can of saying that we love.  Dr. Johnson was not at his
+wisest when he found fault with Lord Lyttelton because, in his "Dialogues
+of the Dead," "that man sat down to write a book, to tell the world what
+the world had all his life been telling him."  This was exactly what he
+wished to do.  In the Preface to his revised edition Lord Lyttelton said,
+"Sometimes a new dress may render an old truth more pleasing to those
+whom the mere love of novelty betrays into error, as it frequently does
+not only the wits, but the sages of these days.  Indeed, one of the best
+services that could now be done to mankind by any good writer would be
+the bringing them back to common sense, from which the desire of shining
+by extraordinary notions has seduced great numbers, to the no small
+detriment of morality and of all real knowledge."
+
+At any rate, we now find it worth while to know what the world had been
+telling all his life to an enlightened, highly-educated man, who was an
+active politician in the days of Walpole and of the elder Pitt, who was a
+friend of Pope's and of the best writers of the day, and who in his
+occasional verse added at least one line to the household words of
+English literature when in his warm-hearted Prologue to Thomson's play of
+_Coriolanus_, produced after its writer's death, he said of that poet
+what we may say of Lord Lyttelton himself, that he gave to the world
+
+   "Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
+   One line which, dying, he could wish to blot."
+
+H. M.
+
+
+
+
+DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD.
+
+
+DIALOGUE I.
+
+
+LORD FALKLAND--MR. HAMPDEN.
+
+_Lord Falkland_.--Are not you surprised to see me in Elysium, Mr.
+Hampden?
+
+_Mr. Hampden_.--I was going to put the same question to your lordship,
+for doubtless you thought me a rebel.
+
+_Lord Falkland_.--And certainly you thought me an apostate from the
+Commonwealth, and a supporter of tyranny.
+
+_Mr. Hampden_.--I own I did, and I don't wonder at the severity of your
+thoughts about me.  The heat of the times deprived us both of our natural
+candour.  Yet I will confess to you here, that, before I died, I began to
+see in our party enough to justify your apprehensions that the civil war,
+which we had entered into from generous motives, from a laudable desire
+to preserve our free constitution, would end very unhappily, and perhaps,
+in the issue, destroy that constitution, even by the arms of those who
+pretended to be most zealous for it.
+
+_Lord Falkland_.--And I will as frankly own to you that I saw, in the
+court and camp of the king, so much to alarm me for the liberty of my
+country, if our arms were successful, that I dreaded a victory little
+less than I did a defeat, and had nothing in my mouth but the word peace,
+which I constantly repeated with passionate fondness, in every council at
+which I was called to assist.
+
+_Mr. Hampden_.--I wished for peace too, as ardently as your lordship, but
+I saw no hopes of it.  The insincerity of the king and the influence of
+the queen made it impossible to trust to his promises and declarations.
+Nay, what reliance could we reasonably have upon laws designed to limit
+and restrain the power of the Crown, after he had violated the Bill of
+Rights, obtained with such difficulty, and containing so clear an
+assertion of the privileges which had been in dispute?  If his conscience
+would allow him to break an Act of Parliament, made to determine the
+bounds of the royal prerogative, because he thought that the royal
+prerogative could have no bounds, what legal ties could bind a conscience
+so prejudiced? or what effectual security could his people obtain against
+the obstinate malignity of such an opinion, but entirely taking from him
+the power of the sword, and enabling themselves to defend the laws he had
+passed?
+
+_Lord Falkland_.--There is evidently too much truth in what you have
+said.  But by taking from the king the power of the sword, you in reality
+took all power.  It was converting the government into a democracy; and
+if he had submitted to it, he would only have preserved the name of a
+king.  The sceptre would have been held by those who had the sword; or we
+must have lived in a state of perpetual anarchy, without any force or
+balance in the government; a state which could not have lasted long, but
+would have ended in a republic or in absolute dominion.
+
+_Mr. Hampden_.--Your reasoning seems unanswerable.  But what could we do?
+Let Dr. Laud and those other court divines, who directed the king's
+conscience, and fixed in it such principles as made him unfit to govern a
+limited monarchy--though with many good qualities, and some great
+ones--let them, I say, answer for all the mischiefs they brought upon him
+and the nation.
+
+_Lord Falkland_.--They were indeed much to blame; but those principles
+had gained ground before their times, and seemed the principles of our
+Church, in opposition to the Jesuits, who had certainly gone too far in
+the other extreme.
+
+_Mr. Hampden_.--It is a disgrace to our Church to have taken up such
+opinions; and I will venture to prophesy that our clergy in future times
+must renounce them, or they will be turned against them by those who mean
+their destruction.  Suppose a Popish king on the throne, will the clergy
+adhere to passive obedience and non-resistance?  If they do, they deliver
+up their religion to Rome; if they do not, their practice will confute
+their own doctrines.
+
+_Lord Falkland_.--Nature, sir, will in the end be sure to set right
+whatever opinion contradicts her great laws, let who will be the teacher.
+But, indeed, the more I reflect on those miserable times in which we both
+lived, the more I esteem it a favour of Providence to us that we were cut
+off so soon.  The most grievous misfortune that can befall a virtuous man
+is to be in such a state that he can hardly so act as to approve his own
+conduct.  In such a state we both were.  We could not easily make a step,
+either forward or backward, without great hazard of guilt, or at least of
+dishonour.  We were unhappily entangled in connections with men who did
+not mean so well as ourselves, or did not judge so rightly.  If we
+endeavoured to stop them, they thought us false to the cause; if we went
+on with them, we ran directly upon rocks, which we saw, but could not
+avoid.  Nor could we take shelter in a philosophical retreat from
+business.  Inaction would in us have been cowardice and desertion.  To
+complete the public calamities, a religious fury, on both sides, mingled
+itself with the rage of our civil dissensions, more frantic than that,
+more implacable, more averse to all healing measures.  The most
+intemperate counsels were thought the most pious, and a regard to the
+laws, if they opposed the suggestions of these fiery zealots, was
+accounted irreligion.  This added new difficulties to what was before but
+too difficult in itself, the settling of a nation which no longer could
+put any confidence in its sovereign, nor lay more restraints on the royal
+authority without destroying the balance of the whole constitution.  In
+those circumstances, the balls that pierced our hearts were directed
+thither by the hands of our guardian angels, to deliver us from horrors
+we could not support, and perhaps from a guilt our souls abhorred.
+
+_Mr. Hampden_.--Indeed, things were brought to so deplorable a state,
+that if either of us had seen his party triumphant, he must have lamented
+that triumph as the ruin of his country.  Were I to return into life, the
+experience I have had would make me very cautious how I kindled the
+sparks of civil war in England; for I have seen that, when once that
+devouring fire is lighted, it is not in the power of the head of a party
+to say to the conflagration, "Thus far shalt thou go, and here shall thy
+violence stop."
+
+_Lord Falkland_.--The conversation we have had, as well as the
+reflections of my own mind on past events, would, if I were condemned to
+my body again, teach me great moderation in my judgments of persons who
+might happen to differ from me in difficult scenes of public action; they
+would entirely cure me of the spirit of party, and make me think that as
+in the Church, so also in the State, no evil is more to be feared than a
+rancorous and enthusiastical zeal.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE II.
+
+
+LOUIS LE GRAND--PETER THE GREAT.
+
+_Louis_.--Who, sir, could have thought, when you were learning the trade
+of a shipwright in the dockyards of England and Holland, that you would
+ever acquire, as I had done, the surname of "Great."
+
+_Peter_.--Which of us best deserved that title posterity will decide.  But
+my greatness appeared sufficiently in that very act which seemed to you a
+debasement.
+
+_Louis_.--The dignity of a king does not stoop to such mean employments.
+For my own part, I was careful never to appear to the eyes of my subjects
+or foreigners but in all the splendour and majesty of royal power.
+
+_Peter_.--Had I remained on the throne of Russia, as my ancestors did,
+environed with all the pomp of barbarous greatness, I should have been
+idolised by my people--as much, at least, as you ever were by the French.
+My despotism was more absolute, their servitude was more humble.  But
+then I could not have reformed their evil customs; have taught them arts,
+civility, navigation, and war; have exalted them from brutes in human
+shapes into men.  In this was seen the extraordinary force of my genius
+beyond any comparison with all other kings, that I thought it no
+degradation or diminution of my greatness to descend from my throne, and
+go and work in the dockyards of a foreign republic; to serve as a private
+sailor in my own fleets, and as a common soldier in my own army, till I
+had raised myself by my merit in all the several steps and degrees of
+promotion up to the highest command, and had thus induced my nobility to
+submit to a regular subordination in the sea and land service by a lesson
+hard to their pride, and which they would not have learnt from any other
+master or by any other method of instruction.
+
+_Louis_.--I am forced to acknowledge that it was a great act.  When I
+thought it a mean one, my judgment was perverted by the prejudices
+arising from my own education and the ridicule thrown upon it by some of
+my courtiers, whose minds were too narrow to be able to comprehend the
+greatness of yours in that situation.
+
+_Peter_.--It was an act of more heroism than any ever done by Alexander
+or Caesar.  Nor would I consent to exchange my glory with theirs.  They
+both did great things; but they were at the head of great nations, far
+superior in valour and military skill to those with whom they contended.
+I was the king of an ignorant, undisciplined, barbarous people.  My
+enemies were at first so superior to my subjects that ten thousand of
+them could beat a hundred thousand Russians.  They had formidable navies;
+I had not a ship.  The King of Sweden was a prince of the most intrepid
+courage, assisted by generals of consummate knowledge in war, and served
+by soldiers so disciplined that they were become the admiration and
+terror of Europe.  Yet I vanquished these soldiers; I drove that prince
+to take refuge in Turkey; I won battles at sea as well as land; I new-
+created my people; I gave them arts, science, policy; I enabled them to
+keep all the powers of the North in awe and dependence, to give kings to
+Poland, to check and intimidate the Ottoman emperors, to mix with great
+weight in the affairs of all Europe.  What other man has ever done such
+wonders as these?  Read all the records of ancient and modern times, and
+find, if you can, one fit to be put in comparison with me!
+
+_Louis_.--Your glory would indeed have been supreme and unequalled if, in
+civilising your subjects, you had reformed the brutality of your own
+manners and the barbarous vices of your nature.  But, alas! the
+legislator and reformer of the Muscovites was drunken and cruel.
+
+_Peter_.--My drunkenness I confess; nor will I plead, to excuse it, the
+example of Alexander.  It inflamed the tempers of both, which were by
+nature too fiery, into furious passions of anger, and produced actions of
+which our reason, when sober, was ashamed.  But the cruelty you upbraid
+me with may in some degree be excused, as necessary to the work I had to
+perform.  Fear of punishment was in the hearts of my barbarous subjects
+the only principle of obedience.  To make them respect the royal
+authority I was obliged to arm it with all the terrors of rage.  You had
+a more pliant people to govern--a people whose minds could be ruled, like
+a fine-managed horse, with an easy and gentle rein.  The fear of shame
+did more with them than the fear of the knout could do with the Russians.
+The humanity of your character and the ferocity of mine were equally
+suitable to the nations over which we reigned.  But what excuse can you
+find for the cruel violence you employed against your Protestant
+subjects?  They desired nothing but to live under the protection of laws
+you yourself had confirmed; and they repaid that protection by the most
+hearty zeal for your service.  Yet these did you force, by the most
+inhuman severities, either to quit the religion in which they were bred,
+and which their consciences still retained, or to leave their native
+land, and endure all the woes of a perpetual exile.  If the rules of
+policy could not hinder you from thus depopulating your kingdom, and
+transferring to foreign countries its manufactures and commerce, I am
+surprised that your heart itself did not stop you.  It makes one shudder
+to think that such orders should be sent from the most polished court in
+Europe, as the most savage Tartars could hardly have executed without
+remorse and compassion.
+
+_Louis_.--It was not my heart, but my religion, that dictated these
+severities.  My confessor told me they alone would atone for all my sins.
+
+_Peter_.--Had I believed in my patriarch as you believed in your priest,
+I should not have been the great monarch that I was.  But I mean not to
+detract from the merit of a prince whose memory is dear to his subjects.
+They are proud of having obeyed you, which is certainly the highest
+praise to a king.  My people also date their glory from the era of my
+reign.  But there is this capital distinction between us.  The pomp and
+pageantry of state were necessary to your greatness; I was great in
+myself, great in the energy and powers of my mind, great in the
+superiority and sovereignty of my soul over all other men.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE III.
+
+
+PLATO--FENELON.
+
+_Plato_.--Welcome to Elysium, O thou, the most pure, the most gentle, the
+most refined disciple of philosophy that the world in modern times has
+produced!  Sage Fenelon, welcome!--I need not name myself to you.  Our
+souls by sympathy must know one another.
+
+_Fenelon_.--I know you to be Plato, the most amiable of all the disciples
+of Socrates, and the philosopher of all antiquity whom I most desired to
+resemble.
+
+_Plato_.--Homer and Orpheus are impatient to see you in that region of
+these happy fields which their shades inhabit.  They both acknowledge you
+to be a great poet, though you have written no verses.  And they are now
+busy in composing for you unfading wreaths of all the finest and sweetest
+Elysian flowers.  But I will lead you from them to the sacred grove of
+philosophy, on the highest hill of Elysium, where the air is most pure
+and most serene.  I will conduct you to the fountain of wisdom, in which
+you will see, as in your own writings, the fair image of virtue
+perpetually reflected.  It will raise in you more love than was felt by
+Narcissus, when he contemplated the beauty of his own face in the
+unruffled spring.  But you shall not pine, as he did, for a shadow.  The
+goddess herself will affectionately meet your embraces and mingle with
+your soul.
+
+_Fenelon_.--I find you retain the allegorical and poetical style, of
+which you were so fond in many of your writings.  Mine also run sometimes
+into poetry, particularly in my "Telemachus," which I meant to make a
+kind of epic composition.  But I dare not rank myself among the great
+poets, nor pretend to any equality in oratory with you, the most eloquent
+of philosophers, on whose lips the Attic bees distilled all their honey.
+
+_Plato_.--The French language is not so harmonious as the Greek, yet you
+have given a sweetness to it which equally charms the ear and heart.  When
+one reads your compositions, one thinks that one hears Apollo's lyre,
+strung by the hands of the Graces, and tuned by the Muses.  The idea of a
+perfect king, which you have exhibited in your "Telemachus," far excels,
+in my own judgment, my imaginary "Republic."  Your "Dialogues" breathe
+the pure spirit of virtue, of unaffected good sense, of just criticism,
+of fine taste.  They are in general as superior to your countryman
+Fontenelle's as reason is to false wit, or truth to affectation.  The
+greatest fault of them, I think, is, that some are too short.
+
+_Fenelon_.--It has been objected to them--and I am sensible of it
+myself--that most of them are too full of commonplace morals.  But I
+wrote them for the instruction of a young prince, and one cannot too
+forcibly imprint on the minds of those who are born to empire the most
+simple truths; because, as they grow up, the flattery of a court will try
+to disguise and conceal from them those truths, and to eradicate from
+their hearts the love of their duty, if it has not taken there a very
+deep root.
+
+_Plato_.--It is, indeed, the peculiar misfortune of princes, that they
+are often instructed with great care in the refinements of policy, and
+not taught the first principles of moral obligations, or taught so
+superficially that the virtuous man is soon lost in the corrupt
+politician.  But the lessons of virtue you gave your royal pupil are so
+graced by the charms of your eloquence that the oldest and wisest men may
+attend to them with pleasure.  All your writings are embellished with a
+sublime and agreeable imagination, which gives elegance to simplicity,
+and dignity to the most vulgar and obvious truths.  I have heard, indeed,
+that your countrymen are less sensible of the beauty of your genius and
+style than any of their neighbours.  What has so much depraved their
+taste?
+
+_Fenelon_.--That which depraved the taste of the Romans after the ago of
+Augustus--an immoderate love of wit, of paradox, of refinement.  The
+works of their writers, like the faces of their women, must be painted
+and adorned with artificial embellishments to attract their regards.  And
+thus the natural beauty of both is lost.  But it is no wonder if few of
+them esteem my "Telemachus," as the maxims I have principally inculcated
+there are thought by many inconsistent with the grandeur of their
+monarchy, and with the splendour of a refined and opulent nation.  They
+seem generally to be falling into opinions that the chief end of society
+is to procure the pleasures of luxury; that a nice and elegant taste of
+voluptuous enjoyments is the perfection of merit; and that a king, who is
+gallant, magnificent, liberal, who builds a fine palace, who furnishes it
+well with good statues and pictures, who encourages the fine arts, and
+makes them subservient to every modish vice, who has a restless ambition,
+a perfidious policy, and a spirit of conquest, is better for them than a
+Numa or a Marcus Aurelius.  Whereas to check the excesses of luxury--those
+excesses, I mean, which enfeeble the spirit of a nation--to ease the
+people, as much as is possible, of the burden of taxes; to give them the
+blessings of peace and tranquillity, when they can he obtained without
+injury or dishonour; to make them frugal, and hardy, and masculine in the
+temper of their bodies and minds, that they may be the fitter for war
+whenever it does come upon them; but, above all, to watch diligently over
+their morals, and discourage whatever may defile or corrupt them--is the
+great business of government, and ought to be in all circumstances the
+principal object of a wise legislature.  Unquestionably that is the
+happiest country which has most virtue in it; and to the eye of sober
+reason the poorest Swiss canton is a much nobler state than the kingdom
+of France, if it has more liberty, better morals, a more settled
+tranquillity, more moderation in prosperity, and more firmness in danger.
+
+_Plato_.--Your notions are just, and if your country rejects them she
+will not long hold the rank of the first nation in Europe.  Her
+declension is begun, her ruin approaches; for, omitting all other
+arguments, can a state be well served when the raising of an opulent
+fortune in its service, and making a splendid use of that fortune, is a
+distinction more envied than any which arises from integrity in office or
+public spirit in government?  Can that spirit, which is the parent of
+national greatness, continue vigorous and diffusive where the desire of
+wealth, for the sake of a luxury which wealth alone can support, and an
+ambition aspiring, not to glory, but to profit, are the predominant
+passions?  If it exists in a king or a minister of state, how will either
+of them find among a people so disposed the necessary instruments to
+execute his great designs; or, rather, what obstruction will he not find
+from the continual opposition of private interest to public?  But if, on
+the contrary, a court inclines to tyranny, what a facility will be given
+by these dispositions to that evil purpose?  How will men with minds
+relaxed by the enervating ease and softness of luxury have vigour to
+oppose it?  Will not most of them lean to servitude, as their natural
+state, as that in which the extravagant and insatiable cravings of their
+artificial wants may best be gratified at the charge of a bountiful
+master or by the spoils of an enslaved and ruined people?  When all sense
+of public virtue is thus destroyed, will not fraud, corruption, and
+avarice, or the opposite workings of court factions to bring disgrace on
+each other, ruin armies and fleets without the help of an enemy, and give
+up the independence of the nation to foreigners, after having betrayed
+its liberties to a king?  All these mischiefs you saw attendant on that
+luxury, which some modern philosophers account (as I am informed) the
+highest good to a state!  Time will show that their doctrines are
+pernicious to society, pernicious to government; and that yours, tempered
+and moderated so as to render them more practicable in the present
+circumstances of your country, are wise, salutary, and deserving of the
+general thanks of mankind.  But lest you should think, from the praise I
+have given you, that flattery can find a place in Elysium, allow me to
+lament, with the tender sorrow of a friend, that a man so superior to all
+other follies could give into the reveries of a Madame Guyon, a
+distracted enthusiast.  How strange was it to see the two great lights of
+France, you and the Bishop of Meaux, engaged in a controversy whether a
+madwoman was a heretic or a saint!
+
+_Fenelon_.--I confess my own weakness, and the ridiculousness of the
+dispute; but did not your warm imagination carry you also into some
+reveries about divine love, in which you talked unintelligibly, even to
+yourself?
+
+_Plato_.--I felt something more than I was able to express.
+
+_Fenelon_.--I had my feelings too, as fine and as lively as yours; but we
+should both have done better to have avoided those subjects in which
+sentiment took the place of reason.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE IV.
+
+
+MR. ADDISON--DR. SWIFT.
+
+_Dr. Swift_.--Surely, Addison, Fortune was exceedingly inclined to play
+the fool (a humour her ladyship, as well as most other ladies of very
+great quality, is frequently in) when she made you a minister of state
+and me a divine!
+
+_Addison_.--I must confess we were both of us out of our elements; but
+you don't mean to insinuate that all would have been right if our
+destinies had been reversed?
+
+_Swift_.--Yes, I do.  You would have made an excellent bishop, and I
+should have governed Great Britain, as I did Ireland, with an absolute
+sway, while I talked of nothing but liberty, property, and so forth.
+
+_Addison_.--You governed the mob of Ireland; but I never understood that
+you governed the kingdom.  A nation and a mob are very different things.
+
+_Swift_.--Ay, so you fellows that have no genius for politics may
+suppose; but there are times when, by seasonably putting himself at the
+head of the mob, an able man may get to the head of the nation.  Nay,
+there are times when the nation itself is a mob, and ought to be treated
+as such by a skilful observer.
+
+_Addison_.--I don't deny the truth of your proposition; but is there no
+danger that, from the natural vicissitudes of human affairs, the
+favourite of the mob should be mobbed in his turn?
+
+_Swift_.--Sometimes there may, but I risked it, and it answered my
+purpose.  Ask the lord-lieutenants, who were forced to pay court to me
+instead of my courting them, whether they did not feel my superiority.
+And if I could make myself so considerable when I was only a dirty Dean
+of St. Patrick's, without a seat in either House of Parliament, what
+should I have done if Fortune had placed me in England, unencumbered with
+a gown, and in a situation that would have enabled me to make myself
+heard in the House of Lords or of Commons?
+
+_Addison_.--You would undoubtedly have done very marvellous acts!  Perhaps
+you might then have been as zealous a Whig as my Lord Wharton himself;
+or, if the Whigs had unhappily offended the statesman as they did the
+doctor, who knows whether you might not have brought in the Pretender?
+Pray let me ask you one question between you and me: If your great
+talents had raised you to the office of first minister under that prince,
+would you have tolerated the Protestant religion or not?
+
+_Swift_.--Ha! Mr. Secretary, are you witty upon me?  Do you think,
+because Sunderland took a fancy to make you a great man in the state,
+that he, or his master, could make you as great in wit as Nature made me?
+No, no; wit is like grace, it must be given from above.  You can no more
+get that from the king than my lords the bishops can the other.  And,
+though I will own you had some, yet believe me, my good friend, it was no
+match for mine.  I think you have not vanity enough in your nature to
+pretend to a competition in that point with me.
+
+_Addison_.--I have been told by my friends that I was rather too modest,
+so I will not determine this dispute for myself, but refer it to Mercury,
+the god of wit, who fortunately happens to be coming this way with a soul
+he has brought to the Shades.
+
+Hail, divine Hermes!  A question of precedence in the class of wit and
+humour, over which you preside, having arisen between me and my
+countryman, Dr. Swift, we beg leave--
+
+_Mercury_.--Dr. Swift, I rejoice to see you.  How does my old lad?  How
+does honest Lemuel Gulliver?  Have you been in Lilliput lately, or in the
+Flying Island, or with your good nurse Glumdalclitch?  Pray when did you
+eat a crust with Lord Peter?  Is Jack as mad still as ever?  I hear that
+since you published the history of his case the poor fellow, by more
+gentle usage, is almost got well.  If he had but more food he would be as
+much in his senses as Brother Martin himself; but Martin, they tell me,
+has lately spawned a strange brood of Methodists, Moravians,
+Hutchinsonians, who are madder than ever Jack was in his worst days.  It
+is a great pity you are not alive again to make a new edition of your
+"Tale of the Tub" for the use of these fellows.  Mr. Addison, I beg your
+pardon; I should have spoken to you sooner, but I was so struck with the
+sight of my old friend the doctor, that I forgot for a time the respects
+due to you.
+
+_Swift_.--Addison, I think our dispute is decided before the judge has
+heard the cause.
+
+_Addison_.--I own it is in your favour, but--
+
+_Mercury_.--Don't be discouraged, friend Addison.  Apollo perhaps would
+have given a different judgment.  I am a wit, and a rogue, and a foe to
+all dignity.  Swift and I naturally like one another.  He worships me
+more than Jupiter, and I honour him more than Homer; but yet, I assure
+you, I have a great value for you.  Sir Roger de Coverley, Will
+Honeycomb, Will Wimble, the Country Gentleman in the Freeholder, and
+twenty more characters, drawn with the finest strokes of unaffected wit
+and humour in your admirable writings, have obtained for you a high place
+in the class of my authors, though not quite so high a one as the Dean of
+St. Patrick's.  Perhaps you might have got before him if the decency of
+your nature and the cautiousness of your judgment would have given you
+leave.  But, allowing that in the force and spirit of his wit he has
+really the advantage, how much does he yield to you in all the elegant
+graces, in the fine touches of delicate sentiment, in developing the
+secret springs of the soul, in showing the mild lights and shades of a
+character, in distinctly marking each line, and every soft gradation of
+tints, which would escape the common eye?  Who ever painted like you the
+beautiful parts of human nature, and brought them out from under the
+shade even of the greatest simplicity, or the most ridiculous weaknesses;
+so that we are forced to admire and feel that we venerate, even while we
+are laughing?  Swift was able to do nothing that approaches to this.  He
+could draw an ill face, or caricature a good one, with a masterly hand;
+but there was all his power, and, if I am to speak as a god, a worthless
+power it is.  Yours is divine.  It tends to exalt human nature.
+
+_Swift_.--Pray, good Mercury (if I may have liberty to say a word for
+myself) do you think that my talent was not highly beneficial to correct
+human nature?  Is whipping of no use to mend naughty boys?
+
+_Mercury_.--Men are generally not so patient of whipping as boys, and a
+rough satirist is seldom known to mend them.  Satire, like antimony, if
+it be used as a medicine, must be rendered less corrosive.  Yours is
+often rank poison.  But I will allow that you have done some good in your
+way, though not half so much as Addison did in his.
+
+_Addison_.--Mercury, I am satisfied.  It matters little what rank you
+assign me as a wit, if you give me the precedence as a friend and
+benefactor to mankind.
+
+_Mercury_.--I pass sentence on the writers, not the men, and my decree is
+this:--When any hero is brought hither who wants to be humbled, let the
+talk of lowering his arrogance be assigned to Swift.  The same good
+office may be done to a philosopher vain of his wisdom and virtue, or to
+a bigot puffed up with spiritual pride.  The doctor's discipline will
+soon convince the first, that with all his boasted morality, he is but a
+Yahoo; and the latter, that to be holy he must necessarily be humble.  I
+would also have him apply his anticosmetic wash to the painted face of
+female vanity, and his rod, which draws blood at every stroke, to the
+hard back of insolent folly or petulant wit.  But Addison should be
+employed to comfort those whose delicate minds are dejected with too
+painful a sense of some infirmities in their nature.  To them he should
+hold his fair and charitable mirror, which would bring to their sight
+their hidden excellences, and put them in a temper fit for
+Elysium.--Adieu.  Continue to esteem and love each other, as you did in
+the other world, though you were of opposite parties, and, what is still
+more wonderful, rival wits.  This alone is sufficient to entitle you both
+to Elysium.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE V.
+
+
+ULYSSES--CIRCE.--IN CIRCE'S ISLAND.
+
+_Circe_.--You will go then, Ulysses, but tell me, without reserve, what
+carries you from me?
+
+_Ulysses_.--Pardon, goddess, the weakness of human nature.  My heart will
+sigh for my country.  It is an attachment which all my admiration of you
+cannot entirely overcome.
+
+_Circe_.--This is not all.  I perceive you are afraid to declare your
+whole mind.  But what, Ulysses, do you fear?  My terrors are gone.  The
+proudest goddess on earth, when she has favoured a mortal as I have
+favoured you, has laid her divinity and power at his feet.
+
+_Ulysses_.--It may be so while there still remains in her heart the
+tenderness of love, or in her mind the fear of shame.  But you, Circe,
+are above those vulgar sensations.
+
+_Circe_.--I understand your caution; it belongs to your character, and
+therefore, to remove all diffidence from you, I swear by Styx I will do
+no manner of harm, either to you or your friends, for anything which you
+say, however offensive it may be to my love or my pride, but will send
+you away from my island with all marks of my friendship.  Tell me now,
+truly, what pleasures you hope to enjoy in the barren rock of Ithaca,
+which can compensate for those you leave in this paradise, exempt from
+all cares and overflowing with all delights?
+
+_Ulysses_.--The pleasures of virtue; the supreme happiness of doing good.
+Here I do nothing.  My mind is in a palsy; all its faculties are
+benumbed.  I long to return into action, that I may worthily employ those
+talents which I have cultivated from the earliest days of my youth.  Toils
+and cares fright not me; they are the exercise of my soul; they keep it
+in health and in vigour.  Give me again the fields of Troy, rather than
+these vacant groves.  There I could reap the bright harvest of glory;
+here I am hid like a coward from the eyes of mankind, and begin to appear
+comtemptible in my own.  The image of my former self haunts and seems to
+upbraid me wheresoever I go.  I meet it under the gloom of every shade;
+it even intrudes itself into your presence and chides me from your arms.
+O goddess, unless you have power to lay that spirit, unless you can make
+me forget myself, I cannot be happy here, I shall every day be more
+wretched.
+
+_Circe_.--May not a wise and good man, who has spent all his youth in
+active life and honourable danger, when he begins to decline, be
+permitted to retire and enjoy the rest of his days in quiet and pleasure?
+
+_Ulysses_.--No retreat can be honourable to a wise and good man but in
+company with the muses.  Here I am deprived of that sacred society.  The
+muses will not inhabit the abodes of voluptuousness and sensual pleasure.
+How can I study or think while such a number of beasts--and the worst
+beasts are men turned into beasts--are howling or roaring or grunting all
+about me?
+
+_Circe_.--There may be something in this, but this I know is not all.  You
+suppress the strongest reason that draws you to Ithaca.  There is another
+image besides that of your former self, which appears to you in this
+island, which follows you in your walks, which more particularly
+interposes itself between you and me, and chides you from my arms.  It is
+Penelope, Ulysses, I know it is.  Don't pretend to deny it.  You sigh for
+Penelope in my bosom itself.  And yet she is not an immortal.  She is
+not, as I am, endowed by Nature with the gift of unfading youth.  Several
+years have passed since hers has been faded.  I might say, without
+vanity, that in her best days she was never so handsome as I.  But what
+is she now?
+
+_Ulysses_.--You have told me yourself, in a former conversation, when I
+inquired of you about her, that she is faithful to my bed, and as fond of
+me now, after twenty years' absence, as at the time when I left her to go
+to Troy.  I left her in the bloom of youth and beauty.  How much must her
+constancy have been tried since that time!  How meritorious is her
+fidelity!  Shall I reward her with falsehood?  Shall I forget my
+Penelope, who can't forget me, who has no pleasure so dear to her as my
+remembrance?
+
+_Circe_.--Her love is preserved by the continual hope of your speedy
+return.  Take that hope from her.  Let your companions return, and let
+her know that you have fixed your abode with me, that you have fixed it
+for ever.  Let her know that she is free to dispose as she pleases of her
+heart and her hand.  Send my picture to her, bid her compare it with her
+own face.  If all this does not cure her of the remains of her passion,
+if you don't hear of her marrying Eurymachus in a twelvemonth, I
+understand nothing of womankind.
+
+_Ulysses_.--O cruel goddess! why will you force me to tell you truths I
+desire to conceal?  If by such unmerited, such barbarous usage I could
+lose her heart it would break mine.  How should I be able to endure the
+torment of thinking that I had wronged such a wife?  What could make me
+amends for her being no longer mine, for her being another's?  Don't
+frown, Circe, I must own--since you will have me speak--I must own you
+could not.  With all your pride of immortal beauty, with all your magical
+charms to assist those of Nature, you are not so powerful a charmer as
+she.  You feel desire, and you give it, but you have never felt love, nor
+can you inspire it.  How can I love one who would have degraded me into a
+beast?  Penelope raised me into a hero.  Her love ennobled, invigorated,
+exalted my mind.  She bid me go to the siege of Troy, though the parting
+with me was worse than death to herself.  She bid me expose myself there
+to all the perils of war among the foremost heroes of Greece, though her
+poor heart sunk and trembled at every thought of those perils, and would
+have given all its own blood to save a drop of mine.  Then there was such
+a conformity in all our inclinations!  When Minerva was teaching me the
+lessons of wisdom she delighted to be present.  She heard, she retained,
+she gave them back to me softened and sweetened with the peculiar graces
+of her own mind.  When we unbent our thoughts with the charms of poetry,
+when we read together the poems of Orpheus, Musaeus, and Linus, with what
+taste did she discern every excellence in them!  My feelings were dull
+compared to hers.  She seemed herself to be the muse who had inspired
+those verses, and had tuned their lyres to infuse into the hearts of
+mankind the love of wisdom and virtue and the fear of the gods.  How
+beneficent was she, how tender to my people!  What care did she take to
+instruct them in all the finer arts, to relieve the necessities of the
+sick and aged, to superintend the education of children, to do my
+subjects every good office of kind intercession, to lay before me their
+wants, to mediate for those who were objects of mercy, to sue for those
+who deserved the favours of the Crown.  And shall I banish myself for
+ever from such a consort?  Shall I give up her society for the brutal
+joys of a sensual life, keeping indeed the exterior form of a man, but
+having lost the human soul, or at least all its noble and godlike powers?
+Oh, Circe, it is impossible, I can't bear the thought.
+
+_Circe_.--Begone; don't imagine that I ask you to stay a moment longer.
+The daughter of the sun is not so mean-spirited as to solicit a mortal to
+share her happiness with her.  It is a happiness which I find you cannot
+enjoy.  I pity and despise you.  All you have said seems to me a jargon
+of sentiments fitter for a silly woman than a great man.  Go read, and
+spin too, if you please, with your wife.  I forbid you to remain another
+day in my island.  You shall have a fair wind to carry you from it.  After
+that may every storm that Neptune can raise pursue and overwhelm you.
+Begone, I say, quit my sight.
+
+_Ulysses_.--Great goddess, I obey, but remember your oath.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE VI.
+
+
+MERCURY--AN ENGLISH DUELLIST--A NORTH AMERICAN SAVAGE.
+
+_The Duellist_.--Mercury, Charon's boat is on the other side of the
+water.  Allow me, before it returns, to have some conversation with the
+North American savage whom you brought hither with me.  I never before
+saw one of that species.  He looks very grim.  Pray, sir, what is your
+name?  I understand you speak English.
+
+_Savage_.--Yes, I learnt it in my childhood, having been bred for some
+years among the English of New York.  But before I was a man I returned
+to my valiant countrymen, the Mohawks; and having been villainously
+cheated by one of yours in the sale of some rum, I never cared to have
+anything to do with them afterwards.  Yet I took up the hatchet for them
+with the rest of my tribe in the late war against France, and was killed
+while I was out upon a scalping party.  But I died very well satisfied,
+for my brethren were victorious, and before I was shot I had gloriously
+scalped seven men and five women and children.  In a former war I had
+performed still greater exploits.  My name is the Bloody Bear; it was
+given me to express my fierceness and valour.
+
+_Duellist_.--Bloody Bear, I respect you, and am much your humble servant.
+My name is Tom Pushwell, very well known at Arthur's.  I am a gentleman
+by my birth, and by profession a gamester and man of honour.  I have
+killed men in fair fighting, in honourable single combat, but don't
+understand cutting the throats of women and children.
+
+_Savage_.--Sir, that is our way of making war.  Every nation has its
+customs.  But, by the grimness of your countenance, and that hole in your
+breast, I presume you were killed, as I was, in some scalping party.  How
+happened it that your enemy did not take off your scalp?
+
+_Duellist_.--Sir, I was killed in a duel.  A friend of mine had lent me a
+sum of money.  After two or three years, being in great want himself, he
+asked me to pay him.  I thought his demand, which was somewhat
+peremptory, an affront to my honour, and sent him a challenge.  We met in
+Hyde Park.  The fellow could not fence: I was absolutely the adroitest
+swordsman in England, so I gave him three or four wounds; but at last he
+ran upon me with such impetuosity, that he put me out of my play, and I
+could not prevent him from whipping me through the lungs.  I died the
+next day, as a man of honour should, without any snivelling signs of
+contrition or repentance; and he will follow me soon, for his surgeon has
+declared his wounds to be mortal.  It is said that his wife is dead of
+grief, and that his family of seven children will be undone by his death.
+So I am well revenged, and that is a comfort.  For my part, I had no
+wife.  I always hated marriage.
+
+_Savage_.--Mercury, I won't go in a boat with that fellow.  He has
+murdered his countryman--he has murdered his friend: I say, positively, I
+won't go in a boat with that fellow.  I will swim over the River, I can
+swim like a duck.
+
+_Mercury_.--Swim over the Styx! it must not be done; it is against the
+laws of Pluto's Empire.  You must go in the boat, and be quiet.
+
+_Savage_.--Don't tell me of laws, I am a savage.  I value no laws.  Talk
+of laws to the Englishman.  There are laws in his country, and yet you
+see he did not regard them, for they could never allow him to kill his
+fellow-subject, in time of peace, because he asked him to pay a debt.  I
+know indeed, that the English are a barbarous nation, but they can't
+possibly be so brutal as to make such things lawful.
+
+_Mercury_.--You reason well against him.  But how comes it that you are
+so offended with murder; you, who have frequently massacred women in
+their sleep, and children in the cradle?
+
+_Savage_.--I killed none but my enemies.  I never killed my own
+countrymen.  I never killed my friend.  Here, take my blanket, and let it
+come over in the boat, but see that the murderer does not sit upon it, or
+touch it.  If he does, I will burn it instantly in the fire I see yonder.
+Farewell!  I am determined to swim over the water.
+
+_Mercury_.--By this touch of my wand I deprive thee of all thy strength.
+Swim now if thou canst.
+
+_Savage_.--This is a potent enchanter.  Restore me my strength, and I
+promise to obey thee.
+
+_Mercury_.--I restore it: but be orderly, and do as I bid you; otherwise
+worse will befall you.
+
+_Duellist_.--Mercury, leave him to me.  I'll tutor him for you.  Sirrah,
+savage, dost thou pretend to be ashamed of my company?  Dost thou know I
+have kept the best company in England?
+
+_Savage_.--I know thou art a scoundrel!  Not pay thy debts! kill thy
+friend who lent thee money for asking thee for it!  Get out of my sight!
+I will drive thee into Styx!
+
+_Mercury_.--Stop!  I command thee.  No violence!  Talk to him calmly.
+
+_Savage_.--I must obey thee.  Well, sir, let me know what merit you had
+to introduce you into good company?  What could you do?
+
+_Duellist_.--Sir, I gamed, as I told you.  Besides, I kept a good table.
+I eat as well as any man either in England or France.
+
+_Savage_.--Eat!  Did you ever eat the liver of a Frenchman, or his leg,
+or his shoulder!  There is fine eating!  I have eat twenty.  My table was
+always well served.  My wife was esteemed the best cook for the dressing
+of man's flesh in all North America.  You will not pretend to compare
+your eating with mine?
+
+_Duellist_.--I danced very finely.
+
+_Savage_.--I'll dance with thee for thy ears: I can dance all day long.  I
+can dance the war-dance with more spirit than any man of my nation.  Let
+us see thee begin it.  How thou standest like a post!  Has Mercury struck
+thee with his enfeebling rod? or art thou ashamed to let us see how
+awkward thou art?  If he would permit me, I would teach thee to dance in
+a way that thou hast never yet learnt.  But what else canst thou do, thou
+bragging rascal?
+
+_Duellist_.--O heavens! must I bear this?  What can I do with this
+fellow?  I have neither sword nor pistol.  And his shade seems to be
+twice as strong as mine.
+
+_Mercury_.--You must answer his questions.  It was your own desire to
+have a conversation with him.  He is not well bred; but he will tell you
+some truths which you must necessarily hear, when you come before
+Rhadamanthus.  He asked you what you could do besides eating and dancing.
+
+_Duellist_.--I sang very agreeably.
+
+_Savage_.--Let me hear you sing your "Death Song" or the "War Whoop."  I
+challenge you to sing.  Come, begin.  The fellow is mute.  Mercury, this
+is a liar; he has told us nothing but lies.  Let me pull out his tongue.
+
+_Duellist_.--The lie given me! and, alas, I dare not resent it.  What an
+indelible disgrace to the family of the Pushwells!  This indeed is
+damnation.
+
+_Mercury_.--Here, Charon, take these two savages to your care.  How far
+the barbarism of the Mohawk will excuse his horrid acts I leave Minos to
+judge.  But what can be said for the other, for the Englishman?  The
+custom of duelling?  A bad excuse at the best! but here it cannot avail.
+The spirit that urged him to draw his sword against his friend is not
+that of honour; it is the spirit of the furies, and to them he must go.
+
+_Savage_.--If he is to be punished for his wickedness, turn him over to
+me; I perfectly understand the art of tormenting.  Sirrah, I begin my
+work with this kick on your breech.
+
+_Duellist_.--Oh my honour, my honour, to what infamy art thou fallen!
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE VII.
+
+
+PLINY THE ELDER--PLINY THE YOUNGER.
+
+_Pliny the Elder_.--The account that you give me, nephew, of your
+behaviour amidst the tenors and perils that accompanied the first
+eruption of Vesuvius does not please me much.  There was more of vanity
+in it than of true magnanimity.  Nothing is great that is unnatural and
+affected.  When the earth was shaking beneath you, when the whole heaven
+was darkened with sulphurous clouds, when all Nature seemed falling into
+its final destruction, to be reading Livy and making extracts was an
+absurd affectation.  To meet danger with courage is manly, but to be
+insensible of it is brutal stupidity; and to pretend insensibility where
+it cannot be supposed is ridiculous falseness.  When you afterwards
+refused to leave your aged mother and save yourself without her, you
+indeed acted nobly.  It was also becoming a Roman to keep up her spirits
+amidst all the horrors of that tremendous scene by showing yourself
+undismayed; but the real merit and glory of this part of your behaviour
+is sunk by the other, which gives an air of ostentation and vanity to the
+whole.
+
+_Pliny the Younger_.--That vulgar minds should consider my attention to
+my studies in such a conjuncture as unnatural and affected, I should not
+much wonder; but that you would blame it as such I did not apprehend--you,
+whom no business could separate from the muses; you, who approached
+nearer to the fiery storm, and died by the suffocating heat of the
+vapour.
+
+_Pliny the Elder_.--I died in doing my duty.  Let me recall to your
+remembrance all the particulars, and then you shall judge yourself on the
+difference of your behaviour and mine.  I was the Prefect of the Roman
+fleet, which then lay at Misenum.  On the first account I received of the
+very unusual cloud that appeared in the air I ordered a vessel to carry
+me out to some distance from the shore that I might the better observe
+the phenomenon, and endeavour to discover its nature and cause.  This I
+did as a philosopher, and it was a curiosity proper and natural to an
+inquisitive mind.  I offered to take you with me, and surely you should
+have gone; for Livy might have been read at any other time, and such
+spectacles are not frequent.  When I came out from my house, I found all
+the inhabitants of Misenum flying to the sea.  That I might assist them,
+and all others who dwelt on the coast, I immediately commanded the whole
+fleet to put out, and sailed with it all round the Bay of Naples,
+steering particularly to those parts of the shore where the danger was
+greatest, and from whence the affrighted people were endeavouring to
+escape with the most trepidation.  Thus I happily preserved some
+thousands of lives, noting at the same time, with an unshaken composure
+and freedom of mind, the several phenomena of the eruption.  Towards
+night, as we approached to the foot of Mount Vesuvius, our galleys were
+covered with ashes, the showers of which grew continually hotter and
+hotter; then pumice stones and burnt and broken pyrites began to fall on
+our heads, and we were stopped by the obstacles which the ruins of the
+volcano had suddenly formed, by falling into the sea and almost filling
+it up, on that part of the coast.  I then commanded my pilot to steer to
+the villa of my friend Pomponianus, which, you know, was situated in the
+inmost recess of the bay.  The wind was very favourable to carry me
+thither, but would not allow him to put off from the shore, as he was
+desirous to have done.  We were, therefore, constrained to pass the night
+in his house.  The family watched, and I slept till the heaps of pumice
+stones, which incessantly fell from the clouds that had by this time been
+impelled to that side of the bay, rose so high in the area of the
+apartment I lay in, that if I had stayed any longer I could not have got
+out; and the earthquakes were so violent as to threaten every moment the
+fall of the house.  We, therefore, thought it more safe to go into the
+open air, guarding our heads as well as we were able with pillows tied
+upon them.  The wind continuing contrary, and the sea very rough, we all
+remained on the shore, till the descent of a sulphurous and fiery vapour
+suddenly oppressed my weak lungs and put an end to my life.  In all this
+I hope that I acted as the duty of my station required, and with true
+magnanimity.  But on this occasion, and in many other parts of your
+conduct, I must say, my dear nephew, there was a mixture of vanity
+blended with your virtue which impaired and disgraced it.  Without that
+you would have been one of the worthiest men whom Rome has over produced,
+for none excelled you in sincere integrity of heart and greatness of
+sentiments.  Why would you lose the substance of glory by seeking the
+shadow?  Your eloquence had, I think, the same fault as your manners; it
+was generally too affected.  You professed to make Cicero your guide and
+pattern; but when one reads his Panegyric upon Julius Caesar, in his
+Oration for Marcellus, and yours upon Trajan, the first seems the genuine
+language of truth and Nature, raised and dignified with all the majesty
+of the most sublime oratory; the latter appears the harangue of a florid
+rhetorician, more desirous to shine and to set off his own wit than to
+extol the great man whose virtues he was praising.
+
+_Pliny the Younger_.--I will not question your judgment either of my life
+or my writings; they might both have been better if I had not been too
+solicitous to render them perfect.  It is, perhaps, some excuse for the
+affectation of my style that it was the fashion of the age in which I
+wrote.  Even the eloquence of Tacitus, however nervous and sublime, was
+not unaffected.  Mine, indeed, was more diffuse, and the ornaments of it
+were more tawdry; but his laboured conciseness, the constant glow of his
+diction, and pointed brilliancy of his sentences, were no less unnatural.
+One principal cause of this I suppose to have been that, as we despaired
+of excelling the two great masters of oratory, Cicero and Livy, in their
+own manner, we took up another, which to many appeared more shining, and
+gave our compositions a more original air; but it is mortifying to me to
+say much on this subject.  Permit me, therefore, to resume the
+contemplation of that on which our conversation turned before.  What a
+direful calamity was the eruption of Vesuvius, which you have been
+describing?  Don't you remember the beauty of that fine coast, and of the
+mountain itself, before it was torn with the violence of those internal
+fires, that forced their way through its surface.  The foot of it was
+covered with cornfields and rich meadows, interspersed with splendid
+villas and magnificent towns; the sides of it were clothed with the best
+vines in Italy.  How quick, how unexpected, how terrible was the change!
+All was at once overwhelmed with ashes, cinders, broken rocks, and fiery
+torrents, presenting to the eye the most dismal scene of horror and
+desolation!
+
+_Pliny the Elder_.--You paint it very truly.  But has it never occurred
+to your philosophical mind that this change is a striking emblem of that
+which must happen, by the natural course of things, to every rich,
+luxurious state?  While the inhabitants of it are sunk in
+voluptuousness--while all is smiling around them, and they imagine that
+no evil, no danger is nigh--the latent seeds of destruction are
+fermenting within; till, breaking out on a sudden, they lay waste all
+their opulence, all their boasted delights, and leave them a sad monument
+of the fatal effects of internal tempests and convulsions.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE VIII.
+
+
+FERNANDO CORTEZ--WILLIAM PENN.
+
+_Cortez_.--Is it possible, William Penn, that you should seriously
+compare your glory with mine?  The planter of a small colony in North
+America presume to vie with the conqueror of the great Mexican Empire?
+
+_Penn_.--Friend, I pretend to no glory--the Lord preserve me from it.  All
+glory is His; but this I say, that I was His instrument in a more
+glorious work than that performed by thee--incomparably more glorious.
+
+_Cortez_.--Dost thou not know, William Penn, that with less than six
+hundred Spanish foot, eighteen horse, and a few small pieces of cannon, I
+fought and defeated innumerable armies of very brave men; dethroned an
+emperor who had been raised to the throne by his valour, and excelled all
+his countrymen in the science of war, as much as they excelled all the
+rest of the West Indian nations?  That I made him my prisoner in his own
+capital; and, after he had been deposed and slain by his subjects,
+vanquished and took Guatimozin, his successor, and accomplished my
+conquest of the whole empire of Mexico, which I loyally annexed to the
+Spanish Crown?  Dost thou not know that, in doing these wonderful acts, I
+showed as much courage as Alexander the Great, as much prudence as Caesar?
+That by my policy I ranged under my banners the powerful commonwealth of
+Tlascala, and brought them to assist me in subduing the Mexicans, though
+with the loss of their own beloved independence? and that, to consummate
+my glory, when the Governor of Cuba, Velasquez, would have taken my
+command from me and sacrificed me to his envy and jealousy, I drew from
+him all his forces and joined them to my own, showing myself as superior
+to all other Spaniards as I was to the Indians?
+
+_Penn_.--I know very well that thou wast as fierce as a lion and as
+subtle as a serpent.  The devil perhaps may place thee as high in his
+black list of heroes as Alexander or Caesar.  It is not my business to
+interfere with him in settling thy rank.  But hark thee, friend Cortez.
+What right hadst thou, or had the King of Spain himself, to the Mexican
+Empire?  Answer me that, if thou canst.
+
+_Cortez_.--The Pope gave it to my master.
+
+_Penn_.--The devil offered to give our Lord all the kingdoms of the
+earth, and I suppose the Pope, as his vicar, gave thy master this; in
+return for which he fell down and worshipped him, like an idolater as he
+was.  But suppose the high priest of Mexico had taken it into his head to
+give Spain to Montezuma, would his grant have been good?
+
+_Cortez_.--These are questions of casuistry which it is not the business
+of a soldier to decide.  We leave that to gownsmen.  But pray, Mr. Penn,
+what right had you to the province you settled?
+
+_Penn_.--An honest right of fair purchase.  We gave the native savages
+some things they wanted, and they in return gave us lands they did not
+want.  All was amicably agreed on, not a drop of blood shed to stain our
+acquisition.
+
+_Cortez_.--I am afraid there was a little fraud in the purchase.  Thy
+followers, William Penn, are said to think cheating in a quiet and sober
+way no mortal sin.
+
+_Penn_.--The saints are always calumniated by the ungodly.  But it was a
+sight which an angel might contemplate with delight to behold the colony
+I settled!  To see us living with the Indians like innocent lambs, and
+taming the ferocity of their barbarous manners by the gentleness of ours!
+To see the whole country, which before was an uncultivated wilderness,
+rendered as fertile and fair as the garden of God!  O Fernando Cortez,
+Fernando Cortez! didst thou leave the great empire of Mexico in that
+state?  No, thou hadst turned those delightful and populous regions into
+a desert--a desert flooded with blood.  Dost thou not remember that most
+infernal scene when the noble Emperor Guatimozin was stretched out by thy
+soldiers upon hot burning coals to make him discover into what part of
+the lake of Mexico he had thrown the royal treasures?  Are not his groans
+ever sounding in the ears of thy conscience?  Do not they rend thy hard
+heart, and strike thee with more horror than the yells of the furies?
+
+_Cortez_.--Alas!  I was not present when that dire act was done.  Had I
+been there I would have forbidden it.  My nature was mild.
+
+_Penn_.--Thou wast the captain of that band of robbers who did this
+horrid deed.  The advantage they had drawn from thy counsels and conduct
+enabled them to commit it; and thy skill saved them afterwards from the
+vengeance that was due to so enormous a crime.  The enraged Mexicans
+would have properly punished them for it, if they had not had thee for
+their general, thou lieutenant of Satan.
+
+_Cortez_.--The saints I find can rail, William Penn.  But how do you hope
+to preserve this admirable colony which you have settled?  Your people,
+you tell me, live like innocent lambs.  Are there no wolves in North
+America to devour those lambs?  But if the Americans should continue in
+perpetual peace with all your successors there, the French will not.  Are
+the inhabitants of Pennsylvania to make war against them with prayers and
+preaching?  If so, that garden of God which you say you have planted will
+undoubtedly be their prey, and they will take from you your property,
+your laws, and your religion.
+
+_Penn_.--The Lord's will be done.  The Lord will defend us against the
+rage of our enemies if it be His good pleasure.
+
+_Cortez_.--Is this the wisdom of a great legislator?  I have heard some
+of your countrymen compare you to Solon.  Did Solon, think you, give laws
+to a people, and leave those laws and that people at the mercy of every
+invader?  The first business of legislature is to provide a military
+strength that may defend the whole system.  If a house is built in a land
+of robbers, without a gate to shut or a bolt or bar to secure it, what
+avails it how well-proportioned or how commodious the architecture of it
+may be?  Is it richly furnished within? the more it will tempt the hands
+of violence and of rapine to seize its wealth.  The world, William Penn,
+is all a land of robbers.  Any state or commonwealth erected therein must
+be well fenced and secured by good military institutions; or, the happier
+it is in all other respects, the greater will be its danger, the more
+speedy its destruction.  Perhaps the neighbouring English colonies may
+for a while protect yours; but that precarious security cannot always
+preserve you.  Your plan of government must be changed, or your colony
+will be lost.  What I have said is also applicable to Great Britain
+itself.  If an increase of its wealth be not accompanied with an increase
+of its force that wealth will become the prey of some of the neighbouring
+nations, in which the martial spirit is more prevalent than the
+commercial.  And whatever praise may be due to its civil institutions, if
+they are not guarded by a wise system of military policy, they will be
+found of no value, being unable to prevent their own dissolution.
+
+_Penn_.--These are suggestions of human wisdom.  The doctrines I held
+were inspired; they came from above.
+
+_Cortez_.--It is blasphemy to say that any folly could come from the
+Fountain of Wisdom.  Whatever is inconsistent with the great laws of
+Nature and with the necessary state of human society cannot possibly have
+been inspired by God.  Self-defence is as necessary to nations as to men.
+And shall particulars have a right which nations have not?  True
+religion, William Penn, is the perfection of reason; fanaticism is the
+disgrace, the destruction of reason.
+
+_Penn_.--Though what thou sayest should be true, it does not come well
+from thy mouth.  A Papist talk of reason!  Go to the Inquisition and tell
+them of reason and the great laws of Nature.  They will broil thee, as
+thy soldiers broiled the unhappy Guatimozin.  Why dost thou turn pale?  Is
+it the name of the Inquisition, or the name of Guatimozin, that troubles
+and affrights thee?  O wretched man! who madest thyself a voluntary
+instrument to carry into a new-discovered world that hellish tribunal?
+Tremble and shake when thou thinkest that every murder the Inquisitors
+have committed, every torture they have inflicted on the innocent
+Indians, is originally owing to thee.  Thou must answer to God for all
+their inhumanity, for all their injustice.  What wouldst thou give to
+part with the renown of thy conquests, and to have a conscience as pure
+and undisturbed as mine?
+
+_Cortez_.--I feel the force of thy words; they pierce me like daggers.  I
+can never, never be happy, while I retain any memory of the ills I have
+caused.  Yet I thought I did right.  I thought I laboured to advance the
+glory of God and propagate, in the remotest parts of the earth, His holy
+religion.  He will be merciful to well designing and pious error.  Thou
+also wilt have need of that gracious indulgence, though not, I own, so
+much as I.
+
+_Penn_.--Ask thy heart whether ambition was not thy real motive and zeal
+the pretence?
+
+_Cortez_.--Ask thine whether thy zeal had no worldly views and whether
+thou didst believe all the nonsense of the sect, at the head of which
+thou wast pleased to become a legislator.--Adieu.  Self-examination
+requires retirement.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE IX.
+
+
+MARCUS PORTIUS CATO--MESSALLA CORVINUS.
+
+_Cato_.--Oh, Messalla! is it then possible that what some of our
+countrymen tell me should be true?  Is it possible that you could live
+the courtier of Octavius; that you could accept of employments and
+honours from him, from the tyrant of your country; you, the brave, the
+noble-minded, the virtuous Messalla; you, whom I remember, my son-in-law
+Brutus has frequently extolled as the most promising youth in Rome,
+tutored by philosophy, trained up in arms, scorning all those soft,
+effeminate pleasures that reconcile men to an easy and indolent
+servitude, fit for all the roughest tasks of honour and virtue, fit to
+live or to die a free man?
+
+_Messalla_.--Marcus Cato, I revere both your life and your death; but the
+last, permit me to tell you, did no good to your country, and the former
+would have done more if you could have mitigated a little the sternness
+of your virtue, I will not say of your pride.  For my own part, I adhered
+with constant integrity and unwearied zeal to the Republic, while the
+Republic existed.  I fought for her at Philippi under the only commander,
+who, if he had conquered, would have conquered for her, not for himself.
+When he was dead I saw that nothing remained to my country but the choice
+of a master.  I chose the best.
+
+_Cato_.--The best!  What! a man who had broken all laws, who had violated
+all trusts, who had led the armies of the Commonwealth against Antony,
+and then joined with him and that sottish traitor Lepidus, to set up a
+triumvirate more execrable by far than either of the former; who shed the
+best blood in Rome by an inhuman proscription, murdered even his own
+guardian, murdered Cicero, to whose confidence, too improvidently given,
+he owed all his power?  Was this the master you chose?  Could you bring
+your tongue to give him the name of Augustus?  Could you stoop to beg
+consulships and triumphs from him?  Oh, shame to virtue!  Oh, degeneracy
+of Rome!  To what infamy are her sons, her noblest sons, fallen.  The
+thought of it pains me more than the wound that I died of; it stabs my
+soul.
+
+_Messalla_.--Moderate, Cato, the vehemence of your indignation.  There
+has always been too much passion mixed with your virtue.  The enthusiasm
+you are possessed with is a noble one, but it disturbs your judgment.
+Hear me with patience, and with the tranquillity that becomes a
+philosopher.  It is true that Octavius had done all you have said; but it
+is no less true that, in our circumstances, he was the best master Rome
+could choose.  His mind was fitted by nature for empire.  His
+understanding was clear and strong.  His passions were cool, and under
+the absolute command of his reason.  His name gave him an authority over
+the troops and the people which no other Roman could possess in an equal
+degree.  He used that authority to restrain the excesses of both, which
+it was no longer in the power of the Senate to repress, nor of any other
+general or magistrate in the state.  He restored discipline in our
+armies, the first means of salvation, without which no legal government
+could have been formed or supported.  He avoided all odious and invidious
+names.  He maintained and respected those which time and long habits had
+endeared to the Roman people.  He permitted a generous liberty of speech.
+He treated the nobles of Pompey's party as well as those of his father's,
+if they did not themselves, for factious purposes, keep up the
+distinction.  He formed a plan of government, moderate, decent,
+respectable, which left the senate its majesty, and some of its power.  He
+restored vigour and spirit to the laws; he made new and good ones for the
+reformation of manners; he enforced their execution; he governed the
+empire with lenity, justice, and glory; he humbled the pride of the
+Parthians; he broke the fierceness of the barbarous nations; he gave to
+his country, exhausted and languishing with the great loss of blood which
+she had sustained in the course of so many civil wars, the blessing of
+peace--a blessing which was become so necessary for her, that without it
+she could enjoy no other.  In doing these things I acknowledge he had my
+assistance.  I am prouder of it, and I think I can justify myself more
+effectually to my country, than if I had died by my own hand at Philippi.
+Believe me, Cato, it is better to do some good than to project a great
+deal.  A little practical virtue is of more use to society than the most
+sublime theory, or the best principles of government ill applied.
+
+_Cato_.--Yet I must think it was beneath the character of Messalla to
+join in supporting a government which, though coloured and mitigated, was
+still a tyranny.  Had you not better have gone into a voluntary exile,
+where you would not have seen the face of the tyrant, and where you might
+have quietly practised those private virtues which are all that the gods
+require from good men in certain situations?
+
+_Messalla_.--No; I did much more good by continuing at Rome.  Had
+Augustus required of me anything base, anything servile, I would have
+gone into exile, I would have died, rather than do it.  But he respected
+my virtue, he respected my dignity; he treated me as well as Agrippa, or
+as Maecenas, with this distinction alone, that he never employed my sword
+but against foreign nations, or the old enemies of the republic.
+
+_Cato_.--It must, I own, have been a pleasure to be employed against
+Antony, that monster of vice, who plotted the ruin of liberty, and the
+raising of himself to sovereign power, amidst the riot of bacchanals, and
+in the embraces of harlots, who, when he had attained to that power,
+delivered it up to a lascivious queen, and would have made an Egyptian
+strumpet the mistress of Rome, if the Battle of Actium had not saved us
+from that last of misfortunes.
+
+_Messalla_.--In that battle I had a considerable share.  So I had in
+encouraging the liberal arts and sciences, which Augustus protected.
+Under his judicious patronage the muses made Rome their capital seat.  It
+would have pleased you to have known Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Ovid,
+Livy, and many more, whose names will be illustrious to all generations.
+
+_Cato_.--I understand you, Messalla.  Your Augustus and you, after the
+ruin of our liberty, made Rome a Greek city, an academy of fine wits,
+another Athens under the government of Demetrius Phalareus.  I had much
+rather have seen her under Fabricius and Curius, and her other honest old
+consuls, who could not read.
+
+_Messalla_.--Yet to these writers she will owe as much of her glory as
+she did to those heroes.  I could say more, a great deal more, on the
+happiness of the mild dominion of Augustus.  I might even add, that the
+vast extent of the empire, the factions of the nobility, and the
+corruption of the people, which no laws under the ordinary magistrates of
+the state were able to restrain, seemed necessarily to require some
+change in the government; that Cato himself, had he remained upon earth,
+could have done us no good, unless he would have yielded to become our
+prince.  But I see you consider me as a deserter from the republic, and
+an apologist for a tyrant.  I, therefore, leave you to the company of
+those ancient Romans, for whose society you were always much fitter than
+for that of your contemporaries.  Cato should have lived with Fabricius
+and Curius, not with Pompey and Caesar.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE X.
+
+
+CHRISTINA, Queen Of Sweden--Chancellor OXENSTIERN.
+
+_Christina_.--You seem to avoid me, Oxenstiern; and, now we are met, you
+don't pay me the reverence that is due to your queen!  Have you forgotten
+that I was your sovereign?
+
+_Oxenstiern_.--I am not your subject here, madam; but you have forgotten
+that you yourself broke that bond, and freed me from my allegiance, many
+years before you died, by abdicating the crown, against my advice and the
+inclination of your people.  Reverence here is paid only to virtue.
+
+_Christina_.--I see you would mortify me if it were in your power for
+acting against your advice.  But my fame does not depend upon your
+judgment.  All Europe admired the greatness of my mind in resigning a
+crown to dedicate myself entirely to the love of the sciences and the
+fine arts; things of which you had no taste in barbarous Sweden, the
+realm of Goths and Vandals.
+
+_Oxenstiern_.--There is hardly any mind too great for a crown, but there
+are many too little.  Are you sure, madam, it was magnanimity that caused
+you to fly from the government of a kingdom which your ancestors, and
+particularly your heroic father Gustavus, had ruled with so much glory?
+
+_Christina_.--Am I sure of it?  Yes; and to confirm my own judgment, I
+have that of many learned men and _beaux esprits_ of all countries, who
+have celebrated my action as the perfection of heroism.
+
+_Oxenstiern_.--Those _beaux esprits_ judged according to their
+predominant passion.  I have heard young ladies express their admiration
+of Mark Antony for heroically leaving his fleet at the Battle of Actium
+to follow his mistress.  Your passion for literature had the same effect
+upon you.  But why did not you indulge it in a manner more becoming your
+birth and rank?  Why did not you bring the muses to Sweden, instead of
+deserting that kingdom to seek them in Rome?  For a prince to encourage
+and protect arts and sciences, and more especially to instruct an
+illiterate people and inspire them with knowledge, politeness, and fine
+taste is indeed an act of true greatness.
+
+_Christina_.--The Swedes were too gross to be refined by any culture
+which I could have given to their dull, their half-frozen souls.  Wit and
+genius require the influence of a more southern climate.
+
+_Oxenstiern_.--The Swedes too gross!  No, madam, not even the Russians
+are too gross to be refined if they had a prince to instruct them.
+
+_Christina_.--It was too tedious a work for the vivacity of my temper to
+polish bears into men.  I should have died of the spleen before I had
+made any proficiency in it.  My desire was to shine among those who were
+qualified to judge of my talents.  At Paris, at Rome I had the glory of
+showing the French and Italian wits that the North could produce one not
+inferior to them.  They beheld me with wonder.  The homage I had received
+in my palace at Stockholm was paid to my dignity.  That which I drew from
+the French and Roman academies was paid to my talents.  How much more
+glorious, how much more delightful to an elegant and rational mind was
+the latter than the former!  Could you once have felt the joy, the
+transport of my heart, when I saw the greatest authors and all the
+celebrated artists in the most learned and civilised countries of Europe
+bringing their works to me and submitting the merit of them to my
+decisions; when I saw the philosophers, the rhetoricians, the poets
+making my judgment the standard of their reputation, you would not wonder
+that I preferred the empire of wit to any other empire.
+
+_Oxenstiern_.--O great Gustavus! my ever-honoured, my adored master!  O
+greatest of kings, greatest in valour, in virtue, in wisdom, with what
+indignation must thy soul, enthroned in heaven, have looked down on thy
+unworthy, thy degenerate daughter!  With what shame must thou have seen
+her rambling about from court to court deprived of her royal dignity,
+debased into a pedant, a witling, a smatterer in sculpture and painting,
+reduced to beg or buy flattery from each needy rhetorician or hireling
+poet!  I weep to think on this stain, this dishonourable stain, to thy
+illustrious blood!  And yet, would to God! would to God! this was all the
+pollution it has suffered!
+
+_Christina_.--Darest thou, Oxenstiern, impute any blemish to my honour?
+
+_Oxenstiern_.--Madam, the world will scarce respect the frailties of
+queens when they are on their thrones, much less when they have
+voluntarily degraded themselves to the level of the vulgar.  And if
+scandalous tongues have unjustly aspersed their fame, the way to clear it
+is not by an assassination.
+
+_Christina_.--Oh! that I were alive again, and restored to my throne,
+that I might punish the insolence of this hoary traitor!  But, see! he
+leaves me, he turns his back upon me with cool contempt!  Alas! do I not
+deserve this scorn?  In spite of myself I must confess that I do.  O
+vanity, how short-lived are the pleasures thou bestowest!  I was thy
+votary.  Thou wast the god for whom I changed my religion.  For thee I
+forsook my country and my throne.  What compensation have I gained for
+all these sacrifices so lavishly, so imprudently made?  Some puffs of
+incense from authors who thought their flattery due to the rank I had
+held, or hoped to advance themselves by my recommendation, or, at best,
+over-rated my passion for literature, and praised me to raise the value
+of those talents with which they were endowed.  But in the esteem of wise
+men I stand very low, and their esteem alone is the true measure of
+glory.  Nothing, I perceive, can give the mind a lasting joy but the
+consciousness of having performed our duty in that station which it has
+pleased the Divine Providence to assign to us.  The glory of virtue is
+solid and eternal.  All other will fade away like a thin vapoury cloud,
+on which the casual glance of some faint beams of light has superficially
+imprinted their weak and transient colours.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XI.
+
+
+TITUS VESPASIANUS--PUBLIUS CORNELIUS SCIPIO AFRICANUS.
+
+_Titus_.--No, Scipio, I can't give place to you in this.  In other
+respects I acknowledge myself your inferior, though I was Emperor of Rome
+and you only her consul.  I think your triumph over Carthage more
+glorious than mine over Judaea.  But in that I gained over love I must
+esteem myself superior to you, though your generosity with regard to the
+fair Celtiberian, your captive, has been celebrated so highly.
+
+_Scipio_.--Fame has been, then, unjust to your merit, for little is said
+of the continence of Titus, but mine has been the favourite topic of
+eloquence in every age and country.
+
+_Titus_.--It has; and in particular your great historian Livy has poured
+forth all the ornaments of his admirable rhetoric to embellish and
+dignify that part of your story.  I had a great historian too--Cornelius
+Tacitus; but either from the brevity which he affected in writing, or
+from the severity of his nature, which never having felt the passion of
+love, thought the subduing of it too easy a victory to deserve great
+encomiums, he has bestowed but three lines upon my parting with Berenice,
+which cost me more pain and greater efforts of mind than the conquest of
+Jerusalem.
+
+_Scipio_.--I wish to hear from yourself the history of that parting, and
+what could make it so hard and painful to you.
+
+_Titus_.--While I served in Palestine under the auspices of my father,
+Vespasian, I became acquainted with Berenice, sister to King Agrippa, and
+who was herself a queen in one of those Eastern countries.  She was the
+most beautiful woman in Asia, but she had graces more irresistible still
+than her beauty.  She had all the insinuation and wit of Cleopatra,
+without her coquetry.  I loved her, and was beloved; she loved my person,
+not my greatness.  Her tenderness, her fidelity so inflamed my passion
+for her that I gave her a promise of marriage.
+
+_Scipio_.--What do I hear?  A Roman senator promise to marry a queen!
+
+_Titus_.--I expected, Scipio, that your ears would be offended with the
+sound of such a match.  But consider that Rome was very different in my
+time from Rome in yours.  The ferocious pride of our ancient republican
+senators had bent itself to the obsequious complaisance of a court.
+Berenice made no doubt, and I flattered myself that it would not be
+inflexible in this point alone.  But we thought it necessary to defer the
+completion of our wishes till the death of my father.  On that event the
+Roman Empire and (what I knew she valued more) my hand became due to her,
+according to my engagements.
+
+_Scipio_.--The Roman Empire due to a Syrian queen!  Oh, Rome, how art
+thou fallen!  Accursed be the memory of Octavius Caesar, who by
+oppressing its liberty so lowered the majesty of the republic, that a
+brave and virtuous Roman, in whom was vested all the power of that mighty
+state, could entertain such a thought!  But did you find the senate and
+people so servile, so lost to all sense of their honour and dignity, as
+to affront the great genius of imperial Rome and the eyes of her tutelary
+gods, the eyes of Jupiter Capitolinus, with the sight of a queen--an
+Asiatic queen--on the throne of the Caesars?
+
+_Titus_.--I did not.  They judged of it as you, Scipio, judge; they
+detested, they disdained it.  In vain did I urge to some particular
+friends, who represented to me the sense of the Senate and people, that a
+Messalina, a Poppaea, were a much greater dishonour to the throne of the
+Caesars than a virtuous foreign princess.  Their prejudices were
+unconquerable; I saw it would be impossible for me to remove them.  But I
+might have used my authority to silence their murmurs.  A liberal
+donative to the soldiers, by whom I was fondly beloved, would have
+secured their fidelity, and consequently would have forced the Senate and
+people to yield to my inclination.  Berenice knew this, and with tears
+implored me not to sacrifice her happiness and my own to an unjust
+prepossession.  Shall I own it to you, Publius?  My heart not only pitied
+her, but acknowledged the truth and solidity of her reasons.  Yet so much
+did I abhor the idea of tyranny, so much respect did I pay to the
+sentiments of my subjects, that I determined to separate myself from her
+for ever, rather than force either the laws or the prejudices of Rome to
+submit to my will.
+
+_Scipio_.--Give me thy hand, noble Titus.  Thou wast worthy of the
+empire, and Scipio Africanus honours thy virtue.
+
+_Titus_.--My virtue can have no greater reward from the approbation of
+man.  But, O Scipio, think what anguish my heart must have felt when I
+took that resolution, and when I communicated it to my dear, my unhappy
+Berenice.  You saw the struggle of Masinissa, when you forced him to give
+up his beloved Sophonisba.  Mine was a harder conflict.  She had
+abandoned him to marry the King of Numidia.  He knew that her ruling
+passion was ambition, not love.  He could not rationally esteem her when
+she quitted a husband whom she had ruined, who had lost his crown and his
+liberty in the cause of her country and for her sake, to give her person
+to him, the capital foe of that unfortunate husband.  He must, in spite
+of his passion, have thought her a perfidious, a detestable woman.  But I
+esteemed Berenice; she deserved my esteem.  I was certain she would not
+have accepted the empire from any other hand; and had I been a private
+man she would have raised me to her throne.  Yet I had the fortitude--I
+ought, perhaps, to say the hardness of heart--to bid her depart from my
+sight; depart for ever!  What, O Publius, was your conquest over
+yourself, in giving back to her betrothed lover the Celtiberian captive
+compared to this?  Indeed, that was no conquest.  I will not so dishonour
+the virtue of Scipio as to think he could feel any struggle with himself
+on that account.  A woman engaged to another--engaged by affection as
+well as vows, let her have been ever so beautiful--could raise in your
+heart no sentiments but compassion and friendship.  To have violated her
+would have been an act of brutality, which none but another Tarquin could
+have committed.  To have detained her from her husband would have been
+cruel.  But where love is mutual, where the object beloved suffers more
+in the separation than you do yourself, to part with her is indeed a
+struggle.  It is the hardest sacrifice a good heart can make to its duty.
+
+_Scipio_.--I acknowledge that it is, and yield you the palm.  But I will
+own to you, Titus, I never knew much of the tenderness you describe.
+Hannibal, Carthage, Rome, the saving of my country, the subduing of its
+rival, these filled my thoughts, and left no room there for those
+effeminate passions.  I do not blame your sensibility; but when I went to
+the capitol to talk with Jove, I never consulted him about love affairs.
+
+_Titus_.--If my soul had been possessed by ambition alone, I might
+possibly have been a greater man than I was; but I should not have been
+more virtuous, nor have gained the title I preferred to that of conqueror
+of Judaea and Emperor of Rome, in being called the delight of humankind.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XII
+
+
+HENRY DUKE OF GUISE--MACHIAVEL.
+
+_Guise_.--Avaunt! thou fiend.  I abhor thy sight.  I look upon thee as
+the original cause of my death, and of all the calamities brought upon
+the French nation, in my father's time and my own.
+
+_Machiavel_.--I the cause of your death!  You surprise me!
+
+_Guise_.--Yes.  Your pernicious maxims of policy, imported from Florence
+with Catherine of Medicis, your wicked disciple, produced in France such
+a government, such dissimulation, such perfidy, such violent, ruthless
+counsels, as threw that whole kingdom into the utmost confusion, and
+ended my life, even in the palace of my sovereign, by the swords of
+assassins.
+
+_Machiavel_.--Whoever may have a right to complain of my policy, you,
+sir, have not.  You owed your greatness to it, and your deviating from it
+was the real cause of your death.  If it had not been for the
+assassination of Admiral Coligni and the massacre of the Huguenots, the
+strength and power which the conduct of so able a chief would have given
+to that party, after the death of your father, its most dangerous enemy,
+would have been fatal to your house; nor could you, even with all the
+advantage you drew from that great stroke of royal policy, have acquired
+the authority you afterwards rose to in the kingdom of France; but by
+pursuing my maxims, by availing yourself of the specious name of religion
+to serve the secret purposes of your ambition, and by suffering no
+restraint of fear or conscience, not even the guilt of exciting a civil
+war, to check the necessary progress of your well-concerted designs.  But
+on the day of the barricades you most imprudently let the king escape out
+of Paris, when you might have slain or deposed him.  This was directly
+against the great rule of my politics, not to stop short in rebellion or
+treason till the work is fully completed.  And you were justly censured
+for it by Pope Sixtus Quintus, a more consummate politician, who said,
+"You ought to have known that when a subject draws his sword against his
+king he should throw away the scabbard."  You likewise deviated from my
+counsels, by putting yourself in the power of a sovereign you had so much
+offended.  Why would you, against all the cautions I had given, expose
+your life in a loyal castle to the mercy of that prince?  You trusted to
+his fear, but fear, insulted and desperate, is often cruel.  Impute
+therefore your death not to any fault in my maxims, but to your own folly
+in not having sufficiently observed them.
+
+_Guise_.--If neither I nor that prince had ever practised your maxims in
+any part of our conduct, he would have reigned many years with honour and
+peace, and I should have risen by my courage and talents to as high a
+pitch of greatness as it consisted with the duty of a subject to desire.
+But your instructions led us on into those crooked paths, out of which
+there was no retreat without great danger, nor a possibility of advancing
+without being detested by all mankind, and whoever is so has everything
+to fear from that detestation.  I will give you a proof of this in the
+fate of a prince, who ought to have been your hero instead of Caesar
+Borgia, because he was incomparably a greater man, and, of all who ever
+lived, seems to have acted most steadily according to the rules laid down
+by you; I mean Richard III., King of England.  He stopped at no crime
+that could be profitable to him; he was a dissembler, a hypocrite, a
+murderer in cool blood.  After the death of his brother he gained the
+crown by cutting off, without pity, all who stood in his way.  He trusted
+no man any further than helped his own purposes and consisted with his
+own safety.  He liberally rewarded all services done him, but would not
+let the remembrance of them atone for offences or save any man from
+destruction who obstructed his views.  Nevertheless, though his nature
+shrunk from no wickedness which could serve his ambition, he possessed
+and exercised all those virtues which you recommend to the practice of
+your prince.  He was bold and prudent in war, just and strict in the
+general administration of his government, and particularly careful, by a
+vigorous execution of the laws, to protect the people against injuries or
+oppressions from the great.  In all his actions and words there
+constantly appeared the highest concern for the honour of the nation.  He
+was neither greedy of wealth that belonged to other men nor profuse of
+his own, but knew how to give and where to save.  He professed a most
+edifying sense of religion, pretended great zeal for the reformation of
+manners, and was really an example of sobriety, chastity, and temperance
+in the whole course of his life.  Nor did he shed any blood, but of those
+who were such obstacles in his way to dominion as could not possibly be
+removed by any other means.  This was a prince after your heart, yet mark
+his end.  The horror his crimes had excited in the minds of his subjects,
+and the detestation it produced, were so pernicious to him, that they
+enabled an exile, who had no right to the crown, and whose abilities were
+much inferior to his, to invade his realm and destroy him.
+
+_Machiavel_.--This example, I own, may seem to be of some weight against
+the truth of my system.  But at the same time it demonstrates that there
+was nothing so new in the doctrines I published as to make it reasonable
+to charge me with the disorders and mischiefs which, since my time, any
+kingdom may have happened to suffer from the ambition of a subject or the
+tyranny of a prince.  Human nature wants no teaching to render it wicked.
+In courts more especially there has been, from the first institution of
+monarchies, a policy practised, not less repugnant than mine to the
+narrow and vulgar laws of humanity and religion.  Why should I be singled
+out as worse than other statesmen?
+
+_Guise_.--There have been, it must be owned, in all ages and all states,
+many wicked politicians; but thou art the first that ever taught the
+science of tyranny, reduced it to rules, and instructed his disciples how
+to acquire and secure it by treachery, perjuries, assassinations,
+proscriptions, and with a particular caution, not to be stopped in the
+progress of their crimes by any check of the conscience or feeling of the
+heart, but to push them as far as they shall judge to be necessary to
+their greatness and safety.  It is this which has given thee a
+pre-eminence in guilt over all other statesmen.
+
+_Machiavel_.--If you had read my book with candour you would have
+perceived that I did not desire to render men either tyrants or rebels,
+but only showed, if they were so, what conduct, in such circumstances, it
+would be rational and expedient for them to observe.
+
+_Guise_.--When you were a minister of state in Florence, if any chemist
+or physician had published a treatise, to instruct his countrymen in the
+art of poisoning, and how to do it with the most certain destruction to
+others and security to themselves, would you have allowed him to plead in
+his justification that he did not desire men to poison their neighbours?
+But, if they would use such evil means of mending their fortunes, there
+could surely be no harm in letting them know what were the most effectual
+poisons, and by what methods they might give them without being
+discovered.  Would you have thought it a sufficient apology for him that
+he had dropped in his preface, or here and there in his book, a sober
+exhortation against the committing of murder?  Without all doubt, as a
+magistrate concerned for the safety of the people of Florence, you would
+have punished the wretch with the utmost severity, and taken great care
+to destroy every copy of so pernicious a book.  Yet your own admired work
+contains a more baneful and more infernal art.  It poisons states and
+kingdoms, and spreads its malignity, like a general pestilence, over the
+whole world.
+
+_Machiavel_.--You must acknowledge at least that my discourses on Livy
+are full of wise and virtuous maxims and precepts of government.
+
+_Guise_.--This, I think, rather aggravates than alleviates your guilt.
+How could you study and comment upon Livy with so acute and profound an
+understanding, and afterwards write a book so absolutely repugnant to all
+the lessons of policy taught by that sage and moral historian?  How could
+you, who had seen the picture of virtue so amiably drawn by his hand, and
+who seemed yourself to be sensible of all its charms, fall in love with a
+fury, and set up her dreadful image as an object of worship to princes?
+
+_Machiavel_.--I was seduced by vanity.  My heart was formed to love
+virtue.  But I wanted to be thought a greater genius in politics than
+Aristotle or Plato.  Vanity, sir, is a passion as strong in authors as
+ambition in princes, or rather it is the same passion exerting itself
+differently.  I was a Duke of Guise in the republic of letters.
+
+_Guise_.--The bad influences of your guilt have reached further than
+mine, and been more lasting.  But, Heaven be praised, your credit is at
+present much declining in Europe.  I have been told by some shades who
+are lately arrived here, that the ablest statesman of his time, a king,
+with whose fame the world is filled, has answered your book, and confuted
+all the principles of it, with a noble scorn and abhorrence.  I am also
+assured, that in England there is a great and good king, whose whole life
+has been a continued opposition to your evil system; who has hated all
+cruelty, all fraud, all falseness; whose word has been sacred, whose
+honour inviolate; who has made the laws of his kingdom the rules of his
+government, and good faith and a regard for the liberty of mankind the
+principles of his conduct with respect to foreign powers; who reigns more
+absolutely now in the hearts of his people, and does greater things by
+the confidence they place in him, and by the efforts they make from the
+generous zeal of affection, than any monarch ever did, or ever will do,
+by all the arts of iniquity which you recommended.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XIII.
+
+
+VIRGIL--HORACE--MERCURY--SCALIGER THE ELDER.
+
+_Virgil_.--My dear Horace, your company is my greatest delight, even in
+the Elysian Fields.  No wonder it was so when we lived together in Rome.
+Never had man so genteel, so agreeable, so easy a wit, or a temper so
+pliant to the inclinations of others in the intercourse of society.  And
+then such integrity, such fidelity, such generosity in your nature!  A
+soul so free from all envy, so benevolent, so sincere, so placable in its
+anger, so warm and constant in its affections!  You were as necessary to
+Maecenas as he to Augustus.  Your conversation sweetened to him all the
+cares of his ministry; your gaiety cheered his drooping spirits; and your
+counsels assisted him when he wanted advice.  For you were capable, my
+dear Horace, of counselling statesmen.  Your sagacity, your discretion,
+your secrecy, your clear judgment in all affairs, recommended you to the
+confidence, not of Maecenas alone, but of Augustus himself; which you
+nobly made use of to serve your old friends of the republican party, and
+to confirm both the minister and the prince in their love of mild and
+moderate measures, yet with a severe restraint of licentiousness, the
+most dangerous enemy to the whole commonwealth under any form of
+government.
+
+_Horace_.--To be so praised by Virgil would have put me in Elysium while
+I was alive.  But I know your modesty will not suffer me, in return for
+these encomiums, to speak of your character.  Supposing it as perfect as
+your poems, you would think, as you did of them, that it wanted
+correction.
+
+_Virgil_.--Don't talk of my modesty.  How much greater was yours, when
+you disclaimed the name of a poet, you whose odes are so noble, so
+harmonious, so sublime!
+
+_Horace_.--I felt myself too inferior to the dignity of that name.
+
+_Virgil_.--I think you did like Augustus, when he refused to accept the
+title of king, but kept all the power with which it was ever attended.
+Even in your Epistles and Satires, where the poet was concealed, as much
+as he could be, you may properly be compared to a prince in disguise, or
+in his hours of familiarity with his intimate friends: the pomp and
+majesty were let drop, but the greatness remained.
+
+_Horace_.--Well, I will not contradict you; and, to say the truth, I
+should do it with no very good grace, because in some of my Odes I have
+not spoken so modestly of my own poetry as in my Epistles.  But to make
+you know your pre-eminence over me and all writers of Latin verse, I will
+carry you to Quintilian, the best of all Roman critics, who will tell you
+in what rank you ought to be placed.
+
+_Virgil_.--I fear his judgment of me was biassed by your commendation.
+But who is this shade that Mercury is conducting?  I never saw one that
+stalked with so much pride, or had such ridiculous arrogance expressed in
+his looks!
+
+_Horace_.--They come towards us.  Hail, Mercury!  What is this stranger
+with you?
+
+_Mercury_.--His name is Julius Caesar Scaliger, and he is by profession a
+critic.
+
+_Horace_.--Julius Caesar Scaliger!  He was, I presume, a dictator in
+criticism.
+
+_Mercury_.--Yes, and he has exercised his sovereign power over you.
+
+_Horace_.--I will not presume to oppose it.  I had enough of following
+Brutus at Philippi.
+
+_Mercury_.--Talk to him a little.  He'll amuse you.  I brought him to you
+on purpose.
+
+_Horace_.--Virgil, do you accost him.  I can't do it with proper gravity.
+I shall laugh in his face.
+
+_Virgil_.--Sir, may I ask for what reason you cast your eyes so
+superciliously upon Horace and me?  I don't remember that Augustus ever
+looked down upon us with such an air of superiority when we were his
+subjects.
+
+_Scaliger_.--He was only a sovereign over your bodies, and owed his power
+to violence and usurpation.  But I have from Nature an absolute dominion
+over the wit of all authors, who are subjected to me as the greatest of
+critics or hypercritics.
+
+_Virgil_.--Your jurisdiction, great sir, is very extensive.  And what
+judgments have you been pleased to pass upon us?
+
+_Scaliger_.--Is it possible you should be ignorant of my decrees?  I have
+placed you, Virgil, above Homer, whom I have shown to be--
+
+_Virgil_.--Hold, sir.  No blasphemy against my master.
+
+_Horace_.--But what have you said of me?
+
+_Scaliger_.--I have said that I had rather have written the little
+dialogue between you and Lydia than have been made king of Arragon.
+
+_Horace_.--If we were in the other world you should give me the kingdom,
+and take both the ode and the lady in return.  But did you always
+pronounce so favourably for us?
+
+_Scaliger_.--Send for my works and read them.  Mercury will bring them to
+you with the first learned ghost that arrives here from Europe.  There is
+instruction for you in them.  I tell you of your faults.  But it was my
+whim to commend that little ode, and I never do things by halves.  When I
+give praise, I give it liberally, to show my royal bounty.  But I
+generally blame, to exert all the vigour of my censorian power, and keep
+my subjects in awe.
+
+_Horace_.--You did not confine your sovereignty to poets; you exercised
+it, no doubt, over all other writers.
+
+_Scaliger_.--I was a poet, a philosopher, a statesman, an orator, an
+historian, a divine without doing the drudgery of any of these, but only
+censuring those who did, and showing thereby the superiority of my genius
+over them all.
+
+_Horace_.--A short way, indeed, to universal fame!  And I suppose you
+were very peremptory in your decisions?
+
+_Scaliger_.--Peremptory! ay.  If any man dared to contradict my opinions
+I called him a dunce, a rascal, a villain, and frightened him out of his
+wits.
+
+_Virgil_.--But what said others to this method of disputation?
+
+_Scaliger_.--They generally believed me because of the confidence of my
+assertions, and thought I could not be so insolent or so angry if I was
+not absolutely sure of being in the right.  Besides, in my controversies,
+I had a great help from the language in which I wrote.  For one can scold
+and call names with a much better grace in Latin than in French or any
+tame modern tongue.
+
+_Horace_.--Have not I heard that you pretended to derive your descent
+from the princes of Verona?
+
+_Scaliger_.--Pretended!  Do you presume to deny it?
+
+_Horace_.--Not I, indeed.  Genealogy is not my science.  If you should
+claim to descend in a direct line from King Midas I would not dispute it.
+
+_Virgil_.--I wonder, Scaliger, that you stooped to so low an ambition.
+Was it not greater to reign over all Mount Parnassus than over a petty
+state in Italy?
+
+_Scaliger_.--You say well.  I was too condescending to the prejudices of
+vulgar opinion.  The ignorant multitude imagine that a prince is a
+greater man than a critic.  Their folly made me desire to claim kindred
+with the Scalas of Verona.
+
+_Horace_.--Pray, Mercury, how do you intend to dispose of this august
+person?  You can't think it proper to let him remain with us.  He must be
+placed with the demigods; he must go to Olympus.
+
+_Mercury_.--Be not afraid.  He shall not trouble you long.  I brought him
+hither to divert you with the sight of an animal you never had seen, and
+myself with your surprise.  He is the chief of all the modern critics,
+the most renowned captain of that numerous and dreadful band.  Whatever
+you may think of him, I can seriously assure you that before he went mad
+he had good parts and great learning.  But I will now explain to you the
+original cause of the absurdities he has uttered.  His mind was formed in
+such a manner that, like some perspective glasses, it either diminished
+or magnified all objects too much; but, above all others, it magnified
+the good man to himself.  This made him so proud that it turned his
+brain.  Now I have had my sport with him, I think it will be charity to
+restore him to his senses, or rather to bestow what Nature denied him--a
+sound judgment.  Come hither, Scaliger.  By this touch of my Caduceus I
+give thee power to see things as they are, and, among others, thyself.
+Look, gentlemen, how his countenance is fallen in a moment!  Hear what he
+says.  He is talking to himself.
+
+_Scaliger_.--Bless me! with what persons have I been discoursing?  With
+Virgil and Horace!  How could I venture to open my lips in their
+presence?  Good Mercury, I beseech you let me retire from a company for
+which I am very unfit.  Let me go and hide my head in the deepest shade
+of that grove which I see in the valley.  After I have performed a
+penance there, I will crawl on my knees to the feet of those illustrious
+shades, and beg them to see me burn my impertinent books of criticism in
+the fiery billows of Phlegethon with my own hands.
+
+_Mercury_.--They will both receive thee into favour.  This mortification
+of truly knowing thyself is a sufficient atonement for thy former
+presumption.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XIV.
+
+
+BOILEAU--POPE.
+
+_Boileau_.--Mr. Pope, you have done me great honour.  I am told that you
+made me your model in poetry, and walked on Parnassus in the same paths
+which I had trod.
+
+_Pope_.--We both followed Horace, but in our manner of imitation, and in
+the turn of our natural genius, there was, I believe, much resemblance.
+We both were too irritable and too easily hurt by offences, even from the
+lowest of men.  The keen edge of our wit was frequently turned against
+those whom it was more a shame to contend with than an honour to
+vanquish.
+
+_Boileau_.--Yes.  But in general we were the champions of good morals,
+good sense, and good learning.  If our love of these was sometimes heated
+into anger against those who offended them no less than us, is that anger
+to be blamed?
+
+_Pope_.--It would have been nobler if we had not been parties in the
+quarrel.  Our enemies observe that neither our censure nor our praise was
+always impartial.
+
+_Boileau_.--It might perhaps have been better if in some instances we had
+not praised or blamed so much.  But in panegyric and satire moderation is
+insipid.
+
+_Pope_.--Moderation is a cold unpoetical virtue.  Mere historical truth
+is better written in prose.  And, therefore, I think you did judiciously
+when you threw into the fire your history of Louis le Grand, and trusted
+his fame to your poems.
+
+_Boileau_.--When those poems were published that monarch was the idol of
+the French nation.  If you and I had not known, in our occasional
+compositions, how to speak to the passions, as well as to the sober
+reason of mankind, we should not have acquired that despotic authority in
+the empire of wit which made us so formidable to all the inferior tribe
+of poets in England and France.  Besides, sharp satirists want great
+patrons.
+
+_Pope_.--All the praise which my friends received from me was unbought.
+In this, at least, I may boast a superiority over the pensioned Boileau.
+
+_Boileau_.--A pension in France was an honourable distinction.  Had you
+been a Frenchman you would have ambitiously sought it; had I been an
+Englishman I should have proudly declined it.  If our merit in other
+respects be not unequal, this difference will not set me much below you
+in the temple of virtue or of fame.
+
+_Pope_.--It is not for me to draw a comparison between our works.  But,
+if I may believe the best critics who have talked to me on the subject,
+my "Rape of the Lock" is not inferior to your "Lutrin;" and my "Art of
+Criticism" may well be compared with your "Art of Poetry;" my "Ethic
+Epistles" are esteemed at least equal to yours; and my "Satires" much
+better.
+
+_Boileau_.--Hold, Mr. Pope.  If there is really such a sympathy in our
+natures as you have supposed, there may be reason to fear that, if we go
+on in this manner comparing our works, we shall not part in good
+friendship.
+
+_Pope_.--No, no; the mild air of the Elysian Fields has mitigated my
+temper, as I presume it has yours.  But, in truth, our reputations are
+nearly on a level.  Our writings are admired, almost equally (as I hear)
+for energy and justness of thought.  We both of us carried the beauty of
+our diction, and the harmony of our numbers, to the highest perfection
+that our languages would admit.  Our poems were polished to the utmost
+degree of correctness, yet without losing their fire, or the agreeable
+appearance of freedom and ease.  We borrowed much from the ancients,
+though you, I believe, more than I; but our imitations (to use an
+expression of your own) had still an original air.
+
+_Boileau_.--I will confess, sir (to show you that the Elysian climate has
+had its effects upon me), I will fairly confess, without the least ill
+humour, that in your "Eloisa to Abelard," your "Verses to the Memory of
+an Unfortunate Lady," and some others you wrote in your youth, there is
+more fire of poetry than in any of mine.  You excelled in the pathetic,
+which I never approached.  I will also allow that you hit the manner of
+Horace and the sly delicacy of his wit more exactly than I, or than any
+other man who has written since his time.  Nor could I, nor did even
+Lucretius himself, make philosophy so poetical, and embellish it with
+such charms as you have given to that of Plato, or (to speak more
+properly) of some of his modern disciples, in your celebrated "Essay on
+Man."
+
+_Pope_.--What do you think of my "Homer?"
+
+_Boileau_.--Your "Homer" is the most spirited, the most poetical, the
+most elegant, and the most pleasing translation that ever was made of any
+ancient poem, though not so much in the manner of the original, or so
+exactly agreeable to the sense in all places, as might perhaps be
+desired.  But when I consider the years you spent in this work, and how
+many excellent original poems you might, with less difficulty, have
+produced in that time, I can't but regret that your talents were thus
+employed.  A great poet so tied down to a tedious translation is a
+Columbus chained to an oar.  What new regions of fancy, full of treasures
+yet untouched, might you have explored, if you had been at liberty to
+have boldly expanded your sails, and steered your own course, under the
+conduct and direction of your own genius!  But I am still more angry with
+you for your edition of Shakespeare.  The office of an editor was below
+you, and your mind was unfit for the drudgery it requires.  Would anybody
+think of employing a Raphael to clean an old picture?
+
+_Pope_.--The principal cause of my undertaking that task was zeal for the
+honour of Shakespeare; and, if you knew all his beauties as well as I,
+you would not wonder at this zeal.  No other author had ever so copious,
+so bold, so creative an imagination, with so perfect a knowledge of the
+passions, the humours, and sentiments of mankind.  He painted all
+characters, from kings down to peasants, with equal truth and equal
+force.  If human nature were destroyed, and no monument were left of it
+except his works, other beings might know what man was from those
+writings.
+
+_Boileau_.--You say he painted all characters, from kings down to
+peasants, with equal truth and equal force.  I can't deny that he did so;
+but I wish he had not jumbled those characters together in the
+composition of his pictures as he has frequently done.
+
+_Pope_.--The strange mixture of tragedy, comedy, and farce in the same
+play, nay, sometimes in the same scene, I acknowledge to be quite
+inexcusable.  But this was the taste of the times when Shakespeare wrote.
+
+_Boileau_.--A great genius ought to guide, not servilely follow, the
+taste of his contemporaries.
+
+_Pope_.--Consider from how thick a darkness of barbarism the genius of
+Shakespeare broke forth!  What were the English, and what, let me ask
+you, were the French dramatic performances, in the age when he nourished?
+The advances he made towards the highest perfection, both of tragedy and
+comedy, are amazing!  In the principal points, in the power of exciting
+terror and pity, or raising laughter in an audience, none yet has
+excelled him, and very few have equalled.
+
+_Boileau_.--Do you think that he was equal in comedy to Moliere?
+
+_Pope_.--In comic force I do; but in the fine and delicate strokes of
+satire, and what is called genteel comedy, he was greatly inferior to
+that admirable writer.  There is nothing in him to compare with the
+_Misanthrope_, the _Ecole des Femmes_, or _Tartuffe_.
+
+_Boileau_.--This, Mr. Pope, is a great deal for an Englishman to
+acknowledge.  A veneration for Shakespeare seems to be a part of your
+national religion, and the only part in which even your men of sense are
+fanatics.
+
+_Pope_.--He who can read Shakespeare, and be cool enough for all the
+accuracy of sober criticism, has more of reason than taste.
+
+_Boileau_.--I join with you in admiring him as a prodigy of genius,
+though I find the most shocking absurdities in his plays--absurdities
+which no critic of my nation can pardon.
+
+_Pope_.--We will be satisfied with your feeling the excellence of his
+beauties.  But you would admire him still more if you could see the chief
+characters in all his test tragedies represented by an actor who appeared
+on the stage a little before I left the world.  He has shown the English
+nation more excellencies in Shakespeare than the quickest wits could
+discern, and has imprinted them on the heart with a livelier feeling than
+the most sensible natures had ever experienced without his help.
+
+_Boileau_.--The variety, spirit, and force of Mr. Garrick's action have
+been much praised to me by many of his countrymen, whose shades I
+converse with, and who agree in speaking of him as we do of Baron, our
+most natural and most admired actor.  I have also heard of another, who
+has now quitted the stage, but who had filled, with great dignity, force,
+and elevation, some tragic parts, and excelled so much in the comic, that
+none ever has deserved a higher applause.
+
+_Pope_.--Mr. Quin was, indeed, a most perfect comedian.  In the part of
+Falstaff particularly, wherein the utmost force of Shakespeare's humour
+appears, he attained to such perfection that he was not an actor; he was
+the man described by Shakespeare; he was Falstaff himself!  When I saw
+him do it the pleasantry of the fat knight appeared to me so bewitching,
+all his vices were so mirthful, that I could not much wonder at his
+having seduced a young prince even to rob in his company.
+
+_Boileau_.--That character is not well understood by the French; they
+suppose it belongs, not to comedy, but to farce, whereas the English see
+in it the finest and highest strokes of wit and humour.  Perhaps these
+different judgments may be accounted for in some measure by the diversity
+of manners in different countries.  But don't you allow, Mr. Pope, that
+our writers, both of tragedy and comedy, are, upon the whole, more
+perfect masters of their art than yours?  If you deny it, I will appeal
+to the Athenians, the only judges qualified to decide the dispute.  I
+will refer it to Euripides, Sophocles, and Menander.
+
+_Pope_.--I am afraid of those judges, for I see them continually walking
+hand-in-hand, and engaged in the most friendly conversation with
+Corneille, Racine, and Moliere.  Our dramatic writers seem, in general,
+not so fond of their company; they sometimes shove rudely by them, and
+give themselves airs of superiority.  They slight their reprimands, and
+laugh at their precepts--in short, they will be tried by their country
+alone; and that judicature is partial.
+
+_Boileau_.--I will press this question no further.  But let me ask you to
+which of our rival tragedians, Racine and Corneille, do you give the
+preference?
+
+_Pope_.--The sublimest plays of Corneille are, in my judgment, equalled
+by the _Athalia_ of Racine, and the tender passions are certainly touched
+by that elegant and most pathetic writer with a much finer hand.  I need
+not add that he is infinitely more correct than Corneille, and more
+harmonious and noble in his versification.  Corneille formed himself
+entirely upon Lucan, but the master of Racine was Virgil.  How much
+better a taste had the former than the latter in choosing his model!
+
+_Boileau_.--My friendship with Racine, and my partiality for his
+writings, make me hear with great pleasure the preference given to him
+above Corneille by so judicious a critic.
+
+_Pope_.--That he excelled his competitor in the particulars I have
+mentioned, can't, I think, be denied.  But yet the spirit and the majesty
+of ancient Rome were never so well expressed as by Corneille.  Nor has
+any other French dramatic writer, in the general character of his works,
+shown such a masculine strength and greatness of thought.  Racine is the
+swan described by ancient poets, which rises to the clouds on downy wings
+and sings a sweet but a gentle and plaintive note.  Corneille is the
+eagle, which soars to the skies on bold and sounding pinions, and fears
+not to perch on the sceptre of Jupiter, or to bear in his pounces the
+lightning of the god.
+
+_Boileau_.--I am glad to find, Mr. Pope, that in praising Corneille you
+run into poetry, which is not the language of sober criticism, though
+sometimes used by Longinus.
+
+_Pope_.--I caught the fire from the idea of Corneille.
+
+_Boileau_.--He has bright flashes, yet I think that in his thunder there
+is often more noise than fire.  Don't you find him too declamatory, too
+turgid, too unnatural, even in his best tragedies?
+
+_Pope_.--I own I do; yet the greatness and elevation of his sentiments,
+and the nervous vigour of his sense, atone, in my opinion, for all his
+faults.  But let me now, in my turn, desire your opinion of our epic
+poet, Milton.
+
+_Boileau_.--Longinus perhaps would prefer him to all other writers, for
+he surpasses even Homer in the sublime; but other critics who require
+variety, and agreeableness, and a correct regularity of thought and
+judgment in an epic poem, who can endure no absurdities, no extravagant
+fictions, would place him far below Virgil.
+
+_Pope_.--His genius was indeed so vast and sublime, that his poem seems
+beyond the limits of criticism, as his subject is beyond the limits of
+nature.  The bright and excessive blaze of poetical fire, which shines in
+so many parts of the "Paradise Lost," will hardly permit the dazzled eye
+to see its faults.
+
+_Boileau_.--The taste of your countrymen is much changed since the days
+of Charles II., when Dryden was thought a greater poet than Milton!
+
+_Pope_.--The politics of Milton at that time brought his poetry into
+disgrace, for it is a rule with the English, they see no good in a man
+whose politics they dislike; but, as their notions of government are apt
+to change, men of parts whom they have slighted become their favourite
+authors, and others who have possessed their warmest admiration are in
+their turn undervalued.  This revolution of favour was experienced by
+Dryden as well as Milton; he lived to see his writings, together with his
+politics, quite out of fashion.  But even in the days of his highest
+prosperity, when the generality of the people admired his _Almanzor_, and
+thought his _Indian Emperor_ the perfection of tragedy, the Duke of
+Buckingham and Lord Rochester, the two wittiest noblemen our country has
+produced, attacked his fame, and turned the rants of his heroes, the
+jargon of his spirits, and the absurdity of his plots into just ridicule.
+
+_Boileau_.--You have made him good amends by the praise you have given
+him in some of your writings.
+
+_Pope_.--I owed him that praise as my master in the art of versification,
+yet I subscribe to the censures which have been passed by other writers
+on many of his works.  They are good critics, but he is still a great
+poet.  You, sir, I am sure, must particularly admire him as an excellent
+satirist; his "Absalom and Achitophel" is a masterpiece in that way of
+writing, and his "Mac Flecno" is, I think, inferior to it in nothing but
+the meanness of the subject.
+
+_Boileau_.--Did not you take the model of your "Dunciad" from the latter
+of those very ingenious satires?
+
+_Pope_.--I did; but my work is more extensive than his, and my
+imagination has taken in it a greater scope.
+
+_Boileau_.--Some critics may doubt whether the length of your poem was so
+properly suited to the meanness of the subject as the brevity of his.
+Three cantos to expose a dunce crowned with laurel!  I have not given
+above three lines to the author of the "Pucelle."
+
+_Pope_.--My intention was to expose, not one author alone, but all the
+dulness and false taste of the English nation in my times.  Could such a
+design be contracted into a narrower compass?
+
+_Boileau_.--We will not dispute on this point, nor whether the hero of
+your "Dunciad" was really a dunce.  But has not Dryden been accused of
+immorality and profaneness in some of his writings?
+
+_Pope_.--He has, with too much reason: and I am sorry to say that all our
+best comic writers after Shakespeare and Johnson, except Addison and
+Steele, are as liable as he to that heavy charge.  Fletcher is shocking.
+Etheridge, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar have painted the
+manners of the times in which they wrote with a masterly hand; but they
+are too often such manners that a virtuous man, and much more a virtuous
+woman, must be greatly offended at the representation.
+
+_Boileau_.--In this respect our stage is far preferable to yours.  It is
+a school of morality.  Vice is exposed to contempt and to hatred.  No
+false colours are laid on to conceal its deformity, but those with which
+it paints itself are there taken off.
+
+_Pope_.--It is a wonderful thing that in France the comic Muse should be
+the gravest lady in the nation.  Of late she is so grave, that one might
+almost mistake her for her sister Melpomene.  Moliere made her indeed a
+good moral philosopher; but then she philosophised, like Democritus, with
+a merry, laughing face.  Now she weeps over vice instead of showing it to
+mankind, as I think she generally ought to do, in ridiculous lights.
+
+_Boileau_.--Her business is more with folly than with vice, and when she
+attacks the latter, it should be rather with ridicule than invective.  But
+sometimes she may be allowed to raise her voice, and change her usual
+smile into a frown of just indignation.
+
+_Pope_.--I like her best when she smiles.  But did you never reprove your
+witty friend, La Fontaine, for the vicious levity that appears in many of
+his tales?  He was as guilty of the crime of debauching the Muses as any
+of our comic poets.
+
+_Boileau_.--I own he was, and bewail the prostitution of his genius, as I
+should that of an innocent and beautiful country girl.  He was all
+nature, all simplicity! yet in that simplicity there was a grace, and
+unaffected vivacity, with a justness of thought and easy elegance of
+expression that can hardly be found in any other writer.  His manner is
+quite original, and peculiar to himself, though all the matter of his
+writings is borrowed from others.
+
+_Pope_.--In that manner he has been imitated by my friend Mr. Prior.
+
+_Boileau_.--He has, very successfully.  Some of Prior's tales have the
+spirit of La Fontaine's with more judgment, but not, I think, with such
+an amiable and graceful simplicity.
+
+_Pope_.--Prior's harp had more strings than La Fontaine's.  He was a fine
+poet in many different ways: La Fontaine but in one.  And, though in some
+of his tales he imitated that author, his "Alma" was an original, and of
+singular beauty.
+
+_Boileau_.--There is a writer of heroic poetry, who lived before Milton,
+and whom some of your countrymen place in the highest class of your
+poets, though he is little known in France.  I see him sometimes in
+company with Homer and Virgil, but oftener with Tasso, Ariosto, and
+Dante.
+
+_Pope_.--I understand you mean Spenser.  There is a force and beauty in
+some of his images and descriptions, equal to any in those writers you
+have seen him converse with.  But he had not the art of properly shading
+his pictures.  He brings the minute and disagreeable parts too much into
+sight; and mingles too frequently vulgar and mean ideas with noble and
+sublime.  Had he chosen a subject proper for epic poetry, he seems to
+have had a sufficient elevation and strength in his genius to make him a
+great epic poet: but the allegory, which is continued throughout the
+whole work, fatigues the mind, and cannot interest the heart so much as
+those poems, the chief actors in which are supposed to have really
+existed.  The Syrens and Circe in the "Odyssey" are allegorical persons;
+but Ulysses, the hero of the poem, was a man renowned in Greece, which
+makes the account of his adventures affecting and delightful.  To be now
+and then in Fairyland, among imaginary beings, is a pleasing variety, and
+helps to distinguish the poet from the orator or historian, but to be
+always there is irksome.
+
+_Boileau_.--Is not Spenser likewise blamable for confounding the
+Christian with the Pagan theology in some parts of his poem?
+
+_Pope_.--Yes; he had that fault in common with Dante, with Ariosto, and
+with Camoens.
+
+_Boileau_.--Who is the poet that arrived soon after you in Elysium, whom
+I saw Spenser lead in and present to Virgil, as the author of a poem
+resembling the "Georgics"?  On his head was a garland of the several
+kinds of flowers that blow in each season, with evergreens intermixed.
+
+_Pope_.--Your description points out Thomson.  He painted nature exactly,
+and with great strength of pencil.  His imagination was rich, extensive,
+and sublime: his diction bold and glowing, but sometimes obscure and
+affected.  Nor did he always know when to stop, or what to reject.
+
+_Boileau_.--I should suppose that he wrote tragedies upon the Greek
+model.  For he is often admitted into the grove of Euripides.
+
+_Pope_.--He enjoys that distinction both as a tragedian and as a
+moralist.  For not only in his plays, but all his other works, there is
+the purest morality, animated by piety, and rendered more touching by the
+fine and delicate sentiments of a most tender and benevolent heart.
+
+_Boileau_.--St. Evremond has brought me acquainted with Waller.  I was
+surprised to find in his writings a politeness and gallantry which the
+French suppose to be appropriated only to theirs.  His genius was a
+composition which is seldom to be met with, of the sublime and the
+agreeable.  In his comparison between himself and Apollo, as the lover of
+Daphne, and in that between Amoret and Sacharissa, there is a _finesse_
+and delicacy of wit which the most elegant of our writers have never
+exceeded.  Nor had Sarrazin or Voiture the art of praising more genteelly
+the ladies they admired.  But his epistle to Cromwell, and his poem on
+the death of that extraordinary man, are written with a force and
+greatness of manner which give him a rank among the poets of the first
+class.
+
+_Pope_.--Mr. Waller was unquestionably a very fine writer.  His Muse was
+as well qualified as the Graces themselves to dress out a Venus; and he
+could even adorn the brows of a conqueror with fragrant and beautiful
+wreaths.  But he had some puerile and low thoughts, which unaccountably
+mixed with the elegant and the noble, like schoolboys or a mob admitted
+into a palace.  There was also an intemperance and a luxuriancy in his
+wit which he did not enough restrain.  He wrote little to the
+understanding, and less to the heart; but he frequently delights the
+imagination, and sometimes strikes it with flashes of the highest
+sublime.  We had another poet of the age of Charles I., extremely admired
+by all his contemporaries, in whose works there is still more affectation
+of wit, a greater redundancy of imagination, a worse taste, and less
+judgment; but he touched the heart more, and had finer feelings than
+Waller.  I mean Cowley.
+
+_Boileau_.--I have been often solicited to admire his writings by his
+learned friend, Dr. Spratt.  He seems to me a great wit, and a very
+amiable man, but not a good poet.
+
+_Pope_.--The spirit of poetry is strong in some of his odes, but in the
+art of poetry he is always extremely deficient.
+
+_Boileau_.--I hear that of late his reputation is much lowered in the
+opinion of the English.  Yet I cannot but think that, if a moderate
+portion of the superfluities of his wit were given by Apollo to some of
+their modern bards, who write commonplace morals in very smooth verse,
+without any absurdity, but without a single new thought, or one
+enlivening spark of imagination, it would be a great favour to them, and
+do them more service than all the rules laid down in my "Art of Poetry"
+and yours of "Criticism."
+
+_Pope_.--I am much of your mind.  But I left in England some poets whom
+you, I know, will admire, not only for the harmony and correctness of
+style, but the spirit and genius you will find in their writings.
+
+_Boileau_.--France, too, has produced some very excellent writers since
+the time of my death.  Of one particularly I hear wonders.  Fame to him
+is as kind as if he had been dead a thousand years.  She brings his
+praises to me from all parts of Europe.  You know I speak of Voltaire.
+
+_Pope_.--I do; the English nation yields to none in admiration of his
+extensive genius.  Other writers excel in some one particular branch of
+wit or science; but when the King of Prussia drew Voltaire from Paris to
+Berlin, he had a whole academy of _belles lettres_ in him alone.
+
+_Boileau_.--That prince himself has such talents for poetry as no other
+monarch in any age or country has ever possessed.  What an astonishing
+compass must there be in his mind, what an heroic tranquillity and
+firmness in his heart, that he can, in the evening, compose an ode or
+epistle in the most elegant verse, and the next morning fight a battle
+with the conduct of Caesar or Gustavus Adolphus!
+
+_Pope_.--I envy Voltaire so noble a subject both for his verse and his
+prose.  But if that prince will write his own commentaries, he will want
+no historian.  I hope that, in writing them, he will not restrain his
+pen, as Caesar has done, to a mere account of his wars, but let us see
+the politician, and the benignant protector of arts and sciences, as well
+as the warrior, in that picture of himself.  Voltaire has shown us that
+the events of battles and sieges are not the most interesting parts of
+good history, but that all the improvements and embellishments of human
+society ought to be carefully and particularly recorded there.
+
+_Boileau_.--The progress of arts and knowledge, and the great changes
+that have happened in the manners of mankind, are objects far more worthy
+of a leader's attention than the revolutions of fortune.  And it is
+chiefly to Voltaire that we owe this instructive species of history.
+
+_Pope_.--He has not only been the father of it among the moderns, but has
+carried it himself to its utmost perfection.
+
+_Boileau_.--Is he not too universal?  Can any writer be exact who is so
+comprehensive?
+
+_Pope_.--A traveller round the world cannot inspect every region with
+such an accurate care as exactly to describe each single part.  If the
+outlines are well marked, and the observations on the principal points
+are judicious, it is all that can be required.
+
+_Boileau_.--I would, however, advise and exhort the French and English
+youth to take a fuller survey of some particular provinces, and to
+remember that although, in travels of this sort, a lively imagination is
+a very agreeable companion, it is not the best guide.  To speak without a
+metaphor, the study of history, both sacred and profane, requires a
+critical and laborious investigation.  The composer of a set of lively
+and witty remarks on facts ill-examined, or incorrectly delivered, is not
+an historian.
+
+_Pope_.--We cannot, I think, deny that name to the author of the "Life of
+Charles XII., King of Sweden."
+
+_Boileau_.--No, certainly.  I esteem it the very best history that this
+age has produced.  As full of spirit as the hero whose actions it
+relates, it is nevertheless most exact in all matters of importance.  The
+style of it is elegant, perspicuous, unaffected; the disposition and
+method are excellent; the judgments given by the writer acute and just.
+
+_Pope_.--Are you not pleased with that philosophical freedom of thought
+which discovers itself in all the works of Voltaire, but more
+particularly in those of an historical nature?
+
+_Boileau_.--If it were properly regulated, I should reckon it among their
+highest perfections.  Superstition, and bigotry, and party spirit are as
+great enemies to the truth and candour of history as malice or adulation.
+To think freely is therefore a most necessary quality in a perfect
+historian.  But all liberty has its bounds, which, in some of his
+writings, Voltaire, I fear, has not observed.  Would to Heaven he would
+reflect, while it is yet in his power to correct what is faulty, that all
+his works will outlive him; that many nations will read them; and that
+the judgment pronounced here upon the writer himself will be according to
+the scope and tendency of them, and to the extent of their good or evil
+effects on the great society of mankind.
+
+_Pope_.--It would be well for all Europe if some other wits of your
+country, who give the tone to this age in all polite literature, had the
+same serious thoughts you recommend to Voltaire.  Witty writings, when
+directed to serve the good ends of virtue and religion, are like the
+lights hung out in a _pharos_, to guide the mariners safe through
+dangerous seas; but the brightness of those that are impious or immoral
+shines only to betray and lead men to destruction.
+
+_Boileau_.--Has England been free from all seductions of this nature?
+
+_Pope_.--No.  But the French have the art of rendering vice and impiety
+more agreeable than the English.
+
+_Boileau_.--I am not very proud of this superiority in the talents of my
+countrymen.  But as I am told that the good sense of the English is now
+admired in France, I hope it will soon convince both nations that true
+wisdom is virtue, and true virtue is religion.
+
+_Pope_.--I think it also to be wished that a taste for the frivolous may
+not continue too prevalent among the French.  There is a great difference
+between gathering flowers at the foot of Parnassus and ascending the
+arduous heights of the mountain.  The palms and laurels grow there, and
+if any of your countrymen aspire to gain them, they must no longer
+enervate all the vigour of their minds by this habit of trifling.  I
+would have them be perpetual competitors with the English in manly wit
+and substantial learning.  But let the competition be friendly.  There is
+nothing which so contracts and debases the mind as national envy.  True
+wit, like true virtue, naturally loves its own image in whatever place it
+is found.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XV.
+
+
+OCTAVIA--PORTIA--ARRIA.
+
+_Portia_.--How has it happened, Octavia, that Arria and I, who have a
+higher rank than you in the Temple of Fame, should have a lower here in
+Elysium?  We are told that the virtues you exerted as a wife were greater
+than ours.  Be so good as to explain to us what were those virtues.  It
+is the privilege of this place that one can bear superiority without
+mortification.  The jealousy of precedence died with the rest of our
+mortal frailties.  Tell us, then, your own story.  We will sit down under
+the shade of this myrtle grove and listen to it with pleasure.
+
+_Octavia_.--Noble ladies, the glory of our sex and of Rome, I will not
+refuse to comply with your desire, though it recalls to my mind some
+scenes my heart would wish to forget.  There can be only one reason why
+Minos should have given to my conjugal virtues a preference above yours,
+which is that the trial assigned to them was harder.
+
+_Arria_.--How, madam! harder than to die for your husband!  We died for
+ours.
+
+_Octavia_.--You did for husbands who loved yon, and were the most
+virtuous men of the ages they lived in--who trusted you with their lives,
+their fame, their honour.  To outlive such husbands is, in my judgment, a
+harder effort of virtue than to die for them or with them.  But Mark
+Antony, to whom my brother Octavius, for reasons of state, gave my hand,
+was indifferent to me, and loved another.  Yet he has told me himself I
+was handsomer than his mistress Cleopatra.  Younger I certainly was, and
+to men that is generally a charm sufficient to turn the scale in one's
+favour.  I had been loved by Marcellus.  Antony said he loved me when he
+pledged to me his faith.  Perhaps he did for a time; a new handsome woman
+might, from his natural inconstancy, make him forget an old attachment.
+He was but too amiable.  His very vices had charms beyond other men's
+virtues.  Such vivacity! such fire! such a towering pride!  He seemed
+made by nature to command, to govern the world; to govern it with such
+ease that the business of it did not rob him of an hour of pleasure.
+Nevertheless, while his inclination for me continued, this haughty lord
+of mankind who could hardly bring his high spirit to treat my brother,
+his partner in empire, with the necessary respect, was to me as
+submissive, as obedient to every wish of my heart, as the humblest lover
+that ever sighed in the vales of Arcadia.  Thus he seduced my affection
+from the manes of Marcellus and fixed it on himself.  He fixed it, ladies
+(I own it with some confusion), more fondly than it had ever been fixed
+on Marcellus.  And when he had done so he scorned me, he forsook me, he
+returned to Cleopatra.  Think who I was--the sister of Caesar, sacrificed
+to a vile Egyptian queen, the harlot of Julius, the disgrace of her sex!
+Every outrage was added that could incense me still more.  He gave her at
+sundry times, as public marks of his love, many provinces of the Empire
+of Rome in the East.  He read her love-letters openly in his tribunal
+itself--even while he was hearing and judging the causes of kings.  Nay,
+he left his tribunal, and one of the best Roman orators pleading before
+him, to follow her litter, in which she happened to be passing by at that
+time.  But, what was more grievous to me than all these demonstrations of
+his extravagant passion for that infamous woman, he had the assurance, in
+a letter to my brother, to call her his wife.  Which of you, ladies,
+could have patiently borne this treatment?
+
+_Arria_.--Not I, madam, in truth.  Had I been in your place, the dagger
+with which I pierced my own bosom to show my dear Paetus how easy it was
+to die, that dagger should I have plunged into Antony's heart, if piety
+to the gods and a due respect to the purity of my own soul had not
+stopped my hand.  But I verily believe I should have killed myself; not,
+as I did, out of affection to my husband, but out of shame and
+indignation at the wrongs I endured.
+
+_Portia_.--I must own, Octavia, that to bear such usage was harder to a
+woman than to swallow fire.
+
+_Octavia_.--Yet I did bear it, madam, without even a complaint which
+could hurt or offend my husband.  Nay, more, at his return from his
+Parthian expedition, which his impatience to bear a long absence from
+Cleopatra had made unfortunate and inglorious, I went to meet him in
+Syria, and carried with me rich presents of clothes and money for his
+troops, a great number of horses, and two thousand chosen soldiers,
+equipped and armed like my brother's Praetorian bands.  He sent to stop
+me at Athens because his mistress was then with him.  I obeyed his
+orders; but I wrote to him, by one of his most faithful friends, a letter
+full of resignation, and such a tenderness for him as I imagined might
+have power to touch his heart.  My envoy served me so well, he set my
+fidelity in so fair a light, and gave such reasons to Antony why he ought
+to see and receive me with kindness, that Cleopatra was alarmed.  All her
+arts were employed to prevent him from seeing me, and to draw him again
+into Egypt.  Those arts prevailed.  He sent me back into Italy, and gave
+himself up more absolutely than ever to the witchcraft of that Circe.  He
+added Africa to the States he had bestowed on her before, and declared
+Caesario, her spurious son by Julius Caesar, heir to all her dominions,
+except Phoenicia and Cilicia, which with the Upper Syria he gave to
+Ptolemy, his second son by her; and at the same time declared his eldest
+son by her, whom he had espoused to the Princess of Media, heir to that
+kingdom and King of Armenia; nay, and of the whole Parthian Empire which
+he meant to conquer for him.  The children I had brought him he entirely
+neglected as if they had been bastards.  I wept.  I lamented the wretched
+captivity he was in; but I never reproached him.  My brother, exasperated
+at so many indignities, commanded me to quit the house of my husband at
+Rome and come into his.  I refused to obey him.  I remained in Antony's
+house; I persisted to take care of his children by Fulvia, the same
+tender care as of my own.  I gave my protection to all his friends at
+Rome.  I implored my brother not to make my jealousy or my wrongs the
+cause of a civil war.  But the injuries done to Rome by Antony's conduct
+could not possibly be forgiven.  When he found he should draw the Roman
+arms on himself, he sent orders to me to leave his house.  I did so, but
+carried with me all his children by Fulvia, except Antyllus, the eldest,
+who was then with him in Egypt.  After his death and Cleopatra's, I took
+her children by him, and bred them up with my own.
+
+_Arria_.--Is it possible, madam? the children of Cleopatra?
+
+_Octavia_.--Yes, the children of my rival.  I married her daughter to
+Juba, King of Mauritania, the most accomplished and the handsomest prince
+in the world.
+
+_Arria_.--Tell me, Octavia, did not your pride and resentment entirely
+cure you of your passion for Antony, as soon as you saw him go back to
+Cleopatra?  And was not your whole conduct afterwards the effect of cool
+reason, undisturbed by the agitations of jealous and tortured love?
+
+_Octavia_.--You probe my heart very deeply.  That I had some help from
+resentment and the natural pride of my sex, I will not deny.  But I was
+not become indifferent to my husband.  I loved the Antony who had been my
+lover, more than I was angry with the Antony who forsook me and loved
+another woman.  Had he left Cleopatra and returned to me again with all
+his former affection, I really believe I should have loved him as well as
+before.
+
+_Arria_.--If the merit of a wife is to be measured by her sufferings,
+your heart was unquestionably the most perfect model of conjugal virtue.
+The wound I gave mine was but a scratch in comparison to many you felt.
+Yet I don't know whether it would be any benefit to the world that there
+should be in it many Octavias.  Too good subjects are apt to make bad
+kings.
+
+_Portia_.--True, Arria; the wives of Brutus and Cecinna Paetus may be
+allowed to have spirits a little rebellious.  Octavia was educated in the
+Court of her brother.  Subjection and patience were much better taught
+there than in our houses, where the Roman liberty made its last abode.
+And though I will not dispute the judgment of Minos, I can't help
+thinking that the affection of a wife to her husband is more or less
+respectable in proportion to the character of that husband.  If I could
+have had for Antony the same friendship as I had for Brutus, I should
+have despised myself.
+
+_Octavia_.--My fondness for Antony was ill-placed; but my perseverance in
+the performance of all the duties of a wife, notwithstanding his
+ill-usage, a perseverance made more difficult by the very excess of my
+love, appeared to Minos the highest and most meritorious effort of female
+resolution against the seductions of the most dangerous enemy to our
+virtue, offended pride.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XVI.
+
+
+LOUISE DE COLIGNI, PRINCESS OF ORANGE--FRANCES WALSINGHAM, COUNTESS OF
+ESSEX AND OF CLANRICARDE; BEFORE, LADY SIDNEY.
+
+_Princess of Orange_.--Our destinies, madam, had a great and surprising
+conformity.  I was the daughter of Admiral Coligni, you of Secretary
+Walsingham, two persons who were the most consummate statesmen and ablest
+supports of the Protestant religion in France, and in England.  I was
+married to Teligni, the finest gentleman of our party, the most admired
+for his valour, his virtue, and his learning: you to Sir Philip Sidney,
+who enjoyed the same pre-eminence among the English.  Both these husbands
+were cut off, in the flower of youth and of glory, by violent deaths, and
+we both married again with still greater men; I with William Prince of
+Orange, the founder of the Dutch Commonwealth; you with Devereux Earl of
+Essex, the favourite of Elizabeth and of the whole English nation.  But,
+alas! to complete the resemblance of our fates, we both saw those second
+husbands, who had raised us so high, destroyed in the full meridian of
+their glory and greatness: mine by the pistol of an assassin; yours still
+more unhappily, by the axe, as a traitor.
+
+_Countess of Clanricarde_.--There was indeed in some principal events of
+our lives the conformity you observe.  But your destiny, though it raised
+you higher than me, was more unhappy than mine.  For my father lived
+honourably, and died in peace: yours was assassinated in his old age.
+How, madam, did you support or recover your spirits under so rainy
+misfortunes?
+
+_Princess of Orange_.--The Prince of Orange left an infant son to my
+care.  The educating of him to be worthy of so illustrious a father, to
+be the heir of his virtue as well as of his greatness, and the affairs of
+the commonwealth, in which I interested myself for his sake, so filled my
+mind, that they in some measure took from me the sense of my grief, which
+nothing but such a great and important scene of business, such a
+necessary talk of private and public duty, could have ever relieved.  But
+let me inquire in my turn, how did your heart find a balm to alleviate
+the anguish of the wounds it had suffered?  What employed your widowed
+hours after the death of your Essex?
+
+_Countess of Clanricarde_.--Madam, I did not long continue a widow: I
+married again.
+
+_Princess of Orange_.--Married again!  With what prince, what king did
+you marry?  The widow of Sir Philip Sidney and of my Lord Essex could not
+descend from them to a subject of less illustrious fame; and where could
+you find one that was comparable to either?
+
+_Countess of Clanricarde_.--I did not seek for one, madam: the heroism of
+the former, and the ambition of the latter, had made me very unhappy.  I
+desired a quiet life and the joys of wedded love, with an agreeable,
+virtuous, well-born, unambitious, unenterprising husband.  All this I
+found in the Earl of Clanricarde: and believe me, madam, I enjoyed more
+solid felicity in Ireland with him, than I ever had possessed with my two
+former husbands, in the pride of their glory, when England and all Europe
+resounded with their praise.
+
+_Princess of Orange_.--Can it be possible that the daughter of
+Walsingham, and the wife of Sidney and Essex, should have sentiments so
+inferior to the minds from which she sprang, and to which she was
+matched?  Believe me, madam, there was no hour of the many years I lived
+after the death of the Prince of Orange, in which I would have exchanged
+the pride and joy I continually had in hearing his praise, and seeing the
+monuments of his glory in the free commonwealth his wisdom had founded,
+for any other delights the world could give.  The cares that I shared
+with him, while he remained upon earth, were a happiness to my mind,
+because they exalted its powers.  The remembrance of them was dear to me
+after I had lost him.  I thought his great soul, though removed to a
+higher sphere, would look down upon mine with some tenderness of
+affection, as its fellow-labourer in the heroic and divine work of
+delivering and freeing his country.  But to be divorced from that soul!
+to be no longer his wife! to be the comfort of an inferior, inglorious
+husband!  I had much rather have died a thousand deaths, than that my
+heart should one moment have conceived such a thought.
+
+_Countess of Clanricarde_.--Your Highness must not judge of all hearts by
+your own.  The ruling passion of that was apparently ambition.  My
+inclinations were not so noble as yours, but better suited, perhaps, to
+the nature of woman.  I loved Sir Philip Sidney, I loved the Earl of
+Essex, rather as amiable men than as heroes and statesmen.  They were so
+taken up with their wars and state-affairs, that my tenderness for them
+was too often neglected.  The Earl of Clanricarde was constantly and
+wholly mine.  He was brave, but had not that spirit of chivalry with
+which Sir Philip Sidney was absolutely possessed.  He had, in a high
+degree, the esteem of Elizabeth, but did not aspire to her love; nor did
+he wish to be the rival of Carr or of Villiers in the affection of James.
+Such, madam, was the man on whom my last choice bestowed my hand, and
+whose kindness compensated for all my misfortunes.  Providence has
+assigned to different tempers different comforts.  To you it gave the
+education of a prince, the government of a state, the pride of being
+called the wife of a hero; to me a good-living husband, quiet, opulence,
+nobility, and a fair reputation, though not in a degree so exalted as
+yours.  If our whole sex were to choose between your consolations and
+mine, your Highness, I think, would find very few of your taste.  But I
+respect the sublimity of your ideas.  Now that we have no bodies they
+appear less unnatural than I should have thought them in the other world.
+
+_Princess of Orange_.--Adieu, madam.  Our souls are of a different order,
+and were not made to sympathise or converse with each other.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XVII.
+
+
+MARCUS BRUTUS--POMPONIUS ATTICUS.
+
+_Brutus_.--Well, Atticus, I find that, notwithstanding your friendship
+for Cicero and for me, you survived us both many years, with the same
+cheerful spirit you had always possessed, and, by prudently wedding your
+daughter to Agrippa, secured the favour of Octavius Caesar, and even
+contracted a close alliance with him by your granddaughter's marriage
+with Tiberius Nero.
+
+_Atticus_.--You know, Brutus, my philosophy was the Epicurean.  I loved
+my friends, and I served them in their wants and distresses with great
+generosity; but I did not think myself obliged to die when they died, or
+not to make others as occasions should offer.
+
+_Brutus_.--You did, I acknowledge, serve your friends, as far as you
+could, without bringing yourself, on their account, into any great danger
+or disturbance of mind: but that you loved them I much doubt.  If you
+loved Cicero, how could you love Antony?  If you loved me, how could you
+love Octavius?  If you loved Octavius, how could you avoid taking part
+against Antony in their last civil war?  Affection cannot be so strangely
+divided, and with so much equality, among men of such opposite
+characters, and who were such irreconcilable enemies to each other.
+
+_Atticus_.--From my earliest youth I possessed the singular talent of
+ingratiating myself with the heads of different parties, and yet not
+engaging with any of them so far as to disturb my own quiet.  My family
+was connected with the Marian party; and, though I retired to Athens that
+I might not be unwillingly involved in the troubles which that turbulent
+faction had begun to excite, yet when young Marius was declared an enemy
+by the Senate, I sent him a sum of money to support him in his exile.  Nor
+did this hinder me from making my court so well to Sylla, upon his coming
+to Athens, that I obtained from him the highest marks of his favour.
+Nevertheless, when he pressed me to go with him to Rome, I declined it,
+being as unwilling to fight for him against the Marian party, as for them
+against him.  He admired my conduct; and at his departure from Athens,
+ordered all the presents made to him during his abode in that city to be
+carried to me.  I remind you of this only to show that moderation in all
+contentions of this kind had been always my principle; and that in the
+instances you mentioned I did not act from any levity or inconstancy in
+my nature, but from a regular consistent plan of conduct, which my reason
+convinced me was the wisest I could follow.
+
+_Brutus_.--I remember indeed that you observed the same neutrality
+between Pompey and Julius Caesar.
+
+_Atticus_.--I did so--and that I might be able to do it with dignity, and
+without the reproach of ingratitude, I never would accept any office or
+honour from either of those great men; nor from Cicero, though my sister
+had married his brother; nor from you, Marcus Brutus, whose friendship I
+thought the greatest honour of my life.
+
+_Brutus_.--Are there no obligations to a good heart, Pomponius, but
+honours and offices?  Or could you, by refusing to encumber yourself with
+these, dissolve all other ties?  But, setting aside any considerations of
+private affection or esteem, how was you able to reconcile your conduct
+with that which is the ruling principle in the heart of every virtuous
+man, and more especially a virtuous Roman, the love of the public?
+
+_Atticus_.--The times I lived in were so bad, and the conflict of parties
+had so little to do in reality with the love of the public, that I
+thought my virtue much safer and purer by avoiding than mixing in the
+fray.
+
+_Brutus_.--Possibly, in the dispute between Marius and Sylla, and even in
+that between Pompey and Caesar, a virtuous man might see so much to blame
+on both sides, and so much to fear, whichever faction should overcome the
+other, as to be justified in not engaging with either.  But let me say,
+without vanity, in the war which I waged against Antony and Octavius you
+could have nothing to blame, for I know you approved the principle upon
+which I killed Julius Caesar.  Nor had you anything to fear if our arms
+had succeeded, for you know that my intentions were upright and pure; nor
+was it doubtful that Cassius was as much determined as I to restore the
+Republic.  How could you, then, with any sense of virtue in your heart,
+maintain an indifference and neutrality between the deliverers and the
+tyrants of your country?
+
+_Atticus_.--My answer to this will necessarily require explanations,
+which my respect to the manes of Brutus makes me wish to avoid.
+
+_Brutus_.--In the other world I loved truth, and was desirous that all
+might speak it with freedom; but here even the tender ears of a tyrant
+are compelled to endure it.  If I committed any faults, or erred in my
+judgment, the calamities I have suffered are a punishment for it.  Tell
+me then, truly, and without fear of offending, what you think were my
+failings.
+
+_Atticus_.--You said that the principle upon which you killed Julius
+Caesar had my approbation.  This I do not deny; but did I ever declare,
+or give you reason to believe, that I thought it a prudent or well-timed
+act?  I had quite other thoughts.  Nothing ever seemed to me worse judged
+or worse timed; and these, Brutus, were my reasons.  Caesar was just
+setting out to make war on the Parthians.  This was an enterprise of no
+little difficulty and no little danger; but his unbounded ambition, and
+that restless spirit which never would suffer him to take any repose, did
+not intend to stop there.  You know very well (for he hid nothing from
+you) that he had formed a vast plan of marching, after he had conquered
+the whole Parthian Empire, along the coast of the Caspian Sea and the
+sides of Mount Caucasus into Scythia, in order to subdue all the
+countries that border on Germany, and Germany itself; from whence he
+proposed to return to Rome by Gaul.  Consider now, I beseech you, how
+much time the execution of this project required.  In some of his battles
+with so many fierce and warlike nations, the bravest of all the
+barbarians, he might have been slain; but, if he had not, disease, or age
+itself, might have ended his life before he could have completed such an
+immense undertaking.  He was, when you killed him, in his fifty-sixth
+year, and of an infirm constitution.  Except his bastard by Cleopatra, he
+had no son; nor was his power so absolute or so quietly settled that he
+could have a thought of bequeathing the Empire, like a private
+inheritance, to his sister's grandson, Octavius.  While he was absent
+there was no reason to fear any violence or maladministration in Italy or
+in Rome.  Cicero would have had the chief authority in the Senate.  The
+praetorship of the city had been conferred upon you by the favour of
+Caesar, and your known credit with him, added to the high reputation of
+your virtues and abilities, gave you a weight in all business which none
+of his party left behind him in Italy would have been able to oppose.
+What a fair prospect was here of good order, peace, and liberty at home,
+while abroad the Roman name would have been rendered more glorious, the
+disgrace of Crassus revenged, and the Empire extended beyond the utmost
+ambition of our forefathers by the greatest general that ever led the
+armies of Rome, or, perhaps, of any other nation!  What did it signify
+whether in Asia, and among the barbarians, that general bore the name of
+King or Dictator?  Nothing could be more puerile in you and your friends
+than to start so much at the proposition of his taking that name in Italy
+itself, when you had suffered him to enjoy all the power of royalty, and
+much more than any King of Rome had possessed from Romulus down to
+Tarquin.
+
+_Brutus_.--We considered that name as the last insult offered to our
+liberty and our laws; it was an ensign of tyranny, hung out with a vain
+and arrogant purpose of rendering the servitude of Rome more apparent.
+We, therefore, determined to punish the tyrant, and restore our country
+to freedom.
+
+_Atticus_.--You punished the tyrant, but you did not restore your country
+to freedom.  By sparing Antony, against the opinion of Cassius, you
+suffered the tyranny to remain.  He was Consul, and, from the moment that
+Caesar was dead, the chief power of the State was in his hands.  The
+soldiers adored him for his liberality, valour, and military frankness.
+His eloquence was more persuasive from appearing unstudied.  The nobility
+of his house, which descended from Hercules, would naturally inflame his
+heart with ambition.  The whole course of his life had evidently shown
+that his thoughts were high and aspiring, and that he had little respect
+for the liberty of his country.  He had been the second man in Caesar's
+party; by saving him you gave a new head to that party, which could no
+longer subsist without your ruin.  Many who would have wished the
+restoration of liberty, if Caesar had died a natural death, were so
+incensed at his murder that, merely for the sake of punishing that, they
+were willing to confer all power upon Antony and make him absolute master
+of the Republic.  This was particularly true with respect to the veterans
+who had served under Caesar, and he saw it so plainly that he presently
+availed himself of their dispositions.  You and Cassius were obliged to
+fly out of Italy, and Cicero, who was unwilling to take the same part,
+could find no expedient to save himself and the Senate but the wretched
+one of supporting and raising very high another Caesar, the adopted son
+and heir of him you had slain, to oppose Antony and to divide the
+Caesarean party.  But even while he did this he perpetually offended that
+party and made them his enemies by harangues in the Senate, which
+breathed the very spirit of the old Pompeian faction, and made him appear
+to Octavius and all the friends of the dead Dictator no less guilty of
+his death than those who had killed him.  What could this end in but that
+which you and your friends had most to fear, a reunion of the whole
+Caesarean party and of their principal leaders, however discordant the
+one with the other, to destroy the Pompeians?  For my own part, I foresaw
+it long before the event, and therefore kept myself wholly clear of those
+proceedings.  You think I ought to have joined you and Cassius at
+Philippi, because I knew your good intentions, and that, if you
+succeeded, you designed to restore the commonwealth.  I am persuaded you
+did both agree in that point, but you differed in so many others, there
+was such a dissimilitude in your tempers and characters, that the union
+between you could not have lasted long, and your dissension would have
+had most fatal effects with regard both to the settlement and to the
+administration of the Republic.  Besides, the whole mass of it was in
+such a fermentation, and so corrupted, that I am convinced new disorders
+would soon have arisen.  If you had applied gentle remedies, to which
+your nature inclined, those remedies would have failed; if Cassius had
+induced you to act with severity, your government would have been
+stigmatised with the name of a tyranny more detestable than that against
+which you conspired, and Caesar's clemency would have been the perpetual
+topic of every factious oration to the people, and of every seditious
+discourse to the soldiers.  Thus you would have soon been plunged in the
+miseries of another civil war, or perhaps assassinated in the Senate, as
+Julius was by you.  Nothing could give the Roman Empire a lasting
+tranquillity but such a prudent plan of a mitigated imperial power as was
+afterwards formed by Octavius, when he had ably and happily delivered
+himself from all opposition and partnership in the government.  Those
+quiet times I lived to see, and I must say they were the best I ever had
+seen, far better than those under the turbulent aristocracy for which you
+contended.  And let me boast a little of my own prudence, which, through
+so many storms, could steer me safe into that port.  Had it only given me
+safety, without reputation, I should not think that I ought to value
+myself upon it.  But in all these revolutions my honour remained as
+unimpaired as my fortune.  I so conducted myself that I lost no esteem in
+being Antony's friend after having been Cicero's, or in my alliance with
+Agrippa and Augustus Caesar after my friendship with you.  Nor did either
+Caesar or Antony blame my inaction in the quarrels between them; but, on
+the contrary, they both seemed to respect me the more for the neutrality
+I observed.  My obligations to the one and alliance with the other made
+it improper for me to act against either, and my constant tenor of life
+had procured me an exemption from all civil wars by a kind of
+prescription.
+
+_Brutus_.--If man were born to no higher purpose than to wear out a long
+life in ease and prosperity, with the general esteem of the world, your
+wisdom was evidently as much superior to mine as my life was shorter and
+more unhappy than yours.  Nay, I verily believe it exceeded the prudence
+of any other man that ever existed, considering in what difficult
+circumstances you were placed, and with how many violent shocks and
+sudden changes of fortune you were obliged to contend.  But here the most
+virtuous and public-spirited conduct is found to have been the most
+prudent.  The motives of our actions, not the success, give us here
+renown.  And could I return to that life from whence I am escaped, I
+would not change my character to imitate yours; I would again be Brutus
+rather than Atticus.  Even without the sweet hope of an eternal reward in
+a more perfect state, which is the strongest and most immovable support
+to the good under every misfortune, I swear by the gods I would not give
+up the noble feelings of my heart, that elevation of mind which
+accompanies active and suffering virtue, for your seventy-seven years of
+constant tranquillity, with all the praise you obtained from the learned
+men whom you patronised or the great men whom you courted.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XVIII.
+
+
+WILLIAM III., KING OF ENGLAND--JOHN DE WITT, PENSIONER, OF HOLLAND.
+
+_William_.--Though I had no cause to love you, yet, believe me, I
+sincerely lament your fate.  Who could have thought that De Witt, the
+most popular Minister that ever served a commonwealth, should fall a
+sacrifice to popular fury!  Such admirable talents, such virtues as you
+were endowed with, so clear, so cool, so comprehensive a head, a heart so
+untainted with any kind of vice, despising money, despising pleasure,
+despising the vain ostentation of greatness, such application to
+business, such ability in it, such courage, such firmness, and so perfect
+a knowledge of the nation you governed, seemed to assure you of a fixed
+and stable support in the public affection.  But nothing can be durable
+that depends on the passions of the people.
+
+_De Witt_.--It is very generous in your Majesty, not only to
+compassionate the fate of a man whose political principles made him an
+enemy to your greatness, but to ascribe it to the caprice and inconstancy
+of the people, as if there had been nothing very blamable in his conduct.
+I feel the magnanimity of this discourse from your Majesty, and it
+confirms what I have heard of all your behaviour after my death.  But I
+must frankly confess that, although the rage of the populace was carried
+much too far when they tore me and my unfortunate brother to pieces, yet
+I certainly had deserved to lose their affection by relying too much on
+the uncertain and dangerous friendship of France, and by weakening the
+military strength of the State, to serve little purposes of my own power,
+and secure to myself the interested affection of the burgomasters or
+others who had credit and weight in the faction the favour of which I
+courted.  This had almost subjected my country to France, if you, great
+prince, had not been set at the head of the falling Republic, and had not
+exerted such extraordinary virtues and abilities to raise and support it,
+as surpassed even the heroism and prudence of William, our first
+Stadtholder, and equalled yon to the most illustrious patriots of Greece
+or Rome.
+
+_William_.--This praise from your mouth is glorious to me indeed!  What
+can so much exalt the character of a prince as to have his actions
+approved by a zealous Republican and the enemy of his house?
+
+_De Witt_.--If I did not approve them I should show myself the enemy of
+the Republic.  You never sought to tyrannise over it; you loved, you
+defended, you preserved its freedom.  Thebes was not more indebted to
+Epaminondas or Pelopidas for its independence and glory than the United
+Provinces were to you.  How wonderful was it to see a youth, who had
+scarce attained to the twenty-second year of his age, whose spirit had
+been depressed and kept down by a jealous and hostile faction, rising at
+once to the conduct of a most arduous and perilous war, stopping an enemy
+victorious, triumphant, who had penetrated into the heart of his country,
+driving him back and recovering from him all he had conquered: to see
+this done with an army in which a little before there was neither
+discipline, courage, nor sense of honour!  Ancient history has no exploit
+superior to it; and it will ennoble the modern whenever a Livy or a
+Plutarch shall arise to do justice to it, and set the hero who performed
+it in a true light.
+
+_William_.--Say, rather, when time shall have worn out that malignity and
+rancour of party which in free States is so apt to oppose itself to the
+sentiments of gratitude and esteem for their servants and benefactors.
+
+_De Witt_.--How magnanimous was your reply, how much in the spirit of
+true ancient virtue, when being asked, in the greatest extremity of our
+danger, "How you intended to live after Holland was lost?" you said, "You
+would live on the lands you had left in Germany, and had rather pass your
+life in hunting there than sell your country or liberty to France at any
+rate!"  How nobly did you think when, being offered your patrimonial
+lordships and lands in the county of Burgundy, or the full value of them
+from France, by the mediation of England in the treaty of peace, your
+answer was, "That to gain one good town more for the Spaniards in
+Flanders you would be content to lose them all!"  No wonder, after this,
+that you were able to combine all Europe in a league against the power of
+France; that you were the centre of union, and the directing soul of that
+wise, that generous confederacy formed by your labours; that you could
+steadily support and keep it together, in spite of repeated misfortunes;
+that even after defeats you were as formidable to Louis as other generals
+after victories; and that in the end you became the deliverer of Europe,
+as you had before been of Holland.
+
+_William_.--I had, in truth, no other object, no other passion at heart
+throughout my whole life but to maintain the independence and freedom of
+Europe against the ambition of France.  It was this desire which formed
+the whole plan of my policy, which animated all my counsels, both as
+Prince of Orange and King of England.
+
+_De Witt_.--This desire was the most noble (I speak it with shame) that
+could warm the heart of a prince whose ancestors had opposed and in a
+great measure destroyed the power of Spain when that nation aspired to
+the monarchy of Europe.  France, sir, in your days had an equal ambition
+and more strength to support her vast designs than Spain under the
+government of Philip II.  That ambition you restrained, that strength you
+resisted.  I, alas! was seduced by her perfidious Court, and by the
+necessity of affairs in that system of policy which I had adopted, to ask
+her assistance, to rely on her favour, and to make the commonwealth,
+whose counsels I directed, subservient to her greatness.  Permit me, sir,
+to explain to you the motives of my conduct.  If all the Princes of
+Orange had acted like you, I should never have been the enemy of your
+house.  But Prince Maurice of Nassau desired to oppress the liberty of
+that State which his virtuous father had freed at the expense of his
+life, and which he himself had defended against the arms of the House of
+Austria with the highest reputation of military abilities.  Under a
+pretence of religion (the most execrable cover of a wicked design) he put
+to death, as a criminal, that upright Minister, Barneveldt, his father's
+best friend, because, he refused to concur with him in treason against
+the State.  He likewise imprisoned several other good men and lovers of
+their country, confiscated their estates, and ruined their families.  Yet,
+after he had done these cruel acts of injustice with a view to make
+himself sovereign of the Dutch Commonwealth, he found they had drawn such
+a general odium upon him that, not daring to accomplish his iniquitous
+purpose, he stopped short of the tyranny to which he had sacrificed his
+honour and virtue; a disappointment so mortifying and so painful to his
+mind that it probably hastened his death.
+
+_William_.--Would to Heaven he had died before the meeting of that
+infamous Synod of Dort, by which he not only dishonoured himself and his
+family, but the Protestant religion itself!  Forgive this interruption--my
+grief forced me to it--I desire you to proceed.
+
+_De Witt_.--The brother of Maurice, Prince Henry, who succeeded to his
+dignities in the Republic, acted with more moderation.  But the son of
+that good prince, your Majesty's father (I am sorry to speak what I know
+you hear with pain), resumed, in the pride and fire of his youth, the
+ambitious designs of his uncle.  He failed in his undertaking, and soon
+afterwards died, but left in the hearts of the whole Republican party an
+incurable jealousy and dread of his family.  Full of these prejudices,
+and zealous for liberty, I thought it my duty as Pensionary of Holland to
+prevent for ever, if I could, your restoration to the power your
+ancestors had enjoyed, which I sincerely believed would be inconsistent
+with the safety and freedom of my country.
+
+_William_.--Let me stop you a moment here.  When my great-grandfather
+formed the plan of the Dutch Commonwealth, he made the power of a
+Stadtholder one of the principal springs in his system of government.  How
+could you imagine that it would ever go well when deprived of this
+spring, so necessary to adjust and balance its motions?  A constitution
+originally formed with no mixture of regal power may long be maintained
+in all its vigour and energy without such a power; but if any degree of
+monarchy was mixed from the beginning in the principles of it, the
+forcing that out must necessarily disorder and weaken the whole fabric.
+This was particularly the case in our Republic.  The negative voice of
+every small town in the provincial States, the tedious slowness of our
+forms and deliberations, the facility with which foreign Ministers may
+seduce or purchase the opinions of so many persons as have a right to
+concur in all our resolutions, make it impossible for the Government,
+even in the quietest times, to be well carried on without the authority
+and influence of a Stadtholder, which are the only remedy our
+constitution has provided for those evils.
+
+_De Witt_.--I acknowledge they are; but I and my party thought no evil so
+great as that remedy, and therefore we sought for other more pleasing
+resources.  One of these, upon which we most confidently depended, was
+the friendship of France.  I flattered myself that the interest of the
+French would secure to me their favour, as your relation to the Crown of
+England might naturally raise in them a jealousy of your power.  I hoped
+they would encourage the trade and commerce of the Dutch in opposition to
+the English, the ancient enemies of their Crown, and let us enjoy all the
+benefits of a perpetual peace, unless we made war upon England, or
+England upon us, in either of which cases it was reasonable to presume we
+should have their assistance.  The French Minister at the Hague, who
+served his Court but too well, so confirmed me in these notions, that I
+had no apprehensions of the mine which was forming under my feet.
+
+_William_.--You found your authority strengthened by a plan so agreeable
+to your party, and this contributed more to deceive your sagacity than
+all the art of D'Estrades.
+
+_De Witt_.--My policy seemed to me entirely suitable to the lasting
+security of my own power, of the liberty of my country, and of its
+maritime greatness; for I made it my care to keep up a very powerful
+navy, well commanded and officered, for the defence of all these against
+the English; but, as I feared nothing from France, or any Power on the
+Continent, I neglected the army, or rather I destroyed it, by enervating
+all its strength, by disbanding old troops and veteran officers attached
+to the House of Orange, and putting in their place a trading militia,
+commanded by officers who had neither experience nor courage, and who
+owed their promotions to no other merit but their relation to or interest
+with some leading men in the several oligarchies of which the Government
+in all the Dutch towns is composed.  Nevertheless, on the invasion of
+Flanders by the French, I was forced to depart from my close connection
+with France, and to concur with England and Sweden in the Triple
+Alliance, which Sir William Temple proposed, in order to check her
+ambition; but as I entered into that measure from necessity, not from
+choice, I did not pursue it.  I neglected to improve our union with
+England, or to secure that with Sweden; I avoided any conjunction of
+counsels with Spain; I formed no alliance with the Emperor or the
+Germans; I corrupted our army more and more; till a sudden, unnatural
+confederacy, struck up, against all the maxims of policy, by the Court of
+England with France, for the conquest of the Seven Provinces, brought
+these at once to the very brink of destruction, and made me a victim to
+the fury of a populace too justly provoked.
+
+_William_.--I must say that your plan was in reality nothing more than to
+procure for the Dutch a licence to trade under the good pleasure and
+gracious protection of France.  But any State that so entirely depends on
+another is only a province, and its liberty is a servitude graced with a
+sweet but empty name.  You should have reflected that to a monarch so
+ambitious and so vain as Louis le Grand the idea of a conquest which
+seemed almost certain, and the desire of humbling a haughty Republic,
+were temptations irresistible.  His bigotry likewise would concur in
+recommending to him an enterprise which he might think would put heresy
+under his feet.  And if you knew either the character of Charles II. or
+the principles of his government, you ought not to have supposed his
+union with France for the ruin of Holland an impossible or even
+improbable event.  It is hardly excusable in a statesman to be greatly
+surprised that the inclinations of princes should prevail upon them to
+act, in many particulars, without any regard to the political maxims and
+interests of their kingdoms.
+
+_De Witt_.--I am ashamed of my error; but the chief cause of it was that,
+though I thought very ill, I did not think quite so ill of Charles II.
+and his Ministry as they deserved.  I imagined, too, that his Parliament
+would restrain him from engaging in such a war, or compel him to engage
+in our defence if France should attack us.  These, I acknowledge, are
+excuses, not justifications.  When the French marched into Holland and
+found it in a condition so unable to resist them, my fame as a Minister
+irrecoverably sank; for, not to appear a traitor, I was obliged to
+confess myself a dupe.  But what praise is sufficient for the wisdom and
+virtue you showed in so firmly rejecting the offers which, I have been
+informed, were made to you, both by England and France, when first you
+appeared in arms at the head of your country, to give you the sovereignty
+of the Seven Provinces by the assistance and under the protection of the
+two Crowns!  Believe me, great prince, had I been living in those times,
+and had known the generous answers you made to those offers (which were
+repeated more than once during the course of the war), not the most
+ancient and devoted servant to your family would have been more your
+friend than I.  But who could reasonably hope for such moderation, and
+such a right sense of glory, in the mind of a young man descended from
+kings, whose mother was daughter to Charles I., and whose father had left
+him the seducing example of a very different conduct?  Happy, indeed, was
+the English nation to have such a prince, so nearly allied to their Crown
+both in blood and by marriage, whom they might call to be their deliverer
+when bigotry and despotism, the two greatest enemies to human society,
+had almost overthrown their whole constitution in Church and State!
+
+_William_.--They might have been happy, but were not.  As soon as I had
+accomplished their deliverance for them, many of them became my most
+implacable enemies, and even wished to restore the unforgiving prince
+whom they had so unanimously and so justly expelled from his kingdom.
+Such levity seems incredible.  I could not myself have imagined it
+possible, in a nation famed for good sense, if I had not had proofs of it
+beyond contradiction.  They seemed as much to forget what they called me
+over for as that they had called me over.  The security of their
+religion, the maintenance of their liberty, were no longer their care.
+All was to yield to the incomprehensible doctrine of right divine and
+passive obedience.  Thus the Tories grew Jacobites, after having
+renounced both that doctrine and King James, by their opposition to him,
+by their invitation of me, and by every Act of the Parliament which gave
+me the Crown.  But the most troublesome of my enemies were a set of
+Republicans, who violently opposed all my measures, and joined with the
+Jacobites in disturbing my government, only because it was not a
+commonwealth.
+
+_De Witt_.--They who were Republicans under your government in the
+Kingdom of England did not love liberty, but aspired to dominion, and
+wished to throw the nation into a total confusion, that it might give
+them a chance of working out from that anarchy a better state for
+themselves.
+
+_William_.--Your observation is just.  A proud man thinks himself a lover
+of liberty when he is only impatient of a power in government above his
+own, and were he a king, or the first Minister of a king, would be a
+tyrant.  Nevertheless I will own to you, with the candour which becomes a
+virtuous prince, that there were in England some Whigs, and even some of
+the most sober and moderate Tories, who, with very honest intentions, and
+sometimes with good judgments, proposed new securities to the liberty of
+the nation, against the prerogative or influence of the Crown and the
+corruption of Ministers in future times.  To some of these I gave way,
+being convinced they were right, but others I resisted for fear of
+weakening too much the royal authority, and breaking that balance in
+which consists the perfection of a mixed form of government.  I should
+not, perhaps, have resisted so many if I had not seen in the House of
+Commons a disposition to rise in their demands on the Crown had they
+found it more yielding.  The difficulties of my government, upon the
+whole, were so great that I once had determined, from mere disgust and
+resentment, to give back to the nation, assembled in Parliament, the
+crown they had placed on my head, and retire to Holland, where I found
+more affection and gratitude in the people.  But I was stopped by the
+earnest supplications of my friends and by an unwillingness to undo the
+great work I had done, especially as I knew that, if England should
+return into the hands of King James, it would be impossible in that
+crisis to preserve the rest of Europe from the dominion of France.
+
+_De Witt_.--Heaven be praised that your Majesty did not persevere in so
+fatal a resolution!  The United Provinces would have been ruined by it
+together with England.  But I cannot enough express my astonishment that
+you should have met with such treatment as could suggest such a thought.
+The English must surely be a people incapable either of liberty or
+subjection.
+
+_William_.--There were, I must acknowledge, some faults in my temper and
+some in my government, which are an excuse for my subjects with regard to
+the uneasiness and disquiet they gave me.  My taciturnity, which suited
+the genius of the Dutch, offended theirs.  They love an affable prince;
+it was chiefly his affability that made them so fond of Charles II.  Their
+frankness and good-humour could not brook the reserve and coldness of my
+nature.  Then the excess of my favour to some of the Dutch, whom I had
+brought over with me, excited a national jealousy in the English and hurt
+their pride.  My government also appeared, at last, too unsteady, too
+fluctuating between the Whigs and the Tories, which almost deprived me of
+the confidence and affection of both parties.  I trusted too much to the
+integrity and the purity of my intentions, without using those arts that
+are necessary to allay the ferment of factions and allure men to their
+duty by soothing their passions.  Upon the whole I am sensible that I
+better understood how to govern the Dutch than the English or the Scotch,
+and should probably have been thought a greater man if I had not been
+King of Great Britain.
+
+_De Witt_.--It is a shame to the English that gratitude and affection for
+such merit as yours were not able to overcome any little disgusts arising
+from your temper, and enthrone their deliverer in the hearts of his
+people.  But will your Majesty give me leave to ask you one question?  Is
+it true, as I have heard, that many of them disliked your alliances on
+the Continent and spoke of your war with France as a Dutch measure, in
+which you sacrificed England to Holland?
+
+_William_.--The cry of the nation at first was strong for the war, but
+before the end of it the Tories began publicly to talk the language you
+mention.  And no wonder they did, for, as they then had a desire to set
+up again the maxims of government which had prevailed in the reign of
+their beloved Charles II., they could not but represent opposition to
+France, and vigorous measures taken to restrain her ambition, as
+unnecessary for England, because they well knew that the counsels of that
+king had been utterly averse to such measures; that his whole policy made
+him a friend to France; that he was governed by a French mistress, and
+even bribed by French money to give that Court his assistance, or at
+least his acquiescence, in all their designs.
+
+_De Witt_.--A King of England whose Cabinet is governed by France, and
+who becomes a vile pensioner to a French King, degrades himself from his
+royalty, and ought to be considered as an enemy to the nation.  Indeed
+the whole policy of Charles II., when he was not forced off from his
+natural bias by the necessity he lay under of soothing his Parliament,
+was a constant, designed, systematical opposition to the interest of his
+people.  His brother, though more sensible to the honour of England, was
+by his Popery and desire of arbitrary power constrained to lean upon
+France, and do nothing to obstruct her designs on the Continent or lessen
+her greatness.  It was therefore necessary to place the British Crown on
+your head, not only with a view to preserve the religious and civil
+rights of the people from internal oppressions, but to rescue the whole
+State from that servile dependence on its natural enemy, which must
+unquestionably have ended in its destruction.  What folly was it to
+revile your measures abroad, as sacrificing the interest of your British
+dominions to connections with the Continent, and principally with
+Holland!  Had Great Britain no interest to hinder the French from being
+masters of all the Austrian Netherlands, and forcing the Seven United
+Provinces, her strongest barrier on the Continent against the power of
+that nation, to submit with the rest to their yoke?  Would her trade,
+would her coasts, would her capital itself have been safe after so mighty
+an increase of shipping and sailors as France would have gained by those
+conquests?  And what could have prevented them, but the war which you
+waged and the alliances which you formed?  Could the Dutch and the
+Germans, unaided by Great Britain, have attempted to make head against a
+Power which, even with her assistance, strong and spirited as it was,
+they could hardly resist?  And after the check which had been given to
+the encroachments of France by the efforts of the first grand alliance,
+did not a new and greater danger make it necessary to recur to another
+such league?  Was not the union of France and Spain under one monarch, or
+even under one family, the most alarming contingency that ever had
+threatened the liberty of Europe?
+
+_William_.--I thought so, and I am sure I did not err in my judgment.  But
+folly is blind, and faction wilfully shuts her eyes against the most
+evident truths that cross her designs, as she believes any lies, however
+palpable and absurd, that she thinks will assist them.
+
+_De Witt_.--The only objection which seems to have any real weight
+against your system of policy, with regard to the maintenance of a
+balance of power in Europe, is the enormous expense that must necessarily
+attend it; an expense which I am afraid neither England nor Holland will
+be able to bear without extreme inconvenience.
+
+_William_.--I will answer that objection by asking a question.  If, when
+you were Pensionary of Holland, intelligence had been brought that the
+dykes were ready to break and the sea was coming in to overwhelm and to
+drown us, what would you have said to one of the deputies who, when you
+were proposing the proper repairs to stop the inundation, should have
+objected to the charge as too heavy on the Province?  This was the case
+in a political sense with both England and Holland.  The fences raised to
+keep out superstition and tyranny were all giving way; those dreadful
+evils were threatening, with their whole accumulated force, to break in
+upon us and overwhelm our ecclesiastical and civil constitutions.  In
+such circumstances to object to a necessary expense is folly and madness.
+
+_De Witt_.--It is certain, sir, that the utmost abilities of a nation can
+never be so well employed as in the unwearied, pertinacious defence of
+their religion and freedom.  When these are lost, there remains nothing
+that is worth the concern of a good or wise man.  Nor do I think it
+consistent with the prudence of government not to guard against future
+dangers, as well as present; which precaution must be often in some
+degree expensive.  I acknowledge, too, that the resources of a commercial
+country, which supports its trade, even in war, by invincible fleets, and
+takes care not to hurt it in the methods of imposing or collecting its
+taxes, are immense, and inconceivable till the trial is made; especially
+where the Government, which demands the supplies, is agreeable to the
+people.  But yet an unlimited and continued expense will in the end be
+destructive.  What matters it whether a State is mortally wounded by the
+hand of a foreign enemy, or dies by a consumption of its own vital
+strength?  Such a consumption will come upon Holland sooner than upon
+England, because the latter has a greater radical force; but, great as it
+is, that force at last will be so diminished and exhausted by perpetual
+drains, that it may fail all at once, and those efforts, which may seem
+most surprisingly vigorous, will be in reality the convulsions of death.
+I don't apply this to your Majesty's government; but I speak with a view
+to what may happen hereafter from the extensive ideas of negotiation and
+war which you have established: they have been salutary to your kingdom;
+but they will, I fear, be pernicious in future times, if in pursuing
+great plans great Ministers do not act with a sobriety, prudence, and
+attention to frugality, which very seldom are joined with an
+extraordinary vigour and boldness of counsels.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XIX.
+
+
+M. APICIUS--DARTENEUF.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--Alas! poor Apicius, I pity thee from my heart for not
+having lived in my age and in my country.  How many good dishes, unknown
+at Rome in thy days, have I feasted upon in England!
+
+_Apicius_.--Keep your pity for yourself.  How many good dishes have I
+feasted upon in Rome which England does not produce, or of which the
+knowledge has been lost, with other treasures of antiquity, in these
+degenerate days!  The fat paps of a sow, the livers of scari, the brains
+of phoenicopters, and the tripotanum, which consisted of three excellent
+sorts of fish, for which you English have no names, the lupus marinus,
+the myxo, and the muraena.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--I thought the muraena had been our lamprey.  We have
+delicate ones in the Severn.
+
+_Apicius_.--No; the muraena, so respected by the ancient Roman senators,
+was a salt-water fish, and kept by our nobles in ponds, into which the
+sea was admitted.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--Why, then, I dare say our Severn lampreys are better.  Did
+you ever eat any of them stewed or potted?
+
+_Apicius_.--I was never in Britain.  Your country then was too barbarous
+for me to go thither.  I should have been afraid that the Britons would
+have eaten me.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--I am sorry for you, very sorry; for if you never were in
+Britain you never ate the best oysters.
+
+_Apicius_.--Pardon me, sir, your Sandwich oysters were brought to Rome in
+my time.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--They could not be fresh; they were good for nothing there.
+You should have come to Sandwich to eat them.  It is a shame for you that
+you did not.  An epicure talk of danger when he is in search of a dainty!
+Did not Leander swim over the Hellespont in a tempest to get to his
+mistress?  And what is a wench to a barrel of exquisite oysters?
+
+_Apicius_.--Nay; I am sure you can't blame me for any want of alertness
+in seeking fine fishes.  I sailed to the coast of Africa, from Minturnae
+in Campania, only to taste of one species, which I heard was larger there
+than it was on our coast; and finding that I had received a false
+information, I returned immediately, without even deigning to land.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--There was some sense in that.  But why did not you also
+make a voyage to Sandwich?  Had you once tasted those oysters in their
+highest perfection, you would never have come back; you would have eaten
+till you burst.
+
+_Apicius_.--I wish I had.  It would have been better than poisoning
+myself, as I did at Rome, because I found, upon the balance of my
+accounts, I had only the pitiful sum of fourscore thousand pounds left,
+which would not afford me a table to keep me from starving.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--A sum of fourscore thousand pounds not keep you from
+starving!  Would I had had it!  I should have been twenty years in
+spending it, with the best table in London.
+
+_Apicius_.--Alas, poor man!  This shows that you English have no idea of
+the luxury that reigned in our tables.  Before I died I had spent in my
+kitchen 807,291 pounds 13s. 4d.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--I don't believe a word of it.  There is certainly an error
+in the account.
+
+_Apicius_.--Why, the establishment of Lucullus for his suppers in the
+Apollo--I mean for every supper he sat down to in the room which he
+called by that name--was 5,000 drachms, which is in your money 1,614
+pounds 11s. 8d.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--Would I had supped with him there!  But are you sure there
+is no blunder in these calculations?
+
+_Apicius_.--Ask your learned men that.  I reckon as they tell me.  But
+you may think that these feasts were made only by great men, by
+triumphant generals, like Lucullus, who had plundered all Asia to help
+him in his housekeeping.  What will you say when I tell you that the
+player AEsopus had one dish that cost him 6,000 sestertia--that is, 4,843
+pounds 10s. English?
+
+_Darteneuf_.--What will I say?  Why, that I pity my worthy friend Mr.
+Gibber, and that, if I had known this when alive, I should have hanged
+myself for vexation that I did not live in those days.
+
+_Apicius_.--Well you might, well you might.  You don't know what eating
+is.  You never could know it.  Nothing less than the wealth of the Roman
+Empire is sufficient to enable a man of taste to keep a good table.  Our
+players were infinitely richer than your princes.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--Oh that I had but lived in the blessed reign of Caligula,
+or of Vitellius, or of Heliogabalus, and had been admitted to the honour
+of dining with their slaves!
+
+_Apicius_.--Ay, there you touch me.  I am miserable that I died before
+their good times.  They carried the glories of their table much farther
+than the best eaters of the age in which I lived.  Vitellius spent in
+feasting, within the compass of one year, what would amount in your money
+to above 7,200,000 pounds.  He told me so himself in a conversation I had
+with him not long ago.  And the two others you mentioned did not fall
+very short of his royal magnificence.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--These, indeed, were great princes.  But what most affects
+me is the luxury of that upstart fellow AEsopus.  Pray, of what
+ingredients might the dish he paid so much for consist?
+
+_Apicius_.--Chiefly of singing birds.  It was that which so greatly
+enhanced the price.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--Of singing birds!  Choke him!  I never ate but one, which I
+stole out of its cage from a lady of my acquaintance, and all London was
+in an uproar, as if I had stolen and roasted an only child.  But, upon
+recollection, I doubt whether I have really so much cause to envy AEsopus.
+For the singing bird which I ate was not so good as a wheat-ear or
+becafigue.  And therefore I suspect that all the luxury you have bragged
+of was nothing but vanity.  It was like the foolish extravagance of the
+son of AEsopus, who dissolved pearls in vinegar and drank them at supper.
+I will stake my credit that a haunch of good buck venison and my
+favourite ham pie were much better dishes than any at the table of
+Vitellius himself.  It does not appear that you ancients ever had any
+good soups, without which a man of taste cannot possibly dine.  The
+rabbits in Italy are detestable.  But what is better than the wing of one
+of our English wild rabbits?  I have been told you had no turkeys.  The
+mutton in Italy is ill-flavoured.  And as for your boars roasted whole,
+they were only fit to be served up at a corporation feast or election
+dinner.  A small barbecued hog is worth a hundred of them.  And a good
+collar of Canterbury or Shrewsbury brawn is a much better dish.
+
+_Apicius_.--If you had some meats that we wanted, yet our cookery must
+have been greatly superior to yours.  Our cooks were so excellent that
+they could give to hog's flesh the taste of all other meats.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--I should never have endured their imitations.  You might as
+easily have imposed on a good connoisseur in painting the copy of a fine
+picture for the original.  Our cooks, on the contrary, give to all other
+meats, and even to some kinds of fish, a rich flavour of bacon without
+destroying that which makes the distinction of one from another.  It does
+not appear to me that essence of hams was ever known to the ancients.  We
+have a hundred ragouts, the composition of which surpasses all
+description.  Had yours been as good, you could not have lain indolently
+lolling upon couches while you were eating.  They would have made you sit
+up and mind your business.  Then you had a strange custom of hearing
+things read to you while you were at supper.  This demonstrates that you
+were not so well entertained as we are with our meat.  When I was at
+table, I neither heard, nor saw, nor spoke; I only tasted.  But the worst
+of all is that, in the utmost perfection of your luxury, you had no wine
+to be named with claret, Burgundy, champagne, old hock, or Tokay.  You
+boasted much of your Falernum, but I have tasted the Lachrymae Christi
+and other wines of that coast, not one of which would I have drunk above
+a glass or two of if you would have given me the Kingdom of Naples.  I
+have read that you boiled your wines and mixed water with them, which is
+sufficient evidence that in themselves they were not fit to drink.
+
+_Apicius_.--I am afraid you do really excel us in wines; not to mention
+your beer, your cider, and your perry, of all which I have heard great
+fame from your countrymen, and their report has been confirmed by the
+testimony of their neighbours who have travelled into England.  Wonderful
+things have been also said to me of an English liquor called punch.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--Ay, to have died without tasting that is miserable indeed!
+There is rum punch and arrack punch!  It is difficult to say which is
+best, but Jupiter would have given his nectar for either of them, upon my
+word and honour.
+
+_Apicius_.--The thought of them puts me into a fever with thirst.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--Those incomparable liquors are brought to us from the East
+and West Indies, of the first of which you knew little, and of the latter
+nothing.  This alone is sufficient to determine the dispute.  What a new
+world of good things for eating and drinking has Columbus opened to us!
+Think of that, and despair.
+
+_Apicius_.--I cannot indeed but exceedingly lament my ill fate that
+America was not discovered before I was born.  It tortures me when I hear
+of chocolate, pineapples, and a number of other fine fruits, or delicious
+meats, produced there which I have never tasted.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--The single advantage of having sugar to sweeten everything
+with, instead of honey, which you, for want of the other, were obliged to
+make use of, is inestimable.
+
+_Apicius_.--I confess your superiority in that important article.  But
+what grieves me most is that I never ate a turtle.  They tell me that it
+is absolutely the best of all foods.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--Yes, I have heard the Americans say so, but I never ate
+any; for in my time they were not brought over to England.
+
+_Apicius_.--Never ate any turtle!  How couldst thou dare to accuse me of
+not going to Sandwich to eat oysters, and didst not thyself take a trip
+to America to riot on turtles?  But know, wretched man, I am credibly
+informed that they are now as plentiful in England as sturgeons.  There
+are turtle-boats that go regularly to London and Bristol from the West
+Indies.  I have just received this information from a fat alderman, who
+died in London last week of a surfeit he got at a turtle feast in that
+city.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--What does he say?  Does he affirm to you that turtle is
+better than venison?
+
+_Apicius_.--He says, there was a haunch of the fattest venison untouched,
+while every mouth was employed on the turtle alone.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--Alas! how imperfect is human felicity!  I lived in an age
+when the noble science of eating was supposed to have been carried to its
+highest perfection in England and France.  And yet a turtle feast is a
+novelty to me!  Would it be impossible, do you think, to obtain leave
+from Pluto of going back for one day to my own table at London just to
+taste of that food?  I would promise to kill myself by the quantity of it
+I would eat before the next morning.
+
+_Apicius_.--You have forgot you have no body.  That which you had has
+long been rotten, and you can never return to the earth with another,
+unless Pythagoras should send you thither to animate a hog.  But comfort
+yourself that, as you have eaten dainties which I never tasted, so the
+next age will eat some unknown to this.  New discoveries will be made,
+and new delicacies brought from other parts of the world.  But see; who
+comes hither?  I think it is Mercury.
+
+_Mercury_.--Gentlemen, I must tell you that I have stood near you
+invisible, and heard your discourse--a privilege which, you know, we
+deities use as often as we please.  Attend, therefore, to what I shall
+communicate to you, relating to the subject upon which you have been
+talking.  I know two men, one of whom lived in ancient, and the other in
+modern times, who had much more pleasure in eating than either of you
+through the whole course of your lives.
+
+_Apicius_.--One of these happy epicures, I presume, was a Sybarite, and
+the other a French gentleman settled in the West Indies.
+
+_Mercury_.--No; one was a Spartan soldier, and the other an English
+farmer.  I see you both look astonished.  But what I tell you is truth.
+Labour and hunger gave a relish to the black broth of the former, and the
+salt beef of the latter, beyond what you ever found in the tripotanums or
+ham pies, that vainly stimulated your forced and languid appetites, which
+perpetual indolence weakened, and constant luxury overcharged.
+
+_Darteneuf_.--This, Apicius, is more mortifying than not to have shared a
+turtle feast.
+
+_Apicius_.--I wish, Mercury, you had taught me your art of cookery in my
+lifetime; but it is a sad thing not to know what good living is till
+after one is dead.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XX.
+
+
+ALEXANDER THE GREAT--CHARLES XII., KING OF SWEDEN.
+
+_Alexander_.--Your Majesty seems in great wrath!  Who has offended you?
+
+_Charles_.--The offence is to you as much as me.  Here is a fellow
+admitted into Elysium who has affronted us both--an English poet, one
+Pope.  He has called us two madmen!
+
+_Alexander_.--I have been unlucky in poets.  No prince ever was fonder of
+the Muses than I, or has received from them a more ungrateful return.
+When I was alive, I declared that I envied Achilles because he had a
+Homer to celebrate his exploits; and I most bountifully rewarded
+Choerilus, a pretender to poetry, for writing verses on mine.  But my
+liberality, instead of doing me honour, has since drawn upon me the
+ridicule of Horace, a witty Roman poet; and Lucan, another versifier of
+the same nation, has loaded my memory with the harshest invectives.
+
+_Charles_.--I know nothing of these; but I know that in my time a pert
+French satirist, one Boileau, made so free with your character, that I
+tore his book for having abused my favourite hero.  And now this saucy
+Englishman has libelled us both.  But I have a proposal to make to you
+for the reparation of our honour.  If you will join with me, we will turn
+all these insolent scribblers out of Elysium, and throw them down
+headlong to the bottom of Tartarus, in spite of Pluto and all his guards.
+
+_Alexander_.--This is just such a scheme as that you formed at Bender, to
+maintain yourself there, with the aid of three hundred Swedes, against
+the whole force of the Ottoman Empire.  And I must say that such follies
+gave the English poet too much cause to call you a madman.
+
+_Charles_.--If my heroism was madness, yours, I presume, was not wisdom.
+
+_Alexander_.--There was a vast difference between your conduct and mine.
+Let poets or declaimers say what they will, history shows that I was not
+only the bravest soldier, but one of the ablest commanders the world has
+ever seen.  Whereas you, by imprudently leading your army into vast and
+barren deserts at the approach of the winter, exposed it to perish in its
+march for want of subsistence, lost your artillery, lost a great number
+of your soldiers, and was forced to fight with the Muscovites under such
+disadvantages as made it almost impossible for you to conquer.
+
+_Charles_.--I will not dispute your superiority as a general.  It is not
+for me, a mere mortal, to contend with the son of Jupiter Ammon.
+
+_Alexander_.--I suppose you think my pretending that Jupiter was my
+father as much entitles me to the name of a madman as your extravagant
+behaviour at Bender does you.  But you are greatly mistaken.  It was not
+my vanity, but my policy, which set up that pretension.  When I proposed
+to undertake the conquest of Asia, it was necessary for me to appear to
+the people something more than a man.  They had been used to the idea of
+demi-god heroes.  I therefore claimed an equal descent with Osiris and
+Sesostris, with Bacchus and Hercules, the former conquerors of the East.
+The opinion of my divinity assisted my arms and subdued all nations
+before me, from the Granicus to the Ganges.  But though I called myself
+the son of Jupiter, and kept up the veneration that name inspired, by a
+courage which seemed more than human, and by the sublime magnanimity of
+all my behaviour, I did not forget that I was the son of Philip.  I used
+the policy of my father and the wise lessons of Aristotle, whom he had
+made my preceptor, in the conduct of all my great designs.  It was the
+son of Philip who planted Greek colonies in Asia as far as the Indies;
+who formed projects of trade more extensive than his empire itself; who
+laid the foundations of them in the midst of his wars; who built
+Alexandria, to be the centre and staple of commerce between Europe, Asia,
+and Africa, who sent Nearchus to navigate the unknown Indian seas, and
+intended to have gone himself from those seas to the Pillars of
+Hercules--that is, to have explored the passage round Africa, the
+discovery of which has since been so glorious to Vasco de Gama.  It was
+the son of Philip who, after subduing the Persians, governed them with
+such lenity, such justice, and such wisdom, that they loved him even more
+than ever they had loved their natural kings; and who, by intermarriages
+and all methods that could best establish a coalition between the
+conquerors and the conquered, united them into one people.  But what,
+sir, did you do to advance the trade of your subjects, to procure any
+benefit to those you had vanquished, or to convert any enemy into a
+friend?
+
+_Charles_.--When I might easily have made myself King of Poland, and was
+advised to do so by Count Piper, my favourite Minister, I generously gave
+that kingdom to Stanislas, as you had given a great part of you conquests
+in India to Porus, besides his own dominions, which you restored to him
+entire after you had beaten his army and taken him captive.
+
+_Alexander_.--I gave him the government of those countries under me and
+as my lieutenant, which was the best method of preserving my power in
+conquests where I could not leave garrisons sufficient to maintain them.
+The same policy was afterwards practised by the Romans, who of all
+conquerors, except me, were the greatest politicians.  But neither was I
+nor were they so extravagant as to conquer only for others, or dethrone
+kings with no view but merely to have the pleasure of bestowing their
+crowns on some of their subjects without any advantage to ourselves.
+Nevertheless, I will own that my expedition to India was an exploit of
+the son of Jupiter, not of the son of Philip.  I had done better if I had
+stayed to give more consistency to my Persian and Grecian Empires,
+instead of attempting new conquests and at such a distance so soon.  Yet
+even this war was of use to hinder my troops from being corrupted by the
+effeminacy of Asia, and to keep up that universal awe of my name which in
+those countries was the great support of my power.
+
+_Charles_.--In the unwearied activity with which I proceeded from one
+enterprise to another, I dare call myself your equal.  Nay, I may pretend
+to a higher glory than you, because you only went on from victory to
+victory; but the greatest losses were not able to diminish my ardour or
+stop the efforts of my daring and invincible spirit.
+
+_Alexander_.--You showed in adversity much more magnanimity than you did
+in prosperity.  How unworthy of a prince who imitated me was your
+behaviour to the king your arms had vanquished!  The compelling Augustus
+to write himself a letter of congratulation to one of his vassals whom
+you had placed in his throne, was the very reverse of my treatment of
+Porus and Darius.  It was an ungenerous insult upon his ill-fortune.  It
+was the triumph of a little and a low mind.  The visit you made him
+immediately after that insult was a further contempt, offensive to him,
+and both useless and dangerous to yourself.
+
+_Charles_.--I feared no danger from it.  I knew he durst not use the
+power I gave him to hurt me.
+
+_Alexander_.--If his resentment in that instant had prevailed over his
+fear, as it was likely to do, you would have perished deservedly by your
+insolence and presumption.  For my part, intrepid as I was in all dangers
+which I thought it was necessary or proper for me to meet, I never put
+myself one moment in the power of an enemy whom I had offended.  But you
+had the rashness of folly as well as of heroism.  A false opinion
+conceived of your enemy's weakness proved at last your undoing.  When, in
+answer to some reasonable propositions of peace sent to you by the Czar,
+you said, "You would come and treat with him at Moscow," he replied very
+justly, "That you affected to act like Alexander, but should not find in
+him a Darius."  And, doubtless, you ought to have been better acquainted
+with the character of that prince.  Had Persia been governed by a Peter
+Alexowitz when I made war against it, I should have acted more
+cautiously, and not have counted so much on the superiority of my troops
+in valour and discipline over an army commanded by a king who was so
+capable of instructing them in all they wanted.
+
+_Charles_.--The battle of Narva, won by eight thousand Swedes against
+fourscore thousand Muscovites, seemed to authorise my contempt of the
+nation and their prince.
+
+_Alexander_.--It happened that their prince was not present in that
+battle.  But he had not as yet had the time which was necessary to
+instruct his barbarous soldiers.  You gave him that time, and he made so
+good a use of it that you found at Pultowa the Muscovites become a
+different nation.  If you had followed the blow you gave them at Narva,
+and marched directly to Moscow, you might have destroyed their Hercules
+in his cradle.  But you suffered him to grow till his strength was
+mature, and then acted as if he had been still in his childhood.
+
+_Charles_.--I must confess you excelled me in conduct, in policy, and in
+true magnanimity.  But my liberality was not inferior to yours; and
+neither you nor any mortal ever surpassed me in the enthusiasm of
+courage.  I was also free from those vices which sullied your character.
+I never was drunk; I killed no friend in the riot of a feast; I fired no
+palace at the instigation of a harlot.
+
+_Alexander_.--It may perhaps be admitted, as some excuse for my
+drunkenness, that the Persians esteemed it an excellence in their kings
+to be able to drink a great quantity of wine, and the Macedonians were
+far from thinking it a dishonour.  But you were as frantic and as cruel
+when sober as I was when drunk.  You were sober when you resolved to
+continue in Turkey against the will of your host, the Grand Signor.  You
+were sober when you commanded the unfortunate Patkull, whose only crime
+was his having maintained the liberties of his country, and who bore the
+sacred character of an ambassador, to be broken alive on the wheel,
+against the laws of nations, and those of humanity, more inviolable still
+to a generous mind.  You were likewise sober when you wrote to the Senate
+of Sweden, who, upon a report of your death, endeavoured to take some
+care of your kingdom, that you would send them one of your boots, and
+from that they should receive their orders if they pretended to meddle in
+government--an insult much worse than any the Macedonians complained of
+from me when I was most heated with wine and with adulation.  As for my
+chastity, it was not so perfect as yours, though on some occasions I
+obtained great praise for my continence; but, perhaps, if you had been
+not quite so insensible to the charms of the fair sex, it would have
+mitigated and softened the fierceness, the pride, and the obstinacy of
+your nature.
+
+_Charles_.--It would have softened me into a woman, or, what I think
+still more contemptible, the slave of a woman.  But you seem to insinuate
+that you never were cruel or frantic unless when you were drunk.  This I
+absolutely deny.  You were not drunk when you crucified Hephaestion's
+physician for not curing a man who killed himself by his intemperance in
+his sickness, nor when you sacrificed to the manes of that favourite
+officer the whole nation of the Cusseans--men, women, and children--who
+were entirely innocent of his death--because you had read in Homer that
+Achilles had immolated some Trojan captives on the tomb of Patroclus.  I
+could mention other proofs that your passions inflamed you as much as
+wine, but these are sufficient.
+
+_Alexander_.--I can't deny that my passions were sometimes so violent as
+to deprive me for a while of the use of my reason; especially when the
+pride of such amazing successes, the servitude of the Persians, and
+barbarian flattery had intoxicated my mind.  To bear at my age, with
+continual moderation, such fortune as mine, was hardly in human nature.
+As for you, there was an excess and intemperance in your virtues which
+turned them all into vices.  And one virtue you wanted, which in a prince
+is very commendable and beneficial to the public--I mean, the love of
+science and of the elegant arts.  Under my care and patronage they were
+carried in Greece to their utmost perfection.  Aristotle, Apelles, and
+Lysippus were among the glories of my reign.  Yours was illustrated only
+by battles.  Upon the whole, though, from some resemblance between us I
+should naturally be inclined to decide in your favour, yet I must give
+the priority in renown to your enemy, Peter Alexowitz.  That great
+monarch raised his country; you ruined yours.  He was a legislator; you
+were a tyrant.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XXI.
+
+
+CARDINAL XIMENES--CARDINAL WOLSEY.
+
+_Wolsey_.--You seem to look on me, Ximenes, with an air of superiority,
+as if I was not your equal.  Have you forgotten that I was the favourite
+and first Minister of a great King of England? that I was at once Lord
+High Chancellor, Bishop of Durham, Bishop of Winchester, Archbishop of
+York, and Cardinal Legate?  On what other subject were ever accumulated
+so many dignities, such honours, such power?
+
+_Ximenes_.--In order to prove yourself my equal, you are pleased to tell
+me what you had, not what you did.  But it is not the having great
+offices, it is the doing great things, that makes a great Minister.  I
+know that for some years you governed the mind of King Henry VIII., and
+consequently his kingdom, with the most absolute sway.  Let me ask you,
+then, What were the acts of your reign?
+
+_Wolsey_.--My acts were those of a very skilful courtier and able
+politician.  I managed a temper which nature had made the most difficult
+to manage of any perhaps that ever existed, with such consummate address
+that all its passions were rendered entirely subservient to my
+inclinations.  In foreign affairs I turned the arms of my master or
+disposed of his friendship, whichever way my own interest happened to
+direct.  It was not with him, but with me, that treaties were made by the
+Emperor or by France; and none were concluded during my Ministry that did
+not contain some Article in my favour, besides secret assurances of
+aiding my ambition or resentment, which were the real springs of all my
+negotiations.  At home I brought the pride of the English nobility, which
+had resisted the greatest of the Plantagenets, to bow submissively to the
+son of a butcher of Ipswich.  And, as my power was royal, my state and
+magnificence were suitable to it; my buildings, my furniture, my
+household, my equipage, my liberalities, and my charities were above the
+rank of a subject.
+
+_Ximenes_.--From all you have said I understand that you gained great
+advantages for yourself in the course of your Ministry--too great,
+indeed, for a good man to desire, or a wise man to accept.  But what did
+you do for your sovereign and for the State?  You make me no answer.  What
+I did is well known.  I was not content with forcing the arrogance of the
+Spanish nobility to stoop to my power, but used that power to free the
+people from their oppressions.  In you they respected the royal
+authority; I made them respect the majesty of the laws.  I also relieved
+my countrymen, the commons of Castile, from a most grievous burden, by an
+alteration in the method of collecting their taxes.  After the death of
+Isabella I preserved the tranquillity of Aragon and Castile by procuring
+the regency of the latter for Ferdinand, a wise and valiant prince,
+though he had not been my friend during the life of the queen.  And when
+after his decease I was raised to the regency by the general esteem and
+affection of the Castilians, I administered the government with great
+courage, firmness, and prudence; with the most perfect disinterestedness
+in regard to myself, and most zealous concern for the public.  I
+suppressed all the factions which threatened to disturb the peace of that
+kingdom in the minority and the absence of the young king; and prevented
+the discontents of the commons of Castile, too justly incensed against
+the Flemish Ministers, who governed their prince and rapaciously pillaged
+their country, from breaking out during my life into open rebellion, as
+they did, most unhappily, soon after my death.  These were my civil acts;
+but, to complete the renown of my administration, I added to it the palm
+of military glory.  At my own charges, and myself commanding the army, I
+conquered Oran from the Moors, and annexed it, with its territory, to the
+Spanish dominions.
+
+_Wolsey_.--My soul was as elevated and noble as yours, my understanding
+as strong, and more refined; but the difference of our conduct arose from
+the difference of our objects.  To raise your reputation and secure your
+power in Castile, by making that kingdom as happy and as great as you
+could, was your object.  Mine was to procure the Triple Crown for myself
+by the assistance of my sovereign and of the greatest foreign Powers.
+Each of us took the means that were evidently most proper to the
+accomplishment of his ends.
+
+_Ximenes_.--Can you confess such a principle of your conduct without a
+blush?  But you will at least be ashamed that you failed in your purpose,
+and were the dupe of the Powers with whom you negotiated, after having
+dishonoured the character of your master in order to serve your own
+ambition.  I accomplished my desire with glory to my sovereign and
+advantage to my country.  Besides this difference, there was a great one
+in the methods by which we acquired our power.  We both owed it, indeed,
+to the favour of princes; but I gained Isabella's by the opinion she had
+of my piety and integrity.  You gained Henry's by a complaisance and
+course of life which were a reproach to your character and sacred orders.
+
+_Wolsey_.--I did not, as you, Ximenes, did, carry with me to Court the
+austerity of a monk; nor, if I had done so, could I possibly have gained
+any influence there.  Isabella and Henry were different characters, and
+their favour was to be sought in different ways.  By making myself
+agreeable to the latter, I so governed his passions, unruly as they were,
+that while I lived they did not produce any of those dreadful effects
+which after my death were caused by them in his family and kingdom.
+
+_Ximenes_.--If Henry VIII., your master, had been King of Castile, I
+would never have been drawn by him out of my cloister.  A man of virtue
+and spirit will not be prevailed with to go into a Court where he cannot
+rise without baseness.
+
+_Wolsey_.--The inflexibility of your mind had like to have ruined you in
+some of your measures; and the bigotry which you had derived from your
+long abode in a cloister, and retained when a Minister, was very near
+depriving the Crown of Castile of the new-conquered kingdom of Granada by
+the revolt of the Moors in that city, whom you had prematurely forced to
+change their religion.  Do you not remember how angry King Ferdinand was
+with you on that account?
+
+_Ximenes_.--I do, and must acknowledge that my zeal was too intemperate
+in all that proceeding.
+
+_Wolsey_.--My worst complaisances to King Henry VIII. were far less
+hurtful to England than the unjust and inhuman Court of Inquisition,
+which you established in Granada to watch over the faith of your
+unwilling converts, has been to Spain.
+
+_Ximenes_.--I only revived and settled in Granada an ancient tribunal,
+instituted first by one of our saints against the Albigenses, and gave it
+greater powers.  The mischiefs which have attended it cannot be denied;
+but if any force may be used for the maintenance of religion (and the
+Church of Rome has, you know, declared authoritatively that it may) none
+could be so effectual to answer the purpose.
+
+_Wolsey_.--This is an argument rather against the opinion of the Church
+than for the Inquisition.  I will only say I think myself very happy that
+my administration was stained with no action of cruelty, not even cruelty
+sanctified by the name of religion.  My temper indeed, which influenced
+my conduct more than my principles, was much milder than yours.  To the
+proud I was proud, but to my friends and inferiors benevolent and humane.
+Had I succeeded in the great object of my ambition, had I acquired the
+Popedom, I should have governed the Church with more moderation and
+better sense than probably you would have done if you had exchanged the
+See of Toledo for that of Rome.  My good-nature, my policy, my taste for
+magnificence, my love of the fine arts, of wit, and of learning, would
+have made me the delight of all the Italians, and have given me a rank
+among the greatest princes.  Whereas in you the sour bigot and rigid monk
+would too much have prevailed over the prince and the statesman.
+
+_Ximenes_.--What either of us would have been in that situation does not
+appear; but, if you are compared to me as a Minister, you are vastly
+inferior.  The only circumstance in which you can justly pretend to any
+equality is the encouragement you gave to learning and your munificence
+in promoting it, which was indeed very great.  Your two colleges founded
+at Ipswich and Oxford may vie with my University at Alcala de Henara.  But
+in our generosity there was this difference--all my revenues were spent
+in well-placed liberalities, in acts of charity, piety, and virtue;
+whereas a great part of your enormous wealth was squandered away in
+luxury and vain ostentation.  With regard to all other points, my
+superiority is apparent.  You were only a favourite; I was the friend and
+the father of the people.  You served yourself; I served the State.  The
+conclusion of our lives was also much more honourable to me than you.
+
+_Wolsey_.--Did not you die, as I did, in disgrace with your master?
+
+_Ximenes_.--That disgrace was brought upon me by a faction of foreigners,
+to whose power, as a good Spaniard, I would not submit.  A Minister who
+falls a victim to such an opposition rises by his fall.  Yours was not
+graced by any public cause, any merit to the nation.  Your spirit,
+therefore, sank under it; you bore it with meanness.  Mine was unbroken,
+superior to my enemies, superior to fortune, and I died, as I had lived,
+with undiminished dignity and greatness of mind.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XXII.
+
+
+LUCIAN--RABELAIS.
+
+_Lucian_.--Friend Rabelais, well met--our souls are very good company for
+one another; we both were great wits and most audacious freethinkers.  We
+laughed often at folly, and sometimes at wisdom.  I was, indeed, more
+correct and more elegant in my style; but then, in return, you had a
+greater fertility of imagination.  My "True History" is much inferior, in
+fancy and invention, in force of wit and keenness of satire, to your
+"History of the Acts of Gargantua and Pantagruel."
+
+_Rabelais_.--You do me great honour; but I may say, without vanity, that
+both those compositions entitle the authors of them to a very
+distinguished place among memoir-writers, travellers, and even
+historians, ancient and modern.
+
+_Lucian_.--Doubtless they do; but will you pardon me if I ask you one
+question?  Why did you choose to write such absolute nonsense as you have
+in some places of your illustrious work?
+
+_Rabelais_.--I was forced to compound my physic for the mind with a large
+dose of nonsense in order to make it go down.  To own the truth to you,
+if I had not so frequently put on the fool's-cap, the freedoms I took in
+other places with cowls, with Red Hats, and the Triple Crown itself,
+would have brought me into great danger.  Not only my book, but I myself,
+should, in all probability, have been condemned to the flames; and
+martyrdom was an honour to which I never aspired.  I therefore
+counterfeited folly, like Junius Brutus, from the wisest of all
+principles--that of self-preservation.  You, Lucian, had no need to use
+so much caution.  Your heathen priests desired only a sacrifice now and
+then from an Epicurean as a mark of conformity, and kindly allowed him to
+make as free as he pleased, in conversation or writings, with the whole
+tribe of gods and goddesses--from the thundering Jupiter and the scolding
+Juno, down to the dog Anubis and the fragrant dame Cloacina.
+
+_Lucian_.--Say rather that our Government allowed us that liberty; for I
+assure you our priests were by no means pleased with it--at least, they
+were not in my time.
+
+_Rabelais_.--The wiser men they; for, in spite of the conformity required
+by the laws and enforced by the magistrate, that ridicule brought the
+system of pagan theology into contempt, not only with the philosophical
+part of mankind, but even with the vulgar.
+
+_Lucian_.--It did so, and the ablest defenders of paganism were forced to
+give up the poetical fables and allegorise the whole.
+
+_Rabelais_.--An excellent way of drawing sense out of absurdity, and
+grave instructions from lewdness.  There is a great modern wit, Sir
+Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, who in his treatise entitled "The Wisdom of
+the Ancients" has done more for you that way than all your own priests.
+
+_Lucian_.--He has indeed shown himself an admirable chemist, and made a
+fine transmutation of folly into wisdom.  But all the later Platonists
+took the same method of defending our faith when it was attacked by the
+Christians; and certainly a more judicious one could not be found.  Our
+fables say that in one of their wars with the Titans the gods were
+defeated, and forced to turn themselves into beasts in order to escape
+from the conquerors.  Just the reverse happened here, for by this happy
+art our beastly divinities were turned again into rational beings.
+
+_Rabelais_.--Give me a good commentator, with a subtle, refining,
+philosophical head, and you shall have the edification of seeing him draw
+the most sublime allegories and the most venerable mystic truths from my
+history of the noble Gargantua and Pantagruel.  I don't despair of being
+proved, to the entire satisfaction of some future ape, to have been,
+without exception, the profoundest divine and metaphysician that ever yet
+held a pen.
+
+_Lucian_.--I shall rejoice to see you advanced to that honour.  But in
+the meantime I may take the liberty to consider you as one of our class.
+There you sit very high.
+
+_Rabelais_.--I am afraid there is another, and a modern author too, whom
+you would bid to sit above me, and but just below yourself--I mean Dr.
+Swift.
+
+_Lucian_.--It was not necessary for him to throw so much nonsense into
+his history of Lemuel Gulliver as you did into that of your two
+illustrious heroes; and his style is far more correct than yours.  His
+wit never descended, as yours frequently did, into the lowest of taverns,
+nor ever wore the meanest garb of the vulgar.
+
+_Rabelais_.--If the garb which it wore was not as mean, I am certain it
+was sometimes as dirty as mine.
+
+_Lucian_.--It was not always nicely clean; yet, in comparison with you,
+he was decent and elegant.  But whether there was not in your
+compositions more fire, and a more comic spirit, I will not determine.
+
+_Rabelais_.--If you will not determine it, e'en let it remain a matter in
+dispute, as I have left the great question, Whether Panurge should marry
+or not?  I would as soon undertake to measure the difference between the
+height and bulk of the giant Gargantua and his Brobdignagian Majesty, as
+the difference of merit between my writings and Swift's.  If any man
+takes a fancy to like my book, let him freely enjoy the entertainment it
+gives him, and drink to my memory in a bumper.  If another likes
+Gulliver, let him toast Dr. Swift.  Were I upon earth I would pledge him
+in a bumper, supposing the wine to be good.  If a third likes neither of
+us, let him silently pass the bottle and be quiet.
+
+_Lucian_.--But what if he will not be quiet?  A critic is an unquiet
+creature.
+
+_Rabelais_.--Why, then he will disturb himself, not me.
+
+_Lucian_.--You are a greater philosopher than I thought you.  I knew you
+paid no respect to Popes or kings, but to pay none to critics is, in an
+author, a magnanimity beyond all example.
+
+_Rabelais_.--My life was a farce; my death was a farce; and would you
+have me make my book a serious affair?  As for you, though in general you
+are only a joker, yet sometimes you must be ranked among grave authors.
+You have written sage and learned dissertations on history and other
+weighty matters.  The critics have therefore an undoubted right to maul
+you; they find you in their province.  But if any of them dare to come
+into mine, I will order Gargantua to swallow them up, as he did the six
+pilgrims, in the next salad he eats.
+
+_Lucian_.--Have I not heard that you wrote a very good serious book on
+the aphorisms of Hippocrates?
+
+_Rabelais_.--Upon my faith I had forgot it.  I am so used to my fool's
+coat that I don't know myself in my solemn doctor's gown.  But your
+information was right; that book was indeed a very respectable work.  Yet
+nobody reads it; and if I had writ nothing else, I should have been
+reckoned, at best, a lackey to Hippocrates, whereas the historian of
+Panurge is an eminent writer.  Plain good sense, like a dish of solid
+beef or mutton, is proper only for peasants; but a ragout of folly, well
+dressed with a sharp sauce of wit, is fit to be served up at an emperor's
+table.
+
+_Lucian_.--You are an admirable pleasant fellow.  Let me embrace you.  How
+Apollo and the Muses may rank you on Parnassus I am not very certain;
+but, if I were Master of the Ceremonies on Mount Olympus, you should be
+placed, with a full bowl of nectar before you, at the right hand of
+Momus.
+
+_Rabelais_.--I wish you were; but I fear the inhabitants of those sublime
+regions will like your company no better than mine.  Indeed, how Momus
+himself could get a seat at that table I can't well comprehend.  It has
+been usual, I confess, in some of our Courts upon earth, to have a
+privileged jester, called the king's fool.  But in the Court of Heaven
+one should not have supposed such an officer as Jupiter's fool.  Your
+allegorical theology in this point is very abstruse.
+
+_Lucian_.--I think our priests admitted Momus into our heaven, as the
+Indians are said to worship the devil, through fear.  They had a mind to
+keep fair with him.  For we may talk of the giants as much as we please,
+but to our gods there is no enemy so formidable as he.  Ridicule is the
+terror of all false religion.  Nothing but truth can stand its lash.
+
+_Rabelais_.--Truth, advantageously set in a good and fair light, can
+stand any attacks; but those of Ridicule are so teasing and so fallacious
+that I have seen them put her ladyship very much out of humour.
+
+_Lucian_.--Ay, friend Rabelais, and sometimes out of countenance too.  But
+Truth and Wit in confederacy will strike Momus dumb.  United they are
+invincible, and such a union is necessary upon certain occasions.  False
+Reasoning is most effectually exposed by Plain Sense; but Wit is the best
+opponent to False Ridicule, as Just Ridicule is to all the absurdities
+which dare to assume the venerable names of Philosophy or Religion.  Had
+we made such a proper use of our agreeable talents; had we employed our
+ridicule to strip the foolish faces of Superstition, Fanaticism, and
+Dogmatical Pride of the serious and solemn masks with which they are
+covered, at the same time exerting all the sharpness of our wit to combat
+the flippancy and pertness of those who argue only by jests against
+reason and evidence in points of the highest and most serious concern, we
+should have much better merited the esteem of mankind.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XXIII.
+
+
+PERICLES--COSMO DE MEDICIS, THE FIRST OF THAT NAME.
+
+_Pericles_.--In what I have heard of your character and your fortune,
+illustrious Cosmo, I find a most remarkable resemblance with mine.  We
+both lived in republics where the sovereign power was in the people; and
+by mere civil arts, but more especially by our eloquence, attained,
+without any force, to such a degree of authority that we ruled those
+tumultuous and stormy democracies with an absolute sway, turned the
+tempests which agitated them upon the heads of our enemies, and after
+having long and prosperously conducted the greatest affairs in war and
+peace, died revered and lamented by all our fellow-citizens.
+
+_Cosmo_.--We have indeed an equal right to value ourselves on that
+noblest of empires, the empire we gained over the minds of our
+countrymen.  Force or caprice may give power, but nothing can give a
+lasting authority except wisdom and virtue.  By these we obtained, by
+these we preserved, in our respective countries, a dominion unstained by
+usurpation or blood--a dominion conferred on us by the public esteem and
+the public affection.  We were in reality sovereigns, while we lived with
+the simplicity of private men; and Athens and Florence believed
+themselves to be free, though they obeyed all our dictates.  This is more
+than was done by Philip of Macedon, or Sylla, or Caesar.  It is the
+perfection of policy to tame the fierce spirit of popular liberty, not by
+blows or by chains, but by soothing it into a voluntary obedience, and
+bringing it to lick the hand that restrains it.
+
+_Pericles_.--The task can never be easy, but the difficulty was still
+greater to me than to you.  For I had a lion to tame, from whose
+intractable fury the greatest men of my country, and of the whole world,
+with all their wisdom and virtue, could not save themselves.  Themistocles
+and Aristides were examples of terror that might well have deterred me
+from the administration of public affairs at Athens.  Another impediment
+in my way was the power of Cimon, who for his goodness, his liberality,
+and the lustre of his victories over the Persians was much beloved by the
+people, and at the same time, by being thought to favour aristocracy, had
+all the noble and rich citizens devoted to his party.  It seemed
+impossible to shake so well established a greatness.  Yet by the charms
+and force of my eloquence, which exceeded that of all orators
+contemporary with me; by the integrity of my life, my moderation, and my
+prudence; but, above all, by my artful management of the people, whose
+power I increased that I might render it the basis and support of my own,
+I gained such an ascendant over all my opponents that, having first
+procured the banishment of Cimon by ostracism, and then of Thucydides,
+another formidable antagonist set up by the nobles against my authority,
+I became the unrivalled chief, or rather the monarch, of the Athenian
+Republic, without ever putting to death, in above forty years that my
+administration continued, one of my fellow-citizens; a circumstance which
+I declared, when I lay on my death-bed, to be, in my own judgment, more
+honourable to me than all my prosperity in the government of the State,
+or the nine trophies erected for so many victories obtained by my
+conduct.
+
+_Cosmo_.--I had also the same happiness to boast of at my death.  And
+some additions were made to the territories of Florence under my
+government; but I myself was no soldier, and the Commonwealth I directed
+was never either so warlike or so powerful as Athens.  I must, therefore,
+not pretend to vie with you in the lustre of military glory; and I will
+moreover acknowledge that, to govern a people whose spirit and pride were
+exalted by the wonderful victories of Marathon, Mycale, Salamis, and
+Plataea, was much more difficult than to rule the Florentines and the
+Tuscans.  The liberty of the Athenians was in your time more imperious,
+more haughty, more insolent, than the despotism of the King of Persia.
+How great, then, must have been your ability and address that could so
+absolutely reduce it under your power!  Yet the temper of my countrymen
+was not easy to govern, for it was exceedingly factious.  The history of
+Florence is little else, for several ages, than an account of
+conspiracies against the State.  In my youth I myself suffered much by
+the dissensions which then embroiled the Republic.  I was imprisoned and
+banished, but after the course of some years my enemies, in their turn,
+were driven into exile.  I was brought back in triumph, and from that
+time till my death, which was above thirty years, I governed the
+Florentines, not by arms or evil arts of tyrannical power, but with a
+legal authority, which I exercised so discreetly as to gain the esteem of
+all the neighbouring potentates, and such a constant affection of all my
+fellow-citizens that an inscription, which gave me the title of Father of
+my Country, was engraved on my monument by an unanimous decree of the
+whole Commonwealth.
+
+_Pericles_.--Your end was incomparably more happy than mine.  For you
+died rather of age than any violent illness, and left the Florentines in
+a state of peace and prosperity procured for them by your counsels.  But
+I died of the plague, after having seen it almost depopulate Athens, and
+left my country engaged in a most dangerous war, to which my advice and
+the power of my eloquence had excited the people.  The misfortune of the
+pestilence, with the inconveniences they suffered on account of the war,
+so irritated their minds, that not long before my death they condemned me
+to a fine.
+
+_Cosmo_.--It is wonderful that, when once their anger was raised, it went
+no further against you!  A favourite of the people, when disgraced, is in
+still greater danger than a favourite of a king.
+
+_Pericles_.--Your surprise will increase at hearing that very soon
+afterwards they chose me their general, and conferred on me again the
+principal direction of all their affairs.  Had I lived I should have so
+conducted the war as to have ended it with advantage and honour to my
+country.  For, having secured to her the sovereignty of the sea by the
+defeat of the Samians, before I let her engage with the power of Sparta,
+I knew that our enemies would be at length wearied out and compelled to
+sue for a peace, because the city, from the strength of its
+fortifications and the great army within it, being on the land side
+impregnable to the Spartans, and drawing continual supplies from the sea,
+suffered not much by their ravages of the country about it, from whence I
+had before removed all the inhabitants; whereas their allies were undone
+by the descents we made on their coasts.
+
+_Cosmo_.--You seem to have understood beyond all other men what
+advantages are to be drawn from a maritime power, and how to make it the
+surest foundation of empire.
+
+_Pennies_.--I followed the plan, traced out by Themistocles, the ablest
+politician that Greece had ever produced.  Nor did I begin the
+Peloponnesian War (as some have supposed) only to make myself necessary,
+and stop an inquiry into my public accounts.  I really thought that the
+Republic of Athens could no longer defer a contest with Sparta, without
+giving up to that State the precedence in the direction of Greece and her
+own independence.  To keep off for some time even a necessary war, with a
+probable hope of making it more advantageously at a favourable
+opportunity, is an act of true wisdom; but not to make it, when you see
+that your enemy will be strengthened, and your own advantages lost or
+considerably lessened, by the delay, is a most pernicious imprudence.
+With relation to my accounts, I had nothing to fear.  I had not embezzled
+one drachma of public money, nor added one to my own paternal estate; and
+the people had placed so entire a confidence in me that they had allowed
+me, against the usual forms of their government, to dispose of large sums
+for secret service, without account.  When, therefore, I advised the
+Peloponnesian War, I neither acted from private views, nor with the
+inconsiderate temerity of a restless ambition, but as became a wise
+statesman, who, having weighed all the dangers that may attend a great
+enterprise, and seeing a reasonable hope of good success, makes it his
+option to fight for dominion and glory, rather than sacrifice both to the
+uncertain possession of an insecure peace.
+
+_Cosmo_.--How were you sure of inducing so volatile a people to persevere
+in so steady a system of conduct as that which you had laid down--a
+system attended with much inconvenience and loss to particulars, while it
+presented but little to strike or inflame the imagination of the public?
+Bold and arduous enterprises, great battles, much bloodshed, and a speedy
+decision, are what the multitude desire in every war; but your plan of
+operation was the reverse of all this, and the execution of it required
+the temper of the Thebans rather than of the Athenians.
+
+_Pericles_.--I found, indeed, many symptoms of their impatience, but I
+was able to restrain it by the authority I had gained; for during my
+whole Ministry I never had stooped to court their favour by any unworthy
+means, never flattered them in their follies, nor complied with their
+passions against their true interests and my own better judgment; but
+used the power of my eloquence to keep them in the bounds of a wise
+moderation, to raise their spirits when too low, and show them their
+danger when they grew too presumptuous, the good effects of which conduct
+they had happily experienced in all their affairs.  Whereas those who
+succeeded to me in the government, by their incapacity, their corruption,
+and their servile complaisance to the humour of the people, presently
+lost all the fruits of my virtue and prudence.  Xerxes himself, I am
+convinced, did not suffer more by the flattery of his courtiers than the
+Athenians, after my decease, by that of their orators and Ministers of
+State.
+
+_Cosmo_.--Those orators could not gain the favour of the people by any
+other methods.  Your arts were more noble--they were the arts of a
+statesman and of a prince.  Your magnificent buildings (which in beauty
+of architecture surpassed any the world had ever seen), the statues of
+Phidias, the paintings of Zeuxis, the protection you gave to knowledge,
+genius, and abilities of every kind, added as much to the glory of Athens
+as to your popularity.  And in this I may boast of an equal merit to
+Florence.  For I embellished that city and the whole country about it
+with excellent buildings; I protected all arts; and, though I was not
+myself so eloquent or so learned as you, I no less encouraged those who
+were eminent in my time for their eloquence or their learning.  Marcilius
+Ficinus, the second father of the Platonic philosophy, lived in my house,
+and conversed with me as intimately as Anaxagoras with you.  Nor did I
+ever forget and suffer him so to want the necessaries of life as you did
+Anaxagoras, who had like to have perished by that unfriendly neglect; but
+to secure him at all times from any distress in his circumstances, and
+enable him to pursue his sublime speculations unmolested by low cares, I
+gave him an estate adjacent to one of my favourite villas.  I also drew
+to Florence Argiropolo, the most learned Greek of those times, that,
+under my patronage, he might teach the Florentine youth the language and
+sciences of his country.  But with regard to our buildings, there is this
+remarkable difference--yours were all raised at the expense of the
+public, mine at my own.
+
+_Pericles_.--My estate would bear no profuseness, nor allow me to exert
+the generosity of my nature.  Your wealth exceeded that of any
+particular, or indeed of any prince who lived in your days.  The vast
+commerce which, after the example of your ancestors, you continued to
+carry on in all parts of the world, even while you presided at the helm
+of the State, enabled you to do those splendid acts which rendered your
+name so illustrious.  But I was constrained to make the public treasure
+the fund of my bounties; and I thought I could not possibly dispose of it
+better in time of peace than in finding employment for that part of the
+people which must else have been idle and useless to the community,
+introducing into Greece all the elegant arts, and adorning my country
+with works that are an honour to human nature; for, while I attended the
+most to these civil and peaceful occupations, I did not neglect to
+provide, with timely care, against war, nor suffer the nation to sink
+into luxury and effeminate softness.  I kept our fleets in continual
+exercise, maintained a great number of seamen in constant pay, and
+disciplined well our land forces.  Nor did I ever cease to recommend to
+all the Athenians, both by precepts and example, frugality, temperance,
+magnanimity, fortitude, and whatever could most effectually contribute to
+strengthen their bodies and minds.
+
+_Cosmo_.--Yet I have heard you condemned for rendering the people less
+sober and modest, by giving them a share of the conquered lands, and
+paying them wages for their necessary attendance in the public assemblies
+and other civil functions; but more especially for the vast and
+superfluous expense you entailed on the State in the theatrical
+spectacles with which you entertained them at the cost of the public.
+
+_Pericles_.--Perhaps I may have been too lavish in some of those
+bounties.  Yet in a popular State it is necessary that the people should
+be amused, and should so far partake of the opulence of the public as not
+to suffer any want, which would render their minds too low and sordid for
+their political duties.  In my time the revenues of Athens were
+sufficient to bear this charge; but afterwards, when we had lost the
+greatest part of our empire, it became, I must confess, too heavy a
+burden, and the continuance of it proved one cause of our ruin.
+
+_Cosmo_.--It is a most dangerous thing to load the State with largesses
+of that nature, or indeed with any unnecessary but popular charges,
+because to reduce them is almost impossible, though the circumstances of
+the public should necessarily demand a reduction.  But did not you
+likewise, in order to advance your own greatness, throw into the hands of
+the people of Athens more power than the institutions of Solon had
+entrusted them with, and more than was consistent with the good of the
+State?
+
+_Pericles_.--We are now in the regions where Truth presides, and I dare
+not offend her by playing the orator in defence of my conduct.  I must
+therefore acknowledge that, by weakening the power of the court of
+Areopagus, I tore up that anchor which Solon had wisely fixed to keep his
+Republic firm against the storms and fluctuations of popular factions.
+This alteration, which fundamentally injured the whole State, I made with
+a view to serve my own ambition, the only passion in my nature which I
+could not contain within the limits of virtue.  For I knew that my
+eloquence would subject the people to me, and make them the willing
+instruments of all my desires; whereas the Areopagus had in it an
+authority and a dignity which I could not control.  Thus by diminishing
+the counterpoise our Constitution had settled to moderate the excess of
+popular power, I augmented my own.  But since my death I have been often
+reproached by the Shades of some of the most virtuous and wisest
+Athenians, who have fallen victims to the caprice or fury of the people,
+with having been the first cause of the injustice they suffered, and of
+all the mischiefs perpetually brought on my country by rash undertakings,
+bad conduct, and fluctuating councils.  They say, I delivered up the
+State to the government of indiscreet or venal orators, and to the
+passions of a misguided, infatuated multitude, who thought their freedom
+consisted in encouraging calumnies against the best servants of the
+Commonwealth, and conferring power upon those who had no other merit than
+falling in with and soothing a popular folly.  It is useless for me to
+plead that, during my life, none of these mischiefs were felt; that I
+employed my rhetoric to promote none but good and wise measures; that I
+was as free from any taint of avarice or corruption as Aristides himself.
+They reply that I am answerable for all the great evils occasioned
+afterwards by the want of that salutary restraint on the natural levity
+and extravagance of a democracy, which I had taken away.  Socrates calls
+me the patron of Anytus, and Solon himself frowns upon me whenever we
+meet.
+
+_Cosmo_.--Solon has reason to do so; for tell me, Pericles, what opinion
+would you have of the architect you employed in your buildings if he had
+made them to last no longer than during the term of your life?
+
+_Pericles_.--The answer to your question will turn to your own
+condemnation.  Your excessive liberalities to the indigent citizens, and
+the great sums you lent to all the noble families, did in reality buy the
+Republic of Florence, and gave your family such a power as enabled them
+to convert it from a popular State into an absolute monarchy.
+
+_Cosmo_.--The Florentines were so infested with discord and faction, and
+their commonwealth was so void of military virtue, that they could not
+have long been exempt from a more ignominious subjection to some foreign
+Power if those internal dissensions, with the confusion and anarchy they
+produced, had continued.  But the Athenians had performed very glorious
+exploits, had obtained a great empire, and were become one of the noblest
+States in the world, before you altered the balance of their government.
+And after that alteration they declined very fast, till they lost all
+their greatness.
+
+_Pericles_.--Their constitution had originally a foul blemish in it--I
+mean, the ban of ostracism, which alone would have been sufficient to
+undo any State.  For there is nothing of such important use to a nation
+as that men who most excel in wisdom and virtue should be encouraged to
+undertake the business of government.  But this detestable custom
+deterred such men from serving the public, or, if they ventured to do so,
+turned even their own wisdom and virtue against them; so that in Athens
+it was safer to be infamous than renowned.  We are told indeed, by the
+advocates for this strange institution, that it was not a punishment, but
+meant as a guard to the equality and liberty of the State; for which
+reason they deem it an honour done to the persons against whom it was
+used; as if words could change the real nature of things, and make a
+banishment of ten years, inflicted on a good citizen by the suffrages of
+his countrymen, no evil to him, or no offence against justice and the
+natural right every freeman may claim--that he shall not be expelled from
+any society of which he is a member without having first been proved
+guilty of some criminal action.
+
+_Cosmo_.--The ostracism was indeed a most unpardonable fault in the
+Athenian constitution.  It placed envy in the seat of justice, and gave
+to private malice and public ingratitude a legal right to do wrong.  Other
+nations are blamed for tolerating vice, but the Athenians alone would not
+tolerate virtue.
+
+_Pericles_.--The friends to the ostracism say that too eminent virtue
+destroys that equality which is the safeguard of freedom.
+
+_Cosmo_.--No State is well modelled if it cannot preserve itself from the
+danger of tyranny without a grievous violation of natural justice; nor
+would a friend to true freedom, which consists in being governed not by
+men but by laws, desire to live in a country where a Cleon bore rule, and
+where an Aristides was not suffered to remain.  But, instead of remedying
+this evil, you made it worse.  You rendered the people more intractable,
+more adverse to virtue, less subject to the laws, and more to impressions
+from mischievous demagogues, than they had been before your time.
+
+_Pericles_.--In truth, I did so; and therefore my place in Elysium,
+notwithstanding the integrity of my whole public conduct, and the great
+virtues I excited, is much below the rank of those who have governed
+commonwealths or limited monarchies, not merely with a concern for their
+present advantage, but also with a prudent regard to that balance of
+power on which their permanent happiness must necessarily depend.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XXIV.
+
+
+LOCKE--BAYLE.
+
+_Bayle_.--Yes, we both were philosophers; but my philosophy was the
+deepest.  You dogmatised; I doubted.
+
+_Locke_.--Do you make doubting a proof of depth in philosophy?  It may be
+a good beginning of it, but it is a bad end.
+
+_Bayle_.--No; the more profound our searches are into the nature of
+things, the more uncertainty we shall find; and the most subtle minds see
+objections and difficulties in every system which are overlooked or
+undiscoverable by ordinary understandings.
+
+_Locke_.--It would be better, then, to be no philosopher, and to continue
+in the vulgar herd of mankind, that one may have the convenience of
+thinking that one knows something.  I find that the eyes which Nature has
+given me see many things very clearly, though some are out of their
+reach, or discerned but dimly.  What opinion ought I to have of a
+physician who should offer me an eye-water, the use of which would at
+first so sharpen my sight as to carry it farther than ordinary vision,
+but would in the end put them out?  Your philosophy, Monsieur Bayle, is
+to the eyes of the mind what I have supposed the doctor's nostrum to be
+to those of the body.  It actually brought your own excellent
+understanding, which was by nature quick-sighted, and rendered more so by
+art and a subtlety of logic peculiar to yourself--it brought, I say, your
+very acute understanding to see nothing clearly, and enveloped all the
+great truths of reason and religion in mists of doubt.
+
+_Bayle_.--I own it did; but your comparison is not just.  I did not see
+well before I used my philosophic eye-water.  I only supposed I saw well;
+but I was in an error, with all the rest of mankind.  The blindness was
+real; the perceptions were imaginary.  I cured myself first of those
+false imaginations, and then I laudably endeavoured to cure other men.
+
+_Locke_.--A great cure, indeed! and don't you think that, in return for
+the service you did them, they ought to erect you a statue?
+
+_Bayle_.--Yes; it is good for human nature to know its own weakness.  When
+we arrogantly presume on a strength we have not, we are always in great
+danger of hurting ourselves--or, at least, of deserving ridicule and
+contempt by vain and idle efforts.
+
+_Locke_.--I agree with you that human nature should know its own
+weakness; but it should also feel its strength, and try to improve it.
+This was my employment as a philosopher.  I endeavoured to discover the
+real powers of the mind; to see what it could do, and what it could not;
+to restrain it from efforts beyond its ability, but to teach it how to
+advance as far as the faculties given to it by Nature, with the utmost
+exertion and most proper culture of them, would allow it to go.  In the
+vast ocean of philosophy I had the line and the plummet always in my
+hands.  Many of its depths I found myself unable to fathom; but by
+caution in sounding, and the careful observations I made in the course of
+my voyage, I found out some truths of so much use to mankind that they
+acknowledge me to have been their benefactor.
+
+_Bayle_.--Their ignorance makes them think so.  Some other philosopher
+will come hereafter, and show those truths to be falsehoods.  He will
+pretend to discover other truths of equal importance.  A later sage will
+arise, perhaps among men now barbarous and unlearned, whose sagacious
+discoveries will discredit the opinions of his admired predecessor.  In
+philosophy, as in Nature, all changes its form, and one thing exists by
+the destruction of another.
+
+_Locke_.--Opinions taken up without a patient investigation, depending on
+terms not accurately defined, and principles begged without proof, like
+theories to explain the phenomena of Nature built on suppositions instead
+of experiments, must perpetually change and destroy one another.  But
+some opinions there are, even in matters not obvious to the common sense
+of mankind, which the mind has received on such rational grounds of
+assent that they are as immovable as the pillars of heaven, or (to speak
+philosophically) as the great laws of Nature, by which, under God, the
+universe is sustained.  Can you seriously think that because the
+hypothesis of your countryman Descartes, which was nothing but an
+ingenious, well-imagined romance, has been lately exploded, the system of
+Newton, which is built on experiments and geometry--the two most certain
+methods of discovering truth--will ever fail?  Or that, because the whims
+of fanatics and the divinity of the schoolmen cannot now be supported,
+the doctrines of that religion which I, the declared enemy of all
+enthusiasm and false reasoning, firmly believed and maintained, will ever
+be shaken?
+
+_Bayle_.--If you had asked Descartes, while he was in the height of his
+vogue, whether his system would be ever confuted by any other
+philosopher's, as that of Aristotle had been by his, what answer do you
+suppose he would have returned?
+
+_Locke_.--Come, come, Monsieur Bayle, you yourself know the difference
+between the foundations on which the credit of those systems and that of
+Newton is placed.  Your scepticism is more affected than real.  You found
+it a shorter way to a great reputation (the only wish of your heart) to
+object than to defend, to pull down than to set up.  And your talents
+were admirable for that kind of work.  Then your huddling together in a
+critical dictionary a pleasant tale, or obscene jest, and a grave
+argument against the Christian religion, a witty confutation of some
+absurd author, and an artful sophism to impeach some respectable truth,
+was particularly commodious to all our young smarts and smatterers in
+freethinking.  But what mischief have you not done to human society!  You
+have endeavoured, and with some degree of success, to shake those
+foundations on which the whole moral world and the great fabric of social
+happiness entirely rest.  How could you, as a philosopher, in the sober
+hours of reflection, answer for this to your conscience, even supposing
+you had doubts of the truth of a system which gives to virtue its
+sweetest hopes, to impenitent vice its greatest fears, and to true
+penitence its best consolations; which restrains even the least
+approaches to guilt, and yet makes those allowances for the infirmities
+of our nature which the stoic pride denied to it, but which its real
+imperfection and the goodness of its infinitely benevolent Creator so
+evidently require?
+
+_Bayle_.--The mind is free, and it loves to exert its freedom.  Any
+restraint upon it is a violence done to its nature, and a tyranny against
+which it has a right to rebel.
+
+_Locke_.--The mind, though free, has a governor within itself, which may
+and ought to limit the exercise of its freedom.  That governor is reason.
+
+_Bayle_.--Yes; but reason, like other governors, has a policy more
+dependent upon uncertain caprice than upon any fixed laws.  And if that
+reason which rules my mind or yours has happened to set up a favourite
+notion, it not only submits implicitly to it, but desires that the same
+respect should be paid to it by all the rest of mankind.  Now I hold that
+any man may lawfully oppose this desire in another; and that if he is
+wise, he will do his utmost endeavours to check it in himself.
+
+_Locke_.--Is there not also a weakness of a contrary nature to this you
+are now ridiculing?  Do we not often take a pleasure to show our own
+power and gratify our own pride by degrading notions set up by other men
+and generally respected?
+
+_Bayle_.--I believe we do; and by this means it often happens that if one
+man builds and consecrates a temple to folly, another pulls it down.
+
+_Locke_.--Do you think it beneficial to human society to have all temples
+pulled down?
+
+_Bayle_.--I cannot say that I do.
+
+_Locke_.--Yet I find not in your writings any mark of distinction to show
+us which you mean to save.
+
+_Bayle_.--A true philosopher, like an impartial historian, must be of no
+sect.
+
+_Locke_.--Is there no medium between the blind zeal of a sectary and a
+total indifference to all religion?
+
+_Bayle_.--With regard to morality I was not indifferent.
+
+_Locke_.--How could you, then, be indifferent with regard to the
+sanctions religion gives to morality?  How could you publish what tends
+so directly and apparently to weaken in mankind the belief of those
+sanctions?  Was not this sacrificing the great interests of virtue to the
+little motives of vanity?
+
+_Bayle_.--A man may act indiscreetly, but he cannot do wrong, by
+declaring that which, on a full discussion of the question, he sincerely
+thinks to be true.
+
+_Locke_.--An enthusiast who advances doctrines prejudicial to society, or
+opposes any that are useful to it, has the strength of opinion and the
+heat of a disturbed imagination to plead in alleviation of his fault; but
+your cool head and sound judgment can have no such excuse.  I know very
+well there are passages in all your works, and those not a few, where you
+talk like a rigid moralist.  I have also heard that your character was
+irreproachably good; but when, in the most laboured parts of your
+writings, you sap the surest foundations of all moral duties, what avails
+it that in others, or in the conduct of your life, you have appeared to
+respect them?  How many who have stronger passions than you had, and are
+desirous to get rid of the curb that restrains them, will lay hold of
+your scepticism to set themselves loose from all obligations of virtue!
+What a misfortune is it to have made such a use of such talents!  It
+would have been better for you and for mankind if you had been one of the
+dullest of Dutch theologians, or the most credulous monk in a Portuguese
+convent.  The riches of the mind, like those of Fortune, may be employed
+so perversely as to become a nuisance and pest instead of an ornament and
+support to society.
+
+_Bayle_.--You are very severe upon me.  But do you count it no merit, no
+service to mankind, to deliver them from the frauds and fetters of
+priestcraft, from the deliriums of fanaticism, and from the terrors and
+follies of superstition?  Consider how much mischief these have done to
+the world!  Even in the last age what massacres, what civil wars, what
+convulsions of government, what confusion in society, did they produce!
+Nay, in that we both lived in, though much more enlightened than the
+former, did I not see them occasion a violent persecution in my own
+country?  And can you blame me for striking at the root of these evils.
+
+_Locke_.--The root of these evils, you well know, was false religion; but
+you struck at the true.  Heaven and hell are not more different than the
+system of faith I defended and that which produced the horrors of which
+you speak.  Why would you so fallaciously confound them together in some
+of your writings, that it requires much more judgment, and a more
+diligent attention than ordinary readers have, to separate them again,
+and to make the proper distinctions?  This, indeed, is the great art of
+the most celebrated freethinkers.  They recommend themselves to warm and
+ingenuous minds by lively strokes of wit, and by arguments really strong,
+against superstition, enthusiasm, and priestcraft; but at the same time
+they insidiously throw the colours of these upon the fair face of true
+religion, and dress her out in their garb, with a malignant intention to
+render her odious or despicable to those who have not penetration enough
+to discern the impious fraud.  Some of them may have thus deceived
+themselves as well as others.  Yet it is certain no book that ever was
+written by the most acute of these gentlemen is so repugnant to
+priestcraft, to spiritual tyranny, to all absurd superstitions, to all
+that can tend to disturb or injure society, as that Gospel they so much
+affect to despise.
+
+_Bayle_.--Mankind is so made that, when they have been over-heated, they
+cannot be brought to a proper temper again till they have been
+over-cooled.  My scepticism might be necessary to abate the fever and
+frenzy of false religion.
+
+_Locke_.--A wise prescription, indeed, to bring on a paralytical state of
+the mind (for such a scepticism as yours is a palsy which deprives the
+mind of all vigour, and deadens its natural and vital powers) in order to
+take off a fever which temperance and the milk of the Evangelical
+doctrines would probably cure.
+
+_Bayle_.--I acknowledge that those medicines have a great power.  But few
+doctors apply them untainted with the mixture of some harsher drugs or
+some unsafe and ridiculous nostrums of their own.
+
+_Locke_.--What you now say is too true.  God has given us a most
+excellent physic for the soul in all its diseases, but bad and interested
+physicians, or ignorant and conceited quacks, administer it so ill to the
+rest of mankind that much of the benefit of it is unhappily lost.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XXV.
+
+
+ARCHIBALD, EARL OF DOUGLAS, DUKE OF TOURAINE--JOHN, DUKE OF ARGYLE AND
+GREENWICH, FIELD-MARSHAL OF HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S FORCES.
+
+_Argyle_.--Yes, noble Douglas, it grieves me that you and your son,
+together with the brave Earl of Buchan, should have employed so much
+valour and have thrown away your lives in fighting the battles of that
+State which, from its situation and interests, is the perpetual and most
+dangerous enemy to Great Britain.  A British nobleman serving France
+appears to me as unfortunate and as much out of his proper sphere as a
+Grecian commander engaged in the service of Persia would have appeared to
+Aristides or Agesilaus.
+
+_Douglas_.--In serving France I served Scotland.  The French were the
+natural allies to the Scotch, and by supporting their Crown I enabled my
+countrymen to maintain their independence against the English.
+
+_Argyle_.--The French, indeed, from the unhappy state of our country,
+were ancient allies to the Scotch, but that they ever were our natural
+allies I deny.  Their alliance was proper and necessary for us, because
+we were then in an unnatural state, disunited from England.  While that
+disunion continued, our monarchy was compelled to lean upon France for
+assistance and support.  The French power and policy kept us, I
+acknowledge, independent of the English, but dependent on them; and this
+dependence exposed us to many grievous calamities by drawing on our
+country the formidable arms of the English whenever it happened that the
+French and they had a quarrel.  The succours they afforded us were
+distant and uncertain.  Our enemy was at hand, superior to us in
+strength, though not in valour.  Our borders were ravaged; our kings were
+slain or led captive; we lost all the advantage of being the inhabitants
+of a great island; we had no commerce, no peace, no security, no degree
+of maritime power.  Scotland was a back-door through which the French,
+with our help, made their inroads into England; if they conquered, we
+obtained little benefit from it; but if they were defeated, we were
+always the devoted victims on whom the conquerors severely wreaked their
+resentment.
+
+_Douglas_.--The English suffered as much in those wars as we.  How
+terribly were their borders laid waste and depopulated by our sharp
+incursions!  How often have the swords of my ancestors been stained with
+the best blood of that nation!  Were not our victories at Bannockburn and
+at Otterburn as glorious as any that, with all the advantage of numbers,
+they have ever obtained over us?
+
+_Argyle_.--They were; but yet they did us no lasting good.  They left us
+still dependent on the protection of France.  They left us a poor, a
+feeble, a distressed, though a most valiant nation.  They irritated
+England, but could not subdue it, nor hinder our feeling such effects of
+its enmity as gave us no reason to rejoice in our triumphs.  How much
+more happily, in the auspicious reign of that queen who formed the Union,
+was my sword employed in humbling the foes of Great Britain!  With how
+superior a dignity did I appear in the combined British senate,
+maintaining the interests of the whole united people of England and
+Scotland against all foreign powers who attempted to disturb our general
+happiness or to invade our common rights!
+
+_Douglas_.--Your eloquence and your valour had unquestionably a much
+nobler and more spacious field to exercise themselves in than any of
+those who defended the interests of only a part of the island.
+
+_Argyle_.--Whenever I read any account of the wars between the Scotch and
+the English, I think I am reading a melancholy history of civil
+dissensions.  Whichever side is defeated, their loss appears to me a loss
+to the whole and an advantage to some foreign enemy of Great Britain.  But
+the strength of that island is made complete by the Union, and what a
+great English poet has justly said in one instance is now true in all:--
+
+   "The Hotspur and the Douglas, both together,
+   Are confident against the world in arms."
+
+Who can resist the English and Scotch valour combined?  When separated
+and opposed, they balanced each other; united, they will hold the balance
+of Europe.  If all the Scotch blood that has been shed for the French in
+unnatural wars against England had been poured out to oppose the ambition
+of France, in conjunction with the English--if all the English blood that
+has been spilt as unfortunately in useless wars against Scotland had been
+preserved, France would long ago have been rendered incapable of
+disturbing our peace, and Great Britain would have been the most powerful
+of nations.
+
+_Douglas_.--There is truth in all you have said.  But yet when I reflect
+on the insidious ambition of King Edward I., on the ungenerous arts he so
+treacherously employed to gain, or rather to steal, the sovereignty of
+our kingdom, and the detestable cruelty he showed to Wallace, our brave
+champion and martyr, my soul is up in arms against the insolence of the
+English, and I adore the memory of those patriots who died in asserting
+the independence of our Crown and the liberty of our nation.
+
+_Argyle_.--Had I lived in those days I should have joined with those
+patriots, and been the foremost to maintain so noble a cause.  The Scotch
+were not made to be subject to the English.  Their souls are too great
+for such a timid submission.  But they may unite and incorporate with a
+nation they would not obey.  Their scorn of a foreign yoke, their strong
+and generous love of independence and freedom, make their union with
+England more natural and more proper.  Had the spirit of the Scotch been
+servile or base, it could never have coalesced with that of the English.
+
+_Douglas_.--It is true that the minds of both nations are congenial and
+filled with the same noble virtues, the same impatience of servitude, the
+same magnanimity, courage, and prudence, the same genius for policy, for
+navigation and commerce, for sciences and arts.  Yet, notwithstanding
+this happy conformity, when I consider how long they were enemies to each
+other, what an hereditary hatred and jealousy had subsisted for many ages
+between them, what private passions, what prejudices, what contrary
+interests must have necessarily obstructed every step of the treaty, and
+how hard it was to overcome the strong opposition of national pride, I
+stand astonished that it was possible to unite the two kingdoms upon any
+conditions, and much more that it could be done with such equal regard
+and amicable fairness to both.
+
+_Argyle_.--It was indeed a most arduous and difficult undertaking.  The
+success of it must, I think, be thankfully ascribed, not only to the
+great firmness and prudence of those who had the management of it, but to
+the gracious assistance of Providence for the preservation of the
+reformed religion amongst us, which, in that conjuncture, if the union
+had not been made, would have been ruined in Scotland and much endangered
+in England.  The same good Providence has watched over and protected it
+since, in a most signal manner, against the attempts of an infatuated
+party in Scotland and the arts of France, who by her emissaries laboured
+to destroy it as soon as formed; because she justly foresaw that the
+continuance of it would be destructive to all her vast designs against
+the liberty of Europe.  I myself had the honour to have a principal share
+in subduing one rebellion designed to subvert it, and since my death it
+has been, I hope, established for ever, not only by the defeat of another
+rebellion, which came upon us in the midst of a dangerous war with
+France, but by measures prudently taken in order to prevent such
+disturbances for the future.  The ministers of the Crown have proposed
+and the British legislature has enacted a wise system of laws, the object
+of which is to reform and to civilise the Highlands of Scotland; to
+deliver the people there from the arbitrary power and oppression of their
+chieftains; to carry the royal justice and royal protection into the
+wildest parts of their mountains; to hinder their natural valour from
+being abused and perverted to the detriment of their country; and to
+introduce among them arts, agriculture, commerce, tranquillity, with all
+the improvements of social and polished life.
+
+_Douglas_.--By what you now tell me you give me the highest idea of the
+great prince, your master, who, after having been provoked by such a
+wicked rebellion, instead of enslaving the people of the Highlands, or
+laying the hand of power more heavily upon them (which is the usual
+consequence of unsuccessful revolts), has conferred on them the
+inestimable blessings of liberty, justice, and good order.  To act thus
+is indeed to perfect the union and make all the inhabitants of Great
+Britain acknowledge, with gratitude and with joy, that they are subjects
+of the same well-regulated kingdom, and governed with the same impartial
+affection by the sovereign and father of the whole commonwealth.
+
+_Argyle_.--The laws I have mentioned and the humane benevolent policy of
+His Majesty's Government have already produced very salutary effects in
+that part of the kingdom, and, if steadily pursued, will produce many
+more.  But no words can recount to you the infinite benefits which have
+attended the union in the northern counties of England and the southern
+of Scotland.
+
+_Douglas_.--The fruits of it must be, doubtless, most sensible there,
+where the perpetual enmity between the two nations had occasioned the
+greatest disorder and desolation.
+
+_Argyle_.--Oh, Douglas, could you revive and return into Scotland what a
+delightful alteration would you see in that country.  All those great
+tracts of land, which in your time lay untilled on account of the inroads
+of the bordering English, or the feuds and discords that raged with
+perpetual violence within our own distracted kingdom, you would now
+behold cultivated and smiling with plenty.  Instead of the castles, which
+every baron was compelled to erect for the defence of his family, and
+where he lived in the barbarism of Gothic pride, among miserable vassals
+oppressed by the abuse of his feudal powers, your eyes would be charmed
+with elegant country houses, adorned with fine plantations and beautiful
+gardens, while happy villages or gay towns are rising about them and
+enlivening the prospect with every image of rural wealth.  On our coasts
+trading cities, full of new manufactures, and continually increasing the
+extent of their commerce.  In our ports and harbours innumerable merchant
+ships, richly loaded, and protected from all enemies by the matchless
+fleet of Great Britain.  But of all improvements the greatest is in the
+minds of the Scotch.  These have profited, even more than their lands, by
+the culture which the settled peace and tranquillity produced by the
+union have happily given to them, and they have discovered such talents
+in all branches of literature as might render the English jealous of
+being excelled by their genius, if there could remain a competition, when
+there remains no distinction between the two nations.
+
+_Douglas_.--There may be emulation without jealousy, and the efforts,
+which that emulation will excite, may render our island superior in the
+fame of wit and good learning to Italy or to Greece; a superiority, which
+I have learnt in the Elysian fields to prefer even to that which is
+acquired by arms.  But one doubt still remains with me concerning the
+union.  I have been informed that no more than sixteen of our peers,
+except those who have English peerages (which some of the noblest have
+not), now sit in the House of Lords as representatives of the rest.  Does
+not this in a great measure diminish those peers who are not elected?  And
+have you not found the election of the sixteen too dependent on the
+favour of a court?
+
+_Argyle_.--It was impossible that the English could ever consent in the
+Treaty of Union, to admit a greater number to have places and votes in
+the Upper House of Parliament, but all the Scotch peerage is virtually
+there by representation.  And those who are not elected have every
+dignity and right of the peerage, except the privilege of sitting in the
+House of Lords and some others depending thereon.
+
+_Douglas_.--They have so; but when parliaments enjoy such a share in the
+government of a country as ours do at this time, to be personally there
+is a privilege and a dignity of the highest importance.
+
+_Argyle_.--I wish it had been possible to impart it to all.  But your
+reason will tell you it was not.  And consider, my lord, that, till the
+Revolution in 1688, the power vested by our Government in the Lords of
+the Articles had made our parliaments much more subject to the influence
+of the Crown than our elections are now.  As, by the manner in which they
+were constituted, those lords were no less devoted to the king than his
+own privy council, and as no proposition could then be presented in
+Parliament if rejected by them, they gave him a negative before debate.
+This, indeed, was abolished upon the accession of King William III., with
+many other oppressive and despotical powers, which had rendered our
+nobles abject slaves to the Crown, while they were allowed to be tyrants
+over the people.  But if King James or his son had been restored, the
+government he had exercised would have been re-established, and nothing
+but the union of the two kingdoms could have effectually prevented that
+restoration.  We likewise owe to the union the subsequent abolition of
+the Scotch privy council, which had been the most grievous engine of
+tyranny, and that salutary law which declared that no crimes should be
+high treason or misprision of treason in Scotland but such as were so in
+England, and gave us the English methods of trial in cases of that
+nature; whereas before there were so many species of treasons, the
+construction of them was so uncertain, and the trials were so arbitrary,
+that no man could be safe from suffering as a traitor.  By the same Act
+of Parliament we also received a communication of that noble privilege of
+the English, exemption from torture--a privilege which, though essential
+both to humanity and to justice, no other nation in Europe, not even the
+freest republics, can boast of possessing.  Shall we, then, take offence
+at some inevitable circumstances, which may be objected to, on our part,
+in the Treaty of Union, when it has delivered us from slavery, and all
+the worst evils that a state can suffer?  It might be easily shown that,
+in his political and civil condition, every baron in Scotland is much
+happier now, and much more independent, than the highest was under that
+constitution of government which continued in Scotland even after the
+expulsion of King James II.  The greatest enemies to the union are the
+friends of that king in whose reign, and in his brother's, the kingdom of
+Scotland was subjected to a despotism as arbitrary as that of France, and
+more tyrannically administered.
+
+_Douglas_.--All I have heard of those reigns makes me blush with
+indignation at the servility of our nobles, who could endure them so
+long.  What, then, was become of that undaunted Scotch spirit, which had
+dared to resist the Plantagenets in the height of their power and pride?
+Could the descendants of those who had disdained to be subjects of Edward
+I. submit to be slaves of Charles II. or James?
+
+_Argyle_.--They seemed in general to have lost every characteristic of
+their natural temper, except a desire to abuse the royal authority for
+the gratification of their private resentments in family quarrels.
+
+_Douglas_.--Your grandfather, my lord, has the glory of not deserving
+this censure.
+
+_Argyle_.--I am proud that his spirit, and the principles he professed,
+drew upon him the injustice and fury of those times.  But there needs no
+other proof than the nature and the manner of his condemnation to show
+what a wretched state our nobility then were in, and what an inestimable
+advantage it is to them that they are now to be tried as peers of Great
+Britain, and have the benefit of those laws which imparted to us the
+equity and the freedom of the English Constitution.
+
+Upon the whole, as much as wealth is preferable to poverty, liberty to
+oppression, and national strength to national weakness, so much has
+Scotland incontestably gained by the union.  England, too, has secured by
+it every public blessing which was before enjoyed by her, and has greatly
+augmented her strength.  The martial spirit of the Scotch, their hardy
+bodies, their acute and vigorous minds, their industry, their activity,
+are now employed to the benefit of the whole island.  He is now a bad
+Scotchman who is not a good Englishman, and he is a bad Englishman who is
+not a good Scotchman.  Mutual intercourse, mutual interests, mutual
+benefits, must naturally be productive of mutual affection.  And when
+that is established, when our hearts are sincerely united, many great
+things, which some remains of jealousy and distrust, or narrow local
+partialities, may hitherto have obstructed, will be done for the good of
+the whole United Kingdom.  How much may the revenues of Great Britain be
+increased by the further increase of population, of industry, and of
+commerce in Scotland!  What a mighty addition to the stock of national
+wealth will arise from the improvement of our most northern counties,
+which are infinitely capable of being improved!  The briars and thorns
+are in a great measure grubbed up; the flowers and fruits may soon be
+planted.  And what more pleasing, or what more glorious employment can
+any government have, than to attend to the cultivating of such a
+plantation?
+
+_Douglas_.--The prospect you open to me of happiness to my country
+appears so fair, that it makes me amends for the pain with which I
+reflect on the times wherein I lived, and indeed on our whole history for
+several ages.
+
+_Argyle_.--That history does, in truth, present to the mind a long series
+of the most direful objects, assassinations, rebellions, anarchy,
+tyranny, and religion itself, either cruel, or gloomy and unsocial.  An
+historian who would paint it in its true colours must take the pencil of
+Guercino or Salvator Rosa.  But the most agreeable imagination can hardly
+figure to itself a more pleasing scene of private and public felicity
+than will naturally result from the union, if all the prejudices against
+it, and all distinctions that may tend on either side to keep up an idea
+of separate interests, or to revive a sharp remembrance of national
+animosities, can be removed.
+
+_Douglas_.--If they can be removed!  I think it impossible they can be
+retained.  To resist the union is indeed to rebel against Nature.  She
+has joined the two countries, has fenced them both with the sea against
+the invasion of all other nations, but has laid them entirely open the
+one to the other.  Accursed be he who endeavours to divide them.  What
+God has joined let no man put asunder.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XXVI.
+
+
+CADMUS--HERCULES.
+
+_Hercules_.--Do you pretend to sit as high on Olympus as Hercules?  Did
+you kill the Nemean lion, the Erymanthian boar, the Lernean serpent, and
+Stymphalian birds?  Did you destroy tyrants and robbers?  You value
+yourself greatly on subduing one serpent; I did as much as that while I
+lay in my cradle.
+
+_Cadmus_.--It is not on account of the serpent I boast myself a greater
+benefactor to Greece than you.  Actions should be valued by their utility
+rather than their eclat.  I taught Greece the art of writing, to which
+laws owe their precision and permanency.  You subdued monsters; I
+civilised men.  It is from untamed passions, not from wild beasts, that
+the greatest evils arise to human society.  By wisdom, by art, by the
+united strength of civil community, men have been enabled to subdue the
+whole race of lions, bears, and serpents, and what is more, to bind in
+laws and wholesome regulations the ferocious violence and dangerous
+treachery of the human disposition.  Had lions been destroyed only in
+single combat, men had had but a bad time of it; and what but laws could
+awe the men who killed the lions?  The genuine glory, the proper
+distinction of the rational species, arises from the perfection of the
+mental powers.  Courage is apt to be fierce, and strength is often
+exerted in acts of oppression.  But wisdom is the associate of justice.
+It assists her to form equal laws, to pursue right measures, to correct
+power, protect weakness, and to unite individuals in a common interest
+and general welfare.  Heroes may kill tyrants, but it is wisdom and laws
+that prevent tyranny and oppression.  The operations of policy far
+surpass the labours of Hercules, preventing many evils which valour and
+might cannot even redress.  You heroes consider nothing but glory, and
+hardly regard whether the conquests which raise your fame are really
+beneficial to your country.  Unhappy are the people who are governed by
+valour not directed by prudence, and not mitigated by the gentle arts!
+
+_Hercules_.--I do not expect to find an admirer of my strenuous life in
+the man who taught his countrymen to sit still and read, and to lose the
+hours of youth and action in idle speculation and the sport of words.
+
+_Cadmus_.--An ambition to have a place in the registers of fame is the
+Eurystheus which imposes heroic labours on mankind.  The muses incite to
+action as well as entertain the hours of repose; and I think you should
+honour them for presenting to heroes such a noble recreation as may
+prevent their taking up the distaff when they lay down the club.
+
+_Hercules_.--Wits as well as heroes can take up the distaff.  What think
+you of their thin-spun systems of philosophy, or lascivious poems, or
+Milesian fables?  Nay, what is still worse, are there not panegyrics on
+tyrants, and books that blaspheme the gods and perplex the natural sense
+of right and wrong?  I believe if Eurystheus was to set me to work again
+he would find me a worse task than any he imposed; he would make me read
+through a great library; and I would serve it as I did the hydra, I would
+burn as I went on, that one chimera might not rise from another to plague
+mankind.  I should have valued myself more on clearing the library than
+on cleansing the Augean stables.
+
+_Cadmus_.--It is in those libraries only that the memory of your labours
+exists.  The heroes of Marathon, the patriots of Thermopylae, owe their
+immortality to me.  All the wise institutions of lawgivers and all the
+doctrines of sages had perished in the ear, like a dream related, if
+letters had not preserved them.  Oh Hercules! it is not for the man who
+preferred virtue to pleasure to be an enemy to the muses.  Let
+Sardanapalus and the silken sons of luxury, who have wasted life in
+inglorious ease, despise the records of action which bear no honourable
+testimony to their lives.  But true merit, heroic virtue, each genuine
+offspring of immortal Jove, should honour the sacred source of lasting
+fame.
+
+_Hercules_.--Indeed, if writers employed themselves only in recording the
+acts of great men, much might be said in their favour.  But why do they
+trouble people with their meditations?  Can it signify to the world what
+an idle man has been thinking?
+
+_Cadmus_.--Yes, it may.  The most important and extensive advantages
+mankind enjoy are greatly owing to men who have never quitted their
+closets.  To them mankind is obliged for the facility and security of
+navigation.  The invention of the compass has opened to them new worlds.
+The knowledge of the mechanical powers has enabled them to construct such
+wonderful machines as perform what the united labour of millions by the
+severest drudgery could not accomplish.  Agriculture, too, the most
+useful of arts, has received its share of improvement from the same
+source.  Poetry likewise is of excellent use to enable the memory to
+retain with more ease, and to imprint with more energy upon the heart,
+precepts of virtue and virtuous actions.  Since we left the world, from
+the little root of a few letters, science has spread its branches over
+all nature, and raised its head to the heavens.  Some philosophers have
+entered so far into the counsels of divine wisdom as to explain much of
+the great operations of nature.  The dimensions and distances of the
+planets, the causes of their revolutions, the path of comets, and the
+ebbing and flowing of tides are understood and explained.  Can anything
+raise the glory of the human species more than to see a little creature,
+inhabiting a small spot, amidst innumerable worlds, taking a survey of
+the universe, comprehending its arrangement, and entering into the scheme
+of that wonderful connection and correspondence of things so remote, and
+which it seems the utmost exertion of Omnipotence to have established?
+What a volume of wisdom, what a noble theology do these discoveries open
+to us!  While some superior geniuses have soared to these sublime
+subjects, other sagacious and diligent minds have been inquiring into the
+most minute works of the Infinite Artificer; the same care, the same
+providence is exerted through the whole, and we should learn from it that
+to true wisdom utility and fitness appear perfection, and whatever is
+beneficial is noble.
+
+_Hercules_.--I approve of science as far as it is assistant to action.  I
+like the improvement of navigation and the discovery of the greater part
+of the globe, because it opens a wider field for the master spirits of
+the world to bustle in.
+
+_Cadmus_.--There spoke the soul of Hercules.  But if learned men are to
+be esteemed for the assistance they give to active minds in their
+schemes, they are not less to be valued for their endeavours to give them
+a right direction and moderate their too great ardour.  The study of
+history will teach the warrior and the legislator by what means armies
+have been victorious and states have become powerful; and in the private
+citizen they will inculcate the love of liberty and order.  The writings
+of sages point out a private path of virtue, and show that the best
+empire is self-government, and subduing our passions the noblest of
+conquests.
+
+_Hercules_.--The true spirit of heroism acts by a sort of inspiration,
+and wants neither the experience of history nor the doctrines of
+philosophers to direct it.  But do not arts and sciences render men
+effeminate, luxurious, and inactive? and can you deny that wit and
+learning are often made subservient to very bad purposes?
+
+_Cadmus_.--I will own that there are some natures so happily formed they
+hardly want the assistance of a master, and the rules of art, to give
+them force or grace in everything they do.  But these heaven-inspired
+geniuses are few.  As learning flourishes only where ease, plenty, and
+mild government subsist, in so rich a soil, and under so soft a climate,
+the weeds of luxury will spring up among the flowers of art; but the
+spontaneous weeds would grow more rank, if they were allowed the
+undisturbed possession of the field.  Letters keep a frugal, temperate
+nation from growing ferocious, a rich one from becoming entirely sensual
+and debauched.  Every gift of the gods is sometimes abused; but wit and
+fine talents by a natural law gravitate towards virtue; accidents may
+drive them out of their proper direction; but such accidents are a sort
+of prodigies, and, like other prodigies, it is an alarming omen, and of
+dire portent to the times.  For if virtue cannot keep to her allegiance
+those men, who in their hearts confess her divine right, and know the
+value of her laws, on whose fidelity and obedience can she depend?  May
+such geniuses never descend to flatter vice, encourage folly, or
+propagate irreligion; but exert all their powers in the service of
+virtue, and celebrate the noble choice of those, who, like you, preferred
+her to pleasure.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XXVII.
+
+
+MERCURY--AND A MODERN FINE LADY.
+
+_Mrs. Modish_.--Indeed, Mr. Mercury, I cannot have the pleasure of
+waiting upon you now.  I am engaged, absolutely engaged.
+
+_Mercury_.--I know you have an amiable, affectionate husband, and several
+fine children; but you need not be told, that neither conjugal
+attachments, maternal affections, nor even the care of a kingdom's
+welfare or a nation's glory, can excuse a person who has received a
+summons to the realms of death.  If the grim messenger was not as
+peremptory as unwelcome, Charon would not get a passenger (except now and
+then a hypochondriacal Englishman) once in a century.  You must be
+content to leave your husband and family, and pass the Styx.
+
+_Mrs. Modish_.--I did not mean to insist on any engagement with my
+husband and children; I never thought myself engaged to them.  I had no
+engagements but such as were common to women of my rank.  Look on my
+chimney-piece, and you will see I was engaged to the play on Mondays,
+balls on Tuesdays, the opera on Saturdays, and to card assemblies the
+rest of the week, for two months to come; and it would be the rudest
+thing in the world not to keep my appointments.  If you will stay for me
+till the summer season, I will wait on you with all my heart.  Perhaps
+the Elysian fields may be less detestable than the country in our world.
+Pray have you a fine Vauxhall and Ranelagh?  I think I should not dislike
+drinking the Lethe waters when you have a full season.
+
+_Mercury_.--Surely you could not like to drink the waters of oblivion,
+who have made pleasure the business, end, and aim of your life!  It is
+good to drown cares, but who would wash away the remembrance of a life of
+gaiety and pleasure.
+
+_Mrs. Modish_.--Diversion was indeed the business of my life, but as to
+pleasure, I have enjoyed none since the novelty of my amusements was gone
+off.  Can one be pleased with seeing the same thing over and over again?
+Late hours and fatigue gave me the vapours, spoiled the natural
+cheerfulness of my temper, and even in youth wore away my youthful
+vivacity.
+
+_Mercury_.--If this way of life did not give you pleasure, why did you
+continue in it?  I suppose you did not think it was very meritorious?
+
+_Mrs. Modish_.--I was too much engaged to think at all: so far indeed my
+manner of life was agreeable enough.  My friends always told me
+diversions were necessary, and my doctor assured me dissipation was good
+for my spirits; my husband insisted that it was not, and you know that
+one loves to oblige one's friends, comply with one's doctor, and
+contradict one's husband; and besides I was ambitious to be thought _du
+bon ton_.
+
+_Mercury_.--_Bon ton_! what is that, madam?  Pray define it.
+
+_Mrs. Modish_.--Oh sir, excuse me, it is one of the privileges of the
+_bon ton_ never to define, or be defined.  It is the child and the parent
+of jargon.  It is--I can never tell you what it is: but I will try to
+tell you what it is not.  In conversation it is not wit; in manners it is
+not politeness; in behaviour it is not address; but it is a little like
+them all.  It can only belong to people of a certain rank, who live in a
+certain manner, with certain persons, who have not certain virtues, and
+who have certain vices, and who inhabit a certain part of the town.  Like
+a place by courtesy, it gets a higher rank than the person can claim, but
+which those who have a legal title to precedency dare not dispute, for
+fear of being thought not to understand the rules of politeness.  Now,
+sir, I have told you as much as I know of it, though I have admired and
+aimed at it all my life.
+
+_Mercury_.--Then, madam, you have wasted your time, faded your beauty,
+and destroyed your health, for the laudable purposes of contradicting
+your husband, and being this something and this nothing called the _bon
+ton_.
+
+_Mrs. Modish_.--What would you have had me do?
+
+_Mercury_.--I will follow your mode of instructing.  I will tell you what
+I would not have had you do.  I would not have had you sacrifice your
+time, your reason, and your duties, to fashion and folly.  I would not
+have had you neglect your husband's happiness and your children's
+education.
+
+_Mrs. Modish_.--As to the education of my daughters, I spared no expense;
+they had a dancing-master, music-master, and drawing-mister, and a French
+governess to teach them behaviour and the French language.
+
+_Mercury_.--So their religion, sentiments, and manners were to be learnt
+from a dancing-master, music-master, and a chambermaid!  Perhaps they
+might prepare them to catch the _bon ton_.  Your daughters must have been
+so educated as to fit them to be wives without conjugal affection, and
+mothers without maternal care.  I am sorry for the sort of life they are
+commencing, and for that which you have just concluded.  Minos is a sour
+old gentleman, without the least smattering of the _bon ton_, and I am in
+a fright for you.  The best thing I can advise you is to do in this world
+as you did in the other, keep happiness in your view, but never take the
+road that leads to it.  Remain on this side Styx, wander about without
+end or aim, look into the Elysian fields, but never attempt to enter into
+them, lest Minos should push you into Tartarus; for duties neglected may
+bring on a sentence not much less severe than crimes committed.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XXVIII.
+
+
+PLUTARCH--CHARON--AND A MODERN BOOKSELLER.
+
+_Charon_.--Here is a fellow who is very unwilling to land in our
+territories.  He says he is rich, has a great deal of business in the
+other world, and must needs return to it; he is so troublesome and
+obstreperous I know not what to do with him.  Take him under your care,
+therefore, good Plutarch; you will easily awe him into order and decency
+by the superiority an author has over a bookseller.
+
+_Bookseller_.--Am I got into a world so absolutely the reverse of that I
+left, that here authors domineer over booksellers?  Dear Charon, let me
+go back, and I will pay any price for my passage; but, if I must stay,
+leave me not with any of those who are styled classical authors.  As to
+you, Plutarch, I have a particular animosity against you for having
+almost occasioned my ruin.  When I first set up shop, understanding but
+little of business, I unadvisedly bought an edition of your "Lives," a
+pack of old Greeks and Romans, which cost me a great sum of money.  I
+could never get off above twenty sets of them.  I sold a few to the
+Universities, and some to Eton and Westminster, for it is reckoned a
+pretty book for boys and undergraduates; but, unless a man has the luck
+to light on a pedant, he shall not sell a set of them in twenty years.
+
+_Plutarch_.--From the merit of the subjects, I had hoped another
+reception for my works.  I will own, indeed, that I am not always
+perfectly accurate in every circumstance, nor do I give so exact and
+circumstantial a detail of the actions of my heroes as may be expected
+from a biographer who has confined himself to one or two characters.  A
+zeal to preserve the memory of great men, and to extend the influence of
+such noble examples, made me undertake more than I could accomplish in
+the first degree of perfection; but surely the characters of my
+illustrious men are not so imperfectly sketched that they will not stand
+forth to all ages as patterns of virtue and incitements to glory.  My
+reflections are allowed to be deep and sagacious; and what can be more
+useful to a reader than a wise man's judgment on a great man's conduct?
+In my writings you will find no rash censures, no undeserved encomiums,
+no mean compliance with popular opinions, no vain ostentation of critical
+skill, nor any affected finesse.  In my "Parallels," which used to be
+admired as pieces of excellent judgment, I compare with perfect
+impartiality one great man with another, and each with the rule of
+justice.  If, indeed, latter ages have produced greater men and better
+writers, my heroes and my works ought to give place to them.  As the
+world has now the advantage of much better rules of morality than the
+unassisted reason of poor Pagans could form, I do not wonder that those
+vices, which appeared to us as mere blemishes in great characters, should
+seem most horrid deformities in the purer eyes of the present age--a
+delicacy I do not blame, but admire and commend.  And I must censure you
+for endeavouring, if you could publish better examples, to obtrude on
+your countrymen such as were defective.  I rejoice at the preference
+which they give to perfect and unalloyed virtue; and as I shall ever
+retain a high veneration for the illustrious men of every age, I should
+be glad if you would give me some account of those persons who in wisdom,
+justice, valour, patriotism, have eclipsed my Solon, Numa, Camillus, and
+other boasts of Greece or Rome.
+
+_Bookseller_.--Why, Master Plutarch, you are talking Greek indeed.  That
+work which repaired the loss I sustained by the costly edition of your
+books was "The Lives of the Highwaymen;" but I should never have grown
+rich if it had not been by publishing "The Lives of Men that Never
+Lived."  You must know that, though in all times it was possible to have
+a great deal of learning and very little wisdom, yet it is only by a
+modern improvement in the art of writing that a man may read all his life
+and have no learning or knowledge at all, which begins to be an advantage
+of the greatest importance.  There is as natural a war between your men
+of science and fools as between the cranes and the pigmies of old.  Most
+of our young men having deserted to the fools, the party of the learned
+is near being beaten out of the field; and I hope in a little while they
+will not dare to peep out of their forts and fastnesses at Oxford and
+Cambridge.  There let them stay and study old musty moralists till one
+falls in love with the Greek, another with the Roman virtue; but our men
+of the world should read our new books, which teach them to have no
+virtue at all.  No book is fit for a gentleman's reading which is not
+void of facts and of doctrines, that he may not grow a pedant in his
+morals or conversation.  I look upon history (I mean real history) to be
+one of the worst kinds of study.  Whatever has happened may happen again,
+and a well-bred man may unwarily mention a parallel instance he had met
+with in history and be betrayed into the awkwardness of introducing into
+his discourse a Greek, a Roman, or even a Gothic name; but when a
+gentleman has spent his time in reading adventures that never occurred,
+exploits that never were achieved, and events that not only never did,
+but never can happen, it is impossible that in life or in discourse he
+should ever apply them.  A secret history, in which there is no secret
+and no history, cannot tempt indiscretion to blab or vanity to quote; and
+by this means modern conversation flows gentle and easy, unencumbered
+with matter and unburdened of instruction.  As the present studies throw
+no weight or gravity into discourse and manners, the women are not afraid
+to read our books, which not only dispose to gallantry and coquetry, but
+give rules for them.  Caesar's "Commentaries," and the "Account of
+Xenophon's Expedition," are not more studied by military commanders than
+our novels are by the fair--to a different purpose, indeed; for their
+military maxims teach to conquer, ours to yield.  Those inflame the vain
+and idle love of glory: these inculcate a noble contempt of reputation.
+The women have greater obligations to our writers than the men.  By the
+commerce of the world men might learn much of what they get from books;
+but the poor women, who in their early youth are confined and restrained,
+if it were not for the friendly assistance of books, would remain long in
+an insipid purity of mind, with a discouraging reserve of behaviour.
+
+_Plutarch_.--As to your men who have quitted the study of virtue for the
+study of vice, useful truth for absurd fancy, and real history for
+monstrous fiction, I have neither regard nor compassion for them; but I
+am concerned for the women who are betrayed into these dangerous studies;
+and I wish for their sakes I had expatiated more on the character of
+Lucretia and some other heroines.
+
+_Bookseller_.--I tell you, our women do not read in order to live or to
+die like Lucretia.  If you would inform us that a _billet-doux_ was found
+in her cabinet after her death, or give a hint as if Tarquin really saw
+her in the arms of a slave, and that she killed herself not to suffer the
+shame of a discovery, such anecdotes would sell very well.  Or if, even
+by tradition, but better still, if by papers in the Portian family, you
+could show some probability that Portia died of dram drinking, you would
+oblige the world very much; for you must know, that next to new-invented
+characters, we are fond of new lights upon ancient characters; I mean
+such lights as show a reputed honest man to have been a concealed knave,
+an illustrious hero a pitiful coward, &c.  Nay, we are so fond of these
+kinds of information as to be pleased sometimes to see a character
+cleared from a vice or crime it has been charged with, provided the
+person concerned be actually dead.  But in this case the evidence must be
+authentic, and amount to a demonstration; in the other, a detection is
+not necessary; a slight suspicion will do, if it concerns a really good
+and great character.
+
+_Plutarch_.--I am the more surprised at what you say of the taste of your
+contemporaries, as I met with a Frenchman who assured me that less than a
+century ago he had written a much admired "Life of Cyrus," under the name
+of Artamenes, in which he ascribed to him far greater actions than those
+recorded of him by Xenophon and Herodotus; and that many of the great
+heroes of history had been treated in the same manner; that empires were
+gained and battles decided by the valour of a single man, imagination
+bestowing what nature has denied, and the system of human affairs
+rendered impossible.
+
+_Bookseller_.--I assure you those books were very useful to the authors
+and their booksellers; and for whose benefit besides should a man write?
+These romances were very fashionable and had a great sale: they fell in
+luckily with the humour of the age.
+
+_Plutarch_.--Monsieur Scuderi tells me they were written in the times of
+vigour and spirit, in the evening of the gallant days of chivalry, which,
+though then declining, had left in the hearts of men a warm glow of
+courage and heroism; and they were to be called to books as to battle, by
+the sound of the trumpet.  He says, too, that if writers had not
+accommodated themselves to the prejudices of the age, and written of
+bloody battles and desperate encounters, their works would have been
+esteemed too effeminate an amusement for gentlemen.  Histories of
+chivalry, instead of enervating, tend to invigorate the mind, and
+endeavour to raise human nature above the condition which is naturally
+prescribed to it; but as strict justice, patriotic motives, prudent
+counsels, and a dispassionate choice of what upon the whole is fittest
+and best, do not direct these heroes of romance, they cannot serve for
+instruction and example, like the great characters of true history.  It
+has ever been my opinion, that only the clear and steady light of truth
+can guide men to virtue, and that the lesson which is impracticable must
+be unuseful.  Whoever shall design to regulate his conduct by these
+visionary characters will be in the condition of superstitious people,
+who choose rather to act by intimations they receive in the dreams of the
+night, than by the sober counsels of morning meditation.  Yet I confess
+it has been the practice of many nations to incite men to virtue by
+relating the deeds of fabulous heroes: but surely it is the custom only
+of yours to incite them to vice by the history of fabulous scoundrels.
+Men of fine imagination have soared into the regions of fancy to bring
+back Astrea; you go thither in search of Pandora.  Oh disgrace to
+letters!  Oh shame to the muses!
+
+_Bookseller_.--You express great indignation at our present race of
+writers; but believe me the fault lies chiefly on the side of the
+readers.  As Monsieur Scuderi observed to you, authors must comply with
+the manners and disposition of those who are to read them.  There must be
+a certain sympathy between the book and the reader to create a good
+liking.  Would you present a modern fine gentleman, who is negligently
+lolling in an easy chair, with the labours of Hercules for his
+recreation? or make him climb the Alps with Hannibal when he is expiring
+with the fatigue of last night's ball?  Our readers must be amused,
+flattered, soothed; such adventures must be offered to them as they would
+like to have a share in.
+
+_Plutarch_.--It should be the first object of writers to correct the
+vices and follies of the age.  I will allow as much compliance with the
+mode of the times as will make truth and good morals agreeable.  Your
+love of fictitious characters might be turned to good purpose if those
+presented to the public were to be formed on the rules of religion and
+morality.  It must be confessed that history, being employed only about
+illustrious persons, public events, and celebrated actions, does not
+supply us with such instances of domestic merit as one could wish.  Our
+heroes are great in the field and the senate, and act well in great
+scenes on the theatre of the world; but the idea of a man, who in the
+silent retired path of life never deviates into vice, who considers no
+spectator but the Omniscient Being, and solicits no applause but His
+approbation, is the noblest model that can be exhibited to mankind, and
+would be of the most general use.  Examples of domestic virtue would be
+more particularly useful to women than those of great heroines.  The
+virtues of women are blasted by the breath of public fame, as flowers
+that grow on an eminence are faded by the sun and wind which expand them.
+But true female praise, like the music of the spheres, arises from a
+gentle, a constant, and an equal progress in the path marked out for them
+by their great Creator; and, like the heavenly harmony, it is not adapted
+to the gross ear of mortals, but is reserved for the delight of higher
+beings, by whose wise laws they were ordained to give a silent light and
+shed a mild, benignant influence on the world.
+
+_Bookseller_.--We have had some English and French writers who aimed at
+what you suggest.  In the supposed character of Clarissa (said a
+clergyman to me a few days before I left the world) one finds the dignity
+of heroism tempered by the meekness and humility of religion, a perfect
+purity of mind, and sanctity of manners.  In that of Sir Charles
+Grandison, a noble pattern of every private virtue, with sentiments so
+exalted as to render him equal to every public duty.
+
+_Plutarch_.--Are both these characters by the same author?
+
+_Bookseller_.--Ay, Master Plutarch, and what will surprise you more, this
+author has printed for me.
+
+_Plutarch_.--By what you say, it is pity he should print any work but his
+own.  Are there no other authors who write in this manner?
+
+_Bookseller_.--Yes, we have another writer of these imaginary histories;
+one who has not long since descended to these regions.  His name is
+Fielding, and his works, as I have heard the best judges say, have a true
+spirit of comedy and an exact representation of nature, with fine moral
+touches.  He has not, indeed, given lessons of pure and consummate
+virtue, but he has exposed vice and meanness with all the powers of
+ridicule; and we have some other good wits who have exerted their talents
+to the purposes you approve.  Monsieur de Marivaux, and some other French
+writers, have also proceeded much upon the same plan with a spirit and
+elegance which give their works no mean rank among the _belles lettres_.
+I will own that, when there is wit and entertainment enough in a book to
+make it sell, it is not the worse for good morals.
+
+_Charon_.--I think, Plutarch, you have made this gentleman a little more
+humble, and now I will carry him the rest of his journey.  But he is too
+frivolous an animal to present to wise Minos.  I wish Mercury were here;
+he would damn him for his dulness.  I have a good mind to carry him to
+the Danaides, and leave him to pour water into their vessels which, like
+his late readers, are destined to eternal emptiness.  Or shall I chain
+him to the rock, side to side by Prometheus, not for having attempted to
+steal celestial fire, in order to animate human forms, but for having
+endeavoured to extinguish that which Jupiter had imparted?  Or shall we
+constitute him _friseur_ to Tisiphone, and make him curl up her locks
+with his satires and libels?
+
+_Plutarch_.--Minos does not esteem anything frivolous that affects the
+morals of mankind.  He punishes authors as guilty of every fault they
+have countenanced and every crime they have encouraged, and denounces
+heavy vengeance for the injuries which virtue or the virtuous have
+suffered in consequence of their writings.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XXIX.
+
+
+PUBLIUS CORNELIUS SCIPIO AFRICANUS--CAIUS JULIUS CAESAR.
+
+_Scipio_.--Alas, Caesar! how unhappily did you end a life made
+illustrious by the greatest exploits in war and most various civil
+talents!
+
+_Caesar_.--Can Scipio wonder at the ingratitude of Rome to her generals?
+Did not he reproach her with it in the epitaph he ordered to be inscribed
+upon his tomb at Liternum, that mean village in Campania, to which she
+had driven the conqueror of Hannibal and of Carthage?  I also, after
+subduing her most dangerous enemies, the Helvetians, the Gauls, and the
+Germans, after raising her name to the highest pitch of glory, should
+have been deprived of my province, reduced to live as a private man under
+the power of my enemies and the enviers of my greatness; nay, brought to
+a trial and condemned by the judgment of a faction, if I had not led my
+victorious troops to Rome, and by their assistance, after all my offers
+of peace had been iniquitously rejected, made myself master of a State
+which knew so ill how to recompense superior merit.  Resentment of this,
+together with the secret machinations of envy, produced not long
+afterwards a conspiracy of senators, and even of some whom I had most
+obliged and loved, against my life, which they basely took away by
+assassination.
+
+_Scipio_.--You say you led your victorious troops to Rome.  How were they
+your troops?  I thought the Roman armies had belonged to the Republic,
+not to their generals.
+
+_Caesar_.--They did so in your time.  But before I came to command them,
+Marius and Sylla had taught them that they belonged to their generals.
+And I taught the senate that a veteran army, affectionately attached to
+its leader, could give him all the treasures and honours of the State
+without asking their leave.
+
+_Scipio_.--Just gods! did I then deliver my country from the invading
+Carthaginian, did I exalt it by my victories above all other nations,
+that it might become a richer prey to its own rebel soldiers and their
+ambitious commanders?
+
+_Caesar_.--How could it be otherwise?  Was it possible that the
+conquerors of Europe, Asia, and Africa could tamely submit to descend
+from their triumphal chariots and become subject to the authority of
+praetors and consuls elected by a populace corrupted by bribes, or
+enslaved to a confederacy of factious nobles, who, without regard to
+merit, considered all the offices and dignities of the State as
+hereditary possessions belonging to their families?
+
+_Scipio_.--If I thought it no dishonour, after triumphing over Hannibal,
+to lay down my fasces and obey, as all my ancestors had done before me,
+the magistrates of the republic, such a conduct would not have
+dishonoured either Marius, or Sylla, or Caesar.  But you all dishonoured
+yourselves when, instead of virtuous Romans, superior to your
+fellow-citizens in merit and glory, but equal to them in a due subjection
+to the laws, you became the enemies, the invaders, and the tyrants of
+your country.
+
+_Caesar_.--Was I the enemy of my country in giving it a ruler fit to
+support all the majesty and weight of its empire?  Did I invade it when I
+marched to deliver the people from the usurped dominion and insolence of
+a few senators?  Was I a tyrant because I would not crouch under Pompey,
+and let him be thought my superior when I felt he was not my equal?
+
+_Scipio_.--Pompey had given you a noble example of moderation in twice
+dismissing the armies, at the head of which he had performed such
+illustrious actions, and returning a private citizen into the bosom of
+his country.
+
+_Caesar_.--His moderation was a cheat.  He believed that the authority
+his victories had gained him would make him effectually master of the
+commonwealth without the help of those armies.  But finding it difficult
+to subdue the united opposition of Crassus and me, he leagued himself
+with us, and in consequence of that league we three governed the empire.
+But, after the death of Crassus, my glorious achievements in subduing the
+Gauls raised such a jealousy in him that he could no longer endure me as
+a partner in his power, nor could I submit to degrade myself into his
+subject.
+
+_Scipio_.--Am I then to understand that the civil war you engaged in was
+really a mere contest whether you or Pompey should remain sole lord of
+Rome?
+
+_Caesar_.--Not so, for I offered, in my letters to the senate, to lay
+down my arms if Pompey at the same time would lay down his, and leave the
+republic in freedom.  Nor did I resolve to draw the sword till not only
+the senate, overpowered by the fear of Pompey and his troops, had
+rejected these offers, but two tribunes of the people, for legally and
+justly interposing their authority in my behalf, had been forced to fly
+from Rome disguised in the habit of slaves, and take refuge in my camp
+for the safety of their persons.  My camp was therefore the asylum of
+persecuted liberty, and my army fought to avenge the violation of the
+rights and majesty of the people as much as to defend the dignity of
+their general unjustly oppressed.
+
+_Scipio_.--You would therefore have me think that you contended for the
+equality and liberty of the Romans against the tyranny of Pompey and his
+lawless adherents.  In such a war I, myself, if I had lived in your
+times, would have willingly been your lieutenant.  Tell me then, on the
+issue of this honourable enterprise, when you had subdued all your foes
+and had no opposition remaining to obstruct your intentions, did you
+establish that liberty for which you fought?  Did you restore the
+republic to what it was in my time?
+
+_Caesar_.--I took the necessary measures to secure to myself the fruits
+of my victories, and gave a head to the empire, which could neither
+subsist without one nor find another so well suited to the greatness of
+the body.
+
+_Scipio_.--There the true character of Caesar was seen unmasked.  You had
+managed so skilfully in the measures which preceded the civil war, your
+offers were so specious, and there appeared so much violence in the
+conduct of your enemies that, if you had fallen in that war, posterity
+might have doubted whether you were not a victim to the interests of your
+country.  But your success, and the despotism you afterwards exorcised,
+took off those disguises and showed clearly that the aim of all your
+actions was tyranny.
+
+_Caesar_.--Let us not deceive ourselves with sounds and names.  That
+great minds should aspire to sovereign power is a fixed law of Nature.  It
+is an injury to mankind if the highest abilities are not placed in the
+highest stations.  Had you, Scipio, been kept down by the republican
+jealousy of Cato, the censor Hannibal would have never been recalled out
+of Italy nor defeated in Africa.  And if I had not been treacherously
+murdered by the daggers of Brutus and Cassius, my sword would have
+avenged the defeat of Crassus and added the empire of Parthia to that of
+Rome.  Nor was my government tyrannical.  It was mild, humane, and
+bounteous.  The world would have been happy under it and wished its
+continuance, but my death broke the pillars of the public tranquillity
+and brought upon the whole empire a direful scene of calamity and
+confusion.
+
+_Scipio_.--You say that great minds will naturally aspire to sovereign
+power.  But, if they are good as well as great, they will regulate their
+ambition by the laws of their country.  The laws of Rome permitted me to
+aspire to the conduct of the war against Carthage; but they did not
+permit you to turn her arms against herself, and subject her to your
+will.  The breach of one law of liberty is a greater evil to a nation
+than the loss of a province; and, in my opinion, the conquest of the
+whole world would not be enough to compensate for the total loss of their
+freedom.
+
+_Caesar_.--You talk finely, Africanus; but ask yourself, whether the
+height and dignity of your mind--that noble pride which accompanies the
+magnanimity of a hero--could always stoop to a nice conformity with the
+laws of your country?  Is there a law of liberty more essential, more
+sacred, than that which obliges every member of a free community to
+submit himself to a trial, upon a legal charge brought against him for a
+public misdemeanour?  In what manner did you answer a regular accusation
+from a tribune of the people, who charged you with embezzling the money
+of the State?  You told your judges that on that day you had vanquished
+Hannibal and Carthage, and bade them follow you to the temples to give
+thanks to the gods.  Nor could you ever be brought to stand a legal
+trial, or justify those accounts, which you had torn in the senate when
+they were questioned there by two magistrates in the name of the Roman
+people.  Was this acting like the subject of a free State?  Had your
+victory procured you an exemption from justice?  Had it given into your
+hands the money of the republic without account?  If it had, you were
+king of Rome.  Pharsalia, Thapsus, and Munda could do no more for me.
+
+_Scipio_.--I did not question the right of bringing me to a trial, but I
+disdained to plead in vindication of a character so unspotted as mine.  My
+whole life had been an answer to that infamous charge.
+
+_Caesar_.--It may be so; and, for my part, I admire the magnanimity of
+your behaviour.  But I should condemn it as repugnant and destructive to
+liberty, if I did not pay more respect to the dignity of a great general,
+than to the forms of a democracy or the rights of a tribune.
+
+_Scipio_.--You are endeavouring to confound my cause with yours; but they
+are exceedingly different.  You apprehended a sentence of condemnation
+against you for some part of your conduct, and, to prevent it, made an
+impious war on your country, and reduced her to servitude.  I trusted the
+justification of my affronted innocence to the opinion of my judges,
+scorning to plead for myself against a charge unsupported by any other
+proof than bare suspicions and surmises.  But I made no resistance; I
+kindled no civil war; I left Rome undisturbed in the enjoyment of her
+liberty.  Had the malice of my accusers been ever so violent, had it
+threatened my destruction, I should have chosen much rather to turn my
+sword against my own bosom than against that of my country.
+
+_Caesar_.--You beg the question in supposing that I really hurt my
+country by giving her a master.  When Cato advised the senate to make
+Pompey sole consul, he did it upon this principle, that any kind of
+government is preferable to anarchy.  The truth of this, I presume, no
+man of sense will contest; and the anarchy, which that zealous defender
+of liberty so much apprehended, would have continued in Rome, if that
+power, which the urgent necessity of the State conferred upon me, had not
+removed it.
+
+_Scipio_.--Pompey and you had brought that anarchy on the State in order
+to serve your own ends.  It was owing to the corruption, the factions,
+and the violence which you had encouraged from an opinion that the senate
+would be forced to submit to an absolute power in your hands, as a remedy
+against those intolerable evils.  But Cato judged well in thinking it
+eligible to make Pompey sole consul rather than you dictator, because
+experience had shown that Pompey respected the forms of the Roman
+constitution; and though he sought, by bad means as well as good, to
+obtain the highest magistracies and the most honourable commands, yet he
+laid them down again, and contented himself with remaining superior in
+credit to any other citizen.
+
+_Caesar_.--If all the difference between my ambition and Pompey's was
+only, as you represent it, in a greater or less respect for the forms of
+the constitution, I think it was hardly becoming such a patriot as Cato
+to take part in our quarrel, much less to kill himself rather than yield
+to my power.
+
+_Scipio_.--It is easier to revive the spirit of liberty in a government
+where the forms of it remain unchanged, than where they have been totally
+disregarded and abolished.  But I readily own that the balance of the
+Roman constitution had been destroyed by the excessive and illegal
+authority which the people were induced to confer upon Pompey, before any
+extraordinary honours or commands had been demanded by you.  And that is,
+I think, your best excuse.
+
+_Caesar_.--Yes, surely.  The favourers of the Manilian law had an ill
+grace in desiring to limit the commissions I obtained from the people,
+according to the rigour of certain absolute republican laws, no more
+regarded in my time than the Sybilline oracles or the pious institutions
+of Numa.
+
+_Scipio_.--It was the misfortune of your time that they were not
+regarded.  A virtuous man would not take from a deluded people such
+favours as they ought not to bestow.  I have a right to say this because
+I chid the Roman people, when, overheated by gratitude for the services I
+had done them, they desired to make me perpetual consul and dictator.
+Hear this, and blush.  What I refused to accept, you snatched by force.
+
+_Caesar_.--Tiberius Gracchus reproached you with the inconsistency of
+your conduct, when, after refusing these offers, you so little respected
+the tribunitian authority.  But thus it must happen.  We are naturally
+fond of the idea of liberty till we come to suffer by it, or find it an
+impediment to some predominant passion; and then we wish to control it,
+as you did most despotically, by refusing to submit to the justice of the
+State.
+
+_Scipio_.--I have answered before to that charge.  Tiberius Gracchus
+himself, though my personal enemy, thought it became him to stop the
+proceedings against me, not for my sake, but for the honour of my
+country, whose dignity suffered with mine.  Nevertheless I acknowledge my
+conduct in that business was not absolutely blameless.  The generous
+pride of virtue was too strong in my mind.  It made me forget I was
+creating a dangerous precedent in declining to plead to a legal
+accusation brought against me by a magistrate invested with the majesty
+of the whole Roman people.  It made me unjustly accuse my country of
+ingratitude when she had shown herself grateful, even beyond the true
+bounds of policy and justice, by not inflicting upon me any penalty for
+so irregular a proceeding.  But, at the same time, what a proof did I
+give of moderation and respect for her liberty, when my utmost resentment
+could impel me to nothing more violent than a voluntary retreat and quiet
+banishment of myself from the city of Rome!  Scipio Africanus offended,
+and living a private man in a country-house at Liternum, was an example
+of more use to secure the equality of the Roman commonwealth than all the
+power of its tribunes.
+
+_Caesar_.--I had rather have been thrown down the Tarpeian Rock than have
+retired, as you did, to the obscurity of a village, after acting the
+first part on the greatest theatre of the world.
+
+_Scipio_.--A usurper exalted on the highest throne of the universe is not
+so glorious as I was in that obscure retirement.  I hear, indeed, that
+you, Caesar, have been deified by the flattery of some of your
+successors.  But the impartial judgment of history has consecrated my
+name, and ranks me in the first class of heroes and patriots; whereas,
+the highest praise her records, even under the dominion usurped by your
+family, have given to you, is, that your courage and talents were equal
+to the object your ambition aspired to, the empire of the world; and that
+you exercised a sovereignty unjustly acquired with a magnanimous
+clemency.  But it would have been better for your country, and better for
+mankind, if you had never existed.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XXX.
+
+
+PLATO--DIOGENES.
+
+_Diogenes_.--Plato, stand off.  A true philosopher as I was, is no
+company for a courtier of the tyrant of Syracuse.  I would avoid you as
+one infected with the most noisome of plagues--the plague of slavery.
+
+_Plato_.--He who can mistake a brutal pride and savage indecency of
+manners for freedom may naturally think that the being in a court
+(however virtuous one's conduct, however free one's language there) is
+slavery.  But I was taught by my great master, the incomparable Socrates,
+that the business of true philosophy is to consult and promote the
+happiness of society.  She must not, therefore, be confined to a tub or a
+cell.  Her sphere is in senates or the cabinets of kings.  While your
+sect is employed in snarling at the great or buffooning with the vulgar,
+she is counselling those who govern nations, infusing into their minds
+humanity, justice, temperance, and the love of true glory, resisting
+their passions when they transport them beyond the bounds of virtue, and
+fortifying their reason by the antidotes she administers against the
+poison of flattery.
+
+_Diogenes_.--You mean to have me understand that you went to the court of
+the Younger Dionysius to give him antidotes against the poison of
+flattery.  But I say he sent for you only to sweeten the cup, by mixing
+it more agreeably, and rendering the flavour more delicate.  His vanity
+was too nice for the nauseous common draught; but your seasoning gave it
+a relish which made it go down most delightfully, and intoxicated him
+more than ever.  Oh, there is no flatterer half so dangerous to a prince
+as a fawning philosopher!
+
+_Plato_.--If you call it fawning that I did not treat him with such
+unmannerly rudeness as you did Alexander the Great when he visited you at
+Athens, I have nothing to say.  But, in truth, I made my company
+agreeable to him, not for any mean ends which regarded only myself, but
+that I might be useful both to him and to his people.  I endeavoured to
+give a right turn to his vanity; and know, Diogenes, that whosoever will
+serve mankind, but more especially princes, must compound with their
+weaknesses, and take as much pains to gain them over to virtue, by an
+honest and prudent complaisance, as others do to seduce them from it by a
+criminal adulation.
+
+_Diogenes_.--A little of my sagacity would have shown you that if this
+was your purpose your labour was lost in that court.  Why did not you go
+and preach chastity to Lais?  A philosopher in a brothel, reading
+lectures on the beauty of continence and decency, is not a more
+ridiculous animal than a philosopher in the cabinet, or at the table of a
+tyrant, descanting on liberty and public spirit!  What effect had the
+lessons of your famous disciple Aristotle upon Alexander the Great, a
+prince far more capable of receiving instruction than the Younger
+Dionysius?  Did they hinder him from killing his best friend, Clitus, for
+speaking to him with freedom, or from fancying himself a god because he
+was adored by the wretched slaves he had vanquished?  When I desired him
+not to stand between me and the sun, I humbled his pride more, and
+consequently did him more good, than Aristotle had done by all his formal
+precepts.
+
+_Plato_.--Yet he owed to those precepts that, notwithstanding his
+excesses, he appeared not unworthy of the empire of the world.  Had the
+tutor of his youth gone with him into Asia and continued always at his
+ear, the authority of that wise and virtuous man might have been able to
+stop him, even in the riot of conquest, from giving way to those passions
+which dishonoured his character.
+
+_Diogenes_.--If he had gone into Asia, and had not flattered the king as
+obsequiously as Haephestion, he would, like Callisthenes, whom he sent
+thither as his deputy, have been put to death for high treason.  The man
+who will not flatter must live independent, as I did, and prefer a tub to
+a palace.
+
+_Plato_.--Do you pretend, Diogenes, that because you were never in a
+court, you never flattered?  How did you gain the affection of the people
+of Athens but by soothing their ruling passion--the desire of hearing
+their superiors abused?  Your cynic railing was to them the most
+acceptable flattery.  This you well understood, and made your court to
+the vulgar, always envious and malignant, by trying to lower all dignity
+and confound all order.  You made your court, I say, as servilely, and
+with as much offence to virtue, as the basest flatterer ever did to the
+most corrupted prince.  But true philosophy will disdain to act either of
+these parts.  Neither in the assemblies of the people, nor in the
+cabinets of kings, will she obtain favour by fomenting any bad
+dispositions.  If her endeavours to do good prove unsuccessful, she will
+retire with honour, as an honest physician departs from the house of a
+patient whose distemper he finds incurable, or who refuses to take the
+remedies he prescribes.  But if she succeeds--if, like the music of
+Orpheus, her sweet persuasions can mitigate the ferocity of the multitude
+and tame their minds to a due obedience of laws and reverence of
+magistrates; or if she can form a Timoleon or a Numa Pompilius to the
+government of a state--how meritorious is the work!  One king--nay, one
+minister or counsellor of state--imbued with her precepts is of more
+value than all the speculative, retired philosophers or cynical revilers
+of princes and magistrates that ever lived upon earth.
+
+_Diogenes_.--Don't tell me of the music of Orpheus, and of his taming
+wild beasts.  A wild beast brought to crouch and lick the hand of a
+master, is a much viler animal than he was in his natural state of
+ferocity.  You seem to think that the business of philosophy is to polish
+men into slaves; but I say, it is to teach them to assert, with an
+untamed and generous spirit, their independence and freedom.  You profess
+to instruct those who want to ride their fellow-creatures, how to do it
+with an easy and gentle rein; but I would have them thrown off, and
+trampled under the feet of all their deluded or insulted equals, on whose
+backs they have mounted.  Which of us two is the truest friend to
+mankind?
+
+_Plato_.--According to your notions all government is destructive to
+liberty; but I think that no liberty can subsist without government.  A
+state of society is the natural state of mankind.  They are impelled to
+it by their wants, their infirmities, their affections.  The laws of
+society are rules of life and action necessary to secure their happiness
+in that state.  Government is the due enforcing of those laws.  That
+government is the best which does this post effectually, and most
+equally; and that people is the freest which is most submissively
+obedient to such a government.
+
+_Diogenes_.--Show me the government which makes no other use of its power
+than duly to enforce the laws of society, and I will own it is entitled
+to the most absolute submission from all its subjects.
+
+_Plato_.--I cannot show you perfection in human institutions.  It is far
+more easy to blame them than it is to amend them, much may be wrong in
+the best: but a good man respects the laws and the magistrates of his
+country.
+
+_Diogenes_.--As for the laws of my country, I did so far respect them as
+not to philosophise to the prejudice of the first and greatest principle
+of nature and of wisdom, self-preservation.  Though I loved to prate
+about high matters as well as Socrates, I did not choose to drink hemlock
+after his example.  But you might as well have bid me love an ugly woman,
+because she was dressed up in the gown of Lais, as respect a fool or a
+knave, because he was attired in the robe of a magistrate.
+
+_Plato_.--All I desired of you was, not to amuse yourself and the
+populace by throwing dirt upon the robe of a magistrate, merely because
+he wore that robe, and you did not.
+
+_Diogenes_.--A philosopher cannot better display his wisdom than by
+throwing contempt on that pageantry which the ignorant multitude gaze at
+with a senseless veneration.
+
+_Plato_.--He who tries to make the multitude venerate nothing is more
+senseless than they.  Wise men have endeavoured to excite an awful
+reverence in the minds of the vulgar for external ceremonies and forms,
+in order to secure their obedience to religion and government, of which
+these are the symbols.  Can a philosopher desire to defeat that good
+purpose?
+
+_Diogenes_.--Yes, if he sees it abused to support the evil purposes of
+superstition and tyranny.
+
+_Plato_.--May not the abuse be corrected without losing the benefit?  Is
+there no difference between reformation and destruction.
+
+_Diogenes_.--Half-measures do nothing.  He who desires to reform must not
+be afraid to pull down.
+
+_Plato_.--I know that you and your sect are for pulling down everything
+that is above your own level.  Pride and envy are the motives that set
+you all to work.  Nor can one wonder that passions, the influence of
+which is so general, should give you many disciples and many admirers.
+
+_Diogenes_.--When you have established your Republic, if you will admit
+me into it I promise you to be there a most respectful subject.
+
+_Plato_.--I am conscious, Diogenes, that my Republic was imaginary, and
+could never be established.  But they show as little knowledge of what is
+practicable in politics as I did in that book, who suppose that the
+liberty of any civil society can be maintained by the destruction of
+order and decency or promoted by the petulance of unbridled defamation.
+
+_Diogenes_.--I never knew any government angry at defamation, when it
+fell on those who disliked or obstructed its measures.  But I well
+remember that the thirty tyrants at Athens called opposition to them the
+destruction of order and decency.
+
+_Plato_.--Things are not altered by names.
+
+_Diogenes_.--No, but names have a strange power to impose on weak
+understandings.  If, when you were in Egypt, you had laughed at the
+worship of an onion, the priests would have called you an atheist, and
+the people would have stoned you.  But I presume that, to have the honour
+of being initiated into the mysteries of that reverend hierarchy, you
+bowed as low to it as any of their devout disciples.  Unfortunately my
+neck was not so pliant, and therefore I was never initiated into the
+mysteries either of religion or government, but was feared or hated by
+all who thought it their interest to make them be respected.
+
+_Plato_.--Your vanity found its account in that fear and that hatred.  The
+high priest of a deity or the ruler of a state is much less distinguished
+from the vulgar herd of mankind than the scoffer at all religion and the
+despiser of all dominion.  But let us end our dispute.  I feel my folly
+in continuing to argue with one who in reasoning does not seek to come at
+truth, but merely to show his wit.  Adieu, Diogenes; I am going to
+converse with the shades of Pythagoras, Solon, and Bias.  You may jest
+with Aristophanes or rail with Thersites.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XXXI.
+
+
+ARISTIDES--PHOCION--DEMOSTHENES.
+
+_Aristides_.--How could it happen that Athens, after having recovered an
+equality with Sparta, should be forced to submit to the dominion of
+Macedon when she had two such great men as Phocion and Demosthenes at the
+head of her State?
+
+_Phocion_.--It happened because our opinions of her interests in foreign
+affairs were totally different; which made us act with a constant and
+pernicious opposition the one to the other.
+
+_Aristides_.--I wish to hear from you both (if you will indulge my
+curiosity) on what principles you could form such contrary judgments
+concerning points of such moment to the safety of your country, which you
+equally loved.
+
+_Demosthenes_.--My principles were the same with yours, Aristides.  I
+laboured to maintain the independence of Athens against the encroaching
+ambition of Macedon, as you had maintained it against that of Persia.  I
+saw that our own strength was unequal to the enterprise; but what we
+could not do alone I thought might be done by a union of the principal
+states of Greece--such a union as had been formed by you and Themistocles
+in opposition to the Persians.  To effect this was the great, the
+constant aim of my policy; and, though traversed in it by many whom the
+gold of Macedon had corrupted, and by Phocion, whom alone, of all the
+enemies to my system, I must acquit of corruption, I so far succeeded,
+that I brought into the field of Chaeronea an army equal to Philip's.  The
+event was unfortunate; but Aristides will not judge of the merits of a
+statesman by the accidents of war.
+
+_Phocion_.--Do not imagine, Aristides, that I was less desirous than
+Demosthenes to preserve the independence and liberty of my country.  But,
+before I engaged the Athenians in a war not absolutely necessary, I
+thought it proper to consider what the event of a battle would probably
+be.  That which I feared came to pass: the Macedonians were victorious,
+and Athens was ruined.
+
+_Demosthenes_.--Would Athens not have been ruined if no battle had been
+fought?  Could you, Phocion, think it safety to have our freedom depend
+on the moderation of Philip?  And what had we else to protect us, if no
+confederacy had been formed to resist his ambition?
+
+_Phocion_.--I saw no wisdom in accelerating the downfall of my country by
+a rash activity in provoking the resentment of an enemy, whose arms, I
+foretold, would in the issue prove superior, not only to ours, but to
+those of any confederacy we were able to form.  My maxim was, that a
+state which cannot make itself stronger than any of its neighbours,
+should live in friendship with that power which is the strongest.  But
+the more apparent it was that our strength was inferior to that of
+Macedon, the more you laboured to induce us, by all the vehemence of your
+oratory, to take such measures as tended to render Philip our enemy, and
+exasperate him more against us than any other nation.  This I thought a
+rash conduct.  It was not by orations that the dangerous war you had
+kindled could finally be determined; nor did your triumphs over me in an
+assembly of the people intimidate any Macedonian in the field of
+Chaeronea, or stop you yourself from flying out of that field.
+
+_Demosthenes_.--My flight from thence, I must own, was ignominious to me;
+but it affects not the question we are agitating now, whether the
+counsels I gave to the people of Athens, as a statesman and a public
+minister, were right or wrong.  When first I excited them to make war
+against Philip, the victories gained by Chabrias, in which you, Phocion,
+had a share (particularly that of Naxos, which completely restored to us
+the empire of the sea), had enabled us to maintain, not only our own
+liberty, but that of all Greece, in the defence of which we had formerly
+acquired so much glory, and which our ancestors thought so important to
+the safety and independence of Athens.  Philip's power was but beginning,
+and supported itself more by craft than force.  I saw, and I warned my
+countrymen in due time, how impolitic it would be to suffer his
+machinations to be carried on with success, and his strength to increase
+by continual acquisitions, without resistance.  I exposed the weakness of
+that narrow, that short-sighted policy, which looked no farther than to
+our own immediate borders, and imagined that whatsoever lay out of those
+bounds was foreign to our interests, and unworthy of our care.  The force
+of my remonstrances roused the Athenians to a more vigilant conduct.  Then
+it was that the orators whom Philip had corrupted loudly inveighed
+against me, as alarming the people with imaginary dangers, and drawing
+them into quarrels in which they had really no concern.  This language,
+and the fair professions of Philip, who was perfectly skilled in the
+royal art of dissembling, were often so prevalent, that many favourable
+opportunities of defeating his designs were unhappily lost.  Yet
+sometimes, by the spirit with which I animated the Athenians and other
+neighbouring states, I stopped the progress of his arms, and opposed to
+him such obstacles as cost him much time and much labour to remove.  You
+yourself, Phocion, at the head of fleets and armies sent against him by
+decrees which I had proposed, vanquished his troops in Eubaea, and saved
+from him Byzantium, with other cities of our allies on the coasts of the
+Hellespont, from which you drove him with shame.
+
+_Phocion_.--The proper use of those advantages was to secure a peace to
+Athens, which they inclined him to keep.  His ambition was checked, but
+his forces were not so much diminished as to render it safe to provoke
+him to further hostilities.
+
+_Demosthenes_.--His courage and policy were indeed so superior to ours
+that, notwithstanding his defeats, he was soon in a condition to pursue
+the great plan of conquest and dominion which he had formed long before,
+and from which he never desisted.  Thus, through indolence on our side
+and activity on his, things were brought to such a crisis that I saw no
+hope of delivering all Greece from his yoke, but by confederating against
+him the Athenians and the Thebans, which league I effected.  Was it not
+better to fight for the independence of our country in conjunction with
+Thebes than alone?  Would a battle lost in Boeotia be so fatal to Athens
+as one lost in our own territory and under our own walls?
+
+_Phocion_.--You may remember that when you were eagerly urging this
+argument I desired you to consider, not where we should fight, but how we
+should be conquerors; for, if we were vanquished, all sorts of evils and
+dangers would be instantly at our gates.
+
+_Aristides_.--Did not you tell me, Demosthenes, when you began to speak
+upon this subject, that you brought into the field of Chaeronea an army
+equal to Philip's?
+
+_Demosthenes_.--I did, and believe that Phocion will not contradict me.
+
+_Aristides_.--But, though equal in number, it was, perhaps, much inferior
+to the Macedonians in valour and military discipline.
+
+_Demosthenes_.--The courage shown by our army excited the admiration of
+Philip himself, and their discipline was inferior to none in Greece.
+
+_Aristides_.--What then occasioned their defeat?
+
+_Demosthenes_.--The bad conduct of their generals.
+
+_Aristides_.--Why was the command not given to Phocion, whose abilities
+had been proved on so many other occasions?  Was it offered to him, and
+did he refuse to accept it?  You are silent, Demosthenes.  I understand
+your silence.  You are unwilling to tell me that, having the power, by
+your influence over the people, to confer the command on what Athenian
+you pleased, you were induced, by the spirit of party, to lay aside a
+great general who had been always successful, who had the chief
+confidence of your troops and of your allies, in order to give it to men
+zealous indeed for your measures and full of military ardour, but of
+little capacity or experience in the conduct of a war.  You cannot plead
+that, if Phocion had led your troops against Philip, there was any danger
+of his basely betraying his trust.  Phocion could not be a traitor.  You
+had seen him serve the Republic and conquer for it in wars, the
+undertaking of which he had strenuously opposed, in wars with Philip.  How
+could you then be so negligent of the safety of your country as not to
+employ him in this, the most dangerous of all she ever had waged?  If
+Chares and Lysicles, the two generals you chose to conduct it, had
+commanded the Grecian forces at Marathon and Plataea we should have lost
+those battles.  All the men whom you sent to fight the Macedonians under
+such leaders were victims to the animosity between you and Phocion, which
+made you deprive them of the necessary benefit of his wise direction.
+This I think the worst blemish of your administration.  In other parts of
+your conduct I not only acquit but greatly applaud and admire you.  With
+the sagacity of a most consummate statesman you penetrated the deepest
+designs of Philip, you saw all the dangers which threatened Greece from
+that quarter while they were yet at a distance, you exhorted your
+countrymen to make a timely provision for their future security, you
+spread the alarm through all the neighbouring states, you combined the
+most powerful in a confederacy with Athens, you carried the war out of
+Attica, which (let Phocion say what he will) was safer than meeting it
+there, you brought it, after all that had been done by the enemy to
+strengthen himself and weaken us, after the loss of Amphipolis, Olynthus,
+and Potidaea, the outguards of Athens, you brought it, I say, to the
+decision of a battle with equal forces.  When this could be effected
+there was evidently nothing so desperate in our circumstances as to
+justify an inaction which might probably make them worse, but could not
+make them better.  Phocion thinks that a state which cannot itself be the
+strongest should live in friendship with that power which is the
+strongest.  But in my opinion such friendship is no better than
+servitude.  It is more advisable to endeavour to supply what is wanting
+in our own strength by a conjunction with others who are equally in
+danger.  This method of preventing the ruin of our country was tried by
+Demosthenes.  Nor yet did he neglect, by all practicable means, to
+augment at the same time our internal resources.  I have heard that when
+he found the Public Treasure exhausted he replenished it, with very great
+peril to himself, by bringing into it money appropriated before to the
+entertainment of the people, against the express prohibition of a popular
+law, which made it death to propose the application thereof to any other
+use.  This was virtue, this was true and genuine patriotism.  He owed all
+his importance and power in the State to the favour of the people; yet,
+in order to serve the State, he did not fear, at the evident hazard of
+his life, to offend their darling passion and appeal against it to their
+reason.
+
+_Phocion_.--For this action I praise him.  It was, indeed, far more
+dangerous for a minister at Athens to violate that absurd and extravagant
+law than any of those of Solon.  But though he restored our finances, he
+could not restore our lost virtue; he could not give that firm health,
+that vigour to the State, which is the result of pure morals, of strict
+order and civil discipline, of integrity in the old, and obedience in the
+young.  I therefore dreaded a conflict with the solid strength of
+Macedon, where corruption had yet made but a very small progress, and was
+happy that Demosthenes did not oblige me, against my own inclination, to
+be the general of such a people in such war.
+
+_Aristides_.--I fear that your just contempt of the greater number of
+those who composed the democracy so disgusted you with this mode and form
+of government, that you were as averse to serve under it as others with
+less ability and virtue than you were desirous of obtruding themselves
+into its service.  But though such a reluctance proceeds from a very
+noble cause, and seems agreeable to the dignity of a great mind in bad
+times, yet it is a fault against the highest of moral obligations--the
+love of our country.  For, how unworthy soever individuals may be, the
+public is always respectable, always dear to the virtuous.
+
+_Phocion_.--True; but no obligation can lie upon a citizen to seek a
+public charge when he foresees that his obtaining of it will be useless
+to his country.  Would you have had me solicit the command of an army
+which I believed would be beaten?
+
+_Aristides_.--It is not permitted to a State to despair of its safety
+till its utmost efforts have been made without success.  If you had
+commanded the army at Chaeronea you might possibly have changed the event
+of the day; but, if you had not, you would have died more honourably
+there than in a prison at Athens, betrayed by a vain confidence in the
+insecure friendship of a perfidious Macedonian.
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE XXXII.
+
+
+MARCUS AURELIUS PHILOSOPHUS--SERVIUS TULLIUS.
+
+_Servius Tullius_.--Yes, Marcus, though I own you to have been the first
+of mankind in virtue and goodness--though, while you governed, Philosophy
+sat on the throne and diffused the benign influences of her
+administration over the whole Roman Empire--yet as a king I might,
+perhaps, pretend to a merit even superior to yours.
+
+_Marcus Aurelius_.--That philosophy you ascribe to me has taught me to
+feel my own defects, and to venerate the virtues of other men.  Tell me,
+therefore, in what consisted the superiority of your merit as a king.
+
+_Servius Tullius_.--It consisted in this--that I gave my people freedom.
+I diminished, I limited the kingly power, when it was placed in my hands.
+I need not tell you that the plan of government instituted by me was
+adopted by the Romans when they had driven out Tarquin, the destroyer of
+their liberty; and gave its form to that republic, composed of a due
+mixture of the regal, aristocratical, and democratical powers, the
+strength and wisdom of which subdued the world.  Thus all the glory of
+that great people, who for many ages excelled the rest of mankind in the
+arts of war and of policy, belongs originally to me.
+
+_Marcus Aurelius_.--There is much truth in what you say.  But would not
+the Romans have done better if, after the expulsion of Tarquin, they had
+vested the regal power in a limited monarch, instead of placing it in two
+annual elective magistrates with the title of consuls?  This was a great
+deviation from your plan of government, and, I think, an unwise one.  For
+a divided royalty is a solecism--an absurdity in politics.  Nor was the
+regal power committed to the administration of consuls continued in their
+hands long enough to enable them to finish any difficult war or other act
+of great moment.  From hence arose a necessity of prolonging their
+commands beyond the legal term; of shortening the interval prescribed by
+the laws between the elections to those offices; and of granting
+extraordinary commissions and powers, by all which the Republic was in
+the end destroyed.
+
+_Servius Tullius_.--The revolution which ensued upon the death of
+Lucretia was made with so much anger that it is no wonder the Romans
+abolished in their fury the name of king, and desired to weaken a power
+the exercise of which had been so grievous, though the doing this was
+attended with all the inconveniences you have justly observed.  But, if
+anger acted too violently in reforming abuses, philosophy might have
+wisely corrected that error.  Marcus Aurelius might have new-modelled the
+constitution of Rome.  He might have made it a limited monarchy, leaving
+to the emperors all the power that was necessary to govern a
+wide-extended empire, and to the Senate and people all the liberty that
+could be consistent with order and obedience to government--a liberty
+purged of faction and guarded against anarchy.
+
+_Marcus Aurelius_.--I should have been happy indeed if it had been in my
+power to do such good to my country.  But the gods themselves cannot
+force their blessings on men who by their vices are become incapable to
+receive them.  Liberty, like power, is only good for those who possess it
+when it is under the constant direction of virtue.  No laws can have
+force enough to hinder it from degenerating into faction and anarchy,
+where the morals of a nation are depraved; and continued habits of vice
+will eradicate the very love of it out of the hearts of a people.  A
+Marcus Brutus in my time could not have drawn to his standard a single
+legion of Romans.  But, further, it is certain that the spirit of liberty
+is absolutely incompatible with the spirit of conquest.  To keep great
+conquered nations in subjection and obedience, great standing armies are
+necessary.  The generals of those armies will not long remain subjects;
+and whoever acquires dominion by the sword must rule by the sword.  If he
+does not destroy liberty, liberty will destroy him.
+
+_Servius Tullius_.--Do you then justify Augustus for the change he made
+in the Roman government?
+
+_Marcus Aurelius_.--I do not, for Augustus had no lawful authority to
+make that change.  His power was usurpation and breach of trust.  But the
+government which he seized with a violent hand came to me by a lawful and
+established rule of succession.
+
+_Servius Tullius_.--Can any length of establishment make despotism
+lawful?  Is not liberty an inherent, inalienable right of mankind?
+
+_Marcus Aurelius_.--They have an inherent right to be governed by laws,
+not by arbitrary will.  But forms of government may, and must, be
+occasionally changed, with the consent of the people.  When I reigned
+over them the Romans were governed by laws.
+
+_Servius Tullius_.--Yes, because your moderation and the precepts of that
+philosophy in which your youth had been tutored inclined you to make the
+laws the rules of your government and the bounds of your power.  But if
+you had desired to govern otherwise, had they power to restrain you?
+
+_Marcus Aurelius_.--They had not.  The imperial authority in my time had
+no limitations.
+
+_Servius Tullius_.--Rome therefore was in reality as much enslaved under
+you as under your son; and you left him the power of tyrannising over it
+by hereditary right?
+
+_Marcus Aurelius_.--I did; and the conclusion of that tyranny was his
+murder.
+
+_Servius Tullius_.--Unhappy father! unhappy king! what a detestable thing
+is absolute monarchy when even the virtues of Marcus Aurelius could not
+hinder it from being destructive to his family and pernicious to his
+country any longer than the period of his own life.  But how happy is
+that kingdom in which a limited monarch presides over a state so justly
+poised that it guards itself from such evils, and has no need to take
+refuge in arbitrary power against the dangers of anarchy, which is almost
+as bad a resource as it would be for a ship to run itself on a rock in
+order to escape from the agitation of a tempest.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 17667.txt or 17667.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/6/6/17667
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+