divisions and subdivisions of Ichthyology, Entomology, Herpetology, and Conchology. But I agree with Doctor Johnson, that little is to be learned from lectures. For the most part those who do not already understand the subject will not understand the lecture, and those who do will learn nothing from it. The latter will hear many things they would like to contradict, which the bienséance of the lecture-room does not allow. I do not comprehend how people can find amusement in lectures. I should much prefer a tenson of the twelfth century, when two or three masters of the Gai Saber discussed questions of love and chivalry.
Miss Gryll. I am afraid, doctor, our age is too prosy for that sort of thing. We have neither wit enough, nor poetry enough, to furnish the disputants. I can conceive a state of society in which such tensons would form a pleasant winter evening amusement: but that state of society is not ours.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Well, Miss Gryll, I should like, some winter evening, to challenge you to a tenson, and your uncle should be umpire. I think you have wit enough by nature, and I have poetry enough by memory, to supply a fair portion of the requisite materials, without assuming an absolute mastery of the Gai Saber.
Miss Gryll. I shall accept the challenge, doctor. The wit on one side will, I am afraid, be very shortcoming; but the poetry on the other will no doubt be abundant.
Mr. Gryll. Suppose, doctor, you were to get up a tenson a little more relative to our own wise days. Spirit-rapping, for example, is a fine field. Nec pueri credunt … Sed tu vera puta.{1} You might go beyond the limits of a tenson. There is ample scope for an Aristophanic comedy. In the contest between the Just and the Unjust in the Clouds, and in other scenes of Aristophanes, you have ancient specimens of something very like tensons, except that love has not much share in them. Let us for a moment suppose this same spirit-rapping to be true—dramatically so, at least. Let us fit up a stage for the purpose: make the invoked spirits visible as well as audible: and calling before us some of the illustrious of former days, ask them what they think of us and our doings? Of our astounding progress of intellect? Our march of mind? Our higher tone of morality? Our vast diffusion of education? Our art of choosing the most unfit man by competitive examination?
1 Not even boys believe it: but suppose it to be true.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. You had better not bring on many of them at once, nor ask many similar questions, or the chorus of ghostly laughter will be overwhelming. I imagine the answer would be something like Hamlets: 'You yourselves, sirs, shall be as wise as we were, if, like crabs, you could go backward.' It is thought something wonderful that uneducated persons should believe in witchcraft in the nineteenth century: as if educated persons did not believe in grosser follies: such as this same spirit-rapping, unknown tongues, clairvoyance, table-turning, and all sorts of fanatical impositions, having for the present their climax in Mormonism. Herein all times are alike. There is nothing too monstrous for human credulity. I like the notion of the Aristophanic comedy. But it would require a numerous company, especially as the chorus is indispensable. The tenson may be carried on by two.
Mr. Gryll. I do not see why we should not have both.
Miss Gryll. Oh pray, doctor! let us have the comedy. We hope to have a houseful at Christmas, and I think we may get it up well, chorus and all. I should so like to hear what my great ancestor, Gryllus, thinks of us: and Homer, and Dante, and Shakespeare, and Richard the First, and Oliver Cromwell.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. A very good dramatis personae. With these, and the help of one or two Athenians and Romans, we may arrive at a tolerable judgment on our own immeasurable superiority to everything that has gone before us.
Before we proceed further, we will give some account of our interlocutors.
CHAPTER II
THE SQUIRE AND HIS NIECE
FORTUNA . SPONDET . MULTA . MULTIS . PRESTAT .
NEMINI . VIVE . IN . DIES . ET . HORAS . NAM .
PROPRIUM . EST . NIHIL.{1} Marmor vetus apud Feam, ad
Hor. Epist. i. ii, 23.
Fortune makes many promises to many,
Keeps them to none.
Live to the days and hours,
For nothing is your own.
Gregory Gryll, Esq., of Gryll Grange in Hampshire, on the borders of the New Forest, in the midst of a park which was a little forest in itself, reaching nearly to the sea, and well stocked with deer, having a large outer tract, where a numerous light-rented and well-conditioned tenantry fattened innumerable pigs, considering himself well located for what he professed to be, Epicuri de grege porcus,{2} and held, though he found it difficult to trace the pedigree, that he was lineally descended from the ancient and illustrious Gryllus, who maintained against Ulysses the superior happiness of the life of other animals to that of the life of man.{3}
1 This inscription appears to consist of comic senarii,
slightly dislocated for the inscriptional purpose.
Spondet
Fortuna multa multis, praestat nemini.
Vive in dies et horas: nam proprium est nihil.
2 A pig from the herd of Epicurus. The old philosophers accepted good-humouredly the disparaging terms attached to them by their enemies or rivals. The Epicureans acquiesced in the pig, the Cynics in the dog, and Cleanthes was content to be called the Ass of Zeno, as being alone capable of bearing the burthen of the Stoic philosophy. 3 Plutarch. Bruta animalia raiione uti. Gryllus in this dialogue seems to have the best of the argument. Spenser, however, did not think … so, when he introduced his Gryll, in the Paradise of Acrasia, reviling Sir Guyon's Palmer for having restored him to the human form. Streightway he with his virtuous staff them strooke, And streight of beasts they comely men became: Yet being men they did unmanly looke, And stared ghastly, some for inward shame, And some for wrath to see their captive dame: But one above the rest in speciall, That had an hog been late, hight Grylle by name, Repyned greatly, and did him miscall, That had from hoggish forme him brought to naturall. Said Guyon: 'See the mind of beastly man, That hath so soon forgot the excellence Of his creation when he life began, That now he chooseth, with vile difference, To be a beast, and lacke intelligence.' Fairy Queen, book ii. canto 12. In Plutarch's dialogue, Ulysses, after his own companions have been restored to the human form, solicits Circe to restore in the same manner any other Greeks who may be under her enchantments. Circe consents, provided they desire it. Gryllus, endowed with speech for the purpose, answers for all, that they had rather remain as they are; and supports the decision by showing the greater comfort of their condition as it is, to what it would probably be if they were again sent forth to share the common lot of mankind. We have unfortunately only the beginning of the dialogue, of which the greater portion has perished.
It might be seen that, to a man who traced his ancestry from the palace of Circe, the first care would be the continuance of his ancient
