Without which, you, my good fellow, could not live a week. BULLER. The Spirit of the Age! The Age should be ashamed of herself for living from hand to mouth on Periodical Literature. The old Lady should indeed, sir. If the Pensive Public conceits herself to be the Thinking World-- NORTH. Let us help to make her so. I have a decent little Library of some three hundred select volumes in the Van--my Plate-chest--and a few dozens of choice wines for my friends--of Champagne, which you, Buller, call small beer---- BULLER. I retracted and apologised. Is that the key of the Van at your watch-chain? NORTH. It is. So many hundred people about the Encampment--sometimes among them suspicious strangers in paletots in search of the picturesque, and perhaps the pecuniary--that it is well to intrust the key to my own body-guard. It does not weigh an ounce. And _that_ lock is not to be picked by the ghost of Huffey White. SEWARD. But of the volume in hand, sir? NORTH. "In that fine passage in the Second Book of the Georgics," says Mr Alison, "in which Virgil celebrates the praises of his native country, after these fine lines-- 'Hic ver assiduum, atque alienis mensibus æstas; Bis gravidæ pecudes, bis pomis utilis arbos. At rabidæ tigres absunt, et sæva leonum Semina: nec miseros fallunt aconita legentes: Nec rapit immensos orbes per humum, neque tanto Squameus in spiram tractu se colligit anguis.' There is no reader whose enthusiasm is not checked by the cold and prosaic line which follows,-- 'Adde tot egregias urbes, operumque laborem.' The tameness and vulgarity of the transition dissipates at once the emotion we had shared with the Poet, and reduces him, in our opinion, to the level of a mere describer." SEWARD. Cold and prosaic line! Tameness and vulgarity! I am struck mute. NORTH. I have no doubt that Mr Alison distressed himself with "_Adde_." It is a word from a merchant's counting-house, reckoning up his gains. And so much the better. Virgil is making out the balance-sheet of Italy--he is inventorying her wealth. Mr Alison would have every word away from reality. Not so _the_ Poet. Every now and then, they--the Poets--amuse themselves with dipping their pencils into the real, the common, the everyday, the homely. By so doing they arrest belief, which above everything they desire to hold fast. I should not wonder if you might catch Spenser at it, even. Shakspeare is full of it. There is nothing else prosaic in the passage; and if Virgil had had the bad taste to say "Ecce" instead of "Adde," I suppose no fault would have been found. SEWARD. But what can Mr Alison mean by the charge of tameness and _vulgarity_? NORTH. I have told you, sir. SEWARD. You have not, sir. NORTH. I have, sir. SEWARD. Yes--yes--yes. "Adde" is vulgar! I cannot think so. NORTH.