I am as willing as most people to bandy compliments, but here you must excuse me. Out of the small fault, rises the Eulogy. This diffusive delusion--this epidemic, yet lively, and airy, and sprightly, and harmless insanity, gives out from its bosom some good uses, and first on the madman himself. As one disease expels another, the musolept is, through the very force of his disorder, free from the taint of cupidity--of the burning desire for worldly wealth. The simple man has room in his heart but for one love. Verse is his passion--his bliss, his all-absorbing vocation. Has his banker failed with his little cash-balance in his hands? He laughs. Has one of his two slaves run away? He laughs. Has a fire at the bookseller's consumed the copies of his last work? 'Tis unlucky--but he laughs. It is not _he_ that speculates upon, or _waylays_, the unguarded trust of his friend or acquaintances--not _he_ that handles with adhesive fingers the gold of his young orphan-ward. And for his fare, it is an anchorite's--pulse and brown bread. BULLER. Very prettily paraphrased indeed! SEWARD. And very feelingly. Imagine these ideas sliding into one's heart in the natural verse of--Goldsmith! For it is as if Goldy here described himself--and see if the argument from the Innocence is not artfully placed, for the induction to the argument from the Benefits, that is to follow. NORTH. My dear Boys Three, Hory is here painting himself--and not himself. It is the idea of the Poet. He brings the traits and the colours together, as they best suit each other, and his purposes. The meritorious Eremite's fare is not personal to the writer. He has reached a point which imperiously requires another _fault_. Frankly and humorously he takes this from Flaccus himself. The Poet is no soldier--slow to find the way to the field, and too quick to find the way from it. Nevertheless--now for the setting up. He, too, is a profitable servant of the State. And forthwith an imperatively demanded apology--for the purple-robed has smiled a little incredulously at the _utilis urbi_. If, says the Complete Letter-Writer, you will only admit that majestic interests may be served by adminicles of "small regard to see to." TALBOYS. And how curiously he hides a pre-eminent power in the very smallest sphere! NORTH. How finely! Rome _was_ a republic of ORATORS. Cedant arma togæ--the Toga the war-weed of the Orator! "Romanos rerum dominos, _gentemque togatam_." The gowned Lords of the Nations--and, Lords of the Lords, the Orators! BULLER. Are you sure that is the right reading? NORTH. Let it be so. Observe now--the occultation. BULLER. The what? TALBOYS. The occultation.