We really should think highly of the powers of any interpreter who could "pierce" the obscurity of such "stuff" as this. One extract more and we have done. A gold medal in the department of Hermeneutical Science to the ingenious individual, who, after any length of study, can succeed in unriddling this tremendous passage from "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha," the organist:-- First you deliver your phrase --Nothing propound, that I see, Fit in itself for much blame or much praise-- Answered no less, where no answer needs be: Off start the Two on their ways! Straight must a Third interpose, Volunteer needlessly help-- In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose, So the cry's open, the kennel's a-yelp, Argument's hot to the close! One disertates, he is candid-- Two must dicept,--has distinguished! Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did: Four protests, Five makes a dart at the thing wished-- Back to One, goes the case bandied! One says his say with a difference-- More of expounding, explaining! All now is wrangle, abuse, and vociferance-- Now there's a truce, all's subdued, self-restraining-- Five, though, stands out all the stiffer hence. One is incisive, corrosive-- Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant-- Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive-- Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant-- Five ... O Danaides, O Sieve! Now, they ply axes and crowbars-- Now they prick pins at a tissue Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar's Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue? Where is our gain at the Two-bars? _Est fuga, volvitur rota!_ On we drift. Where looms the dim port? One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota-- Something is gained, if one caught but the import-- Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha! What [with] affirming, denying, Holding, risposting, subjoining, All's like ... it's like ... for an instance I'm trying ... There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining Under those spider-webs lying? So your fugue broadens and thickens, Greatens and deepens and lengthens, Till one exclaims--"But where's music, the dickens? Blot ye the gold, while your spider-web strengthens, Blacked to the stoutest of tickens?"