_Pedant._ Cicero makes much of these shades, as he calls them. He says Eloquence did not flourish in war-times. “Pacis est comes _otiique socia_, et jam hene constitutæ civitatis quasi alumna quæmdam Eloquentia.” The gabble and fuss of much that is called learned talk in our towns is destructive of deep feeling and thus of high art. _Albert._ Yes, and as my honored abbé used to quote from Goethe, concerning such a _litterateur_: “All the springs of natural feeling, which were open in all their fullness to our fathers, are shut to him. The paper-hangings, which fade on his walls in the course of a few years, are a token of his taste and a type of his works.” _Pedant._ Yet we lack great libraries here in our remote place. _Albert._ We must be ignorant of many things to know any. True—though said by a man I hate—Helvetius. My friend, let me play the old man and warn you. You spread your nets too wide. You sow in more fields than you can ever reap. You have a reluctance to be an undistinguished happy man. You should read oftener in the Phædo, for you have more Greek than I. Often am I lifted above common thoughts as I read this wonderful dialogue. What a passage this is, about the dying swan, (chap. 30) and the argument of Simmias (chap. 36) about the lyre and its harmonies! _Pedant._ Thus for I can read Plato best in a version. _Albert._ A version! It is my aversion. There goes my first pun. Think of Pope’s Homer! Open the books at Vaucluse for a sample, as your uncle draws a hand of tobacco from a hogshead. Here—take the Odyssey, xvii. 26-36. What can be simpler than the original—what more meretricious than the copy? Ἀρτέμιδι ἰκέλη ἠὲ χρυσέῃ Ἀφροδίτῃ Pope thus: “The beauteous cheeks the blush of Venus wear, Chastened with coy Diana’s pensive air.” And then, in plain English, “Weeping, she threw her arms about her dear boy, and kissed his brow and his two fair eyes, and murmuring plaintively, spake these winged words!” But Pope, doubtless in wig and ruffles, thus: “Hangs o’er her son, _in his embraces dies_; _Rains_ kisses on his neck, his face, his eyes; Few words she spoke, _though much she had to say_. And scarce those few, for tears, could force their way.” _Pedant._ Hold—I give up, Pope; but all translators have not his redundancy and pomp of words.