'I find in you,' continued the theologian with benevolence, 'much to tolerate, much even to admire. I regret that, formerly, some of my predecessors may have been led, by your aggressive and turbulent spirit, to form unnecessarily harsh judgments of your character, and put unnecessarily tight thumbscrews on your thumbs; but as for me, I desire to win you by sympathy and affection and physico-theological afternoon parties, not to coerce you by vituperation. Your eye of Reason, as I have often observed, is already sufficiently developed; supplement it with the eye of Faith, and you will be quite complete. It will then only remain for you to learn which objects it is necessary to view with which eye, and carefully to close the other. This takes a little practice (which must not be attempted in Society), but I am sure that a person of your attainments will easily master the difficulty. We will then joyfully receive you into our ranks. No sacrifice on your part will be required; you will retain the old distinction of F.R.S., of which you have always been justly proud; but we shall take the liberty of conferring upon you the additional privilege of the honorary title of D.D.' The professor uttered a brief but trenchant observation, on which the theologian was about to launch down a reply, less brief but equally trenchant. But the poet, as his fate would have it, struck in, in the capacity of a lightning conductor, and succeeded in turning the wrath of both combatants upon his own devoted head. 'If you must quarrel,' he cried, 'pray don't quarrel here. You would fight on the very peaks of Parnassus. I can't think of a word that will rhyme except "design." Stop, now I have it: 'Bright messenger of the Celestial Nine, Now in translucent ambience entombed.' Celestial Nine is commonplace, but what can a man do in this region of trivial souls? Soar, my mind! What does "ambience" mean, by the way? Never mind, if the Sublime is unfettered by literal meaning, all the better for the Sublime!' At this the divine and the philosopher turned upon him together, as they were wont to do every now and then. 'This laxity of terms,' said the professor, 'is unscientific and unpractical.' 'I am a poet,' said the poet, 'I bow to no narrow machinery of definitions. Words have a gemlike beauty and colour of their own. They are _not_ merely the signs of ideas—of thoughts.' 'I wish they were!' groaned the professor. 'They are with us.' 'The idea,' continued the poet, 'must conform to the word, when the word honours the idea by making use of it. What care I for the conventional, the threadbare significance? My heart recognises, through the outer vestment of apparent insanity, the inner adaptability. Soar, my mind!'