If, rising to the utmost cruelty of conception, I can dare add to the calamities of genius a misery so degrading and extreme as to imagine the great authors of the world condemned to clerkships under Mr. Harlan, I can at least mitigate that dream of wretchedness and insult by adding the fancy of their fate under the action of his principles. Let me suppose them there, and he still magnifying the calling of the Secretary into that of the literary headsman. He opens the great book of _Genesis_. Everywhere “indecent passages.” The mother hushes the child, and bids him skip as he reads aloud that first great history. It cannot be read aloud in “drawing-rooms” by “gentlemen” and “ladies.” The freest use of language, the plainest terms, frank mention of forbidden subjects; the story of Onan; of Hagar and Sarai; of Lot and his daughters; of Isaac, Rebekah, and Abimelech; of Jacob and Leah; of Reuben and Bilhah; of Potiphar’s wife and Joseph; tabooed allusion and statement everywhere; no veils, no euphemism, no delicacy, no meal in the mouth anywhere. Out with Moses! The cloven splendor on that awful brow shall not save him.—Mr. Harlan takes up the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. The loves of Jupiter and Juno; the dalliance of Achilles and Patroclus with their women; the perfectly frank, undraped reality of Greek life and manners naïvely shown without regard to the feelings of Christian civilizees—horrible! Out with Homer!—Here is Lucretius: Mr. Harlan opens the _De Rerum Natura_, and reads the vast, benign, majestic lines, sad with the shadow of the unintelligible universe upon them; sublime with the tragic problems of the Infinite; august with their noble love and compassion for mankind. But what is this? “_Ut quasi transactis sœpe omnibus rebus_,” &c. And this: “_Morè ferarum, quadrupedumque magis ritu_,” &c. And this: “_Nam mulier prohibet se concipere atque repugnat_,” &c. And this: “_Quod petiere, premunt arcte, faciuntque dolorem_,” &c. Enough. Fine language, fine illustrations, fine precepts, pretty decency! Out with Lucretius! Out with the chief poet of the Tiber side!—Here is Æschylus: a dark magnificence of cloud, all rough with burning gold, which thunders and drips blood! The Greek Shakespeare. The gorgeous and terrible Æschylus! What is this in the _Prometheus_ about Jove and Iö? What sort of detail is that which, at the distance of ten years, I remember amazed Mr. Buckley as he translated the _Agamemnon_? What kind of talk is this in the _Chœphori_, in _The Suppliants_, and in the fragments of the comic drama of _The Argians_? Out with Æschylus!—Here is the sublime book of Ezekiel. All the Hebrew grandeur at its fullest is there. But look at this blurt of coarse words, hurled direct as the prophet-mouth can hurl them—this familiar reference to functions and organs voted out of language—this bread for human lips baked with ordure—these details of the scortatory loves of Aholah and Aholibamah. Enough. Dismiss this dreadful majesty of