In what bower,oh Lucian,of your rediscovered Islands Fortunate are you now reclining;the delight of the fair,the learned,the witty,and the brave?In that clear and tranquil climate,whose air breathes of "violet and lily,myrtle,and the flower of the vine,"Where the daisies are rose-scented,And the Rose herself has got Perfume which on earth is not,among the music of all birds,and the wind-blown notes of flutes hanging on the trees,methinks that your laughter sounds most silvery sweet,and that Helen and fair Charmides are still of your company.Master of mirth,and Soul the best contented of all that have seen the world's ways clearly,most clear-sighted of all that have made tranquillity their bride,what other laughers dwell with you,where the crystal and fragrant waters wander round the shining palaces and the temples of amethyst?
Heine surely is with you;if,indeed,it was not one Syrian soul that dwelt among alien men,Germans and Romans,in the bodily tabernacles of Heine and of Lucian.But he was fallen on evil times and evil tongues;while Lucian,as witty as he,as bitter in mockery,as happily dowered with the magic of words,lived long and happily and honoured,imprisoned in no "mattress-grave."Without Rabelais,without Voltaire,without Heine,you would find,methinks,even the joys of your Happy Islands lacking in zest;and,unless Plato came by your way,none of the ancients could meet you in the lists of sportive dialogue.
There,among the vines that bear twelve times in the year,more excellent than all the vineyards of Touraine,while the song-birds bring you flowers from vales enchanted,and the shapes of the Blessed come and go,beautiful in wind-woven raiment of sunset hues;there,in a land that knows not age,nor winter,midnight,nor autumn,nor noon,where the silver twilight of summer-dawn is perennial,where youth does not wax spectre-pale and die;there,my Lucian,you are crowned the Prince of the Paradise of Mirth.
Who would bring you,if he had the power,from the banquet where Homer sings:Homer,who,in mockery of commentators,past and to come,German and Greek,informed you that he was by birth a Babylonian?Yet,if you,who first wrote Dialogues of the Dead,could hear the prayer of an epistle wafted to "lands indiscoverable in the unheard-of West,"you might visit once more a world so worthy of such a mocker,so like the world you knew so well of old.
Ah,Lucian,we have need of you,of your sense and of your mockery!
Here,where faith is sick and superstition is waking afresh;where gods come rarely,and spectres appear at five shillings an interview;where science is popular,and philosophy cries aloud in the market-place,and clamour does duty for government,and Thais and Lais are names of power--here,Lucian,is room and scope for you.Can I not imagine a new "Auction of Philosophers,"and what wealth might be made by him who bought these popular sages and lecturers at his estimate,and vended them at their own?
HERMES:Whom shall we put first up to auction?
ZEUS:That German in spectacles;he seems a highly respectable man.
HERMES:Ho,Pessimist,come down and let the public view you.
ZEUS:Go on,put him up and have done with him.
HERMES:Who bids for the Life Miserable,for extreme,complete,perfect,unredeemable perdition?What offers for the universal extinction of the species,and the collapse of the Conscious?
A PURCHASER:He does not look at all a bad lot.May one put him through his paces?
HERMES:Certainly;try your luck.
PURCHASER:What is your name?
PESSIMIST:Hartmann.
PURCHASER:What can you teach me?
PESSIMIST:That Life is not worth Living.
PURCHASER:Wonderful Most edifying!How much for this lot?
HERMES:Two hundred pounds.
PURCHASER:I will write you a cheque for the money.Come home,Pessimist,and begin your lessons without more ado.
HERMES:Attention!Here is a magnificent article--the Positive Life,the Scientific Life,the Enthusiastic Life.Who bids for a possible place in the Calendar of the Future?
PURCHASER:What does he call himself?he has a very French air.
HERMES:Put your own questions.
PURCHASER:What's your pedigree,my Philosopher,and previous performances?
POSITIVIST:I am by Rousseau out of Catholicism,with a strain of the Evolution blood.
