Pope.—I think it also to be wished that a taste for the frivolous may not continue too prevalent among the French. There is a great difference between gathering flowers at the foot of Parnassus and ascending the arduous heights of the mountain. The palms and laurels grow there, and if any of your countrymen aspire to gain them, they must no longer enervate all the vigour of their minds by this habit of trifling. I would have them be perpetual competitorswith the English in manly wit and substantial learning. But let the competition be friendly. There is nothing which so contracts and debases the mind as national envy. True wit, like true virtue, naturally loves its own image in whatever place it is found.
Octavia—Portia—Arria.
Portia.—How has it happened, Octavia, that Arria and I, who have a higher rank than you in the Temple of Fame, should have a lower here in Elysium? We are told that the virtues you exerted as a wife were greater than ours. Be so good as to explain to us what were those virtues. It is the privilege of this place that one can bear superiority without mortification. The jealousy of precedence died with the rest of our mortal frailties. Tell us, then, your own story. We will sit down under the shade of this myrtle grove and listen to it with pleasure.
Octavia.—Noble ladies, the glory of our sex and of Rome, I will not refuse to comply with your desire, though it recalls to my mind some scenes my heart would wish to forget. There can be only one reason why Minos should have given to my conjugal virtues a preference above yours, which is that the trial assigned to them was harder.
Arria.—How, madam! harder than to die for your husband! We died for ours.
Octavia.—You did for husbands who loved yon, and were the most virtuous men of the ages they lived in—who trusted you with their lives, their fame, their honour. To outlive such husbands is, in my judgment, a harder effort of virtue than to die for them or with them. But Mark Antony, to whom my brother Octavius, for reasons of state, gave my hand, was indifferent to me, and loved another. Yet he has told me himself I was handsomer than his mistressCleopatra. Younger I certainly was, and to men that is generally a charm sufficient to turn the scale in one’s favour. I had been loved by Marcellus. Antony said he loved me when he pledged to me his faith. Perhaps he did for a time; a new handsome woman might, from his natural inconstancy, make him forget an old attachment. He was but too amiable. His very vices had charms beyond other men’s virtues. Such vivacity! such fire! such a towering pride! He seemed made by nature to command, to govern the world; to govern it with such ease that the business of it did not rob him of an hour of pleasure. Nevertheless, while his inclination for me continued, this haughty lord of mankind who could hardly bring his high spirit to treat my brother, his partner in empire, with the necessary respect, was to me as submissive, as obedient to every wish of my heart, as the humblest lover that ever sighed in the vales of Arcadia. Thus he seduced my affection from the manes of Marcellus and fixed it on himself. He fixed it, ladies (I own it with some confusion), more fondly than it had ever been fixed on Marcellus. And when he had done so he scorned me, he forsook me, he returned to Cleopatra. Think who I was—the sister of Cæsar, sacrificed to a vile Egyptian queen, the harlot of Julius, the disgrace of her sex! Every outrage was added that could incense me still more. He gave her at sundry times, as public marks of his love, many provinces of the Empire of Rome in the East. He read her love-letters openly in his tribunal itself—even while he was hearing and judging the causes of kings. Nay, he left his tribunal, and one of the best Roman orators pleading before him, to follow her litter, in which she happened to be passing by at that time. But, what was more grievous to me than all these demonstrations of his extravagant passion for that infamous woman, he had the assurance, in a letter to my brother, to call her his wife. Which of you, ladies, could have patiently borne this treatment?
Arria.—Not I, madam, in truth. Had I been in your place, the dagger with which I pierced my own bosom to show my dear Pætus how easy it was to die, that dagger should I have plunged into Antony’s heart, if piety to the gods and a due respect to the purity of my own soul had not stopped my hand. But I verily believe I should have killed myself; not, as I did, out of affection to my husband, but out of shame and indignation at the wrongs I endured.
Portia.—I must own, Octavia, that to bear such usage was harder to a woman than to swallow fire.
Octavia.—Yet I did bear it, madam, without even a complaint which could hurt or offend my husband. Nay, more, at his return from his Parthian expedition, which his impatience to bear a long absence from Cleopatra had made unfortunate and inglorious, I went to meet him in Syria, and carried with me rich presents of clothes and money for his troops, a great number of horses, and two thousand chosen soldiers, equipped and armed like my brother’s Prætorian bands. He sent to stop me at Athens because his mistress was then with him. I obeyed his orders; but I wrote to him, by one of his most faithful friends, a letter full of resignation, and such a tenderness for him as I imagined might have power to touch his heart. My envoy served me so well, he set my fidelity in so fair a light, and gave such reasons to Antony why he ought to see and receive me with kindness, that Cleopatra was alarmed. All her arts were employed to prevent him from seeing me, and to draw him again into Egypt. Those arts prevailed. He sent me back into Italy, and gave himself up more absolutely than ever to the witchcraft of that Circe. He added Africa to the States he had bestowed on her before, and declared Cæsario, her spurious son by Julius Cæsar, heir to all her dominions, except Phœnicia and Cilicia, which with the Upper Syria he gave to Ptolemy, his second son by her; and at the same time declared his eldest son by her, whom he had espoused to the Princess of Media, heir to thatkingdom and King of Armenia; nay, and of the whole Parthian Empire which he meant to conquer for him. The children I had brought him he entirely neglected as if they had been bastards. I wept. I lamented the wretched captivity he was in; but I never reproached him. My brother, exasperated at so many indignities, commanded me to quit the house of my husband at Rome and come into his. I refused to obey him. I remained in Antony’s house; I persisted to take care of his children by Fulvia, the same tender care as of my own. I gave my protection to all his friends at Rome. I implored my brother not to make my jealousy or my wrongs the cause of a civil war. But the injuries done to Rome by Antony’s conduct could not possibly be forgiven. When he found he should draw the Roman arms on himself, he sent orders to me to leave his house. I did so, but carried with me all his children by Fulvia, except Antyllus, the eldest, who was then with him in Egypt. After his death and Cleopatra’s, I took her children by him, and bred them up with my own.
Arria.—Is it possible, madam? the children of Cleopatra?
Octavia.—Yes, the children of my rival. I married her daughter to Juba, King of Mauritania, the most accomplished and the handsomest prince in the world.
Arria.—Tell me, Octavia, did not your pride and resentment entirely cure you of your passion for Antony, as soon as you saw him go back to Cleopatra? And was not your whole conduct afterwards the effect of cool reason, undisturbed by the agitations of jealous and tortured love?
Octavia.—You probe my heart very deeply. That I had some help from resentment and the natural pride of my sex, I will not deny. But I was not become indifferent to my husband. I loved the Antony who had been my lover, more than I was angry with the Antony who forsook me and loved another woman. Had he left Cleopatra and returned to me again with all his former affection, I really believe I should have loved him as well as before.
Arria.—If the merit of a wife is to be measured by her sufferings, your heart was unquestionably the most perfect model of conjugal virtue. The wound I gave mine was but a scratch in comparison to many you felt. Yet I don’t know whether it would be any benefit to the world that there should be in it many Octavias. Too good subjects are apt to make bad kings.
Portia.—True, Arria; the wives of Brutus and Cecinna Pætus may be allowed to have spirits a little rebellious. Octavia was educated in the Court of her brother. Subjection and patience were much better taught there than in our houses, where the Roman liberty made its last abode. And though I will not dispute the judgment of Minos, I can’t help thinking that the affection of a wife to her husband is more or less respectable in proportion to the character of that husband. If I could have had for Antony the same friendship as I had for Brutus, I should have despised myself.
Octavia.—My fondness for Antony was ill-placed; but my perseverance in the performance of all the duties of a wife, notwithstanding his ill-usage, a perseverance made more difficult by the very excess of my love, appeared to Minos the highest and most meritorious effort of female resolution against the seductions of the most dangerous enemy to our virtue, offended pride.
Louise de Coligni, Princess of Orange—Frances Walsingham, Countess of Essex and of Clanricarde; before, Lady Sidney.
Princess of Orange.—Our destinies, madam, had a great and surprising conformity. I was the daughter of Admiral Coligni, you of Secretary Walsingham, two persons who were the most consummate statesmen and ablest supports ofthe Protestant religion in France, and in England. I was married to Teligni, the finest gentleman of our party, the most admired for his valour, his virtue, and his learning: you to Sir Philip Sidney, who enjoyed the same pre-eminence among the English. Both these husbands were cut off, in the flower of youth and of glory, by violent deaths, and we both married again with still greater men; I with William Prince of Orange, the founder of the Dutch Commonwealth; you with Devereux Earl of Essex, the favourite of Elizabeth and of the whole English nation. But, alas! to complete the resemblance of our fates, we both saw those second husbands, who had raised us so high, destroyed in the full meridian of their glory and greatness: mine by the pistol of an assassin; yours still more unhappily, by the axe, as a traitor.
Countess of Clanricarde.—There was indeed in some principal events of our lives the conformity you observe. But your destiny, though it raised you higher than me, was more unhappy than mine. For my father lived honourably, and died in peace: yours was assassinated in his old age. How, madam, did you support or recover your spirits under so rainy misfortunes?
Princess of Orange.—The Prince of Orange left an infant son to my care. The educating of him to be worthy of so illustrious a father, to be the heir of his virtue as well as of his greatness, and the affairs of the commonwealth, in which I interested myself for his sake, so filled my mind, that they in some measure took from me the sense of my grief, which nothing but such a great and important scene of business, such a necessary talk of private and public duty, could have ever relieved. But let me inquire in my turn, how did your heart find a balm to alleviate the anguish of the wounds it had suffered? What employed your widowed hours after the death of your Essex?
Countess of Clanricarde.—Madam, I did not long continue a widow: I married again.
Princess of Orange.—Married again! With what prince, what king did you marry? The widow of Sir Philip Sidney and of my Lord Essex could not descend from them to a subject of less illustrious fame; and where could you find one that was comparable to either?
Countess of Clanricarde.—I did not seek for one, madam: the heroism of the former, and the ambition of the latter, had made me very unhappy. I desired a quiet life and the joys of wedded love, with an agreeable, virtuous, well-born, unambitious, unenterprising husband. All this I found in the Earl of Clanricarde: and believe me, madam, I enjoyed more solid felicity in Ireland with him, than I ever had possessed with my two former husbands, in the pride of their glory, when England and all Europe resounded with their praise.
Princess of Orange.—Can it be possible that the daughter of Walsingham, and the wife of Sidney and Essex, should have sentiments so inferior to the minds from which she sprang, and to which she was matched? Believe me, madam, there was no hour of the many years I lived after the death of the Prince of Orange, in which I would have exchanged the pride and joy I continually had in hearing his praise, and seeing the monuments of his glory in the free commonwealth his wisdom had founded, for any other delights the world could give. The cares that I shared with him, while he remained upon earth, were a happiness to my mind, because they exalted its powers. The remembrance of them was dear to me after I had lost him. I thought his great soul, though removed to a higher sphere, would look down upon mine with some tenderness of affection, as its fellow-labourer in the heroic and divine work of delivering and freeing his country. But to be divorced from that soul! to be no longer his wife! to be the comfort of an inferior, inglorious husband! I had much rather have died a thousand deaths, than that my heart should one moment have conceived such a thought.
Countess of Clanricarde.—Your Highness must not judge of all hearts by your own. The ruling passion of that was apparently ambition. My inclinations were not so noble as yours, but better suited, perhaps, to the nature of woman. I loved Sir Philip Sidney, I loved the Earl of Essex, rather as amiable men than as heroes and statesmen. They were so taken up with their wars and state-affairs, that my tenderness for them was too often neglected. The Earl of Clanricarde was constantly and wholly mine. He was brave, but had not that spirit of chivalry with which Sir Philip Sidney was absolutely possessed. He had, in a high degree, the esteem of Elizabeth, but did not aspire to her love; nor did he wish to be the rival of Carr or of Villiers in the affection of James. Such, madam, was the man on whom my last choice bestowed my hand, and whose kindness compensated for all my misfortunes. Providence has assigned to different tempers different comforts. To you it gave the education of a prince, the government of a state, the pride of being called the wife of a hero; to me a good-living husband, quiet, opulence, nobility, and a fair reputation, though not in a degree so exalted as yours. If our whole sex were to choose between your consolations and mine, your Highness, I think, would find very few of your taste. But I respect the sublimity of your ideas. Now that we have no bodies they appear less unnatural than I should have thought them in the other world.
Princess of Orange.—Adieu, madam. Our souls are of a different order, and were not made to sympathise or converse with each other.
Marcus Brutus—Pomponius Atticus.
Brutus.—Well, Atticus, I find that, notwithstanding your friendship for Cicero and for me, you survived us both many years, with the same cheerful spirit you hadalways possessed, and, by prudently wedding your daughter to Agrippa, secured the favour of Octavius Cæsar, and even contracted a close alliance with him by your granddaughter’s marriage with Tiberius Nero.
Atticus.—You know, Brutus, my philosophy was the Epicurean. I loved my friends, and I served them in their wants and distresses with great generosity; but I did not think myself obliged to die when they died, or not to make others as occasions should offer.
Brutus.—You did, I acknowledge, serve your friends, as far as you could, without bringing yourself, on their account, into any great danger or disturbance of mind: but that you loved them I much doubt. If you loved Cicero, how could you love Antony? If you loved me, how could you love Octavius? If you loved Octavius, how could you avoid taking part against Antony in their last civil war? Affection cannot be so strangely divided, and with so much equality, among men of such opposite characters, and who were such irreconcilable enemies to each other.
Atticus.—From my earliest youth I possessed the singular talent of ingratiating myself with the heads of different parties, and yet not engaging with any of them so far as to disturb my own quiet. My family was connected with the Marian party; and, though I retired to Athens that I might not be unwillingly involved in the troubles which that turbulent faction had begun to excite, yet when young Marius was declared an enemy by the Senate, I sent him a sum of money to support him in his exile. Nor did this hinder me from making my court so well to Sylla, upon his coming to Athens, that I obtained from him the highest marks of his favour. Nevertheless, when he pressed me to go with him to Rome, I declined it, being as unwilling to fight for him against the Marian party, as for them against him. He admired my conduct; and at his departure from Athens, ordered all the presents made to him during his abode in that city to be carried to me. I remind you ofthis only to show that moderation in all contentions of this kind had been always my principle; and that in the instances you mentioned I did not act from any levity or inconstancy in my nature, but from a regular consistent plan of conduct, which my reason convinced me was the wisest I could follow.
Brutus.—I remember indeed that you observed the same neutrality between Pompey and Julius Cæsar.
Atticus.—I did so—and that I might be able to do it with dignity, and without the reproach of ingratitude, I never would accept any office or honour from either of those great men; nor from Cicero, though my sister had married his brother; nor from you, Marcus Brutus, whose friendship I thought the greatest honour of my life.
Brutus.—Are there no obligations to a good heart, Pomponius, but honours and offices? Or could you, by refusing to encumber yourself with these, dissolve all other ties? But, setting aside any considerations of private affection or esteem, how was you able to reconcile your conduct with that which is the ruling principle in the heart of every virtuous man, and more especially a virtuous Roman, the love of the public?
Atticus.—The times I lived in were so bad, and the conflict of parties had so little to do in reality with the love of the public, that I thought my virtue much safer and purer by avoiding than mixing in the fray.
Brutus.—Possibly, in the dispute between Marius and Sylla, and even in that between Pompey and Cæsar, a virtuous man might see so much to blame on both sides, and so much to fear, whichever faction should overcome the other, as to be justified in not engaging with either. But let me say, without vanity, in the war which I waged against Antony and Octavius you could have nothing to blame, for I know you approved the principle upon which I killed Julius Cæsar. Nor had you anything to fear if our arms had succeeded, for you know that my intentions were uprightand pure; nor was it doubtful that Cassius was as much determined as I to restore the Republic. How could you, then, with any sense of virtue in your heart, maintain an indifference and neutrality between the deliverers and the tyrants of your country?
Atticus.—My answer to this will necessarily require explanations, which my respect to the manes of Brutus makes me wish to avoid.
Brutus.—In the other world I loved truth, and was desirous that all might speak it with freedom; but here even the tender ears of a tyrant are compelled to endure it. If I committed any faults, or erred in my judgment, the calamities I have suffered are a punishment for it. Tell me then, truly, and without fear of offending, what you think were my failings.
Atticus.—You said that the principle upon which you killed Julius Cæsar had my approbation. This I do not deny; but did I ever declare, or give you reason to believe, that I thought it a prudent or well-timed act? I had quite other thoughts. Nothing ever seemed to me worse judged or worse timed; and these, Brutus, were my reasons. Cæsar was just setting out to make war on the Parthians. This was an enterprise of no little difficulty and no little danger; but his unbounded ambition, and that restless spirit which never would suffer him to take any repose, did not intend to stop there. You know very well (for he hid nothing from you) that he had formed a vast plan of marching, after he had conquered the whole Parthian Empire, along the coast of the Caspian Sea and the sides of Mount Caucasus into Scythia, in order to subdue all the countries that border on Germany, and Germany itself; from whence he proposed to return to Rome by Gaul. Consider now, I beseech you, how much time the execution of this project required. In some of his battles with so many fierce and warlike nations, the bravest of all the barbarians, he might have been slain; but, if he had not, disease, or age itself,might have ended his life before he could have completed such an immense undertaking. He was, when you killed him, in his fifty-sixth year, and of an infirm constitution. Except his bastard by Cleopatra, he had no son; nor was his power so absolute or so quietly settled that he could have a thought of bequeathing the Empire, like a private inheritance, to his sister’s grandson, Octavius. While he was absent there was no reason to fear any violence or maladministration in Italy or in Rome. Cicero would have had the chief authority in the Senate. The prætorship of the city had been conferred upon you by the favour of Cæsar, and your known credit with him, added to the high reputation of your virtues and abilities, gave you a weight in all business which none of his party left behind him in Italy would have been able to oppose. What a fair prospect was here of good order, peace, and liberty at home, while abroad the Roman name would have been rendered more glorious, the disgrace of Crassus revenged, and the Empire extended beyond the utmost ambition of our forefathers by the greatest general that ever led the armies of Rome, or, perhaps, of any other nation! What did it signify whether in Asia, and among the barbarians, that general bore the name of King or Dictator? Nothing could be more puerile in you and your friends than to start so much at the proposition of his taking that name in Italy itself, when you had suffered him to enjoy all the power of royalty, and much more than any King of Rome had possessed from Romulus down to Tarquin.
Brutus.—We considered that name as the last insult offered to our liberty and our laws; it was an ensign of tyranny, hung out with a vain and arrogant purpose of rendering the servitude of Rome more apparent. We, therefore, determined to punish the tyrant, and restore our country to freedom.
Atticus.—You punished the tyrant, but you did not restore your country to freedom. By sparing Antony,against the opinion of Cassius, you suffered the tyranny to remain. He was Consul, and, from the moment that Cæsar was dead, the chief power of the State was in his hands. The soldiers adored him for his liberality, valour, and military frankness. His eloquence was more persuasive from appearing unstudied. The nobility of his house, which descended from Hercules, would naturally inflame his heart with ambition. The whole course of his life had evidently shown that his thoughts were high and aspiring, and that he had little respect for the liberty of his country. He had been the second man in Cæsar’s party; by saving him you gave a new head to that party, which could no longer subsist without your ruin. Many who would have wished the restoration of liberty, if Cæsar had died a natural death, were so incensed at his murder that, merely for the sake of punishing that, they were willing to confer all power upon Antony and make him absolute master of the Republic. This was particularly true with respect to the veterans who had served under Cæsar, and he saw it so plainly that he presently availed himself of their dispositions. You and Cassius were obliged to fly out of Italy, and Cicero, who was unwilling to take the same part, could find no expedient to save himself and the Senate but the wretched one of supporting and raising very high another Cæsar, the adopted son and heir of him you had slain, to oppose Antony and to divide the Cæsarean party. But even while he did this he perpetually offended that party and made them his enemies by harangues in the Senate, which breathed the very spirit of the old Pompeian faction, and made him appear to Octavius and all the friends of the dead Dictator no less guilty of his death than those who had killed him. What could this end in but that which you and your friends had most to fear, a reunion of the whole Cæsarean party and of their principal leaders, however discordant the one with the other, to destroy the Pompeians? For my own part, I foresaw it long before theevent, and therefore kept myself wholly clear of those proceedings. You think I ought to have joined you and Cassius at Philippi, because I knew your good intentions, and that, if you succeeded, you designed to restore the commonwealth. I am persuaded you did both agree in that point, but you differed in so many others, there was such a dissimilitude in your tempers and characters, that the union between you could not have lasted long, and your dissension would have had most fatal effects with regard both to the settlement and to the administration of the Republic. Besides, the whole mass of it was in such a fermentation, and so corrupted, that I am convinced new disorders would soon have arisen. If you had applied gentle remedies, to which your nature inclined, those remedies would have failed; if Cassius had induced you to act with severity, your government would have been stigmatised with the name of a tyranny more detestable than that against which you conspired, and Cæsar’s clemency would have been the perpetual topic of every factious oration to the people, and of every seditious discourse to the soldiers. Thus you would have soon been plunged in the miseries of another civil war, or perhaps assassinated in the Senate, as Julius was by you. Nothing could give the Roman Empire a lasting tranquillity but such a prudent plan of a mitigated imperial power as was afterwards formed by Octavius, when he had ably and happily delivered himself from all opposition and partnership in the government. Those quiet times I lived to see, and I must say they were the best I ever had seen, far better than those under the turbulent aristocracy for which you contended. And let me boast a little of my own prudence, which, through so many storms, could steer me safe into that port. Had it only given me safety, without reputation, I should not think that I ought to value myself upon it. But in all these revolutions my honour remained as unimpaired as my fortune. I so conducted myself that I lost no esteem inbeing Antony’s friend after having been Cicero’s, or in my alliance with Agrippa and Augustus Cæsar after my friendship with you. Nor did either Cæsar or Antony blame my inaction in the quarrels between them; but, on the contrary, they both seemed to respect me the more for the neutrality I observed. My obligations to the one and alliance with the other made it improper for me to act against either, and my constant tenor of life had procured me an exemption from all civil wars by a kind of prescription.
Brutus.—If man were born to no higher purpose than to wear out a long life in ease and prosperity, with the general esteem of the world, your wisdom was evidently as much superior to mine as my life was shorter and more unhappy than yours. Nay, I verily believe it exceeded the prudence of any other man that ever existed, considering in what difficult circumstances you were placed, and with how many violent shocks and sudden changes of fortune you were obliged to contend. But here the most virtuous and public-spirited conduct is found to have been the most prudent. The motives of our actions, not the success, give us here renown. And could I return to that life from whence I am escaped, I would not change my character to imitate yours; I would again be Brutus rather than Atticus. Even without the sweet hope of an eternal reward in a more perfect state, which is the strongest and most immovable support to the good under every misfortune, I swear by the gods I would not give up the noble feelings of my heart, that elevation of mind which accompanies active and suffering virtue, for your seventy-seven years of constant tranquillity, with all the praise you obtained from the learned men whom you patronised or the great men whom you courted.
William iii., King of England—John de Witt, Pensioner, of Holland.
William.—Though I had no cause to love you, yet, believe me, I sincerely lament your fate. Who could have thought that De Witt, the most popular Minister that ever served a commonwealth, should fall a sacrifice to popular fury! Such admirable talents, such virtues as you were endowed with, so clear, so cool, so comprehensive a head, a heart so untainted with any kind of vice, despising money, despising pleasure, despising the vain ostentation of greatness, such application to business, such ability in it, such courage, such firmness, and so perfect a knowledge of the nation you governed, seemed to assure you of a fixed and stable support in the public affection. But nothing can be durable that depends on the passions of the people.
De Witt.—It is very generous in your Majesty, not only to compassionate the fate of a man whose political principles made him an enemy to your greatness, but to ascribe it to the caprice and inconstancy of the people, as if there had been nothing very blamable in his conduct. I feel the magnanimity of this discourse from your Majesty, and it confirms what I have heard of all your behaviour after my death. But I must frankly confess that, although the rage of the populace was carried much too far when they tore me and my unfortunate brother to pieces, yet I certainly had deserved to lose their affection by relying too much on the uncertain and dangerous friendship of France, and by weakening the military strength of the State, to serve little purposes of my own power, and secure to myself the interested affection of the burgomasters or others who had credit and weight in the faction the favour of which I courted. This had almost subjected my country to France, if you, great prince, had not been set at the head of the falling Republic, and had not exerted such extraordinaryvirtues and abilities to raise and support it, as surpassed even the heroism and prudence of William, our first Stadtholder, and equalled yon to the most illustrious patriots of Greece or Rome.
William.—This praise from your mouth is glorious to me indeed! What can so much exalt the character of a prince as to have his actions approved by a zealous Republican and the enemy of his house?
De Witt.—If I did not approve them I should show myself the enemy of the Republic. You never sought to tyrannise over it; you loved, you defended, you preserved its freedom. Thebes was not more indebted to Epaminondas or Pelopidas for its independence and glory than the United Provinces were to you. How wonderful was it to see a youth, who had scarce attained to the twenty-second year of his age, whose spirit had been depressed and kept down by a jealous and hostile faction, rising at once to the conduct of a most arduous and perilous war, stopping an enemy victorious, triumphant, who had penetrated into the heart of his country, driving him back and recovering from him all he had conquered: to see this done with an army in which a little before there was neither discipline, courage, nor sense of honour! Ancient history has no exploit superior to it; and it will ennoble the modern whenever a Livy or a Plutarch shall arise to do justice to it, and set the hero who performed it in a true light.
William.—Say, rather, when time shall have worn out that malignity and rancour of party which in free States is so apt to oppose itself to the sentiments of gratitude and esteem for their servants and benefactors.
De Witt.—How magnanimous was your reply, how much in the spirit of true ancient virtue, when being asked, in the greatest extremity of our danger, “How you intended to live after Holland was lost?” you said, “You would live on the lands you had left in Germany, and had rather pass your life in hunting there than sell your country orliberty to France at any rate!” How nobly did you think when, being offered your patrimonial lordships and lands in the county of Burgundy, or the full value of them from France, by the mediation of England in the treaty of peace, your answer was, “That to gain one good town more for the Spaniards in Flanders you would be content to lose them all!” No wonder, after this, that you were able to combine all Europe in a league against the power of France; that you were the centre of union, and the directing soul of that wise, that generous confederacy formed by your labours; that you could steadily support and keep it together, in spite of repeated misfortunes; that even after defeats you were as formidable to Louis as other generals after victories; and that in the end you became the deliverer of Europe, as you had before been of Holland.
William.—I had, in truth, no other object, no other passion at heart throughout my whole life but to maintain the independence and freedom of Europe against the ambition of France. It was this desire which formed the whole plan of my policy, which animated all my counsels, both as Prince of Orange and King of England.
De Witt.—This desire was the most noble (I speak it with shame) that could warm the heart of a prince whose ancestors had opposed and in a great measure destroyed the power of Spain when that nation aspired to the monarchy of Europe. France, sir, in your days had an equal ambition and more strength to support her vast designs than Spain under the government of Philip II. That ambition you restrained, that strength you resisted. I, alas! was seduced by her perfidious Court, and by the necessity of affairs in that system of policy which I had adopted, to ask her assistance, to rely on her favour, and to make the commonwealth, whose counsels I directed, subservient to her greatness. Permit me, sir, to explain to you the motives of my conduct. If all the Princes of Orange had acted like you, I should never have been the enemy of your house.But Prince Maurice of Nassau desired to oppress the liberty of that State which his virtuous father had freed at the expense of his life, and which he himself had defended against the arms of the House of Austria with the highest reputation of military abilities. Under a pretence of religion (the most execrable cover of a wicked design) he put to death, as a criminal, that upright Minister, Barneveldt, his father’s best friend, because, he refused to concur with him in treason against the State. He likewise imprisoned several other good men and lovers of their country, confiscated their estates, and ruined their families. Yet, after he had done these cruel acts of injustice with a view to make himself sovereign of the Dutch Commonwealth, he found they had drawn such a general odium upon him that, not daring to accomplish his iniquitous purpose, he stopped short of the tyranny to which he had sacrificed his honour and virtue; a disappointment so mortifying and so painful to his mind that it probably hastened his death.
William.—Would to Heaven he had died before the meeting of that infamous Synod of Dort, by which he not only dishonoured himself and his family, but the Protestant religion itself! Forgive this interruption—my grief forced me to it—I desire you to proceed.
De Witt.—The brother of Maurice, Prince Henry, who succeeded to his dignities in the Republic, acted with more moderation. But the son of that good prince, your Majesty’s father (I am sorry to speak what I know you hear with pain), resumed, in the pride and fire of his youth, the ambitious designs of his uncle. He failed in his undertaking, and soon afterwards died, but left in the hearts of the whole Republican party an incurable jealousy and dread of his family. Full of these prejudices, and zealous for liberty, I thought it my duty as Pensionary of Holland to prevent for ever, if I could, your restoration to the power your ancestors had enjoyed, which I sincerely believed would be inconsistent with the safety and freedom of my country.
William.—Let me stop you a moment here. When my great-grandfather formed the plan of the Dutch Commonwealth, he made the power of a Stadtholder one of the principal springs in his system of government. How could you imagine that it would ever go well when deprived of this spring, so necessary to adjust and balance its motions? A constitution originally formed with no mixture of regal power may long be maintained in all its vigour and energy without such a power; but if any degree of monarchy was mixed from the beginning in the principles of it, the forcing that out must necessarily disorder and weaken the whole fabric. This was particularly the case in our Republic. The negative voice of every small town in the provincial States, the tedious slowness of our forms and deliberations, the facility with which foreign Ministers may seduce or purchase the opinions of so many persons as have a right to concur in all our resolutions, make it impossible for the Government, even in the quietest times, to be well carried on without the authority and influence of a Stadtholder, which are the only remedy our constitution has provided for those evils.
De Witt.—I acknowledge they are; but I and my party thought no evil so great as that remedy, and therefore we sought for other more pleasing resources. One of these, upon which we most confidently depended, was the friendship of France. I flattered myself that the interest of the French would secure to me their favour, as your relation to the Crown of England might naturally raise in them a jealousy of your power. I hoped they would encourage the trade and commerce of the Dutch in opposition to the English, the ancient enemies of their Crown, and let us enjoy all the benefits of a perpetual peace, unless we made war upon England, or England upon us, in either of which cases it was reasonable to presume we should have their assistance. The French Minister at the Hague, who served his Court but too well, so confirmed me in these notions,that I had no apprehensions of the mine which was forming under my feet.
William.—You found your authority strengthened by a plan so agreeable to your party, and this contributed more to deceive your sagacity than all the art of D’Estrades.
De Witt.—My policy seemed to me entirely suitable to the lasting security of my own power, of the liberty of my country, and of its maritime greatness; for I made it my care to keep up a very powerful navy, well commanded and officered, for the defence of all these against the English; but, as I feared nothing from France, or any Power on the Continent, I neglected the army, or rather I destroyed it, by enervating all its strength, by disbanding old troops and veteran officers attached to the House of Orange, and putting in their place a trading militia, commanded by officers who had neither experience nor courage, and who owed their promotions to no other merit but their relation to or interest with some leading men in the several oligarchies of which the Government in all the Dutch towns is composed. Nevertheless, on the invasion of Flanders by the French, I was forced to depart from my close connection with France, and to concur with England and Sweden in the Triple Alliance, which Sir William Temple proposed, in order to check her ambition; but as I entered into that measure from necessity, not from choice, I did not pursue it. I neglected to improve our union with England, or to secure that with Sweden; I avoided any conjunction of counsels with Spain; I formed no alliance with the Emperor or the Germans; I corrupted our army more and more; till a sudden, unnatural confederacy, struck up, against all the maxims of policy, by the Court of England with France, for the conquest of the Seven Provinces, brought these at once to the very brink of destruction, and made me a victim to the fury of a populace too justly provoked.
William.—I must say that your plan was in reality nothing more than to procure for the Dutch a licence totrade under the good pleasure and gracious protection of France. But any State that so entirely depends on another is only a province, and its liberty is a servitude graced with a sweet but empty name. You should have reflected that to a monarch so ambitious and so vain as Louis le Grand the idea of a conquest which seemed almost certain, and the desire of humbling a haughty Republic, were temptations irresistible. His bigotry likewise would concur in recommending to him an enterprise which he might think would put heresy under his feet. And if you knew either the character of Charles II. or the principles of his government, you ought not to have supposed his union with France for the ruin of Holland an impossible or even improbable event. It is hardly excusable in a statesman to be greatly surprised that the inclinations of princes should prevail upon them to act, in many particulars, without any regard to the political maxims and interests of their kingdoms.
De Witt.—I am ashamed of my error; but the chief cause of it was that, though I thought very ill, I did not think quite so ill of Charles II. and his Ministry as they deserved. I imagined, too, that his Parliament would restrain him from engaging in such a war, or compel him to engage in our defence if France should attack us. These, I acknowledge, are excuses, not justifications. When the French marched into Holland and found it in a condition so unable to resist them, my fame as a Minister irrecoverably sank; for, not to appear a traitor, I was obliged to confess myself a dupe. But what praise is sufficient for the wisdom and virtue you showed in so firmly rejecting the offers which, I have been informed, were made to you, both by England and France, when first you appeared in arms at the head of your country, to give you the sovereignty of the Seven Provinces by the assistance and under the protection of the two Crowns! Believe me, great prince, had I been living in those times, and had known the generous answers you made to those offers (which were repeated more than onceduring the course of the war), not the most ancient and devoted servant to your family would have been more your friend than I. But who could reasonably hope for such moderation, and such a right sense of glory, in the mind of a young man descended from kings, whose mother was daughter to Charles I., and whose father had left him the seducing example of a very different conduct? Happy, indeed, was the English nation to have such a prince, so nearly allied to their Crown both in blood and by marriage, whom they might call to be their deliverer when bigotry and despotism, the two greatest enemies to human society, had almost overthrown their whole constitution in Church and State!
William.—They might have been happy, but were not. As soon as I had accomplished their deliverance for them, many of them became my most implacable enemies, and even wished to restore the unforgiving prince whom they had so unanimously and so justly expelled from his kingdom. Such levity seems incredible. I could not myself have imagined it possible, in a nation famed for good sense, if I had not had proofs of it beyond contradiction. They seemed as much to forget what they called me over for as that they had called me over. The security of their religion, the maintenance of their liberty, were no longer their care. All was to yield to the incomprehensible doctrine of right divine and passive obedience. Thus the Tories grew Jacobites, after having renounced both that doctrine and King James, by their opposition to him, by their invitation of me, and by every Act of the Parliament which gave me the Crown. But the most troublesome of my enemies were a set of Republicans, who violently opposed all my measures, and joined with the Jacobites in disturbing my government, only because it was not a commonwealth.
De Witt.—They who were Republicans under your government in the Kingdom of England did not love liberty, but aspired to dominion, and wished to throw thenation into a total confusion, that it might give them a chance of working out from that anarchy a better state for themselves.
William.—Your observation is just. A proud man thinks himself a lover of liberty when he is only impatient of a power in government above his own, and were he a king, or the first Minister of a king, would be a tyrant. Nevertheless I will own to you, with the candour which becomes a virtuous prince, that there were in England some Whigs, and even some of the most sober and moderate Tories, who, with very honest intentions, and sometimes with good judgments, proposed new securities to the liberty of the nation, against the prerogative or influence of the Crown and the corruption of Ministers in future times. To some of these I gave way, being convinced they were right, but others I resisted for fear of weakening too much the royal authority, and breaking that balance in which consists the perfection of a mixed form of government. I should not, perhaps, have resisted so many if I had not seen in the House of Commons a disposition to rise in their demands on the Crown had they found it more yielding. The difficulties of my government, upon the whole, were so great that I once had determined, from mere disgust and resentment, to give back to the nation, assembled in Parliament, the crown they had placed on my head, and retire to Holland, where I found more affection and gratitude in the people. But I was stopped by the earnest supplications of my friends and by an unwillingness to undo the great work I had done, especially as I knew that, if England should return into the hands of King James, it would be impossible in that crisis to preserve the rest of Europe from the dominion of France.
De Witt.—Heaven be praised that your Majesty did not persevere in so fatal a resolution! The United Provinces would have been ruined by it together with England. But I cannot enough express my astonishment that you shouldhave met with such treatment as could suggest such a thought. The English must surely be a people incapable either of liberty or subjection.
William.—There were, I must acknowledge, some faults in my temper and some in my government, which are an excuse for my subjects with regard to the uneasiness and disquiet they gave me. My taciturnity, which suited the genius of the Dutch, offended theirs. They love an affable prince; it was chiefly his affability that made them so fond of Charles II. Their frankness and good-humour could not brook the reserve and coldness of my nature. Then the excess of my favour to some of the Dutch, whom I had brought over with me, excited a national jealousy in the English and hurt their pride. My government also appeared, at last, too unsteady, too fluctuating between the Whigs and the Tories, which almost deprived me of the confidence and affection of both parties. I trusted too much to the integrity and the purity of my intentions, without using those arts that are necessary to allay the ferment of factions and allure men to their duty by soothing their passions. Upon the whole I am sensible that I better understood how to govern the Dutch than the English or the Scotch, and should probably have been thought a greater man if I had not been King of Great Britain.
De Witt.—It is a shame to the English that gratitude and affection for such merit as yours were not able to overcome any little disgusts arising from your temper, and enthrone their deliverer in the hearts of his people. But will your Majesty give me leave to ask you one question? Is it true, as I have heard, that many of them disliked your alliances on the Continent and spoke of your war with France as a Dutch measure, in which you sacrificed England to Holland?
William.—The cry of the nation at first was strong for the war, but before the end of it the Tories began publicly to talk the language you mention. And no wonder theydid, for, as they then had a desire to set up again the maxims of government which had prevailed in the reign of their beloved Charles II., they could not but represent opposition to France, and vigorous measures taken to restrain her ambition, as unnecessary for England, because they well knew that the counsels of that king had been utterly averse to such measures; that his whole policy made him a friend to France; that he was governed by a French mistress, and even bribed by French money to give that Court his assistance, or at least his acquiescence, in all their designs.
De Witt.—A King of England whose Cabinet is governed by France, and who becomes a vile pensioner to a French King, degrades himself from his royalty, and ought to be considered as an enemy to the nation. Indeed the whole policy of Charles II., when he was not forced off from his natural bias by the necessity he lay under of soothing his Parliament, was a constant, designed, systematical opposition to the interest of his people. His brother, though more sensible to the honour of England, was by his Popery and desire of arbitrary power constrained to lean upon France, and do nothing to obstruct her designs on the Continent or lessen her greatness. It was therefore necessary to place the British Crown on your head, not only with a view to preserve the religious and civil rights of the people from internal oppressions, but to rescue the whole State from that servile dependence on its natural enemy, which must unquestionably have ended in its destruction. What folly was it to revile your measures abroad, as sacrificing the interest of your British dominions to connections with the Continent, and principally with Holland! Had Great Britain no interest to hinder the French from being masters of all the Austrian Netherlands, and forcing the Seven United Provinces, her strongest barrier on the Continent against the power of that nation, to submit with the rest to their yoke? Would her trade, would her coasts, would hercapital itself have been safe after so mighty an increase of shipping and sailors as France would have gained by those conquests? And what could have prevented them, but the war which you waged and the alliances which you formed? Could the Dutch and the Germans, unaided by Great Britain, have attempted to make head against a Power which, even with her assistance, strong and spirited as it was, they could hardly resist? And after the check which had been given to the encroachments of France by the efforts of the first grand alliance, did not a new and greater danger make it necessary to recur to another such league? Was not the union of France and Spain under one monarch, or even under one family, the most alarming contingency that ever had threatened the liberty of Europe?
William.—I thought so, and I am sure I did not err in my judgment. But folly is blind, and faction wilfully shuts her eyes against the most evident truths that cross her designs, as she believes any lies, however palpable and absurd, that she thinks will assist them.
De Witt.—The only objection which seems to have any real weight against your system of policy, with regard to the maintenance of a balance of power in Europe, is the enormous expense that must necessarily attend it; an expense which I am afraid neither England nor Holland will be able to bear without extreme inconvenience.
William.—I will answer that objection by asking a question. If, when you were Pensionary of Holland, intelligence had been brought that the dykes were ready to break and the sea was coming in to overwhelm and to drown us, what would you have said to one of the deputies who, when you were proposing the proper repairs to stop the inundation, should have objected to the charge as too heavy on the Province? This was the case in a political sense with both England and Holland. The fences raised to keep out superstition and tyranny were all giving way; those dreadful evils were threatening, with their whole accumulatedforce, to break in upon us and overwhelm our ecclesiastical and civil constitutions. In such circumstances to object to a necessary expense is folly and madness.
De Witt.—It is certain, sir, that the utmost abilities of a nation can never be so well employed as in the unwearied, pertinacious defence of their religion and freedom. When these are lost, there remains nothing that is worth the concern of a good or wise man. Nor do I think it consistent with the prudence of government not to guard against future dangers, as well as present; which precaution must be often in some degree expensive. I acknowledge, too, that the resources of a commercial country, which supports its trade, even in war, by invincible fleets, and takes care not to hurt it in the methods of imposing or collecting its taxes, are immense, and inconceivable till the trial is made; especially where the Government, which demands the supplies, is agreeable to the people. But yet an unlimited and continued expense will in the end be destructive. What matters it whether a State is mortally wounded by the hand of a foreign enemy, or dies by a consumption of its own vital strength? Such a consumption will come upon Holland sooner than upon England, because the latter has a greater radical force; but, great as it is, that force at last will be so diminished and exhausted by perpetual drains, that it may fail all at once, and those efforts, which may seem most surprisingly vigorous, will be in reality the convulsions of death. I don’t apply this to your Majesty’s government; but I speak with a view to what may happen hereafter from the extensive ideas of negotiation and war which you have established: they have been salutary to your kingdom; but they will, I fear, be pernicious in future times, if in pursuing great plans great Ministers do not act with a sobriety, prudence, and attention to frugality, which very seldom are joined with an extraordinary vigour and boldness of counsels.
M. Apicius—Darteneuf.
Darteneuf.—Alas! poor Apicius, I pity thee from my heart for not having lived in my age and in my country. How many good dishes, unknown at Rome in thy days, have I feasted upon in England!
Apicius.—Keep your pity for yourself. How many good dishes have I feasted upon in Rome which England does not produce, or of which the knowledge has been lost, with other treasures of antiquity, in these degenerate days! The fat paps of a sow, the livers of scari, the brains of phœnicopters, and the tripotanum, which consisted of three excellent sorts of fish, for which you English have no names, the lupus marinus, the myxo, and the muræna.
Darteneuf.—I thought the muræna had been our lamprey. We have delicate ones in the Severn.
Apicius.—No; the muræna, so respected by the ancient Roman senators, was a salt-water fish, and kept by our nobles in ponds, into which the sea was admitted.
Darteneuf.—Why, then, I dare say our Severn lampreys are better. Did you ever eat any of them stewed or potted?
Apicius.—I was never in Britain. Your country then was too barbarous for me to go thither. I should have been afraid that the Britons would have eaten me.
Darteneuf.—I am sorry for you, very sorry; for if you never were in Britain you never ate the best oysters.
Apicius.—Pardon me, sir, your Sandwich oysters were brought to Rome in my time.
Darteneuf.—They could not be fresh; they were good for nothing there. You should have come to Sandwich to eat them. It is a shame for you that you did not. An epicure talk of danger when he is in search of a dainty! Did not Leander swim over the Hellespont in a tempest to get to his mistress? And what is a wench to a barrel of exquisite oysters?
Apicius.—Nay; I am sure you can’t blame me for any want of alertness in seeking fine fishes. I sailed to the coast of Africa, from Minturnæ in Campania, only to taste of one species, which I heard was larger there than it was on our coast; and finding that I had received a false information, I returned immediately, without even deigning to land.
Darteneuf.—There was some sense in that. But why did not you also make a voyage to Sandwich? Had you once tasted those oysters in their highest perfection, you would never have come back; you would have eaten till you burst.
Apicius.—I wish I had. It would have been better than poisoning myself, as I did at Rome, because I found, upon the balance of my accounts, I had only the pitiful sum of fourscore thousand pounds left, which would not afford me a table to keep me from starving.
Darteneuf.—A sum of fourscore thousand pounds not keep you from starving! Would I had had it! I should have been twenty years in spending it, with the best table in London.
Apicius.—Alas, poor man! This shows that you English have no idea of the luxury that reigned in our tables. Before I died I had spent in my kitchen £807,291 13s. 4d.
Darteneuf.—I don’t believe a word of it. There is certainly an error in the account.
Apicius.—Why, the establishment of Lucullus for his suppers in the Apollo—I mean for every supper he sat down to in the room which he called by that name—was 5,000 drachms, which is in your money £1,614 11s. 8d.
Darteneuf.—Would I had supped with him there! But are you sure there is no blunder in these calculations?
Apicius.—Ask your learned men that. I reckon as they tell me. But you may think that these feasts were made only by great men, by triumphant generals, like Lucullus, who had plundered all Asia to help him in his housekeeping. What will you say when I tell you that the player Æsopushad one dish that cost him 6,000 sestertia—that is, £4,843 10s. English?
Darteneuf.—What will I say? Why, that I pity my worthy friend Mr. Gibber, and that, if I had known this when alive, I should have hanged myself for vexation that I did not live in those days.
Apicius.—Well you might, well you might. You don’t know what eating is. You never could know it. Nothing less than the wealth of the Roman Empire is sufficient to enable a man of taste to keep a good table. Our players were infinitely richer than your princes.
Darteneuf.—Oh that I had but lived in the blessed reign of Caligula, or of Vitellius, or of Heliogabalus, and had been admitted to the honour of dining with their slaves!
Apicius.—Ay, there you touch me. I am miserable that I died before their good times. They carried the glories of their table much farther than the best eaters of the age in which I lived. Vitellius spent in feasting, within the compass of one year, what would amount in your money to above £7,200,000. He told me so himself in a conversation I had with him not long ago. And the two others you mentioned did not fall very short of his royal magnificence.
Darteneuf.—These, indeed, were great princes. But what most affects me is the luxury of that upstart fellow Æsopus. Pray, of what ingredients might the dish he paid so much for consist?
Apicius.—Chiefly of singing birds. It was that which so greatly enhanced the price.
Darteneuf.—Of singing birds! Choke him! I never ate but one, which I stole out of its cage from a lady of my acquaintance, and all London was in an uproar, as if I had stolen and roasted an only child. But, upon recollection, I doubt whether I have really so much cause to envy Æsopus. For the singing bird which I ate was not so good as a wheat-ear or becafigue. And therefore I suspect that all the luxury you have bragged of was nothing but vanity. It was likethe foolish extravagance of the son of Æsopus, who dissolved pearls in vinegar and drank them at supper. I will stake my credit that a haunch of good buck venison and my favourite ham pie were much better dishes than any at the table of Vitellius himself. It does not appear that you ancients ever had any good soups, without which a man of taste cannot possibly dine. The rabbits in Italy are detestable. But what is better than the wing of one of our English wild rabbits? I have been told you had no turkeys. The mutton in Italy is ill-flavoured. And as for your boars roasted whole, they were only fit to be served up at a corporation feast or election dinner. A small barbecued hog is worth a hundred of them. And a good collar of Canterbury or Shrewsbury brawn is a much better dish.
Apicius.—If you had some meats that we wanted, yet our cookery must have been greatly superior to yours. Our cooks were so excellent that they could give to hog’s flesh the taste of all other meats.
Darteneuf.—I should never have endured their imitations. You might as easily have imposed on a good connoisseur in painting the copy of a fine picture for the original. Our cooks, on the contrary, give to all other meats, and even to some kinds of fish, a rich flavour of bacon without destroying that which makes the distinction of one from another. It does not appear to me that essence of hams was ever known to the ancients. We have a hundred ragouts, the composition of which surpasses all description. Had yours been as good, you could not have lain indolently lolling upon couches while you were eating. They would have made you sit up and mind your business. Then you had a strange custom of hearing things read to you while you were at supper. This demonstrates that you were not so well entertained as we are with our meat. When I was at table, I neither heard, nor saw, nor spoke; I only tasted. But the worst of all is that, in the utmost perfection of your luxury, you had no wine to be named with claret, Burgundy,champagne, old hock, or Tokay. You boasted much of your Falernum, but I have tasted the Lachrymæ Christi and other wines of that coast, not one of which would I have drunk above a glass or two of if you would have given me the Kingdom of Naples. I have read that you boiled your wines and mixed water with them, which is sufficient evidence that in themselves they were not fit to drink.
Apicius.—I am afraid you do really excel us in wines; not to mention your beer, your cider, and your perry, of all which I have heard great fame from your countrymen, and their report has been confirmed by the testimony of their neighbours who have travelled into England. Wonderful things have been also said to me of an English liquor called punch.
Darteneuf.—Ay, to have died without tasting that is miserable indeed! There is rum punch and arrack punch! It is difficult to say which is best, but Jupiter would have given his nectar for either of them, upon my word and honour.
Apicius.—The thought of them puts me into a fever with thirst.
Darteneuf.—Those incomparable liquors are brought to us from the East and West Indies, of the first of which you knew little, and of the latter nothing. This alone is sufficient to determine the dispute. What a new world of good things for eating and drinking has Columbus opened to us! Think of that, and despair.
Apicius.—I cannot indeed but exceedingly lament my ill fate that America was not discovered before I was born. It tortures me when I hear of chocolate, pineapples, and a number of other fine fruits, or delicious meats, produced there which I have never tasted.
Darteneuf.—The single advantage of having sugar to sweeten everything with, instead of honey, which you, for want of the other, were obliged to make use of, is inestimable.
Apicius.—I confess your superiority in that important article. But what grieves me most is that I never ate a turtle. They tell me that it is absolutely the best of all foods.
Darteneuf.—Yes, I have heard the Americans say so, but I never ate any; for in my time they were not brought over to England.
Apicius.—Never ate any turtle! How couldst thou dare to accuse me of not going to Sandwich to eat oysters, and didst not thyself take a trip to America to riot on turtles? But know, wretched man, I am credibly informed that they are now as plentiful in England as sturgeons. There are turtle-boats that go regularly to London and Bristol from the West Indies. I have just received this information from a fat alderman, who died in London last week of a surfeit he got at a turtle feast in that city.
Darteneuf.—What does he say? Does he affirm to you that turtle is better than venison?
Apicius.—He says, there was a haunch of the fattest venison untouched, while every mouth was employed on the turtle alone.
Darteneuf.—Alas! how imperfect is human felicity! I lived in an age when the noble science of eating was supposed to have been carried to its highest perfection in England and France. And yet a turtle feast is a novelty to me! Would it be impossible, do you think, to obtain leave from Pluto of going back for one day to my own table at London just to taste of that food? I would promise to kill myself by the quantity of it I would eat before the next morning.
Apicius.—You have forgot you have no body. That which you had has long been rotten, and you can never return to the earth with another, unless Pythagoras should send you thither to animate a hog. But comfort yourself that, as you have eaten dainties which I never tasted, so the next age will eat some unknown to this. New discoverieswill be made, and new delicacies brought from other parts of the world. But see; who comes hither? I think it is Mercury.
Mercury.—Gentlemen, I must tell you that I have stood near you invisible, and heard your discourse—a privilege which, you know, we deities use as often as we please. Attend, therefore, to what I shall communicate to you, relating to the subject upon which you have been talking. I know two men, one of whom lived in ancient, and the other in modern times, who had much more pleasure in eating than either of you through the whole course of your lives.
Apicius.—One of these happy epicures, I presume, was a Sybarite, and the other a French gentleman settled in the West Indies.
Mercury.—No; one was a Spartan soldier, and the other an English farmer. I see you both look astonished. But what I tell you is truth. Labour and hunger gave a relish to the black broth of the former, and the salt beef of the latter, beyond what you ever found in the tripotanums or ham pies, that vainly stimulated your forced and languid appetites, which perpetual indolence weakened, and constant luxury overcharged.
Darteneuf.—This, Apicius, is more mortifying than not to have shared a turtle feast.
Apicius.—I wish, Mercury, you had taught me your art of cookery in my lifetime; but it is a sad thing not to know what good living is till after one is dead.