The Works of Thomas Love Peacock

CIRCE.
Wake, Gryllus, and arise in human form.

GRYLLUS.
I have slept soundly, and had pleasant dreams.

CIRCE.
I, too, have soundly slept. Divine how long.

279

GRYLLUS.
Why, judging by the sun, some fourteen hours.

CIRCE.
Three thousand years.

GRYLLUS.
That is a nap, indeed.
But this is not your garden, nor your palace.
Where are we now?

CIRCE.
Three thousand years ago,
This land was forest, and a bright pure river
Ran through it to and from the Ocean stream.
Now, through a wilderness of human forms,
And human dwellings, a polluted flood
Rolls up and down, charged with all earthly poisons,
Poisoning the air in turn.

GRYLLUS.
I see vast masses
Of strange unnatural things.

CIRCE.
Houses, and ships,
And boats, and chimneys vomiting black smoke,
Horses, and carriages of every form,
And restless bipeds, rushing here and there
For profit or for pleasure, as they phrase it.

GRYLLUS.
Oh, Jupiter and Bacchus! what a crowd,
Flitting, like shadows without mind or purpose,
Such as Ulysses saw in Erebus.
But wherefore are we here?

280

CIRCE.
There have arisen
Some mighty masters of the invisible world,
And these have summoned us.

GRYLLUS.
With what design?

CIRCE.
That they themselves must tell. Behold they come,
Carrying a mystic table, around which
They work their magic spells. Stand by, and mark.

Three spirit-rappers appeared, carrying a table, which they placed on one side of the stage:
1.
Carefully the table place,
Let our gifted brother trace
A ring around the enchanted space.

2.
Let him tow'rd the table point,
With his first fore-finger joint,
And, with mesmerized beginning,
Set the sentient oak-slab spinning.

3.
Now it spins around, around,
Sending forth a murmuring sound,
By the initiate understood
As of spirits in the wood.

ALL.
Once more Circe we invoke.

CIRCE.
Here: not bound in ribs of oak,
Nor, from wooden disk revolving,
In strange sounds strange riddles solving,
But in native form appearing,
Plain to sight, as clear to hearing.

281

THE THREE.
Thee with wonder we behold.
By thy hair of burning gold,
By thy face with radiance bright,
By thine eyes of beaming light,
We confess thee, mighty one,
For the daughter of the Sun.
On thy form we gaze appalled.

CIRCE.
Gryllus, too, your summons called.

THE THREE.
Him of yore thy powerful spell
Doomed in swinish shape to dwell:
Yet such life he reckoned then
Happier than the life of men.
Now, when carefully he ponders
All our scientific wonders,
Steam-driven myriads, all in motion,
On the land and on the ocean,
Going, for the sake of going,
Wheresoever waves are flowing,
Wheresoever winds are blowing;
Converse through the sea transmitted,
Swift as ever thought has flitted;
All the glories of our time,
Past the praise of loftiest rhyme;
Will he, seeing these, indeed,
Still retain his ancient creed,
Ranking, in his mental plan,
Life of beast o'er life of man?

CIRCE.
Speak, Gryllus.

282

GRYLLUS.
It is early yet to judge:
But all the novelties I yet have seen
Seem changes for the worse.

THE THREE.
If we could show him
Our triumphs in succession, one by one,
'Twould surely change his judgment: and herein
How might'st thou aid us, Circe!

CIRCE.
I will do so:
And calling down, like Socrates of yore,
The Clouds to aid us, they shall shadow forth,
In bright succession, all that they behold,
From air, on earth and sea. I wave my wand:
And lo! they come, even as they came in Athens,
Shining like virgins of ethereal life.

The Chorus of Clouds descended, and a dazzling array of female beauty was revealed by degrees through folds of misty gauze. They sang their first choral song:
CHORUS OF CLOUDS.

I

Clouds ever-flowing, conspicuously soaring,
From loud-rolling Ocean, whose stream gave us birth,

283

To heights, whence we look over torrents down-pouring
To the deep quiet vales of the fruit-giving earth,—
As the broad eye of Æther, unwearied in brightness,
Dissolves our mist-veil in its glittering rays,
Our forms we reveal from its vapoury lightness,
In semblance immortal, with far-seeing gaze.

II

Shower-bearing Virgins, we seek not the regions
Whence Pallas, the Muses, and Bacchus have fled,
But the city, where Commerce embodies her legions,
And Mammon exalts his omnipotent head.
All joys of thought, feeling, and taste are before us,
Wherever the beams of his favour are warm:
Though transient full oft as the veil of our chorus,
Now golden with glory, now passing in storm.

The first stanza is pretty closely adapted from the strophe of Aristophanes: Αεναοι Νεφελαι. The second is only a distant imitation of the antistrophe: Παρθενοι ομβροφοροι.

In Homer, and all the older poets, the ocean is a river surrounding the earth, and the seas are inlets from it.

285

CHORUS.

I

As before the pike will fly
Dace and roach and such small fry;
As the leaf before the gale,
As the chaff beneath the flail;
As before the wolf the flocks,
As before the hounds the fox;
As before the cat the mouse,
As the rat from falling house;
As the fiend before the spell
Of holy water, book, and bell;
As the ghost from dawning day,—
So has fled, in gaunt dismay,
This septemvirate of quacks,
From the shadowy attacks
Of Cœur-de-Lion's battle-axe.

II

Could he in corporeal might,
Plain to feeling as to sight,
Rise again to solar light,
How his arm would put to flight
All the forms of Stygian night,
That round us rise in grim array,
Darkening the meridian day:
Bigotry, whose chief employ
Is embittering earthly joy;
Chaos, throned in pedant state,
Teaching echo how to prate;
And “Ignorance, with looks profound,”
Not “with eye that loves the ground,”
But stalking wide, with lofty crest,
In science's pretentious vest.

286

III

And now, great masters of the realms of shade,
To end the task which called us down from air,
We shall present, in pictured show arrayed,
Of this your modern world the triumphs rare,
That Gryllus's benighted spirit
May wake to your transcendent merit,
And, with profoundest admiration thrilled,
He may with willing mind assume his place
In your steam-nursed, steam-borne, steam-killed,
And gas-enlightened race.

CIRCE.
Speak, Gryllus, what you see.

GRYLLUS.
I see the ocean,
And o'er its face ships passing wide and far;
Some with expanded sails before the breeze,
And some with neither sails nor oars, impelled
By some invisible power against the wind,
Scattering the spray before them. But of many
One is on fire, and one has struck on rocks
And melted in the waves like fallen snow.
Two crash together in the middle sea,
And go to pieces on the instant, leaving
No soul to tell the tale; and one is hurled
In fragments to the sky, strewing the deep
With death and wreck. I had rather live with Circe
Even as I was, than flit about the world
In those enchanted ships, which some Alastor
Must have devised as traps for mortal ruin.

CIRCE.
Look yet again.

287

GRYLLUS.
Now the whole scene is changed.
I see long trains of strange machines on wheels,
With one in front of each, puffing white smoke
From a black hollow column. Fast and far
They speed, like yellow leaves before the gale,
When autumn winds are strongest. Through their windows
I judge them thronged with people; but distinctly
Their speed forbids my seeing.

SPIRIT-RAPPER.
This is one
Of the great glories of our modern time.
“Men are become as birds,” and skim like swallows
The surface of the world.

GRYLLUS.
For what good end?

SPIRIT-RAPPER.
The end is in itself—the end of skimming
The surface of the world.

GRYLLUS.
If that be all,
I had rather sit in peace in my old home:
But while I look, two of them meet and clash,
And pile their way with ruin. One is rolled
Down a steep bank; one through a broken bridge
Is dashed into a flood. Dead, dying, wounded,
Are there as in a battle-field. Are these
Your modern triumphs? Jove preserve me from them.

SPIRIT-RAPPER.
These ills are rare. Millions are borne in safety
Where one incurs mischance. Look yet again.

288

GRYLLUS.
I see a mass of light brighter than that
Which burned in Circe's palace, and beneath it
A motley crew dancing to joyous music.
But from that light explosion comes, and flame;
And forth the dancers rush in haste and fear
From their wide-blazing hall.

SPIRIT-RAPPER.
Oh, Circe! Circe!
Thou show'st him all the evil of our arts
In more than just proportion to the good.
Good without evil is not given to man.
Jove, from his urns dispensing good and ill,
Gives ill unmixed to some, and good and ill
Mingled to many—good unmixed to none.
Our arts are good. The inevitable ill
That mixes with them, as with all things human,
Is as a drop of water in a goblet
Full of old wine.

289

GRYLLUS.
More than one drop, I fear,
And those of bitter water.

CIRCE.
There is yet
An ample field of scientific triumph:
What shall we show him next?

SPIRIT-RAPPER.
Pause we awhile.
He is not in the mood to feel conviction
Of our superior greatness. He is all
For rural comfort and domestic ease,
But our impulsive days are all for moving:
Sometimes with some ulterior end, but still
For moving, moving, always. There is nothing
Common between us in our points of judgment.
He takes his stand upon tranquillity,
We ours upon excitement. There we place
The being, end, and aim of mortal life.
The many are with us: some few, perhaps,
With him. We put the question to the vote
By universal suffrage. Aid us, Circe!
On talismanic wings your spells can waft
The question and reply. Are we not wiser,
Happier, and better, than the men of old,
Of Homer's days, of Athens, and of Rome?

290

VOICES WITHOUT.
Aye. No. Aye, aye. No. Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye.
We are the wisest race the earth has known,
The most advanced in all the arts of life,
In science, and in morals.

SPIRIT-RAPPER.
The Ayes have it.
What is that wondrous sound, that seems like thunder,
Mixed with gigantic laughter?

CIRCE.
It is Jupiter,
Who laughs at your presumption; half in anger,
And half in mockery. Now, my worthy masters,
You must in turn experience in yourselves
The mighty magic thus far tried on others.

This is the true sense of the Homeric passage:—

Δοιοι γαρ τε πιθοι κατακειαται εν Διος ουδει
Δωρων, οια διδωσι, κακων, ετερος δε εαων:
Ωι μεν καμμιξας δωη Ζευς τερπικεραυνος,
Αλλοτε μεν τε κακω ογε κυρεται, αλλοτε δ' εσθλω.
Ωι δε κε των λυγρων δωη, λωβητον εθηκε,
Και ε κακη βουβρωστις επι χθονα διαν ελαυνει:
Φοιτα δ' ουτε θεοισι τετιμενος, ουτε βροτοισιν.

Homer: Il. xxiv.

There are only two distributions: good and ill mixed, and unmixed ill. None, as Heyne has observed, receive unmixed good. Ex dolio bonorum nemo meracius accipit: hoc memorare omisit. This sense is implied, not expressed. Pope missed it in his otherwise beautiful translation.

Two urns by Jove's high throne have ever stood,
The source of evil one, and one of good:
From thence the cup of mortal man he fills,
Blessings to these, to those distributes ills,
To most he mingles both: the wretch decreed
To taste the bad, unmixed, is curst indeed:
Pursued by wrongs, by meagre famine driven,
He wanders, outcast both of earth and heaven.

Pope.

CIRCE.
Now, Gryllus, we may seek our ancient home
In my enchanted isle.

291

GRYLLUS.
Not yet, not yet.
Good signs are toward of a joyous supper.
Therein the modern world may have its glory,
And I, like an impartial judge, am ready
To do it ample justice. But, perhaps,
As all we hitherto have seen are shadows,
So too may be the supper.

CIRCE.
Fear not, Gryllus.
That you will find a sound reality,
To which the land and air, seas, lakes, and rivers,
Have sent their several tributes. Now, kind friends,
Who with your smiles have graciously rewarded
Our humble but most earnest aims to please,
And with your presence at our festal board
Will charm the winter midnight, Music gives
The signal: Welcome and old wine await you.

THE CHORUS.
Shadows to-night have offered portraits true
Of many follies which the world enthral.
“Shadows we are, and shadows we pursue:”
But in the banquet's well-illumined hall,
Realities, delectable to all,
Invite you now our festal joy to share.
Could we our Attic prototype recal,
One compound word should give our bill of fare:
But where our language fails, our hearts true welcome bear.

As at the end of the Ecclesiazusæ.

University of Virginia Library

[Wake, Gryllus, and arise in human form.]

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