Gryll Grange Part 10

In this mood the Reverend Doctor Opimian found him one morning in the library reading. He sprang up to meet the Divine, exclaiming, 'Ah, dear doctor, I am very glad to see you. Have you any special favourite among the Odes of Pindar?'

The doctor thought this an odd question for the first salutation. He had expected that the first inquiry would have been for the fair convalescent. He divined that the evasion of this subject was the result of an inward struggle. He thought it would be best to fall in with the mood of the questioner, and said, 'Charles Fox's favourite is said to have been the second Olympic; I am not sure that there is, or can be, anything better. What say you?'

_Mr. Falconer._ It may be that something in it touches a peculiar tone of feeling; but to me there is nothing like the ninth Pythian.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I can understand your fancy for that ode. You see an image of ideal beauty in the nymph Cyrene.

_Mr. Falconer._ 'Hidden are the keys of wise persuasion of sacred endearments,'{1} seems a strange phrase in English; but in Greek the words invest a charming sentiment with singular grace. Fit words to words as closely as we may, the difference of the mind which utters them fails to reproduce the true semblance of the thought. The difference of the effect produced, as in this instance, by exactly corresponding words, can only be traced to the essential difference of the Greek and the English mind.

1 (Greek pa.s.sage)--Pindar?

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ And indeed, as with the words, so with the image. We are charmed by Cyrene wrestling with the lion; but we should scarcely choose an English girl so doing as the type of ideal beauty.

_Mr. Falconer._ We must draw the image of Cyrene, not from an English girl but from a Greek statue.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Unless a man is in love, and then to him all images of beauty take something of the form and features of his mistress.

_Mr. Falconer._ That is to say, a man in love sees everything through a false medium. It must be a dreadful calamity to be in love.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Surely not when all goes well with it.

_Mr. Falconer._ To me it would be the worst of all mischances.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Every man must be subject to Love once in his life. It is useless to contend with him. 'Love,' says Sophocles, 'is unconquered in battle, and keeps his watch in the soft cheeks of beauty.'{1}

_Mr. Falconer._ I am afraid, doctor, the Morgana to whom you have introduced me is a veritable enchantress. You find me here, determined to avoid the spell.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Pardon me. You were introduced, as Jupiter was to Semele, by thunder and lightning, which was, happily, not quite as fatal.

_Mr. Falconer._ I must guard against its being as fatal in a different sense; otherwise I may be myself the _triste bidental_.{2} I have aimed at living, like an ancient Epicurean, a life of tranquillity. I had thought myself armed with triple bra.s.s against the folds of a three-formed Chimaera. What with cla.s.sical studies, and rural walks, and a domestic society peculiarly my own, I led what I considered the perfection of life: 'days so like each other they could not be remembered.' {3}

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ It is vain to make schemes of life. The world will have its slaves, and so will Love.

Say, if you can, in what you cannot change. For such the mind of man, as is the day The Sire of G.o.ds and men brings over him.{4}

1 (Greek pa.s.sage)--Antigone.

2 Bidental is usually a place struck by lightning: thence enclosed, and the soil forbidden to be moved. Persius uses it for a person so killed.

3 Wordsworth: The Brothers.

4 Quid placet aut odio est, quod non mutabile credas?

(Greek phrase) These two quotations form the motto of Knight's Principles of Taste.

_Mr. Falconer._ I presume, doctor, from the complacency with which you speak of Love, you have had no cause to complain of him.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Quite the contrary. I have been an exception to the rule that 'The course of true love never did run smooth.' Nothing could run more smooth than mine. I was in love. I proposed. I was accepted. No crossings before. No bickerings after. I drew a prize in the lottery of marriage.

_Mr. Falconer._ It strikes me, doctor, that the lady may say as much.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I have made it my study to give her cause to say so. And I have found my reward.

_Mr. Falconer._ Still, yours is an exceptional case. For, as far as my reading and limited observation have shown me, there are few happy marriages. It has been said by an old comic poet that 'a man who brings a wife into his house, brings into it with her either a good or an evil genius.'{1} And I may add from Juvenal: 'The G.o.ds only know which it will be.'{2}

1 (Greek pa.s.sage)

Theodectes: apud Stobaeum.

2 Conjugium petimus partumque uxoris, at illis Notum, qui pueri, qualisque futura sit uxor.

JUV. Sat. x. 352-3.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Well, the time advances for the rehearsals of our Aristophanic comedy, and, independently of your promise to visit the Grange, and their earnest desire to see you, you ought to be there to a.s.sist in the preliminary arrangements.

_Mr. Falconer._ Before you came, I had determined not to go; for, to tell you the truth, I am afraid of falling in love.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ It is not such a fearful matter. Many have been the better for it. Many have been cured of it. It is one of those disorders which every one must have once.

_Mr. Falconer._ The later the better.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian_. No; the later the worse, if it falls into a season when it cannot be reciprocated.

_Mr. Falconer._ That is just the season for it. If I were sure that it would not be reciprocated, I think I should be content to have gone through it.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Do you think it would be reciprocated?

_Mr. Falconer._ Oh no. I only think it possible that it might be.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Well, there is a gentleman doing his best to bring about your wish.

_Mr. Falconer._ Indeed! Who?

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian_. A visitor at the Grange, who seems in great favour with both uncle and niece--Lord Curryfin.

_Mr. Falconer._ Lord Curryfin! I never heard you speak of him, but as a person to be laughed at.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ That was my impression of him before I knew him.

Barring his absurdities, in the way of lecturing on fish, and of s.h.i.+ning in absurd company in the science of pantopragmatics, he has very much to recommend him: and I discover in him one quality which is invaluable. He does all he can to make himself agreeable to all about him, and he has great tact in seeing how to do it. In any intimate relation of life--with a reasonable wife, for instance--he would be the pink of a good husband.

The doctor was playing, not altogether unconsciously, the part of an innocent Iago. He only said what was true, and he said it with a good purpose; for, with all his repeated resolutions against match-making, he could not dismiss from his mind the wish to see his young friends come together; and he would not have liked to see Lord Curryfin carry off the prize through Mr. Falconer's neglect of his opportunity. Jealousy being the test of love, he thought a spice of it might be not unseasonably thrown in.

_Mr. Falconer._ Notwithstanding your example, doctor, love is to be avoided, because marriage is at best a dangerous experiment. The experience of all time demonstrates that it is seldom a happy condition.

Jupiter and Juno to begin with; Venus and Vulcan. Fictions, to be sure, but they show Homer's view of the conjugal state. Agamemnon in the shades, though he congratulates Ulysses on his good fortune in having an excellent wife, advises him not to trust even her too far. Come down to realities, even to the masters of the wise: Socrates with Xantippe; Euripides with his two wives, who made him a woman-hater; Cicero, who was divorced; Marcus Aurelius.--Travel downwards: Dante, who, when he left Florence, left his wife behind him; Milton, whose first wife ran away from him; Shakespeare, who scarcely s.h.i.+nes in the light of a happy husband. And if such be the lot of the lights of the world, what can humbler men expect?

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ You have given two or three heads of a catalogue which, I admit, might be largely extended. You can never read a history, you can never open a newspaper, without seeing some example of unhappy marriage. But the conspicuous are not the frequent. In the quiet path of every-day life--the _secretum iter et fallentis semita vita_--I could show you many couples who are really comforts and helpmates to each other. Then, above all things, children. The great blessing of old age, the one that never fails, if all else fail, is a daughter.

_Mr. Falconer._ All daughters are not good.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Most are. Of all relations in life, it is the least disappointing: where parents do not so treat their daughters as to alienate their affections, which unhappily many do.