MANDEVILLE.That does n't seem to me sufficient.Shakespeare has put everything into his plays and poems, swept the whole range of human sympathies and passions, and at times is inspired by the sweetest spirit that ever man had.
THE YOUNG LADY.No one has better interpreted love.
MANDEVILLE.Yet I apprehend that no person living has any personal regard for Shakespeare, or that his personality affects many,--except they stand in Stratford church and feel a sort of awe at the thought that the bones of the greatest poet are so near them.
THE PARSON.I don't think the world cares personally for any mere man or woman dead for centuries.
MANDEVILLE.But there is a difference.I think there is still rather a warm feeling for Socrates the man, independent of what he said, which is little known.Homer's works are certainly better known, but no one cares personally for Homer any more than for any other shade.
OUR NEXT DOOR.Why not go back to Moses? We've got the evening before us for digging up people.
MANDEVILLE.Moses is a very good illustration.No name of antiquity is better known, and yet I fancy he does not awaken the same kind of popular liking that Socrates does.
OUR NEXT DOOR.Fudge! You just get up in any lecture assembly and propose three cheers for Socrates, and see where you'll be.
Mandeville ought to be a missionary, and read Robert Browning to the Fijis.
THE FIRE-TENDER.How do you account for the alleged personal regard for Socrates?
THE PARSON.Because the world called Christian is still more than half heathen.
MANDEVILLE.He was a plain man; his sympathies were with the people;he had what is roughly known as "horse-sense," and he was homely.
Franklin and Abraham Lincoln belong to his class.They were all philosophers of the shrewd sort, and they all had humor.It was fortunate for Lincoln that, with his other qualities, he was homely.
That was the last touching recommendation to the popular heart.
THE MISTRESS.Do you remember that ugly brown-stone statue of St.
Antonio by the bridge in Sorrento? He must have been a coarse saint, patron of pigs as he was, but I don't know any one anywhere, or the homely stone image of one, so loved by the people.
OUR NEXT DOOR.Ugliness being trump, I wonder more people don't win.
Mandeville, why don't you get up a "centenary" of Socrates, and put up his statue in the Central Park? It would make that one of Lincoln in Union Square look beautiful.
THE PARSON.Oh, you'll see that some day, when they have a museum there illustrating the "Science of Religion."THE FIRE-TENDER.Doubtless, to go back to what we were talking of, the world has a fondness for some authors, and thinks of them with an affectionate and half-pitying familiarity; and it may be that this grows out of something in their lives quite as much as anything in their writings.There seems to be more disposition of personal liking to Thackeray than to Dickens, now both are dead,--a result that would hardly have been predicted when the world was crying over Little Nell, or agreeing to hate Becky Sharp.
THE YOUNG LADY.What was that you were telling about Charles Lamb, the other day, Mandeville? Is not the popular liking for him somewhat independent of his writings?
MANDEVILLE.He is a striking example of an author who is loved.
Very likely the remembrance of his tribulations has still something to do with the tenderness felt for him.He supported no dignity and permitted a familiarity which indicated no self-appreciation of his real rank in the world of letters.I have heard that his acquaintances familiarly called him "Charley."OUR NEXT DOOR.It's a relief to know that! Do you happen to know what Socrates was called?
MANDEVILLE.I have seen people who knew Lamb very well.One of them told me, as illustrating his want of dignity, that as he was going home late one night through the nearly empty streets, he was met by a roystering party who were making a night of it from tavern to tavern.
They fell upon Lamb, attracted by his odd figure and hesitating manner, and, hoisting him on their shoulders, carried him off, singing as they went.Lamb enjoyed the lark, and did not tell them who he was.When they were tired of lugging him, they lifted him, with much effort and difficulty, to the top of a high wall, and left him there amid the broken bottles, utterly unable to get down.Lamb remained there philosophically in the enjoyment of his novel adventure, until a passing watchman rescued him from his ridiculous situation.
THE FIRE-TENDER.How did the story get out?
MANDEVILLE.Oh, Lamb told all about it next morning; and when asked afterwards why he did so, he replied that there was no fun in it unless he told it.