contemporary and tavern-companion, as the author of such "unconsidered
trifles" as _Hamlet_ and _Lear_, _Othello_ and _Macbeth_, _The Tempest_
and _The Midsummer Night's Dream_! Wer't ever at the "Mermaid," VERULAM?
_Bacon._ Verily, Mr. PUNCH, I should like mightily to have joined in
that company, just for once, and to have discussed the Cryptogram with
the "Spanish great galleon" and the "English man-of-war" (as FULLER puts
it), whom DONELLY now desires to knock, as it were, into one curiously
composite craft. Did not this same maker of mare's-nests indite a
fantastic tome, full of bottomless argument and visionary particularity,
concerning that fabled island or continent of Atlantis, which the
Egyptian priest told SOLON had been swallowed up by an earthquake?
_Mr. P._ Like enough, my Lord, like enough. Once a mare's-nester, always
a mare's-nester. Nephelo-Coccygia was _terra firma_ compared with the
elaborate but evanescent Cloud-Cuckoolands of riddle-reading
theory-mongers.
_Shaks._ When OEDIPUS gets crotchet-ridden the sooner the Sphinx
devours him the better.
_Mr. P._ True, O Swan! Let the Great Brethren of British Genius be
brethren still--twins, if you please, but twain. Verily it might almost
pass the might of Mother Nature to round two such splendid orbs into
one. Rare BEN had his tribute for you also, my VERULAM. "No man ever
spake more neatly, more purely, more weightily, or suffered less
emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered." Might have been said of
ME!
_Bacon._ Praise shared with you is praise indeed! But the language of
the Realm of Phantasy--WILL'S own world--the speech of Arcady, of Arden,
of shadowy Elsinore, of _Prospero's_ enchanted Isle--WILL'S native
tongue--passeth many a league-long step beyond the "neatness" of the
judgment-seat, or the "fulness" of the _Novum Organum Scientiarum_.
_Mr. P._ Well said, Wisdom!
_Shaks._ (_chortling softly_). Why, who knows? One day, perchance,--æons
hence, of course,--some puzzle-headed pragmatist may propound the
preposterous question, "Who wrote _Punch?_" From out the fathomless
deeps of its many thousand wit-stored tomes the DONELLY of that dim and
distant future may readily dip up, in his poor bucket, a Cryptogram, to
show that they were produced by a scientific syndicate, including
FARADAY and MILL, HUXLEY and HERBERT SPENCER, DARWIN and the Duke of
ARGYLL. [_At the mention of the Olympian and autocratic Scottish
Sciolist, Homeric laughter bursts forth anew in yet fuller force._
_Bacon._ Prithee, sweet WILL, don't! Shadowy sides can ache, I find, and
then, what will Rhadamanthus think?
_Mr. P._ As Jupiter did when the adventurous Ixion intruded into
Olympus, perhaps. Well, well, put aside that preposterous book, which,
as you, my Lord BACON, said of the Aristotelian method, is "only strong
for disputations and contentions, but barren of works for the benefit of
the life of man," and, I may add, of immortals.
_Shaks._ (_yawning_). Not all reading, my FRANCIS, makes a full
man--save in the sense in which one may be filled with the East wind.
_My_ books were men. Not much that is novel in Nature, human or
otherwise, to study in these shadowy realms. I miss the "Mermaid," and
the mazy world which was my stage. DONELLY'S book is dull, however.
Canst furnish us with a substitute, excellent Mr. PUNCH?
_Mr. P._ That can I, sweet WILL. To that end indeed came I hither. As a
popular stage-character--not one of your own--saith, "I hope I don't
intrude." Ah, I thought not; but you needn't try (ineffectually) to
wring my hands off, the pair of you. Behold!!!!!!
As Mr. PUNCH reluctantly turned his back upon Elysium, he left the two
Illustrious Shades, prone side by side and cheek by jowl upon an
asphodel bank, eagerly and diligently perusing his
Ninety-Third Volume!
[Illustration]
[Transcriber's Note:
All apparent printer's errors retained.
Italics denoted with underscores (_).]