“I'll give him some hours, at least,” thought he, “to ponder over what I have said. Who knows but the argument may seem better in memory than in action? Such things have happened before now.” And having finished this reflection, he turned to peruse the pamphlet of a quack doctor who pledged himself to cure all disorders of the circulation by attending to tidal influences, and made the moon herself enter into the materia medica. What Sir Horace believed, or did not believe, in the wild rhapsodies of the charlatan, is known only to himself. Whether his credulity was fed by the hope of obtaining relief, or whether his fancy only was aroused by the speculative images thus suggested, it is impossible to say. It is not altogether improbable that he perused these things as Charles Fox used to read all the trashiest novels of the Minerva Press, and find, in the very distorted and exaggerated pictures, a relief and a relaxation which more correct views of life had failed to impart. Hard-headed men require strange indulgences.
CHAPTER XIV. BILLY TRAYNOR AND THE COLONEL
It was a fine breezy morning as the Colonel set out with Billy Traynor for Belmullet. The bridle-path by which they travelled led through a wild and thinly inhabited tract,—now dipping down between grassy hills, now tracing its course along the cliffs over the sea. Tall ferns covered the slopes, protected from the west winds, and here and there little copses of stunted oak showed the traces of what once had been forest. It was, on the whole, a silent and dreary region, so that the travellers felt it even relief as they drew nigh the bright blue sea, and heard the sonorous booming of the waves as they broke along the shore.
“It cheers one to come up out of those dreary dells, and hear the pleasant plash of the sea,” said Harcourt; and his bright face showed that he felt the enjoyment.
“So it does, sir,” said Billy. “And yet Homer makes his hero go heavy-hearted as he hears the ever-sounding sea.”
“What does that signify, Doctor?” said Harcourt, impatiently. “Telling me what a character in a fiction feels affects me no more than telling me what he does. Why, man, the one is as unreal as the other. The fellow that created him fashioned his thoughts as well as his actions.”
“To be sure he did; but when the fellow is a janius, what he makes is as much a crayture as either you or myself.”
“Come, come, Doctor, no mystification.”
“I don't mean any,” broke in Billy. “What I want to say is this, that as we read every character to elicit truth,—truth in the working of human motives, truth in passion, truth in all the struggles of our poor weak natures,—why would n't a great janius like Homer, or Shakspeare, or Milton, be better able to show us this in some picture drawn by themselves, than you or I be able to find it out for ourselves?”