“Why not, in heaven’s name?” said Kennedy; “if they suit, they are good because so thoroughly familiar.”
“Yes, but somehow one judges them differently.”
“I daresay you do,—in fact I know you do; but you’ve no business to. I maintain that even according to Moses, king David deserved a felon’s death. Murder and adultery were crimes every bit as heinous then as they are now. Yet David, this most human of heroes, was the man after God’s own heart. Solve me the problem.”
“Practically,” said Lillyston; “I believe one follows a genuine instinct in determining not to look at the spots, however wide or dark they are, upon the sun.”
“And in accepting theoretically old Strabo’s grand dictum, ouch oion agathon genesthai poieeteen mee pzotezon geneethenta anoza agathon. Eh?”
“As Coleridge was so fond of doing,” said Julian.
“Ay, he needed the theory,” said Suton.
“Hush!” said Julian, “I can’t stand any such Philadelphus hints about Coleridge. By the bye, Owen, you might have quoted a still more apt illustration from Seneca, who criticises Livy for saying ‘Vir ingenii magni magis quam boni’ with the remark, ‘Non potest illud separari; aut et bonum erit aut nec magnum.’”
Mr Admer, who was one of the circle, chuckled inwardly at the discussion. “I was once,” he said, “at a party where a lady sang one of Byron’s Hebrew melodies. At the close of it a young clergyman sighed deeply, and with an air of intense self-satisfaction, observed, ‘Ah! I was wondering where poor Byron is now!’ What should you have all said to that?”
“Detesting Byron’s personal character, I should have said that the very wonder was a piece of idle and meddling presumption,” said Owen.