The King of Athens here.’ ”
Of whom and of his enemy, I have time to tell you no more to-day—except only that this Minotaur is the type or embodiment of the two essentially bestial sins of Anger and Lust;—that both these are in the human nature, interwoven inextricably with its chief virtue, Love, so that Dante makes this very ruin of the Rocks of hell, on which the Minotaur is couched, to be wrought on them at the instant when “the Universe was thrilled with love,”—(the last moment of the Crucifixion)—and that the labyrinth of these passions is one not fabulous, nor only pictured on coins of Crete. And the right interweaving of Anger with Love, in criminal justice, is the main question in earthly law, which the Athenian lawgiver had to deal with. Look, if you can, at my introductory Lectures at Oxford, p. 83; and so I must leave Theseus for this time;—in next letter, which will be chiefly on Christmas cheer, I must really try to get as far as his vegetable soup.
As for Æacus, and his coining business, we must even let them alone now, till next year; only I have to thank some readers who have written to me on the subject of interest of money, (one or two complaining that I had dismissed it too summarily, when, alas! I am only at the threshold of it!), and, especially, my reader for the press, who has referred me to a delightful Italian book, ‘Teoremi di Politica Cristiana,’ (Naples, 1830,) and copied out ever so much of it for me; and Mr. Sillar, for farther most useful letters, of which to-day I can only quote this postscript:—
“Please note that your next number of ‘Fors Clavigera’ ought to be in the hands of your readers on Friday, the 1st, or Saturday, the 2nd, of November. The following day being Sunday, the 3rd, there will be read in every church in England, or in the world, where the Church Service is used, the 15th Psalm, which distinctly declares the man who shall ascend to God’s holy hill to be him who, amongst other things, has not put forth his money upon usury; a verse impiously ignored in most of the metrical versions of the Psalms; those adapted to popular tunes or popular prejudices.”
I think, accordingly, that some of my readers may be glad to have a sounder version of that Psalm; and as the 14th is much connected with it, and will be variously useful to us afterwards, here they both are, done into verse by an English squire,—or his sister, for they alike could rhyme; and the last finished singing what her brother left unsung, the Third Fors having early put seal on his lips.
PSALM XIV.—(Dixit insipiens.)
The foolish man by flesh and fancy ledd,
His guilty hart with this fond thought hath fed:
There is noe God that raigneth.
And so thereafter he and all his mates