In short the Missionary concludes that he has found every where an abundant crop of vices, and that all his endeavours to produce amendment have been like ploughing the sea shore. Again afflicted Nature asks advice of Mors, and Mors recommends that she should call up Justice and send her abroad with her scourge to repress the wicked. But Justice is found to be so fast asleep that no calling can awaken her. Mors then advises her to summon Veritas; alas! unhappy Veritas enters complaining of pains from head to foot and in all the intermediate parts, within and without; she is dying and entreats that Nature will call some one to confess her. But who shall be applied to?—Kings? They will not come.—Nobles? Veritas is a hateful personage to them.—Bishops, or mitred Abbots? They have no regard for Truth.—Some Saint from the desert? Nature knows not where to find one! Poor Veritas therefore dies “unhouseled, disappointed, unanealed;” and forthwith three Demons enter rejoicing that Human Nature is left with none to help her, and that they are Kings of this world. They call in their Ministers, Caro and Voluptas and Vitium, and send them to do their work among mankind. These successful missionaries return, and relate how well they have sped every where; and the Demons being by this time hungry, after washing in due form, and many ceremonious compliments among themselves, sit down to a repast which their ministers have provided. The bill of fare was one which Beelzebub's Court of Aldermen might have approved. There were the brains of a fat monk,—a roasted Doctor of Divinity who afforded great satisfaction,—a King's sirloin,—some broiled Pope's flesh, and part of a Schoolmaster; the joint is not specified, but I suppose it to have been the rump. Then came a Senator's lights and a Lawyer's tongue.
When they have eaten of these dainties till the distended stomach can hold no more, Virtus comes in and seeing them send off the fragments to their Tartarean den, calls upon mankind to bestow some sustenance upon her, for she is tormented with hunger. The Demons and their ministers insult her and drive her into banishment; they tell Nature that to-morrow the great King of Orcus will come and carry her away in chains; off they go in a dance, and Nature concludes the piece by saying that what they have threatened must happen, unless Justice shall be awakened, Virtue fed, and Veritas restored to life by the sacred book.
There are several other Dialogues in a similar strain of fiction. The rudest and perhaps oldest specimen of this style is to be found in Pierce Ploughman, the most polished in Calderon, the most popular in John Bunyan's Holy War, and above all in his Pilgrim's Progress. It appears from the Dialogues that they were not composed for the use of youth alone as a school book, but were represented at College; and poor as they are in point of composition, the oddity of their combinations, and the wholesome honesty of their satire, were well adapted to strike young imaginations and make an impression there which better and wiser works might have failed to leave.
A schoolmaster who had been regularly bred would have regarded such a book with scorn, and discerning at once its obvious faults, would have been incapable of perceiving any thing which might compensate for them. But Guy was not educated well enough to despise a writer like old Textor. What he knew himself, he had picked up where and how he could, in bye ways and corners. The book was neither in any respect above his comprehension, nor below his taste; and Joseph Warton, never rolled off the hexameters of Virgil or Homer, ore rotundo, with more delight, when expatiating with all the feelings of a scholar and a poet upon their beauties, to such pupils as Headley and Russell and Bowles, than Guy paraphrased these rude but striking allegories to his delighted Daniel.
CHAPTER XIV. P. I.
AN OBJECTION ANSWERED.
| Is this then your wonder? Nay then you shall under- stand more of my skill. BEN JONSON. |