A l'auteur on connoît l'ouvrage,
A l'ouvrage on connoît l'auteur,
though he may be equally benevolent, would not be equally sagacious. It is not for mere caprice that I remain Ignotus and Innominabilis; not a Great Unknown, an Ignotolemagne, but simply an Unknown, Αγνωστος, l'Inconnu, Sconciuto, the Encubierto, the Desconocido—
This precious secret let me hide
I'll tell you every thing beside.4
4 COTTON.
Critics, we know, affect always to have strange intelligence; but though they should say to me
You may
As soon tie up the sunbeams in a net
As keep yourself unknown,5
I shall still continue in darkness inscrutable. Nor am I to be moved from this determination by the opinion which the Emperor Julian expressed concerning Proteus, when he censured him for changing himself into divers forms, lest men should compel him to manifest his knowledge. For said Julian, “if Proteus were indeed wise, and knew as Homer says many things, I praise him indeed for his knowledge, but I do not commend his disposition; seeing that he performed the part, not of a philanthropist, but rather of an imposter, in concealing himself lest he should be useful to mankind.”
5 SHIRLEY.
This was forming a severer opinion of the Ancient of the Deep, the old Prophet of the Sea, than I would pronounce upon Julian himself, though the name of Apostate clings to him. Unhappy as he was in the most important of all concerns, he was at least a true believer in a false religion, and therefore a better man than some of those kings who have borne the title of most Christian or most Catholic. I wish he had kept his beard clean! But our follies and weaknesses, when they are nothing worse, die with us, and are not like unrepented sins to be raised up in judgement. The beard of the imperial Philosopher is not populous now. And in my posthumous travels, if in some extramundane excursion I should meet him in that Limbo which is not a place of punishment but where odd persons as well as odd things are to be found, and in the Public Library of that Limbo we should find a certain Opus conspicuously placed and in high repute, translated, not into the Limbo tongue alone, but into all languages, and the Imperial Philosopher should censure the still incognoscible Author for still continuing in incognoscibility for the same reason that he blamed the Ancient of the Deep, I should remind him of the Eleusinian Mysteries, whisper the Great Decasyllabon in his ear, and ask him whether there are not some secrets which it is neither lawful nor fitting to disclose.
END OF VOL. V.