"Who the deuse was he?" I hear you growling.
My dear Iberian friend, I really thought that you knew everything; but I find that you have set up for an Admirable Crichton upon an inadequate capital. Know, then, that a great many years ago Sannazarius—never mind who he was,—I do not justly know, myself—wrote an hexastich on the city of Venice, and sent it to the potent Senators of that moist settlement. It was as follows:—
"Viderat Adriacis Venetam Neptunus in undis
Stare urbem et toti ponere jura mari.
Nunc mihi Tarpeias quantumvis, Jupiter, arces,
Objice, et ilia tui moenia Martis, ait;
Sic Pelago Tibrim praefers; urbem aspice utramque,
Illam homines dices, hanc posuisse deos."
Which may be liberally rendered thus:—
When sea-faring Neptune saw Venice well-founded
And stiffly coercing the Adrian main,
The jolly tar cried, in a rapture unbounded:
"Why, d—ash my eyes, Jove, but I have you again;
You may boast of your city, and Mars of his walling;
But while I'm afloat, I'll stick to it that mine
Beats yours into rope-yarn in spite of your bawling,
Just as snuffy old Tiber is flogged by the brine;
And he who the difference cannot discern
Is a lob-sided lubber from bowsprit to stern.
"Very free, indeed!" you will say. It might have been worse, if I had staid at college a year or two longer, or if I had been elevated to a place in the Triennial Catalogue,—thus:
PAULUS POTTER, LL.D., S.T.D.; Barat.
V. Gubernator, Lit. Hum. Prof.,
e Cong., Praeses Rerumpub. Foed., A.B.
Yal., M.D. Dart., D.D. Dart., P.D.
V. Mon., etc., etc., etc.
I have put myself down stelliger, because it is certain, that, after obtaining all the above honors, if not an inmate of the cold and silent tomb, I should be false to my duties as a member of society, and a nuisance to my fellow-creatures. The little anachronism of translating after being translated you will also pardon; and talking of the tomb, let us return to Sannazarius. I pray that your nicely noble nose may not be offended by the tarry flavor of my version. You will find the Latin in Howell's "Survey of Venice," 1651,—a book so thoroughly useless, and so scarce withal, that I am sure it must be in your library. By the way, as you have written travels in all parts of this and other worlds, without so much as stirring from your arm-chair, and have calmly and coolly published the same, I must quote to you the rebuke of Howell, who says, "He would not have adventured upon the remote, outlandish subject, had he not bin himself upon the place; had he not had practicall conversation with the people of whom he writes." This veracious person very properly dedicated his book to the saints in Parliament assembled, many of whom had, soon after, ample leisure for perusing the fat folio. Nor is it perfectly certain that you have read the book, although you may own it; since it is your sublime pleasure to collect books like Guiccardini's History, which somebody went to the galleys rather than read through.
But let us return, my dear Bobus, to the money question. Know, then, that the Sannazarian performance above quoted, so different from the language of the malignant and turbaned Turks, filled with rapture the first Senator and the second Senator and all the other Senators mentioned in Act I., Scene 3, of "Othello," so that, in grand committee, and, for all I know to the contrary, with Brabantio in the chair, they voted to the worthy author a reward of three hundred zechins, or, to state it cambistically in our own beloved Columbian currency, $1,233.20,—this being the highest literary remuneration upon record, if we except the untold sums lavished by "The New York Blotter" upon the fascinating author of "Steel and Strychnine; or, the Dagger and the Bowl." But as we have had enough of Sannazarius, let us leave him with the gentle hope that his check was cashed in specie at the Rialto Bank, and that he made a good use of the money.
Now, dear Don, in the great case of Virtue vs. Money, I appear for the defendant. Confound Virtue, say I, and the whole tribe of the Virtuous! I am as weary of both as was that sensible Athenian of hearing Aristides called The Just; and if I had been there, and a legal voter, I know into which box my humble oyster-shell would have been plumped. Such was the vile, self-complacent habit of the Athenians, that I suspect the best fellows then were not good fellows at all. And what did the son of Lysimachus make by being recalled from banishment? He died so poor, that he was buried at the public charge, and left a couple of daughters as out-door pensioners upon public charity. The Athenians, I aver, were a duncified race; and it would have pleased me hugely to have been in the neighborhood when Alcibiades rescinded his dog's charming tail,—a fine practical protest, although unpleasant to the dog. Virtue may be well enough by way of variety; but for a good, steady, permanent pleasure, commend me to Avarice! Yes, O my Bobus, I, who was once, as to money, "still in motion of raging waste," and, like Timon, "senseless of expense,"—I, who have many a time borrowed cash of you with amiable recklessness, and have never asked you to take it back again,—I, who have had many a race with the constable, and have sometimes been overtaken,—I, who have in my callow days spoken disrespectfully of Mammon in several charming copies of verses,—I am waxing sordid. I am for the King of Lydia against Solon. How do I know that the insolent Cyras was not blandished out of his bloodthirsty intention of roasting his deposed brother by a little cash which the son of Gyges had saved out of the wide, weltering wreck of his wealth, and had concealed in his boots? Royal palms were not wholly free from pruritus even then. Why has this silly world still persisted in putting long ears upon Midas? I do not know whether he sang better or worse than Apollo; and I am sure it is much better, and bespeaks more sense, to play the flute ill than to play it well. Depend upon it, his Majesty of Phrygia has been very much abused by the mythologists. With that particular skill of his, during an epidemic of the brevitas pecuniaria, (Angl. shorts,) he would have been just the person to coax into one's house of accompt, at five minutes before two o'clock in the afternoon, to work a little involuntary transmutation,—to change the coal-scuttle into ingots, and the ruler into a great, gorged, glittering rouleau. So little would his auricular eccentricity have hindered his welcome, that I verily believe he would have been heartily received, if he had come with ensanguined chaps straight from the pillory, and had left both ears nailed to the post.