Conspiracy, and yet unconscious half;
For, though, beneath, there worked one plastic mind,
The surface seemed fortuitous concurrence,
One man the hook supplying, one the eye,
Here the false maxim, there the fact suborned,
This the mad hope, and that the grudge forgotten.
The lawyer wrote the falsehood in the dust
Of mouldering scrolls; with sighs the court-priest owned it;
The minstrel tossed it gaily from his strings;
The witling lisped it, and the soldier mouthed it.