Nescio. “I wonder not that an early father, in holy abhorrence, called poesy, vinum dæmonum, the wine of fiends, if its influence be such as you assert. For surely it supplies to the educated and refined, the same refuge from corroding thought and disturbing conscience, which the intoxicating cup offers to the sensual and brutish.”
Tristo. “It is so in some measure, but with this difference, which will immediately rescue this ‘divina facultas’ from injurious reflections. The inebriating draught, the actual ‘uvæ succus’ offers its poor and transient relief to all. The unfortunate and the guilty, those upon whom melancholy has settled like a mist from the ground, causeless and undeserved, though unavoidable—and those upon whom an outraged conscience inflicts its scourgings in righteous retribution, may there seek and find oblivion. But only a pure life, a cultivated mind, a religious nature, (let not the phrase breed heresy,) can secure to one the healing influence of poetry.”
Nescio. “The idea is a sublime one. But is it not merely a beautiful idea? Can you bring forward any evidence to make it manifest, or even any illustration to render it probable?”
Tristo. “With ease. Indeed, were I to search far and wide through the whole circle of English poetry, I could not find a more pertinent illustration than in the passage which I have just been reading, and on which my finger now rests.”
Nescio. “What is it? Read it.”
Tristo. “Even its title is affecting. ‘On the receipt of my mother’s picture.’ It must be familiar to you, yet I will read a few lines.
‘O that those lips had language! Life has pass’d
With me but roughly since I saw thee last.
Those lips are thine—thy own sweet smile I see,
The same, that oft in childhood solaced me;