by this time wine and friendship had brought poor Dick to a perfectly maudlin state, and he hiccupped out the last line with a tenderness that set one of his auditors a-laughing.

“I admire the license of your poets,” says Esmond to Mr. Addison. (Dick, after reading of the verses, was fain to go off, insisting on kissing his two dear friends before his departure, and reeling away with his periwig over his eyes.) “I admire your art:  the murder of the campaign is done to military music, like a battle at the opera, and the virgins shriek in harmony, as our victorious grenadiers march into their villages.  Do you know what a scene it was?”—­(by this time, perhaps, the wine had warmed Mr. Esmond’s head too,)—­“what a triumph you are celebrating? what scenes of shame and horror were enacted, over which the commander’s genius presided, as calm as though he didn’t belong to our sphere?  You talk of the ‘listening soldier fixed in sorrow,’ the ‘leader’s grief swayed by generous pity;’ to my belief the leader cared no more for bleating flocks than he did for infants’ cries, and many of our ruffians butchered one or the other with equal alacrity.  I was ashamed of my trade when I saw those horrors perpetrated, which came under every man’s eyes.  You hew out of your polished verses a stately image of smiling victory; I tell you ’tis an uncouth, distorted, savage idol; hideous, bloody, and barbarous.  The rites performed before it are shocking to think of.  You great poets should show it as it is—­ugly and horrible, not beautiful and serene.  Oh, sir, had you made the campaign, believe me, you never would have sung it so.”

During this little outbreak, Mr. Addison was listening, smoking out of his long pipe, and smiling very placidly.  “What would you have?” says he.  “In our polished days, and according to the rules of art, ’tis impossible that the Muse should depict tortures or begrime her hands with the horrors of war.  These are indicated rather than described; as in the Greek tragedies, that, I dare say, you have read (and sure there can be no more elegant specimens of composition), Agamemnon is slain, or Medea’s children destroyed, away from the scene;—­the chorus occupying the stage and singing of the action to pathetic music.  Something of this I attempt, my dear sir, in my humble way:  ’tis a panegyric I mean to write, and not a satire.  Were I to sing as you would have me, the town would tear the poet in pieces, and burn his book by the hands of the common hangman.  Do you not use tobacco?  Of all the weeds grown on earth, sure the nicotian is the most soothing and salutary.  We must paint our great Duke,” Mr. Addison went on, “not as a man, which no doubt he is, with weaknesses like the rest of us, but as a hero.  ’Tis in a triumph, not a battle, that your humble servant is riding his sleek Pegasus.  We college poets trot, you know, on very easy nags; it hath been, time out of mind, part of the poet’s profession to celebrate