The reproach of being amusing has somewhat dimmed your fame—­for a moment.  The shadow of this tyranny will soon be overpast; and when ‘La Cure’e’ and ‘Pot-Bouille’ are more forgotten than ‘Le Grand Cyrus,’ men and women—­and, above all, boys—­will laugh and weep over the page of Alexandre Dumas.  Like Scott himself, you take us captive in our childhood.  I remember a very idle little boy who was busy with the ‘Three Musketeers’ when he should have been occupied with ‘Wilkins’s Latin Prose.’  ‘Twenty years after’ (alas and more) he is still constant to that gallant company; and, at this very moment, is breathlessly wondering whether Grimand will steal M. de Beaufort out of the Cardinal’s prison.

XIII.

To Theocritus

‘Sweet, methinks, is the whispering sound of yonder pine-tree,’ so, Theocritus, with that sweet word ade*, didst thou begin and strike the keynote of thy songs.  ‘Sweet,’ and didst thou find aught of sweet, when thou, like thy Daphnis, didst ’go down the stream, when the whirling wave closed over the man the Muses loved, the man not hated of the Nymphs?’ Perchance below those waters of death thou didst find, like thine own Hylas, the lovely Nereids waiting thee, Eunice, and Malis, and Nycheia with her April eyes.  In the House of Hades, Theocritus, doth there dwell aught that is fair, and can the low light on the fields of asphodel make thee forget thy Sicily?  Nay, methinks thou hast not forgotten, and perchance for poets dead there is prepared a place more beautiful than their dreams.  It was well for the later minstrels of another day, it was well for Ronsard and Du Bellay to desire a dim Elysium of their own, where the sunlight comes faintly through the shadow of the earth, where the poplars are duskier, and the waters more pale than in the meadows of Anjou.

* Transliterated.

There, in that restful twilight, far remote from war and plot, from sword and fire, and from religions that sharpened the steel and lit the torch, there these learned singers would fain have wandered with their learned ladies, satiated with life and in love with an unearthly quiet.  But to thee, Theocritus, no twilight of the Hollow Land was dear, but the high suns of Sicily and the brown cheeks of the country maidens were happiness enough.  For thee, therefore, methinks, surely is reserved an Elysium beneath the summer of a far-off system, with stars not ours and alien seasons.  There, as Bion prayed, shall Spring, the thrice desirable, be with thee the whole year through, where there is neither frost, nor is the heat so heavy on men, but all is fruitful, and all sweet things blossom, and evenly meted are darkness and dawn.  Space is wide, and there be many worlds, and suns enow, and the Sun-god surely has had a care of his own.  Little didst thou need, in thy native land, the isle of the three capes, little didst thou need but sunlight on land and sea.  Death can