The Box of Pandora.

A Colloquy with Erasmus.

"Must it be so? And must I ravel out

My weaved-up Follies? Gentle Northumberland,
If thy Offences were upon Record,

Would it not shame thee, in so fair a Troop,
To read a Lecture on them?"

KING RICHARD II.

HEAR, O illustrious Desiderius from thy grass grown

Sepulchre, among the red Cloister-arches and Armorial Monuments of BASILIA;* hear me beneath the mighty Woodlands and Manorial Palaces of Kent, desirous to cleanse my pages of much perilous stuff by an Interview with thy venerable Shade.

And to whom should I so reasonably appeal, in my present predicament, as to thyself, seeing thou wert the Great Coeval of The Press, the Bosom Friend and Household Guest of Aldus Manutius at Venice, the Agamemnon of the Reformation, as Luther was its Achilles, the dread Antagonist of Error, and so intolerant of Errata, that thou art known to have protested thou wouldst rather have given a Pursefull of Golden Crowns, than have overlooked a grievous Typographical Misdemeanour which tarnished the lustre of a Treatise dedicated to a certain Dame of Quality, thy munificent and honoured Patroness. True, I cannot carry my predilection so far as to cry, "Mallem ERRARE cum Erasmo !"

406

THE BOX OF PANDORA.

but thus much I may say, without hazarding the imputation of Sycophancy, that

Since to my share some Printed' Errors fall,"

I would infinitely prefer the shelter of thy great Name for the unlucky Changelings, to exposing them before the invidious scrutiny of the public, unprotected by such a Telamonian shield.

Exposed, somehow or another, they inevitably must be; and I have always profoundly revered that Machiavellian Maxim,

"EVER BE THE FIRST TO AVOW SUCH FAULTS IN YOURself, As MUST be detected, whetheR YOU AVOW THEM OR NOT;" the Confession itself gives an air of charming Candour to your character, disarms the surliness of criticism, and drops a coquettish veil over the very Defects it professes to divulge.

Nevertheless I cannot endure the nauseous practice of placarding the poor things upon a loose slip, like the Label on the Apothecary's Phial, more distasteful than the Draught which it indicates within.

No! let me rather communicate to thee, O sublime Shadow! what I cannot ultimately conceal from the world; so that the humiliating disclosures emerging, as it were, from the solemn sanctuary of thy Cathedral Home, and, in a manner, enmantled with thy majestic Shroud, may experience a degree of compassionate respect, which, under a less illusory guise, they could scarcely anticipate.

"To err is human," singeth the Poet; ah, would it were not also diabolical! as, in reference to the Ministering Angels of Faust and Güttemberg, it too often is.

"But this eternal Blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list!”

THE BOX OF PANDORA.

407

First of all, then, Page 39 shews me, and through me, thee, O redoubtable* Professor of the Cam! that I have permitted to pass muster the chronological term "Olympiad" in place of the triumphal lay, "Olympic"that clarion epithet, associated with all the glories of Elis; the refulgent meridian, emblazing with sightless gold the Temple of Jupiter; the blue rushing of the Alphæus beneath his aged Olive groves; and the broad meadows of Olympia surrendering their verdure to those brazen Chariots of rich Heroic Sculpture, Steeds worthy the immortality of Pentelic Marbles, and Youthful Candidates for glory, naked and radiant as that great Luminary, in whose full blaze they strove. For this Boeotian delinquency, if I do not kiss the Rod now, the Rod, of a surety, would have kissed me some years ago; or if my skin had then escaped from jeopardy, my feathers would have suffered at a more recent period, when I should infallibly have forfeited all title to that mystic Password of The Schools, "TESTAMUR;" and realizing Plato's definition of a Man, been reduced to the condition of a Michaelmas Goose.

To continue! as the Beadle said to the Cutpurse, when he gave him the first lash.

At Page 53, I find myself, through the malignant agency of the subordinate Genii of the Press,-placed, to my infinite disgust, in the prædicament of a modern Iconoclast, barbarously exorcising the umbratile divinity from her Grotto, and enshrining on her pedestal an empty

name.

It should have been Numen-it is Nomen! And I asseverate, O Seer of Rotterdam! that no Men but those

* Erasmus was the Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at Cambridge.