Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/52

 36 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES and * Odyssey,' thought of the allegories which have been squeezed out of him by Plutarch, Heraclides Pon- ticus, Eustathius, Cornatus, and which Politian filched again from them ? If you believe it, with neither feet nor hands do you approach my opinion, which judges them to have been as little dreamed of by Homer as were by Ovid, in his ' Metamorphoses,' the Sacraments of the Church, which a wolfish friar, a true bacon- picker, has tried to prove, if, perchance, he could meet with others as foolish as himself, and (as the proverb says) a lid worthy of the saucepan." Now, while agreeing with Coleridge that Rabelais was among the deepest, as well as boldest, thinkers of his time, and even considering him, so far as I can judge, quite the boldest and deepest of all; while further agreeing that he is to be classed with the great creative minds of the world — Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, &c. ; and, while yet further agreeing that his filth and zanyism show how fully he both knew and felt the danger in which he stood, I must still think Pope's line not only plausible but also appro- priate. Profound thought and creative genius may wear a riant not less than a tragic face, or, in some instances, the one and the other in alternation ; and there are even instances in which one-half the mask has been of Thalia and the other of Melpomene ; for wisdom and genius are not necessarily, though they are more frequently, grave. Democritus the laugher seems to have been a philosopher yet more subtle than Heraclitus the weeper, and our fore- most scientific men are reviving his theories after more than two millenniums; and Aristophanes, I suppose, had at least as much imaginative genius as