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24 As a pendant to these "Dialogues of the Gods," though it is not one of the pieces which bear that name, we have an amusing satire, conceived in the same daring spirit of iconoclasm, called

The speculations of the rationalists of the day as to the existence or non-existence of the Olympian deities have reached the ears of Jupiter himself, and he enters upon the scene in a state of considerable excitement and indignation, marching up and down, and muttering, with a pallid face, and his skin the colour of a philosopher, to the great bewilderment of his family. He finds it impossible to give expression to his feelings in sober prose, but addresses Minerva in tragic verse, compounded from his recollections of Euripides. "Good heavens," says his goddess-daughter to herself, "what an awful prologue!" Not to show herself wanting in poetical taste, however, as indeed was due to her own reputation, she answers him in his own vein, in a cento from Homer. But, as the king of the gods is proceeding in the same strain, Juno comes upon the scene, and, like some mortal wives, has little sympathy with her husband's poetical vein. She begs him, for the sake of ordinary comprehensions, to confine himself to prose. "Remember, Jupiter," says she, "that all of us have not devoured Euripides bodily, as you have, and do not be angry if wo are unable to keep up with you in this extempore tragedy." She draws her own conclusion at once as to the cause of this excitement. Plainly it is nothing more or less