Page:Lucian (IA lucianlucas00collrich).pdf/77

 would think, the change could have been not so very sad. Was he a king on earth? No. Or a man of rank and wealth? "No," is the reply; "I was in my ninetieth year, and miserably poor; I had to earn my bread by fishing. I had no children to succour me, and I was lame and blind." "What!" says the philosopher, "in such a case, could you really wish to have life prolonged?" "Ay," replies the old fisherman, echoing the thought of the great Achilles—"Ay, life is sweet, and death terrible."

Although this is not classed amongst the "Dialogues of the Dead," there seems no reason why it should not find a place among them. Charon and his ghostly freight are a favourite subject for Lucian's satire, and he has here introduced them again in a dramatic scene of considerably more length than any of the preceding. The sparkling humour of the introduction gives additional force to the serious moral of the close.

Charon. Well, Clotho, here's the boat all a-taut, and everything ready for crossing; we've pumped out the water, and stepped the mast, and hoisted the sail—the oars are in their row-locks, and, so far as I am concerned, nothing hinders us from weighing anchor and setting off. And that Mercury is keeping me waiting—he ought to have been here long ago. The boat lies here empty still, you see, when we might have made three trips already to-day; and now it's almost evening, and