Page:The portrait of Mr. W. H (IA portraitofmrwh01wild).pdf/77

 tainly, was fascinated by it, and had read the dialogue, if not in Ficino’s translation, of which many copies found their way to England, perhaps in that French translation by Leroy to which Joachim du Bellay contributed so many graceful metrical versions. When he says to Willie Hughes,

“he that calls on thee, let him bring forth Eternal numbers to outlive long date,”

he is thinking of Diotima’s theory that Beauty is the goddess who presides over birth,and draws into the light of day the dim conceptions of the soul: when he tells us of the “marriage of true minds,” and exhorts his friend to beget children that time cannot destroy, he is but repeating the words in which the prophetess tells us that “friends are married by a far nearer tie than those who beget mortal children, for fairer and more immortal are the children who are their common offspring.” So, also, Edward Blount in his dedication of “Heroand Leander” talks of Marlowe's works as his “right children,” being the “issue of his brain”; and when Bacon claims that “the best works and of greatest merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried and childless