Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/418

4H ' FAMILIAR COLLOQUIES. grow on their foreheads, and then they seem very cunning fellows, and are more fit to rule than to be ruled. And at last you send them away in a condition to live merrily and die blessedly. Ba. I find you can- not keep your tongue from railing; but have a care you do not raise my indignation. If you do not foi'bear throwing your squibs at me, I will throw them, at you again; I have something to hit you in the teeth of. Th. And nothing but slanders. Ba. You poor wretch you, I say I send them back such (whether you know it or no) that they will not strike sail to your poets for versification (that is the chief thing you have to boast of).

Th. For number, I confess ; but we do not so much regard the number of verses as the goodness of them. But you, on the contrary, only take notice of the number, and not the goodness ; you count the pages, but pass by the barbarisms that are in them. So they do but hang together, that is the only thing that you regard, it is no matter for the goodness of them. Ba. You senseless creature, you make a mighty to do about goodness; I do not think anything is so empty of goodness as your poems ; for what are they but gilded lies, full of old women's tales 1 Th. You commend them sufficiently. Ba. I com- mend such ridiculous stuff ! Th. You commend, and do not know you do it. Ba. What, such lying ones ; I rather ridicule them than praise them. Th. You praise them against your will. Ba. How so ? Th. While thou enviously railest at them; for the way to displease those that are bad is to commend them. Ba. Great and elaborate lies that anybody may envy.

Th. You shew your ignorance as plainly as the sun at noonday. Unhappy wretch, you are not sensible how much you commend the industry of those poets by your foolish talking, who think it unfit to cast roses before swine in mire and dirt ; and therefore they wrap up and hide the truth in ambiguous words and enigmatical expressions, that though all may read them, yet all may not understand them. They read them, and go away as ignorant as if they never had seen them. A man of learning reads them, and searches into the meaning of the words (for they are transparent), and finds that under them is couched a vast treasure of wholesome truth that the other passed over unobserved. Ba. Very fine, very fine ; a comical piece of roguery, to mingle truth and falsehood together ! to corrupt truth with feigned fables ! is this that you give such great encomiums of? Th. Shall I give you an answer to this in a few words ? But first answer me this ; pray, which do you look upon to be the best, to pick up jewels out of dung, or to admire them set in gold ? Ba. The last is the best. Th. You mean to yourself, and so it is. As for you, if there is any truth in a poem, you obscure it so with trifling words, that it rather makes it look dim, than gives it a lustre. On the contrary, we (not as you reproachfully say) do not corrupt the truth by an elegancy of words ; but we put a lustre upon it, as when a jewel is set in gold. We do not take the lustre from it, but add to it ; we do not make it more dark, but shine the brighter. And last of all, this we do, we labour that that truth, which is of its own nature profitable, be made more grateful by industry. As for your partisans, they being ignorant of these things, reproach, carp at, and are envious at them. If they were wise, how much more would they cry me up 1 have stopped your