You a man of gallantry, and think of such a thing! For shame, my dear Cœlius! Do not let Clodia hear of it." While Cæsar spoke he had been engaged in keeping Clodius at arm's length. The rage of the frantic libertine increased as the struggle continued. "Stand back, as you value your life," he cried; "I will pass." "Not this way, sweet Clodius. I have too much regard for you to suffer you to make love at such disadvantage. You smell too much of Falernian at present. Would you stifle your mistress? By Hercules, you are fit to kiss nobody now, except old Piso, when he is tumbling home in the morning from the vintners." * Clodius plunged his hand into his bosom and drew a little dagger, the faithful companion of many desperate adventures. "Oh, Gods! he will be murdered!" cried Zoe. The whole throng of revellers was in agitation. The street fluctuated with torches and lifted hands. It was but for a moment. Cæsar watched with a steady eye the descending hand of Clodius, arrested the blow, seized his antagonist by the throat, and flung him against one of the pillars of the portico with such violence that he rolled, stunned and senseless, on the ground. "He is killed," cried several voices. "Fair self-defence, by Hercules!" said Marcus Cœlius. "Bear witness, you all saw him draw his dagger." plenty of conversation. So reckon upon me, my dear Marcus, and farewell." Cæsar and Zoe turned away. As soon as they were beyond hearing, she began in great agitation: "Cæsar, you are in danger. I know all. I overheard Catiline and Cethegus. You are engaged in a project which must lead to certain destruction." "My beautiful Zoe, I live only for glory and pleasure. For these I have never hesitated to hazard an existence which they alone render valuable to me. In the present case, I can assure you that our scheme presents the fairest hopes of success.' "So much the worse. You do not know-you do not understand me. speak not of open peril, but of secret treachery. Catiline hates you; Cethegus hates you; your destruction is resolved. If you survive the contest, you perish in the first hour of victory. They detest you for your moderation;-they are eager for blood and plunder. I have risked my life to bring you this warning; but that is of little moment. Farewell!-Be happy." Cæsar stopped her. "Do you fly from my thanks, dear Zoe?" "I wish not for your thanks, but for your safety;-I desire not to defraud Valeria or Servilia of one caress, extorted from gratitude or pity. Be my feelings what they may, I have learnt in a fearful school to endure and to suppress them. I have been taught to abase a proud spirit to the claps and hisses of the vulgar;-to smile on suitors who united the insults of a despicable pride to the endearments of a loathsome fondness;-to affect sprightliness with an aching head, and eyes from which tears were ready to gush ;-to feign love with curses on my lips, and madness in my brain. Who feels for me any esteem,-any "By all the Gods, Caius! you have won your lady fairly. A splendid vietory! You deserve a triumph." "What a madman Clodius has be- tenderness? Who will shed a tear come!" "Intolerable. But come and sup with me on the Nones. You have no objection to meet the Consul?" "6 Cicero ? None at all. We need not talk politics. Our old dispute about Plato and Epicurus will furnish us with *Cic. in Pis. over the nameless grave which will soon shelter from cruelty and scorn the broken heart of the poor Athenian girl? But you, who alone have addressed her in her degradation with a voice of kindness and respect, farewell. Sometimes think of me,-not with sorrow;-no; I could bear your in gratitude, but not your distress. Yet, "Oh! Cæsar," interrupted the blushif it will not pain you too much, in ing Zoe, "think only on your own distant days, when your lofty hopes security at present. If you feel as you and destinies are accomplished,-on speak, but you are only mocking me, the evening of some mighty victory,- --or perhaps your compassionin the chariot of some magnificent "By Heaven!--by every oath that is triumph,-think on one who loved you bindingwith that exceeding love which only "Alas! alas! Cæsar, were not all the miserable can feel. Think that, the same oaths sworn yesterday to wherever her exhausted frame may Valeria? But I will trust you, at have sunk beneath the sensibilities of least so far as to partake your present a tortured spirit,-in whatever hovel dangers. Flight may be necessary:or whatever vault she may have closed form your plans. Be they what they her eyes,-whatever strange scenes of may, there is one who, in exile, in horror and pollution may have sur- poverty, in peril, asks only to wander, rounded her dying bed, your shape was to beg, to die with you." the last that swam before her sight- My Zoe, I do not anticipate any your voice the last sound that was such necessity. To renounce the conringing in her ears. Yet turn your spiracy without renouncing the prinface to me, Cæsar. Let me carry away ciples on which it was originally underone last look of those features, and taken,-to elude the vengeance of the then He turned round. He Senate without losing the confidence of looked at her. He hid his face on her the people,-is, indeed, an arduous, but bosom, and burst into tears. With not an impossible, task. I owe it to sobs long and loud, and convulsive as myself and to my country to make the those of a terrified child, he poured attempt. There is still ample time for forth on her bosom the tribute of im- consideration. At present I am too petuous and uncontrollable emotion. happy in love to think of ambition or He raised his head; but he in vain danger." struggled to restore composure to the brow which had confronted the frown of Sylla, and the lips which had rivalled the eloquence of Cicero. He several times attempted to speak, but in vain; and his voice still faltered with tenderness, when, after a pause of several minutes, he thus addressed her: They had reached the door of a stately palace. Cæsar struck it. It was instantly opened by a slave. Zoe found herself in a magnificent hall, surrounded by pillars of green marble, between which were ranged the statues of the long line of Julian nobles. "Call Endymion," said Cæsar. The confidential freed man made his appearance, not without a slight smile, which his patron's good nature emboldened him to hazard, at perceiving the beautiful Athenian. "My own dear Zoe, your love has been bestowed on one who, if he cannot merit, can at least appreciate and adore you. Beings of similar loveliness, and similar devotedness of affection, mingled, in all my boyish dreams of greatness, with visions of curule chairs and ivory cars, marshalled legions and laurelled fasces. Such I have endeavoured to find in the world; and, in their stead, I have met with selfishness, with vanity, with frivolity, with falsehood. The life which you have preserved is a boon less valuable than apartments. This way, my sweet Zoe." the affection "Arm my slaves, Endymion; there are reasons for precaution. Let them relieve each other on guard during the night. Zoe, my love, my preserver, why are your cheeks so pale? Let me kiss some bloom into them. How you tremble! Endymion, a flask of Samian and some fruit. Bring them to my ON THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE. (JUNE 1823.) THIS is the age of societies. There is scarcely one Englishman in ten who has not belonged to some association for distributing books, or for prosecuting them; for sending invalids to the hospital, or beggars to the treadmill; for giving plate to the rich or blankets to the poor. To be the most absurd institution among so many institutions is no small distinction; it seems, however, to belong indisputably to the Royal Society of Literature. At the first establishment of that ridiculous academy, every sensible man predicted that, in spite of regal patronage and episcopal management, it would do nothing, or do harm. And it will scarcely be denied that those expectations have hitherto been fulfilled. I do not attack the founders of the association. Their characters are respectable; their motives, I am willing to believe, were laudable. But I feel, and it is the duty of every literary man to feel, a strong jealousy of their proceedings. Their society can be innocent only while it continues to be despicable. Should they ever possess the power to encourage merit, they must also possess the power to depress it. Which power will be more frequently exercised, let every one who has studied literary history, let every one who has studied human nature, declare. Envy and faction insinuate themselves into all communities. They often disturb the peace, and pervert the decisions, of benevolent and scientific associations. But it is in literary academies that they exert the most extensive and pernicious influence. In the first place, the principles of literary criticism, though equally fixed with those on which the chemist and the surgeon proceed, are by no means equally recognised. Men are rarely able to assign a reason for their approbation or dislike on questions of taste; and therefore they willingly submit to any guide who boldly asserts his claim to superior discernment. It is more difficult to ascertain and establish the merits of a poem than the powers of a machine or the benefits of a new remedy. Hence it is in literature, that quackery is most easily puffed, and excellence most easily decried. on In some degree this argument applies to academies of the fine arts; and it is fully confirmed by all that I have ever heard of that institution which annually disfigures the walls of Somerset-House with an acre of spoiled canvass. But a literary tribunal is incomparably more dangerous. Other societies, at least, have no tendency to call forth any opinions on those subjects which most agitate and inflame the minds of men. The sceptic and the zealot, the revolutionist and the placeman, meet common ground in a gallery of paintings or a laboratory of science. They can praise or censure without reference to the differences which exist between them. In a literary body this can never be the case. Literature is, and always must be, inseparably blended with politics and theology; it is the great engine which moves the feelings of a people on the most momentous questions. It is, therefore, impossible that any society can be formed so impartial as to consider the literary character of an individual abstracted from the opinions which his writings inculcate. It is not to be hoped, perhaps it is not to be wished, that the feelings of the man should be so completely forgotten in the duties of the academician. The consequences are evident. The honours and censures of this Star-chamber of the Muses will be awarded according to the prejudices of the particular sect or faction which may at the time predominate. Whigs would canvass against a Southey, Tories against a Byron. Those who might at first protest against such conduct as unjust would soon adopt it on the plea of retaliation; and the general good of literature, for which the society was professedly instituted, would be forgotten in the stronger claims of political and religious partiality. Yet even this is not the worst. Should the institution ever acquire any influence, it will afford most pernicious facilities to every malignant coward who may desire to blast a reputation which he envies. It will furnish a secure am- | letters. But I hasten on to another buscade, behind which the Maroons of topic. literature may take a certain and deadly aim. The editorial we has often been fatal to rising genius; though all the world knows that it is only a form of speech, very often employed by a single needy blockhead. The academic we would have a far greater and more ruinous influence. Numbers, while they increased the effect, would diminish the shame, of injustice. The advantages of an open and those of an anonymous attack would be combined; and the authority of avowal would be united to the security of concealment. The serpents in Virgil, after they had destroyed Laocoon, found an asylum from the vengeance of the enraged people behind the shield of the statue of Minerva. And, in the same manner, every thing that is grovelling and venomous, every thing that can hiss, and every thing that can sting, would take sanctuary in the recesses of this new temple of wisdom. One of the modes by which our Society proposes to encourage merit is the distribution of prizes. The munificence of the king has enabled it to offer an annual premium of a hundred guineas for the best essay in prose, and another of fifty guineas for the best poem, which may be transmitted to it. This is very laughable. In the first place the judges may err. Those imperfections of human intellect to which, as the articles of the church tell us, even general councils are subject may possibly be found even in the Royal Society of Literature. The French academy, as I have already said, was the most illustrious assembly of the kind, and numbered among its associates men much more distinguished than ever will assemble at Mr. Hatchard's to rummage the box of the English Society. Yet this famous body gave a poetical prize, for which Voltaire was a candidate, to a fellow who wrote some verses about the frozen and the burning pole. The French academy was, of all such associations, the most widely and the most justly celebrated. It was founded Yet, granting that the prizes were by the greatest of ministers; it was always awarded to the best composition, patronised by successive kings; it that composition, I say without hesitanumbered in its lists most of the eminent tion, will always be bad. A prize poem is French writers. Yet what benefit has like a prize sheep. The object of the comliterature derived from its labours? petitor for the agricultural premium is What is its history but an uninterrupted to produce an animal fit, not to be eaten, record of servile compliances-of paltry but to be weighed. Accordingly he pamartifices of deadly quarrels-of per-pers his victim into morbid and unfidious friendships? Whether governed natural fatness; and, when it is in such by the Court, by the Sorbonne, or by the Philosophers, it was always equally powerful for evil, and equally impotent for good. I might speak of the attacks by which it attempted to depress the rising fame of Corneille; I might speak of the reluctance with which it gave its tardy confirmation to the applauses which the whole civilised world had bestowed on the genius of Voltaire. I might prove by overwhelming evidence that, to the latest period of its existence, even under the superintendence of the all-accomplished D'Alembert, it continued to be a scene of the fiercest animosities and the basest intrigues. I might cite Piron's epigrams, and Marmontel's memoirs, and Montesquieu's a state that it would be sent away in disgust from any table, he offers it to the judges. The object of the poetical candidate, in like manner, is to produce, not a good poem, but a poem of that exact degree of frigidity or bombast which may appear to his censors to be correct or sublime. Compositions thus constructed will always be worthless. The few excellences which they may contain will have an exotic aspect and flavour. In general, prize sheep are good for nothing but to make tallow candles, and prize poems are good for nothing but to light them. The first subject proposed by the Society to the poets of England was Dartmoor. I thought that they intended a covert sarcasm at their own projects. | and one of them thus addressed the Their institution was a literary Dart-king: moor scheme;-a plan for forcing into cultivation the waste lands of intellect, -for raising poetical produce, by means of bounties, from soil too meagre to have yielded any returns in the natural course of things. The plan for the cultivation of Dartmoor has, I hear, been abandoned. I hope that this may be an omen of the fate of the Society. In truth, this seems by no means improbable. They have been offering for several years the rewards which the king placed at their disposal, and have not, as far as I can learn, been able to find in their box one composition which they have deemed worthy of publication. At least no publication has taken place. The associates may perhaps be astonished at this. But I will attempt to explain it, after the manner of ancient times, by means of an apologue. About four hundred years after the deluge, King Gomer Chephoraod reigned in Babylon. He united all the characteristics of an excellent sovereign. He made good laws, won great battles, and white-washed long streets. He was, in consequence, idolised by his people, and panegyrised by many poets and orators. A book was then a serious undertaking. Neither paper nor any similar material had been invented. Authors were therefore under the necessity of inscribing their compositions on massive bricks. Some of these Babylonian records are still preserved in European museums; but the language in which they are written has never been deciphered. Gomer Chephoraod was so popular that the clay of all the plains round the Euphrates could scarcely furnish brickkilns enough for his eulogists. It is recorded in particular that Pharonezzar, the Assyrian Pindar, published a bridge and four walls in his praise. "Gomer Chephoraod, live for ever! It appears to thy servants that of all the productions of the earth good wine is the best, and bad wine is the worst. Good wine makes the heart cheerful, the eyes bright, the speech ready. Bad wine confuses the head, disorders the stomach, makes us quarrelsome at night, and sick the next morning. Now therefore let my lord the king take order that thy servants may drink good wine." "And how is this to be done?" said the good-natured prince. "O King," said his monitor, "this is most easy. Let the king make a decree, and seal it with his royal signet: and let it be proclaimed that the king will give ten she-asses, and ten slaves, and ten changes of raiment, every year, unto the man who shall make ten measures of the best wine. And whosoever wishes for the she-asses, and the slaves, and the raiment, let him send the ten measures of wine to thy servants, and we will drink thereof and judge. So shall there be much good wine in Assyria." The project pleased Gomer Chephoraod. "Be it so," said he. The people shouted. The petitioners prostrated themselves in gratitude. The same night heralds were despatched to bear the intelligence to the remotest districts of Assyria. After a due interval the wines began to come in; and the examiners assembled to adjudge the prize. The first vessel was unsealed. Its odour was such that the judges, without tasting it, pronounced unanimous condemnation. The next was opened: it had a villainous taste of clay. The third was sour and vapid. They proceeded from one cask of execrable liquor to another, till at length, in absolute nausea, they gave up the investigation. The next morning they all assembled at the gate of the king, with pale One day the king was going in state from his palace to the temple of Belus. During this procession it was lawful for any Babylonian to offer any peti-faces and aching heads. They owned tion or suggestion to his sovereign. As the chariot passed before a vintner's shop, a large company, apparently half-drunk, sallied forth into the street; that they could not recommend any competitor as worthy of the rewards. They swore that the wine was little better than poison, and intreated per |