'May we not be let off with the preface?' they cried in piteous
accents. 'May we not glance at the table of contents and be done with
it?' But the presiding demons (who had been Examiners in the bodily
life) drove them remorseless to their toils.
"Among the condemned I could not but witness, with sympathy, the
punishment reserved for translators. The translators of Virgil, in
particular, were a vast and motley assemblage of most respectable men.
Bishops were there, from Gawain Douglas downwards; Judges, in their
ermine; professors, clergymen, civil servants, writhing in all the
tortures that the blank verse, the anapaestic measure, the metre of the
'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' the heroic couplet and similar devices can
inflict. For all these men had loved Virgil, though not wisely: and now
their penance was to hear each other read their own translations."
"That must have been more than they could bear," said Lady Violet
"Yes," said Mr. Witham; "I should know, for down I fell into Tartarus
with a crash, and writhed among the Translators."
"Why?" asked Lady Violet.
"Because I have translated Theocritus!"
"Mr. Witham," said Lady Violet, "did you meet your ideal woman when you
were in the Paradise of Poets?"
"She yet walks this earth," said the bard, with a too significant bow.
Lady Violet turned coldly away.
* * *
Mr. Witham was never invited to the Blues again--the name of Lord Azure's
place in Kent.
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