| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Kenilworth by Walter Scott: yourself with a sort of scant-of-grace, as men call me, and,
knowing me to be such, you make yourself my companion in a visit
to a man whom you are a stranger to--and all out of mere
curiosity, forsooth! The excuse, if curiously balanced, would be
found to want some scruples of just weight, or so."
"If your suspicions were just," said Tressilian, "you have shown
no confidence in me to invite or deserve mine."
"Oh, if that be all," said Lambourne, "my motives lie above
water. While this gold of mine lasts"--taking out his purse,
chucking it into the air, and catching it as it fell--"I will
make it buy pleasure; and when it is out I must have more. Now,
Kenilworth |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: debts I am leaving behind for the benefit of my creditors, who will
put a 'P'* on the bills, and I shall live comfortably in Italy for the
rest of my days as the Conte Ferraro. [*Protested.] I was alone with
him when he died, poor fellow, in the marsh of Zembin, and I shall
slip into his skin. . . . Mille diables! the woman who is to follow
after me might give them a clue! Think of an old campaigner like me
infatuated enough to tie myself to a petticoat tail! . . . Why take
her? I must leave her behind. Yes, I could make up my mind to it;
but--I know myself--I should be ass enough to go back to her. Still,
nobody knows Aquilina. Shall I take her or leave her?"
"You will not take her!" cried a voice that filled Castanier with
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: understanding the subject acknowledges that his writings have not come down
to us in an authentic form like most of the dialogues of Plato. How much
of them is to be ascribed to Aristotle's own hand, how much is due to his
successors in the Peripatetic School, is a question which has never been
determined, and probably never can be, because the solution of it depends
upon internal evidence only. To 'the height of this great argument' I do
not propose to ascend. But one little fact, not irrelevant to the present
discussion, will show how hopeless is the attempt to explain Plato out of
the writings of Aristotle. In the chapter of the Metaphysics quoted by Dr.
Jackson, about two octavo pages in length, there occur no less than seven
or eight references to Plato, although nothing really corresponding to them
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