as she.  You feel desire, and you give it, but you have never felt love, nor can you inspire it.  How can I love one who would have degraded me into a beast?  Penelope raised me into a hero.  Her love ennobled, invigorated, exalted my mind.  She bid me go to the siege of Troy, though the parting with me was worse than death to herself.  She bid me expose myself there to all the perils of war among the foremost heroes of Greece, though her poor heart sunk and trembled at every thought of those perils, and would have given all its own blood to save a drop of mine.  Then there was such a conformity in all our inclinations!  When Minerva was teaching me the lessons of wisdom she delighted to be present.  She heard, she retained, she gave them back to me softened and sweetened with the peculiar graces of her own mind.  When we unbent our thoughts with the charms of poetry, when we read together the poems of Orpheus, Musaeus, and Linus, with what taste did she discern every excellence in them!  My feelings were dull compared to hers.  She seemed herself to be the muse who had inspired those verses, and had tuned their lyres to infuse into the hearts of mankind the love of wisdom and virtue and the fear of the gods.  How beneficent was she, how tender to my people!  What care did she take to instruct them in all the finer arts, to relieve the necessities of the sick and aged, to superintend the education of children, to do my subjects every good office of kind intercession, to lay before me their wants, to mediate for those who were objects of mercy, to sue for those who deserved the favours of the Crown.  And shall I banish myself for ever from such a consort?  Shall I give up her society for the brutal joys of a sensual life, keeping indeed the exterior form of a man, but having lost the human soul, or at least all its noble and godlike powers?  Oh, Circe, it is impossible, I can’t bear the thought.

Circe.—­Begone; don’t imagine that I ask you to stay a moment longer.  The daughter of the sun is not so mean-spirited as to solicit a mortal to share her happiness with her.  It is a happiness which I find you cannot enjoy.  I pity and despise you.  All you have said seems to me a jargon of sentiments fitter for a silly woman than a great man.  Go read, and spin too, if you please, with your wife.  I forbid you to remain another day in my island.  You shall have a fair wind to carry you from it.  After that may every storm that Neptune can raise pursue and overwhelm you.  Begone, I say, quit my sight.

Ulysses.—­Great goddess, I obey, but remember your oath.

DIALOGUE VI.

MERCURY—­AN ENGLISH DUELLIST—­A NORTH AMERICAN SAVAGE.

The Duellist.—­Mercury, Charon’s boat is on the other side of the water.  Allow me, before it returns, to have some conversation with the North American savage whom you brought hither with me.  I never before saw one of that species.  He looks very grim.  Pray, sir, what is your name?  I understand you speak English.