"The distinction, you would remark. Pindar astounds. But his elder
brings us the more sustaining cup. One is a fountain of prodigious
ascent. One is the unsounded purple sea of marching billows."

"A very fine distinction."

"I conceive you to be now commending the similes. They pertain to the
time of the first critics of those poets. Touch the Greeks, and you can
nothing new; all has been said: 'Graiis . . . praeter, laudem nullius
avaris.' Genius dedicated to Fame is immortal. We, sir, dedicate genius
to the cloacaline floods. We do not address the unforgetting gods, but
the popular stomach."

Sir Willoughby was patient. He was about as accordantly coupled with
Dr. Middleton in discourse as a drum duetting with a bass-viol; and
when he struck in he received correction from the
paedagogue-instrument. If he thumped affirmative or negative, he was
wrong. However, he knew scholars to be an unmannered species; and the
doctor's learnedness would be a subject to dilate on.

In the cellar, it was the turn for the drum. Dr. Middleton was
tongue-tied there. Sir Willoughby gave the history of his wine in heads
of chapters; whence it came to the family originally, and how it had
come down to him in the quantity to be seen. "Curiously, my
grandfather, who inherited it, was a water-drinker. My father died
early."

"Indeed! Dear me!" the doctor ejaculated in astonishment and
condolence. The former glanced at the contrariety of man, the latter
embraced his melancholy destiny.

He was impressed with respect for the family. This cool vaulted cellar,
and the central square block, or enceinte, where the thick darkness was
not penetrated by the intruding lamp, but rather took it as an eye,
bore witness to forethoughtful practical solidity in the man who had
built the house on such foundations. A house having a great wine stored
below lives in our imaginations as a joyful house, fast and splendidly
rooted in the soil. And imagination has a place for the heir of the
house. His grandfather a water-drinker, his father dying early, present
circumstances to us arguing predestination to an illustrious heirship
and career. Dr Middleton's musings were coloured by the friendly
vision of glasses of the great wine; his mind was festive; it pleased
him, and he chose to indulge in his whimsical, robustious,
grandiose-airy style of thinking: from which the festive mind will
sometimes take a certain print that we cannot obliterate immediately.