al is inspired, as Michelet once said, by some temporal and
momentary interest. The man who has climbed to the Idalian spring comes
down benevolent. He does not grudge this toiling ant his grain, that
snarling dog his bone, but is content to live serene, in the certainty
that his soul has great provision, and that though all human things are
small, each is worth its while. Into his hand there is given a scale by
which life is known in its fair proportions; a tranquil joy, disturbed
neither by dirges nor Epinician odes, is poured into his heart and
exalts him above distraction. He respects himself as akin to that great
Self whose perfection shall one day be known; he understands the passion
for the ideal through which men die young; he wonders at envy and in the
happiness of enfranchisement would have all men free.

The pages of this Almagest are for the exceptional hour; but daily, as
one bookish from the nursery, I read much in many directions. For if
books are called the best friends of happy men, to the sad they are
saviours also. And when I remember too clearly what I am, I turn perhaps
most often to Lucretius. For of all those who have taken up the pen to
assuage the miseries of men, it is he who sings most bravely of the
great endurance. This austere enthusiast, whose soul was never fused in
the fire of friendship; who went apart, as it were, amid thunders upon
the lonely heights; who, without any lover, yet loved his kind so well
that all the years of his maturity, how short and splendid a period,
were poured forth in one song of human consolation,--this man for all
the madness of his creed, was yet aflame with a wisdom to be called
divine. That calm face, lit with one desire--to drive the furies from
the way and soothe the frightened children of men, is ever among the
nobler countenances which fancy summons about my bed. Over the anxious
heart they flow, those slow cadences, so vibrant yet so magnificently
passionless, until the nerves of pain cease to throb, and fear shrinks
as a taint impossible to the patient of such a physician. It is not his
to intimidate or denounce, to evoke visions of lurid hell, to linger
over dire vaticinations, or apportion to each his grade of torment, but
with cool fingers to smooth the hair back from the forehead, and in
grave, tender accents to say: Sleep now, for it was a dream.

Landor, in a fine passage, compared the merciful tolerance of the Roman
poet with the pitiless ire of