sentences at the end of it, and the choice of
expression throughout, had not astonished all the auditors. I, who can
never say anything nearly so beautiful, would if possible have made my
escape, and have fairly run off for shame.' He had indeed much better
run off before he made so wretched a pun on the name of Gorgias. 'I
dreaded,' says he, 'lest Agathon, _measuring my discourse by the head
of the eloquent Gorgias, should turn me to stone_ for inability of
utterance.'

Was there ever joke more frigid? What painful twisting of unelastic
stuff! If Socrates was the wisest man in the world, it would require
another oracle to persuade us, after this, that he was the wittiest.
But surely a small share of common sense would have made him abstain
from hazarding such failures. He falls on his face in very flat and
very dry ground; and, when he gets up again, his quibbles are
well-nigh as tedious as his witticisms. However, he has the presence
of mind to throw them on the shoulders of Diotima, whom he calls a
prophetess, and who, ten years before the plague broke out in Athens,
obtained from the gods (he tells us) that delay. Ah! the gods were
doubly mischievous: they sent her first. Read her words, my cousin, as
delivered by Socrates; and if they have another plague in store for
us, you may avert it by such an act of expiation.

_Timotheus._ The world will have ended before ten years are over.

_Lucian._ Indeed!

_Timotheus._ It has been pronounced.

_Lucian._ How the threads of belief and unbelief run woven close
together in the whole web of human life! Come, come; take courage; you
will have time for your Dialogue. Enlarge the circle; enrich it with a
variety of matter, enliven it with a multitude of characters, occupy
the intellect of the thoughtful, the imagination of the lively; spread
the board with solid viands, delicate rarities, and sparkling wines;
and throw, along the whole extent of it, geniality and festal crowns.

_Timotheus._ What writer of dialogues hath ever done this, or
undertaken, or conceived, or hoped it?

_Lucian._ None whatever; yet surely you yourself may, when even your
babes and sucklings are endowed with abilities incomparably greater
than our niggardly old gods have bestowed on the very best of us.

_Timotheus._ I wish, my dear Lucian, you would let our babes and
sucklings lie quiet, and say no more about them: as for your gods, I
leave them at your mercy. Do not impose on me the performa