ured; for besides Glaucus,
Neptune, Thetis, and Co., there was the company registered by Gevartius.

CURATE.--I have looked again at the passage, and think I have not quite
given the meaning of "novissimo." I doubt if it does mean remote--it
more likely means the last voyage--so let me substitute this:--

She came,
'Twas her last voyage, from far sea,
To this clear inlet-home, the same
Good bark and true, and proudly free
From vows which under doubtful skies,
Are made to sea-side Deities.

GRATIAN.--_Probatum est._--We have, however, run the vessel down. Let me
see what comes next. Oh, "To Lesbia." This is the old well-known
deliciously elegant little piece that I remember we were wont to try our
luck with in our youth; and many a translation of it may yet be found
among half-forgotten trifles. We are, some of us, it is true, a little
out of this cherry-season of kissing--there is a time for all things,
and so there was a time for that. It is pleasant still to trifle with
the subject: even the wise Socrates played with it in one of his
dialogues, and so may we, innocently enough. Though there be some
greybeards, (no, I am wrong, they are not greybeards, but grave-airs,
and they, more shame to them, with scarcely a beard at all,) that would
open the book here, and shut it again in haste, and look as if they had
just come out of the cave of Trophonius. That is not a healthy and
honest purity.

AQUILIUS.--But these do not object to a little professional kissing.

GRATIAN.--More shame to them--that is the worst of all, but pass on;
here is nothing but a little harmless play. Yet I don't see why the
young poet, (you know he died at thirty,) should mock his elders in
"rumoresque senum severiorum," these "sayings of severe old men." Why
should old men be severe? O' my conscience, I believe they are far less
severe than the young. Had I been present when the poet indited this to
his Lesbia, I might just have ventured to hint to him thus:--"My dear
friend, you have had enough, perhaps too much of kissing; my advice is,
that you keep it to yourself, and tell it to no one; and don't despise
the words of us old men, and mine are words of advice, that if not
married already, after all this kissing, you take her, your Lesbia, to
wife, as soon as you conveniently can."

This was pronounced with an amusingly affected gravity. I and the Curate
assumed the submissive. We were, as I told you, Eusebius,