English version—or rather I know not what made Æschylus take up with me, for he took me rather than I him; but no sooner had he got me than he began puzzling me, as he has done any time this forty years, to know wherein his transcendent merit can be supposed to lie.  To me he is, like the greater number of classics in all ages and countries, a literary Struldbrug, rather than a true ambrosia-fed immortal.  There are true immortals, but they are few and far between; most classics are as great impostors dead as they were when living, and while posing as gods are, five-sevenths of them, only Struldbrugs.  It comforts me to remember that Aristophanes liked Æschylus no better than I do.  True, he praises him by comparison with Sophocles and Euripides, but he only does so that he may run down these last more effectively.  Aristophanes is a safe man to follow, nor do I see why it should not be as correct to laugh with him as to pull a long face with the Greek Professors; but this is neither here nor there, for no one really cares about Æschylus; the more interesting question is how he contrived to make so many people for so many years pretend to care about him.

Perhaps he married somebody’s daughter.  If a man would get hold of the public ear, he must pay, marry, or fight.  I have never understood that Æschylus was a man of means, and the fighters do not write poetry, so I suppose he must have married a theatrical manager’s daughter, and got his plays brought out that way.  The ear of any age or country is like its land, air, and water; it seems limitless but is really limited, and is already in the keeping of those who naturally enough will have no squatting on such valuable property.  It is written and talked up to as closely as the means of subsistence are bred up to by a teeming population.  There is not a square inch of it but is in private hands, and he who would freehold any part of it must do so by purchase, marriage, or fighting, in the usual way—and fighting gives the longest, safest tenure.  The public itself has hardly more voice in the question who shall have its ear, than the land has in choosing its owners.  It is farmed as those who own it think most profitable to themselves, and small blame to them; nevertheless, it has a residuum of mulishness which the land has not, and does sometimes dispossess its tenants.  It is in this residuum that those who fight place their hope and trust.

Or perhaps Æschylus squared the leading critics of his time.  When one comes to think of it, he must have done so, for how is it conceivable that such plays should have had such runs if he had not?  I met a lady one year in Switzerland who had some parrots that always travelled with her and were the idols of her life.  These parrots would not let any one read aloud in their presence, unless they heard their own names introduced from time to time.  If these were freely interpolated into the text they would remain as still as stones, for they thought the reading was about themselves.  If it was not about them it could not be allowed.  The leaders of literature are like these parrots; they do not look at what a man writes, nor if they did would they understand it much better than the parrots do; but they like the sound of their own names, and if these are freely interpolated in a tone they take as friendly, they may even give ear to an outsider.  Otherwise they will scream him off if they can.

I should not advise any one with ordinary independence of mind to attempt the public ear unless he is confident that he can out-lung and out-last his own generation; for if he has any force, people will and ought to be on their guard against him, inasmuch as there is no knowing where he may not take them.  Besides, they have staked their money on the wrong men so often without suspecting it, that when there comes one whom they do suspect it would be madness not to bet against him.  True, he may die before he has out-screamed his opponents, but that has nothing to do with it.  If his scream was well pitched it will sound clearer when he is dead.  We do not know what death is.  If we know so little about life which we have experienced, how shall we know about death which we have not—and in the nature of things never can?  Every one, as I said years ago in “Alps and Sanctuaries,” is an immortal to himself, for he cannot know that he is dead until he is dead, and when dead how can he know anything about anything?  All we know is, that even the humblest dead may live long after all trace of the body has disappeared; we see them doing it in the bodies and memories of those that come after them; and not a few live so much longer and more effectually than is desirable, that it has been necessary to get rid of them by Act of Parliament.  It is love that alone gives life, and the truest life is that which we live not in ourselves but vicariously in others, and with which we have no concern.  Our concern is so to order ourselves that we may be of the number of them that enter into life—although we know it not.

Æschylus did so order himself; but his life is not of that inspiriting kind that can be won through fighting the good fight only—or being believed to have fought it.  His voice is the echo of a drone, drone-begotten and drone-sustained.  It is not a tone that a man must utter or die—nay, even though he die; and likely enough half the allusions and hard passages in Æschylus of which we can make neither head nor tail are in reality only puffs of some of the literary leaders of his time.

The lady above referred to told me more about her parrots.  She was like a Nasmyth’s hammer going slow—very gentle, but irresistible.  She always read the newspaper to them.  What was the use of having a newspaper if one did not read it to one’s parrots?

“And have you divined,” I asked, “to which side they incline in politics?”

“They do not like Mr. Gladstone,” was the somewhat freezing answer; “this is the only point on which we disagree, for I adore him.  Don’t ask more about this, it is a great grief to me.  I tell them everything,” she continued, “and hide no secret from them.”

“But can any parrot be trusted to keep a secret?”

“Mine can.”

“And on Sundays do you give them the same course of reading as on a week-day, or do you make a difference?”

“On Sundays I always read them a genealogical chapter from the Old or New Testament, for I can thus introduce their names without profanity.  I always keep tea by me in case they should ask for it in the night, and I have an Etna to warm it for them; they take milk and sugar.  The old white-headed clergyman came to see them last night; it was very painful, for Jocko reminded him so strongly of his late . . . ”

I thought she was going to say “wife,” but it proved to have been only of a parrot that he had once known and loved.

One evening she was in difficulties about the quarantine, which was enforced that year on the Italian frontier.  The local doctor had gone down that morning to see the Italian doctor and arrange some details.  “Then, perhaps, my dear,” she said to her husband, “he is the quarantine.”  “No, my love,” replied her husband.  “The quarantine is not a person, it is a place where they put people”; but she would not be comforted, and suspected the quarantine as an enemy that might at any moment pounce out upon her and her parrots.  So a lady told me once that she had been in like trouble about the anthem.  She read in her prayer-book that in choirs and places where they sing “here followeth the anthem,” yet the person with this most mysteriously sounding name never did follow.  They had a choir, and no one could say the church was not a place where they sang, for they did sing—both chants and hymns.  Why, then, this persistent slackness on the part of the anthem, who at this juncture should follow her papa, the rector, into the reading-desk?  No doubt he would come some day, and then what would he be