powers of the immortal gods concerning Kingfisher, or Nightingale.
Yet the glory of thy mythus, as my fathers bequeathed it to me, O
tearful songstress! that will I too hand on to my children, and tell
it often to my wives, Xanthippe and Myrto:--the story of thy pious
love to Ceyx, and of thy melodious hymns; and, above all, of the
honour thou hast with the gods!"

The reader's well-turned periods seemed to stimulate, almost
uncontrollably, the eloquent stirrings of the eminent man of letters
then present. The impulse to speak masterfully was visible, before
the recital was well over, in the moving lines about his mouth, by no
means designed, as detractors were wont to say, simply to display the
beauty of his teeth. One of the company, expert in his humours, made
ready to transcribe what he would say, the sort of [85] things of
which a collection was then forming, the "Florida" or Flowers, so to
call them, he was apt to let fall by the way--no impromptu ventures
at random; but rather elaborate, carved ivories of speech, drawn, at
length, out of the rich treasure-house of a memory stored with such,
and as with a fine savour of old musk about them. Certainly in this
case, as Marius thought, it was worth while to hear a charming writer
speak. Discussing, quite in our modern way, the peculiarities of
those suburban views, especially the sea-views, of which he was a
professed lover, he was also every inch a priest of Aesculapius,
patronal god of Carthage. There was a piquancy in his rococo, very
African, and as it were perfumed personality, though he was now well-
nigh sixty years old, a mixture there of that sort of Platonic
spiritualism which can speak of the soul of man as but a sojourner m
the prison of the body--a blending of that with such a relish for
merely bodily graces as availed to set the fashion in matters of
dress, deportment, accent, and the like, nay! with something also