that vision of his which you all know, of his father's house on fire
and the rest, was it just by way of a riddle? was it in deliberate
ineptitude that he reproduced it? a likely thing in their desperate
military situation, with the enemy surrounding them! no, the relation
was to serve a useful purpose.

Similarly I have had an object in telling you my dream. It is that the
young may be guided to the better way and set themselves to Culture,
especially any among them who is recreant for fear of poverty, and
minded to enter the wrong path, to the ruin of a nature not all
ignoble. Such an one will be strengthened by my tale, I am well
assured; in me he will find an apt example; let him only compare the
boy of those days, who started in pursuit of the best and devoted
himself to Culture regardless of immediate poverty, with the man who
has now come back to you, as high in fame, to put it at the lowest, as
any stonecutter of them all.

H.




A LITERARY PROMETHEUS


So you will have me a Prometheus? If your meaning is, my good sir,
that my works, like his, are of clay, I accept the comparison and hail
my prototype; potter me to your heart's content, though _my_ clay is
poor common stuff, trampled by common feet till it is little better
than mud. But perhaps it is in exaggerated compliment to my ingenuity