I am afraid my work is a camel in Egypt, and men's admiration limited
to the bridle and purple housings; as to combinations, though the
components may be of the most beautiful (as Comedy and Dialogue in the
present case), that will not ensure a good effect, unless the mixture
is harmonious and well-proportioned; it is possible that the resultant
of two beauties may be bizarre. The readiest instance to hand is the
centaur: not a lovely creature, you will admit, but a savage, if the
paintings of its drunken bouts and murders go for anything. Well, but
on the other hand is it not possible for two such components to result
in beauty, as the combination of wine and honey in superlative
sweetness? That is my belief; but I am not prepared to maintain that
_my_ components have that property; I fear the mixture may only
have obscured their separate beauties.

For one thing, there was no great original connexion or friendship
between Dialogue and Comedy; the former was a stay-at-home, spending
his time in solitude, or at most taking a stroll with a few intimates;
whereas Comedy put herself in the hands of Dionysus, haunted the
theatre, frolicked in company, laughed and mocked and tripped it to
the flute when she saw good; nay, she would mount her anapaests, as
likely as not, and pelt the friends of Dialogue with nicknames--
doctrinaires, airy metaphysicians, and the like. The thing she loved
of all else was to chaff them and drench them in holiday impertinence,
exhibit them treading on air and arguing with the clouds, or measuring
the jump of a flea, as a type of their ethereal refinements. But
Dialogue continued his deep speculations upon Nature and Virtue, till,
as the musicians say, the interval between them was two full octaves,
from the highest to the lowest note. This ill-assorted pair it is that
we have dared to unite and harmonize-reluctant and ill--disposed for