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I like to sit sometimes and look at the moon and the stars, the stars more than all; for they seem all the time to look right back into my face, very sadly, as if they would say, 'We see you, and pity you, and would help you, if we could. But it is so mournful to be always looking at such myriads of melancholy eyes! and I long so to read those nice books that you lend me, Solon!"
I. As a parallel to Solon we shall take Poplicola, who was honoured with this name by the Romans, his original name having been Publius Valerius, a supposed descendant of that Valerius who in ancient times was especially instrumental in making the Romans and Sabines cease to be enemies and become one people; for it was he who persuaded the two kings to meet and make terms of peace.
But he entertained absurd ideas of the vortical motion of the heavens whisking stones into the sky, there to be ignited by the fiery firmament to form stars. He was prosecuted for this unsettling opinion, and for maintaining that the moon is an inhabited earth. Solon dabbled, like many others, in reforms of the calendar.
Now, as the turtle weighed nearly one hundred and fifty pounds, Solon would have had very little chance of victory if he had trusted only to his strength; so sometimes he would let go and leap round to the other side of the turtle, and would bite away at its flapper. This made it retreat once more up the beach.
But at his retort the lady merely elevated her rather fine brows and remarked, "Really, Mr. Denney, you speak much as you write you must not let me forget to give you that little book I spoke of." As we went down the stairs Solon placed "One Hundred Common Errors in Speaking and Writing" close under his arm, adroitly shielding the title from public scrutiny.
Nowell was riding on a wild buffalo; Alfred had mounted on the shoulders of a bear; and Solon, with the greatest gravity, was astraddle on, the back of a monster crocodile, to which Saint George's green dragon was a mere pigmy, when the crocodile took it into his head to plunge into the sea, at which Solon remonstrated and barked vehemently.
Amid the confusion and tumult of the city, Solon retained his native courage. He appeared in public harangued the citizens upbraided their blindness invoked their courage. In his speeches he bade them remember that if it be the more easy task to prevent tyranny, it is the more glorious achievement to destroy it.
Now when these laws were enacted, and some came to Solon every day, to commend or dispraise them, and to advise, if possible, to leave out, or put in something, and many criticised, and desired him to explain, and tell the meaning of such and such a passage, he, to escape all displeasure, it being a hard thing, as he himself says, In great affairs to satisfy all sides,
Nothing could better illustrate this point than the anecdote related by Herodotus of the interview between Solon and Croesus, King of Lydia. Croesus, proud of his boundless wealth, asks the Greek stranger who is the happiest man on earth? expecting to hear in reply his own name.
He took it, and off he went as fast as he could gallop. I groaned with pain as I lay on the ground. I had not long to wait. I soon heard Tom shouting and Solon barking. My dog quickly led the way to where I lay. Tom had understood what had happened, and had brought two sticks to serve as crutches. Even with these I had great difficulty in reaching the huts.
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