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I imagine that in that second millennium B. C., in the early centuries of Kali-Yuga, you had a warrior class with their bards, inspired with high Bushido feeling, with chivalry and all that is fine in patricianism but no longer under the leadership of Adept Princes; the esoteric knowledge was now mainly in the hands of the Priest-class.

If they, "the bards," says an Elizabethan writer, "say ought in dispraise, the gentleman, especially the meere Irish, stand in great awe." It is easy, I think, to see this is merely the survival of some far more potent power wielded in earlier times.

Put on shining mail on his person and armed with the bow, Pratarddana, his praises sung by bards and the celestial Rishis, shone resplendent like the risen star of day. Mounted on his car and with the scimitar tied to his belt, he shone like a blazing fire. With scimitar and shield and whirling his shield as he went, he proceeded to the presence of his sire.

Of course there were weeds on the ruinous top of the towers, and along the summit of the wall. This was the first castle built by Edward I. in Wales, and he resided here during the erection of Conway Castle, and here Queen Eleanor gave birth to a princess. Some few years since a meeting of Welsh bards was held within it.

How Browning and his wife rode far into the country, eating strawberries and drinking milk out of the basins of the peasants; how they fell in with the strangest and most picturesque figures of Italian society; how they climbed mountains and read books and modelled in clay and played on musical instruments; how Browning was made a kind of arbiter between two improvising Italian bards; how he had to escape from a festivity when the sound of Garibaldi's hymn brought the knocking of the Austrian police; these are the things of which his life is full, trifling and picturesque things, a series of interludes, a beautiful and happy story, beginning and ending nowhere.

The bards could hate no one consistently. If they took away the heroic chivalry from Conchobar in one tale they restored it to him in another. They have the confident trust and expectation of goodness that children have, who may have suffered punishment, but who come later on and smile on the chastiser. It is this quality which gives the tales their extraordinary charm.

After he had taken one degree in arts, and dedicated some time to reading the bards of antiquity, he gained some reputation in poetry, particularly of the satiric species; but being convinced how barren a foil poetry is, and how unlikely to yield a competent provision for its professors, he studied physic, for the improvement of which he went beyond sea, took the degree of Dr. of that faculty at Avignon, returned and was incorporated in the university in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's reign: Afterwards settling in London, he practised physic with great success, and was particularly encouraged by the Roman Catholics, of which persuasion it is said he was.

Thus, lifted into a higher sphere, their talents receive cultivation; they become professed bards, and though their subsequent works bear evident marks of improvement, they are neglected among the rest of their brethren, because that novelty, which recommended them in the beginning, no longer remains. So it fared with our adventurer in his new occupation.

Even in his "serious" volumes of verse, there is much satire and saline humour; so that his delightful book of parodies, called and Other Poets is as spontaneous a product of his Muse as his utterances ex cathedra. The twenty-seven poems, called The Banquet of the Bards, with which the book begins, are excellent fooling and genuine criticism.

In the days of the old kings the order of bards had grown so numerous, that they comprised a third of the whole population, and they devoted themselves with such talent and zeal to the task of invective that no man could live in peace, and the country cried out against them, and there was talk of suppressing the whole order. The king spared them on condition that they would mend their manners.