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They seem to have been pedants, who, though destitute of those valuable qualities which are frequently found in conjunction with pedantry, thought themselves great philosophers and great politicians. They not only mislead their readers in every page, as to particular facts, but they appear to have altogether misconceived the whole character of the times of which they write.
The tinge of caution is never absent, even from his most liberal moments; and he was willing to endure great evil if it seemed dangerous to estimate the cost of change. His American speeches are the true text-book for colonial administration. He put aside the empty plea of right which satisfied legal pedants like George Grenville.
"That's the best place for you. . . You are better where you are buried, you pitiless pedants!" thought Desnoyers, recalling his conversations with his friend, the Russian.
Business and war and any customary task may come to form, so to speak, an organ whose natural function will be just that operation, and the most abstract and secondary activity, like that of adding figures or reading advertisements, may in this way become the one function proper to some soul. There are Nibelungen dwelling by choice underground and happy pedants in the upper air.
Primitive men had no profound science to perpetuate by means of allegory, nor were they such sorry pedants as to talk in riddles when plain language would serve their purpose. Their minds, we may be sure, worked like our own, and when they spoke of the far-darting sun-god, they meant just what they said, save that where we propound a scientific theorem, they constructed a myth.
The continental kingdoms which had risen on the ruins of the Western Empire kept up some intercourse with those eastern provinces where the ancient civilisation, though slowly fading away under the influence of misgovernment, might still astonish and instruct barbarians, where the court still exhibited the splendour of Diocletian and Constantine, where the public buildings were still adorned with the sculptures of Polycletus and the paintings of Apelles, and where laborious pedants, themselves destitute of taste, sense, and spirit, could still read and interpret the masterpieces of Sophocles, of Demosthenes, and of Plato.
It hands over the discussion of all important topics to pedants and blockheads, and bans the argumentum ad absurdum which has been employed by all the great satirists from Aristophanes to Voltaire.
He ignores all the rules of rhetoric, please your Grace." The Duchess had a natural distaste for pedants and tale-bearers. She did what we all would have done in her place; at first she did not listen to them but as they again began to repeat their tittle-tattle, she ended by believing them and decided to send Francoeur away.
"Apply, my dear Lord, that experience to your future career. You remember what the most sagacious of all pedants,* even though he was an emperor, has so happily expressed, 'Repentance is a goddess, and the preserver of those who have erred." * The Emperor Julian. The original expression is paraphrased in the text.
That personage, however, with his usual contempt both for law and Latin, answered brutally, "Non curamus vestros privilegios," and with this memorable answer, abruptly closed his interview with the trembling pedants. Petitions now poured into the council from all quarters, abject recantations from terror-stricken municipalities, humble intercessions in behalf of doomed and imprisoned victims.
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