a marvel what
will be found in the depths of them. Cavete, canes! Have a care how ye
lap that water. What do they want with us, the mischievous siren sluts?
A green-eyed Naiad never rests until she has inveigled a fellow under
the water; she sings after him, she dances after him; she winds round
him, glittering tortuously; she warbles and whispers dainty secrets at
his cheek, she kisses his feet, she leers at him from out of her rushes:
all her beds sigh out, "Come, sweet youth! Hither, hither, rosy Hylas!"
Pop goes Hylas. (Surely the fable is renewed for ever and ever?) Has his
captivator any pleasure? Doth she take any account of him? No more than
a fisherman landing at Brighton does of one out of a hundred thousand
herrings.... The last time. Ulysses rowed by the Sirens' bank, he and
his men did not care though a whole shoal of them were singing and
combing their longest locks. Young Telemachus was for jumping overboard:
but the tough old crew held the silly, bawling lad. They were deaf, and
could not hear his bawling nor the sea-nymphs' singing. They were dim
of sight, and did not see how lovely the witches were. The stale, old,
leering witches! Away with ye! I dare say you have painted your cheeks
by this time; your wretched old songs are as out of fashion as Mozart,
and it is all false hair you are combing!

In the last sentence you see Lector Benevolus and Scriptor Doctissimus
figure as tough old Ulysses and his tough old Boatswain, who do not care
a quid of tobacco for any Siren at Sirens' Point; but Harry Warrington
is green Telemachus, who, be sure, was very unlike the soft youth in the
good Bishop of Cambray's twaddling story. He does not see that the siren
paints the lashes from under which she ogles him; will put by into a box
when she has done the ringlets into which she would inveigle him; and
if she eats him, as she proposes to do, will crunch his bones with a new
set of grinders just from the dentist's, and warranted for mastication.
The song is not stale to Harry Warrington, nor the voice cracked or out
of tune that sings it. But--but--oh, dear me, Brother Boatswain! Don't
you remember how pleasant the opera was when we first heard it? Cosi
fan tutti was its name--Mozart's music. Now, I dare say, they have other
words, and other music, and other singers and fiddlers, and another
great crowd in the pit. Well, well, Cosi fan tutti is still upon the
bills, and they are going on singing it over and over an